I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
Never mind that, read this
The Man In The Moon
The moonbeams kelter i the lift, An Earth, the bare auld stane, Glitters aneath the seas o Space, White as a mammoth's bane.
An, lifted owre the gowden wave, Peers a dumfoun'ered Thocht, Wi keethin sicht o a' there is, An bodily sicht o nocht.
MacDiarmid btw
On a Raised Beach [extract]
All is lithogenesis — or lochia, Carpolite fruit of the forbidden tree, Stones blacker than any in the Caaba, Cream-coloured caen-stone, chatoyant pieces, Celadon and corbeau, bistre and beige, Glaucous, hoar, enfouldered, cyathiform, Making mere faculae of the sun and moon, I study you glout and gloss, but have No cadrans to adjust you with, and turn again From optik to haptik and like a blind man run My fingers over you, arris by arris, burr by burr, Slickensides, truité, rugas, foveoles, Bringing my aesthesis in vain to bear, An angle-titch to all your corrugations and coigns, Hatched foraminous cavo-rilievo of the world, Deictic, fiducial stones. Chiliad by chiliad What bricole piled you here, stupendous cairn
Golly, not come across him in that mode before. A bit too G M Hopkins for me.
Very much sui generis, Grieve was, in poetry as well as politics. He seems to have been everything but not at once - at different times, so simply saying he was a X-ist is meaningless without specifying the date.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
Yeah a coal fire ain't warming anything other than the room it's in. Same with an aga.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
Surely it is time for a Regency. It is not abdication so she doesn't break her oath but it gives her some well-earned rest. She is clearly not up to it and it is cruel to expect her to carry on.
Sure, but nobody is making her do this presumably. She can't be in much doubt od Charles's willingness to step in. Kindest to let her carry on as long as she wants to.
Indeed, but surely some sort of fudge is possible that enables her to carry on in principle, but in practice someone else does the work. We don’t need to know in realtime and publicise who took which meeting.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
Duty to her last breath. It’s who she is. Even that can be managed surely in a way that avoids the prurience that follows ‘HM doesn’t attend X’ stories. I know it matters hugely in the British constitution what she does, but given the mountain of fudge in that constitution there is surely a way not to put a 96 year old through the ringer or create stories like this. Just say from here in HM and Charles will share the work and leave it at that.
They've already done that for most events, even the Queen's Speech now. I suspect that her sense of duty meant that asking a new PM to form a Government was one task she wouldn't delegate.
Being honest, this was quite possibly Her Majesty's final in-person photographed duty. Liz Truss is probably her final PM, she's not likely to ever ask another MP to form a Government, so this is unlikely to come up again. Charles can keep doing the Queens Speech etc, until he is monarch.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
What work has she done in the past year other than take a weekly phone call from Boris Johnson and get visited by him and Liz Truss for formalities yesterday? (Edit: maybe she takes calls from the Lord President of the Council too. But she doesn't prance about handwaving any more.)
She isn't even mentioned on the Court Circular nowadays.
Not sure you have mastered the search function, there's 18 pages of her activities over the past year.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
That's why the closure of gas storage facilities was penny pinching bordering on the insane. Whatever happened to gas cylinders? Every town used to have them. Why did they go and when?
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
UK coal consumption in 2001 was 64 million tonnes. In 2021, because of the growth in wind power, it had declined to 7 million tonnes.
Wind pushed coal out of the grid, and if we build more of it then we can push gas out of the grid too.
Edit: In terms of electricity production the decline was even more pronounced, from 51 to 3 million tonnes.
That is patently untrue. We will always need power generation that can be switched on and off at will to compensate for the vagaries of renewables, IF wind and solar are those renewables. UNLESS we have excellent storage too, which despite protestations to the contrary, is not happening at the moment, which, as far as I can work out, is because the system actively disincentivises renewables providers from finding ways to store their power.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
Haha - fair enough! My first hand experience of this is almost nil. My understanding is based largely on the stories of my ex-girlfriend's father.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
Surely it is time for a Regency. It is not abdication so she doesn't break her oath but it gives her some well-earned rest. She is clearly not up to it and it is cruel to expect her to carry on.
