Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
So is the number of ships sunk by Iran still at precisely zero ?
If so then that's less than the number of Russian ships sunk by Ukraine in the Mediterranean this month.
Hormuz is not the equivalent of Malta 1942, its simply a matter of Trump or the Gulf Arabs paying the extra risk money to the shipping companies.
Ships have been attacked and oil refineries have been as well. If it was as one sided as you portray, oil would be $50 a barrel and we wouldn't be taking about it.
Clearly, there's a degree of risk aversion going on and I don't know why the US hasn't offered to escort tankers through Hormuz or, as you say, agreed to cover the extra insurance.
Anyone with a cynical mind would think they benefit from higher oil prices as well - indeed, apart from the poor consumers, who doesn't?
Attacked is one thing.
Destroyed is another.
There was no shortage of attacks on shipping in the Gulf by both Iran and Iraq in the 1980s yet the ships continued to sail:
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
It's almost as if Iran, while clearly militarily weaker than the US and Israel, did in fact hold some of the cards.
Perhaps this can be a lesson for Trump on the limitations of US power.
Iran, being clearly militarily weaker than the US and Israel, is likely to go asymmetric. Wait for it ......
It's difficult for us on the soft left not to listen to what Marandi has to say and disagree with any of it. That is the American problem. This is becoming a culture war and many of us-probably a majority -do not sign up to Trump's version of the world.
I strongly recomend listening to his interview posted by me at 8.45 this morning
There problem there is the idea that Trump has a vision.
Trump just wants his name to be in the news when he switches it on in the morning
That's the point. It is a collision of cultures. One is of power and vanity and the other believes in a code that we should all live by.
The problem is a different one. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi, Kim, Khameini, and a host of others believe that codes to live by, rules, laws, are for suckers and losers. The only rule that matters is the rule of force. You’re either giving a beating, or taking one.
And that is where those who talk of international law/human rights can sound as if they are living in an ivory tower. It’s like quoting Proust to a shark. They are not even listening.
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.
Israel has never before been as relatively strong compared to the other MENA countries as it is now.
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi, the Gulf states now accept Israel's existence.
Syria, Iraq and Iran are militarily crushed.
I think Israel sees the Gulf states, UAE etc, as being rising powers in the region, as well as Saudi Arabia. The crisis in the Straits of Hormuz is currently a restraint on their growth, which suits Israel. The US is supporting Israel as normal.
I would have to disagree that Iran is militarily crushed. For now it remains the dominant military power in the Gulf, just as Russia is bigger than Ukraine. However, oil prices are pushing upwards. There seems to be no apparent end to the crisis, which could drag on for years like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
This conflict has been started essentially without reference to America's allies, whether regional or NATO- indeed Trump has continued his stream of insults against NATO allies. Even as it became clear that allied resources would be required, Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut. Neither has the administration offered any incentives to their allies: even after the US Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariff regime, he has sought to continue or even expand punitive tariffs against most other countries, making little difference between an ostensible competitor, like China or ostensible allies, like Britain. So, in both practical economics and propaganda, the strains in the Western alliance are getting far worse.
Trump has broken most rules, and even laws, with impunity. Whether in his personal corruption, which has been untrammeled and without equal in American history, in the illegal use of force against American citizens, which is a betrayal of his oath of office, or the issuing of rules by decree, regardless of the rights of the US Congress, Trump has got used to his political opponents failing to mount successful challenges against him. However, in his vainglorious and reckless attack on Iran, Trump is meeting an enemy that has nothing to lose- that in fact matches his own reckless disregard for law.
Trump has stamped on a hornets nest, and must now settle down for an extremely damaging and potentially long term war, where he lacks the military resources to defeat and occupy Iran and has also alienated his former allies to the point of rupture.
As gifted migrants no longer offer their skills to the USA. As the reputation of that country plummets every time the crass vulgar thug in the Oval office presumes to lecture other nations. As former allies no longer trust America enough to buy weapons from the United States (but are buying weapons that could be used against the United States). As American launches wars of choice in a reckless, ill prepared and feckless manner. All of this adds up to a United States that will see its power diminish and decline far faster than could have remotely seemed possible even one year ago.
I have little doubt the Americans in due course will issue a "Damnatio memoriae" for Trump and the crew of drunks, creeps and spooks that came in on his coat tails, not to mention his criminally corrupt family. Perhaps they may even place the survivors on trial. However unless that happens, unless the Americans recognize the scale of the crimes and incompetence of Donald Trump and seek redress, then the country will dwindle from hegemon to also ran.
History is littered with Empires that fell because of an ill judged choice of war. Trump has risked the same fate befalling the United States.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
There would be a far better scenario, but given the choice between spending huge amounts of cash on building a large nuclear fleet and drilling the North Sea dry, I think it's a very unlikely one.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
Which is like saying that littering is fine because fly tipping exists.
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
I guess they would be more relaxed about sourcing the uranium from Russia or Kazakhstan...
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
We'd have to scrap lots of other disastrous rules and regulations too, like the minimum wage and our catastrophic planning system, for industry here to have a serious chance. Also make work pay again by cutting taxes and welfare benefits.
But then perhaps industrial Britain, or indeed the rest of the economy, might stand a bit of a chance again.
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
It's definitely suboptimal for incumbents, but is Trump burning it all down soooo successfully really going to fuel burn it all down sentiment in Europe? The real answer is probably still "perhaps", but I suspect there is greater subtlety here than TSE's header achieves.
Who ends up going hard and who ends up Going Home out of this is not entirely obvious to me.
So is the number of ships sunk by Iran still at precisely zero ?
If so then that's less than the number of Russian ships sunk by Ukraine in the Mediterranean this month.
Hormuz is not the equivalent of Malta 1942, its simply a matter of Trump or the Gulf Arabs paying the extra risk money to the shipping companies.
