Best Of

https://x.com/alexwickham/status/2035280623808413826

Lots of interesting stuff in here.

— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.

But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.

Of course their solutions are half-baked and politically unsaleable, so they almost certainly won't happen.

Merging NI with income tax is a good if unoriginal idea, but it will either be ruinously expensive or politically disastrous, depending on whether you go for revenue neutrality or compensate those who lose out fully.

Shifting the tax burden away from salaried work towards land wouldn't raise much (what land anyway? Agricultural land? Would raise barely anything. Residential property? Politically impossible) and targeting "economic rent-seeking", i.e. presumably corporate profits, would destroy what little business confidence remains. Unless of course they mean real rent-seeking groups like lawyers or public sector quangocrats with their own pensions by act of Parliament, but somehow I doubt that.

New incentives for entrepreneurship and risk taking are exactly the kind of rent-seeking that the previous point wanted to target, so that's just bizarre.

And targeted deregulation under Labour, especially of the energy sector, always seems to end up with yet more regulation.

Moving levies off bills - where to? Presumably general taxation. So basically a largely meaningless accounting exercise which would achieve essentially nothing except to disguise the cost of Mad Ed's idiocy.

Still, interesting that the case for pro-market reforms is now so overwhelming that even some in this cretinous government acknowledges it, even if they don't really understand markets or the private sector in general.

The Mail on Sunday

Sarah Ferguson explored a TV project to clone the late Queen’s corgis, with replicas sold worldwide. Talks with Hollywood producers framed it as a way to raise funds. Critics cite welfare and ethics concerns, noting pet cloning is costly, uncertain and controversial.

The Sunday Telegraph

Israeli government explains to Starmer that Iranian missiles can now hit UK, and encourage UK to join with them in the National Interest of UK Security. Starmer and his government doing their best to cover this up, and hide the facts behind: security concerns restricts what can be discussed.

I'd say it's more Israel and its government doing their best to drag the UK into a conflict they started for exclusively their own purposes.

But you concede, it can be seen both ways, and yourselves and others who like your post, bring all sorts of longstanding bias to your answer?

This is one two governments can go in two very different ways answering - like Labour under Blair answered the same question of rogue state seeking/close to weapons of mass destruction, by joining USA action. Only Spain in Europe agreed.

The SundayTimes also goes big on Iran’s intercontinental ballistic weapons, that could carry warheads of mass destruction, used against UK’s Chagos base.
The Subtext from all these headlines in the most influential of papers is explicitly clear.
This world threat now totally justifies and excuses the Israeli and US action. And considering it’s just as much threat to us, and it’s our fight too, why are we letting US & Israel do the difficult, expensive, fighting and dying bit alone, on our behalf?
Will the UK Conservative Party under Patel and Badenoch pick this ball up from their friends, and run with it?

AI travel advice:

“Charente-Maritime (La Rochelle to Royan)

The Manger: Éclade de Moules. Don't just order mussels; look for an Éclade. The mussels are arranged in a concentric circle on a wooden board and covered with a thick layer of pine needles, which are then set on fire. The result is a smoky, resinous flavour you won't find anywhere else.

The Boire: Pineau des Charentes (Chilled). This is a mistelle (grape juice mixed with Cognac). It is the classic drink in this region “

Eclade are wonderful - had them at a place Ile d'Oleron which was basically a tent in a car park - the fire and drama made it one of my most memorable meals.

Found it: Les Pieds dans l’Ø Coquille Mobile Églade Oléron

There are positives from this war, even if we do see energy prices go gaga.

We could be pretty self-sufficient as a nation. And have made huge strides forward in recent years. Reform fuckheads smashed the Milliband / Cameron / May / Boris / Sunak consensus on renewables. But "lets get rid of wind and solar and use more oil and gas" looks not just really stupid but practically traitorous.

Whilst I wholly agree with the voices saying lets drill more oil / gas, those same voices also lean towards "instead of renewables". It should be "in addition to renewables"

Not sure I have seen many people on here say Iintead of renewables.

Most of the commentary has been instead of importing oil and gas. Something with which I think you agree.

The fuckhead - to use your rather florid term - is Miliband who somehow thinks importing hydrocarbons is more climate friendly than using our own.

I didn't say on here. But out there in politics world Reform fuckheads - and they are fuckheads - have filled people's head with all kinds of guff about renewables.

Milliband is a dick, but he is less wrong than Tice et al who want us to turn our energy security over to Putin.

There is a lot of guff spoken about renewables - the biggest piece of guff about them being that they are cheaper than gas. This is a provable untruth, but it is still repeated with the same enthusiasm as a North Korean ovation for Kim Jong Un.