Sure, but nobody is making her do this presumably. She can't be in much doubt od Charles's willingness to step in. Kindest to let her carry on as long as she wants to.
Yes but. Increasingly she just isn't doing it at all. She may want to carry on but she just isn't carrying on.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 14 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
That's why the closure of gas storage facilities was penny pinching bordering on the insane. Whatever happened to gas cylinders? Every town used to have them. Why did they go and when?
Gasholders/gasometers? They were to even out consumption on a daily and weekly cycle of the "town gas" produced in the retorts on the spot. The gas was at near atmospheric pressure so they wouldn't store very much. They were taken out of use when North Sea gas came in - like my home town, the gasworks was demolished, I think because the pressure was centrally regulated by the network of distribution pipes across the UK.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 13 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
"greatest monarch"? No need to overegg. There is a real argument there, in terms of service, but you're wrecking it.
Political figurehead. Victoria had much more power and impact.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
O/T it's great to see the Russian frontline collapsing in Ukraine.
It's not wise to make predictions about wars but hopefully this might persuade the doubters that Russia can actually lose this thing.
It's a bit daft not to send weapons now because you are scared Russia will cut off the gas.
If you don't want to make cast-iron predictions then surely you are a doubter that Russia will lose this thing?
At the risk of stating the obvious, wars can escalate.
I do have some doubts about that. What I'm saying is the defeatism in some quarters that they can't lose ought to be gone now.
I know wars can escalate but that is a danger for BOTH sides. Maybe it would be best for Putin to cut his losses now in Ukraine for fear that he might lose his puppets in Transnistria, Belarus or North Ossetia?
For Scottish PB'ers, the classic 1971 BBC Scotland adaptation of "Sunset Song" on BBC4 at the moment. After the revelation of a documentary on literature on primetine BBC2 with the James Joyce doc earlier on, the first time I've seen that kind of schedule for more than two decades, at last BBC TV is earning its license fee tonight.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
The poets, the ones that survived anyway, seemed to have set their faces against the jingoism though.
There's some very mixed imagery in the Great War memorials - St George, sometimes with an actual (presumably German) dragon was popular. Some are very much the brave soldier answering the call of King and Emperor. But others were much more about sacrifice and mourning, rifles reversed, etc. And others were functional (libraries, community halls, etc.). Andf some just baffle. The arguments at the time make those over the Maggie Hambling statue of Ms Wollstonecraft a squabble in a kindergarten by comparison.
Insofar as I have the wit to set myself in 1919 onwards I can sympathise with the confusion, starting with all that cheerful jingoism to end up with such massive sacrifice and loss; to justify or not to justify?
My main takeaway from reading about it is the act of remembrance started with ex servicemen standing respectfully, the two minute silence meticulously observed across the country but without the public exhortations to emote before, during and after that is the current form.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 14 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Some sort of pattern here, surely? Given Charles seems to harbour some batshit notion of not being King Charles, maybe he should consider styling himself Queen Elizabeth III.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
That's why the closure of gas storage facilities was penny pinching bordering on the insane. Whatever happened to gas cylinders? Every town used to have them. Why did they go and when?
Gasholders were only good for diurnal storage. The network can achieve that with line pack, so we don't need them any more.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
That's why the closure of gas storage facilities was penny pinching bordering on the insane. Whatever happened to gas cylinders? Every town used to have them. Why did they go and when?
Gasholders/gasometers? They were to even out consumption on a daily and weekly cycle of the "town gas" produced in the retorts on the spot. The gas was at near atmospheric pressure so they wouldn't store very much. They were taken out of use when North Sea gas came in - like my home town, the gasworks was demolished, I think because the pressure was centrally regulated by the network of distribution pipes across the UK.
