The war is over yesterday, Iran has 48 hours today to open the Straits or their power plants will be obliterated
This insanity is beyond comprehension and will lead to the need for a comprehensive defence review
I would close all our middle east bases and Akroteri and let those countries defend themselves
As Iran has fired a ballistic missile that indicated they could at sometime in the future hit London then we need our own iron dome and suitable equipped forces with drones in the forefront
I would add that for all Starmer's faults labour would be crazy to embark on a leadership fight this spring
Bond rates would go through the roof and 10 year are already near 5.0%
Someday this will settle down but wishing Trump would go away is not something I expect and anyway who would replace him that would start to repair the collosal damage he has caused not least to NATO
The EU / UK / Canada / Australia / Japan should form a new Global Alliance and basically tell the Yanks to get stuffed, get out of the UK and until or unless any stain of the DNA / MAGA is removed from American Politics basically FUCK YOU!
Deals should then be done on a non agression pact basis with China and Middle East Oil rich states and South American States!.
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
If an energy transition can be done by driving down (lowering) costs and sprinting for (attaining) cheapness with no mention of any costs transferred to anyone else then it's hardly a political crisis. It is, like opening Hormuz, dead easy.
But I think, as so often, the account misses out the crucial second stage of the underpants gnomes.
It's the difference between one-off capital spends and ongoing revenue spends. The energy transition costs upfront (installing and connecting things) but pays back in the future. Borrowing in that situation is fine, even desirable.
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
Hope for us all in the latest fashion trend: being smart.
"Being smart is sexy now. Not only the kind of sexy that makes people fancy you, but the kind of sexy that generates discourse. The kind of sexy that accrues value. The flipside of a dumbed-down world is that thought has scarcity value, and what is rare has always been hyped. Knowing stuff is to the 2020s what limited-edition trainers were to the 2000s."
I was musing on this idea of knowledge scarcity in the context of (of course) the rise of AI and how the premium of actually knowing stuff might rise. On the one hand, supporters or AI would say that it will devalue knowledge because anyone can access 'phd-level expertise' in a given field.
I disagree, it's not like knowledge had been particularly scarce the past decade or two, for those who know where to look, the blockage has always been interpretation. With AI's unreliability problem being a 'feature' (and increasingly acknowledged as unsolvable) I think it means that people able to spot it's bullshit might become increasingly valued.
Difficult to articulate on a CV as a skill, but I was thinking that knowledge and field specific expertise might be making a comeback.
I’m honestly feeling really depressed about what this war is doing
It frightens me too. The leaders of the US, Israel, Iran, and Russia are in love with war.
During the Cold War, both sides were careful not to step over the brink. That restraint is now gone.
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that if Trump was leader then we’d have had full on nuclear war.
I don’t agree with a lot of what various Republican and Tory leaders have done in the past however I think they were mostly decent people and followed some kind of ideology. But they were crucially mentally sound, reliable and predictable.
Not Trump though. Apparently his unpredictability is his best asset. Which I can sort of see until it comes to an actual war where the only result seems to be utter chaos and destruction of the world economy.
I’ve got no doubt Labour is going to get punished for the war in some form however unlike in 2008 when I can sort of see the arguments the Tories made (without agreeing), this is entirely of the US’s making. They did not need to do any of this.
The Iranian regime is vile. But it was contained. Now it has to fight to the bitter end.
I'm not convinced it was contained.
I agree, it wasn't. Their funding and arming of proxies throughout the Middle East was a major source of disruption and violence. This war makes far more sense from an Israeli perspective than it does from a US one. Through Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others the Israelis were engaged in low level warfare by proxy with Iran for decades.
But I do agree with @Sean_F that there are few options for the Iranian regime and fighting to win by merely surviving is the most likely.
I would close all our middle east bases and Akroteri and let those countries defend themselves
Could not agree more. What are we doing there? The vast of amount money they consume would be far better spent elsewhere.
I assumed because senior naval officers like Mediterranean postings.
The SBA is very rarely graced by the RN, it's Club Med for the RAF. I only ever went there when I was on my RAF exchange. In an unexpected turn of events the weather in North Wales became bad with Valley blacked out with freezing fog for 11 consecutive days. We had to take a whole Hawk course to Akrotiri so we could graduate them. That's not a particular argument for retaining it because we had other options like Souda and Decimomannu.
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
If an energy transition can be done by driving down (lowering) costs and sprinting for (attaining) cheapness with no mention of any costs transferred to anyone else then it's hardly a political crisis. It is, like opening Hormuz, dead easy.
But I think, as so often, the account misses out the crucial second stage of the underpants gnomes.
It's the difference between one-off capital spends and ongoing revenue spends. The energy transition costs upfront (installing and connecting things) but pays back in the future. Borrowing in that situation is fine, even desirable.
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
I don't think the coalition missed the difference between the long and the short term at all. They were fully aware that they were screwing the future - they just judged short-term political popularity to be much more important, as do all fundamentally vacuous and ultimately self-defeating centrist political projects, from Blairism to Heir-to-Blairism to Starmerism.
