Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Kosovo is am interesting place to visit. Wonder how they're getting on there economically and socially after 20 years of NATO presence, but no entry route as yet to the EU.
Once flavour of the month for the Western media, now zilch .
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
But anchored in Blighty by their love of Sir Norman Wisdom.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
But anchored in Blighty by their love of Sir Norman Wisdom.
Can't help wondering about Tugendhat now. Not stellar, but the only candidate not to have slipped on a banana skin. And with the news agenda dominated by foreign affairs, it certainly plays to his strengths. Safe pair of hands allied with a steely appreciation of British interests? Offset his perceived wetness with members and MPs?
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
I assume Leon means how would Iran destroy Israel's energy infrastructure - which is a good question because if their last attack was anything to go by, they don't have the technology you'd need to (a) be precise enough and (b) evade the defences. But they presumably *do* know the vulnerability of their own key facilities.
I don't know. If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
No surprise as Albania is the only plurality Muslim nation fully in Europe, 46% of Albanians are Muslim, 16% undeclared, 14% unaffiliated, 8% Roman Catholic, 7% Orthodox, 4% Bektashi and 4% atheist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
Have decided not to think about the chagos islands surrender as it is so distressingly stupid it is physically painful
Not remotely as stupid as Brexit
Are you the world's most boring man?
I can just imagine conversation in your house, if indeed anyone still lives with or talks to you, about how you'd compare absolutely anything to being "not remotely as stupid as Brexit".
1. Microwaving a salad - Because at least you know it’s pointless before you do it, unlike, say… a certain referendum. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
2. Trying to charge a banana with a USB cable Yes, it’s illogical, but at least it doesn’t affect trade agreements with 27 countries. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
3. Asking Siri for directions to Narnia Siri might be confused, but at least it won’t be not remotely as stupid as Brexit
4. Throwing a surprise party for your goldfish Goldfish have short memories, but still longer to live than some of those who voted to leave. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
5. Using mayonnaise as sunblock You’ll get weird looks, sure, but at least your supply chains for critical goods won’t collapse. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
6. Washing your hands with peanut butter Not effective, but still a more sensible strategy than negotiating with Brussels for three years. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
7. Declaring war on a vending machine Vending machines can be frustrating, but at least they don’t demand a backstop for Ireland. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
8. Knitting a sweater out of spaghetti It won’t keep you warm, but at least it’s not triggering a constitutional crisis. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
9. Trying to vacuum the lawn A waste of time, sure—but not on the scale of proroguing Parliament to avoid making a decision. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
10. Attempting to fly by flapping your arms really hard. This may result in a sore shoulder, but won’t result in a catastrophic drop in GDP. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
"Not remotely as stupid as Brexit."
How stupid did Remainers have to be not to be able to stop the really stupid people pushing a stupid Brexit?
Sorry but there's been some real utter bullshit from pollsters on this leadership campaign. We've had all this ramping of Cleverly, polls of Tory members where he inexplicably comes top and wins all head to heads.
Now that Cleverly has basically flushed his own campaign, suddenly a focus group is being touted that Tugendhat is the people's champion? His speech was widely panned as being low energy tripe. It was Cleverly who had the 'Cleggasm' speech, not Tug-end, and this just smacks of desperately ramping the only viable wet left in the contest.
You are accusing a (reputable) pollster of lying. That's not encourage on PB.
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
We will see, not impossible more Stride backers go to Tugendhat than Cleverly and then Jenrick lends him some votes to knock out Badenoch in the final MPs round
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
No surprise as Albania is the only plurality Muslim nation fully in Europe, 46% of Albanians are Muslim, 16% undeclared, 14% unaffiliated, 8% Roman Catholic, 7% Orthodox, 4% Bektashi and 4% atheist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
I really did not expect Albania to look like this. We keep climbing mountains and they are swathed in eerie fog and blackened by rainstorms. Its like driving into Mordor
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
I assume Leon means how would Iran destroy Israel's energy infrastructure - which is a good question because if their last attack was anything to go by, they don't have the technology you'd need to (a) be precise enough and (b) evade the defences. But they presumably *do* know the vulnerability of their own key facilities.
I don't know. If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
If they had a couple of hundred ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.
The Israelis have an obvious defence measure, incidentally. One that the Iranians would really, really not want to trigger.
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
I don’t believe much of this. The times reports the Americans are privately angry
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
But anchored in Blighty by their love of Sir Norman Wisdom.
An interesting fact is thar John Belushi is Albanian.
But maybe not that interesting.
Sone of the most interesting facts for me about Albania are that a) it was basically Italy that prevented their territory from being swallowed up by neighbours like Greece to the South and the Slavic powers to the North, because they thought it could be their client state on the Adriatic, also securing the coast all the way down Slovenia and Croatia, which was then only Italian, and b).. The first and only Albanian King, styling himself King Zoh, was a military officer who was desperate to ingratiate himself, and be accepted by other, older European monarchies, nit never was. A crowning part of the whole bizarre story is that he found a glamorous American socialite who thought it sounded like fun to be Queen of Albania, so she became his consort.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
Given Tugendhat seems to have had the best reception, they clearly didn't get help from Frank Luntz 28% return on him coming last in 3rd round.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
No surprise as Albania is the only plurality Muslim nation fully in Europe, 46% of Albanians are Muslim, 16% undeclared, 14% unaffiliated, 8% Roman Catholic, 7% Orthodox, 4% Bektashi and 4% atheist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
And Bektashis are Muslim (albeit exotic ones), so that gets you to about 50% Muslim.
However, Bosnia is on a slightly higher figure, and Kosovo is 88% Muslim (if you aren't going to quibble about their status as a separate nation).
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
I assume Leon means how would Iran destroy Israel's energy infrastructure - which is a good question because if their last attack was anything to go by, they don't have the technology you'd need to (a) be precise enough and (b) evade the defences. But they presumably *do* know the vulnerability of their own key facilities.
I don't know. If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
If they had a couple of hundred ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.
The Israelis have an obvious defence measure, incidentally. One that the Iranians would really, really not want to trigger.
They do - they used around that number for this week's attack.
I wasn't suggesting they're likely to do it - just an example of what might be possible
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
It depends which Americans I suppose. The ones seeking to protect and extend US/western hegemony and those seeking to switch to autocracy.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
Have to be in Pristina Kosovo ASAP for bizarre Gazette assignment visiting Europe’s cheapest and then most expensive cities (Geneva) with the same budget
Missed flight to Pristina last night due to wizzair being wankers. Only choice (if I am to make it all work) was to get absurd early flight to Tirana then pray I can get a bus from Tirana to Pristina today then fly back Sunday at about midnight then fly to Geneva a few hours later
Albanian Taxi is stuck in rain. Heavy storms rage over the communist wedding cake citadels. Reggaeton
Sunday 10PM overnight Ferry to Bari and 12 hours by train via Milan and Brig not possible?
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
This is a good one. High up in the spooky hills and you’re crossing into a ghost of a country
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
Just wondering if it is going to be politically sustainable to fine car manufacturers because buyers don't feel like buying electric cars in sufficient quantities?
It feels like one of those policies that is fine for 10 years time, but less fine when the time comes - which apparently is around now. It would appear entirely incompatible with the most rudimentary idea of justice.
I just cannot see it
Governments are trying to force action on climate change, but the public are not acting accordingly as the recent figures show them turning back to petrol and diesel and falling EV sales and even those only sustained by fleet buyers
Governments are going to find that it's much easier to get people to play along if they offer carrots rather than sticks. The only reason for a lot of EV purchases now is that the BIK rules make them very attractive to have as a company car (carrot).
