Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – People who lived through the blackouts and economic chaos of the 1970s must be experiencing a strong sense of deja-vu, with Boris Johnson starring as the spiritual successor of the weak, ineffectual Conservative leader Edward Heath.
UK industry could face shutdowns as wholesale gas price hits record high
Steel, chemicals and fertiliser industries warn of difficult winter unless government takes emergency action
Rob Davies and Joanna Partridge
Thu 7 Oct 2021 05.00 AEDTWholesale gas prices hit new all-time highs on Wednesday, prompting warnings that factories could be forced to shut down over winter or switch to more polluting fuels just as the UK hosts the Cop26 climate conference next month.
The crisis has already forced a wave of collapses among energy suppliers that has led to warnings of “desperate choices” for households likely to face higher bills as a result.
As power-hungry sectors such as steel, glass and chemicals fight their own battle with soaring gas and electricity costs, they warned of further shocks to both industry and consumers, including higher prices of goods and factories being forced to temporarily close.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/06/uk-industry-could-face-shutdowns-as-wholesale-gas-price-hits-record-high
Why do I think Heath is comparable to Boris Johnson? Because just like Heath, Boris Johnson’s ineptitude could be about to plunge Britain into a new era of darkness, rolling power cuts and industrial stoppages.
When the lights DID go out: Meals by candlelight and lamp-lit shopping… how miners strikes and sky-high inflation saw 1970s Britain plunged into darkness with a three-day working week
- From 1972, Prime Minister Edward Heath was locked in political battle with National Union of Mineworkers
- A six-week strike that year led to mass blackouts around the country and thousands of lay-offs
- Heath then imposed a three-day week in 1973 as continued coal shortages threatened electricity supply
- TV companies including the BBC and ITV had to stop broadcasting at 10.30pm each night
- Ordinary Britons were ordered to limit heating to one room and to keep non-essential lights switched off
- Do YOU remember the crisis? Send recollections and pictures to harry.s.howard@mailonline.co.uk
By HARRY HOWARD, HISTORY CORRESPONDENT FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 21:21 AEDT, 21 September 2021 | UPDATED: 23:55 AEDT, 21 September 2021
As Britain grapples with soaring gas and electricity prices and an energy supply crisis, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has been forced to say there is ‘no question of the lights going out’.
But, when the country was gripped by strikes by coal workers in the 1970s, the lights really did go out.
From 1972, the then Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath became locked in political battle with the immensely powerful and militant National Union of Mineworkers.
Unlike today, most of Britain’s electricity came from coal, and so crisis struck when miners voted to strike over wages for six weeks between January and February 1972.
Miners picketed power stations in an effort to restrict coal supply, leading to mass blackouts around the country and businesses being forced to close.
Whilst that strike came to an end with the Government’s capitulation and a pay rise for miners, the following year saw further unrest when ministers capped public sector wages amid an inflation crisis – as the NUM demanded a further pay hike of 35 per cent.
Although another strike was initially avoided, miners did vote to ban overtime, leading to the halving of coal production and the imposition by Heath of a three-day week in December 1973, with the aim of conserving coal stocks and keeping all essential lights on.
Nearly all businesses had to limit their electricity use to three days a week and were banned from operating for long hours on those days.
…
The British government claims there is no question of the lights going out – but I’m not sure I believe them. In any case, the crazy price spikes on offer could achieve the same effect as an actual shutdown, by making power utterly unaffordable.
At least Heath had the excuse of not being the primary cause of his disaster. Heath’s weakness might have made his administration the plaything of militant unions, but he didn’t personally order power generators to be shut down.
Boris Johnson, by contrast, in my opinion is entirely responsible for Britain’s current energy market chaos. Boris could have shored up Britain’s energy security, and removed obstacles to shale, to eliminate dependence on Russian gas and French electricity, he could have re-opened coal mines or secured sufficient supplies to buffer Britain against supply shocks. All this could have happened right from the start of his administration.
But in his arrogance, in my opinion BoJo did the opposite – he ignored warnings, and powered full steam ahead with his disastrous green energy plan, deliberately killing off investment in coal and other reliable forms of energy, and creating the conditions which led to Britain’s current calamitous shortages and energy market instability. Just when Britain was finally showing signs of pulling out of BoJo’s Covid lockdown recession.
