{"id":94454,"date":"2026-07-31T07:19:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=94454"},"modified":"2026-07-31T07:19:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:19:24","slug":"the-madness-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/07\/31\/the-madness-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The madness goes on"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FT provides a plethora of headlines about a bizarre world this morning, each sending out wildly different signals.<\/p>\n

BP issues one of the weirdest predictions, claiming it needs to cut costs because of the risk of a global glut of oil and gas and the potential for oil and gas prices to collapse. Maybe they have not noticed there is a war on in the Gulf:<\/p>\n

\"\"Shell, meanwhile, is raking it in, exploiting the opportunity provided by Trump to fleece us all:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trump is having an impact elsewhere. The US economy is not doing as expected. No wonder he is, and should be, worried about the midterms:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The arms trade is, however, enjoying the bonanza:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Others are not. I know Foxtons are not a typical estate agent, dealing mainly in the high-end London market, but when that market sneezes, everyone else gets a cold, and the FT notes;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mind you, things could have got worse for them yesterday. The Bank of England held off rate rises, but it will not be for long. The idiots on the Monetary Policy Committee really do think they can change oil price-driven inflation by changing interest rates:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And the FTSE 100 fell, but not by enough for anyone to notice. The madness goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FT provides a plethora of headlines about a bizarre world this morning, each sending out wildly different signals. BP issues one of the weirdest
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,204,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-city-of-london","category-economic-justice","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94469,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94454\/revisions\/94469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}