Trying to get the public onboard with buying EVs by massive fines on the things they want to buy (stick) is going to go down like a cup of cold sick (and the public will know, because you can be sure the dealerships will tell them).
It's also going to remain difficult to shift them to the public all the while the residuals are rubbish (which will remain the case at least until technological development plateaus again - last years model will be worth even less than it otherwise would be if this years model is better/cheaper).
The idea that EV sales have vanished isn’t borne out by the data
They haven't but according to Sky business the sales of evs are almost exclusively to fleet buyers
Company cars on average drive 2 - 2.5 times the number of miles that the average driver does.
Far from being a bad thing (as you no doubt think) that fleet sales make 75% of Electric vehicle sales, its a positive.
It also means a nice slug of cheap(er) EV cars in 3 years when those company cars are replaced.
It would be peverse if Mrs Goggins of Greendale was buying an electric car to do a once weekly trip to the shop.
Mrs Goggins of Greendale is in no position to buy an EV or any other sort of car because she has only recently been let out of prison following her Horizon conviction for post office fraud and has not yet received her compensation. She is also 132 years of age.
A modern remake of Postman Pat would have much more exciting story lines.
I always had my suspicions about that Ted Glen. Bit of a ladies man on the side I think.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
What would the economics of green hydrogen look like, using electricity at 1p per kWh ?
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
7 people in a focus group. For all we know they did several and the outlet chose the one it preferred.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
I assume Leon means how would Iran destroy Israel's energy infrastructure - which is a good question because if their last attack was anything to go by, they don't have the technology you'd need to (a) be precise enough and (b) evade the defences. But they presumably *do* know the vulnerability of their own key facilities.
I don't know. If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
If they had a couple of hundred ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.
The Israelis have an obvious defence measure, incidentally. One that the Iranians would really, really not want to trigger.
They do - they used around that number for this week's attack.
I wasn't suggesting they're likely to do it - just an example of what might be possible
A nuclear reactor is a pretty small thing though. Judging by the missiles they launches last week, they're not accurate enough to hit, even with a swarm attack, though of course they might get lucky. It's one thing hitting a city; it's another hitting a specific piece of infrastructure (particularly if there's a missile defence shield aligned to tracking software that can identify flight paths and impact points, and has a high level of interception).
As an aside, ballistic missile targeting is where the phrase 'ballpark' comes from in the sense of accuracy.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
No surprise as Albania is the only plurality Muslim nation fully in Europe, 46% of Albanians are Muslim, 16% undeclared, 14% unaffiliated, 8% Roman Catholic, 7% Orthodox, 4% Bektashi and 4% atheist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
I really did not expect Albania to look like this. We keep climbing mountains and they are swathed in eerie fog and blackened by rainstorms. Its like driving into Mordor
I love the surprise of travel
Not watched the Top Gear/Grand Tour episodes in Albanian obviously! Some glorious roads.
Have to be in Pristina Kosovo ASAP for bizarre Gazette assignment visiting Europe’s cheapest and then most expensive cities (Geneva) with the same budget
Missed flight to Pristina last night due to wizzair being wankers. Only choice (if I am to make it all work) was to get absurd early flight to Tirana then pray I can get a bus from Tirana to Pristina today then fly back Sunday at about midnight then fly to Geneva a few hours later
Albanian Taxi is stuck in rain. Heavy storms rage over the communist wedding cake citadels. Reggaeton
Sunday 10PM overnight Ferry to Bari and 12 hours by train via Milan and Brig not possible?
Much more fun but probably not quite doable in the meagre time
We are now in a spectacular road tunnel hurtling towards the border!
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
Primary legislation to remove/bypass the enquiries? To start with, that would instantly get the whole Enquiry Industry on the case to claim that such legislation was illegal.
Secondly, it would push another chunk of the Labour votes to the Greens.
Thirdly, Starmer is a long term government lawyer. To him such enquiries are a good thing. Part of The Process.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
But anchored in Blighty by their love of Sir Norman Wisdom.
An interesting fact is thar John Belushi is Albanian.
But maybe not that interesting.
Sone of the most interesting facts for me about Albania are that a) it was basically Italy that prevented their territory from being swallowed up by neighbours like Greece to the South and the Slavic powers to the North, because they thought it could be their client state on the Adriatic, also securing the coast all the way down Slovenia and Croatia, which was then only Italian, and b).. The first and only Albanian King, styling himself King Zoh, was a military officer who was desperate to ingratiate himself, and be accepted by other, older European monarchies, nit never was. A crowning part of the whole bizarre story is that he found a glamorous American socialite who thought it sounded like fun to be Queen of Albania, so she became his consort.
Throne was offered to CB Fry. Zog was six feet seven.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
Much less costly but also showing how badly run we are, the two police officers sacked for a stop and search of an athlete have now been re-instated with back pay. The incident happened in July 2020. Regardless of whether they should be sacked/disciplined/retrained/promoted/whatever, why on earth can we not have reached a final decision by the end of 2020 rather than over 4 years later during which the officers will have missed a load of work through suspension and then being sacked.
Speeding up justice and the processes around it needs to be an absolute priority. Investing in that up front will save money and time later on.
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
I assume Leon means how would Iran destroy Israel's energy infrastructure - which is a good question because if their last attack was anything to go by, they don't have the technology you'd need to (a) be precise enough and (b) evade the defences. But they presumably *do* know the vulnerability of their own key facilities.
I don't know. If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
If they had a couple of hundred ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.
The Israelis have an obvious defence measure, incidentally. One that the Iranians would really, really not want to trigger.
They do - they used around that number for this week's attack.
I wasn't suggesting they're likely to do it - just an example of what might be possible
A nuclear reactor is a pretty small thing though. Judging by the missiles they launches last week, they're not accurate enough to hit, even with a swarm attack, though of course they might get lucky. It's one thing hitting a city; it's another hitting a specific piece of infrastructure (particularly if there's a missile defence shield aligned to tracking software that can identify flight paths and impact points, and has a high level of interception).
As an aside, ballistic missile targeting is where the phrase 'ballpark' comes from in the sense of accuracy.
And was why the American jump in capability with Trident (especially Trident II) and the rero fits to Minuteman were so startling to the USSR, during the late cold war.
There is a story that they deliberately scheduled a test to land the warheads at Kwajalein Atoll for when a Soviet satellite was overhead. The warheads, so the story goes, were aimed to create a very obvious pattern.
Off topic. GB has qualified for America's Cup today with barely a remark. Was totally unaware it was on. And yet. There was a time when it was headline news for months. But now it isn't. Why?
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
This is a good one. High up in the spooky hills and you’re crossing into a ghost of a country
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
BTW: this is also why solar will take over. It's because it can installed anywhere and without government approval or new transmission lines or anything.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
Theres just the mnor matter of those 100000+ lost jobs in the North Sea and the industrial infrastructure that goes with it.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
You quote a figure - no-one in the industry believes to be correct nowadays - didn't we work it out as 30,000 direct jobs maximum...
No we didnt. Its about when you take in the supply chain 100000 with potentially 200000 in the pot but some of these will get saved by other work.
However even if I take your hope figure of 30000, Why the fk should 30000 people lose their jobs just on an ideologues whim ? I'll have some of those people to sack next year shall I tell them it;s all for their own good and they should thank me ?
Government policy - at the moment - is to provide tax relief at 90% for the exploration and development of new fields, incentivising companies to avoid the windfall tax by directing investment into fossil fuels.