Thanks for that. Did they go with the North Sea? I have memories of the one in Bolton being around in the early 2000's. But that may be memory playing tricks. I walked past it every day to school 74- 85. Then ended up working in the same area in the mid 2000's. I may have projected that recollection that it was still there.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 13 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
"greatest monarch"? No need to overegg. There is a real argument there, in terms of service, but you're wrecking it.
Political figurehead. Victoria had much more power and impact.
Victoria headed the Empire yes but was also a constitutional monarch (Elizabeth 1st actually led the effort to successfully defeat the Armada). Victoria also spent much of her latter years remote and isolated from the public and morose after the death of her husband, the Queen has reigned longer than Victoria and has never stopped performing her duties even now or resorted to self pity
For Scottish PB'ers, the classic 1971 BBC Scotland adaptation of "Sunset Song" on BBC4 at the moment. After the revelation of a documentary on literature on primetine BBC2 with the James Joyce doc earlier on, the first time I've seen that kind of schedule for more than two decades, at last BBC TV is earning its license fee tonight.
Ha, I’m recording it! Got to finish off Roads to Freedom first.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
Depends whether storage is cheaper or more expensive than excess renewables capacity.
First thing we need is way way more renewables generation. We currently have around 20gw of generating capacity for wind for example. Average UK demand is 35 or so, peaking over 40 on some winter evenings and rarely getting below around 26-27 even at its lowest. Tonight wind is producing around 5gw - it’s not very windy. 25% of max.
Build 100gw of wind infrastructure and tonight we would be generating 25gw. Add the 5 from nuclear and that would be 100% of our demand. If batteries are cheaper than wind per gw output then add batteries, if not then erect more turbines.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Pointless. Geoilogically futile, and temporally ignorant, as much discussed here (useless in the current crisis). It's a shibboleth for Tories.
No it isn't, it is a desperately needed new supply of energy to reduce reliance on energy from overseas and help cut bills and also much less carbon emitting than other fossil fuels and safer than nuclear as has been pointed out by TSGA
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
🤦♂️🤦♂️
As it stands, the game doesn't need to be changed, since our share of renewable is low enough that we don't surpass 100% of demand coming from renewables. Our share of renewables isn't yet even high enough to reach baseload demands consistently.
As was explained to you by many people at the time, the wind providers being paid on extremely rare occasions to switch off is not a problem whatsoever. Energy generators have always been, and always will be, from time to time paid to switch off because if they weren't then we wouldn't have the ability for them to switch on when demanded for surges like TV Pickup, or dips in demand like during Remembrance Services. Do you think all energy generators are running at full pelt at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month? Or the corresponding Sunday?
If the share of renewables went past baseline then we'd start to need storage, but we're not there yet. But we're going to be there with storage before we need the storage, so again, not a problem. It is a non-issue.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
Robert can pitch in but my understanding is that the amounts paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus production are so trivial in the grand scheme that it’s not worth wasting more than a moment thinking about.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Pointless. Geoilogically futile, and temporally ignorant, as much discussed here (useless in the current crisis). It's a shibboleth for Tories.
No it isn't, it is a desperately needed new supply of energy to reduce reliance on energy from overseas and help cut bills and also much less carbon emitting than other fossil fuels
Will this go into a sovereign wealth fund? I severely doubt it. Fast buck fracking.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 14 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Some sort of pattern here, surely? Given Charles seems to harbour some batshit notion of not being King Charles, maybe he should consider styling himself Queen Elizabeth III.
He might take George and many of the Georges were not bad, even Charles IInd was pretty good
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
As it stands we're using gas all the time, not just to solve intermittency problems, so no its not the problem. The problem is we don't have enough renewables to even switch off gas when the wind is blowing yet, let alone when it isn't.
