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FPT

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Surely this latest war is just more evidence we need to stop importing energy which surely means more renewables? How can anyone disagree.

There are some alternatives. We could have massive strategic reserves of gas and oil that the government can release in an emergency (see Japan). We could nationalise and massively subsidise O&G production to isolate the industry from global energy prices and boost domestic production. Coal in theory could work because it's easy to store, we'd just need to import lots of it and, again, nationalise it in preperation for a period like this.

These aren't cost-free options though.

The massive gas storage facility which Conservative governments decided wasn't worth the cost of subsidising would have probably been the most cost effective mitigation.

As a I understand it the North Sea would make an excellent gas storage facility, if we hadn't drilled it so extensively. That's why Rough is unusual for being a decent UK option, neglected until 2022 and the Ukraine invasion.

Richard_Tyndall is online however so he can put me straight.

The problem is not how much we have drilled. Indeed drilling/producing a field is a pre-requisite to reduce the existing volumes/pressures in the formation so you can then use it to store gas. And the cement we use to abandon wells is, by necessity, stronger than the surrounding formations. This is my job these days, abandoning hundreds of wells across the North Sea and Denmark. As long as it is done properly then it has no impact on the storage capabilities.

The problem with the gas storage is that continualy pumping gas into and out of the formation weakens it over time. Rough has no where near the capacity it had at the start of its storage life because of this. And suprisingly the number of fields suitable for such storage are vanishingly small. I am not aware currently of any other serious contenders for gas storage in the UK sector - although some of those being looked at for CCS might be suitable. Germany generally uses salt as the storage formation for its gas reserves which is much more stable but in the North Sea the Zechstein Salts are much deeper which causes a lot of additional problems as the pressures are higher and salt under pressure acts like a fluid and flows.

I am sure there are suitable targets but successive governments over the last 40 years have not really invested in looking for or apppraising them.

The other thing is the Netherlands has oodles of gas storage capacity suitable for the purpose, so we don't need old North Sea fields, unless we start getting worried about the Dutch

Its not so much being worried about the Dutch. More that if things get really tight then there is no gaurantee that gas will head our way. For a start they have their own domestic needs (they currently have just enough stored for their needs) and after that we are simply another customer along with the whole of the rest of Europe. Bear in mind the Norwegians were planning on cutting back supplies to the UK last year as well.

The only way to have any form of security is to have our own storage capacity.

We do have other storage in the form of LNG landing tanks. The risk we would protect against with extremely expensive redundant storage is that the Dutch could break contract on - steal essentially - gas storage that we're not bothering to fill anyway. Not saying No, but we do have a lot of other necessary investments this would compete with.

I would suggest that keeping the lights on and our homes warm is pretty high on the list of priorities for any Government. Though I accept that with Miliband in charge this is by no means a certainty.

The two essentials for any Government are a) the distribution of food and water and b) the administration of law. Everything else, for a longer or shorter period, isn't vital.

Both of those would be very much at risk if we had serious cuts in our power supply.

The Buncefield fire 20 years ago left the food distribution network perilously close to collapse.

FPT

.

Surely this latest war is just more evidence we need to stop importing energy which surely means more renewables? How can anyone disagree.

There are some alternatives. We could have massive strategic reserves of gas and oil that the government can release in an emergency (see Japan). We could nationalise and massively subsidise O&G production to isolate the industry from global energy prices and boost domestic production. Coal in theory could work because it's easy to store, we'd just need to import lots of it and, again, nationalise it in preperation for a period like this.

These aren't cost-free options though.

The massive gas storage facility which Conservative governments decided wasn't worth the cost of subsidising would have probably been the most cost effective mitigation.

As a I understand it the North Sea would make an excellent gas storage facility, if we hadn't drilled it so extensively. That's why Rough is unusual for being a decent UK option, neglected until 2022 and the Ukraine invasion.

Richard_Tyndall is online however so he can put me straight.