Three ships have been struck, but not sunk: Skylight, Hercules Star and the MKD Vyom.
The reason they haven’t sunk is probably to do with the fact that modern ships are vast and the better ones have a zillion compartments. Modern design/ops is to have every compartment you can, unmanned, closed off and with a monitoring camera.
Fun fact - even during the age of armour plate on ships, much of the protection was done by having lots of compartments.
Tankers have either vast reserve buoyancy (unloaded) or a cargo that actually absorbs shock and supports the ship after a breach. It’s quite hard to get even light crude to burn.
In the Tanker War in the 80s, next to none were sunk, but many damaged.
The loss of trade isn’t from sinkings. It’s from damage stopping ships. And insurance vanishing.
This conflict has been started essentially without reference to America's allies, whether regional or NATO- indeed Trump has continued his stream of insults against NATO allies. Even as it became clear that allied resources would be required, Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut. Neither has the administration offered any incentives to their allies: even after the US Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariff regime, he has sought to continue or even expand punitive tariffs against most other countries, making little difference between an ostensible competitor, like China or ostensible allies, like Britain. So, in both practical economics and propaganda, the strains in the Western alliance are getting far worse.
Trump has broken most rules, and even laws, with impunity. Whether in his personal corruption, which has been untrammeled and without equal in American history, in the illegal use of force against American citizens, which is a betrayal of his oath of office, or the issuing of rules by decree, regardless of the rights of the US Congress, Trump has got used to his political opponents failing to mount successful challenges against him. However, in his vainglorious and reckless attack on Iran, Trump is meeting an enemy that has nothing to lose- that in fact matches his own reckless disregard for law.
Trump has stamped on a hornets nest, and must now settle down for an extremely damaging and potentially long term war, where he lacks the military resources to defeat and occupy Iran and has also alienated his former allies to the point of rupture.
As gifted migrants no longer offer their skills to the USA. As the reputation of that country plummets every time the crass vulgar thug in the Oval office presumes to lecture other nations. As former allies no longer trust America enough to buy weapons from the United States (but are buying weapons that could be used against the United States). As American launches wars of choice in a reckless, ill prepared and feckless manner. All of this adds up to a United States that will see its power diminish and decline far faster than could have remotely seemed possible even one year ago.
I have little doubt the Americans in due course will issue a "Damnatio memoriae" for Trump and the crew of drunks, creeps and spooks that came in on his coat tails, not to mention his criminally corrupt family. Perhaps they may even place the survivors on trial. However unless that happens, unless the Americans recognize the scale of the crimes and incompetence of Donald Trump and seek redress, then the country will dwindle from hegemon to also ran.
History is littered with Empires that fell because of an ill judged choice of war. Trump has risked the same fate befalling the United States.
Lets hope he takes out his defeat on Netanyahu. A firing squad will do
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
So is the number of ships sunk by Iran still at precisely zero ?
If so then that's less than the number of Russian ships sunk by Ukraine in the Mediterranean this month.
Hormuz is not the equivalent of Malta 1942, its simply a matter of Trump or the Gulf Arabs paying the extra risk money to the shipping companies.
Ships have been attacked and oil refineries have been as well. If it was as one sided as you portray, oil would be $50 a barrel and we wouldn't be taking about it.
Clearly, there's a degree of risk aversion going on and I don't know why the US hasn't offered to escort tankers through Hormuz or, as you say, agreed to cover the extra insurance.
Anyone with a cynical mind would think they benefit from higher oil prices as well - indeed, apart from the poor consumers, who doesn't?
They're shit scared one of their ships gets hit with resultant casualties thus denting the overwhelming invincibility myth that their deafeningly trying to convince everyone of.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
But some people, like Eabhal, want less consumption rather than cheap abundant energy.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
But some people, like Eabhal, want less consumption rather than cheap abundant energy.
You making stuff up about me again?
I think one of the most exciting things about renewables is we are going to have so much excess (free) electricity on windy, sunny days that a whole economy will build up around consuming as much as that as possible.
Something like 40% of Scottish wind generation was lost last year. If the accursed Miliband had faced down the SE of England we'd have nodal pricing that would have enabled such an economy.
But there's nothing wrong with reducing consumption either, particularly when it's so expensive. There is another name for that: productivity growth. It's why my little 1 litre turbo can zip me up the A9 at a reasonable cost.
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
I guess they would be more relaxed about sourcing the uranium from Russia or Kazakhstan...
You could stockpile a decade or two of reactor fuel, quite easily.
It’s not radioactive, really. I wouldn’t recommend eating it. Just a bunch of metal
It wouldn’t even take up much space. I’d be a little bit careful of how you pile (ha!) it up, though. Bird cages and all that.
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
There would be a far better scenario, but given the choice between spending huge amounts of cash on building a large nuclear fleet and drilling the North Sea dry, I think it's a very unlikely one.
Meanwhile, a Tesla subsidiary has received an OFCOM licence to be an electricity vendor.
We can have a pretty good idea of what their business model is going to be, they’ll be buying wholesale at night and selling at the peaks in the early morning and early evening.
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
Which is like saying that littering is fine because fly tipping exists.
No its not.
People like you dont give a rats arse about the people you are throwing on the scrap heap.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.
Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.
I guess they would be more relaxed about sourcing the uranium from Russia or Kazakhstan...
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.
Israel has never before been as relatively strong compared to the other MENA countries as it is now.
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi, the Gulf states now accept Israel's existence.
Syria, Iraq and Iran are militarily crushed.
I think Israel sees the Gulf states, UAE etc, as being rising powers in the region, as well as Saudi Arabia. The crisis in the Straits of Hormuz is currently a restraint on their growth, which suits Israel. The US is supporting Israel as normal.
