Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
I guess it'll be an amalgamation of West Midlands and East Midlands as on the chart in another of his tweets.
I don't think that makes sense. His graphic has about 14% for East Midlands and 18% for West Midlands, but over 25% for Wales, NI and NE. If you combine East and West Midlands, the combined stat isn't the sum of the percentages, it's a weighted average.
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
On topic. I see Talarico is last price matched 30 for the Dem POTUS nomination and is available at 55 to back in the next POTUS market. I had £4.61 on him to be next POTUS at 110 last night.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
The British food revolution. This is painfully accurate, and were it not for my partner regularly going through the food cupboards and fridge freezer like a dose of salts would largely be me.
What British people have in their freezers:
-Frozen peas (some in a bag, some rolling around loose) -Full bag of oven chips -Another bag with three oven chips left in it -Tupperware half-filled with unidentified brown stuff -Half a scoop of mash potato that you saved for some reason -An empty box that used to contain ice lollies that fools you every time you look in it but you still don’t throw it away -Bag of hash browns -Some sort of meat joint (possibly lamb) from 2014 -A near-empty ice cream tub -Something that might be chilli or might be bolognese but you didn’t label it -Some party food from three Christmases ago -An empty bag that used to contain ice cubes -A pack of chicken or fish that you needed to eat but you chucked it in the freezer because you ordered a takeaway instead -One drawer that doesn’t open anymore
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
This is one of the issues I have with the narrative that all our rivers are full of shit and pollution. We have lots of data now because we are actively monitoring. And our rivers are far better than they were in say the middle of the last century. Were not many of the rivers in big cities functionally dead not long ago?
We clearly need to do even more to avoid farmland run-off and sewage directly entering the rivers, but we should remember that we have made significant progress.
If I had to guess, I'd say that industrial pollution has improved greatly, and agricultural runoff has got worse. And I doubt that domestic discharges have massively improved over the last couple of decades.
Assuming that's anywhere near correct, it would mean some water courses improving, and some not.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
I guess it'll be an amalgamation of West Midlands and East Midlands as on the chart in another of his tweets.
I don't think that makes sense. His graphic has about 14% for East Midlands and 18% for West Midlands, but over 25% for Wales, NI and NE. If you combine East and West Midlands, the combined stat isn't the sum of the percentages, it's a weighted average.
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
That's the old data - he specifically says he's waiting for the new figures.
Whilst talking about all things crazy in the US. Elon's ex and it made me smile. (Perhaps too much information for many of us but the interviewer guides us through it!)
On topic. I see Talarico is last price matched 30 for the Dem POTUS nomination and is available at 55 to back in the next POTUS market. I had £4.61 on him to be next POTUS at 110 last night.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
No. (but decent trading bet.)
And if he does win the Senate seat, the Dems will want to nail him to it for the next six years.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
I guess it'll be an amalgamation of West Midlands and East Midlands as on the chart in another of his tweets.
I don't think that makes sense. His graphic has about 14% for East Midlands and 18% for West Midlands, but over 25% for Wales, NI and NE. If you combine East and West Midlands, the combined stat isn't the sum of the percentages, it's a weighted average.
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
That's the old data - he specifically says he's waiting for the new figures.
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
This is one of the issues I have with the narrative that all our rivers are full of shit and pollution. We have lots of data now because we are actively monitoring. And our rivers are far better than they were in say the middle of the last century. Were not many of the rivers in big cities functionally dead not long ago?
We clearly need to do even more to avoid farmland run-off and sewage directly entering the rivers, but we should remember that we have made significant progress.
If I had to guess, I'd say that industrial pollution has improved greatly, and agricultural runoff has got worse. And I doubt that domestic discharges have massively improved over the last couple of decades.
Assuming that's anywhere near correct, it would mean some water courses improving, and some not.
My main issue is that we are testing far more than we were say 20 years ago and that has led to a narrative that things have got worse, when we cannot actually say that (lack of data from 2000, for instance). Yes we have challenges and maximum pressure needs to be put on water companies in order to get to where we need to go.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
I guess it'll be an amalgamation of West Midlands and East Midlands as on the chart in another of his tweets.
I don't think that makes sense. His graphic has about 14% for East Midlands and 18% for West Midlands, but over 25% for Wales, NI and NE. If you combine East and West Midlands, the combined stat isn't the sum of the percentages, it's a weighted average.
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
That's the old data - he specifically says he's waiting for the new figures.
Ah, thank you.
His tweets aren't always a model of linguistic clarity, TBF.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction (once he has won the by election but not before)
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
This is one of the issues I have with the narrative that all our rivers are full of shit and pollution. We have lots of data now because we are actively monitoring. And our rivers are far better than they were in say the middle of the last century. Were not many of the rivers in big cities functionally dead not long ago?
We clearly need to do even more to avoid farmland run-off and sewage directly entering the rivers, but we should remember that we have made significant progress.
We have severe problems with inconsistency and regulatory capture.
So we have water companies being able do their sewerage overflows hundreds or thousands of times, then being left to self-document the problems, and miraculously the severities of any problems get marked down to "not important enough to require a real intervention".
There is also a weird system where they plea bargain non-prosecution in exchange for a small (to them) donation to a collaborating environmental charity. So they are allowed literally to treat pollution incidents as a minor business overhead.
I think regulatory capture has turned out to be one of the most severe problems of privatisation of services. Essentially once the service has been privatised, the regulator is privatised as well. Unfortunately that takes away perhaps the single most important factor that is required for privatisation to be successful.
IMO the ideological failure is that the post-privatisation generation of politicians who needed to keep it on the rails just do not believe in any real role for public authorities. So what happens is that as soon as something is effective, lobbyists get to work, and then unprincipled or spineless politicians surrender and gut whatever it was that was effective.
The outcome will be that privatisation is unsustainable after the model has been broken.
Gutting the public sector is something we see everywhere - local authorities and trading standards being 2 examples. But this is a very particular example.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
I guess it'll be an amalgamation of West Midlands and East Midlands as on the chart in another of his tweets.
I don't think that makes sense. His graphic has about 14% for East Midlands and 18% for West Midlands, but over 25% for Wales, NI and NE. If you combine East and West Midlands, the combined stat isn't the sum of the percentages, it's a weighted average.
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
That's the old data - he specifically says he's waiting for the new figures.
Those are 2 seperate tweets.
The "region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England..." is the NE.
In 2000 WM and EM combined ran a small deficit, perhaps better than the whole UK deficit. Now they are worse.
So he is talking about the NE in the first, and WM/EM in the 2nd.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
This is one of the issues I have with the narrative that all our rivers are full of shit and pollution. We have lots of data now because we are actively monitoring. And our rivers are far better than they were in say the middle of the last century. Were not many of the rivers in big cities functionally dead not long ago?
We clearly need to do even more to avoid farmland run-off and sewage directly entering the rivers, but we should remember that we have made significant progress.
The most recent improvements, with the Thames, are a function of the entry into service of the new super sewer - the huge new sewer bored under the Thames.
I'm at the other end of the super sewer near Beckton which is a huge site with constant vehicular movement and which, I'm told, is the largest sewage treatment works in Europe.
We used to get a distinct "hint" of something in the air when the wind was in the south east but it seems much less now.
On topic. I see Talarico is last price matched 30 for the Dem POTUS nomination and is available at 55 to back in the next POTUS market. I had £4.61 on him to be next POTUS at 110 last night.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
Me. I am also on him at 110.
Although when I last mentioned him some PBers replied that he has already ruled himself out of POTUS 2028.
My main concern - alarm bells are ringing - is that we’re hearing the same things from Burnham’s team that we heard from Starmer’s in 2024.
“The plan will come”.
I won’t be lied to twice.
Are you not including Corbyn too? Or did you not regard him as lying. more deluded?