In the 1970s legendary Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher challenged and defeated Heath as leader of the Conservatives, soared to victory, and instituted economic reforms which revived Britain’s moribund economy. But Thatcher was already a prominent member of Heath’s cabinet. Of course, no leader is perfect, even good leaders. Margaret Thatcher promoted global warming alarm to publicly justify her campaign to crush militant coal unions, and restore stability to Britain’s energy supplies.
Which British cabinet member today will step into Thatcher’s shoes and save Britain? Michael Gove? Alok Sharma? Maybe a member of the shadow cabinet? Keir Starmer or Ed Miliband?
Perhaps there is a new Thatcher in waiting, hiding their talent behind a convincing facade of mediocrity and incompetence. But if there is, I don’t know them.
Since we agree Thachter helped to start the coal bad narrative, why not blame her for the current insanity?
Thatcher helped start it, a fact I acknowledged. But as Lord Monckton pointed out, when she realised what a monster she created, Thatcher tried to undo the damage. Even if this wasn’t the case, Thatcher did a great deal of good in other respects. I don’t see everything through a global warming lens.
Everyone forgotten Thatcher’s Big Bang financial deregulation, known in France as the Big Band? And her Mad Cow disease? What is worrying is just this week they seem to allow livestock food again with carcass remains again…
True not everything is climate…
Thatcher is Marmite. For me her tenure, and John Major’s, meant three redundancies pay cuts and high, then even higher interest rates. At one time I cursed General Galtieri most days while working long hours to survive as he turned her from the most unpopular PM to the 3x election winner and exported UK industry to the Far East. Before the Falklands her economic policies were highly unpopular. I still think she should have resigned over the Falklands as it was her defence cuts that gave the Argentinian Junta the idea we weren’t interested in keeping overseas territories.
It’s ironic that a very poor journalist became PM on the back of a three word slogan is now following policies the opposite to Thatcher, high wages and who cares about inflation.
In their own unique ways both harming the poorer workers of the UK.
Indeed it was quite likely that Galtieri did manage to turn the tide in the Judeo-Masonic UK, 1983 general election via “The Falklands Factor”.
The principle of at least “two birds with one stone” was at play, as ever, with the submarine torpedoing of the Argentine warship, the General Belgrano on May 2, 1982 which just happened to the The Father of Modern Zionsim – Theodor Herzl’s 122 nd birthday. Revenge for the WW2 Nazi ratrunners to the Argentine …
I will never forget having to do my homework by candlelight in 1972. There were no changes in the heating arrangements in our house because we did not have a gas boiler nor electric heaters, but relied on the fantastic coal fire downstairs and parafiin upstairs. In the winter we used to break icicles off from the inside of our bedroom windows … those were the days …
MG
Thatcher fixed the problems created by the Labour movement in the 60s and 70s. Nothing more, nothing less. My dad lost two jobs in the 70s because of the unions. I came home from school with no food in the house.
Thatcher fixed the problems in the UK of creeping socialism and inefficient Nationalised industries run by Unions, not by businessmen.
No one in a Union ever paid with his job for a failed business, the Taxpayer did.
The 50’s/60’s saw the introduction of the 98% supertax which witnessed the 70’s brain drain. Sensible, wealthy businessmen fleeing to America (amongst others) and taking their employment (as opposed to their employees) with them.
Thatcher was the most courageous PM the UK ever had. She alone stood firm to transform the country from the ‘Poor Man of Europe’ to the service industry powerhouse we moved on to be.
Thatcher alone knew that competing for industry against the far and middle east meant paying far and middle eastern wages.
She alone recognised the single most important element of a small, well educated nation was that at the top of the industrial and economic tree is always money. Control that and you control everything, so she unleashed the awesome power of the City of London on the world, wholesale.
She understood the key to the continuation of this was education. She encouraged Grammar Schools which assessed students purely on their academic performance, giving those from the most deprived regions the opportunity to excel.
For all Blairs mantra was “Education, Education, Education” he sought to devalue education by destroying the Grammar School system, which sought to identify and lift individuals, to a single school system of an ill named ‘Comprehensive education system’ which sought to drag the talented down to the level of mediocrity.