To get rid of the intermittency issues would require baseline energy from other sources, plus storage, but both are being built to different extents already. But we aren't even at the bridge to tackling the intermittency issues yet, we aren't that far advanced at all. That's like discussing what colour the walls should be on our Martian base, before we've even got a craft capable of flying people to the Moon or Mars yet.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Yep. Get dressed under the covers before sprinting downstairs.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
Yeah a coal fire ain't warming anything other than the room it's in. Same with an aga.
I have a wood burner in my place in France (which is admittedly only a 2 bed cottage) and after a day it’s usually enough to keep the whole house at 19-20C permanently without any other heating if it’s kept on overnight.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Pointless. Geoilogically futile, and temporally ignorant, as much discussed here (useless in the current crisis). It's a shibboleth for Tories.
No it isn't, it is a desperately needed new supply of energy to reduce reliance on energy from overseas and help cut bills and also much less carbon emitting than other fossil fuels and safer than nuclear as has been pointed out by TSGA
If anyone was producing shale gas today they would be making windfall profits* just like the rest of the upstream sector. Increasing UK production might help with the balance of payments (I'm old enough to remember when that was considered to be important) but it wouldn't impact the prices we are all paying for our gas and electricity.
*Well, a bit less, because producing shale gasin the UK will be a costly endeavour, so the underlying profits will be lower.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
Are you sure it is not just that the Balmoral IT guy can't set up a Zoom call? That would explain why Boris and Liz needed to fly up, and also postponement of the remote privy council meeting.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Yep. Get dressed under the covers before sprinting downstairs.
You were lucky. We never had covers. We froze to death in our beds each night, before undertaker carted us off in the morning.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 14 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Some sort of pattern here, surely? Given Charles seems to harbour some batshit notion of not being King Charles, maybe he should consider styling himself Queen Elizabeth III.
Dressed in his mother's bridal veil. (I'm sure your local Smiths fan can suggest that one.)
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Yep. Get dressed under the covers before sprinting downstairs.
Advice our recent PM always had on standby. Actually our present one also by all accounts.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
If they're getting 25% off their energy bills, how much opposition do you expect?
Where's going to be drilled. Perhaps sites other than Tinker Lane are viable. One thing that would be a good idea with fracking is that a national co along the lines of Norways equinor ought to be put in place so the profits are there for the people... Noted socialist Richard Tice thought this a good idea..
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Yep. Get dressed under the covers before sprinting downstairs.
You were lucky. We never had covers. We froze to death in our beds each night, before undertaker carted us off in the morning.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
Robert can pitch in but my understanding is that the amounts paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus production are so trivial in the grand scheme that it’s not worth wasting more than a moment thinking about.
Yes, RCS said that to Putinguy the last time he used this argument to say why we should not have more renewables. That Putinguy took away from that the notion that this was a problem, rather than it wasn't, goes to show how rigid his own worldview is.
From memory the sum paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus amount to a total of less than £1 per annum per household energy bill.
Coal and gas plants have always been idle too. This is not a problem, but Putinguy wants to make it one to further his agenda.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
Robert can pitch in but my understanding is that the amounts paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus production are so trivial in the grand scheme that it’s not worth wasting more than a moment thinking about.
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Everyone involved will have learned that this is going to need bungs handed out.
So why not onshore wind too? In fact. Why not make it retrospective? We could have free energy for two decades round here as compensation for the windfarms we have that cause nae bugger any bother whatsoever. Nor elicit any comment of any kind.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
My solution to this problem is to turn down a smart meter. I therefore have no idea what it costs per day.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
Are you sure it is not just that the Balmoral IT guy can't set up a Zoom call? That would explain why Boris and Liz needed to fly up, and also postponement of the remote privy council meeting.
It would also explain why Liz kept mentioning broadband in her speech at Number 10 door on her return. We have broadband already, but may Balmoral doesn't?
On the Queen - disinterested friends literally came out with "I love her" and "she's so cute" seeing that photo.
