Shell Oil announced their figures yesterday. They made a 7.2 billion pound profit in the last 3 months. Shame. To add to BP’s 6 billion announced last week. And when I say ‘shame’ I don’t mean ‘awww, how can anyone live on that’, I mean ‘shame’ in a more Green Party way: ‘rewarded for single-handedly devastating the entire world with the product causing most increase in carbon levels’. Or in a Labour Party way: ‘these two parasitical mega-corps have made obscene levels of profit on the pain, suffering and financial devastation of every working person in the world and must be taxed accordingly. Punitively’.

There are questions to be asked really, because the massive increases in these two giants’ quarterly figures are due to the vast increases in oil and gas prices worldwide. Causing people everywhere to be forced to make horrible decisions. Feed the kids, pay the gas bill or have a night down the pub with me mates? Looks like the kids’ll be cold as well as hungry then. Others are having to burn old people to heat their homes, so scared of turning on the heating. All of which deprivation has translated into vast wealth for the oil producers. Causing unease in all the usual reactionaries. Kier Starmer, Angela Rayner et al see it as a ‘no brainer’ that as much as this profit should be stolen as a ‘windfall tax’ by the government. 50% of that vast total, taken in taxation, could mean every home in Britain having an annual energy cost reduction of almost one pound!!! And that’s gotta be worth having, surely? To offset the 200 quid a month increase in monthly payments?

Because it costs us nothing to just steal a few bil from a big company. Especially an… OIL!!!! company, for whom there can’t be much support or sympathy. For ‘preying’ on the frail and incontinent. (?)

Yet there are problems with such a move. Firstly, though of no concern to the Labour Party is the whole morality of a ‘windfall tax’. Which is basically: you’ve got more than me, I’m gonna take it and you can’t do nuffink about it. And then there’s the other considerations. Like the increased value this little profit will put on virtually everyone’s pensions, including the state one. Like the billions in research which Big Oil is spending on renewable and greener energy. Which they do because otherwise, when oil and gas are banned in 2040/2050/20-whenever, they’ll have nothing to sell. But also because they have the infrastructure and cash to build wind-farms (million quid each windmill) and build car-charging points and look for alternatives to fossil fuels. Well, they do unless we steal it from them.

Sometimes you need to look beyond the knee-jerk indignation. You listening, Starmer?

Happy Friday

A xxxx