The Government should be focusing each ounce of their energy in controlling: - fuel prices - utility prices - food prices Bank of England should not really be needed much. All this is doing is absolutely killing the average public with more squeeze on their costs&mortgage

This is only creating a wealth transfer at the moment from British public to: - energy suppliers - fuel suppliers - BP etc - food suppliers - Tesco et al. &, you guessed it, - the banks

Lets talk about Energycosts The government thankfully subsidised some of these costs when they shot up in gas prices that occurred due to Brexit, Russia/Ukraine situation etc Compare your home utility bills compared to Jan 21 to now. The wholesale gas prices are back to a very similar level. But how different are your energy bills? 2.5-3.5x? Mine too. Why?

Our wholesale gas prices, as shown here are back to Jan 21 levels. However you are probably paying 2.5-3.5x for electricity and gas right now. I will analyse oil prices next which can explain a little bit increase (maybe to 1.25-1.5x of Jan 21 pricing), but nothing like what you currently suffer with

You can see here, quite rightly, our dependance on Coal and Gas has reduced drastically when comparing Jan 19 through to Jan 23. We may be consuming more energy, but our % of consumption from the expensive gas has reduced and in exact terms year on year we have reduced our gas consumption drastically.

So if we are using more wind, nuclear other renewable energy sources more and less dependance on the gas that was meant to have risen our costs up drastically, why are we still paying 2.5-3.5x more?

Now lets talk about Oil Jan 21 $54/barrel and now about $73/barrel. That can give some allowance of our cost for utilities to about 1.5x compared to Jan 21. due to transport costs of coal etc

Petrol/Diesel prices if we compare to Jan 21, as I mentioned is about 40% more expensive now. So the price of £1.45/litre seems reasonable in comparison to £1.17/litre in Jan 21. But lets compare it to Jan 18, when oil prices hit similar highs, petrol price was £1.21/l cont.

The cost of petrol/diesel affects EVERYTHING and contributes hugely to inflation. It is needed to deliver your groceries to the stores from all over UK and Europe and the world, your daily items and purchases from Amazon or Ocado

This does not just affect you, but businesses too. For example eating out, if raw food and groceries are much more expensive, along with keeping the lights on and the gas to cook the food, plus they had to give a pay rise to their awesome chefs; You naturally pay more for the food.

Paid about 25-35% more for your food on @Deliveroo or at @wagamama uk and others recently? Thats the increased cost to just put food on the table and keep the lights on

Each litre of fuel sold, gives tax to the Treasury. Looking at the table below, there are two stark differences between how we use our roads since 2019: 1) We are using our cars and taxis 9% less 2) Use of light commercial and HGVs went up by about 12.5% Its the latter that has the impact we see on our grocery stores and prices, along with increase in cost of storage, and the general supply chain.

Overall the roads were travelled about 5% less in 2022 compared to 2019. This is also reflected in the Fuel Duty Tax receipts; 2019 £27.57b vs 2022 £25.94b = 6% reduction in fuel duty to HMRC This can be explained by 5% less travel overall AND also due to Electric Vehicles/Hybrids picking up popularity.

This is also impacted due to the fuel duty being reduced by 5-7% already in order to help inflation

All of this has led to inflation being around 9% for the last 6 months (Year on Year figures) What this means is that compared to last year, the £1 you earn, is actually worth £0.90 in comparison to this time last year. This is ABSOLUTELY the biggest killer to the economy as @Rishi Sunak has quite rightly spotted and said to his credit

But thats all @Rishi Sunak and the Government have got right. What would I do if I was PM ? 1) Give a further fuel duty cut but purely for HGVs that are transporting most of our consumables, daily items etc. This will help drive down the cost of food Fuel is needed for the entire supply chain transport from the point food is picked at the farm or manufactured and packaged in a factory, through to storage, through to stores, right through to our dinner table As you see below, food and household consumables inflationary costs are FAR outstripping the general CPI figure of 10% This is also reflected in the knock on impact in the hospitality sector - there is a reason 61% of us have stopped going out to restaurants/hotels - massive impact on our economy! The reduction in fuel duty from this could be about £2bil to the treasury, but their loss in income through VAT from hospitality sector will be £1bil even if only 10% drop in business from consumers (although market indicators are more around 20-25% reduction due to cost of living crisis)

2) The big one is utility prices These providers are all provide providers. The government can not truly control their pricing and nor should a free market expect that from the government. However, to protect the consumer, there is a regulator @Ofgem who is there to protect the interest of the public and businesses However, the pricing regulation/cap for the months of April through to the end of June was set on 27th of February. Similarly, for our Jan 23 to March 23 pricing, the pricing was set towards the end of November. The price at that point was 338p/therm for the utility companies to purchase. However at that start of this period, purchasing was happening at 182p/therm - that is a STONKING 85% reduction in their buying price from when capped pricing was set by OFGEM. So what happened? You paid almost 2X for your utilities than you really needed to, whilst still making sure the companies have a very healthy profit. However, instead what happened is - energy firms making over £60 million a day profit per day. Of course the government has a lever called Windfall Tax - which it has used before. But I personally do not believe thats fair on a business and for its planning. Some energy firms have let people go citing that tax as the reason for it. Also, the big problem is that for you and I, the cash is still taken from our accounts, we fail to make ends meet. The government did give support with utilities which was great but of course that support has long since been withdrawn. But that was not the right modality either. What the government SHOULD have done is hold regular and frequent meetings with the regulators and suppliers through this volatility and fluctuation. They could very easily ask Ofgem to set a much more fluid process for setting prices, which maybe were updated towards the end of each month for the following month. Yes this increases work load for all involved but if the government truly cared about the public, this was well within their gift (and still is). Ps. Did you think its odd that energy and oil companies have seen a heavy windfall tax being levied and in essence they ended up giving 75% towards taxes yet they have not really made a massive fuss about it? Do you wonder why? I do. But what a surprise, they have clawed all that back & then some

A utility cut, again makes and impact on EVERYTHING in our lives. Storage of food for grocery stores in cold storages requires a lot of energy, whilst its being transported too, keeping the lights on in these stores, the factories which are packaging up your favourite foods and essentials. You get the picture. If the cost to these companies for producing, farming, storing etc of these goods was 2X less in utilities, it would make a drastic difference to the price they could afford to charge (ie drop their prices)

Continuing with Food, I would have spoken to the major retailers and asked what are the key items which are increasing in price and why - understanding the supply chain a little bit more. Coming up with some very focused aids to parts of the supply chain IF needed (which it shouldn't really be if we handle utilities and fuel challenges well). But, of course Brexit has also had an impact, so our sourcing and supply chain of goods coming from Europe has had its challenges. I would look to see if there are UK alternatives or any help we could offer specifically to the UK suppliers or manufacturers/farmers

This would be my immediate go to. But what the government have done is literally just put up their hands and said its not our problem (or maybe they dont care that it is their problem) and this is the @Bank of England job. No. Controlling inflation is the governments job. Bank of England has its own lever to help with that.

IF the government had done all of these things, then inflation would have been in much better control than it is. I am not saying it would have been back towards the normal 2% mark, but lets say 4.5% Bank of England could eased up the interest rates but they would definitely not be hitting the 5% they are now. I imagine the Bank would have max had to raise to about 2.25%. Imagine the difference that that interest rate makes on your monthly expenses in your household or in your businesses?