Every additional day performing these basic functions crystallises her reputation, especially among my generation who equate her with our grandparents, most of whom have died by now. When she goes, it will feel like them going all over again.
We saw that extraordinary poll earlier about about how little faith younger people have in our democratic system. Weirdly, I think the monarchy, being above and beyond our daily politics, holds the idea of a British state that is worth defending just above the water. When the Queen dies, it's possible that Britain does too.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
Robert can pitch in but my understanding is that the amounts paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus production are so trivial in the grand scheme that it’s not worth wasting more than a moment thinking about.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
Don’t iron. Learn to love the creases.
Be a scruffy git to save the economy! Who said Boris was finished?
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
What a load of rubbish, the Queen is 96 years old for goodness sake, already she has lived 14 years longer than the life expectancy of the average Briton.
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Some sort of pattern here, surely? Given Charles seems to harbour some batshit notion of not being King Charles, maybe he should consider styling himself Queen Elizabeth III.
There goes any concept the Tories care about the environment
Using UK generated energy is cleaner and greener than imports from Qatar so how do you figure?
You want supposedly UK energy firms to pay for the cost of energy, but for there to be no UK energy firms, no investment, for us to import everything, and for us not to pay for our imports.
Do you understand why others don't take those proposals seriously?
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
Are you sure it is not just that the Balmoral IT guy can't set up a Zoom call? That would explain why Boris and Liz needed to fly up, and also postponement of the remote privy council meeting.
Not if he calls himself an IT guy. If he can't, send someone over from Edinburgh.
On the Queen - disinterested friends literally came out with "I love her" and "she's so cute" seeing that photo.
Every additional day performing these basic functions crystallises her reputation, especially among my generation who equate her with our grandparents, most of whom have died by now. When she goes, it will feel like them going all over again.
We saw that extraordinary poll earlier about about how little faith younger people have in our democratic system. Weirdly, I think the monarchy, being above and beyond our daily politics, holds the idea of a British state that is worth defending just above the water. When the Queen dies, it's possible that Britain does too.
To be fair it was only 18 to 24s who wanted a supreme leader on that poll and a long way to go before they become the key swing voters, indeed probably well past Charles' reign let alone the Queen's
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
My solution to this problem is to turn down a smart meter. I therefore have no idea what it costs per day.
Isn't that a bit like trying to diet without weighing yourself?
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Yep. Get dressed under the covers before sprinting downstairs.
You were lucky. We never had covers. We froze to death in our beds each night, before undertaker carted us off in the morning.
“Beds”? Pfftt. You had beds? Luxury.
{pryers open a case of magnums of Chateau de Chassilier}
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
On the Queen - disinterested friends literally came out with "I love her" and "she's so cute" seeing that photo.
Every additional day performing these basic functions crystallises her reputation, especially among my generation who equate her with our grandparents, most of whom have died by now. When she goes, it will feel like them going all over again.
We saw that extraordinary poll earlier about about how little faith younger people have in our democratic system. Weirdly, I think the monarchy, being above and beyond our daily politics, holds the idea of a British state that is worth defending just above the water. When the Queen dies, it's possible that Britain does too.
To be fair it was only 18 to 24s who wanted a supreme leader on that poll and a long way to go before they become the key swing voters, indeed probably well past Charles' reign let alone the Queen's
Is it just me who thought the dictatorship poll question was worded oddly? I can't help wondering if all respondents were answering the same perceived question.
On the Queen - disinterested friends literally came out with "I love her" and "she's so cute" seeing that photo.
Every additional day performing these basic functions crystallises her reputation, especially among my generation who equate her with our grandparents, most of whom have died by now. When she goes, it will feel like them going all over again.
We saw that extraordinary poll earlier about about how little faith younger people have in our democratic system. Weirdly, I think the monarchy, being above and beyond our daily politics, holds the idea of a British state that is worth defending just above the water. When the Queen dies, it's possible that Britain does too.
Caveat - I have had a bottle of wine and am feeling quite down this evening. Just realised it's autumn I think.