The war is over yesterday, Iran has 48 hours today to open the Straits or their power plants will be obliterated
This insanity is beyond comprehension and will lead to the need for a comprehensive defence review
I would close all our middle east bases and Akroteri and let those countries defend themselves
As Iran has fired a ballistic missile that indicated they could at sometime in the future hit London then we need our own iron dome and suitable equipped forces with drones in the forefront
I would add that for all Starmer's faults labour would be crazy to embark on a leadership fight this spring
Bond rates would go through the roof and 10 year are already near 5.0%
Someday this will settle down but wishing Trump would go away is not something I expect and anyway who would replace him that would start to repair the collosal damage he has caused not least to NATO
The EU / UK / Canada / Australia / Japan should form a new Global Alliance and basically tell the Yanks to get stuffed, get out of the UK and until or unless any stain of the DNA / MAGA is removed from American Politics basically FUCK YOU!
I can see the argument for EU+UK (particularly after Rejoin) but for Australia and Japan that would a severe downgrade of defensive alliances. The EU+UK's ability to project power into the Indo-Pacific, while not zero, is very close to it.
There are positives from this war, even if we do see energy prices go gaga.
We could be pretty self-sufficient as a nation. And have made huge strides forward in recent years. Reform fuckheads smashed the Milliband / Cameron / May / Boris / Sunak consensus on renewables. But "lets get rid of wind and solar and use more oil and gas" looks not just really stupid but practically traitorous.
Whilst I wholly agree with the voices saying lets drill more oil / gas, those same voices also lean towards "instead of renewables". It should be "in addition to renewables"
Not sure I have seen many people on here say Iintead of renewables.
Most of the commentary has been instead of importing oil and gas. Something with which I think you agree.
The fuckhead - to use your rather florid term - is Miliband who somehow thinks importing hydrocarbons is more climate friendly than using our own.
I didn't say on here. But out there in politics world Reform fuckheads - and they are fuckheads - have filled people's head with all kinds of guff about renewables.
Milliband is a dick, but he is less wrong than Tice et al who want us to turn our energy security over to Putin.
There is a lot of guff spoken about renewables - the biggest piece of guff about them being that they are cheaper than gas. This is a provable untruth, but it is still repeated with the same enthusiasm as a North Korean ovation for Kim Jong Un.
The current gas price has shot through the roof - AI has it currently at £126 per megawatt hour. That makes it still cheaper than any renewable bar solar on CFD.
Is Gas cheaper to produce? No, renewable energy is consistently cheaper to produce than gas-fired power. Why is Electricity expensive? Because the price is set by expensive gas-fired generation, not the cheaper renewables.
Generation Costs: Renewables are Cheaper Cost of Production: New onshore wind and solar projects are among the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the UK. Once built, the fuel (wind/sun) is free. Gas Expense: Gas-fired power plants have high and volatile running costs because they must purchase fuel, often setting the highest price in the market. Contracted Prices: New offshore wind projects have seen costs drop significantly, often delivering power at prices below new gas plants.
Despite renewable generation being cheaper, gas often makes electricity more expensive due to the UK's market structure: The Marginal Price Mechanism: The UK electricity market operates on a "marginal pricing" system. This means the price of all electricity is set by the last and most expensive source needed to meet demand, which is frequently gas. Gas Sets the Price: According to recent data, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity around 98% of the time. Even if the majority of electricity comes from wind, the final, expensive unit of gas determines the price for everything. Green Levies: A significant portion of electricity bills (roughly 23% in some estimates) includes "green levies" to fund renewable projects, adding to the cost compared to direct gas, which has much lower levies.
Hope these facts help you get the big picture right, Lucky 🙂
They're not facts dear. They're the shite that you get when you ask an LLM questions and don't bother yourself to query the results. It hasn't even given you numbers!
The facts are quite clearly laid out in the Substack I helpfully linked to.
An issue, as I understand it, is partly that Gas in UK is effectively on standby as the fuel of last resort all the time for the renewables. It costs to start and then shut down a gas turbine compared to just running it 24/7.
If only we had followed the French and built 20 nuke stations in the 1970s/80s
Another option was to pace ourselves through our North Sea riches, and invest it into future returns and securities, like Norway did.
UK went mad at it, blowing the windfall on cheaper economic costs, lower taxes, and other things like the “triple ratchet” on pensions.
What is commercially and technically viable to now get out the UK basins, especially the Gas one, is next to nothing. In other words: it’s far Too late to be more like Norway.
If an MP, Party Leader, or anyone on PB wants to say “we should be more like Norway right now” the only correct response is the same as at the end of Their Will Be Blood: their head smashed in with a bowling pin for being so fucking ignorant about how this one has already played out.
There will always be UK gas under the North Sea, like we have coal too. But just like coal industry, the UK North Sea Gas industry is dead because the commercial cost and technical difficulties extracting the last bits prevents us from having one.