She made mistakes, of course she did. Her Poll Tax proposal and experimentation in Scotland was a disaster, but her battle against the Mining Unions, not the Miners themselves, was an exercise in Churchillian strategy.
The socialist labour party had closed more mines than she ever did, but because she was a ‘despised Tory’, as Trump was ‘despised GOP’ the left mobilised and resorted to their usual street violence and subversive propaganda.
We went from the laughing stock of the world over our cuisine into a country that even France was envious of. The variety and quality of food has been transformational and indicative of the outward looking nature of the Nation. The Miners were encouraged to revolt, but were met with tactical nous, and the thin blue line the media painted as politically complicit and evil. Sound familiar?
She prevailed, and not a soldier involved.
The UK would now be a failed socialist state were it not for Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher didn’t think coal was bad. She thought the coal miners union, headed by the odious Scargill, was bad for the country
And she was right
Correct. It wasn’t coal itself, it was the dependence on an uneconomic politicised and nationalised industry.
Climate change was a handy narrative to put a moral gloss on closures.
Unfortunately the high interest rates of that period scuppered capital intensive nuclear, while North Sea Gas was a far cheaper and apolitical alternative.
It is a little known fact that Labour under Wilson closed more coal mines than the Tories under Thatcher
MG
Incorrect. Labour under Wilson had more mines close than under Thatcher. But that is the nature of extractive industries. The amount of coal being produced did not decline, nor the the number of people employed in the industry.
Union bashers often put the latter point as a sign of the nation’s inefficiency at the time.
When the country was bankrupt, apart from finance in London and North Sea Oil, she finally realised that destroying jobs had bad effects. So she needed energy again and went for…
Nuclear.
Chernobyl immediately followed so she had to find a reason why coal was as bad as that. Hence the AGW scam began.
Monckton claims she regretted that. But you would be hard-pressed to find any report of her saying so. Or of her regretting the decline of the North and the3 million unemployed her policies caused.
The coal mine closure figures speak for themseleves M Courtney, no matter how you might try to spin them.
More pits closed under Wilson than Thatcher. Fact.
MG
See my comment below with supporting evidence.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/07/guardian-uk-industry-facing-climate-policy-winter-shutdown/#comment-3362418
What is it that they call a person who heads a political grouping that just happened to be a trade union, that tries to bring down a democratically elected government, by foul means by inflicting pain upon the people, just because they want a Socialist dystopia, a place where democracy doesn’t exist???
Do grow up.
Because she recanted?
She realized it was a climate scam near the end.
We all make mistakes. The difference is being able to admit them, correct them, and move on. Honest intellectuals admit mistakes and correct. Socialists can’t do that. They always blame someone else and then double down on the failed policy.
Was it a mistake to invite Pinochet to tea at Downing Street, you know that Chicago Boy dictator of Chile, that paragon of free markets?
Pinochet’s involvement with BAE and Thatcher’s Al Yamamah (oil for arms – The Dove) deal with Saudia’s Bandar, is the key to 9/11 – that deal’s slush fund.
Pinochet crushed the communists. Gotta give him that. Sometimes it takes bad people to crush other bad people.
Yes it was a mishtoik to invite Pinochet to tea. In the same way that it is a mishteak to deliberately ignore Stalin’s murdered millions in preference for the other chap …
I prefer Tel Aviv, Washington and London being the prime suspects for 9/11.
MG
Are you sure it’s not spelled Goebbels?
Your logic suggests we should actually be blaming Harold Wilson who shutdown more coal mines than Thatcher ever did.
He did. Wilson closed more coal mines than Thatcher. Fact.
Here is the amount of coal mined. Spot the drop of a third in the early 80s.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/370721/deep-and-surface-mining-coal-production-in-the-united-kingdom/
You should not be confused by centralisation. As technology progressed mines could become larger and cachement areas for workers wider. Fewer heads and support infrastructure does not mean less coal or less underground workers.
There is a difference between a developing industry and a dying industry. One increases the productivity of a nation. We now have a problem.
Yet you simultaneously argue that the closing of mines ( under socialist govs ) and the drop in coal output is “the nature of extraction industries”.
