Oil and gas industry is shrieking at the very idea of helping people out as it rakes in the cash – Susan Morrison

The Chancellor is aghast. Fuel bills are coming in that make it look like we have taken up home steel smelting.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney has spoken out against a windfall tax on the oil and gas industry to help people struggling with high energy bills (Picture: Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images)

He immediately plans to shell out 200 smackers to help ease this burden. But he wants it back.

So, basically, he’s giving me a loan I didn’t ask for and can’t say no to. He says he needs it back because we are broke. That’s why he cut Universal Credit by £20 a week.

We might be broke, but by jingo, we have our pride, so we won’t be tapping the energy companies who’re currently raking it in. No sirree, you just put your purse away there, BP, even though you raked in $12.8 billion in profit last year.

The chief executive of BP, Bernard Looney, shrieked like a shocked debutante at the mere notion of a ‘windfall tax’.

Bernard bleated that this money only made up for losses the previous year. He didn’t mention that this was the first dip in a decade, so all things considered, mate, I think you’ve evened things out.

A windfall tax, he says, “won’t incentivise people to invest in the thing that we need right now”. Gosh, Bernard, these investors of yours are real scaredy cats if a simple thing like helping people out gives them the frights.

Until fuel gets renewable, these global fuel pumpers pretty much have us over an oily barrel. We have to buy our fuel from them, unless you plan to go full-on Good Life and start heating your house by burning the furniture. And you’d probably have to give up the car in favour of a horse. The dung would be handy, I suppose.

They get our money when the going is good, so why not give back when times get tight? Honestly, windfall taxes really don’t hurt.

Back when BT suffered by having me on the payroll, it got whacked for a tasty bill by the Iron Chancellor, Gordon Brown. You could hear the screaming from HQ in Edinburgh.

But they paid it, and the company survived. Things have gone downhill since, but that’s because I left the company, obviously.

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