Whatever ones thoughts on renewables (I like them but would change where we put them and increase the variety) most of what you have written here is palpable rubbish.
We did not produce our oil and gas faster than Norway. Although we started around the same time, the UK has produced around 35 billion BOE. Norway has produced around 40 billion BOE.
Nor is there next to nothing left, at least as far as oil is concerned.
Current recoverable reserves in the UKCS are estimated at around 15 billion BOE. As I mentioned, in the history of the UKCS we have so far extracted around 35 billion BOE. So yes, with the right incentives and the right long term fiscal environment we could be far closer to meeting our needs. Gas of course is a different matter but even there we could radically reduced our reliance on imports.
We are abandoning oil fields in the UK sector whilst, a mile or two away on the Norwegian side of the boundary, they are massively increasing proven reserves, exploration and production. They are literally producing from adjacent or even connected fields whilst we are shutting the down.
And it is not commercial costs shutting down the North Sea, it is Governmental costs and policy. Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?
Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
If an energy transition can be done by driving down (lowering) costs and sprinting for (attaining) cheapness with no mention of any costs transferred to anyone else then it's hardly a political crisis. It is, like opening Hormuz, dead easy.
But I think, as so often, the account misses out the crucial second stage of the underpants gnomes.
It's the difference between one-off capital spends and ongoing revenue spends. The energy transition costs upfront (installing and connecting things) but pays back in the future. Borrowing in that situation is fine, even desirable.
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
I don't think the coalition missed the difference between the long and the short term at all. They were fully aware that they were screwing the future - they just judged short-term political popularity to be much more important, as do all fundamentally vacuous and ultimately self-defeating centrist political projects, from Blairism to Heir-to-Blairism to Starmerism.
But from a fiscal point of view, Thatcher was no better. All those privatisations, all those hydrocarbons from the North Sea, and what did we have to show for it in the end?
(I'm sure there's something of a poignant cargo cult aspect to the 'drill baby drill' calls on the right. We had North Sea oil in the good times, so keeping it going will bring the good times back.
The difference between that and Ed Sillyband's policy is not huge. Not zero, but not huge. The bigger issue is that most of the oil and gas in the British North Sea that can be extracted at a commercial cost very largely has been. It was always a nice windfall, not a permanent thing.)
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
Of course their solutions are half-baked and politically unsaleable, so they almost certainly won't happen.
Merging NI with income tax is a good if unoriginal idea, but it will either be ruinously expensive or politically disastrous, depending on whether you go for revenue neutrality or compensate those who lose out fully.
Shifting the tax burden away from salaried work towards land wouldn't raise much (what land anyway? Agricultural land? Would raise barely anything. Residential property? Politically impossible) and targeting "economic rent-seeking", i.e. presumably corporate profits, would destroy what little business confidence remains. Unless of course they mean real rent-seeking groups like lawyers or public sector quangocrats with their own pensions by act of Parliament, but somehow I doubt that.
New incentives for entrepreneurship and risk taking are exactly the kind of rent-seeking that the previous point wanted to target, so that's just bizarre.
And targeted deregulation under Labour, especially of the energy sector, always seems to end up with yet more regulation.
Moving levies off bills - where to? Presumably general taxation. So basically a largely meaningless accounting exercise which would achieve essentially nothing except to disguise the cost of Mad Ed's idiocy.
Still, interesting that the case for pro-market reforms is now so overwhelming that even some in this cretinous government acknowledges it, even if they don't really understand markets or the private sector in general.
There are positives from this war, even if we do see energy prices go gaga.
We could be pretty self-sufficient as a nation. And have made huge strides forward in recent years. Reform fuckheads smashed the Milliband / Cameron / May / Boris / Sunak consensus on renewables. But "lets get rid of wind and solar and use more oil and gas" looks not just really stupid but practically traitorous.
Whilst I wholly agree with the voices saying lets drill more oil / gas, those same voices also lean towards "instead of renewables". It should be "in addition to renewables"
Not sure I have seen many people on here say Iintead of renewables.
Most of the commentary has been instead of importing oil and gas. Something with which I think you agree.
The fuckhead - to use your rather florid term - is Miliband who somehow thinks importing hydrocarbons is more climate friendly than using our own.
I didn't say on here. But out there in politics world Reform fuckheads - and they are fuckheads - have filled people's head with all kinds of guff about renewables.
Milliband is a dick, but he is less wrong than Tice et al who want us to turn our energy security over to Putin.
There is a lot of guff spoken about renewables - the biggest piece of guff about them being that they are cheaper than gas. This is a provable untruth, but it is still repeated with the same enthusiasm as a North Korean ovation for Kim Jong Un.
The current gas price has shot through the roof - AI has it currently at £126 per megawatt hour. That makes it still cheaper than any renewable bar solar on CFD.