That includes the 100 additional licences issued by Sunak last year. The fact is that Miliband has only made the very smallest of dents into the course of the North Sea, which has seen a gradual decline in production for decades and throughout the Conservative's time in office.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
I’m struggling to recall those crazy, hazy days when you were anything other than seriously pessimistic..
We have been running a substantial trade deficit for well over 20 years. We got a lot of growth out of financial services, Edinburgh did particularly well, but that has been a lot more difficult since 2008. Our industrial base is continuing to decline. Our education system, which we once could be particularly proud of, is declining. Our public sector is too large and, frankly, too well paid sucking talent out of the economy. We need to do some seriously hard thinking about what our children and their children are going to do for a living.
So, what can we do?
We have some excellent Universities in St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde. We have some good ones in Dundee, Aberdeen and Stirling. They seem to me the obvious base for our future, just as Monasteries were in the middle ages .
Not only do they bring a lot of money into Scotland through foreign students but they also spin off some businesses and generate significant investment such as the Wellcome Trust in Dundee and Microsoft in Edinburgh. We need to do all we can to generate more such businesses. That will include enterprise zones with lower taxes, close liaison between what the Universities teach and what these businesses of tomorrow want, tax and investment incentives and we need to encourage those trained here to stay and create their businesses here. They have the capacity to replace those industrial estates around Aberdeen.
We still have strength in financial services but it is absolutely essential that that business remains closely tied with London to which it is back office and services.
We need to try and get our tax rates competitive with the rest of the UK, to be focused on our economy and close the door on constitutional uncertainty, indeed every kind of uncertainty that we can control.
But this is not likely to happen, hence my pessimism.
Universities are doomed. Sorry
With a bit of luck universities will be well placed to return to sanity rather than being doomed. They can be very good at two things: really demanding vocational and quasi vocational training for really demanding careers - and they have been doing this since about 1100 with some success both in outcomes and in changing with the times.
They are also good at real rigorous academia as an exercise in being a civilized nation in a world in need of it, and world class research with both practical real world applications, and the good in itself of adding to the world's stock of reliable knowledge.
They are less good at being places to keep 18-22 year olds off the streets and out of the employment market and giving lazier schools an excuse for not doing decent careers advice, but hopefully that's just a passing fad which will price itself out of usefulness.
Last paragraph spot on, of course. Earlier paragraph not so much.
In England, control over admission into the professions remained with the professional bodies, who ran their own professional training and set the professional examinations. Recent governments have muddied the waters on this a bit - but recent governments in the UK have not really known what they were doing.
In the case of our continental neighbours, admission to professions was in the hands of the government, which meant the church, which also controlled the universities. So it was simple enough for these countries to devolve admission to the universities, who did the technical training, set the exams and marked their own homework.
That is why traditionaly the English university was less interested in the technical details of professional training and managed them less well. And why the polytechnics did much better. It was a great shame that the Conservatives, in their ignorance, abolished them.
Meanwhile, we should not be looking towards universities for the technical and applied aspects of professional training.
The Iranians are threatening to destroy Israel's entire energy infrastructure if they make "a mistake", according to various reports in the last few hours. Grim times.
How?!
The more belligerent the Iranian regime's rhetoric, the more in trouble they know they are in.
If only they would adopt Netanyahu’s reasonable and pacific tone.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
This is a good one. High up in the spooky hills and you’re crossing into a ghost of a country
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
Unless there is some technological advance, of course. But technological advances scarcely ever happen.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
BTW: this is also why solar will take over. It's because it can installed anywhere and without government approval or new transmission lines or anything.
And, to return to the point that JE Gordon was making decades ago, that's all fine as long as you accept that you are getting collecting relatively diffuse energy with a biggish bucket, rather than having a really dense energy resource all in one place. For a long time, engineering has mostly been about the latter, and the former does require a different attitude.
(Probably something similar to his attitude to wood vs. metal. Metal might be more modern, but nobody involved in it ever seems to be happy, whereas people like working with wood.)
The next necessary step seems to be energy-consuming industries adapting to the realisation that electricity can be too cheap to meter, as long as they only access it intermittently. Not everything can work on that basis, but it will be interesting to see which industries can make that switch.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
And no big enquiries.
The Lawyer-Activist Complex will hate that.
There is already quite a bit of anger about a regulation the last government snuck in - local power storage up to 50MWh* (IIRC) are not regulated as power stations. Which means that it is relatively easy to get permissions to park a few ISO containers worth next to your solar farm.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
It wouldn't be necessary to cover houses with them if you put them on most other things like factories and warehouses.
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
I don’t believe much of this. The times reports the Americans are privately angry
Foreign policy appears to be one area where there are persistent divisions within the current administration. Consequently both stories could be true if one view was Blinken's and the other Sullivan's.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
And no big enquiries.
The Lawyer-Activist Complex will hate that.
There is already quite a bit of anger about a regulation the last government snuck in - local power storage up to 50MWh* (IIRC) are not regulated as power stations. Which means that it is relatively easy to get permissions to park a few ISO containers worth next to your solar farm.
Stuff popping up all over the place, including the Highlands to pick up excess wind power.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Northern Lights CCS is operational as of 24 September allegedly, some may have better info, so perhaps if UK had got on with it ....
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
I don’t believe much of this. The times reports the Americans are privately angry
Foreign policy appears to be one area where there are persistent divisions within the current administration. Consequently both stories could be true if one view was Blinken's and the other Sullivan's.
My final Chagos comment for the day
It is simply beyond belief that the Americans would want to go from a positive of complete control over the whole archipelago - sovereignty belonging to one of of their closest allies - no chance of any foreigners going anywhere near the base - to a position where they have a “lease”. And the rest of the archipelago belongs to Mauritius who can invite the Chinese to fish (as of course they wil) and then the Chinese can build a “fishing base”
And so on
How is the latter situation preferable for America? It is not. So they have tolerated blind self harming stupidity from the UK and made the best of our bad job
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
7 people in a focus group. For all we know they did several and the outlet chose the one it preferred.
Stop reaching for conspiracy theories. There are limits to what one can tell from a single focus group and it may not reflect broader views well, but claims that polling companies or BBC5Live are deliberately skewing results are unfounded and, AIUI, against PB rules.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
It wouldn't be necessary to cover houses with them if you put them on most other things like factories and warehouses.
From memory (and please don't take this as professional advice, as I'm doing this with my muggle hat on), it can't cope with elections, because changes in voting patterns aren't at random. The example is the 2020 Potus, where Benford's Law interpreted a consistent change in the Democrat voting pattern (a non-random change) as fraud (another non-random change). Apologies if this is wrong.
Have decided not to think about the chagos islands surrender as it is so distressingly stupid it is physically painful
Not remotely as stupid as Brexit
You think it was stupid to implement the biggest vote for anything in the country's history?
If you do, just say so. At least you'd be logical, if not a democrat.
If the Brexit vote had been thwarted, I thought it through and it was probably the only time in my life I had every contemplated violence, I mean really paramilitary stuff. Whether I would have actually carried it out past a thought process, I dont know. The government's entire right to exist would have vanished, I would have seen them as nothing more than an occupying force that needed resistance.
I was no puritan on the matter of Brexit, I voted to leave with a heavy heart, and considered the moral obligation to carry out the will of the British people was limited to no longer being a member of the EU, as the ballot paper said. After that, whether we remained in single market or whatever, as far as democratic mandate was just a detail. We left, the mandate was fulfilled. Even if Starmer now tried to re-enter the EU, or re-enter the single market. It is not a betrayal. The instruction was carried out.
But. I wonder if I was alone in thinking for the first time about extreme political violence.
As a Remainder I basically agree with you.
