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Vaping is just as bad for your heart as cigarettes, landmark study findsSustained use of e-cigarettes can significantly impair function of body’s blood vessels, reports suggest Long-term use of vaping products can be just as bad for your heart as smoking normal cigarettes, two new studies have found.
Ex-Tory chairman alleges Braverman responsible for ‘multiple breaches of ministerial code’Jake Berry, who sat in the cabinet alongside Braverman at the heart of Liz Truss’s government, said she was responsible for a “really serious breach” after sending confidential information to a private address, sending it to an MP, attempting to send it to the MP’s wife and then accidentally sending it to a member of parliamentary staff.“It was sent from a private email address to another member of parliament,” he told TalkTV’s Kate McCann. “She then sought to copy in that individual’s wife and accidentally sent it to a staffer in parliament. To me, that seems a really serious breach, especially when it was documents relating to cyber security, as I believe. That seems a really serious breach.”
Rishi Sunak urged to drop triple lock to spread economic burden across all agesThe new Prime Minister has refused to rule out scrapping the triple-lockThe triple lock was a key 2019 Tory election manifesto promise that guarantees the state pension will rise each year by whichever is the highest of three measures – the Consumer Prices Index, wage growth, or a 2.5pc benchmark.But the Government should now consider getting rid of this and replacing it with a system that pegs the state pension to earnings, in order to avoid cutting funding to essential public services, Policy Exchange warned in a report titled “Balancing the Books”.It said: “Given the savings that need to be made in the current economic context, it would be unfair to impose the burden solely on those in the labour market.”
Shell won't pay the UK windfall tax this year despite eye-watering profitsShell has made $30 billion (£26 billion) in the first nine months of 2022 and is on course to make a truly staggering annual profit.The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused the market price of oil and gas to spike in such a way that energy producers are chalking up revenues they could only have dreamed of a year ago.For reasons which have nothing at all to do with the ingenuity of Shell’s executive team, oil and gas revenues are falling from the sky like manna from heaven.This morning, Ben Van Beurden [Shell CEO} repeated his view that it is “only sensible” for governments to cash in on the energy profits bonanza. Windfall taxes are, he argues the “right” and “moral” way “to help the most vulnerable in society”.“We simply don’t have profits which we can be taxed against,” explains Sinead Gorman, Shell’s chief financial officer.She does not expect Shell to pay the Energy Price Levy until the beginning of next year at the earliest. What happens then depends on the oil price - Sunak’s levy falls away if it dips below $70.The fact that Shell has not paid any tax on its UK income since 2017 also sticks in the throat of some.We should remember that the company’s shareholders include the investment funds which manage pensions saving of behalf of millions of people. They are entitled to a share of the spoils.But it is both interesting and slightly bizarre that Shell is choosing not to use any of the billions of dollars that have fallen into its arms to turbo-charge efforts to hit its target of Net Zero emissions by 2050.
Energy minister announces Nov. subsidy rates for electricity billsEnvironment and Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas on Thursday announced the size of the state subsidy for electricity bills in November, saying it would be set at 0.238 euros per KWh for a monthly consumption of up to 500 KWh.At this rate of subsidy, the average customer of the Public Power Corporation (PPC) [ΔΕΗ], for example, will pay 0.159 euros per KWh. The size of the subsidy will then decline as monthly consumption levels increase while it will apply to all domestic electricity connections without income criteria.The total cost of the subsidies will be 430 million euros, of which 270 million will subsidize households. Skrekas said that the greater part of this amount is financed via the mechanism for recovering the windfall profits of power producers, which came into force in July and has so far generated revenues exceeding 2.3 billion euros. He noted that this mechanism has also been adopted in Europe by other EU member-states.
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Topic: 27/10/22 (Read 859 times)
