- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Michael, I don’t think it is really full nationalisation. The underlying resources aren’t being nationalised; the government isn’t taking back ownership of the coal, oil and gas. Those will still be extracted and hence owned by private companies, a lot of which aren’t even British.
There was huge propaganda promoting privatisation and denigrating nationalisation around the Thatcher era. And it worked; national assets were sold off cheap, and anyone who bought shares made a lot of money very quickly.
But think what nationalisation really means. Recently, loads of councils have been on the brink of going bust. But say the council housing hadn’t been privatised. Those councils would still have masses of rent coming in every week. They’d have financial independence, to do whatever local people voted for instead of whatever Westminster insists upon. As an added bonus, private landlords would be unable to charge the exorbitant rents that they do these days, because they’d have to compete against the lower prices of social housing. Win, win.
The same goes for energy companies, but at the national level. If the government owned the energy companies, they’d really be our energy companies, and all our energy bills would subtract from the tax we have to pay. We’d also have some degree of democratic control – we have zero democratic control over private companies, unless we have enough spare money to buy shares in them.
On the downside, we might get bombed by the USA though. That’s what the USA does; it bombs any country that nationalises its resources. That’s why they bombed Libya and Iraq, fought a dirty war against Syria, and overthrew Iranian democracy back in 1953. It’s a very consistent pattern.
Michael, why is Clive “Lord” MacKinlay telling untruths about climate science?
Clark, until a couple of days ago, I had never heard of Lord MacKinlay.
I have only looked at that presentation once.
i will look at it again.
i had gained the impression that his main focus was on energy supply and energy self sufficiency and energy security.
At present we are often getting between ten and twenty percent of our electrical supply vis interconnectors, meaning we are importing that energy.
Europe Energy is also in crisis, partly because of the blowing up of the undersea natural gas pipelines but also Ukraine has shut down natural gas transit from Russia through Ukraine.
Ukraine are also targeting Russian energy plants and transmission in Russia.
Yes, Russia has destroyed a lot of the energy system in Ukraine.
Because of nuclear accidents, Germany decided to cut their reliance on nuclear power.
Many of the nuclear power plants in France are coming to the end of their working lives, yes, at Christmas an EPR came on stream in Normandy, no doubt, some of that electrical supply comes to England.
The U.K. has decided to end its use of coal, a little prematurely, I would say.
We are building Hinkley Point C a double EPR but nobody knows when that will come on stream.
Ed Milliband is not keen on nuclear power.
So, most of Europe is in a right pickle over energy.
The cost of energy is the main reason Europe and the U.K. are rapidly shedding jobs in energy intense use facilities, like steel making, cement making and chemical making.
The U.K. is the most dedicated country in the world with Net Zero.
We will soon be able to just beg?
We will be running out of home produced food as farmers sell their land for housing or runways or solar farms or wind farms.
The current government are focused on destroying small farmers, they are idelogically set against them, how dare they own their own land.– “…until a couple of days ago, I had never heard of Lord MacKinlay.”
I’m not surprised. He was only made a lord, a baron no less, last year. I wonder what he did to deserve that? The political honours system stinks.
He’s right that there’s a potential energy shortfall and I agree with him about Drax, but lying about climate science won’t solve either.
Politics ruins everything, it forces all issues into binary choices, and encouraged by the media most people start taking sides. I really can’t see any point in a fight between a mixed bag on one side, and a conversely mixed bag on the other, unless the objective is to keep everyone confused and conflicted while you make a load of money.
I also agree that it’s less harmful to make most stuff where it is to be used, rather than paying China to make it and then shipping it half way across the world.
But if we did that, we couldn’t blame China for our emissions 😉
Michael, I’m not keen on nuclear power, because you need a stable, well ordered society to tend it or it’ll turn into a set of disasters within days. You rightly highlight a set of crises Britain and the developed world faces. Food could run out, energy could fall short. Chaos would ensue and reactors would melt down and blow up. No thanks; it’d be bad enough already.
Yes, we are importing some of our electricity; but that is because it is cheaper to do this than generate from gas. The main supplier is France, who have an excess of nuclear power at times when their demand is reduced due to mild temperatures.
We are not reliant on the imports, but it saves the country money and reduces our naughty gas burning statistics.
However, some purveyors of BS like to pretend that if we didn’t import the power our lights would all go out. No they wouldn’t; but the country would have to make very expensive short term purchases of gas at inflated prices – so our bills would rise quite steeply.
I/4 of the U.S.A. fleet of B-2 nuclear capable bombers have recently been moved to Diego Garcia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit
For the last few weeks the Americans, mostly from the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Harry_S._Truman
have been attempting to degrade the Houhti military, in Yemen.
There is some talk that the Houthi have taken out a Hawkeye, with the five crew, not yet confirmed by yesterdays American press conference. The Hawkeye flies from the aircraft carrier, it is both defence and mission directing.
Iran has vowed to first strike Diego Garcia.
This might be because the Americans are taking out Iranian assets in Houthi controlled Yemen?
Or WW£ might be on the way.Recently Sir keir Rodney Starmer claimed that an extra one point six billion pounds would be dedicated to fix potholes in our crumbling roads.
The treasury, have rowed back, saying there is no money.
Ed Milliband is going to be using thirty billion pounds for Carbon-Capture.This is unproved tech.
We cannot expand the grid four or five times, in less than five years for his fantasy of Net Zero by 2030.
The greatest out pouring of money will be on the renewal and multiplication of the grid.
95% of U.K. GDP is government debt.
We are stoney broke.
If we can not afford £1.6 billion for potholes how can we afford £30 billion on Carbon-Capture?We are living in a madhouse.
That mad house is Ed Milliband’s head.
He is delusional.
Yes, it might be possible to get to something approaching Net Zero in two hundred years time but to hobble the U.K. more than any other country, so quickly, will bring the United Kingdom to economic catastrophe.Michael, any government with a sovereign currency cannot go broke because the government is the creator of the money. This was proven, in spades, when paying for wars, when bailing out the banks in 2008, and in the first year of the pandemic.
So when they tell us there is not enough money, we can be sure they’re withholding their real reasons.
Fat John, your April 1, 10:15 comment is partly untrue. There are indeed times that electricity would fall short without the imports, particularly when demand is high and average British wind speeds are very low. There is not enough installed gas generation capacity to meet peak demand if other sources are low.
You’re partly right too though. Mostly, importing electricity is cheaper than burning gas. But also, sometimes the interconnectors are used because there is insufficient grid capacity to move British wind energy to where it is needed.
Michael, coal hasn’t been completely abandoned. There are still at least two coal fired stations; one of them is the unused plant at Drax. They are mothballed, but at least one was fired up and made a test delivery to the grid, this winter just gone.
Michael, thanks for the US military update, even though it is very bad news. Love the typo; highly appropriate!
And the biggest carbon capture project is for Drax. They’re so shy about it they never mention Drax and don’t even mark Selby on the map!
Re: ‘This [carbon-capture] is unproved tech.
On the contrary, Michael: Carbon-capture machines are now a reality. In addition, as well as capturing carbon, during their working lifetimes, many carbon-capture machines can even manufacture thousands of new carbon-capture machines for you. This is not an April Fool. Some people call them trees. I wonder how many you can get for £30 billion.
Re-lapsed Agnostic,
wonderful, amusing but true.
I have long thought that as CO2 in the air increases and our planet warms and become a little more wet, then the vast Boreal will grow more profusely, also the tree line will go further North.
The ability of the Boreal to take in Carbon dioxide is huge. Already the planet is greening, a lot.
All this for free.