The problem is not how much we have drilled. Indeed drilling/producing a field is a pre-requisite to reduce the existing volumes/pressures in the formation so you can then use it to store gas. And the cement we use to abandon wells is, by necessity, stronger than the surrounding formations. This is my job these days, abandoning hundreds of wells across the North Sea and Denmark. As long as it is done properly then it has no impact on the storage capabilities.

The problem with the gas storage is that continualy pumping gas into and out of the formation weakens it over time. Rough has no where near the capacity it had at the start of its storage life because of this. And suprisingly the number of fields suitable for such storage are vanishingly small. I am not aware currently of any other serious contenders for gas storage in the UK sector - although some of those being looked at for CCS might be suitable. Germany generally uses salt as the storage formation for its gas reserves which is much more stable but in the North Sea the Zechstein Salts are much deeper which causes a lot of additional problems as the pressures are higher and salt under pressure acts like a fluid and flows.

I am sure there are suitable targets but successive governments over the last 40 years have not really invested in looking for or apppraising them.

The other thing is the Netherlands has oodles of gas storage capacity suitable for the purpose, so we don't need old North Sea fields, unless we start getting worried about the Dutch

Its not so much being worried about the Dutch. More that if things get really tight then there is no gaurantee that gas will head our way. For a start they have their own domestic needs (they currently have just enough stored for their needs) and after that we are simply another customer along with the whole of the rest of Europe. Bear in mind the Norwegians were planning on cutting back supplies to the UK last year as well.

The only way to have any form of security is to have our own storage capacity.

We do have other storage in the form of LNG landing tanks. The risk we would protect against with extremely expensive redundant storage is that the Dutch could break contract on - steal essentially - gas storage that we're not bothering to fill anyway. Not saying No, but we do have a lot of other necessary investments this would compete with.

I would suggest that keeping the lights on and our homes warm is pretty high on the list of priorities for any Government. Though I accept that with Miliband in charge this is by no means a certainty.

The two essentials for any Government are a) the distribution of food and water and b) the administration of law. Everything else, for a longer or shorter period, isn't vital.

Both of those would be very much at risk if we had serious cuts in our power supply.

I think Luke misses one parallel here:

Should it be unusual for a party that has just lost power after 14 years not to have recovered in voters eyes yet - absolutely not - Tories by 1999 hadn't shifted brand perception at all from 1997, but they didn't have a challenger party to their right, there was time (13 years in fact!)
18:27 · 8 Mar 2026

I'd say the common comparison is that the Tories in both cases were ploughing their failed furrow from before the Election.

After 2000 it took Michael Howard for them to begin getting a grip.

I have yet to see any signs that Kemi Badenoch has confronted their past.

In retrospect, Hague faced an impossible task trying to dent the Labour majority in 2001 yet in some areas the Conservatives actually went further back from 1997 which had seemed the nadir.

Arguably, the lower turnout saved the Conservatives from an even worse beating - I believe there was some polling of non voters which showed them breaking 2:1 to Labour over the Conservatives.

It's been argued elsewhere Howard should have led after 1997 and Hague would have been the choice post IDS - I'm not sure and whether it would have made enough difference to, for example, reduce Blair's third majority to 20 rather than 60 I don't know.

On current polling, Badenoch's Conservatives will go backwards in many areas from 2024 - their saving grace will be they will fall slower and less far than Labour and rather as with the SNP last year, the further and deeper fall of their main opponents may help them win and hold more seats than the voting shares might suggest.

I think Luke misses one parallel here:

Should it be unusual for a party that has just lost power after 14 years not to have recovered in voters eyes yet - absolutely not - Tories by 1999 hadn't shifted brand perception at all from 1997, but they didn't have a challenger party to their right, there was time (13 years in fact!)
18:27 · 8 Mar 2026

I'd say the common comparison is that the Tories in both cases were ploughing their failed furrow from before the Election.