Need to embrace the light we get at this time of year - climb some mountains, grab the camera.
There goes any concept the Tories care about the environment
All we've done is import gas to replace untapped domestic supply. It's the same idiotic idea that we closing heavy industry in Europe is environmentally friendly, all it does is push it to China which has dirtier energy production than most European countries, adding to climate change.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Fossil fuel fans seem obsessed with the idea that renewables must have perfect balance between capacity and output, and must never have any excess capacity. While gas, coal and especially oil power plants frequently stand idle during low demand periods indeed some are built expressly to fire up only during surges.
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
I don't have an issue with excess capacity, but as a taxpayer, I have a huge issue with paying for non-generation of power. There was a 'wind-farm boom' in Scotland precisely because builders of those facilities wanted to benefit from constraint payments. We need to ensure a similar but even bigger issue does not arise if we're going to be carpeting the joint with windmills, because otherwise the whole system becomes an unaffordable farce.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
Robert can pitch in but my understanding is that the amounts paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus production are so trivial in the grand scheme that it’s not worth wasting more than a moment thinking about.
£72 million in wind constraint payments in the first two months of 2020 is hardly trivial, in any scheme.
It sounds absolutely trivial.
For comparison how much was paid to gas and coal in the same months?
According to this article, gas and coal power stations pay the grid when they need to switch off, not the other way around:
'Constraint payments to wind farms to reduce output started in 2010. Prior to that, National Grid usually called on gas and coal power stations to reduce electricity output which is the cheaper option for the reason described above. There is a fundamental difference between costs of reducing output between conventional power stations and wind powered generators. If a fossil-fuelled power station reduces output, savings are made on the cost of the fuel which need not be used. As a result of this, fossil-fuelled power stations submit negative bids to the system operator indicating they will pay National Grid a certain sum per MWh if asked to reduce output. Conversely, wind farms do not have fuel costs, but if they are called upon to reduce output, they lose subsidies such as the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) and (prior to 1 August 2015) the Climate Change Levy Exemption Certificates (referred to as Levy Exemption Certificates, LECs). This, in part, explains why wind generator participants in the Balancing Mechanism submit positive bids to the system operator indicating that they need to be paid by National Grid to reduce output.
What has become clear since 2010 is that the amount charged by wind farms is very significantly in excess of the value of the subsidies foregone. For example, the average price paid to Scottish wind farms to reduce output in 2011 was £220 per MWh, whereas the lost subsidy is approximately £55 per MWh. The amount paid by conventional plant such as coal and gas was approximately £34 per MWh to reduce output in 2011. Ultimately the cost of balancing electricity is paid by the electricity consumer so this large difference in cost is not in the consumer interest. https://www.ref.org.uk/energy-data/notes-on-wind-farm-constraint-payments
@benrileysmith 🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
My solution to this problem is to turn down a smart meter. I therefore have no idea what it costs per day.
Isn't that a bit like trying to diet without weighing yourself?
Healthiest way to diet. Inch loss, fitness progress etc. are far better measures of progress.
Unpopular opinion. I'm not opposed to getting rid of the ban on fracking. It may not be economic but if companies want to do a bit of exploration let them. Safety concerns can be dealt with by sensible regulation. As for going green, we're importing LNG from thousands of miles away.
Social media rumours that Ukrainian armour is currently racing towards Kupuansk, circa 50km deeper than last night’s front line. Key strategic railhead for feeding the main Russian garrison on the Donbas front in Izyum. Would also imply possibility of encircling thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands west of the Oskil river.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 2h More solid Ukrainians sources saying things like this
Oleksiy Sorokin @mrsorokaa In a few days we’ll have a lot of good news made public. The offensive in the north, from what I know, is going very very good.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
My Dad would never let the upstairs heating be on “because heat rises”. The effect was similarly theoretical.
