Best Of

This is a very good thread, which deals at some length with an issue that bothers me, too.

It's not that wind power isn't (probably) the UK's best option for a large slug of our energy mix; it's that it's going to be deeply uncompetitive against year round solar, in countries closer to the equator, at prices of 0.5 cents per kWh.

There are counter arguments, but I'd be interested in what posters like @rcs1000 think.

1. Wind and solar both keep me up at night, but for opposite reasons. Solar works and is winning the global race, Britain simply sits too far north to benefit. Britain is betting on wind instead, yet wind lacks the very traits that makes solar work...
https://x.com/RobertBoswall/status/1946513592225792475

Not on X so can't read the replies but the advantage of wind is that it blows at night. And more in the winter time when energy consumption is likely to be highest. And although solar may still be cheaper the transmission costs from, eg, the Sahara to here would be massive. Given where we are on the globe I think we have made the right choice. If anyone wants to worry about the base cost of our electricity for manufacturing it is nuclear they should be worrying about, not wind.

Yes, that's what killed the Xlinks project (along with security concerns).

The point of the argument isn't that wind power is probably a big part of our best energy option - which it likely is - it's that year round solar for the majority of generation in (eg) Arizona or Saudi is going to be less than a third of the cost.

Solar panels are dirt cheap. And getting cheaper. The expensive part is the grid connection, the power converter electronics and battery storage.

If you need 4x as many panels (because it’s the U.K.), the rest of the system stays the same. You only need more panels. Which are dirt cheap.

So a solar farm in the UK will cost little more than one in Morocco. Certainly, the difference will be orders of magnitude less than building and maintaining an inter-continental cable.

Yes. On a related point about solar farms on agricultural land, which I think a ridiculous objection, I calculated you could replicate the entire current electricity production of the UK as solar panels and still only take up 0.5% of agricultural land.

Having said that, current and planned wind farms are a cost effective means of energy generation and better than anything else except solar.

This article talks about battery storage auctions in China averaging about £50 per MWh. As a comparison, day ahead prices in the UK for gas generation are about twice that, this being the direct alternative. We are in now in the situation where we can get completely off fossil fuels for electricity generation.

https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering-launches-record-25-gwh-storage-tender-as-prices-hit-historic-low/

Which is fine for all year round solar, where your battery storage needs to cover less than 24hrs.

A northerly country where winter insolation is less than a sixth of the summer amount (which weather can bring down to almost nil) has to rely on wind for peak seasonal (winter) demand.

And wind variability means you need a lot more than 24hrs of battery storage - so the effective cost is a lot higher.

X, by contrast, is SEVENTY times bigger than this.

98.73% of those "users" are (fascist) bots

TwiX is an intellectual dead end (for fascists)

Bluesky is doomed. Face it. Musk won this battle

You’re better off fighting new battles elsewhere, but seeing as this is you, I doubt you will heed my advice

Why are you so obsessed with Bluesky failing?

If you don't want to use it then don't.

I enjoy seeing lefties in pain. That's it. That's my only reason

I particularly enjoy seeing Bluesky lefties in pain because they are such smug, wanky little pricks

Bluesky is lefties and liberals smugly chatting to each other with not having to worry about being contaminated with any rightwingers arguing with them as they started to get on X.

If Reform win the next general election Bluesky will be like the late film critic Pauline Kael who reacted to Nixon's win in 1972 over her favoured candidate McGovern “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him”

Bluesky will become what is was always likely to become. A sad lefty ghetto

The problem is conceptual: it was founded exactly as that. A safe space for lefties, fleeing X

Then they realised that only lefties were coming over, and there was no one to debate or argue with, no diversity of thought, and so it could not grow properly. So they made half-arsed attempts to lure rightwingers and centrists, but by then the culture was cemented in place: bitter, angry, lefty, deluded, humourless, full of "people" like @Scott_xP, and furiously intolerent of any deviation from Woke Maximalism

Not exactly inviting, so no one accepted the invitation, and so it slowly dies. It cannot recover now

Warning, this guy on X is a lefty fool and often talks twaddle, however it’s Sunday and it’s entertaining gossip and I’m hurkle-durkling


“I'm told a potential Labour leadership bid from Wes Streeting is currently shaping up, with Shabana Mahmood broached as campaign chair”

https://x.com/david__osland/status/1946589573733023782?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

‘I’ve had enough of the pie faced centrist in hock to lobbyists and running scared of anything vaguely progressive. Who we need is Wes Streeting!’

Said no one except Wes Streeting.

Indeed

Replies under the tweet point out that Streeting has a majority sub-1000 (is that true? Haven’t checked) and is highly likely to lose his seat next GE

Why should that be a problem? The PM doesn't need to be an MP, he will simply promote someone in a safe seat to the Lords and win the subsequent by-election.

They could equally well elect Andy Burnham as leader and PM. When you have been in opposition for x years then people doing important roles in the provinces (or devolved administrations) should be particularly valuable.