I would have to disagree that Iran is militarily crushed. For now it remains the dominant military power in the Gulf, just as Russia is bigger than Ukraine. However, oil prices are pushing upwards. There seems to be no apparent end to the crisis, which could drag on for years like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Iran is militarily crushed compared to Israel.
Israel will not complain if Iran continues to be a threat to its Arab neighbours.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And yet if everyone said that, nothing would change and our children and grandchildren will inherit a completely broken planet.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And if everyone thinks that way, nothing gets done. But we have had success working within international agreements to get multiple countries to cut their CO2 outputs.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And yet if everyone said that, nothing would change and our children and grandchildren will inherit a completely broken planet.
Twaddle
There are loads of things we can do. I have kids and gandkids and think about their futures. What we're doing now is placing them in danger
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
But some people, like Eabhal, want less consumption rather than cheap abundant energy.
You making stuff up about me again?
I think one of the most exciting things about renewables is we are going to have so much excess (free) electricity on windy, sunny days that a whole economy will build up around consuming as much as that as possible.
Something like 40% of Scottish wind generation was lost last year. If the accursed Miliband had faced down the SE of England we'd have nodal pricing that would have enabled such an economy.
But there's nothing wrong with reducing consumption either, particularly when it's so expensive. There is another name for that: productivity growth. It's why my little 1 litre turbo can zip me up the A9 at a reasonable cost.
You said in the prior thread we need to consume less.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
That will need some intervention at regulatory level on bikes, e-scooters etc. I'm not sure on the EVs, which I assume already ahve a lot of things in type approval regulations.
I mentioned some time ago a case of a disabled lady who was told she could not keep her E-Brompton in her council flat (because of "batteries" and insurers), even though an electric wheelchair or a mobility scooter or a cordless power tool is OK.
That's slopey-shooulders on consistent regulation, and insurance companies making broad assumptions. The BSI standards already exist and have for some time, and if we can apply BSI standards to microwaves and kettles and power tools I really do not see the difficulty.
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
Filming air defence locations. More than a subtle difference.
Don’t film military activity in any country, ever. Including the UK.
That particular “campaign group” has about as much credibility as a Guardian article on someone who was deported.
So you've gone native?
When the bombing of the girls school was first reported a poster on here said it was an Iranian bomb that had gone wrong and linked to a site by a well known' Israeli sympathetic' misinformer. Pretty disgraceful really. Maybe he should apologise?
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And if everyone thinks that way, nothing gets done. But we have had success working within international agreements to get multiple countries to cut their CO2 outputs.
Last time I bothered looking the EU was about to move a lot of its commitments on vehicles or else it wont have a car industry.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
Dozens? Google map shows 3 on Union St and Sauchiehall St is nowhere near there (and is any case not throbbing with vape shops).
I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
There's quite a lot everywhere. They can't make much money given that I expect most people buy online. They have joined the Turkish barbers, nail bars and convenience stores that have sprung up.
We now have four convenience shops in about a mile of high street, although admittedly one is in a parade where it has become more residential. One is opposite a Sainsburys supermarket that is only open an hour less on weekdays.
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.
They want the Iranian regime gone. Not happened.
They want to be able to build the Trump resort and casino in Gaza without any threat of drone attacks. Not happened.
They want the US to continue to unconditionally support anything and everything they do. Not sure that happened.
Morning all!
I suspect that, given the mess that they will inherit, the next US President, assuming it's NOT a MAGA Republican, will have a considerably less adulatory view of Israel. Israel, or perhaps it's 'just' Bibi appears to have conned the US into an unwinnable war. Unwinnable anyway unless the US uses ground troops in Iran.
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
Filming air defence locations. More than a subtle difference.
Don’t film military activity in any country, ever. Including the UK.
That particular “campaign group” has about as much credibility as a Guardian article on someone who was deported.
So you've gone native?
When the bombing of the girls school was first reported a poster on here said it was an Iranian bomb that had gone wrong and linked to a site by a well known' Israeli sympathetic' misinformer. Pretty disgraceful really. Maybe he should apologise?
@Sandpit Do you limit what you post here for the reasons of tight Government monitoring of social media etc in the UAE?
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
🏇🏻 Day 3 - of pigging out with junk food and cocktails on next to no sleep - and still the Fez keeps coming.
No wins yesterday, so only 2 wins from 14 🫣 And now the weathers going to change to wet. But not much rain till about 1pm, it will likely stay good to soft all afternoon, so don’t let rain fool you it now favours mud larks. those who built reputation this year on softer ground, I don’t think it softens enough, such as to give challengers to Doo much hope for example…
Thursday
13:20 - Charme De Faust 14:00 - Slade Steel 14:40 - Wodhooh NAP - Lossie was this weeks Queen, now hail Princess Doo 15:20 - Teahupoo NAP - Tay’s getting it back. 16:00 - Fact To File 16:40 - Yeah Man 17:20 - Herakles Westwood
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And yet if everyone said that, nothing would change and our children and grandchildren will inherit a completely broken planet.
Twaddle
There are loads of things we can do. I have kids and gandkids and think about their futures. What we're doing now is placing them in danger
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
I have had interest from Nigelb, kyf_100 (who can already see it) and I think @Andy_JS and @Kinabalu want to be pre-readers (can you confirm this please?)
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
There are significant and known dangers from counterfeit chargers. It would not surprise to discover that the cause of the fire was (a) dodgy fake chargers (b) overloaded, daisy chained plug sockets or (c) both of the above.
"Italian base in Kurdish region of Iraq attacked, says Italian foreign minister An Italian military base in the Kurdish region of Iraq was attacked, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said in a post on X. Tajani said he strongly condemned the attack in Erbil, but didn’t say if authorities knew who was responsible for it. He said all soldiers on the base were safe."
Well, that's a surprise. I had no idea that Italy had a base in Iraq, never mind the Kurdish region. What's that about?