When it drops in the 80’s under Thatcher, your argument changes.
Why is that ?
MG
Because one led to efficiencies and the other led to destruction.
Look at the graph.
Output drops by a third in the early 80s.
You are counting pitheads and front door signs. What matters is the coal produced.
“Output drops by a third in the early 80s.”
I believe your statistics are skewed by the miners strike.
After the strike ended production returned to over 100 million tons per year right into the 90’s.
The Bliar/Brown era of New Labour took production down from 53.5 million to 20.2 million tons, I’d call that more than half, or a coup de grâce.
“Since we agree Thachter helped to start the coal bad narrative, why not blame her for the current insanity?”
…….. because the failures were mostly related to others not being able to implement her nuclear power vision.
If you feel the need to blame a Margaret, there’s a far better candidate in Margaret Mead and the vile spawn she created:
https://21sci-tech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
Ah good old Margaret Mead, the “Pacific islanders free sex liar” and sexual revolution propagandist, married to Gregory Bateson – dosed by Abramson with CIA / MK-ULTRA LSD …
Wonderful creatures …
MG
Just when you think you had it all worked out …
The kabbalistic launch of MK-ULTRA : The CIA and Karl Marx :
https://www.whataboutthewhen.com/mkultra_began_karl_marx_died.html
MG
It’s cheaper to buy coal from Australia than mine it in the UK. It’s why the UK coal industry peaked in 1913 as far as tonnes produced are concerned. It was downhill all the way from that date.
Open-cast mining is much cheaper than the deep mines the UK had and so once shipping costs became low enough it was going to be a supply of cheaper coal.
The focus is always on the communist-led miners union but there was also the rail unions who would join in to stop the transport of mined coal to power stations. The ‘dash for gas’ side-lined these problem unions.
If memory serves, Australian coal mines were vast open-cast mines, whereas British coal mines were not, limited to underground access only through narrow passages & shafts to access the coal seams, the former being a very cheap alternative to deep underground options!!!
A large slow moving cloud filled high pressure system is settling over the uk for the next week or so.
Solar and wind energy will be negligible.
Failure to plan backup facilities has been gross negligence and has been perpetrated by leftist bedwetters some of whom are still in the Tory party and the PM is married to one.
Yup. Looks like gas is up from 15GW peak to 20GW peak. France also in low wind trouble as nor exporting much, but we are pulling in a gigawatt each from Belgium and Holland, and 0.7GW from Norway.
Coal at half a gigawatt and the OCGT fleet is even in operation…
And it’s not even winter yet ( currently 14°C ) what’s it going to be like at 4°C ??
Absolutely – it is obvious from afar that Carrie is the real problem. I bet Denis did not try very hard to change Margaret Thatcher’s mind on policy.
If you think the PM is entirely responsible, you’re, quite frankly, nuts. He’s only been in power a couple of years and it may have escaped your notice that this weak in effectual fool as you call him, pushed through Brexit against all the odds. It must so escaped your notice that ever since then that there has been a little bug going around that has occupied most of the attention of moat of the world
A very poor article
Heath wasn’t entirely responsible for the 1970s either. But Thatcher proved that if Heath was a better leader, he could have fixed the problems. History will judge Boris in a similar light.
As for Brexit, a lot of commenters are suggesting the current trade and partnership agreement is “Brexit in name only“.
If Boris was displaying any suggestion he had learned by his horrendous mistakes, I would have been a little nicer. But if anything he seems to be doubling down on the disastrous renewable energy policies which got Britain into this mess.
The current deal was at least in part ameliorated from Mays ‘turd’ by Frost and Cummings. It is not cast in concrete, and it is unilaterally revokable by either party.
What it takes is the political will to do that. Ther are signs that there isn’t, and into that power vaccum Princess NutNutz has poured her LBGT ECO agenda.
I think the princess NutzNutz issue is a clever deflection, possibly orchestrated by Boris himself. The good king distracted by evil advisors is an old trope, and rarely the truth.
I tend to believe what Cummings said. That a meeting would be held, decisions made, but once Boris got home, emails and whatsapp messages would come out reversing the policy.
Cummings may have been a SOB but he was our SOB.