Corbyn lied about anti-Semitism. But that wasn’t not having a plan per se.
I think his lies were more about the extent of the things he was going to provide - free wifi for all etc.
30 million houses @ ~£30/mth * 12 = Call it £11 Bn.
I don't think it particularly needs nationalising though. I'd add it to the list of things that are reasonably competitive/cheap in the UK compared to elsewhere.
Back on topic, this is quite the development in Texas politics. Big solar embraces the tactics of big oil.
Chip Roy lost his bid for Texas attorney general last night. He was one of the solar industry's biggest opponents in Congress. And a group of clean energy investors decided there had to be a consequence.
They ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads calling him "not MAGA enough." The ads never mentioned clean energy once. They forced Roy into a runoff, which he lost yesterday.
I recently sat down with one of the lead donors to the campaign: Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of Ripple, who is now investing heavily in climate.
Chris was one of the lead investors in crypto's Fairshake campaign that turned the industry from a regulatory target into one of the most feared political forces in Washington. It spent nearly half of all corporate political dollars in the 2024 cycle and won over 95% of the races it engaged in.
He thinks clean energy can do the same thing. And he does not mince words about what that requires: "This is political warfare. You talk about what works. You talk about what's going to take out that person."
I also sat down with his co-founder at the Clean Break Fund: Mike Brune, the longest-serving executive director of the Sierra Club.
"The next time someone votes against the solar industry, there's a lot of money that could come after them in the next primary or the next election," Brune said.
The clean energy industry has been historically focused on making the affirmative case by highlighting economic benefits, building coalitions, and telling a positive story. But Chris and Mike think that the industry needs to get more serious about delivering political consequences.
"The worst thing you want in a political fight is for your opponents to think you're weak," Chris told the room.
There's still a massive spending gap between renewables and fossil fuels. In 2024, the entire renewable energy industry donated $2.5 million to political campaigns. Oil and gas donated $75 million just to elect Trump.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
My main concern - alarm bells are ringing - is that we’re hearing the same things from Burnham’s team that we heard from Starmer’s in 2024.
“The plan will come”.
I won’t be lied to twice.
Are you not including Corbyn too? Or did you not regard him as lying. more deluded?
Corbyn lied about anti-Semitism. But that wasn’t not having a plan per se.
I think his lies were more about the extent of the things he was going to provide - free wifi for all etc.
30 million houses @ ~£30/mth * 12 = Call it £11 Bn.
I don't think it particularly needs nationalising though. I'd add it to the list of things that are reasonably competitive/cheap in the UK compared to elsewhere.
It was a stupid idea when Openreach are running one of the world’s fastest FTTP rollouts ever and at no cost to the taxpayer for the vast majority of it.
Back on topic, this is quite the development in Texas politics. Big solar embraces the tactics of big oil.
Chip Roy lost his bid for Texas attorney general last night. He was one of the solar industry's biggest opponents in Congress. And a group of clean energy investors decided there had to be a consequence.
They ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads calling him "not MAGA enough." The ads never mentioned clean energy once. They forced Roy into a runoff, which he lost yesterday.
I recently sat down with one of the lead donors to the campaign: Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of Ripple, who is now investing heavily in climate.
Chris was one of the lead investors in crypto's Fairshake campaign that turned the industry from a regulatory target into one of the most feared political forces in Washington. It spent nearly half of all corporate political dollars in the 2024 cycle and won over 95% of the races it engaged in.
He thinks clean energy can do the same thing. And he does not mince words about what that requires: "This is political warfare. You talk about what works. You talk about what's going to take out that person."
I also sat down with his co-founder at the Clean Break Fund: Mike Brune, the longest-serving executive director of the Sierra Club.
"The next time someone votes against the solar industry, there's a lot of money that could come after them in the next primary or the next election," Brune said.
The clean energy industry has been historically focused on making the affirmative case by highlighting economic benefits, building coalitions, and telling a positive story. But Chris and Mike think that the industry needs to get more serious about delivering political consequences.
"The worst thing you want in a political fight is for your opponents to think you're weak," Chris told the room.
There's still a massive spending gap between renewables and fossil fuels. In 2024, the entire renewable energy industry donated $2.5 million to political campaigns. Oil and gas donated $75 million just to elect Trump.
Probably less harmful to the future of the world, and probably harder to concentrate so much power in a few hands, so less bad consequences, but still bad. And the "making a noise about X to serve your hidden interests in Y" is exactly as bad.
Interesting, though. Partly to speculate what the partisan consequences are, but mostly because of what it says about the changing balance of power and money.
It does show the flaws in the US "free speech if you have enough money to pay for it" model, though.
1) What does it say that the incoming government didn't know in July 2024? 2) While we are where we are, if there was something the Labour party needed to know about this as it made detailed plans for government, wasn't 2023/4 the time to be completing it?
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
I don't think so. Do you have a link? The "costs involved" are highly contentious and are being heavily promoted by investors in Thames Water.
If Thames Water does not secure long-term funding, it is projected to completely run out of money and face bankruptcy as soon as September 2026.
If it goes bankrupt, its debtors lose their money and shareholders get the value of its assets less its liabilities which may be net zero (or even negative).
Burnham will be very cynical about the lobbying by Thames Water and potential investors in Thames Water. He will want to thoroughly investigate the costs, but I don't think he will have "rowed back" on this at this stage. But I may be wrong. If you the link ....
... but not a link to a Thames Water prospectus please.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
He did what TfL do in London, where they don’t operate (I think there is like one exception) the buses directly but instead pay a company to operate the routes.
In London it mostly works very well, I’d be happy seeing it elsewhere
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
We already spend enormous amounts on "apprenticeships" though, do we not?
Now renamed to something else, but raising £4.4 billion per annum:
The Growth and Skills Levy (formerly the Apprenticeship Levy) is expected to raise approximately £4.4 billion for the current financial year. This funding is primarily generated by UK employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million, who contribute 0.5% of their payroll into the scheme. (Google AI answring the question.)
I'm not close enough to it to know whether it is effective, or whether employers have found ways of diverting the money into something else (aiui the mechanism is quite circular).
On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
Sorry, but once again, this has been comprehensively debunked, so perhaps we can stop with it. Renewables are not cheaper. Nor are they getting cheaper - the strike price on new wind has afaik gone UP because nobody was interested in bidding for the contracts.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
EDIT: It looks as if Horse and I are in agreement on this.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
He did what TfL do in London, where they don’t operate (I think there is like one exception) the buses directly but instead pay a company to operate the routes.
In London it mostly works very well, I’d be happy seeing it elsewhere
That’s my understanding of it. Basically getting rid of the mad situation you had where effectively private bus companies could decide their own routes / timetable / fees. With the expected chaos that would lead to - e.g. over served popular routes, dead zones, timetables that didn’t coordinate and wildly different fees.
It always seemed odd that the full pleasure (incentives) of privatisation had to hit places other than London.
Back on topic, this is quite the development in Texas politics. Big solar embraces the tactics of big oil.
Chip Roy lost his bid for Texas attorney general last night. He was one of the solar industry's biggest opponents in Congress. And a group of clean energy investors decided there had to be a consequence.
They ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads calling him "not MAGA enough." The ads never mentioned clean energy once. They forced Roy into a runoff, which he lost yesterday.
I recently sat down with one of the lead donors to the campaign: Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of Ripple, who is now investing heavily in climate.
Chris was one of the lead investors in crypto's Fairshake campaign that turned the industry from a regulatory target into one of the most feared political forces in Washington. It spent nearly half of all corporate political dollars in the 2024 cycle and won over 95% of the races it engaged in.
He thinks clean energy can do the same thing. And he does not mince words about what that requires: "This is political warfare. You talk about what works. You talk about what's going to take out that person."