After 2000 it took Michael Howard for them to begin getting a grip.

I have yet to see any signs that Kemi Badenoch has confronted their past.

Until a zeitgeist event happens the Tories are held in pincers. This is made even more obvious by the fact they have not advanced despite the government being unpopular, bad at communicating and times are tough.

The trap is simple: they hold few seats, every seat they need to win is strongly contested, every seat they hold is strongly contested, they don't have a monopoly on the Right of Centre ground, the One Nation party has vanished, they aren't, and can't be, trusted not to sustain Reform in government, they don't have a compelling new set of visions for the country, they have a record of failure, they are tied to a Brexit most don't want and to a USA that is now hated. And last week Kemi gave an unstatesmanlike display of not being a great LOTO in time of war.

Apart from that my former party is doing fine. And the nearest thing (though not near enough) to the old centre ground remains the highly flawed and not very good Labour party.

As a result I think the Left of Centre will win 325+ seats in 2029, and Labour will have a plurality of those seats.

(And the best way of looking at the contest for next government at this moment is not party by party but as 'Left of Centre' v 'Right of Centre' - where in % polling terms they are very level.)

Some drone footage of the aftermath of last nights fire next to Glasgow Central station :

https://www.tiktok.com/@vyromedia_/video/7615156447374085398?_r=1&_t=ZN-94XVQz5Y2II

All trains cancelled for the foreseeable future.

There are trains passing through the station - local services.

Yesterday, trains from the south were stopping at Carlisle and turning back - this morning it seems they are going as far as Motherwell and presumably buses are being provided for the rest of the journey.

I think it's possible to get to Queen Street from Edinburgh and that line could be used to get more services into Glasgow - from memory (a walk on a cold Monday morning in the 1990s) it's not a long walk from Central to Queen Street (does it involve Buchanan Street?). From the latter you can get services to places like Oban and Fort William.

It’s five blocks, around 500yds, between Queen St and Central stations. Yes Buchanan St is part of the route, you can walk up it or cross over it.

Yes QS trains go to Edinburgh, but not sure where the lines cross. @Sunil_Prasannan is your man for trains!

QS is the main Glasgow departure point for Edinburgh trains.

Thoigh there are FOUR different routes across the Central Belt! Some from Central.

I think the Tory problem is simple. If you want a Reform government you vote Reform. If you don't, you vote for the party that can beat Reform in your seat AND certainly won't help them govern. It doesn't matter what they say, people will believe the Tories might sustain a Reform government.

If (like me) you want an old fashioned One Nation Tory government, tough.

The Tory dilemma may be insoluble for now.

The problem is if the Tories rule out supporting Reform the follow up questions are likely to result in the Tories calling Reform out as the racists they are.

And you can’t call your potential voters racist.

More than half of Reform voters want to deport my kids. I'm not sure what I'm meant to do with this information, other than doing everything I can to ensure they don't get to run the country.

What does Reforms official policy say ?

I cannot see any party ever deporting children like yours. They’re as British as any of us

I'm watching erstwhile Trump supporters getting rounded up by ICE saying I didn't think he meant people like me, and I'm thinking being complacent about this stuff is not a good strategy. More than half of Reform supporters want to deport non-white Britons who were not born in the UK. That is two of my children, my brothers in law, my parents in law...
There's that saying, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

FPT

.

Surely this latest war is just more evidence we need to stop importing energy which surely means more renewables? How can anyone disagree.

There are some alternatives. We could have massive strategic reserves of gas and oil that the government can release in an emergency (see Japan). We could nationalise and massively subsidise O&G production to isolate the industry from global energy prices and boost domestic production. Coal in theory could work because it's easy to store, we'd just need to import lots of it and, again, nationalise it in preperation for a period like this.

These aren't cost-free options though.

The massive gas storage facility which Conservative governments decided wasn't worth the cost of subsidising would have probably been the most cost effective mitigation.