Since his demise Boris has been drifting rudderless. And Carrie has stepped into the gap – what was she doing, making political speeches about party policy at the tory conference?
She is virtually telling the public that she is in charge of policy, not Boris.
No, she is not a convenient excuse. She is a clear and present danger, and if she is running the country, Boris has to go.
Boris was always rudderless in government. Cummings calls him “the shopping trolley”.
He’s famous for agreeing with the last person he spoke to.
It’s why it’s better the lights go out this winter rather than the UK scraping by and blustering on.
But most good kings do not sleep with their evil advisors!
Oh c’mon – you’ve got to hand it to Carrie for her sheer commitment and literal thinking. She’s a professional lobbyist for a Green activist and lobbying company – her job would be to lobby parties, get close to politicians and get their support for a Green agenda. You can hardly blame the woman for giving 100% on this and really going above and beyond her job – she literally got into bed with the Tories. sarc
Thatcher had the advantage of living through the miners’ strike of the 1970s. When she became PM she prepared for the next miners’ strike by building up stocks of coal at power stations.
“A lot of commenters” (whatever happened to ‘commentators?)? I followed the link to the Daily Express article and it mentioned criticism from precisely ONE person. I don’t know where ‘a lot of commenters’ comes from.
In addition, that Daily Express article was dated May 2, 2021. Hardly ‘current’. Since May a lot has happened.
Yes, including this:
The UK is on the cusp of victory in the Sausage War with the EU, after Brussels finally waved the white flag over allowing British bangers to be sold in Northern Ireland at the end of the grace period. Finally, the wurst is truly behind us.
The European Commission announced today that it would introduce a “sausage clause” for the sake of peace, allowing certain “national identity goods” to continue entering Northern Ireland. Reflecting on the day’s great victory, David Davis said:
https://order-order.com/2021/10/08/eu-surrenders-over-sausage-war-in-northern-ireland/
Ahh, good old fat filled offal tubes.
And people claim “Yes Minister” wasn’t a documentary series.
BoJo is a clown and has always been a clown, who flip flops on his view depending on which way the wind is blowing.
The only difference between then and now is he’s the UK’s PM
And that Heath was a nasty Paedo, who got the UK (finally) into the EEC.
He kicked the bucket before he could be taken to the courts, just like another (BBC and MM) well protected nasty called Savile!
Bojo is just another nasty liar, who got the UK “sort of” back out of what evolved from the EEC into a socialist camp bent on redistributing cash from “haves” to “have nots” or too lazy to work for it.
The contrast is really small.
The continuity of flagrant gravy trains, and abuse of power is the most striking, while the lunatics are now out of the asylum running the place.
You promulgate a nasty lie.
One that has been found to be completely false and, I believe, the perpetrator of said lie is serving a prison sentence for starting it.
And Cyril Smith?
There’s no smoke without fire.
The house of commons is as full of nasties, has always been, and as is as evil as the paedos of the catholic church.
In fact there’s a lot in common between the confessionals, the bent cops, the royalty, the catholics and the British penchant for being totally two faced…
What a load of rubbish, the EEC..””.evolved from the EEC into a socialist camp bent on redistributing cash from “haves” to “have nots”””
That’s absolutely reversed. What about the CAP? Taking tax money from all the poor people of Europe and giving it to already rich people because they worked hard, created jobs, and innovated….no. because they owned land.
The EU became an unelected government of the rich. Not left, right, not facist or socialist, a dictatorship. Their most stupid move was to try to create a military. That has done for them, thank God.
from Jay Willis
“What a load of rubbish, the EEC..””.evolved from the EEC into a socialist camp bent on redistributing cash from “haves” to “have nots”””
That’s absolutely reversed.”
then
“The EU became an unelected government of the rich. Not left, right, not facist or socialist, a dictatorship.”
You seem to be disregarding the fact that is EXACTLY how socialism always ends up, and not like the pretty ideology
Mark Gilbert (just a random Engineer)
No one cares if Bojo plays poltical games, is utterly insincere and changes side according to what the electorate wants. That is a perfect democrat to be honest.
