The basics of life – the ability to heat and eat – shouldn’t come down to numbers.
But sometimes, and as an indictment of how we live, they do.
Two figures have stood out recently. One the one hand oil giant Shell's profits have soared to a record €8.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022 - almost three times what it made during the same time period last year.
And on the other, the New Economics Foundation has calculated that 23.4 million people in the UK will be unable to afford the basic cost of living this spring.
Energy prices rise. Energy firm profits rise. The number of people living in poverty rise.
We’ll be accused of over-simplification here, but it’s really not difficult to see the threads that bind these phenomena.
A number of things have been proposed to combat the cost of living disaster.
One of these is a windfall tax on the big energy companies - a one-off tax imposed by the government on a sector when it makes huge profits from a situation.
This, it is argued, might help to off-set some of the pain.
That’s why we’re asking: as energy prices soar, do you support a windfall tax on the big energy companies?
Vote now and join in the debate by leaving a comment below.
Windfall to be used to reinvest in renewable energy or a law to make them have a green levy since consumers have one. A productive tax yes. But to just take their money for cost of living crisis, when did that ever work. It would be another £200 off nonsense. The problem is so much bigger than this. You also risk dividends being hit and pensioners need those. So you push a sustainable group into poverty. Might want to get Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Netflix et al to actually pay full tax (no avoidance) before going after criterial industries.