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The general available ISO container battery systems are about 3MWh each, heading towards 4.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
There are significant and known dangers from counterfeit chargers. It would not surprise to discover that the cause of the fire was (a) dodgy fake chargers (b) overloaded, daisy chained plug sockets or (c) both of the above.
You would expect trading standards and/or fire brigades to take an interest and undertake a lot of inspections
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
I agree on North Sea oil. But the idea our electricity generation should come from gas or coal in the future, or our transport rely on oil, looks even more stupid this week than it has done previously.
Thats just totally disconnected from the economy. The economy pays bills, makes people richer makes a better society. Low cost energy is what we need and nothing our governments have done for the last 30 years have helped. Net Zero and other plans do nothing for the country. Our approach has simply been to tax the ass off energy and push out subsidies to pet projects. Despite our claims we have done very little to reduce our carbon footprint. Clsoing down our manufacturing sector simply shifts he pollution overseas it doesnt stop it.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
But some people, like Eabhal, want less consumption rather than cheap abundant energy.
You making stuff up about me again?
I think one of the most exciting things about renewables is we are going to have so much excess (free) electricity on windy, sunny days that a whole economy will build up around consuming as much as that as possible.
Something like 40% of Scottish wind generation was lost last year. If the accursed Miliband had faced down the SE of England we'd have nodal pricing that would have enabled such an economy.
But there's nothing wrong with reducing consumption either, particularly when it's so expensive. There is another name for that: productivity growth. It's why my little 1 litre turbo can zip me up the A9 at a reasonable cost.
British man who ‘filmed missiles’ in Dubai faces two years in jail
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
Filming air defence locations. More than a subtle difference.
Don’t film military activity in any country, ever. Including the UK.
That particular “campaign group” has about as much credibility as a Guardian article on someone who was deported.
So you've gone native?
When the bombing of the girls school was first reported a poster on here said it was an Iranian bomb that had gone wrong and linked to a site by a well known' Israeli sympathetic' misinformer. Pretty disgraceful really. Maybe he should apologise?
We are not known to agree, but the girls school is just horrible as is Gaza and those guilty men, as they are all men, need to be charged in the international courts and includes Netanyahu, Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, Iran's regime and let's not forget Putin and Trump
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.
They want the Iranian regime gone. Not happened.
They want to be able to build the Trump resort and casino in Gaza without any threat of drone attacks. Not happened.
They want the US to continue to unconditionally support anything and everything they do. Not sure that happened.
My reading of Israeli strategic aims:
1. Undisputed regional hegemon 2. America remains Israel's constant and unconditional ally 3. All countries in the region, especially but not only Iran, reduced to dysfunction 4. Free hand to invade and occupy the neighborhood
With this operation Israel has enhanced (1); (2) bound the United States further; (3) Iran reduced further to rubble with the bonus of the Gulf economies possibly also ruined; (4) currently rampaging Lebanon free of consequences to Israel.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
There are significant and known dangers from counterfeit chargers. It would not surprise to discover that the cause of the fire was (a) dodgy fake chargers (b) overloaded, daisy chained plug sockets or (c) both of the above.
You would expect trading standards and/or fire brigades to take an interest and undertake a lot of inspections
You would expect that, yes. But as with everything they are no doubt stretched.
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
I have had interest from Nigelb, kyf_100 (who can already see it) and I think @Andy_JS and @Kinabalu want to be pre-readers (can you confirm this please?)
Hi @viewcode - I'm happy to wait for its publication as a Header and look forward to reading it then.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
Dozens? Google map shows 3 on Union St and Sauchiehall St is nowhere near there (and is any case not throbbing with vape shops).
I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.
There is a side street in North Manchester - just off the infamous and now destroyed counterfeit alley - where there are a good 20, with a trading estate at the end where there are another 20. Have a look and I defy you to conclude that this is anything but dodgy as fuck. https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3zZ2RaoXn6pjNT76
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame
The third day of Cheltenham approaches and my thoughts on the day as follows: . Mares Novices Hurdle: BAMBINO FEVER
Jack Richards Novices Handicap Chase: SIXMILEBRIDGE
Mares Hurdle - WODHOOH
Stayers Hurdle - MA SHANTOU (win), IMPOSE TOI (each way)
Ryanair Chase: IMPAIRE ET PASSE
Yey! We agree on Doo. 🙂
13:20 - Charme De Faust 14:00 - Slade Steel 14:40 - Wodhooh NAP - Lossie was this weeks Queen, now hail Princess Doo 15:20 - Teahupoo NAP - Tay’s getting it back. 16:00 - Fact To File 16:40 - Yeah Man 17:20 - Herakles Westwood
Rains arrived earlier apparently. Could mean a spate of late non runners. Bainbridge to hide in a box at first sign of umbrella’s?
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
There were a lot of histrionics about the strike price for floating wind but it's a novel technology developed in the UK that could have a transformative impact on energy both here and around the world. Worth a punt I reckon, exactly the kind of risk government should be taking in given the wider social and economic benefits if it succeeds.
The problem is that people can't decouple consumption and production in their minds. We should immediately reduce the former, the latter I think the government should stay out of except where it impedes the transition on consumption. Miliband's biggest failure is dumping out on market reform - where is the nodal pricing? Why am I still paying a standing charge? Why isn't everyone on a time-variable tariff?
On FWT unfortunately you're wrong, the size of the floating foundation, amount of mooring line, unbelievably complicated analyses to get the design right and that the body setting the standards has just upped that complication tenfold means that they're decades away from being price competitive with fixed offshore wind.
That's a bit depressing. I'm just a bit of a optimistic on things like this - there were similar sentiments about solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, EVs not long ago...
I was too. But the cost curves for solar and wind are now quite evidently very different. And there's no good way to iterate around the simple physical constraints of offshore wind, while solar continues to evolve very quickly through both production and materials science innovation.
