Best Of

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As I’ve said continuously I’m fully supportive of more North Sea oil drilling but I think the idea it would have any impact on energy bills is thin.

Why are supportive of opening up new fields when the vast majority of experts say no? What do you know they don’t?

https://theconversation.com/would-more-north-sea-drilling-lower-uk-energy-bills-our-analysis-says-no-278467

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67945281

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-would-opening-up-north-sea-oil-again-resolve-the-current-energy-price-problems-for-the-uk

Kemi and her front bench team are going to have to u-turn on this, so they are in future backed up by the science and the facts in what they are claiming.

No they don't.
They say it won't change oil and gas prices, which it won't.

As a matter of economics, it will earn the country money, and won't make any difference at all to our oil and gas consumption.

We could even put the £2bn or so extra that government might earn into solar plus grid backup projects.

So there is no good argument not to do it.

The Unions game here is wholly interested in taxpayers money keeping people in jobs, by government subsidising any industry, anywhere, that’s not economically viable or profit making. That’s what Unions are doing in the lobby.

The industry lobby says it’s all government policy decision, not geology at all.
Green Lobby says UK North Sea is waning due to geology, and UK policy is still too much commitment to drilling fossil fuel for far too long. Here’s an example of Green Lobby spin:
https://www.upliftuk.org/post/the-declining-economics-of-the-north-sea

North Sea policy is a war. There’s various sides, each have vested interest in not sticking to fact or balance - including government with their net zero policy, and the Conservatives who invented net zero policy in office, but prefer to argue Populist position against net zero in opposition.

Truth is the first casualty of war. It’s very hard to for us to spot what’s smartest in long run with this one imho.

That's just babble.
If the government allowed licenses for the new fields, industry would develop them at their own expense.

There's no argument about that.

The cover-up is worse than the crime.

https://x.com/Peston/status/2036826551170261052

Downing Street is refusing to say whether Morgan McSweeney’s WhatsApp exchanges with Peter Mandelson were lost when his phone was stolen (after Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador because of revelations about his Epstein friendship). But surely the rule in government for any official as senior as McSweeney - then chief of staff - should be that their messages are backed up to the cloud, when those messages are about government business.

If there was no backup - and if there is no government rule insisting on backups - that would be extraordinary.

And if McSweeney had an iPhone, for example, the default position is that messages would be backed up to the cloud. So if the Mandelson messages are not there, he would have disabled this facility

Sir Keir Starmer has arrived at Canterbury Cathedral for the enthronement of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury (and the first Archbishop it turns out to have been educated at a comprehensive and a non Russell Group university and the first since Carey not to have been to Oxbridge), to be followed by Kemi Badenoch and the Prince and Princess of Wales. Live coverage on BBC1

I do not want to be unkind but frankly it is boring

Bit like you can sometimes be then!

I am a confirmed Christian by no less than the Bishop of Durham and a previous server at communion but I just find all this very niche