From my very limited understanding, it does sound like a glimmer of good news, although unlikely to affect consumer prices for a while yet, but at least the govt subsidy (and national debt) won't be as high.

If the forward gas stays where it is, retail prices will go higher next year.

If forward gas prices move ⬇️ (Apr23 contract) towards £2 then prices will (slightly) reduce from £3.50.

Apr22 price, where summer '22 prices were based, was around £1.40. April 2023 is currently £3.68.

The painting protester speaks out ... ♀️ ✊ ?

https://twitter.com/michaelmezz/status/1582184473252098049

Initial LOLs at the stunt! ? But keep watching for the factual analysis >

https://twitter.com/ByDonkeys/status/1582303415576715265

https://twitter.com/dsmitheconomics/status/1582630106362691584

Robert Peston >> 

On Monday the prime minister said: “I’ve fixed the mistakes”. That’s not quite right. What she might more properly have said is “my new chancellor is trying to fix my mistakes, but lasting damage has been done”. The point is that the mini budget has increased the hole in the public finances by more than the direct impact of the mini-budget’s unfunded tax increases.

By undermining investors’ confidence in the government’s economic competence, the mini-budget increased the relative interest rate the government has to pay to borrow - and that caused an indirect but significant deepening of the hole in the public finances. That is partly why simply reversing the mini-budget’s tax cuts and limiting the energy subsidies isn’t enough to fill the hole.

The appearance of a chancellor and pm giving away money in tax cuts the country didn’t have undermined the confidence of investors in the economic competence of the government. That is one important reason why market interest rates soared, why the price of government bonds collapsed.

Those bond prices have recovered to an extent; interest rates have fallen. But - and this is the important point - those market interest rates are higher than they would have been had the mini budget not happened. One way of seeing this is that in the years after Brexit, the yield on 10-year UK government bonds or gilts was significantly less than the yield on US ten-year Treasury bonds, often a full percentage point lower.

[Image below]

So for years it was massively cheaper for the UK government to borrow than it was for the US government. Immediately after the mini-budget debacle, it suddenly became massively more expensive for the UK to borrow than for Washington.

Today, after the u-turns and sacking of Kwarteng, the interest rate the UK government has to pay to borrow for 10 years is roughly the same as what Washington pays. That is the lasting damage for the public finances and the economy. It means the government will (spend) more in interest to raise the hundreds of billions of pounds it will need in the coming years than would have been the case.

It also increases the interest rate we all pay and slows economic growth. So part of the residual £40bn odd hole in the public finances is harm inflicted by Truss’s mini budget. It will take years of steady economic stewardship to remove the underlying harm.

In the jargon, she and Kwasi increased the risk premium attached by investors to the UK. That is the mistake they made that cannot easily be corrected. Hunt is doing his best. Every time he does a u-turn on their policies - pushing up taxes, cutting public spending - the Office of Budget Responsibility sends him a new updated forecast of the fiscal hole he is yet to fill.

Day after day between now and 31 October, when he announces the overall rescue package, he will tell the OBR “this or that benefit won’t be fully updated by inflation” and “this or that public service will be squeezed”, to fill the hole. That is the cost of the mini-budget’s incompetence and incontinence. It is a price that falls disproportionately on those on lowest incomes, who rely most on public services.

And when Tory MPs recover from the shock they feel at the scale of their party’s humiliation, they’ll grasp the magnitude of the harm inflicted on them too. Because at the next election, and maybe for a few elections, their traditional mantra that only the Tories can be trusted to manage the public finances will sound like a bad joke.

I thought they were campaigning to stop the new licences that the Truss just gave out, rather than stopping the existing ones. We need to use less oil and gas and focus more attention on renewables, rather than just allowing more oil wells. It reduces the incentive for these companies to do what's required, though does of course keep their profits nice and high at our expense.

I see the pension ping pong ball has swung back to 'in line with inflation'.

I wonder if they'll have made up their minds by next April.

Braverman gone already. Tonight's fracking vote could make for some very interesting headlines.

Can we just have a bloody election now, this situation is utterly ridiculous. 

Good grief... What an embarrassing mess... smh

Sheesh ... don't even know where to begin ! In case you missed it ...

https://twitter.com/DanJohnsonNews/status/1582808074875973633?s=20&t=_ZCtupAM9NOxE4QL49HK0A

https://twitter.com/OwsWills/status/1582845613019787264?s=20&t=nKRTjM8MKQ6Fb9BNDqgtQg

https://twitter.com/TheCentreLefty/status/1582791769892491268?s=20&t=CfxJYHTFzetVy_BBWhb5OA

and a sober reminder ...

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1582978455184232448?s=20&t=6Nhlg8HV_bledPHSqDnaTA

This article by Matthew Parris (The Times) from August is making the rounds again. ? >

In Times columns I’ve offered my first impressions of (Truss) ... intellectually shallow, her convictions wafer-thin; driven by ambition pure and simple; that her manner was wooden and her ability to communicate convincingly was virtually non-existent; dangerously impulsive and headstrong, with a self-belief unattended by precaution; and that her leadership of the Conservative Party and our country would be a tragedy for both. “There’s nothing there beyond a leaping self-confidence that’s almost endearing in its wide-eyed disregard for the forces of political gravity.”

Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. Her biggest job has been foreign secretary. I’ll wager that at the outset most readers thought Liz Truss a bit weird, curiously hollow and potentially dangerous. This summer a short period will see such rushes to judgment revised. Then government will descend into a huge effort to contain and defang an unstable prime minister; and we shall revert to our first impressions. Save yourself the detour and stick with them. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.

"No hystrionics. No hyperbole. Just a calm and honest summation of the situation. A breath of fresh air in an age of fake news."

From ex-Telegrapher Peter Oborne.?

What a complete omnishambles.