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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Local By-Election Preview : May 9th 2013
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Local By-Election Preview : May 9th 2013
After all the excitement of last Thursday, which saw the worst Conservative performance in a set of local elections since 1995 (25% national projected vote share), Labour make no change on their 2010 local election performance (29% national projected vote share), the Liberal Democrats see thirty three years of local election advances wiped out (14% national projected vote share, only 1% higher…
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Yes, that's true! But then again, it is Barking (only kidding)!
"And if it's cheaper for us to import electricity than make our own we should. Otherwise we are disadvantaging businesses that are electricity users.
Free trade is free trade.
My basic contention is that we are not about to suffer brownouts and rationing. Trust me, there are few subjects I am an expert on, but I've financed quite a few power stations, and this is something I'm pretty comfortable talking about with a degree of knowledge."
No, there are other reasons to generate our own electricity and not rely on imports. The phrase 'energy security' has several meanings, one of which is security of supply. Our reliance on Middle East oil has had exacerbated, if not caused, many problems over the years. A reliance on French (or Irish, or German) electricity would be just as bad. It would leave us at a strategic disadvantage; what could we do if, say, they decided to double the price overnight? That may not happen, but the mere threat of even minor increases would put us at a disadvantage in any negotiations.
We need the capability to create and generate as much power as we can ourselves within the UK. Having our own power stations, and a diversified generation system (i.e. coal/oil/gas/nuclear/wind/tidal) means we are not just reliant on one country for the supplies.
As for the financing; these plants are only marginally economic. Changes to tariffs, and addition of green tariffs, have made at least one gas-fired plants uneconomic, and led to closure. Incidentally, this was a plant I worked on (in a very small way) when it was under construction in the early 1990s. People are stripping it out as I type.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derwent_Power_Station
The power companies need to know that they will get a return on their investment. The current trend of following green idiocy (as exemplified by Ed Miliband amongst others) does not give them that, and stops investment dead.
The companies need to know that another Large Combustion Plant Directive is not going to land on their laps.
And another article about a possible crunch: http://www.energyglobal.com/news/coal/articles/The_UK_faces_capacity_crunch_as_coal_fired_power_plants_close_132.aspx
You may be an expert, but I won't trust your word over OFGEM's.
Didcot B is not a 1.3gw behemoth. It consists of two plants, each of which has two turbines.
Irrespective, I'm bored of arguing with people who don't actually know anything about electrical generation.
If you are all so confident of the looming electricity shortage predicted by UKIP, then take me up on one of my bets:
- brownouts and rationing in 2015 (so far, no takers)
- electricity prices above current levels in 2016 (in real terms, one taker Socrates)
Also, as French and German power companies are commercial entities, they will sell power at whatever price makes them a profit.
Your argument is akin to saying "we should grow all our own food just in case in foreigners decide to double the prices."
OFGEM give brownouts and cut-offs in that period a 1 in 12 chance (*), before the latest closure and opening announcements.
I'd say 1 in 12 is far too high for a bet, but far too low for the security of the country. You won't get any takers without odds much higher than evens.
Additionally, I'm quoting from OFGEM and other official documents. You are just appealing to your own authority and knowledge. You might be right; I think you're being far too over-optimistic.
But at the end of the day, I hope you're right. If my fears are realised there're gong to be lots of problems. Which is why we should be doing everything feasible to avoid them.
(*) Executive summary of OFGEM document I linked too earlier.
Or Miliband.
We are not under any imminent threat of invasion, yet we still maintain a military, as does virtually every other country on Earth. We do this *just in case* any number of possible event occur. The same is true of our energy security.
You also trivialise the cost of creating the interconnectors that couldprovide that much power. ISTR the current capacity is 2GW - a drop in the ocean.
I have never heard anyone seriously suggest that we rely on the continent for our electricity generation!
Suppose the French have a Fukushima situation on their hands. Will they turn the electricity off for London, or Paris?
Security of supply matters.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The YouGov polling, commissioned by Progress, suggests the party is still seen as "nice" but incapable of taking tough decisions. Miliband's personal ratings have hardly improved over the past year.
In an article for Progress, the New Labour pressure group, the YouGov president, Peter Kellner, describes the polling as "profoundly troubling" for Labour, saying that despite the unpopularity of the government, Labour has uncomfortably small leads and has been unable to generate wide public enthusiasm.
