After my usual morning routine I spent a small fortune filling the car with petrol, then drove west-wards to Pembury. As I drove there was talk about the massive hikes in energy bills coming in the autumn (as if this morning's petrol bill wasn't enough). It was claimed that (in an attempt to buy votes from those who might vote for him), wannabe leader of the Conservative party Rishi Sunak is offering to cut VAT on fuel bills. The other wannabe leader of the Conservative party Liz Truss was quick to say that Rishi hadn’t been keen on cutting fuel taxes until he realised he might buy votes that way.
What he seems to have overlooked is that the average person eligible to vote for him in the next few weeks is rich enough not to really be that fussed about their leccie and gas bills, and that cutting the VAT on those bills is little more than pissing in the wind anyway (!) when the bills are going up over a hundred quid or more a month compared to what they were a year ago.
Meanwhile in Europe there are serious worries about fuel bills. With the Russians reducing their gas exports to Europe to a fifth of what they once were (and at the most expensive it has ever been), Europe is in for a bleak winter.
However I have a theory... Call me cynical if you will, but the Russians clearly have a stranglehold on Europe. And why are the Russians strangling? Because the Europeans are backing Russia's enemy in the ongoing war.
But will Europe be doing that for much longer. Suddenly the news today was all about seven hundred (or more) institutions across Ukraine in which the mentally and physically handicapped are being mistreated. There was quite a bit of consternation over this…
I hope I’m wrong, but keep an eye on the news... I wonder if over the next few weeks more and more stories like this will come to light, and slowly but surely the public's opinion will be turned against the Ukrainian underdog. For all that the Ukrainians are the injured party, the Russians are the ones we need to keep sweet.
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