I also sat down with his co-founder at the Clean Break Fund: Mike Brune, the longest-serving executive director of the Sierra Club.
"The next time someone votes against the solar industry, there's a lot of money that could come after them in the next primary or the next election," Brune said.
The clean energy industry has been historically focused on making the affirmative case by highlighting economic benefits, building coalitions, and telling a positive story. But Chris and Mike think that the industry needs to get more serious about delivering political consequences.
"The worst thing you want in a political fight is for your opponents to think you're weak," Chris told the room.
There's still a massive spending gap between renewables and fossil fuels. In 2024, the entire renewable energy industry donated $2.5 million to political campaigns. Oil and gas donated $75 million just to elect Trump.
It's the American way. The funny thing is America can embrace both. It has vast, uninhabited deserts that could be turned over to solar farms, or just stick panels on roofs in the sunnier states, which is most of them.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
He did what TfL do in London, where they don’t operate (I think there is like one exception) the buses directly but instead pay a company to operate the routes.
In London it mostly works very well, I’d be happy seeing it elsewhere
That’s my understanding of it. Basically getting rid of the mad situation you had where effectively private bus companies could decide their own routes / timetable / fees. With the expected chaos that would lead to - e.g. over served popular routes, dead zones, timetables that didn’t coordinate and wildly different fees.
It always seemed odd that the full pleasure (incentives) of privatisation had to hit places other than London.
IIRC this was also basically Johnson’s idea for the railways. Single brand but each route still operated by a private company for a fixed fee.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
...On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
A European market might help...
There's about 10 GW of interconnector across the Channel/North Sea, with about the same amount of capacity being built.
Most of it went online on the last decade or so; it's good to see that we were getting something right.
But it isn't equalising the electricity prices. Maybe that's an issue with how electricity is priced in Britain, or maybe it says something about electricity - which despite us having what we call a national grid, is a lot harder to move from one place to another than imagined.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
...On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
A European market might help...
There's about 10 GW of interconnector across the Channel/North Sea, with about the same amount of capacity being built.
Most of it went online on the last decade or so; it's good to see that we were getting something right.
But it isn't equalising the electricity prices. Maybe that's an issue with how electricity is priced in Britain, or maybe it says something about electricity - which despite us having what we call a national grid, is a lot harder to move from one place to another than imagined.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
Using our own reserves of fossil fuels and becoming a world leader in renewables.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
...On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
A European market might help...
There's about 10 GW of interconnector across the Channel/North Sea, with about the same amount of capacity being built.
Most of it went online on the last decade or so; it's good to see that we were getting something right.
But it isn't equalising the electricity prices. Maybe that's an issue with how electricity is priced in Britain, or maybe it says something about electricity - which despite us having what we call a national grid, is a lot harder to move from one place to another than imagined.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
The National Grid desperately needs upgrading. We have moved away from the model where generation and use were often close to each other – think of all the old power stations along the Thames lighting homes, offices and factories in London. Most were demolished and a couple turned into art galleries (Tate Modern was Bankside Power Station) or posh flats (which gave London Underground Battersea Power Station station).
The point with water is, how do you decrease costs?
The simplest way - not saying this is sensible - is that the government takes control and sets the prices at some rate and subsidises it. It then wouldn’t matter who you were actually paying the bill to. Maybe this is what Burnham means.
I think water is the odd one out compared to electricity and gas.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
He's planning an article when the official numbers come out, which will be interesting.
If only all official stats were dashboarded - and available as a JSON feed.
But after COVID the dashboard team was hurriedly disbanded to prevent ideas like that happening. Because officials thought that information = power and didn’t want to give it up.
Someone put it in their manifesto, please.
I think the dashboard team, who I knew some of, was disbanded because it had done its job and no longer had a purpose. It wasn’t malice. The team didn’t have a broader remit and it would’ve required active intervention and a lot of cross-departmental discussions over budgets and reporting paths to have given it a broader remit. That lack of flexibility is very much a failing of government (a result of an obsessive drive to constantly save money), but your supposition is wrong.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
We already spend enormous amounts on "apprenticeships" though, do we not?
Now renamed to something else, but raising £4.4 billion per annum:
The Growth and Skills Levy (formerly the Apprenticeship Levy) is expected to raise approximately £4.4 billion for the current financial year. This funding is primarily generated by UK employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million, who contribute 0.5% of their payroll into the scheme. (Google AI answring the question.)
I'm not close enough to it to know whether it is effective, or whether employers have found ways of diverting the money into something else (aiui the mechanism is quite circular).
On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
Sorry, but once again, this has been comprehensively debunked, so perhaps we can stop with it. Renewables are not cheaper. Nor are they getting cheaper - the strike price on new wind has afaik gone UP because nobody was interested in bidding for the contracts.
Compare electricity prices in Italy and Spain and then tell me that fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
...On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
A European market might help...
There's about 10 GW of interconnector across the Channel/North Sea, with about the same amount of capacity being built.
Most of it went online on the last decade or so; it's good to see that we were getting something right.
But it isn't equalising the electricity prices. Maybe that's an issue with how electricity is priced in Britain, or maybe it says something about electricity - which despite us having what we call a national grid, is a lot harder to move from one place to another than imagined.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
Isn't it also the "most expensive joule sets the price for everything" issue? As long as we are using a bit of gas, that sets the spot price. That should be starting to change meaningfully soon, because the total of non-gas sources edges ahead of demand. But we're mostly not quite there yet.
Having said that, an interesting observation on yesterday's price cap bad news:
Our analysis shows something different is happening in the wake of this energy crisis. Electricity costs have risen by only 6% in this price cap, roughly a quarter as much as gas prices have risen. This suggests that electricity prices may be beginning to decouple from gas, which is one of the key aims of the UK government’s Clean Power 2030 plan.
Back on topic, this is quite the development in Texas politics. Big solar embraces the tactics of big oil.
Chip Roy lost his bid for Texas attorney general last night. He was one of the solar industry's biggest opponents in Congress. And a group of clean energy investors decided there had to be a consequence.
They ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads calling him "not MAGA enough." The ads never mentioned clean energy once. They forced Roy into a runoff, which he lost yesterday.
I recently sat down with one of the lead donors to the campaign: Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of Ripple, who is now investing heavily in climate.
Chris was one of the lead investors in crypto's Fairshake campaign that turned the industry from a regulatory target into one of the most feared political forces in Washington. It spent nearly half of all corporate political dollars in the 2024 cycle and won over 95% of the races it engaged in.
He thinks clean energy can do the same thing. And he does not mince words about what that requires: "This is political warfare. You talk about what works. You talk about what's going to take out that person."
I also sat down with his co-founder at the Clean Break Fund: Mike Brune, the longest-serving executive director of the Sierra Club.
"The next time someone votes against the solar industry, there's a lot of money that could come after them in the next primary or the next election," Brune said.
The clean energy industry has been historically focused on making the affirmative case by highlighting economic benefits, building coalitions, and telling a positive story. But Chris and Mike think that the industry needs to get more serious about delivering political consequences.
"The worst thing you want in a political fight is for your opponents to think you're weak," Chris told the room.
There's still a massive spending gap between renewables and fossil fuels. In 2024, the entire renewable energy industry donated $2.5 million to political campaigns. Oil and gas donated $75 million just to elect Trump.
Big money buying political outcomes isn't good at all.
I posted it because it's interesting, not because I'm a fan (and I doubt the MAGA replacement is any better than the appalling Chip Roy), even if the renewables cause is one I strongly support.
It's a straw in the wind for the future of GOP energy policy.
On topic. I see Talarico is last price matched 30 for the Dem POTUS nomination and is available at 55 to back in the next POTUS market. I had £4.61 on him to be next POTUS at 110 last night.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
That's interesting. Why was he out at 110?
I had £20 on him at 90 when someone tipped him a couple of months ago. I think it is 80% a trading bet.