Is Gas cheaper to produce? No, renewable energy is consistently cheaper to produce than gas-fired power. Why is Electricity expensive? Because the price is set by expensive gas-fired generation, not the cheaper renewables.
Generation Costs: Renewables are Cheaper Cost of Production: New onshore wind and solar projects are among the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the UK. Once built, the fuel (wind/sun) is free. Gas Expense: Gas-fired power plants have high and volatile running costs because they must purchase fuel, often setting the highest price in the market. Contracted Prices: New offshore wind projects have seen costs drop significantly, often delivering power at prices below new gas plants.
Despite renewable generation being cheaper, gas often makes electricity more expensive due to the UK's market structure: The Marginal Price Mechanism: The UK electricity market operates on a "marginal pricing" system. This means the price of all electricity is set by the last and most expensive source needed to meet demand, which is frequently gas. Gas Sets the Price: According to recent data, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity around 98% of the time. Even if the majority of electricity comes from wind, the final, expensive unit of gas determines the price for everything. Green Levies: A significant portion of electricity bills (roughly 23% in some estimates) includes "green levies" to fund renewable projects, adding to the cost compared to direct gas, which has much lower levies.
Hope these facts help you get the big picture right, Lucky 🙂
They're not facts dear. They're the shite that you get when you ask an LLM questions and don't bother yourself to query the results. It hasn't even given you numbers!
The facts are quite clearly laid out in the Substack I helpfully linked to.
An issue, as I understand it, is partly that Gas in UK is effectively on standby as the fuel of last resort all the time for the renewables. It costs to start and then shut down a gas turbine compared to just running it 24/7.
If only we had followed the French and built 20 nuke stations in the 1970s/80s
Another option was to pace ourselves through our North Sea riches, and invest it into future returns and securities, like Norway did.
UK went mad at it, blowing the windfall on cheaper economic costs, lower taxes, and other things like the “triple ratchet” on pensions.
What is commercially and technically viable to now get out the UK basins, especially the Gas one, is next to nothing. In other words: it’s far Too late to be more like Norway.
If an MP, Party Leader, or anyone on PB wants to say “we should be more like Norway right now” the only correct response is the same as at the end of Their Will Be Blood: their head smashed in with a bowling pin for being so fucking ignorant about how this one has already played out.
There will always be UK gas under the North Sea, like we have coal too. But just like coal industry, the UK North Sea Gas industry is dead because the commercial cost and technical difficulties extracting the last bits prevents us from having one.
Whatever ones thoughts on renewables (I like them but would change where we put them and increase the variety) most of what you have written here is palpable rubbish.
We did not produce our oil and gas faster than Norway. Although we started around the same time, the UK has produced around 35 billion BOE. Norway has produced around 40 billion BOE.
Nor is there next to nothing left, at least as far as oil is concerned.
Current recoverable reserves in the UKCS are estimated at around 15 billion BOE. As I mentioned, in the history of the UKCS we have so far extracted around 35 billion BOE. So yes, with the right incentives and the right long term fiscal environment we could be far closer to meeting our needs. Gas of course is a different matter but even there we could radically reduced our reliance on imports.
We are abandoning oil fields in the UK sector whilst, a mile or two away on the Norwegian side of the boundary, they are massively increasing proven reserves, exploration and production. They are literally producing from adjacent or even connected fields whilst we are shutting the down.
And it is not commercial costs shutting down the North Sea, it is Governmental costs and policy. Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?
My first concern is that most new finds in the North Sea are relatively small. To be financially viable they need the existing infrastructure in place to allow the oil or gas to be collected cost effectively. If we allow the existing infrastructure to close down or be withdrawn these smaller fields are effectively lost forever. We are throwing money away and damaging our balance of payments for no good reason. My second concern is one you have already touched upon. Some of these fields are connected and in allowing Norway to drain them from their sector is literally giving oil and gas away so that someone else gets the benefit. Madness.
I have been doing a trial in Aberdeen this last week that is going to last until Wednesday. It is bordering on tragic what has happened to that city. The loss of the skills, technology and revenues that were generated there is a self inflicted disaster for the whole of the UK but for Scotland in particular.
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
If an energy transition can be done by driving down (lowering) costs and sprinting for (attaining) cheapness with no mention of any costs transferred to anyone else then it's hardly a political crisis. It is, like opening Hormuz, dead easy.
But I think, as so often, the account misses out the crucial second stage of the underpants gnomes.
It's the difference between one-off capital spends and ongoing revenue spends. The energy transition costs upfront (installing and connecting things) but pays back in the future. Borrowing in that situation is fine, even desirable.
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
I don't think the coalition missed the difference between the long and the short term at all. They were fully aware that they were screwing the future - they just judged short-term political popularity to be much more important, as do all fundamentally vacuous and ultimately self-defeating centrist political projects, from Blairism to Heir-to-Blairism to Starmerism.
That's not entirely clear, since it had only a single term in government. Whatever long term plans it might have had, and any carried over into Cameron's second term we completely derailed by Brexit.