For the UK specifically we have dreadful solar insolation whilst having decent wind power potential. If the economics long term favour solar power we are in a weak position for relative advantage long term particularly during the winter.
I acknowledge that. We should build all the onshore wind we can, and any offshore projects with favourable cost/benefit. But offshore floating wind just doesn't begin to compete with any alternative energy source, unfortunately.
Or we could just scrap the lot, save the Net Zero subsidies and reduce energy prices. That way we might have an industrial base still.
You are Mojtaba Khamenei and I claim my £5.
No Im just someone who runs factories who is pissed off at why my government wants to cripple our competitiveness by pointless virtue signalling.
I have a factory in Aberdeen mostly dependent on the oil industry. Any good reason these people should have their livelihoods put at risk just because some ideologue in North London wants to please activists ?
Burning fossil fuels is doing very real damage to the world. It's not just about pleasing activists.
We're not the prime source of carbon, Nothing we can cut will be materially significant
And if everyone thinks that way, nothing gets done. But we have had success working within international agreements to get multiple countries to cut their CO2 outputs.
Last time I bothered looking the EU was about to move a lot of its commitments on vehicles or else it wont have a car industry.
Agreements except when it doesnt suit.
International agreements are complicated: we've had some successes, but also some failures. Obviously, the US is currently deep into climate change denial. But your rhetoric of "we've not achieved anything, we can't do anything" is false and harmful.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
Dozens? Google map shows 3 on Union St and Sauchiehall St is nowhere near there (and is any case not throbbing with vape shops).
I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.
David Knopfler is a passionate progressive lefty, Mark broadly similar I believe but far less vocal than David.
They famously told the Apartheid regime in South Africa to stuff their royalties to Brothers in Arms and made the SA government pay them to Amnesty International.
I'm sure David would make the point that if the people realise cost of living increases are due to rabid right wingers in US and Israel and whose actions are backed by Reform and Tories, however much Farage backtracks and blinking Kemi ties herself in ever more ridiculous knots, that public opinion will understand especially if the Government brings in quick real support.
That support would not be grandstanding over fuel duty in 24 weeks time that may never happen but genuine help if required in the next few weeks and specifically for those homes heated by oil.
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
I have had interest from Nigelb, kyf_100 (who can already see it) and I think @Andy_JS and @Kinabalu want to be pre-readers (can you confirm this please?)
My appeal is for everyone in this debate is to have compassion for @kyf_100 who has real life experience of love and suffered loss and who provides an insight from those directly affected that requires compassion
The Mandelson payout is a breach of value for money rules & therefore breach of the Ministerial Code. You are NOT allowed to use severance payments for "reputation management"
"Italian base in Kurdish region of Iraq attacked, says Italian foreign minister An Italian military base in the Kurdish region of Iraq was attacked, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said in a post on X. Tajani said he strongly condemned the attack in Erbil, but didn’t say if authorities knew who was responsible for it. He said all soldiers on the base were safe."
Well, that's a surprise. I had no idea that Italy had a base in Iraq, never mind the Kurdish region. What's that about?
They are "part of international force training Kurds".
Thank Allah I don’t work for the Lloyds Banking Group.
Some customers using Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Halifax apps have been able to see other users' transactions on their accounts.
Lloyds Banking Group customers reported being able to view charges and payments from other sources on Thursday morning.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson apologised for the issue and said the incident had been quickly resolved.
An investigation is under way.
One woman told BBC Scotland News she was able to see the accounts of six different users on the Bank of Scotland app, including some National Insurance numbers, over a 20-minute period.
Those included transactions from a pub in Newcastle, 154 miles from her home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, fees for using one card abroad and wage payments from a company based in England.
The 55-year-old also reported being able to view benefits payments from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which use the National Insurance numbers of recipients as a payment reference.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
There are significant and known dangers from counterfeit chargers. It would not surprise to discover that the cause of the fire was (a) dodgy fake chargers (b) overloaded, daisy chained plug sockets or (c) both of the above.
You would expect trading standards and/or fire brigades to take an interest and undertake a lot of inspections
Glasgow was b - there is a video showing as much which Mrs Eek saw
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.
Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.
I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.
The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.
Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.
Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max
The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.
There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?
Dozens? Google map shows 3 on Union St and Sauchiehall St is nowhere near there (and is any case not throbbing with vape shops).
I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.
There is a side street in North Manchester - just off the infamous and now destroyed counterfeit alley - where there are a good 20, with a trading estate at the end where there are another 20. Have a look and I defy you to conclude that this is anything but dodgy as fuck. https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3zZ2RaoXn6pjNT76
Cool, but I was just refuting an obvious bullshit assertion from someone who lives several thousand miles away from the location under disussion. No need to thank me.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame
Richard is an expert on geology, but he's also an AGW sceptic which I suspect colours his opinions. The problem is that from a climate point of view, we simply don't have a much longer time frame. A transition to renewables over a much longer time frame will ultimately result in world in which we failed to avert most of the effects of climate change.
I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.
I love how the solution of left wing suits is to pursue idealistic purity of Net Zero in the UK, leading us to having the highest energy prices in the world, sclerotic growth and investment and a total dependence on other people's hydrocarbons.
Thank Allah I don’t work for the Lloyds Banking Group.
Some customers using Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Halifax apps have been able to see other users' transactions on their accounts.
Lloyds Banking Group customers reported being able to view charges and payments from other sources on Thursday morning.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson apologised for the issue and said the incident had been quickly resolved.
An investigation is under way.
One woman told BBC Scotland News she was able to see the accounts of six different users on the Bank of Scotland app, including some National Insurance numbers, over a 20-minute period.
Those included transactions from a pub in Newcastle, 154 miles from her home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, fees for using one card abroad and wage payments from a company based in England.
The 55-year-old also reported being able to view benefits payments from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which use the National Insurance numbers of recipients as a payment reference.