My skills at judging POTUS candidates are not very good ! But to evaluate Talarico and the landscape - to me he is far more like a black evangelical in the USA, or a mainstream British evangelical, than he is a Trump supporting white evangelical.
I was expecting more prominent evisceration of Trump by the black evangelical community, but it may be I have just missed it. Talarico is one person doing that job - ie standing up for what I would regard as an orthodox evangelical view, I characterise either the Hegseth emphasis (imo he like the Dutch Reformed in South Africa) or the Paula White emphasis (prosperity gospel / pastor-con-artist tradition) as what evangelicals call "another gospel" (ie, heretical).
For British evangelicals, the heroes defining the tradition are people like Wesley, Wilberforce, and Lord Shaftesbury - that is preaching / social action, opposing slavery for 50 years, and being the key Victorian "improve society" Parliamentarian. More recently it would be Rev John Stott. In the UK the "Pete Hegseth" type tradition is marginal; I can probably only point you at a single prominent church minister I would call Christian Nationalist in the mainstream (Rev Jamie Bambrick of Hope Church, Craigavon - Church of Ireland, 40k subs on Youtube). The core organisation is the Evangelical Alliance, which functions as the evangelical denomination for many independents.
That is Anglican-focussed, but the non-conformist evangelical trends in the UK are mainly parallel since say 1950.
People in the Hegseth type tradition are the theological descendants of people who defended slavery; that is why the Southern Baptists were formed, and they did not apologise officially for supporting slavery until 1995. That Christian Right tradition was recast around 'personal morality' (abortion, marriage, sexual orientation, rejection of the "social gospel") in the 1970s, and has not shifted. But things like racism, justice, money etc were written out of the programme. I'd describe that as a process of self-siloing, driven by people like Jerry Falwell. That is a severe contrast to USA black evangelicals, and to the UK.
We have seen similar controversy around the personal morality, and church organisation, but here there has never been controversy on the basics of social action. eg the Prosperity Gospel has never made many inroads here. Recently we have seen more influence dripping in via groups such as Turning Point and Alliance Defending freedom.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
Buses and water are not analogous for the reasons you give. But the operations of a water company don't all have to be done by a single company. Infrastructure repairs and maintenance could be done by one specialist company after a competitive tender with performance metrics. Customer service and charging by another. Etc. All coordinated by Great British Water, a slim strategic company, publicly owned, but with salaries and bonuses competitive with the private sector to attract the best talent.
In the NHS, the new NHCs (Neighbourhood Health Centres) which combine NHS employed GPs, community nursing, mental health specialists, social care, etc, will provide competition (and potentially eventually replace) the traditional GP practice which are increasingly being taken over by private equity.
For young people the welfare state needs to become a spring board to work and not a safety net.
Alan Milburn.
As someone on here asked earlier - why on earth didn't they do this report while in opposition and preparing for government?
Ming Empty Vase strategy....
There is a big problem that none of the major parties are really doing the hard yards, investigating problems and thinking hard about solutions. Instead its stuff like overtime tax free, abolish stamp duty, etc type policies without being a) thought out and b) are wider joined up package.
There has also become a lot of starting with a particular idealogical policy in mind and working backwards, and that goes for think tanks as well.
The point with water is, how do you decrease costs?
The simplest way - not saying this is sensible - is that the government takes control and sets the prices at some rate and subsidises it. It then wouldn’t matter who you were actually paying the bill to. Maybe this is what Burnham means.
I think water is the odd one out compared to electricity and gas.
There is at least some semblance of competition in the electricity market. Water utilities are absolute monopolies are far as the consumer in concerned, and there's no benefit to their being privately owned.
Privatisation was a huge blunder, but undoing it (with the exception of Thames going bust) is problematic.
The point with water is, how do you decrease costs?
The simplest way - not saying this is sensible - is that the government takes control and sets the prices at some rate and subsidises it. It then wouldn’t matter who you were actually paying the bill to. Maybe this is what Burnham means.
I think water is the odd one out compared to electricity and gas.
Nearly 75% of Thames Water operating profits are used to pay interest on its debt. That's about 15% of its revenue. Remove that and you can cut costs by 15% and still make the same profit.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
...On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
A European market might help...
There's about 10 GW of interconnector across the Channel/North Sea, with about the same amount of capacity being built.
Most of it went online on the last decade or so; it's good to see that we were getting something right.
But it isn't equalising the electricity prices. Maybe that's an issue with how electricity is priced in Britain, or maybe it says something about electricity - which despite us having what we call a national grid, is a lot harder to move from one place to another than imagined.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
Isn't it also the "most expensive joule sets the price for everything" issue? As long as we are using a bit of gas, that sets the spot price. That should be starting to change meaningfully soon, because the total of non-gas sources edges ahead of demand. But we're mostly not quite there yet.
Having said that, an interesting observation on yesterday's price cap bad news:
Our analysis shows something different is happening in the wake of this energy crisis. Electricity costs have risen by only 6% in this price cap, roughly a quarter as much as gas prices have risen. This suggests that electricity prices may be beginning to decouple from gas, which is one of the key aims of the UK government’s Clean Power 2030 plan.
I guess there are a couple of issues with the British grid - it can't move electricity from where it is generated to where it is used. It's not creating the incentives to store excess renewable electricity for use when there is a renewable electricity deficit (which, thinking about, is related to the first issue too).
Given how long it takes to build a wind farm, from planning through to completing construction, it's a huge failure to not also build the grid infrastructure to be able to move that electricity to where it is needed.
Even when Britain does a thing reasonably well - and the growth in offshore wind has been impressive - it manages to mess it up in some way so that it can't reap the benefit. (Along the same lines, I was in London over the bank holiday weekend, and the Elizabeth line seems to have an awful reputation for the unreliability of its signalling among the resident Londoners I spoke to.)
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
It reminds me of the comment yesterday that London is the nicest major city in the world to live in.
Yes,that's likely true, but that's not a great recommendation.
The Thames is cleaner than the Seine or the Danube? I mean, show me a low bar.
When I was a kid growing up in East London it was well known that if you fell in the Thames you were whisked straight off to hospital where you were pumped full of drugs. Now I believe you can swim safely in it, although one would generally prefer not to.
On topic. I see Talarico is last price matched 30 for the Dem POTUS nomination and is available at 55 to back in the next POTUS market. I had £4.61 on him to be next POTUS at 110 last night.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
That's interesting. Why was he out at 110?
I had £20 on him at 90 when someone tipped him a couple of months ago. I think it is 80% a trading bet.
My skills at judging POTUS candidates are not very good ! But to evaluate Talarico and the landscape - to me he is far more like a black evangelical in the USA, or a mainstream British evangelical, than he is a Trump supporting white evangelical.
I was expecting more prominent evisceration of Trump by the black evangelical community, but it may be I have just missed it. Talarico is one person doing that job - ie standing up for what I would regard as an orthodox evangelical view, I characterise either the Hegseth emphasis (imo he like the Dutch Reformed in South Africa) or the Paula White emphasis (prosperity gospel / pastor-con-artist tradition) as what evangelicals call "another gospel" (ie, heretical).
For British evangelicals, the heroes defining the tradition are people like Wesley, Wilberforce, and Lord Shaftesbury - that is preaching / social action, opposing slavery for 50 years, and being the key Victorian "improve society" Parliamentarian. More recently it would be Rev John Stott. In the UK the "Pete Hegseth" type tradition is marginal; I can probably only point you at a single prominent church minister I would call Christian Nationalist in the mainstream (Rev Jamie Bambrick of Hope Church, Craigavon - Church of Ireland, 40k subs on Youtube). The core organisation is the Evangelical Alliance, which functions as the evangelical denomination for many independents.