The stupidity of Brexit was not it's enactment, but the fact that it's form was determined more by the internal politics of the Conservative party and it's relationship to UKIP than the will of the British people.
Had it not been enacted at all we would on one level have ceased to be a democracy - and in that circumstance political unrest would have been entirely justified (though I'd stop short of violence).
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Northern Lights CCS is operational as of 24 September allegedly, some may have better info, so perhaps if UK had got on with it ....
In the same way that nuclear fuel is operational, and Green Steel is operational. So far nothing other than concepts, press releases and token demonstration projects.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
But anchored in Blighty by their love of Sir Norman Wisdom.
An interesting fact is thar John Belushi is Albanian.
But maybe not that interesting.
Sone of the most interesting facts for me about Albania are that a) it was basically Italy that prevented their territory from being swallowed up by neighbours like Greece to the South and the Slavic powers to the North, because they thought it could be their client state on the Adriatic, also securing the coast all the way down Slovenia and Croatia, which was then only Italian, and b).. The first and only Albanian King, styling himself King Zoh, was a military officer who was desperate to ingratiate himself, and be accepted by other, older European monarchies, nit never was. A crowning part of the whole bizarre story is that he found a glamorous American socialite who thought it sounded like fun to be Queen of Albania, so she became his consort.
Throne was offered to CB Fry. Zog was six feet seven.
Fry instead ended up commanding the hellship known as TS Mercury. Formerly HMS Gannet, now restored to that name and configuration at Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Have decided not to think about the chagos islands surrender as it is so distressingly stupid it is physically painful
Not remotely as stupid as Brexit
You think it was stupid to implement the biggest vote for anything in the country's history?
If you do, just say so. At least you'd be logical, if not a democrat.
If the Brexit vote had been thwarted, I thought it through and it was probably the only time in my life I had every contemplated violence, I mean really paramilitary stuff. Whether I would have actually carried it out past a thought process, I dont know. The government's entire right to exist would have vanished, I would have seen them as nothing more than an occupying force that needed resistance.
I was no puritan on the matter of Brexit, I voted to leave with a heavy heart, and considered the moral obligation to carry out the will of the British people was limited to no longer being a member of the EU, as the ballot paper said. After that, whether we remained in single market or whatever, as far as democratic mandate was just a detail. We left, the mandate was fulfilled. Even if Starmer now tried to re-enter the EU, or re-enter the single market. It is not a betrayal. The instruction was carried out.
But. I wonder if I was alone in thinking for the first time about extreme political violence.
As a Remainder I basically agree with you.
The stupidity of Brexit was not it's enactment, but the fact that it's form was determined more by the internal politics of the Conservative party and it's relationship to UKIP than the will of the British people.
Had it not been enacted at all we would on one level have ceased to be a democracy - and in that circumstance political unrest would have been entirely justified (though I'd stop short of violence).
I agree with you both and I am sure that if the referendum had been annulled we would have seen widespread violence. After all, if you can simply cancel a vote - and cancel democracy - what is left for the voter, how else can they express their desires? That’s when and why violence starts
Dominic Cummings realised this - he wrote it at the time
It is incredible to me how 2nd voters like Starmer - have been able to get away with what they espoused. If they’d got their way Britain would have tipped into bloodshed
A secondary outcome of an annulled election would have been a collapse in turnout at all further elections. What’s the point in voting if it means nothing?
And the “2nd vote” itself would have been a desperate debacle as millions of Leave voters boycotted it
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
I don’t believe much of this. The times reports the Americans are privately angry
Foreign policy appears to be one area where there are persistent divisions within the current administration. Consequently both stories could be true if one view was Blinken's and the other Sullivan's.
My final Chagos comment for the day
It is simply beyond belief that the Americans would want to go from a positive of complete control over the whole archipelago - sovereignty belonging to one of of their closest allies - no chance of any foreigners going anywhere near the base - to a position where they have a “lease”. And the rest of the archipelago belongs to Mauritius who can invite the Chinese to fish (as of course they wil) and then the Chinese can build a “fishing base”
And so on
How is the latter situation preferable for America? It is not. So they have tolerated blind self harming stupidity from the UK and made the best of our bad job
The rationale, as relayed by the supremely reliable journalist Peston - surely the Pulitzer is only a matter of time - is that the status quo was not stable, and they were worried about Trump pudding for a worse outcome to please his dictator besties.
If be more confident in this story if it came from a different messenger, but I think fear of Trump is an important factor.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
I don't believe the polls we're getting from 'Techne' and 'MoreInCommon' etc. at present. I strongly suspect Labour have already crashed below the Tories - approval ratings are a good indication, and if I could be bothered I'd create a formula by which one could extrapolate one from the other.
Just caught up with the Telegrunt on how Mr Starmer is betraying the blue rinse brigade, and the rump war-poodles of Tunbridge Wells left over from the Empire; TW is now a Lib Dem seat.
(TLDR: It's shit-stirring. But then we all knew that.)
The Telegrunt headline said: Starmer refuses to rule out signing away Gibraltar and Falklands
The only mention of the Falklands and Gibraltar was by the headline writer, and a "this also happened" reference in the article, puffed up into a story that does not exist other than being farted out of someone's arse. According to the Telegrunt's grunt he was asked, and replied:
The Prime Minister was asked to guarantee that under Labour no other British overseas territories will be signed away.
He told reporters in response: “The single most important thing was ensuring that we had a secure base, the joint US-UK base; hugely important to the US, hugely important to us.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Windier in the winter, which will help.
So long as you don't get one of those rather common polar highs which cause very cold, very calm weather. Hence the reason for backup systems.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
I don't believe the polls we're getting from 'Techne' and 'MoreInCommon' etc. at present. I strongly suspect Labour have already crashed below the Tories - approval ratings are a good indication, and if I could be bothered I'd create a formula by which one could extrapolate one from the other.
MAGA types tried to re-calculate polls they didn't believe. It went badly for them.
Why do pollsters try to extract quantitative results from qualitative research methods?
' On Kemi Badenoch: "Unconvincing" "As bad as Suella Braverman" "Strong, honest" "It sounds a bit corporate. There was a lack of sincerity. It needed more oomph" "It was a bit Liz Truss-y"
💥 On Tom Tugendhat: "Impressed" "He's a soldier, so he's probably a bit more down to earth" "More engaging" "Limp. Boring" "I was drawn into what he was saying... confident, articulate" "More capable compared to the bluffing and blustering of everyone else... maybe he is less self-serving'
💥 On Rob Jenrick: "Cringeworthy" "Honest" "Too animated. Too much coffee" "I liked what he said about the migration. But then he ruined it with all the cheap jokes and snides, and the fact he thought he was really fun with it put me right off" "A bit flimsy. A smug face" "That's not someone I would even want leading the school PTA"
💥 On James Cleverly: "He went on about things they didn't deliver, like on Brexit" "Good candour" "Patronising" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "Arrogant" "The worst"' https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1842161408806621353
So voters like the candidate who's currently trending last. Will the (s)electorate of the leadership campaign care?
7 people in a focus group. For all we know they did several and the outlet chose the one it preferred.
Stop reaching for conspiracy theories. There are limits to what one can tell from a single focus group and it may not reflect broader views well, but claims that polling companies or BBC5Live are deliberately skewing results are unfounded and, AIUI, against PB rules.
I have not suggested polling impropriety I have suggested that it is possible that several focus groups were conducted and 5Live chose its preferred option. It's not against PB policy to criticise 5live - at least I hope it's not.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
(Yes, they're activists, but it looks fairly well done)
From the site you reference: "The Development Consent Order (DCO) planning application was actually 554 documents (not 2,383 claimed), and totalled 63,330 pages, not 359,000 [7]."