Our smartmeter was reading £6 for the day this evening, which was a bit of a shocker in a summer month. But I think it was a couple of hours of ironing that did it. Non-crease clothes might be the secret to defeating the energy crisis.
My solution to this problem is to turn down a smart meter. I therefore have no idea what it costs per day.
Isn't that a bit like trying to diet without weighing yourself?
Not really, though it is easily possible to diet without stepping on the scales. What is the point of smart meters? Unless your electricity usage varies wildly from one day to the next, you might just as well divide your monthly bill by 30 as look at the daily amount on your smart meter.
Given the likely cost of shale gas I don't think it's the solution we should be looking for. We should be doing more to try and get the gas price down.
Comments
http://www.macdiarmidsbrownsbank.org.uk/
BTW his cottage is preserved not too far from Edinburgh.
Being honest, this was quite possibly Her Majesty's final in-person photographed duty. Liz Truss is probably her final PM, she's not likely to ever ask another MP to form a Government, so this is unlikely to come up again. Charles can keep doing the Queens Speech etc, until he is monarch.
Whatever happened to gas cylinders? Every town used to have them. Why did they go and when?
Given how cheap especially wind generation now is it makes sense to build multiples of current energy demand so long as there is the space on the sea floor.
Increasingly she just isn't doing it at all. She may want to carry on but she just isn't carrying on.
🚨BREAKING: The fracking ban will be scrapped **tomorrow**. Planning requests for new drilling expected within weeks. Major change in UK energy rules.
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1567617883231993858
For her and for us every day more of our Glorious Queen (our greatest monarch since Elizabeth 1st) is a bonus. She did her duty on Monday and even posed for the cameras with the new PM and as long as she wants to do it let her. Charles' time will surely come in a few years but no need to rush it
Nothing about it in the Mercury either that I can see.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/
Hindu nationalists are like the alt.right anywhere else and like to stir up such stories. It wouldn't surprise me if it was that.
Political figurehead. Victoria had much more power and impact.
End the constraint payments, then build as many windmills (at sea please) as you like. Providers will then build storage into their schemes as they'll want to be paid.
I know wars can escalate but that is a danger for BOTH sides. Maybe it would be best for Putin to cut his losses now in Ukraine for fear that he might lose his puppets in Transnistria, Belarus or North Ossetia?
My main takeaway from reading about it is the act of remembrance started with ex servicemen standing respectfully, the two minute silence meticulously observed across the country but without the public exhortations to emote before, during and after that is the current form.
Given Charles seems to harbour some batshit notion of not being King Charles, maybe he should consider styling himself Queen Elizabeth III.
Did they go with the North Sea? I have memories of the one in Bolton being around in the early 2000's. But that may be memory playing tricks. I walked past it every day to school 74- 85. Then ended up working in the same area in the mid 2000's. I may have projected that recollection that it was still there.
First thing we need is way way more renewables generation. We currently have around 20gw of generating capacity for wind for example. Average UK demand is 35 or so, peaking over 40 on some winter evenings and rarely getting below around 26-27 even at its lowest. Tonight wind is producing around 5gw - it’s not very windy. 25% of max.
Build 100gw of wind infrastructure and tonight we would be generating 25gw. Add the 5 from nuclear and that would be 100% of our demand. If batteries are cheaper than wind per gw output then add batteries, if not then erect more turbines.
As it stands, the game doesn't need to be changed, since our share of renewable is low enough that we don't surpass 100% of demand coming from renewables. Our share of renewables isn't yet even high enough to reach baseload demands consistently.
As was explained to you by many people at the time, the wind providers being paid on extremely rare occasions to switch off is not a problem whatsoever. Energy generators have always been, and always will be, from time to time paid to switch off because if they weren't then we wouldn't have the ability for them to switch on when demanded for surges like TV Pickup, or dips in demand like during Remembrance Services. Do you think all energy generators are running at full pelt at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month? Or the corresponding Sunday?