That is Anglican-focussed, but the non-conformist evangelical trends in the UK are mainly parallel since say 1950.
People in the Hegseth type tradition are the theological descendants of people who defended slavery; that is why the Southern Baptists were formed, and they did not apologise officially for supporting slavery until 1995. That Christian Right tradition was recast around 'personal morality' (abortion, marriage, sexual orientation, rejection of the "social gospel") in the 1970s, and has not shifted. But things like racism, justice, money etc were written out of the programme. I'd describe that as a process of self-siloing, driven by people like Jerry Falwell. That is a severe contrast to USA black evangelicals, and to the UK.
We have seen similar controversy around the personal morality, and church organisation, but here there has never been controversy on the basics of social action. eg the Prosperity Gospel has never made many inroads here. Recently we have seen more influence dripping in via groups such as Turning Point and Alliance Defending freedom.
My impression was the prosperity gospel is quite big with some African-origin churches.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
He's planning an article when the official numbers come out, which will be interesting.
If only all official stats were dashboarded - and available as a JSON feed.
But after COVID the dashboard team was hurriedly disbanded to prevent ideas like that happening. Because officials thought that information = power and didn’t want to give it up.
Someone put it in their manifesto, please.
I think the dashboard team, who I knew some of, was disbanded because it had done its job and no longer had a purpose. It wasn’t malice. The team didn’t have a broader remit and it would’ve required active intervention and a lot of cross-departmental discussions over budgets and reporting paths to have given it a broader remit. That lack of flexibility is very much a failing of government (a result of an obsessive drive to constantly save money), but your supposition is wrong.
One of Patrick Vallance's bug bear for years has been how poor the public sector collects data and uses it. He had some big ideas in the aftermath of COVID and it seemed like a good hire by the government to get him. However, like Timpson, he has become Mr Totally Invisible. Now I am sure he is working away doing some things, but none of big bang of data driven public sector is ever getting talked about by Starmer etc, instead they have become fixated on non-compulsory id cards.
Timpson is even more, all the stuff with prison fuck ups, early release, etc etc etc and he is always hidden away from the media.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
The companies operating London buses don't compete directly either though. A passenger wanting to travel on a bus from Streatham to Oxford Street has to take the 159, regardless of which company operates it. They can't take the 432 instead. But TfL can see which companies operate their routes well, and adjust contracts to match.
A national state coordinating company for water franchises - Water for Britain, say - would be able to judge how well an operating company was performing in charge of Thames/Severn/etc Water and use that to inform decisions about awarding the franchise to operate the water system in Yorkshire.
Milburn's handling of the questions with warmth, passion, humour and an honest attempt to answer the actual question is superb.
We see this time and tmie again that unburdened from being in actual office, people can come across a lot better and are much more honest about things. I do wonder if ministers get it totally wrong were they think being straight forward, honest, admit mistakes and problems even if that gets interrupathons on R4 or social media excited about the p'ownage, is actually a better long term strategy.
The Be Kind crowd in action with some anti-semitism....
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
Brown, Blair and Milburn all bring thinking into serious issues, which raises the question what did Labour do whilst in opposition other than the ming vase ?
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
I would just add I am very familiar with NEETs with 2 of our grandchildren wanting to work but struggling to find any positions
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
It reminds me of the comment yesterday that London is the nicest major city in the world to live in.
Yes,that's likely true, but that's not a great recommendation.
The Thames is cleaner than the Seine or the Danube? I mean, show me a low bar.
When I was a kid growing up in East London it was well known that if you fell in the Thames you were whisked straight off to hospital where you were pumped full of drugs. Now I believe you can swim safely in it, although one would generally prefer not to.
30 years ago I remember drifting about at the edge of the Tyne in a sea of sanitary towels and condoms. Experienced rapid weight loss a couple of times after an accidental dip. What did the EU ever do for us? Celebrate that freedom from EU red tape and nannying regulations as you violently expel the contents of your digestive tract from both ends simultaneously.
Milburn's handling of the questions with warmth, passion, humour and an honest attempt to answer the actual question is superb.
We see this time and tmie again that unburdened from being in actual office, people can come across a lot better and are much more honest about things.
Perhaps it's more about the strict message discipline of modern party politics than being in office itself.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
He's planning an article when the official numbers come out, which will be interesting.
If only all official stats were dashboarded - and available as a JSON feed.
But after COVID the dashboard team was hurriedly disbanded to prevent ideas like that happening. Because officials thought that information = power and didn’t want to give it up.
Someone put it in their manifesto, please.
I think the dashboard team, who I knew some of, was disbanded because it had done its job and no longer had a purpose. It wasn’t malice. The team didn’t have a broader remit and it would’ve required active intervention and a lot of cross-departmental discussions over budgets and reporting paths to have given it a broader remit. That lack of flexibility is very much a failing of government (a result of an obsessive drive to constantly save money), but your supposition is wrong.
One of Patrick Vallance's bug bear for years has been how poor the public sector collects data and uses it. He had some big ideas in the aftermath of COVID and it seemed like a good hire by the government to get him. However, like Timpson, he has become Mr Totally Invisible. Now I am sure he is working away doing some things, but none of big bang of data driven public sector is ever getting talked about by Starmer etc, instead they have become fixated on non-compulsory id cards.
Timpson is even more, all the stuff with prison fuck ups, early release, etc etc etc and he is always hidden away from the media.
Wonder where Timpson is, with all the furore about the young rapists?
We've heard, understandably, a lot from the parents of the girls involved but nothing from the parents of the lads. Who must be, surely, absolutely devastated at the behaviour of their sons.
Brown, Blair and Milburn all bring thinking into serious issues, which raises the question what did Labour do whilst in opposition other than the ming vase ?
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
Blair first term and the Coalition government just had much better people overall than now.
Actually the cleanest capital city river in Europe.
We monitor the water quality on a daily basis at the club.
The local seal popped up while I was out, yesterday.
It reminds me of the comment yesterday that London is the nicest major city in the world to live in.
Yes,that's likely true, but that's not a great recommendation.
The Thames is cleaner than the Seine or the Danube? I mean, show me a low bar.
When I was a kid growing up in East London it was well known that if you fell in the Thames you were whisked straight off to hospital where you were pumped full of drugs. Now I believe you can swim safely in it, although one would generally prefer not to.
30 years ago I remember drifting about at the edge of the Tyne in a sea of sanitary towels and condoms. Experienced rapid weight loss a couple of times after an accidental dip. What did the EU ever do for us? Celebrate that freedom from EU red tape and nannying regulations as you violently expel the contents of your digestive tract from both ends simultaneously.
30 years ago - so well before we left the EU.
Heck 40 years ago I seem to remember drinking bottles water in Paris as there was no guarantee that the tap water was safe to drink
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
He's planning an article when the official numbers come out, which will be interesting.
If only all official stats were dashboarded - and available as a JSON feed.
But after COVID the dashboard team was hurriedly disbanded to prevent ideas like that happening. Because officials thought that information = power and didn’t want to give it up.
Someone put it in their manifesto, please.
I think the dashboard team, who I knew some of, was disbanded because it had done its job and no longer had a purpose. It wasn’t malice. The team didn’t have a broader remit and it would’ve required active intervention and a lot of cross-departmental discussions over budgets and reporting paths to have given it a broader remit. That lack of flexibility is very much a failing of government (a result of an obsessive drive to constantly save money), but your supposition is wrong.
One of Patrick Vallance's bug bear for years has been how poor the public sector collects data and uses it. He had some big ideas in the aftermath of COVID and it seemed like a good hire by the government to get him. However, like Timpson, he has become Mr Totally Invisible. Now I am sure he is working away doing some things, but none of big bang of data driven public sector is ever getting talked about by Starmer etc, instead they have become fixated on non-compulsory id cards.