The Labour party would first need to change its constitution. To get on the leadership ballot, a candidate must be a sitting MP

Indeed, any party member in good standing should be eligible. I don't understand why you would have a selection system that may exclude the best candidate for the role. The small parties don't seem to have this problem.

As party leader, sure.
In Burnhams case, I think trying to foist him on us as our PM before he had a seat in the Commons would be the electoral end of the Labour Party and he'd probably very likely lose any by election - the opposition would put up a unity candidate under some sort of 'stop the outrage!' banner
Telling HMK not a single one of your 400 MPs can govern and it has to be 'some dude' would also be constitutionally interesting

Burnham also crashed out of national politics. Pretty badly.

Reinventing himself as a regional champion has gone well. He is popular because he doesn’t have to take responsibility for cuts or tax rises. To be fair, he has worked pretty hard within the limitations of the job. He has built a solid personal following. Even with the Labour collapse, he will win the next Mayoral election, I think.

So, he has relatively secure, well paid job. That he likes and does well. Within the Labour movement he is lauded from Left to Right.

Giving that up to, to try to and become leader, when that is looking like a disaster?

Why would he? Ambition? A belief that “only I can save this”? Not sure I see either of those in Burnham.

As it stands there is no route to number 10 for him unless he wins a by election before a vacancy as leader arises in any case.
Hes not going to give up his mayoralty to become a backbencher who might have enough suppiot to maybe get on the ballot if a vacancy arises

Warning, this guy on X is a lefty fool and often talks twaddle, however it’s Sunday and it’s entertaining gossip and I’m hurkle-durkling


“I'm told a potential Labour leadership bid from Wes Streeting is currently shaping up, with Shabana Mahmood broached as campaign chair”

https://x.com/david__osland/status/1946589573733023782?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

‘I’ve had enough of the pie faced centrist in hock to lobbyists and running scared of anything vaguely progressive. Who we need is Wes Streeting!’

Said no one except Wes Streeting.

Indeed

Replies under the tweet point out that Streeting has a majority sub-1000 (is that true? Haven’t checked) and is highly likely to lose his seat next GE

Why should that be a problem? The PM doesn't need to be an MP, he will simply promote someone in a safe seat to the Lords and win the subsequent by-election.

They could equally well elect Andy Burnham as leader and PM. When you have been in opposition for x years then people doing important roles in the provinces (or devolved administrations) should be particularly valuable.

The Labour party would first need to change its constitution. To get on the leadership ballot, a candidate must be a sitting MP

Indeed, any party member in good standing should be eligible. I don't understand why you would have a selection system that may exclude the best candidate for the role. The small parties don't seem to have this problem.

As party leader, sure.
In Burnhams case, I think trying to foist him on us as our PM before he had a seat in the Commons would be the electoral end of the Labour Party and he'd probably very likely lose any by election - the opposition would put up a unity candidate under some sort of 'stop the outrage!' banner
Telling HMK not a single one of your 400 MPs can govern and it has to be 'some dude' would also be constitutionally interesting

Why? An MP is a legislator, not a trainee PM. Surely having a regional/devolved "executive" role is better experience for being PM than a backbench MP or even shad cab minister. If SKS were to step down now, most of the candidates would have only 1 year cabinet experience.

On topic (some mistake shurely?)

What hypothetical polls do tell us is that significant sections of the voting public are not happy with what is on offer from existing parties.

With such multiple different political currents around we either need an electoral system that treats multiple parties fairly, or genuine democracy within the major parties. Tories, Labour and Reform are all led very much top down, with little or no grass roots say on policy or direction.

And thank the Lord for that. If you think the leadership are delusional, stupid and plain ignorant, have a look at the membership. Who twice voted for Corbyn. Who voted for IDS and Liz Truss. Who support Farage no matter what. The idea that the membership of any of these parties should be let near policy is frankly frightening.

Policy shouldn't purely be based on activists, but neither should their opinions be ignored outside leadership contests. The same too for backbenchers.

I haven't been a member of a political party for more than 30 years. I just never see the point. They really don't care what you think. You have no right to even be listened to. You are just a cashpoint for other peoples' ambitions. The one thing you get in most parties (not Farage's vehicles, of course) is the right to vote for the leadership. And the membership have proven themselves to be consistently useless at that.

Your point here becomes borderline incoherent. You don't want to be a member because they don't get a say, yet you're appalled at the say they do have.

As for Tory members electing poor leaders, as I've reminded you several times, they are choosing between a shortlist of two presented to them by the PCP. In IDS's case they rejected someone completely ideologically opposed to the settled Eurosceptical view of the wider party, and in Truss's case they rejected Sunak, who want on to lead the Tories to their most crushing defeat in living memory. Sunak was shit on that campaign trail (as he was in Government, and in the GE) and any sensible electorate would have rejected him for the complete dud he was. It's a deeply flawed system, but it's idiotic (as surely you know) to highlight the members choosing one candidate from two, when the MPs have selected 2 from many.

Many of the Conservative MPs who thought they were being oh-so-clever in the games they played on who to put to the membership were shown to be complete fuckwits when they were booted out by the voters as a consequence of that twattishness.