But you're right that several of their blunders remain entrenched.
There are positives from this war, even if we do see energy prices go gaga.
We could be pretty self-sufficient as a nation. And have made huge strides forward in recent years. Reform fuckheads smashed the Milliband / Cameron / May / Boris / Sunak consensus on renewables. But "lets get rid of wind and solar and use more oil and gas" looks not just really stupid but practically traitorous.
Whilst I wholly agree with the voices saying lets drill more oil / gas, those same voices also lean towards "instead of renewables". It should be "in addition to renewables"
Not sure I have seen many people on here say Iintead of renewables.
Most of the commentary has been instead of importing oil and gas. Something with which I think you agree.
The fuckhead - to use your rather florid term - is Miliband who somehow thinks importing hydrocarbons is more climate friendly than using our own.
I didn't say on here. But out there in politics world Reform fuckheads - and they are fuckheads - have filled people's head with all kinds of guff about renewables.
Milliband is a dick, but he is less wrong than Tice et al who want us to turn our energy security over to Putin.
There is a lot of guff spoken about renewables - the biggest piece of guff about them being that they are cheaper than gas. This is a provable untruth, but it is still repeated with the same enthusiasm as a North Korean ovation for Kim Jong Un.
The current gas price has shot through the roof - AI has it currently at £126 per megawatt hour. That makes it still cheaper than any renewable bar solar on CFD.
Is Gas cheaper to produce? No, renewable energy is consistently cheaper to produce than gas-fired power. Why is Electricity expensive? Because the price is set by expensive gas-fired generation, not the cheaper renewables.
Generation Costs: Renewables are Cheaper Cost of Production: New onshore wind and solar projects are among the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the UK. Once built, the fuel (wind/sun) is free. Gas Expense: Gas-fired power plants have high and volatile running costs because they must purchase fuel, often setting the highest price in the market. Contracted Prices: New offshore wind projects have seen costs drop significantly, often delivering power at prices below new gas plants.
Despite renewable generation being cheaper, gas often makes electricity more expensive due to the UK's market structure: The Marginal Price Mechanism: The UK electricity market operates on a "marginal pricing" system. This means the price of all electricity is set by the last and most expensive source needed to meet demand, which is frequently gas. Gas Sets the Price: According to recent data, gas sets the wholesale price of electricity around 98% of the time. Even if the majority of electricity comes from wind, the final, expensive unit of gas determines the price for everything. Green Levies: A significant portion of electricity bills (roughly 23% in some estimates) includes "green levies" to fund renewable projects, adding to the cost compared to direct gas, which has much lower levies.
Hope these facts help you get the big picture right, Lucky 🙂
They're not facts dear. They're the shite that you get when you ask an LLM questions and don't bother yourself to query the results. It hasn't even given you numbers!
The facts are quite clearly laid out in the Substack I helpfully linked to.
An issue, as I understand it, is partly that Gas in UK is effectively on standby as the fuel of last resort all the time for the renewables. It costs to start and then shut down a gas turbine compared to just running it 24/7.
If only we had followed the French and built 20 nuke stations in the 1970s/80s
Another option was to pace ourselves through our North Sea riches, and invest it into future returns and securities, like Norway did.
UK went mad at it, blowing the windfall on cheaper economic costs, lower taxes, and other things like the “triple ratchet” on pensions.
What is commercially and technically viable to now get out the UK basins, especially the Gas one, is next to nothing. In other words: it’s far Too late to be more like Norway.
If an MP, Party Leader, or anyone on PB wants to say “we should be more like Norway right now” the only correct response is the same as at the end of Their Will Be Blood: their head smashed in with a bowling pin for being so fucking ignorant about how this one has already played out.
There will always be UK gas under the North Sea, like we have coal too. But just like coal industry, the UK North Sea Gas industry is dead because the commercial cost and technical difficulties extracting the last bits prevents us from having one.
Whatever ones thoughts on renewables (I like them but would change where we put them and increase the variety) most of what you have written here is palpable rubbish.
We did not produce our oil and gas faster than Norway. Although we started around the same time, the UK has produced around 35 billion BOE. Norway has produced around 40 billion BOE.
Nor is there next to nothing left, at least as far as oil is concerned.
Current recoverable reserves in the UKCS are estimated at around 15 billion BOE. As I mentioned, in the history of the UKCS we have so far extracted around 35 billion BOE. So yes, with the right incentives and the right long term fiscal environment we could be far closer to meeting our needs. Gas of course is a different matter but even there we could radically reduced our reliance on imports.
We are abandoning oil fields in the UK sector whilst, a mile or two away on the Norwegian side of the boundary, they are massively increasing proven reserves, exploration and production. They are literally producing from adjacent or even connected fields whilst we are shutting the down.
And it is not commercial costs shutting down the North Sea, it is Governmental costs and policy. Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?