What they do care is if he is weak, vacillating, doesn’t fire incompetents and is aligning policy with his
mistress’wife’s wants and desires.Boris skill is at being a front man, and selecting the right back room boys. But since Nut Nut he has picked the wrong ones.
Have you seen the cabinet? Most make Bojo look decisive and competant. I think they’ve been chosen to make him look better.
Redge – the ‘Paedo’ accusation is not only irrelevant but also innacurate and undermines your credibility. It’s not necessary to sink to that level in order to make a point.
In reality, a fantasist called Carl Beech wrongly accused Heath and many others – too many for his claims to be true – and ls now serving a long prison sentence for, among other things, wasting police time.
An inordinately long prison sentence imo. 18 years jail time for allegedly being a “fantasist” – I wonder why such a steep tarif …
While in any other arena the cries of the bleeding hearts would be deafening …
Most odd.
MG
Carl Beech was found guilty of 12 seperate counts of perverting the course of justice and 1 count of fraud. 18 years not quite so steep really.
I didn’t call anyone a paedo
it was pigs_in_space
I’m no fan of the Tories. But there is no evidence that Heath was a paedophile.
Frankly, if that muppet tried to hide the fact it would have been the only thing he managed to do successfully in office.
Indeed he is – it is so obvious. The classic and ancient “fool archetype” in occult history – worth researching imo …
MG
And having pushed through Brexit gas shortages along with petrol and food shortages. It is worth noting that there are no such shortages in the EU or even in Northern Ireland which is still part of the customs union. This shortage is due to Brexit and it is the Tories and Boris’s fault,
That simply isn’t true Izaak.
Europe is suffering severe power price spikes as well. Britain, being on the end of a long supply line, gets their share once everyone has taken their helping. Brexit did not change this.
Its possible Britain may not have had such severe truck driver shortages if they were still part of the EU. But there is another possible explanation. Britain recently tightened their tax laws, specifically IR35, making it very difficult for small businesses to claim tax deductions. This has caused severe shortages in some industries, because a lot of expats working in Britain didn’t accept the effective tax hike, and decided to call it quits and go home. I don’t know if truck drivers were hit as hard as other industries, but its a possibility.
France needs 50,000 truck drivers at the moment. Diesel up nearly a third from the beginning of the year, Gas up 54% from January, and a promised hike of 10% on the electricity bill.
France doesn’t need 50000 truck drivers. they are being priced out of the market by the Poles, Lithuanians, Bulgarians & Ukrainians.
I know cos I see them all over the EU I travel thru.
France moaning about not enough truck drivers is about as honest as Mr Jupiter Macron himself…
Just moan moan moan France then watch your jobs being exported lock stock and barrel to better places!
“France doesn’t need 50000 truck drivers.”
Take it up with the people that said it, why would they lie?
La Fédération Nationale des Transports Routiers:
(translated)
“The situation is not as dramatic as in Great Britain, but there is also a shortage of truck drivers in France: between 40,000 and 50,000”- FNTR.
utter bollox, what the FNTR wants is jobs for FRENCH drivers, who are being eliminated from the game by Polski and Litva guys.
Go round a truck park in France and view it with your own eyes!!!
I had my second successive NHS virtual appointment cancelled today. Have not had any follow up now for 6 months.
I’m guessing all the NHS consultants are now lorry driving for Tescos …
MG
All of Europe is short.
The UK (except NI) had the pumps run dry.
It is the fault of the UK Government.
Every headwind that comes our way topples the ship of state with these guys at the helm.
It was more the fault of the morons who rushed to panic buy fuel.
There are morons everywhere. It didn’t happen everywhere.
Because only in the UK do they include the entire Government.
Typical champagne socialist, “up the workers” except when the workers don’t vote as they’re told.
The workers voted for Brexit.
Labour, (so funny), now hate those workers, (and basically all the unwoke).
Those workers (and basically everyone else) hate Labour.
Tony Bliar went to war against the will of the British people…. seems to be a bit of a theme with the Left.
I despise Johnson and all that he and his cronies have done to degrade conservative values, but this peanut throwing from the Left is pitiful, you’re a laughing stock.