They have a lifetime away from power to think on their actions. I hope every day stings like chilli in the eye.

Why do we think Conservative MPs are any more sensible than the members?

The members have to deal with the choices put before them.

Although, voting for Truss shows they ain't exactly politically attuned either...

This is a very good thread, which deals at some length with an issue that bothers me, too.

It's not that wind power isn't (probably) the UK's best option for a large slug of our energy mix; it's that it's going to be deeply uncompetitive against year round solar, in countries closer to the equator, at prices of 0.5 cents per kWh.

There are counter arguments, but I'd be interested in what posters like @rcs1000 think.

1. Wind and solar both keep me up at night, but for opposite reasons. Solar works and is winning the global race, Britain simply sits too far north to benefit. Britain is betting on wind instead, yet wind lacks the very traits that makes solar work...
https://x.com/RobertBoswall/status/1946513592225792475

Not on X so can't read the replies but the advantage of wind is that it blows at night. And more in the winter time when energy consumption is likely to be highest. And although solar may still be cheaper the transmission costs from, eg, the Sahara to here would be massive. Given where we are on the globe I think we have made the right choice. If anyone wants to worry about the base cost of our electricity for manufacturing it is nuclear they should be worrying about, not wind.

This is a very good thread, which deals at some length with an issue that bothers me, too.

It's not that wind power isn't (probably) the UK's best option for a large slug of our energy mix; it's that it's going to be deeply uncompetitive against year round solar, in countries closer to the equator, at prices of 0.5 cents per kWh.

There are counter arguments, but I'd be interested in what posters like @rcs1000 think.

1. Wind and solar both keep me up at night, but for opposite reasons. Solar works and is winning the global race, Britain simply sits too far north to benefit. Britain is betting on wind instead, yet wind lacks the very traits that makes solar work...
https://x.com/RobertBoswall/status/1946513592225792475

Not on X so can't read the replies but the advantage of wind is that it blows at night. And more in the winter time when energy consumption is likely to be highest. And although solar may still be cheaper the transmission costs from, eg, the Sahara to here would be massive. Given where we are on the globe I think we have made the right choice. If anyone wants to worry about the base cost of our electricity for manufacturing it is nuclear they should be worrying about, not wind.

Boswall's thread points out the key engineering issue of the lifetime costs of any engineered product (for those of you that haven't had to deal with it). PV is simpler, cheaper and less lifetime costs from an installation, running and maintenance point of view.

Against this (as alluded to in the transmission cost) is that solar is in the wrong place for the UK. But if the North Africans decide to set up a grid with the Southern Europeans, you could see an energy cascade northwards. They will have to allow for the NIMBYs that don't like HV transmission lines in their area - a real issue in the UK.

It's a useful contribution to the debate and domestic energy storage (Tesla batteries or even a Tesla) looks like another additional area for future building regulation, if GCH is to be banned. I say that as someone who made their living out of the polluting coal power stations and the even more polluting nuclear.

I have no comment to make on wind - people know my view on that.

But I will say more generally that UK energy policy is in my view heavily led by lobbyists and interest groups - as well as the overall direction of travel being to tick emissions boxes, not generate plentiful, inexpensive energy.

Therefore it is entirely predictable that we would choose the least efficient form of power generation, because greater the inefficiency, the greater money someone is making out of it. We tend to think of 'Government waste' just going into a metaphorical toilet, and nobody would mind if it stopped. Of course, that isn't the case. It actually goes into another organisation's pockets, and those organisations have the resources and influence to keep it that way.

I am not being fatalistic - I really do believe the next Government will start the journey of serious reform that the country needs. But they need to understand broadly that there will be fierce opposition from those who like the current set up - not just for ideological reasons but for profound commercial ones.

For some strange reason, Brits like burning things (coal, gas, nuclear fuel) as they choose to buy poorly insulated shoddily built homes. Perhaps its a weather thing. If we had to cope with months of sub-zero temperatures, we might pay a bit more attention to insulation rather than generation.

On topic (some mistake shurely?)

What hypothetical polls do tell us is that significant sections of the voting public are not happy with what is on offer from existing parties.

With such multiple different political currents around we either need an electoral system that treats multiple parties fairly, or genuine democracy within the major parties. Tories, Labour and Reform are all led very much top down, with little or no grass roots say on policy or direction.

And thank the Lord for that. If you think the leadership are delusional, stupid and plain ignorant, have a look at the membership. Who twice voted for Corbyn. Who voted for IDS and Liz Truss. Who support Farage no matter what. The idea that the membership of any of these parties should be let near policy is frankly frightening.

Policy shouldn't purely be based on activists, but neither should their opinions be ignored outside leadership contests. The same too for backbenchers.

I haven't been a member of a political party for more than 30 years. I just never see the point. They really don't care what you think. You have no right to even be listened to. You are just a cashpoint for other peoples' ambitions. The one thing you get in most parties (not Farage's vehicles, of course) is the right to vote for the leadership. And the membership have proven themselves to be consistently useless at that.