Only 63,330 pages - so that's OK then.
I think this is a bit like the people who tried to argue that the number Dom Cummings painted on the side of a bus was arguably slightly out.
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
This is a good one. High up in the spooky hills and you’re crossing into a ghost of a country
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
I cycled through South America about 20 years ago. Border posts were a real highlight.
In Tierra del Fuego the border guards put us up for the night on their hut as it was so late.
Crossing from Argentina into Bolivia we met a cackling local on a single geared bike with no brakes who then beat us down a ~20km descent using his foot on the front tyre to brake.
Some of the tiny border posts at the end of dirt roads up the spine of the Andes were magical.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Hence the connector from Algeria tp the UK. This seems a pretty sensible way of doing things.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Windier in the winter, which will help.
So long as you don't get one of those rather common polar highs which cause very cold, very calm weather. Hence the reason for backup systems.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Windier in the winter, which will help.
So long as you don't get one of those rather common polar highs which cause very cold, very calm weather. Hence the reason for backup systems.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking of solar like it is now: as in, there are some panels on some rooves.
There will be 1,000x as many panels generating electricity in the UK (or Ireland) in 25 years time as now.
They will be so cheap, that almost every surface, horizontal or vertical, will be generating energy.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Windier in the winter, which will help.
So long as you don't get one of those rather common polar highs which cause very cold, very calm weather. Hence the reason for backup systems.
Natural gas.
We hope.
The UK is uniquely shit as far as natural gas storage goes, but it is the perfect battery. It's clean, energy dense, efficient, dispatchable, and - this is most important - close to zero maintenance when it's not running. That last one is incredibly important: compared to any other form of electricity generation, natural gas turbines are people and maintenance lite. They sit there... you press a button... and just a few seconds later power begins to flow.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Hence the connector from Algeria tp the UK. This seems a pretty sensible way of doing things.
The pricing on that looks surprisingly affordable.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
I don't believe the polls we're getting from 'Techne' and 'MoreInCommon' etc. at present. I strongly suspect Labour have already crashed below the Tories - approval ratings are a good indication, and if I could be bothered I'd create a formula by which one could extrapolate one from the other.
Relative approval ratings are not a set of good indicators when one leader or another is either on their way out or very new to the job. Plus, in this case, the Tories have a legacy on image and perception that will take a time to shift whoever the new leader is (even if they try, which they may not).
It's not that Labour is not struggling in government; it's that the Tories can't simply pretend that the last 14 years - and especially the last 5 - didn't happen.
Have decided not to think about the chagos islands surrender as it is so distressingly stupid it is physically painful
Not remotely as stupid as Brexit
Are you the world's most boring man?
I can just imagine conversation in your house, if indeed anyone still lives with or talks to you, about how you'd compare absolutely anything to being "not remotely as stupid as Brexit".
1. Microwaving a salad - Because at least you know it’s pointless before you do it, unlike, say… a certain referendum. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
2. Trying to charge a banana with a USB cable Yes, it’s illogical, but at least it doesn’t affect trade agreements with 27 countries. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
3. Asking Siri for directions to Narnia Siri might be confused, but at least it won’t be not remotely as stupid as Brexit
4. Throwing a surprise party for your goldfish Goldfish have short memories, but still longer to live than some of those who voted to leave. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
5. Using mayonnaise as sunblock You’ll get weird looks, sure, but at least your supply chains for critical goods won’t collapse. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
6. Washing your hands with peanut butter Not effective, but still a more sensible strategy than negotiating with Brussels for three years. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
7. Declaring war on a vending machine Vending machines can be frustrating, but at least they don’t demand a backstop for Ireland. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
8. Knitting a sweater out of spaghetti It won’t keep you warm, but at least it’s not triggering a constitutional crisis. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
9. Trying to vacuum the lawn A waste of time, sure—but not on the scale of proroguing Parliament to avoid making a decision. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
10. Attempting to fly by flapping your arms really hard. This may result in a sore shoulder, but won’t result in a catastrophic drop in GDP. Not remotely as stupid as Brexit.
"Not remotely as stupid as Brexit."
How stupid did Remainers have to be not to be able to stop the really stupid people pushing a stupid Brexit?
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
Not for a determined government. As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
On that note.
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
(Yes, they're activists, but it looks fairly well done)
From the site you reference: "The Development Consent Order (DCO) planning application was actually 554 documents (not 2,383 claimed), and totalled 63,330 pages, not 359,000 [7]."
Only 63,330 pages - so that's OK then.
I think this is a bit like the people who tried to argue that the number Dom Cummings painted on the side of a bus was arguably slightly out.
Transport Action Network are quite reputable. They are generally analytical not ideological, and were a key body in overturning the previous Government's assault on ticket offices, where disabled organisations were left out of consultations before the policy announcement for some reason.
They are not in the 'cycling mafia' (who I generally support, of course, and reject the label); nor are they one of the fringe groups that serve as useful idiots for the Daily Mail and the Telegrunt, wanting to eg ban bus stop bypasses rather than design them properly.
The first tweeter seems to be some sort of libertarian given to unnuanced analyses.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
I don't believe the polls we're getting from 'Techne' and 'MoreInCommon' etc. at present. I strongly suspect Labour have already crashed below the Tories - approval ratings are a good indication, and if I could be bothered I'd create a formula by which one could extrapolate one from the other.
Relative approval ratings are not a set of good indicators when one leader or another is either on their way out or very new to the job. Plus, in this case, the Tories have a legacy on image and perception that will take a time to shift whoever the new leader is (even if they try, which they may not).
It's not that Labour is not struggling in government; it's that the Tories can't simply pretend that the last 14 years - and especially the last 5 - didn't happen.
It doesn’t matter if Labour continue as they are. And this seems likely given the insane incompetence - and sleaze - shown so far. They are venal, naive and stupid. They are already less popular than Sunak’s government!
After 5 years of this voters will loathe them with a passion - as they loathed the Tories - and will punish them however they can. If it means voting Tory so be it. Elsewhere they will vote reform or SNP or LD
For this not to happen you have to believe Labour have a cunning plan and a hidden economic genius. Do you believe that? If you do you’ve got an archipelago I’d like to buy from you but you will have to pay
Albania feels like the most unEuropean place I’ve ever been in Europe. There are minarets. The women look like Iranians. The music is half Arabic. The mountains are wreathed in fog but there are palm trees
It should obviously be in the Caucasus
If you go to the far South, though, as mentioned, it feels Greek. Europe and the Middle East in one country.
Skopje is a bit similar.
We’re an hour from crossing the kosovan frontier
I don’t know why I take childish joy in crossing land borders but I do. There is no pleasure in a passport queue at an airport, but a manned border post in the misty mountains… oooh
Because it's an echo of a timeless world that's mostly now past. There's romance, history, adventure, the unknown.
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
This is a good one. High up in the spooky hills and you’re crossing into a ghost of a country
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
I cycled through South America about 20 years ago. Border posts were a real highlight.
In Tierra del Fuego the border guards put us up for the night on their hut as it was so late.
Crossing from Argentina into Bolivia we met a cackling local on a single geared bike with no brakes who then beat us down a ~20km descent using his foot on the front tyre to brake.
Some of the tiny border posts at the end of dirt roads up the spine of the Andes were magical.
We are now stuck at the Kosovan border in this pouring rain which has killed people across the region
Have decided not to think about the chagos islands surrender as it is so distressingly stupid it is physically painful
Not remotely as stupid as Brexit
You think it was stupid to implement the biggest vote for anything in the country's history?