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
I have had interest from Nigelb, kyf_100 (who can already see it) and I think @Andy_JS and @Kinabalu want to be pre-readers (can you confirm this please?)
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.
They want the Iranian regime gone. Not happened.
They want to be able to build the Trump resort and casino in Gaza without any threat of drone attacks. Not happened.
They want the US to continue to unconditionally support anything and everything they do. Not sure that happened.
My reading of Israeli strategic aims:
1. Undisputed regional hegemon 2. America remains Israel's constant and unconditional ally 3. All countries in the region, especially but not only Iran, reduced to dysfunction 4. Free hand to invade and occupy the neighborhood
With this operation Israel has enhanced (1); (2) bound the United States further; (3) Iran reduced further to rubble with the bonus of the Gulf economies possibly also ruined; (4) currently rampaging Lebanon free of consequences to Israel.
But on 2 they used to receive almost universal cross-party support in the US. Now their are many voices, and not just Democrats, openly questioning the value of this alliance.
The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.
There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...
It's almost as if Iran, while clearly militarily weaker than the US and Israel, did in fact hold some of the cards.
Perhaps this can be a lesson for Trump on the limitations of US power.
Iran, being clearly militarily weaker than the US and Israel, is likely to go asymmetric. Wait for it ......
It's difficult for us on the soft left not to listen to what Marandi has to say and disagree with any of it. That is the American problem. This is becoming a culture war and many of us-probably a majority -do not sign up to Trump's version of the world.
I strongly recomend listening to his interview posted by me at 8.45 this morning
There problem there is the idea that Trump has a vision.
Trump just wants his name to be in the news when he switches it on in the morning
That's the point. It is a collision of cultures. One is of power and vanity and the other believes in a code that we should all live by.
The problem is a different one. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi, Kim, Khameini, and a host of others believe that codes to live by, rules, laws, are for suckers and losers. The only rule that matters is the rule of force. You’re either giving a beating, or taking one.
And that is where those who talk of international law/human rights can sound as if they are living in an ivory tower. It’s like quoting Proust to a shark. They are not even listening.
The response to the real-world shifting beneath their feet seems to be to dig-in ever deeper on a comfortable ideology.
That Trump started the attacks on Iran without even having the semblance of a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open is both a mystery and a scandal — from which he might not recover politically. Republican grandees in swing seats/states now beginning to panic, flooding White House with calls to ‘do something’ as gas [petrol] prices soar.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame
Richard is an expert on geology, but he's also an AGW sceptic which I suspect colours his opinions. The problem is that from a climate point of view, we simply don't have a much longer time frame. A transition to renewables over a much longer time frame will ultimately result in world in which we failed to avert most of the effects of climate change.
I just do not agree that we impoverish ourselves when realistically we are only responsible for 1% of emissions
We should be extracting as much oil and gas as we can from the North Sea as are Norway, and I see no condemnation of Norway
Climate change is happening, but preventing our use of the North sea for tax revenues over the next 20 years is lunacy
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame
But do we have 'much longer'? Our world's temperature is rising and while I doubt we are in the Last Chance Saloon, it would appear we're getting close to it.
Thank Allah I don’t work for the Lloyds Banking Group.
Some customers using Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Halifax apps have been able to see other users' transactions on their accounts.
Lloyds Banking Group customers reported being able to view charges and payments from other sources on Thursday morning.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson apologised for the issue and said the incident had been quickly resolved.
An investigation is under way.
One woman told BBC Scotland News she was able to see the accounts of six different users on the Bank of Scotland app, including some National Insurance numbers, over a 20-minute period.
Those included transactions from a pub in Newcastle, 154 miles from her home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, fees for using one card abroad and wage payments from a company based in England.
The 55-year-old also reported being able to view benefits payments from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which use the National Insurance numbers of recipients as a payment reference.
Your daily summary and detailed update from "What's Going on with Shipping":
(He deliberately tries to be non-political; currently it is nearly working). He notes that China's former "This is a Chinese Ship" on the AIS ID that worked in the Red Sea is not working here. There's diplomatic work for Beijing to do there.
This is taken in the Port of Salalah in Oman (which faces the Indian Ocean at the Western end of Oman):
Salalah is a *long* way from Iran. It’s 1,000km South of Muscat.
Yes - I thought that when I checked.
I can't see any reason why Iran could not start dropping drones on the ports on the Red Sea, and on the western end of the Saudi East-West pipeline, other than that they are largely leaving Saudi alone at present.
Perhaps some of our UK/Ukrainian anti-Shahed Octopus drones being made in volume in Mildenhall will be headed for the Gulf in trade for high end missiles from Gulf stocks.
Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!
I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.
Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.
Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources. He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return. He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame
But do we have 'much longer'? Our world's temperature is rising and while I doubt we are in the Last Chance Saloon, it would appear we're getting close to it.
We are only 1% of omissions, whilst the US, Russia and others have no intention of complying with the Climate acts
Comments
Destroyed is another.
There was no shortage of attacks on shipping in the Gulf by both Iran and Iraq in the 1980s yet the ships continued to sail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanker_war
Who is now controlling this war? (Clue. Not the Americans)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuiS21jZbTk
And that is where those who talk of international law/human rights can sound as if they are living in an ivory tower. It’s like quoting Proust to a shark. They are not even listening.
We need mixed sources of energy generation and at the lowest cost possible to stay internationally competitive and cut the cost of living. I remain intrigued how rhe Gen Zers are going to face up to power for data centres which will need more energy that Manufacturing ever did.
I would have to disagree that Iran is militarily crushed. For now it remains the dominant military power in the Gulf, just as Russia is bigger than Ukraine. However, oil prices are pushing upwards. There seems to be no apparent end to the crisis, which could drag on for years like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.
That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.