As a I understand it the North Sea would make an excellent gas storage facility, if we hadn't drilled it so extensively. That's why Rough is unusual for being a decent UK option, neglected until 2022 and the Ukraine invasion.

Richard_Tyndall is online however so he can put me straight.

The problem is not how much we have drilled. Indeed drilling/producing a field is a pre-requisite to reduce the existing volumes/pressures in the formation so you can then use it to store gas. And the cement we use to abandon wells is, by necessity, stronger than the surrounding formations. This is my job these days, abandoning hundreds of wells across the North Sea and Denmark. As long as it is done properly then it has no impact on the storage capabilities.

The problem with the gas storage is that continualy pumping gas into and out of the formation weakens it over time. Rough has no where near the capacity it had at the start of its storage life because of this. And suprisingly the number of fields suitable for such storage are vanishingly small. I am not aware currently of any other serious contenders for gas storage in the UK sector - although some of those being looked at for CCS might be suitable. Germany generally uses salt as the storage formation for its gas reserves which is much more stable but in the North Sea the Zechstein Salts are much deeper which causes a lot of additional problems as the pressures are higher and salt under pressure acts like a fluid and flows.

I am sure there are suitable targets but successive governments over the last 40 years have not really invested in looking for or apppraising them.

The other thing is the Netherlands has oodles of gas storage capacity suitable for the purpose, so we don't need old North Sea fields, unless we start getting worried about the Dutch

Its not so much being worried about the Dutch. More that if things get really tight then there is no gaurantee that gas will head our way. For a start they have their own domestic needs (they currently have just enough stored for their needs) and after that we are simply another customer along with the whole of the rest of Europe. Bear in mind the Norwegians were planning on cutting back supplies to the UK last year as well.

The only way to have any form of security is to have our own storage capacity.

We do have other storage in the form of LNG landing tanks. The risk we would protect against with extremely expensive redundant storage is that the Dutch could break contract on - steal essentially - gas storage that we're not bothering to fill anyway. Not saying No, but we do have a lot of other necessary investments this would compete with.

I would suggest that keeping the lights on and our homes warm is pretty high on the list of priorities for any Government. Though I accept that with Miliband in charge this is by no means a certainty.

Should be second highest priority behind only defence of the nation.

All governments should have plans in place for events outside their control, including where necessary keeping strategic stocks of important things we import. That lesson should have been learned six years ago, but the covid inquiry seems much more interested in who said what to whom at a No.10 ‘party’.

This week I found out the UAE has a strategic emergency food supply, good for 11m people for 4-6 months. Now it’s going to be mostly rice and flour, rather than the contents of my local Waitrose, but when you import 90% of your food it’s damn important. Supermarkets are totally fine here by the way, despite what the Western press might be saying. Cargo flights are still getting through, and alternative shipping routes exist.

I think the Tory problem is simple. If you want a Reform government you vote Reform. If you don't, you vote for the party that can beat Reform in your seat AND certainly won't help them govern. It doesn't matter what they say, people will believe the Tories might sustain a Reform government.

If (like me) you want an old fashioned One Nation Tory government, tough.

The Tory dilemma may be insoluble for now.

The problem is if the Tories rule out supporting Reform the follow up questions are likely to result in the Tories calling Reform out as the racists they are.

And you can’t call your potential voters racist.

More than half of Reform voters want to deport my kids. I'm not sure what I'm meant to do with this information, other than doing everything I can to ensure they don't get to run the country.

What does Reforms official policy say ?

I cannot see any party ever deporting children like yours. They’re as British as any of us

Had a scan at the weekend with a lovely ex-Philippino nurse. Now a British national and loves it here (been 14 years). Why would anyone want to deport such people?

I’ve always wondered if there’s any nurses left in the Philippines? About 80% of nurses in the sandpit are from there, as well as many more in the UK and US.

They must train twice as many as they actually need domestically!