If you do, just say so. At least you'd be logical, if not a democrat.
If the Brexit vote had been thwarted, I thought it through and it was probably the only time in my life I had every contemplated violence, I mean really paramilitary stuff. Whether I would have actually carried it out past a thought process, I dont know. The government's entire right to exist would have vanished, I would have seen them as nothing more than an occupying force that needed resistance.
I was no puritan on the matter of Brexit, I voted to leave with a heavy heart, and considered the moral obligation to carry out the will of the British people was limited to no longer being a member of the EU, as the ballot paper said. After that, whether we remained in single market or whatever, as far as democratic mandate was just a detail. We left, the mandate was fulfilled. Even if Starmer now tried to re-enter the EU, or re-enter the single market. It is not a betrayal. The instruction was carried out.
But. I wonder if I was alone in thinking for the first time about extreme political violence.
As a Remainder I basically agree with you.
The stupidity of Brexit was not it's enactment, but the fact that it's form was determined more by the internal politics of the Conservative party and it's relationship to UKIP than the will of the British people.
Had it not been enacted at all we would on one level have ceased to be a democracy - and in that circumstance political unrest would have been entirely justified (though I'd stop short of violence).
I agree with you both and I am sure that if the referendum had been annulled we would have seen widespread violence. After all, if you can simply cancel a vote - and cancel democracy - what is left for the voter, how else can they express their desires? That’s when and why violence starts
Dominic Cummings realised this - he wrote it at the time
It is incredible to me how 2nd voters like Starmer - have been able to get away with what they espoused. If they’d got their way Britain would have tipped into bloodshed
A secondary outcome of an annulled election would have been a collapse in turnout at all further elections. What’s the point in voting if it means nothing?
And the “2nd vote” itself would have been a desperate debacle as millions of Leave voters boycotted it
Starmer is a complete fucking idiot, and a traitor.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
It makes sense once you realise this has nothing to do with the Chagossians and little to do with the UK, but is mainly about the USA wanting to secure its base on Diego Garcia. The international law issues aren't the USA's problem - Britain, you sort that out. Which is why both Biden and Trump seem to think this a good result.
Do you think the story about the Americans privately opposing the deal is cobblers then?
Yes. It is cobblers.
No sign of any equivocation here and this is the horse's mouth
"We strongly condemn the agreement between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago as a strategic blunder that undermines U.S. interests and regional security. Far from being a diplomatic achievement, this deal represents a colossal failure by the British government, which has naively jeopardized the future of one of the most important military assets in the Indo-Pacific.
By conceding sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the UK has weakened its control over Diego Garcia, a critical joint U.S.-UK military base. The agreement introduces unnecessary uncertainty and creates potential friction with Mauritius over the long-term status and operations of the base, threatening its ability to function effectively. Given Diego Garcia's central role in supporting U.S. military operations and maintaining regional stability, this move is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Moreover, the British government's willingness to compromise on such a vital strategic asset reflects a profound lack of foresight. By pursuing a deal that appears politically convenient, they have failed to safeguard the long-term security interests of both the UK and the United States. This agreement risks destabilizing the carefully calibrated balance of power in the IndoPacific, potentially creating vulnerabilities in a region already facing significant security threats."
THAT??
Rather than applauding this misguided agreement, we should be deeply concerned about the consequences it will have for U.S. strategic interests and the future of our critical defense partnerships in the region
I find it interesting the highly intelligent commentators think the Chagos deal was anything other than driven by the Americans, particularly when they pretty much say it was.
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
The peston take is bollocks
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
Nah. I think it was pretty much the Americans - though the Biden administration and the various other links we have with the US (military, intelligence, Republican politicians) may not have all been singing from the same hymn-sheet - it's plausible that others would have been flagging concerns through their own channels.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
The whole subject is too depressing to contemplate so we must agree to disagree
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
I don't believe the polls we're getting from 'Techne' and 'MoreInCommon' etc. at present. I strongly suspect Labour have already crashed below the Tories - approval ratings are a good indication, and if I could be bothered I'd create a formula by which one could extrapolate one from the other.
Relative approval ratings are not a set of good indicators when one leader or another is either on their way out or very new to the job. Plus, in this case, the Tories have a legacy on image and perception that will take a time to shift whoever the new leader is (even if they try, which they may not).
It's not that Labour is not struggling in government; it's that the Tories can't simply pretend that the last 14 years - and especially the last 5 - didn't happen.
It doesn’t matter if Labour continue as they are. And this seems likely given the insane incompetence - and sleaze - shown so far. They are venal, naive and stupid. They are already less popular than Sunak’s government!
After 5 years of this voters will loathe them with a passion - as they loathed the Tories - and will punish them however they can. If it means voting Tory so be it. Elsewhere they will vote reform or SNP or LD
For this not to happen you have to believe Labour have a cunning plan and a hidden economic genius. Do you believe that? If you do you’ve got an archipelago I’d like to buy from you but you will have to pay
Don't worry.
In a minute we'll get @Anabobazina coming along to say it doesn't matter if everyone hates Labour and their popularity ratings are minus 10,000% because they'll just have to console themselves with their 170 majority for the next 5 years.
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
Windier in the winter, which will help.
So long as you don't get one of those rather common polar highs which cause very cold, very calm weather. Hence the reason for backup systems.
Natural gas.
We hope.
The UK is uniquely shit as far as natural gas storage goes, but it is the perfect battery. It's clean, energy dense, efficient, dispatchable, and - this is most important - close to zero maintenance when it's not running. That last one is incredibly important: compared to any other form of electricity generation, natural gas turbines are people and maintenance lite. They sit there... you press a button... and just a few seconds later power begins to flow.
Echoes a thing I was thinking about here recently- the difference between "what's the endpoint?" and "what's the next useful thing to do?"
At some point in the not-too-distant future, humanity needs to Stop Burning Stuff to release energy. The cumulative consequences are too bad, the amount of stuff available is too finite and too useful for other things. Sorry, but that's how it is. However, in the meantime, there are plenty of opportunities to substantially reduce the amount of stuff being burnt. Coal is now out of the electricity mix, and this year we have had windy and sunny days where gas has made a pretty minimal contribution.
Wind and solar both have plenty of potential to expand, and work well as incremental developments rather than Big Berthas. And yes, that leaves the question of what to do when they both fail- at the moment, burning methane is the best answer we have. Changing that needs to happen, but that's about the endgame. We can get most of the way to where we need by gradually doing things that we do understand how to do- electrification with renewables and stopping some of the silly shoddy wastes of energy.
(Anecdote: as one of those dreadful WFH types, I'm currently having a garden office built. Yes, I know. It's not having solar panels- it's not something the builder had experience of, and keeping things simple felt desirable. But I probably should have explored it more at this stage, and it's an obvious thing to do as the Next Damnfool Project.)
@Peston There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
I don’t believe much of this. The times reports the Americans are privately angry
Foreign policy appears to be one area where there are persistent divisions within the current administration. Consequently both stories could be true if one view was Blinken's and the other Sullivan's.
My final Chagos comment for the day
I'll believe that when I don't read the next one .
Surprised a couple of utterly none political friends have picked up on the £22bn investment in the north, in a very positive way.
Expect if a boat load of similar capital investment projects can be delivered in the next five years, especially in the poorest of areas, the country and politics could be rather different compared to what people expect today.
Feed a starving population and they'll be grateful, much of the population has been starved of investment for generations.
Which investment is that Kurt? Do you have a link? (Apologies if this is big news I'm somehow missing but I can't see it!)
Seems to be the announcement of 22Bn for carbon capture.
It will buy some nice offices etc.