If the share of renewables went past baseline then we'd start to need storage, but we're not there yet. But we're going to be there with storage before we need the storage, so again, not a problem. It is a non-issue.
From a lot of folk to whom that is a mere bagatelle. Mostly in Tory seats.
To get rid of the intermittency issues would require baseline energy from other sources, plus storage, but both are being built to different extents already. But we aren't even at the bridge to tackling the intermittency issues yet, we aren't that far advanced at all. That's like discussing what colour the walls should be on our Martian base, before we've even got a craft capable of flying people to the Moon or Mars yet.
https://5pillarsuk.com/2022/09/06/gangs-of-hindu-youths-are-terrorising-muslims-in-leicester/
House is pretty well insulated though.
*Well, a bit less, because producing shale gasin the UK will be a costly endeavour, so the underlying profits will be lower.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
One thing that would be a good idea with fracking is that a national co along the lines of Norways equinor ought to be put in place so the profits are there for the people...
Noted socialist Richard Tice thought this a good idea..
From memory the sum paid to disconnect wind farms during periods of surplus amount to a total of less than £1 per annum per household energy bill.
Coal and gas plants have always been idle too. This is not a problem, but Putinguy wants to make it one to further his agenda.
Goodnight all!
£72 million in wind constraint payments in the first two months of 2020 is hardly trivial, in any scheme.
In fact. Why not make it retrospective? We could have free energy for two decades round here as compensation for the windfarms we have that cause nae bugger any bother whatsoever. Nor elicit any comment of any kind.
Every additional day performing these basic functions crystallises her reputation, especially among my generation who equate her with our grandparents, most of whom have died by now. When she goes, it will feel like them going all over again.
We saw that extraordinary poll earlier about about how little faith younger people have in our democratic system. Weirdly, I think the monarchy, being above and beyond our daily politics, holds the idea of a British state that is worth defending just above the water. When the Queen dies, it's possible that Britain does too.
For comparison how much was paid to gas and coal in the same months?
Who said Boris was finished?
You want supposedly UK energy firms to pay for the cost of energy, but for there to be no UK energy firms, no investment, for us to import everything, and for us not to pay for our imports.
Do you understand why others don't take those proposals seriously?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0iJDA7_lY
Need to embrace the light we get at this time of year - climb some mountains, grab the camera.
'Constraint payments to wind farms to reduce output started in 2010. Prior to that, National Grid usually called on gas and coal power stations to reduce electricity output which is the cheaper option for the reason described above. There is a fundamental difference between costs of reducing output between conventional power stations and wind powered generators. If a fossil-fuelled power station reduces output, savings are made on the cost of the fuel which need not be used. As a result of this, fossil-fuelled power stations submit negative bids to the system operator indicating they will pay National Grid a certain sum per MWh if asked to reduce output. Conversely, wind farms do not have fuel costs, but if they are called upon to reduce output, they lose subsidies such as the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) and (prior to 1 August 2015) the Climate Change Levy Exemption Certificates (referred to as Levy Exemption Certificates, LECs). This, in part, explains why wind generator participants in the Balancing Mechanism submit positive bids to the system operator indicating that they need to be paid by National Grid to reduce output.
What has become clear since 2010 is that the amount charged by wind farms is very significantly in excess of the value of the subsidies foregone. For example, the average price paid to Scottish wind farms to reduce output in 2011 was £220 per MWh, whereas the lost subsidy is approximately £55 per MWh. The amount paid by conventional plant such as coal and gas was approximately £34 per MWh to reduce output in 2011. Ultimately the cost of balancing electricity is paid by the electricity consumer so this large difference in cost is not in the consumer interest.
https://www.ref.org.uk/energy-data/notes-on-wind-farm-constraint-payments
@PhillipsPOBrien
·
2h
More solid Ukrainians sources saying things like this
Oleksiy Sorokin
@mrsorokaa
In a few days we’ll have a lot of good news made public. The offensive in the north, from what I know, is going very very good.