He writes: "The central fact is that no successful opposition in the past 50 years has gone on to regain power with such a weak image and without achieving much bigger voting-intention leads at some point in the parliament."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/09/labour-election-victory-2015-distant-prospect?mobile-redirect=false
Won't happen without dramatic cost implications. They are life-expiring the plant as we type, and you cannot get replacement kit off the shelf. (As I have said before, one plant had several turbines go in a rather interesting way. They had to fly in a spare from an identical plant in the US. It was flown in the back of an Antonov to Prestwick, and then taken south by road. They were very fortunate there was a spare available as the lead time was many months. And that plant was only a decade old - the kit is no longer made for older plants).
As for new power plants; they take time. Any large ones that get planning this year will sadly not be in operation before 2015.
I'd also be interested in OFGEM's 2008 estimates; ISTR (although could be wrong) that they've talked about the 2015 timeframe since 2002.
And the problem with the market is that governments do not leave alone. The Large Combustion Plant Directive fortunately only effected old plants that were nearing their life expiration. However, operators are concerned that the EU or government will throw another spanner in the works for other plants.
The LCPD has worried them immensely. Some idiot listening to the green lobby (or a luvvie actor) could wipe out their profits in the swipe of a pen. They've made their money on old plants. The uncertainty is on some similar idiocy to LCPD happening on new plants.
Just saying.
The polling also shows that by a margin of 50-35 points, voters regard Labour as "nice" – but by a larger, 61-24, margin, also as "dim". Most people consider the Tories both "mean" and "dim"; but more people regard the Tories as "smart" than say the same about Labour.
(only kidding! I come in peace!)
Nevertheless, Didcot B consists of two separate generation plants, each with two turbines. So, short of a major terrorist incident, you'd only lose around a quarter of capacity. And even if we did have a major terrorist incident, we'd still (at today's capacity utilisation rates) have 8,7GW of spare capacity.
Why is no-one keen to take me up on my bet?
(BTW, if you want to to have enough capacity to meet every eventuality, you will need to pay more for your electricity.)
I am surprised wind is so high at the moment - I thought it was usually around the 1-1.5GW mark.
Mr. Eagles, isn't that just the standard party stereotype though>?
Labour = nice but dim
Conservatives = competent but horrid
F1: remember, kids, P1 is on BBC2 at 9am.
Oh, you mean outside!
The Uk would never have voted for PM Brown - they wontt vote for his son either.
He adds: "No opposition could be happy with the fact that, when the economy is flatlining, just one person in three thinks it [the Labour party] would take the right decisions to secure greater prosperity.
You maybe shocked and surprised that Dan Hodges tweeted that poll to OGH.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Ed is crap : OFFICIAL !
Superb combo.
http://blogs.channel4.com/michael-crick-on-politics/healey-case-for-leaving-europe-stronger-than-staying/2494
@tim your political hero wants out = lol
I got worried when he tweeted my recent Ed is Crap (Blairites edition) thread approvingly.
Healy “I wouldn’t object strongly to leaving the EU. The advantages of being members of the union are not obvious. The disadvantages are very obvious. I can see the case for leaving – the case for leaving is stronger than for staying in.”
The true voice of Old Labour has spoken , let the New Labour impostors repent or suffer the wrath of judgement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/cartoon/
If they didn't just ignore it: sadly this generation of politicians have little respect of the Constitution.
That noise you can hear is Transatlantic laughter
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22473862
@afneil: Poll coming out showing young Scots 3 to 1 against independence. Way above average. Reducing voting could have been a mistake for Nats.
But the people will.
Corrected it for you ;-)
There is no evidence at all the Osborne has abandoned his deficit elimination and debt ratio reduction targets. The deficit reduction target remains within Osborne's primary fiscal mandate and the supplementary target of reducing Public Sector Net Debt to GDP ratio is only delayed on a forecast which makes no allowance for sales of bank shares (inter alia).
The phasing of deficit reduction was back loaded in the OBR's March EFO forecast, with the underlying deficit estimated to remain stable at around £120bn for two years. However this OBR forecast was outdated even on the day it was issued.
ONS Public Finance figures show that the underlying deficit fell at its most rapid level last fiscal year in the final quarter (2013 Q1). It subsequently became known that growth over this quarter was 0.3%, an annual rate of 1.2%.
With the OBR forecasting 0.6% for the whole of 2013, half the current and accelerating rate of growth, then it is clear that the OBR will need to make substantial revisions to both their growth and deficit reduction forecasts when they next report in June.