There might even be money left over to spend on actually capturing carbon. But that’s a frivolity, really.
The £22bn covers CAPEX and OPEX and is only paid out by the government as each tonne of CO2 is actually captured and stored.
So paid out over 15 years, starting when projects commence commercial operation.
Its almost literally spending £22bn on hot air.
Its inevitable that we will need gas as some part of the energy mix past 2030 so therefore miss "net zero".
So we spend £22 bn on something that tries to make it look like we will hit net zero sometime a few years after 2030 (and past the next election).
That £22 bn could be far better spent on something else.
Clearly the government agrees with your assessment that there is a role for gas fired generation post 2030, hence looking to implement a CCGT with CCS.
Let's see if they think that when this government get their heads round what tidal can actually deliver.
I do know that Charles Hendry, who wrote the brilliant independent report on tidal lagoon power stations, has already met with Ed Milband and is having a formal briefing with him later this month.
The biggest problem, apart from that bullshit report that circulates in government about lagoons, is the timescale. Start a project and it will be completed beyond the next election. So you get all the negative stuff from the antis - environmental and other - this cycle....
The advantage of future carbon sequestration credits is that they involve spending no money now. Nor are they directly linked to actually doing anything. So a win, win.
You'd have tidallagoons well under construction by the next election.
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
When is the CCS supposed to come on stream, anyway ? I suspect not this side of the next election.
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels. A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
CCS Is far into the future. So is, it is claimed, the actual spend. Also, the government won't be directly involved in any attempts to build actual plants. So they have the win of announcing spending, the win of not actually spending and the win of not having try to actually build anything.
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I'm afraid Elon is right: all non solar energy is doomed, because the price just keeps falling. In the future, every surface of every building, every bus stop, every car roof is going to be covered is solar cells of one kind or another.
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What proportion of incident solar energy for the month of December would you need to capture to power the UK (including surface transport and space heating)?
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking of solar like it is now: as in, there are some panels on some rooves.
There will be 1,000x as many panels generating electricity in the UK (or Ireland) in 25 years time as now.
They will be so cheap, that almost every surface, horizontal or vertical, will be generating energy.
I can't find the numbers on solar insolation on December just now, but I think the surface area of solar panels required at ~51N would be impractical. Not on cost grounds, but just in terms of space.
Perhaps building three months worth of natural gas storage and shifting the summer surplus to power the winter makes it possible.
Comments
Wonder how they're getting on there economically and socially after 20 years of NATO presence, but no entry route as yet to the EU.
Once flavour of the month for the Western media, now zilch .
And the mutliplier in the local economy of such a civil engineering project is, I understand 2.8 times. Wherever you build these, they are going to feel like they have been awarded the Olympics.
There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same
way at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.
The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was in effect set by Washington.
I am told that President Biden wanted the deal done before the 5 November presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.
For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”
It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.
And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.
As for Liz Truss’s assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos, and that the talks did not start properly till she was PM.
If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the foreign office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.
If they targeted a couple of hundred ballistic missiles at the nuclear reactor, a fair number would get through. Possibly enough on target to destroy it.
It would be a mad thing to do, but not impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
How stupid did Remainers have to be not to be able to stop the really stupid people pushing a stupid Brexit?
Remain - beaten by the side of a bus.
I love the surprise of travel
The Israelis have an obvious defence measure, incidentally. One that the Iranians would really, really not want to trigger.
But maybe not that interesting.
Sone of the most interesting facts for me about Albania are that a) it was basically Italy that prevented their territory from being swallowed up by neighbours like Greece to the South and the Slavic powers to the North, because they thought it could be their client state on the Adriatic, also securing the coast all the way down Slovenia and Croatia, which was then only Italian, and b)..
The first and only Albanian King, styling himself King Zoh, was a military officer who was desperate to ingratiate himself, and be accepted by other, older European monarchies, nit never was. A crowning part of the whole bizarre story is that he found a glamorous American socialite who thought it sounded like fun to be
Queen of Albania, so she became his consort.
I suspect not this side of the next election.
And they are still bollocking on about "blue hydrogen" and "game changing technology".
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/04/labour-to-commit-almost-22bn-to-fund-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects
It's just a far more expensive way of burning fossil fuels.
A job preservation scheme for the oil and chemicals industry, with almost no economic rationale.
Utterly mad, when there is so much demand for productive capital investment elsewhere
28% return on him coming last in 3rd round.
However, Bosnia is on a slightly higher figure, and Kosovo is 88% Muslim (if you aren't going to quibble about their status as a separate nation).
Or at least there is in the right mindset. I crossed four European borders on the same day last month and the most adventurous aspect of it was using the coach toilet in the night.
But as a general rule with these things, the less technology, the better (border posts, not coach toilets)
So a perfect policy, really. No downsides *for the politicians*
Whereas a tidal lagoon will only come online years after an election. It will involve a bitter fight with the Enquiry Industrial Complex (bad stories for the government carefully planted in the press for years), might well involve government spending before the election. And someone else will get to cut the ribbon on the project when it opens.
Perfectly crap policy, really. No upsides *for the politicians*.
I wasn't suggesting they're likely to do it - just an example of what might be possible
That's not to say the deal was the right one from a moral view.
"Benford's Law - How mathematics can detect fraud"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIsDjbhbADY
As MM notes, with the right legislation, they could get it going this parliament; no need for enquiries.
But Labour aren't going to do it, so in that respect, you're right.
Trying to think of my favourite. I never did the Berlin Wall before 1989 - that would have been fun
So I’m going for Chile into Bolivia over the high Andes. The border post is about 14000 feet up and llamas stare at you as you wait - wheezing - to get your passport stamped. And as soon as you cross you come to the famous crimson lake of the mad flamingos
It cost £297m to produce the Lower Thames Crossing's 359,866 page long planning application.
That's more than it cost Norway to build the world's longest road tunnel.
The Department for Transport was meant to decide whether to approve it today. Instead, we got another delay.
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1842208910532374949
As an aside, ballistic missile targeting is where the phrase 'ballpark' comes from in the sense of accuracy.
What happened was this. The TORIES spinelessly and stupidly decided to do something like this - probably egged on by the usual lefties in the foreign office etc
But Boris and then Cameron realised it was pointless and terrible self harm and said no. Because it is easy to say no. Tell the UN to go jump. The court has no power
So it was halted but then Labour won and starmer seized his chance to do something lefty and treacherous with his friend Philippe and he told the Americans he was determined to do it and they got irritated by the insanity but they said “well If you must do it you must do it like this and do it quick and we will then pretend we are happy about it”
That fits all the known facts. That’s what happened
We are now in a spectacular road tunnel hurtling towards the border!
Secondly, it would push another chunk of the Labour votes to the Greens.
Thirdly, Starmer is a long term government lawyer. To him such enquiries are a good thing. Part of The Process.
Speeding up justice and the processes around it needs to be an absolute priority. Investing in that up front will save money and time later on.
There is a story that they deliberately scheduled a test to land the warheads at Kwajalein Atoll for when a Soviet satellite was overhead. The warheads, so the story goes, were aimed to create a very obvious pattern.
And yet. There was a time when it was headline news for months.
But now it isn't. Why?
AAAGH - broke the one image per day rule - sorry!
It's simple maths.
And it makes it almost impossible for any of these other technologies - whether modular nuclear, or tidal or whatever - to make money. Because demand for electricity from the grid for half the year (the half when the sun is shining) is going to be zero.
And as battery technology follows the same price path as solar, then solar will next take out the early evening.
It's share will be forever growing, because panels last (effectively) forever, and more panels get made and installed every day.