Timpson is even more, all the stuff with prison fuck ups, early release, etc etc etc and he is always hidden away from the media.
Wonder where Timpson is, with all the furore about the young rapists?
We've heard, understandably, a lot from the parents of the girls involved but nothing from the parents of the lads. Who must be, surely, absolutely devastated at the behaviour of their sons.
Brown, Blair and Milburn all bring thinking into serious issues, which raises the question what did Labour do whilst in opposition other than the ming vase ?
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
Blair first term and the Coalition government just had much better people overall than now.
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
I would be interested to know what he means by "English Midlands"; it is not a region.
I'm assuming primarily hollowing out of Birmingham, and also the auto industry.
Though presumably Denby Pottery (500 jobs) may come within the locus.
He's planning an article when the official numbers come out, which will be interesting.
If only all official stats were dashboarded - and available as a JSON feed.
But after COVID the dashboard team was hurriedly disbanded to prevent ideas like that happening. Because officials thought that information = power and didn’t want to give it up.
Someone put it in their manifesto, please.
I think the dashboard team, who I knew some of, was disbanded because it had done its job and no longer had a purpose. It wasn’t malice. The team didn’t have a broader remit and it would’ve required active intervention and a lot of cross-departmental discussions over budgets and reporting paths to have given it a broader remit. That lack of flexibility is very much a failing of government (a result of an obsessive drive to constantly save money), but your supposition is wrong.
One of Patrick Vallance's bug bear for years has been how poor the public sector collects data and uses it. He had some big ideas in the aftermath of COVID and it seemed like a good hire by the government to get him. However, like Timpson, he has become Mr Totally Invisible. Now I am sure he is working away doing some things, but none of big bang of data driven public sector is ever getting talked about by Starmer etc, instead they have become fixated on non-compulsory id cards.
Timpson is even more, all the stuff with prison fuck ups, early release, etc etc etc and he is always hidden away from the media.
Wonder where Timpson is, with all the furore about the young rapists?
We've heard, understandably, a lot from the parents of the girls involved but nothing from the parents of the lads. Who must be, surely, absolutely devastated at the behaviour of their sons.
Its really weird as it is undeniable he cares about the issue of rehabilitation, the government made a big deal about convincing him to leave the business and join government. The Timpson family are really decent people, but he literally might well as not exist in the government.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
EDIT: It looks as if Horse and I are in agreement on this.
GP practices are the weakest link in the NHS system. Not an advert for privatisation.
'Xi Jinping is not sitting there in Beijing saying, "I wonder what that Ed Miliband thinks." In the end, of course, renewable energy is going to be the future long term, but by the way, with artificial intelligence, you may well get developments in nuclear fusion, you'll get developments in battery storage. There's a whole new world that will come down the track at us. But right now our energy costs are really high, they're imposing costs on business, we've got this artificial intelligence revolution that's going to use more and more energy. We need more electricity if we're going to go for electric cars, which again we should do, and therefore all I'm saying is the lens through which you judge policy should be cheap energy and electrification, because that's the way the rest of worlds doing it, and it's a sort of quixotic fantasy to think that because Britain's decided, with by the way under 1% of global emissions, it is going to go down a different path at huge expense, it's quixotic to think that the rest of the world is going to follow that. It's not, and it isn't.'
Milburn's handling of the questions with warmth, passion, humour and an honest attempt to answer the actual question is superb.
We see this time and tmie again that unburdened from being in actual office, people can come across a lot better and are much more honest about things. I do wonder if ministers get it totally wrong were they think being straight forward, honest, admit mistakes and problems even if that gets interrupathons on R4 or social media excited about the p'ownage, is actually a better long term strategy.
I think that's right. We seem to be stuck between three different approaches at the moment. On the one hand you have the culmination of the media strategy from the Blair years, which is now robotic and alien (I still remember Ed Miliband's repetition of his answer about some trade union dispute). And on the other hand you have the digital native approach from Badenoch or Polanski, which has some appearance of being more genuine, but it's very artificial in its way, because the pool of participants online is pretty limited and tends towards the extremes. And then you have the Farage/Trump shitpost politics, of aiming to rile up your opponents as much as possible to establish yourself as the champion of your side in a bitter divide.
Brown, Blair and Milburn all bring thinking into serious issues, which raises the question what did Labour do whilst in opposition other than the ming vase ?
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
Blair first term and the Coalition government just had much better people overall than now.
Yes and it really shows
Strange world where I find myself thinking I'd vote for Blair ahead of any of the current leaders (of any party).
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
It looks as though the MIlburn Report will be a damning indictment of failure of successive Governments who have seriously compromised the future propects of a generation.
When I was in local Government, and I confess I was only on the periphery of this, there was a requirement for every 16-18 year old certainly to be either in work, education, training or on some scheme. The Council partnered with a provider and used space at local libraries and youth centres to run the training.
It's always been the way (well, it was when I graduated back in the late Permian) employers are reluctant to take on staff, however well qualified, without experience and you can't get that experience without a job. The public sector did its bit - we took on trainees in a number of the professions and supported them through their qualifications in the sure knowledge once they got their accreditation, they would be off to a much better paid job in the private sector.
There was of course a time when every graduate became a barista but I suspect that's not the case. I worked in betting shops marking the board as was the fashion in the Triassic.
There's a lot of talk about apprenticeships and that has to be the way to go for those less academically gifted but that needs far more from all sectors of industry than seems to be about currently.
The cost of everything, the value of nothing.
Boris wave
Park a problem that had built up before Covid and which Boris palpably ignilored after it.
Regards
You can do apprenticeships in various professions, you always could, engineering via CAD trainee to HND or degree, legal exec to solicitor, accountancy etc, whether the "new" apprenticeships have added anything
Pretty scary numbers if the official figures in a month's time confirm this:
It's very preliminary data, but I think that the region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England...
..The erosion of the economy of the English Midlands from being a net contributor to the national finances in 2000 to now running a bigger deficit than Greece at the deepest point of its financial crisis is an economic catastrophe and a deep threat to our country's survival. https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2059748175947194392
During 2017 one friend of mine, then the organist at Cannock, spoke of his great frustration that politicians talked all about the financial markets in London and not one of them understood that manufacturing was the backbone of the economy of the Midlands.
He was right then and he's right now, but it's probably too late to do much about it.
I used to work at the lighting factory in Cannock. Not there anymore.
Used to employ hundreds.
Manufacturing has been in decline for many years and people in power happy for it to be. Same with hospitality
People in manufacturing say it’s ’leccy prices that have been killing them, the last few years.
Consumers have been protected,
Among other things, it blocks productivity improvement - install machinery, then pay a fortune to run it.
Well why would you even bother ?
Just thrash your existing assets.
High energy pricing certainly is a problem. Less so for a screwdriver facility than a primary manufacturer like a trade moulder or casting company.
Who would set up a manufacturing company in the UK that was energy intensive now unless you’re going to get a lot of cash from HMG.
But there have been other problems too. Govt policy has not been keen to keep key product or commodity production in this country.
My last company was fortunate that it was able to negotiate a corporate deal for electricity. It was still a big chunk of spend. They, foolishly, invested in new end capping machines which use a fair bit of electricity in the process as it’s hot plate welding. All to grow the Business.
The growth never came as the sale price was too high so they had part utilised assets. Cut the price and you’re on the corporate naughty step for too low a margin.
If the new machinery was more energy efficient it could be worth it perhaps. The consumer support was politically expedient stupidity, it did nothing to promote energy efficiency that would have had longterm benefits, just subsidised demand.
We already spend enormous amounts on "apprenticeships" though, do we not?
Now renamed to something else, but raising £4.4 billion per annum:
The Growth and Skills Levy (formerly the Apprenticeship Levy) is expected to raise approximately £4.4 billion for the current financial year. This funding is primarily generated by UK employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million, who contribute 0.5% of their payroll into the scheme. (Google AI answring the question.)