My first concern is that most new finds in the North Sea are relatively small. To be financially viable they need the existing infrastructure in place to allow the oil or gas to be collected cost effectively. If we allow the existing infrastructure to close down or be withdrawn these smaller fields are effectively lost forever. We are throwing money away and damaging our balance of payments for no good reason. My second concern is one you have already touched upon. Some of these fields are connected and in allowing Norway to drain them from their sector is literally giving oil and gas away so that someone else gets the benefit. Madness.
I have been doing a trial in Aberdeen this last week that is going to last until Wednesday. It is bordering on tragic what has happened to that city. The loss of the skills, technology and revenues that were generated there is a self inflicted disaster for the whole of the UK but for Scotland in particular.
Wife's family is from that area. Before Oil it was a relatively wealthy city based on fishing and farming. What happened to those industries which were regenerative rather than one offs. But as Richard T points out, it's down to investment decisions. If you are angling (pun) for some form of government intervention, you'll know their track record is not so good.
— Policy proposals being examined include shifting the tax burden away from salaried work toward land and economic rent-seeking, merging employees’ NI with income tax, reforming council tax and creating new incentives for entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It also argues for a targeted deregulation push and an energy policy which refocuses the clean energy transition on driving down costs for households and industry, including moving levies off bills and a sprint for cheap electrification.
But if Labour did any of these I’d be happy.
If an energy transition can be done by driving down (lowering) costs and sprinting for (attaining) cheapness with no mention of any costs transferred to anyone else then it's hardly a political crisis. It is, like opening Hormuz, dead easy.
But I think, as so often, the account misses out the crucial second stage of the underpants gnomes.
It's the difference between one-off capital spends and ongoing revenue spends. The energy transition costs upfront (installing and connecting things) but pays back in the future. Borrowing in that situation is fine, even desirable.
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
I don't think the coalition missed the difference between the long and the short term at all. They were fully aware that they were screwing the future - they just judged short-term political popularity to be much more important, as do all fundamentally vacuous and ultimately self-defeating centrist political projects, from Blairism to Heir-to-Blairism to Starmerism.
That's not entirely clear, since it had only a single term in government. Whatever long term plans it might have had, and any carried over into Cameron's second term we completely derailed by Brexit.
But you're right that several of their blunders remain entrenched.
I thought it a really good government up to around 2013 but then they missed loads of opportunities and caused future problems from then onwards. It felt like they thought they had to keep repeating what was necessary in 2010 forever despite the global economy changing.
No one seems to give a damn anymore but article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with grave breaches, provides, amongst others that, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is a war crime.
Destroying the energy infrastructure of Iran would, in my view, be a war crime, particularly in the context of a country which is already suffering deeply from drought and which is very dependent on the pumping of water.
But I wouldn't want to make the policy seem even more attractive to Trump than it is already.
The war is over yesterday, Iran has 48 hours today to open the Straits or their power plants will be obliterated
This insanity is beyond comprehension and will lead to the need for a comprehensive defence review
I would close all our middle east bases and Akroteri and let those countries defend themselves
As Iran has fired a ballistic missile that indicated they could at sometime in the future hit London then we need our own iron dome and suitable equipped forces with drones in the forefront
I would add that for all Starmer's faults labour would be crazy to embark on a leadership fight this spring
Bond rates would go through the roof and 10 year are already near 5.0%
Someday this will settle down but wishing Trump would go away is not something I expect and anyway who would replace him that would start to repair the collosal damage he has caused not least to NATO
The EU / UK / Canada / Australia / Japan should form a new Global Alliance and basically tell the Yanks to get stuffed, get out of the UK and until or unless any stain of the DNA / MAGA is removed from American Politics basically FUCK YOU!
I can see the argument for EU+UK (particularly after Rejoin) but for Australia and Japan that would a severe downgrade of defensive alliances. The EU+UK's ability to project power into the Indo-Pacific, while not zero, is very close to it.
Aus/Jap/S Korea/Taiwan have no real alternative to relying on the US, for now, certainly.
But in a world where the US continues to pull the rug from under them, what would be a better alternative ?
We're not there yet, but unless there's a sharp 180 under a new Democratic administration, it's not entirely implausible.
EU with a rejoined UK, plus Canada, would be a lot better than nothing at all. And would be a ground that another Trump type would be more likely to have to do business with.
No one seems to give a damn anymore but article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with grave breaches, provides, amongst others that, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is a war crime.
Destroying the energy infrastructure of Iran would, in my view, be a war crime, particularly in the context of a country which is already suffering deeply from drought and which is very dependent on the pumping of water.
But I wouldn't want to make the policy seem even more attractive to Trump than it is already.
Isn't this the Hiroshima argument? Saving American lives. Apart from the ratings boost, the only other calculation appears to be that 1 American (or Israeli) life is worth far more than an Iranian one. And regrettably, he'll have support for that POV.