What a pathetic shambles of a country, what a great falling off
And this is why thinking about Britain is a bit like phone calls with my demented mother. The reality is distressing. Avert the gaze
https://transportactionnetwork.org.uk/lower-thames-crossing-myths-and-facts/
(Yes, they're activists, but it looks fairly well done)
In England, control over admission into the professions remained with the professional bodies, who ran their own professional training and set the professional examinations. Recent governments have muddied the waters on this a bit - but recent governments in the UK have not really known what they were doing.
In the case of our continental neighbours, admission to professions was in the hands of the government, which meant the church, which also controlled the universities. So it was simple enough for these countries to devolve admission to the universities, who did the technical training, set the exams and marked their own homework.
That is why traditionaly the English university was less interested in the technical details of professional training and managed them less well. And why the polytechnics did much better. It was a great shame that the Conservatives, in their ignorance, abolished them.
Meanwhile, we should not be looking towards universities for the technical and applied aspects of professional training.
(Probably something similar to his attitude to wood vs. metal. Metal might be more modern, but nobody involved in it ever seems to be happy, whereas people like working with wood.)
The next necessary step seems to be energy-consuming industries adapting to the realisation that electricity can be too cheap to meter, as long as they only access it intermittently. Not everything can work on that basis, but it will be interesting to see which industries can make that switch.
Telling the Brits to fuck off out of their colony but getting them to pay through the nose for the US to stay there is right out of the Biden (in his more lucid moments) play book.
Cleverly was a supine Foreign Sec., there's not a chance in hell he'd have started something against a background of US opposition.
Cameron may have delayed it, but I suspect if he did, it was just can-kicking from a wily politician who knew the Tories would lose the election and didn't want to have his name associated with giving chunks of territory away.
It is no surprise that Starmer's lot took it up with glee - they seem utterly determined to impoverish and humiliate the nation, but let's not kid ourselves that the Tories under a weak streak of piss like Sunak would have defied the US over it.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.205526560
I wonder if it will impact the polls. Hard to tell. It’s certainly not going to HELP Labour - they are indeed craven traitors as you say
It’s so telling that one of the few voices of support is Jeremy fucking Corbyn
It is simply beyond belief that the Americans would want to go from a positive of complete control over the whole archipelago - sovereignty belonging to one of of their closest allies - no chance of any foreigners going anywhere near the base - to a position where they have a “lease”. And the rest of the archipelago belongs to Mauritius who can invite the Chinese to fish (as of course they wil) and then the Chinese can build a “fishing base”
And so on
How is the latter situation preferable for America? It is not. So they have tolerated blind self harming stupidity from the UK and made the best of our bad job
The stupidity of Brexit was not it's enactment, but the fact that it's form was determined more by the internal politics of the Conservative party and it's relationship to UKIP than the will of the British people.
Had it not been enacted at all we would on one level have ceased to be a democracy - and in that circumstance political unrest would have been entirely justified (though I'd stop short of violence).
We're still in October, I'm relatively far south in SW Ireland, but even on a sunny day the peak solar insolation is now below 500W/m2. Certainly I'd envisage energy being more expensive in winter, but people will have to pay for alternative sources at far northern latitudes such as the UK.
Bodes pretty well for Africa, though.
https://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/17th-august-1985/28/beastly-beatie-cb-fry-and-the-boys
Edit: another candidate for King (of Albania) was the dinosaur palaeontologist Baron Franz Nopcsa.
Dominic Cummings realised this - he wrote it at the time
It is incredible to me how 2nd voters like Starmer - have been able to get away with what they espoused. If they’d got their way Britain would have tipped into bloodshed
A secondary outcome of an annulled election would have been a collapse in turnout at all further elections. What’s the point in voting if it means nothing?
And the “2nd vote” itself would have been a desperate debacle as millions of Leave voters boycotted it
If be more confident in this story if it came from a different messenger, but I think fear of Trump is an important factor.
Just caught up with the Telegrunt on how Mr Starmer is betraying the blue rinse brigade, and the rump war-poodles of Tunbridge Wells left over from the Empire; TW is now a Lib Dem seat.
(TLDR: It's shit-stirring. But then we all knew that.)
The Telegrunt headline said:
Starmer refuses to rule out signing away Gibraltar and Falklands
The only mention of the Falklands and Gibraltar was by the headline writer, and a "this also happened" reference in the article, puffed up into a story that does not exist other than being farted out of someone's arse. According to the Telegrunt's grunt he was asked, and replied:
The Prime Minister was asked to guarantee that under Labour no other British overseas territories will be signed away.
He told reporters in response: “The single most important thing was ensuring that we had a secure base, the joint US-UK base; hugely important to the US, hugely important to us.
Next?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/04/politics-latest-news-starmer-labour-chagos-security/
Only 63,330 pages - so that's OK then.
I think this is a bit like the people who tried to argue that the number Dom Cummings painted on the side of a bus was arguably slightly out.
In Tierra del Fuego the border guards put us up for the night on their hut as it was so late.
Crossing from Argentina into Bolivia we met a cackling local on a single geared bike with no brakes who then beat us down a ~20km descent using his foot on the front tyre to brake.
Some of the tiny border posts at the end of dirt roads up the spine of the Andes were magical.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/esther-rantzen-keir-starmer-prime-minister-ed-miliband-government-b1185895.html
There will be 1,000x as many panels generating electricity in the UK (or Ireland) in 25 years time as now.
They will be so cheap, that almost every surface, horizontal or vertical, will be generating energy.
It's not that Labour is not struggling in government; it's that the Tories can't simply pretend that the last 14 years - and especially the last 5 - didn't happen.
They are not in the 'cycling mafia' (who I generally support, of course, and reject the label); nor are they one of the fringe groups that serve as useful idiots for the Daily Mail and the Telegrunt, wanting to eg ban bus stop bypasses rather than design them properly.
The first tweeter seems to be some sort of libertarian given to unnuanced analyses.
After 5 years of this voters will loathe them with a passion - as they loathed the Tories - and will punish them however they can. If it means voting Tory so be it. Elsewhere they will vote reform or
SNP or LD
For this not to happen you have to believe Labour have a cunning plan and a hidden economic genius. Do you believe that? If you do you’ve got an archipelago I’d like to buy from you but you will have to pay
In a minute we'll get @Anabobazina coming along to say it doesn't matter if everyone hates Labour and their popularity ratings are minus 10,000% because they'll just have to console themselves with their 170 majority for the next 5 years.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, humanity needs to Stop Burning Stuff to release energy. The cumulative consequences are too bad, the amount of stuff available is too finite and too useful for other things. Sorry, but that's how it is. However, in the meantime, there are plenty of opportunities to substantially reduce the amount of stuff being burnt. Coal is now out of the electricity mix, and this year we have had windy and sunny days where gas has made a pretty minimal contribution.
Wind and solar both have plenty of potential to expand, and work well as incremental developments rather than Big Berthas. And yes, that leaves the question of what to do when they both fail- at the moment, burning methane is the best answer we have. Changing that needs to happen, but that's about the endgame. We can get most of the way to where we need by gradually doing things that we do understand how to do- electrification with renewables and stopping some of the silly shoddy wastes of energy.
(Anecdote: as one of those dreadful WFH types, I'm currently having a garden office built. Yes, I know. It's not having solar panels- it's not something the builder had experience of, and keeping things simple felt desirable. But I probably should have explored it more at this stage, and it's an obvious thing to do as the Next Damnfool Project.)
Boast about it, even.
Maybe one day they will figure it out...
Perhaps building three months worth of natural gas storage and shifting the summer surplus to power the winter makes it possible.