The other important point to make is that the "underlying deficit" is an artificial construct which does not reflect true accrued or cash net borrowing. Due to special interventions (Post Office pension assets etc etc) the actual net amount borrowed last fiscal year was £86 bn not £120 bn. This means real borrowing costs (interest paid on gilts issued) will be far less than the headline deficit of £120 bn implies.
Set against the above is that the final quarter of a fiscal year can deliver unreliable ongoing figures for receipts, expenses and borrowing due to movements of transactions across the year end boundary. It is clear that this happened both from the 'miraculous' close undershoot of all key targets and the comments made by the OBR on March's public finances bulletin.
The problem for sceptics though is that all the indications are that the government finances were better rather than worse than stated in March. Still we need to wait for follow up bulletins before taking this as fact.
In summary, the next OBR EFO is likely to forecast substantial reductions in the 'underlying deficit' over 2013-15 in place of the flat-lining predicted in March, Similarly they will substantially uprate short term growth forecasts in light of current known growth rates.
All this will show that the government under Osborne as Chancellor has not "ignored its debt reduction target" as stated by Warner. As his whole article depends on this assumption it is probably best to disregard it in its entirety.
The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. You would have thought that the Tories might have learnt something from the 1990s.
And yet they go on.
"Illegitimi non carborundum"
politicshomeuk Tory Peter Luff tells World Tonight it's "worrying" that pro-EU Tories are reluctant to speak. “It is the love that dare not speak its name”
Blue on blue ;-)
Seems fairly sensible. People don't like hearing the EU praised, especially when we and the EU are doing so poorly, but they appear to be doing even worse. Even the pro-arguments have to carefully explain away the bad things about membership as worth it, whereas UKIP keeps it simple. They could speak up, but they'd be washed away in the current climate.
Consider that since Cammie won the leadership tory MPs were told to keep quiet about Europe and let him get on with detox and modernisation. Then the election campaign made that silence even more imperative and for the most part they complied since power was tantalisingly close. There were dangerous rumblings in the gap between the election and formation of the coalition but once the coalition had been cemented and the agreement signed tory MPs were too busy contemplating power to do much grumbling about Europe.
Then the Eurocrisis happened. The was the moment most Eurosceptics had been waiting on for decades and they were determined to bang on about it and win more converts. Cammie let them blow off a bit and they had their rebellion but any excessive noises and disunity were still usually a bodyblow for an ambitious MP. So the posturing began. The flounce to the speech, anything to shut them up. They do not want to shut up though. They want to bang on about Europe and posture on it far more than Cammie will ever be comfortable with because they look at Farage and UKIP with fear and envy. What if the UKIP vote doesn't disappear and hits them in the marginals? If only they could bang on about Europe as freely and as strongly? If only that UKIP vote could be transferred en mass to the tories?
Sooner or later this gets to IN or OUT and the tory party will have to put it's cards on the table and decide which it wants to be.
How vicious are the politics in a one party council I wonder? Pretty rough I'd bet, without the ease of standard party labels to divide people.
Childcare row getting nasty. Whitehall source: ‘Clegg signed this policy off [but] as tuition fees showed, you just can’t trust the Libs'
And yet they go on.
"Illegitimi non carborundum"
Oh dear, Bobajob, you are paying far too much attention to tim.
If you want to learn about the use of house price inflation to create artificial economic booms you need do no more than consult the following table: Gordon is your master.
Longbridge deserves comment. It was the one ward in B & D that often elected Conservative councillors, because it was middle class. 10 years ago, we won a thumping majority in a by-election. Unfortunately, our candidate was a prize chump. He thought he could emigrate to the Phillipines to farm chickens, while returning once every few months, so he could claim his allowance. Unsurprisingly, we did badly in 2006. Since then, White flight has made this a safe Labour seat. UKIP might well win seats in Dagenham, but Barking is now as solid as Newham for Labour.
Alexandra is safe Labour.
With global warming throwing a spanner into the food growing works at the same time as our relative wealth is diminished, the future is not looking quite so good.
I'm pretty sure the Irish produce a food surplus about the same size as our food deficit. I guess we can hope that they've forgiven us for the Famine, eh?
... on Millwall.
Or we could take it by force? Merely hypothesising potential options in a desperate, nay, apocalyptic scenario of course.