The war is over yesterday, Iran has 48 hours today to open the Straits or their power plants will be obliterated
This insanity is beyond comprehension and will lead to the need for a comprehensive defence review
I would close all our middle east bases and Akroteri and let those countries defend themselves
As Iran has fired a ballistic missile that indicated they could at sometime in the future hit London then we need our own iron dome and suitable equipped forces with drones in the forefront
I would add that for all Starmer's faults labour would be crazy to embark on a leadership fight this spring
Bond rates would go through the roof and 10 year are already near 5.0%
Someday this will settle down but wishing Trump would go away is not something I expect and anyway who would replace him that would start to repair the collosal damage he has caused not least to NATO
The EU / UK / Canada / Australia / Japan should form a new Global Alliance and basically tell the Yanks to get stuffed, get out of the UK and until or unless any stain of the DNA / MAGA is removed from American Politics basically FUCK YOU!
I can see the argument for EU+UK (particularly after Rejoin) but for Australia and Japan that would a severe downgrade of defensive alliances. The EU+UK's ability to project power into the Indo-Pacific, while not zero, is very close to it.
Aus/Jap/S Korea/Taiwan have no real alternative to relying on the US, for now, certainly.
But in a world where the US continues to pull the rug from under them, what would be a better alternative ?
We're not there yet, but unless there's a sharp 180 under a new Democratic administration, it's not entirely implausible.
EU with a rejoined UK, plus Canada, would be a lot better than nothing at all. And would be a ground that another Trump type would be more likely to have to do business with.
Currently, given its structure and the attitudes of some of its members, the EU is incapable of providing leadership or even involvement except on a country by country basis. So I fail to see how the UK rejoiing would make things any better. Indeed they may well make things worse.
The nation with the strongest interest in reopening the strait, and with the military power to be able to try, is of course China.
If the US were to wash its hands of the disaster it has precipitated, then that leaves a vacuum which they might fill. And the "nations don't have allies, just interests" crowd might just start thinking about making common cause with them.
The Chinese leadership is evil, but rational. You can deal with them. The US leadership is evil, and insane.
I don't think the Chinese or Iranian leadership are comparable to the US leadership in the evil stakes.
Trump is breaching boundaries and taboos he never should have in a Western country, which shocks us to the core, but his regime isn't totalitarian.
We believed that the community of interests based on the Atlantic Charter was an alliance of principles, and that our common values mattered. Trump has rejected those common values in favour of a narrow, purely American self interest. From the European point of view, if you had a choice of two offers, one from the USA and one from China, our community of values would have always chosen America. Now, given the United States refuses to accept that community, the alliance is effectively over. Worse, many of the decisions that Trump has taken have not only been taken with no reference to the NATO alliance, several of them have in fact been directly hostile to the interests of the Europeans. In fact Trump has made comments, such as his wish to destroy the Lloyds of London insurance market that are directly contrary to our own national interests. His insults to our PM are simply not acceptable in any forum, while his despicable hostility to Ukraine and his pro Moscow, pro Orban stance is a direct challenge to the interests of the EU.
The abject incompetence of the attack on Iran gives us a chance to haul in the USA in the short term but if we fail to put some restraint on Trump, then the USA not only ceases to be any kind of ally, but becomes instead a direct strategic competitor. Under such circumstances, we start to make deals that no longer reference a community of interests which no longer holds, but instead we will start to aim to do deals that weaken the American threat. In fact, whatever happens in Iran now, the Europeans have no choice- we can no longer rely on American weapons or political support. We will need to rearm and face the challenge not just of China, but the USA too and that is the irrevocable change that Trump's treachery has caused. When Putin goes, there will be a scramble to get Russia onside- and while that could still be a while off, we already see a conflict of interests- the US wants to keep Russia strong enough to challenge China, even if Putinism is still in the saddle, Europe could only work with Russia after Putin and his system have gone.
Trump will be remembered with horror, but his poisonous legacy will probably remain.
Incidentally, re the Trump-Mandelson-Epstein connection: two of the children accusing Trump of abuse in the files have boys names. The full files are, of course, not yet released, but the accusations against Trump in the materials that have been released show a man of almost limitless depravity, especially since it appears that several of the victims seem to have met mysterious deaths.
Too long and too pompous. Didn't read it.
Sorry.
I bow to your expertise on pomposity but how do you know the piece was pompous if you didn't read it?
Fairly safe assumption.
I've found Cicero's posts informative over years, what, exactly do you think was "pompous" in the comment we sew discussing?
Well, what did you find informative in it?
Although this comment wasn't about the Baltics in particular I find Cicero's comments on what is going on there informative, particularly with Putin posing the threat he is. To simply dismiss it as "pompous" without even bothering to read it is crass.
As you have agreed believe that it's a "fairly safe assumption" that Cicero's comments are pompous, I ask again, what makes you say this? I just don't see it
Well, he's managed to write three paragraphs, into which he has failed to add anything informative, as you acknowledge by omission. That seems to tell its own story.
If you used that criteria you wouldn't even bother coming onto PB in the first place. His posts on the Baltics are often informative. Even in the comment we are discussing I certainly didn't know that 2 of Trump's accusers in the Epstein files have boys names but this, I expect is not information you want so it's not "informative".