Russia colluuuusion 😉
Vlad’s reported uptick in EU gas delivery is today being reported on both sides of the pond as Vlad holding the EU to ransom …
Most diabolically odd …
MG
Izaak, Europe is being badly affected too.
https://www.thegwpf.com/green-europe-begs-russia-for-more-coal-to-survive-winter-energy-crunch/
The US is facing the same problem with the supply chain. Gas prices are rising in the EU.
“there are no such shortages in the EU”
Just like there were no US tanks in Baghdad according to Chemical Ali?
The standard of trolls here is deteriorating
David,
You’re acting as if BoJo can’t walk a straight line and chew bubble gum at the same time.
Being good at Multi-tasking is essential to being a successful executive in both business and in government. Dealing with multiple issues and handling the crises they present and correcting where necessary are hallmark traits of good leaders.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that it was in fact Dominic Cummings who pushed through Brexit, and now with him gone, Princess NutNutz is riding the Gee – Gee and steering it onto a broke, woke EcoBlivion. Or as Some might say. EcoBloviation.
Ok So Johnson can’t multitask seems to be your argument. And the people voted for him so he could get Brexit implemented albeit in a sub optimal way. When the lights go out this winter and the computer networks with them then the 1970’s will seem like a holiday in comparison. There was a major committment to frack in the 2017 Conservative manifesto. So it is Johnson who has removed that priority. Basically he’s useless when it comes to strategic thinking and practical energy policy.
Exactly. Can’t believe you’ve been down voted for the comment. What do the downvoters expect Boris to do?
It’s astonishing howe many people think the entire country is run by one person pulling levers like it’s a Sim City computer game.
It takes years for energy policy to filter through. We are experiencing the effects of Blair and Milliband’s disastrous Climate Change Act and the subsequent Tory years where they embraced green eco-policy.
This nonsense again!
Boris did not get Brexit done. He floundered. He blundered. And he failed.
●No trade deal with the USA.
●No settled relationship with EU.
●No reduction in Red Tape – quite the opposite.
●Fishing industry devastated.
●NI shuffled off to merge economically and (so eventually legally) with Dublin.
●No working controlled immigration scheme (having to beg drivers to come back for a quarter is not controlled).
Stop pretending that the Tories achieved their one policy.
He didn’t get Brexit done.
The rest of the Parliament, even further to the left then him (he’s no more a Tory than was Cameron) wouldn’t even have tried.
Lack of trade deal with USA is primarily down to … USA.
No settled relationship with EU is primarily down to … EU
Red tape? time will tell, too early to say.
Fishing industry was devastated by EU membership (thanks to traitor Heath). It’ll take a long time to recover, if it ever does.
NI – undoubtedly sold out but at least the treacherous May’s ‘backstop’ was dumped. Whether BoJo has the cajones to invoke article 16, rather than let Frost threaten, remains to be seen.
No working controlled immigration scheme – the generally useless Patel has at least managed to come up with one. More than the political far left would have done (they wouldn’t even have bothered). Can’t see where EU drivers would come from as EU has same shortages, so a bizarre policy, but would be controlled.
You concede all my points but none are the fault of the guy with the “Oven-Ready Brexit”?
It was half-baked and so are your excuses.
No, the lying oaf Johnson is not entirely responsible as this disaster has been coming for over a decade. It is true that the oaf has no idea how to deal with it and neither has anyone else in the government.
Johnson’s botched Brexit of ignorance is still very slowly unravelling given that the problems of Covid have disrupted the functioning of the economy. But slowly but surely the problems he and his buffoon Frost have created will become more obvious, aided and abetted by the ignorant CEOs of lots of our biggest companies who over 5 years after our vote still can’t tell the difference between ‘customs controls’ and ‘border controls’.
UK average yearly average temperature is about 10 C {50 F} and London is about 10.5 C- too bad they didn’t get enough global warming. France average is 14 C and Paris is about 11.5 C.
Global warming is mostly about warmer winters and warmer nights. Why do the Brits want colder winters?
I lived in Britain for a while. From what I saw, British support for climate action is because Britons are decent people. They’ve been told that global warming will hurt poor people in hot countries, and while warmer weather might be nice for Britain, they don’t like the idea of profiting from the pain of others.
This is why alarmists speaking to UK audiences made such a big deal of hyping Australia’s bushfires, creating a false narrative that their cousins in Australia were really suffering because of the world’s selfishness.