I'm not close enough to it to know whether it is effective, or whether employers have found ways of diverting the money into something else (aiui the mechanism is quite circular).
On electricity prices, I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the market - somehow. We need to stop teh price of cheap renewables being determined by the price of expensive, volatile, gas. SKS has failed to do it, for reasons I cannot fathom.
A mechanism is required for heavy users to avoid the slings and arrows over the long term, and another to let the lower prices of renewables be widely apparent.
There are things we can point to - the freeze on any new rounds of wind projects from 2010 to 2020 being one, but SKS has metaphorically stood in the Farage Firing Range and machine-gunned himself in the head, with Farage needing to do nothing.
Sorry, but once again, this has been comprehensively debunked, so perhaps we can stop with it. Renewables are not cheaper. Nor are they getting cheaper - the strike price on new wind has afaik gone UP because nobody was interested in bidding for the contracts.
Brown, Blair and Milburn all bring thinking into serious issues, which raises the question what did Labour do whilst in opposition other than the ming vase ?
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
Blair first term and the Coalition government just had much better people overall than now.
Yes and it really shows
Strange world where I find myself thinking I'd vote for Blair ahead of any of the current leaders (of any party).
Blair is only 73. In many previous era's he would be normal aged as PM.
'Xi Jinping is not sitting there in Beijing saying, "I wonder what that Ed Miliband thinks." In the end, of course, renewable energy is going to be the future long term, but by the way, with artificial intelligence, you may well get developments in nuclear fusion, you'll get developments in battery storage. There's a whole new world that will come down the track at us. But right now our energy costs are really high, they're imposing costs on business, we've got this artificial intelligence revolution that's going to use more and more energy. We need more electricity if we're going to go for electric cars, which again we should do, and therefore all I'm saying is the lens through which you judge policy should be cheap energy and electrification, because that's the way the rest of worlds doing it, and it's a sort of quixotic fantasy to think that because Britain's decided, with by the way under 1% of global emissions, it is going to go down a different path at huge expense, it's quixotic to think that the rest of the world is going to follow that. It's not, and it isn't.'
Meanwhile China is following Britain's lead and building humongous quantities of renewable electricity generating capacity.
Whoever Xi Jinping is listening to when he decides energy policy, it certainly isn't Blair.
The Be Kind crowd in action with some anti-semitism....
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
'Xi Jinping is not sitting there in Beijing saying, "I wonder what that Ed Miliband thinks." In the end, of course, renewable energy is going to be the future long term, but by the way, with artificial intelligence, you may well get developments in nuclear fusion, you'll get developments in battery storage. There's a whole new world that will come down the track at us. But right now our energy costs are really high, they're imposing costs on business, we've got this artificial intelligence revolution that's going to use more and more energy. We need more electricity if we're going to go for electric cars, which again we should do, and therefore all I'm saying is the lens through which you judge policy should be cheap energy and electrification, because that's the way the rest of worlds doing it, and it's a sort of quixotic fantasy to think that because Britain's decided, with by the way under 1% of global emissions, it is going to go down a different path at huge expense, it's quixotic to think that the rest of the world is going to follow that. It's not, and it isn't.'
Meanwhile China is following Britain's lead and building humongous quantities of renewable electricity generating capacity.
Whoever Xi Jinping is listening to when he decides energy policy, it certainly isn't Blair.
The difference is that reducing carbon emissions is a side effect, not the objective. They’re not imposing energy austerity on the population.
The Be Kind crowd in action with some anti-semitism....
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
The Be Kind crowd in action with some anti-semitism....
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
The Be Kind crowd in action with some anti-semitism....
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
Comments
Consider this synthetic example:
EM = 28/200 (14%), WM = 54/300 (18%), combined = 82/500 (16.4%)
So I don't see how he gets EM+WM greater than Wales, NI and NE. Of course if his graphic is for last year's data not this year's, then I'm talking bollocks, but there y'go.
I can't tell any more.
I only checked him out for the first time last night. A great speaker. Charismatic, principled, tolerant, inclusive. I like him a lot! Anyone give him a realistic chance?
“The plan will come”.
I won’t be lied to twice.
And I doubt that domestic discharges have massively improved over the last couple of decades.
Assuming that's anywhere near correct, it would mean some water courses improving, and some not.
And if he does win the Senate seat, the Dems will want to nail him to it for the next six years.
This is the clear direction (once he has won the by election but not before)
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour)
* Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour)
* Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing)
* Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
So we have water companies being able do their sewerage overflows hundreds or thousands of times, then being left to self-document the problems, and miraculously the severities of any problems get marked down to "not important enough to require a real intervention".
There is also a weird system where they plea bargain non-prosecution in exchange for a small (to them) donation to a collaborating environmental charity. So they are allowed literally to treat pollution incidents as a minor business overhead.
I think regulatory capture has turned out to be one of the most severe problems of privatisation of services. Essentially once the service has been privatised, the regulator is privatised as well. Unfortunately that takes away perhaps the single most important factor that is required for privatisation to be successful.
IMO the ideological failure is that the post-privatisation generation of politicians who needed to keep it on the rails just do not believe in any real role for public authorities. So what happens is that as soon as something is effective, lobbyists get to work, and then unprincipled or spineless politicians surrender and gut whatever it was that was effective.
The outcome will be that privatisation is unsustainable after the model has been broken.
Example: https://channel4news.substack.com/p/exclusive-how-polluting-water-companies
Gutting the public sector is something we see everywhere - local authorities and trading standards being 2 examples. But this is a very particular example.
The "region of the UK with the highest fiscal deficit as % of GVA has moved for the first time I've ever known it, to be in England..." is the NE.
In 2000 WM and EM combined ran a small deficit, perhaps better than the whole UK deficit. Now they are worse.
So he is talking about the NE in the first, and WM/EM in the 2nd.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/andy-burnham-putting-everything-line-33989167
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
We used to get a distinct "hint" of something in the air when the wind was in the south east but it seems much less now.
I'm sure Mr Bazalgette would be impressed...
Although when I last mentioned him some PBers replied that he has already ruled himself out of POTUS 2028.
We will see.
I don't think it particularly needs nationalising though. I'd add it to the list of things that are reasonably competitive/cheap in the UK compared to elsewhere.
Big renewables energy money good.
Probably less harmful to the future of the world, and probably harder to concentrate so much power in a few hands, so less bad consequences, but still bad. And the "making a noise about X to serve your hidden interests in Y" is exactly as bad.
Interesting, though. Partly to speculate what the partisan consequences are, but mostly because of what it says about the changing balance of power and money.
It does show the flaws in the US "free speech if you have enough money to pay for it" model, though.
Burnham doesn’t seem to have a plan. Better comms will start him off well but it will only take him so far. Get Blair back in.
1) What does it say that the incoming government didn't know in July 2024?
2) While we are where we are, if there was something the Labour party needed to know about this as it made detailed plans for government, wasn't 2023/4 the time to be completing it?
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
The "costs involved" are highly contentious and are being heavily promoted by investors in Thames Water.
If Thames Water does not secure long-term funding, it is projected to completely run out of money and face bankruptcy as soon as September 2026.
If it goes bankrupt, its debtors lose their money and shareholders get the value of its assets less its liabilities which may be net zero (or even negative).
Burnham will be very cynical about the lobbying by Thames Water and potential investors in Thames Water.
He will want to thoroughly investigate the costs, but I don't think he will have "rowed back" on this at this stage. But I may be wrong. If you the link ....
... but not a link to a Thames Water prospectus please.
In London it mostly works very well, I’d be happy seeing it elsewhere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ6N-sb7SVQ
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well.
If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working.
It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
EDIT: It looks as if Horse and I are in agreement on this.