This conflict has been started essentially without reference to America's allies, whether regional or NATO- indeed Trump has continued his stream of insults against NATO allies. Even as it became clear that allied resources would be required, Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut. Neither has the administration offered any incentives to their allies: even after the US Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariff regime, he has sought to continue or even expand punitive tariffs against most other countries, making little difference between an ostensible competitor, like China or ostensible allies, like Britain. So, in both practical economics and propaganda, the strains in the Western alliance are getting far worse.
Trump has broken most rules, and even laws, with impunity. Whether in his personal corruption, which has been untrammeled and without equal in American history, in the illegal use of force against American citizens, which is a betrayal of his oath of office, or the issuing of rules by decree, regardless of the rights of the US Congress, Trump has got used to his political opponents failing to mount successful challenges against him. However, in his vainglorious and reckless attack on Iran, Trump is meeting an enemy that has nothing to lose- that in fact matches his own reckless disregard for law.
Trump has stamped on a hornets nest, and must now settle down for an extremely damaging and potentially long term war, where he lacks the military resources to defeat and occupy Iran and has also alienated his former allies to the point of rupture.
As gifted migrants no longer offer their skills to the USA. As the reputation of that country plummets every time the crass vulgar thug in the Oval office presumes to lecture other nations. As former allies no longer trust America enough to buy weapons from the United States (but are buying weapons that could be used against the United States). As American launches wars of choice in a reckless, ill prepared and feckless manner. All of this adds up to a United States that will see its power diminish and decline far faster than could have remotely seemed possible even one year ago.
I have little doubt the Americans in due course will issue a "Damnatio memoriae" for Trump and the crew of drunks, creeps and spooks that came in on his coat tails, not to mention his criminally corrupt family. Perhaps they may even place the survivors on trial. However unless that happens, unless the Americans recognize the scale of the crimes and incompetence of Donald Trump and seek redress, then the country will dwindle from hegemon to also ran.
History is littered with Empires that fell because of an ill judged choice of war. Trump has risked the same fate befalling the United States.
Away from WW3, Draper and Norrie both into the Quarter Finals in Indian Wells, Draper edging out Djokovic to do so.
But then perhaps industrial Britain, or indeed the rest of the economy, might stand a bit of a chance again.
Tourists risk two years in prison for posting about Iranian strikes on social media
A British man arrested after allegedly filming missiles targeting Dubai is one of 21 people who have been charged under cybercrime laws.
The 60-year-old man, whose arrest on Monday was first reported by The Telegraph, is said to have deleted the video from his phone immediately when asked. He claims he had no intention of doing anything wrong.
However, the Londoner has been charged together with 20 others in connection with videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/12/dubai-charges-british-man-arrested-for-filming-missiles/
Who ends up going hard and who ends up Going Home out of this is not entirely obvious to me.
Fun fact - even during the age of armour plate on ships, much of the protection was done by having lots of compartments.
Tankers have either vast reserve buoyancy (unloaded) or a cargo that actually absorbs shock and supports the ship after a breach. It’s quite hard to get even light crude to burn.
In the Tanker War in the 80s, next to none were sunk, but many damaged.
The loss of trade isn’t from sinkings. It’s from damage stopping ships. And insurance vanishing.
I think one of the most exciting things about renewables is we are going to have so much excess (free) electricity on windy, sunny days that a whole economy will build up around consuming as much as that as possible.
Something like 40% of Scottish wind generation was lost last year. If the accursed Miliband had faced down the SE of England we'd have nodal pricing that would have enabled such an economy.
But there's nothing wrong with reducing consumption either, particularly when it's so expensive. There is another name for that: productivity growth. It's why my little 1 litre turbo can zip me up the A9 at a reasonable cost.
It’s not radioactive, really. I wouldn’t recommend eating it. Just a bunch of metal
It wouldn’t even take up much space. I’d be a little bit careful of how you pile (ha!) it up, though. Bird cages and all that.
https://x.com/alex_avoigt/status/2032019178903790037
We can have a pretty good idea of what their business model is going to be, they’ll be buying wholesale at night and selling at the peaks in the early morning and early evening.
Don’t film military activity in any country, ever. Including the UK.
That particular “campaign group” has about as much credibility as a Guardian article on someone who was deported.
People like you dont give a rats arse about the people you are throwing on the scrap heap.
Israel will not complain if Iran continues to be a threat to its Arab neighbours.
The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 5.7% in 2023 to their lowest level since 1879
There are loads of things we can do. I have kids and gandkids and think about their futures. What we're doing now is placing them in danger
Several drones have hit Kuwait International Airport.
They want to be able to build the Trump resort and casino in Gaza without any threat of drone attacks. Not happened.
They want the US to continue to unconditionally support anything and everything they do. Not sure that happened.
If you transfer all your industry intensive businesses over seas it just means you have subcontracted where you pollute.
It's probably a bad idea as it goes to countries with leass stringent standards than us.
Which is better to run a foundry on the West Midlands where we control standards or buy from a foundry in India where standards are optional.
I mentioned some time ago a case of a disabled lady who was told she could not keep her E-Brompton in her council flat (because of "batteries" and insurers), even though an electric wheelchair or a mobility scooter or a cordless power tool is OK.
That's slopey-shooulders on consistent regulation, and insurance companies making broad assumptions. The BSI standards already exist and have for some time, and if we can apply BSI standards to microwaves and kettles and power tools I really do not see the difficulty.
When the bombing of the girls school was first reported a poster on here said it was an Iranian bomb that had gone wrong and linked to a site by a well known' Israeli sympathetic' misinformer. Pretty disgraceful really. Maybe he should apologise?
Agreements except when it doesnt suit.
I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.
We now have four convenience shops in about a mile of high street, although admittedly one is in a parade where it has become more residential. One is opposite a Sainsburys supermarket that is only open an hour less on weekdays.
I suspect that, given the mess that they will inherit, the next US President, assuming it's NOT a MAGA Republican, will have a considerably less adulatory view of Israel.