A 2025 Substack by David Turver has this useful table (you may have to blow it up if PB does a micropic):

https://davidturver.substack.com/p/renewables-are-more-expensive-than-gas

Now, granted, this was in May 2025.

The current gas price has shot through the roof - AI has it currently at £126 per megawatt hour. That makes it still cheaper than any renewable bar solar on CFD.

Is Gas cheaper to produce? No, renewable energy is consistently cheaper to produce than gas-fired power.
Why is Electricity expensive? Because the price is set by expensive gas-fired generation, not the cheaper renewables.

Generation Costs: Renewables are Cheaper
Cost of Production: New onshore wind and solar projects are among the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the UK. Once built, the fuel (wind/sun) is free.
Gas Expense: Gas-fired power plants have high and volatile running costs because they must purchase fuel, often setting the highest price in the market.
Contracted Prices: New offshore wind projects have seen costs drop significantly, often delivering power at prices below new gas plants.

Despite renewable generation being cheaper, gas often makes electricity more expensive due to the UK's market structure:
The Marginal Price Mechanism: The UK electricity market operates on a "marginal pricing" system. This means the price of all electricity is set by the last and most expensive source needed to meet demand, which is frequently gas.
Gas Sets the Price: According to recent data, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity around 98% of the time. Even if the majority of electricity comes from wind, the final, expensive unit of gas determines the price for everything.
Green Levies: A significant portion of electricity bills (roughly 23% in some estimates) includes "green levies" to fund renewable projects, adding to the cost compared to direct gas, which has much lower levies.

Hope these facts help you get the big picture right, Lucky 🙂

They're not facts dear. They're the shite that you get when you ask an LLM questions and don't bother yourself to query the results. It hasn't even given you numbers!

The facts are quite clearly laid out in the Substack I helpfully linked to.

An issue, as I understand it, is partly that Gas in UK is effectively on standby as the fuel of last resort all the time for the renewables. It costs to start and then shut down a gas turbine compared to just running it 24/7.

If only we had followed the French and built 20 nuke stations in the 1970s/80s

Another option was to pace ourselves through our North Sea riches, and invest it into future returns and securities, like Norway did.

UK went mad at it, blowing the windfall on cheaper economic costs, lower taxes, and other things like the “triple ratchet” on pensions.

What is commercially and technically viable to now get out the UK basins, especially the Gas one, is next to nothing.
In other words: it’s far Too late to be more like Norway.

If an MP, Party Leader, or anyone on PB wants to say “we should be more like Norway right now” the only correct response is the same as at the end of Their Will Be Blood: their head smashed in with a bowling pin for being so fucking ignorant about how this one has already played out.

There will always be UK gas under the North Sea, like we have coal too. But just like coal industry, the UK North Sea Gas industry is dead because the commercial cost and technical difficulties extracting the last bits prevents us from having one.

Whatever ones thoughts on renewables (I like them but would change where we put them and increase the variety) most of what you have written here is palpable rubbish.

We did not produce our oil and gas faster than Norway. Although we started around the same time, the UK has produced around 35 billion BOE. Norway has produced around 40 billion BOE.

Nor is there next to nothing left, at least as far as oil is concerned.

Current recoverable reserves in the UKCS are estimated at around 15 billion BOE. As I mentioned, in the history of the UKCS we have so far extracted around 35 billion BOE. So yes, with the right incentives and the right long term fiscal environment we could be far closer to meeting our needs. Gas of course is a different matter but even there we could radically reduced our reliance on imports.

We are abandoning oil fields in the UK sector whilst, a mile or two away on the Norwegian side of the boundary, they are massively increasing proven reserves, exploration and production. They are literally producing from adjacent or even connected fields whilst we are shutting the down.

And it is not commercial costs shutting down the North Sea, it is Governmental costs and policy. Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?

My first concern is that most new finds in the North Sea are relatively small. To be financially viable they need the existing infrastructure in place to allow the oil or gas to be collected cost effectively. If we allow the existing infrastructure to close down or be withdrawn these smaller fields are effectively lost forever. We are throwing money away and damaging our balance of payments for no good reason. My second concern is one you have already touched upon. Some of these fields are connected and in allowing Norway to drain them from their sector is literally giving oil and gas away so that someone else gets the benefit. Madness.

I have been doing a trial in Aberdeen this last week that is going to last until Wednesday. It is bordering on tragic what has happened to that city. The loss of the skills, technology and revenues that were generated there is a self inflicted disaster for the whole of the UK but for Scotland in particular.

Wife's family is from that area. Before Oil it was a relatively wealthy city based on fishing and farming. What happened to those industries which were regenerative rather than one offs. But as Richard T points out, it's down to investment decisions. If you are angling (pun) for some form of government intervention, you'll know their track record is not so good.