It always seemed odd that the full pleasure (incentives) of privatisation had to hit places other than London.
Although there are complications (heavy and light crude, for example) there is a global market in oil, and you can talk not entirely inaccurately about a global oil price (and a global gas price, and a global coal price). Electricity isn't the same. As the economy moves from fossil fuels to be electrified this difference is going to have increasing importance. We have to get it right - look at Italy's high electricity prices (which are due to an over-reliance on gas) and consider what the implications are of having more expensive energy. Britain (and Ireland) have to secure their own supplies of cheap electricity.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The simplest way - not saying this is sensible - is that the government takes control and sets the prices at some rate and subsidises it. It then wouldn’t matter who you were actually paying the bill to. Maybe this is what Burnham means.
I think water is the odd one out compared to electricity and gas.
The contrast with a Starmer event is staggering.
Having said that, an interesting observation on yesterday's price cap bad news:
Our analysis shows something different is happening in the wake of this energy crisis. Electricity costs have risen by only 6% in this price cap, roughly a quarter as much as gas prices have risen. This suggests that electricity prices may be beginning to decouple from gas, which is one of the key aims of the UK government’s Clean Power 2030 plan.
https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/july-energy-price-cap-iran-crisis-bills-blog/
I posted it because it's interesting, not because I'm a fan (and I doubt the MAGA replacement is any better than the appalling Chip Roy), even if the renewables cause is one I strongly support.
It's a straw in the wind for the future of GOP energy policy.
I had £20 on him at 90 when someone tipped him a couple of months ago. I think it is 80% a trading bet.
My skills at judging POTUS candidates are not very good ! But to evaluate Talarico and the landscape - to me he is far more like a black evangelical in the USA, or a mainstream British evangelical, than he is a Trump supporting white evangelical.
I was expecting more prominent evisceration of Trump by the black evangelical community, but it may be I have just missed it. Talarico is one person doing that job - ie standing up for what I would regard as an orthodox evangelical view, I characterise either the Hegseth emphasis (imo he like the Dutch Reformed in South Africa) or the Paula White emphasis (prosperity gospel / pastor-con-artist tradition) as what evangelicals call "another gospel" (ie, heretical).
For British evangelicals, the heroes defining the tradition are people like Wesley, Wilberforce, and Lord Shaftesbury - that is preaching / social action, opposing slavery for 50 years, and being the key Victorian "improve society" Parliamentarian. More recently it would be Rev John Stott. In the UK the "Pete Hegseth" type tradition is marginal; I can probably only point you at a single prominent church minister I would call Christian Nationalist in the mainstream (Rev Jamie Bambrick of Hope Church, Craigavon - Church of Ireland, 40k subs on Youtube). The core organisation is the Evangelical Alliance, which functions as the evangelical denomination for many independents.
That is Anglican-focussed, but the non-conformist evangelical trends in the UK are mainly parallel since say 1950.
People in the Hegseth type tradition are the theological descendants of people who defended slavery; that is why the Southern Baptists were formed, and they did not apologise officially for supporting slavery until 1995. That Christian Right tradition was recast around 'personal morality' (abortion, marriage, sexual orientation, rejection of the "social gospel") in the 1970s, and has not shifted. But things like racism, justice, money etc were written out of the programme. I'd describe that as a process of self-siloing, driven by people like Jerry Falwell. That is a severe contrast to USA black evangelicals, and to the UK.
We have seen similar controversy around the personal morality, and church organisation, but here there has never been controversy on the basics of social action. eg the Prosperity Gospel has never made many inroads here. Recently we have seen more influence dripping in via groups such as Turning Point and Alliance Defending freedom.
But the operations of a water company don't all have to be done by a single company.
Infrastructure repairs and maintenance could be done by one specialist company after a competitive tender with performance metrics.
Customer service and charging by another. Etc. All coordinated by Great British Water, a slim strategic company, publicly owned, but with salaries and bonuses competitive with the private sector to attract the best talent.
In the NHS, the new NHCs (Neighbourhood Health Centres) which combine NHS employed GPs, community nursing, mental health specialists, social care, etc, will provide competition (and potentially eventually replace) the traditional GP practice which are increasingly being taken over by private equity.
Alan Milburn.
As someone on here asked earlier - why on earth didn't they do this report while in opposition and preparing for government?
MingEmpty Vase strategy....There is a big problem that none of the major parties are really doing the hard yards, investigating problems and thinking hard about solutions. Instead its stuff like overtime tax free, abolish stamp duty, etc type policies without being a) thought out and b) are wider joined up package.
There has also become a lot of starting with a particular idealogical policy in mind and working backwards, and that goes for think tanks as well.
Privatisation was a huge blunder, but undoing it (with the exception of Thames going bust) is problematic.
That's about 15% of its revenue.
Remove that and you can cut costs by 15% and still make the same profit.
Given how long it takes to build a wind farm, from planning through to completing construction, it's a huge failure to not also build the grid infrastructure to be able to move that electricity to where it is needed.
Even when Britain does a thing reasonably well - and the growth in offshore wind has been impressive - it manages to mess it up in some way so that it can't reap the benefit. (Along the same lines, I was in London over the bank holiday weekend, and the Elizabeth line seems to have an awful reputation for the unreliability of its signalling among the resident Londoners I spoke to.)
Timpson is even more, all the stuff with prison fuck ups, early release, etc etc etc and he is always hidden away from the media.
But they'll be grown up by now.
A national state coordinating company for water franchises - Water for Britain, say - would be able to judge how well an operating company was performing in charge of Thames/Severn/etc Water and use that to inform decisions about awarding the franchise to operate the water system in Yorkshire.
Milburn's handling of the questions with warmth, passion, humour and an honest attempt to answer the actual question is superb.
Dame Helen Mirren has been harassed in the street by a pro-Palestine activist calling her an “evil Zionist b----”.
Footage on social media shows the Oscar-winning actress, 80, being accosted as she walked along the street in London with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. In the video, Dame Helen can be seen initially greeting the man with a smile and asking if he is OK as he approaches the couple while filming.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/28/helen-mirren-called-evil-zionist-pro-palestine-activist/
All three have important contributions but it looks like Burnham, Streeting and others want to put their fingers in the ears and follow more left policies
Maybe Burnham will moderate to the centre but his problem is his left dominated mps and his promise to the WASPI women which is certainly unaffordable even if there is a case
I would just add I am very familiar with NEETs with 2 of our grandchildren wanting to work but struggling to find any positions
What did the EU ever do for us?
Celebrate that freedom from EU red tape and nannying regulations as you violently expel the contents of your digestive tract from both ends simultaneously.
We've heard, understandably, a lot from the parents of the girls involved but nothing from the parents of the lads. Who must be, surely, absolutely devastated at the behaviour of their sons.
Heck 40 years ago I seem to remember drinking bottles water in Paris as there was no guarantee that the tap water was safe to drink
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/2059638352169586866
'Xi Jinping is not sitting there in Beijing saying, "I wonder what that Ed Miliband thinks." In the end, of course, renewable energy is going to be the future long term, but by the way, with artificial intelligence, you may well get developments in nuclear fusion, you'll get developments in battery storage. There's a whole new world that will come down the track at us. But right now our energy costs are really high, they're imposing costs on business, we've got this artificial intelligence revolution that's going to use more and more energy. We need more electricity if we're going to go for electric cars, which again we should do, and therefore all I'm saying is the lens through which you judge policy should be cheap energy and electrification, because that's the way the rest of worlds doing it, and it's a sort of quixotic fantasy to think that because Britain's decided, with by the way under 1% of global emissions, it is going to go down a different path at huge expense, it's quixotic to think that the rest of the world is going to follow that. It's not, and it isn't.'
Whoever Xi Jinping is listening to when he decides energy policy, it certainly isn't Blair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjSc--QjkZA