Israel, or perhaps it's 'just' Bibi appears to have conned the US into an unwinnable war. Unwinnable anyway unless the US uses ground troops in Iran.
I'd assume you are "judicious".
(https://gulfnews.com/uae/uae-warns-against-spreading-rumours-during-crisis-fines-up-to-dh200000-1.500467121, which also refers to 'shares'.
Official: https://x.com/UAE_PP/status/2027783299171815757)
Not all bad in 14 years then
Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.
If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.
I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.
Brothers in arms, so far away, sultans of swing(ometers), money for nothing, walk of life, Romeo & Juliet, tunnel of love.
Edit - 8 including the headline.
Day 3 - of pigging out with junk food and cocktails on next to no sleep - and still the Fez keeps coming.
No wins yesterday, so only 2 wins from 14 🫣
And now the weathers going to change to wet. But not much rain till about 1pm, it will likely stay good to soft all afternoon, so don’t let rain fool you it now favours mud larks. those who built reputation this year on softer ground, I don’t think it softens enough, such as to give challengers to Doo much hope for example…
Thursday
13:20 - Charme De Faust
14:00 - Slade Steel
14:40 - Wodhooh NAP - Lossie was this weeks Queen, now hail Princess Doo
15:20 - Teahupoo NAP - Tay’s getting it back.
16:00 - Fact To File
16:40 - Yeah Man
17:20 - Herakles Westwood
But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.
He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons
He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources.
He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup
He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return.
He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time
Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.
"Italian base in Kurdish region of Iraq attacked, says Italian foreign minister
An Italian military base in the Kurdish region of Iraq was attacked, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said in a post on X. Tajani said he strongly condemned the attack in Erbil, but didn’t say if authorities knew who was responsible for it. He said all soldiers on the base were safe."
Well, that's a surprise. I had no idea that Italy had a base in Iraq, never mind the Kurdish region. What's that about?
"Cue the Sun"
Didn't inlude the headline as it isn't a song title.
1. Undisputed regional hegemon
2. America remains Israel's constant and unconditional ally
3. All countries in the region, especially but not only Iran, reduced to dysfunction
4. Free hand to invade and occupy the neighborhood
With this operation Israel has enhanced (1); (2) bound the United States further; (3) Iran reduced further to rubble with the bonus of the Gulf economies possibly also ruined; (4) currently rampaging Lebanon free of consequences to Israel.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3zZ2RaoXn6pjNT76
13:20 - Charme De Faust
14:00 - Slade Steel
14:40 - Wodhooh NAP - Lossie was this weeks Queen, now hail Princess Doo
15:20 - Teahupoo NAP - Tay’s getting it back.
16:00 - Fact To File
16:40 - Yeah Man
17:20 - Herakles Westwood
Rains arrived earlier apparently. Could mean a spate of late non runners.
Bainbridge to hide in a box at first sign of umbrella’s?
They famously told the Apartheid regime in South Africa to stuff their royalties to Brothers in Arms and made the SA government pay them to Amnesty International.
I'm sure David would make the point that if the people realise cost of living increases are due to rabid right wingers in US and Israel and whose actions are backed by Reform and Tories, however much Farage backtracks and blinking Kemi ties herself in ever more ridiculous knots, that public opinion will understand especially if the Government brings in quick real support.
That support would not be grandstanding over fuel duty in 24 weeks time that may never happen but genuine help if required in the next few weeks and specifically for those homes heated by oil.
https://x.com/KieranMullanUK/status/2032022850018631973
The Mandelson payout is a breach of value for money rules & therefore breach of the Ministerial Code. You are NOT allowed to use severance payments for "reputation management"
https://youtu.be/E_1Oej_r-ts?t=46
Oooops.
Some customers using Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Halifax apps have been able to see other users' transactions on their accounts.
Lloyds Banking Group customers reported being able to view charges and payments from other sources on Thursday morning.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson apologised for the issue and said the incident had been quickly resolved.
An investigation is under way.
One woman told BBC Scotland News she was able to see the accounts of six different users on the Bank of Scotland app, including some National Insurance numbers, over a 20-minute period.
Those included transactions from a pub in Newcastle, 154 miles from her home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, fees for using one card abroad and wage payments from a company based in England.
The 55-year-old also reported being able to view benefits payments from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which use the National Insurance numbers of recipients as a payment reference.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g23npxpwgo
No need to thank me.
Now their are many voices, and not just Democrats, openly questioning the value of this alliance.
@afneil
That Trump started the attacks on Iran without even having the semblance of a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open is both a mystery and a scandal — from which he might not recover politically. Republican grandees in swing seats/states now beginning to panic, flooding White House with calls to ‘do something’ as gas [petrol] prices soar.
But imagine during Royal Ascot thousand of attendees who had backed my horse all saying ‘Come on my face’.
Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش
@citrinowicz
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no realistic off-ramp to the current confrontation with Iran.
https://x.com/citrinowicz/status/2032021550283489550
We should be extracting as much oil and gas as we can from the North Sea as are Norway, and I see no condemnation of Norway
Climate change is happening, but preventing our use of the North sea for tax revenues over the next 20 years is lunacy
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-guardian-view-on-kemi-badenoch-and-the-iran-war-confusion-reveals-a-lack-of-serious-thinking
I can't see any reason why Iran could not start dropping drones on the ports on the Red Sea, and on the western end of the Saudi East-West pipeline, other than that they are largely leaving Saudi alone at present.
Perhaps some of our UK/Ukrainian anti-Shahed Octopus drones being made in volume in Mildenhall will be headed for the Gulf in trade for high end missiles from Gulf stocks.
6-0 last week
6-0 this week
The inimitable John Crace nails it!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/11/a-clever-person-knows-their-limitations-kemi-believes-she-has-none
desperate Tory trolling