Comments
Deals should then be done on a non agression pact basis with China and Middle East Oil rich states and South American States!.
3 Nations would be global pariahs...
USA
Russia
Israel
#FEA
I mean, I'll concede they're a bunch of cocks...
One of the coalition's bigger mistakes was to miss that difference. Hence austerity felt fairly painless for many at the time, but now everything is rubbish. But we spent the preceding decades spending one-off windfalls as If they were recurring revenue, which is a similar thing with different signs on the numbers.
I disagree, it's not like knowledge had been particularly scarce the past decade or two, for those who know where to look, the blockage has always been interpretation. With AI's unreliability problem being a 'feature' (and increasingly acknowledged as unsolvable) I think it means that people able to spot it's bullshit might become increasingly valued.
Difficult to articulate on a CV as a skill, but I was thinking that knowledge and field specific expertise might be making a comeback.
But I do agree with @Sean_F that there are few options for the Iranian regime and fighting to win by merely surviving is the most likely.
Winning biggly !
First Nick Timothy - still staggeringly in post
Now THE CHIEF WHIP!
If Badenoch is utterly gutless to act or so terrifyingly evil as to agree with this bile and to support it, they should go and she should go!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/22/tory-chief-whip-reposts-ai-video-created-by-far-right-figure-jailed-for-hate-crimes
We did not produce our oil and gas faster than Norway. Although we started around the same time, the UK has produced around 35 billion BOE. Norway has produced around 40 billion BOE.
Nor is there next to nothing left, at least as far as oil is concerned.
Current recoverable reserves in the UKCS are estimated at around 15 billion BOE. As I mentioned, in the history of the UKCS we have so far extracted around 35 billion BOE. So yes, with the right incentives and the right long term fiscal environment we could be far closer to meeting our needs. Gas of course is a different matter but even there we could radically reduced our reliance on imports.
We are abandoning oil fields in the UK sector whilst, a mile or two away on the Norwegian side of the boundary, they are massively increasing proven reserves, exploration and production. They are literally producing from adjacent or even connected fields whilst we are shutting the down.
And it is not commercial costs shutting down the North Sea, it is Governmental costs and policy. Why should any company continue to invest in the UKCS when they can get a far better return on their investment a few miles away in the Norwegian sector?
Is our politics so shit this is, somehow, an issue.
If they’re endorsing Nazism or rTommeh that’s one thing. This is a nothing story.
So capitalism actually works. Glad to hear it.
(I'm sure there's something of a poignant cargo cult aspect to the 'drill baby drill' calls on the right. We had North Sea oil in the good times, so keeping it going will bring the good times back.
The difference between that and Ed Sillyband's policy is not huge. Not zero, but not huge. The bigger issue is that most of the oil and gas in the British North Sea that can be extracted at a commercial cost very largely has been. It was always a nice windfall, not a permanent thing.)
Merging NI with income tax is a good if unoriginal idea, but it will either be ruinously expensive or politically disastrous, depending on whether you go for revenue neutrality or compensate those who lose out fully.
Shifting the tax burden away from salaried work towards land wouldn't raise much (what land anyway? Agricultural land? Would raise barely anything. Residential property? Politically impossible) and targeting "economic rent-seeking", i.e. presumably corporate profits, would destroy what little business confidence remains. Unless of course they mean real rent-seeking groups like lawyers or public sector quangocrats with their own pensions by act of Parliament, but somehow I doubt that.
New incentives for entrepreneurship and risk taking are exactly the kind of rent-seeking that the previous point wanted to target, so that's just bizarre.
And targeted deregulation under Labour, especially of the energy sector, always seems to end up with yet more regulation.
Moving levies off bills - where to? Presumably general taxation. So basically a largely meaningless accounting exercise which would achieve essentially nothing except to disguise the cost of Mad Ed's idiocy.
Still, interesting that the case for pro-market reforms is now so overwhelming that even some in this cretinous government acknowledges it, even if they don't really understand markets or the private sector in general.
I have been doing a trial in Aberdeen this last week that is going to last until Wednesday. It is bordering on tragic what has happened to that city. The loss of the skills, technology and revenues that were generated there is a self inflicted disaster for the whole of the UK but for Scotland in particular.
But you're right that several of their blunders remain entrenched.
NEW THREAD
Destroying the energy infrastructure of Iran would, in my view, be a war crime, particularly in the context of a country which is already suffering deeply from drought and which is very dependent on the pumping of water.
But I wouldn't want to make the policy seem even more attractive to Trump than it is already.
But in a world where the US continues to pull the rug from under them, what would be a better alternative ?
We're not there yet, but unless there's a sharp 180 under a new Democratic administration, it's not entirely implausible.
EU with a rejoined UK, plus Canada, would be a lot better than nothing at all. And would be a ground that another Trump type would be more likely to have to do business with.
Our politics is that sh!t.