Yep. The watermelons lied to Joe public in Britain. And will reap the whirlwind.
If one of the underwater cables goes the Liberals may come back!
Two of them have goine already
Who are these ‘liberals’ of which you speak?
Australia’s average temperature is about 22 C. It’s close or in tropics. Tropics is little effected by global warming or cooling, though Australia could have less deserts if there was any global warming.
Earth is in The Late Cenozoic Ice Age, wiki:
Late Cenozoic Ice Age – Wikipedia
And during this 34 million years long period with warm and cold periods, Australia
has remained around it’s current temperature. The tropical zone doesn’t change much whether we in interglacial period or glaciation period. Australia has never been as cold as UK is presently. But deserts conditions in tropics do change.
8,000 years ago Sahara desert was grasslands and forest during the warmest time of the Holocene period.
So, Earth is in icehouse climate or Ice Age. And Earth has about 1/3rd of land area as deserts. In icehouse climate or Ice Age one is globally drier, and have lot’s of deserts. The tropical zone is 80% ocean and this ocean is global heat engine.
An icehouse climate is defined as cold oceans {we have very cold oceans] and one or more ice caps. Antarctica continent moved South and started forming glaciers and within last 2 million years, Greenland started forming glaciers. And last 2 million years has been the coldest period within the 34 million year icehouse climate.
Anyhow, we between glacial periods, hence the term interglacial period, and peak temperature of the holocene occured in period called holocene climate optimum:
Holocene climatic optimum – Wikipedia
And UK should be at least couple degrees warmer than it is now. And Australia should have had less desert.
I think its likely Australia would receive deeper inland incursions of monsoon rain if the world was warmer, but climate is pretty complicated, so who knows. One thing for sure, we’re better off developing the engineering capacity to face whatever comes, than sacrifice our freedom of movement in a crazy attempt to tie ourselves to chaotic natural cycles.
In a sane world, Australia would have 10 nuclear power stations on each coastline. They would each drive 3 reverse osmosis water purifier plants to push purified sea water inland for irrigation to farmers. Those farmers then would be able to feed half the world, all totally self sustained with its own internal nuclear fuel supplies and unlimited sea water for purification.
But we do not live in sane world. The Left is mentally insane, and the opportunity for the kind of power that would present them is unbearable to resist and thus screwing it all up before it all got going from the paper planning stage.
Check what happened to Australia’s Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when he attempted sovereignty against London’s Money Power (Frank Anstey’s book). The Crown simply dismissed the government. That prerogative still exists.
This reality is not noticed in the ‘left-right’ circus narratives.
I remember my dad coming home, explaining how he was going to be working for the government, because his was one of the companies Gough was planning to nationalise.
I’m glad he went, but the manner of his ejection left deep scars. The only consolation is what might have happened had he remained.
This is what Abbot suggested. I was one of the few that applauded the idea. To most he was a crackpot.
If we did this, we could feed most of Asia.
Perhaps brits are worried about sea level rise. If choice to continue being cold and not have sea level rise. Though sea level in last 100 years has only been about 7″.
In terms of engineering capacity, it seems UK should look into using Geothermal energy and be so bold as look for in oceans.
But equally bold moves, could be adding lot water to Sahara deserts- which would increase global temperatures, but lower sea levels.
Another challenging thing, doing something to start ocean settlements.
It’s my opinion the Mars settlements will lead to ocean settlements- Mars settlement require using the ocean to launch rockets- and such busy activity in ocean should lead to ocean settlement in region one launching rockets. Another things is if we get significantly more sub-orbital travel, one launch and land on the Ocean. For sub-orbit, a good place to land and leave could include the English Channel.
There are lot things the brits could do, but socialism will get them there, they need more free enterprise.
Us Brits couldn’t care less about climate change. Us Brits have more imporatnt things on our minds, like not getting sucked back into the EU and destroyed as a nation, and dealing with the consequences of 18 months of lockdown and inattention to basic energy policy.
They have accepted EcoBollox™ as long as it was a lobster being boiled slowly, but suddenly faced with a 50% hike in heating costs this winter, no fuel at the pumps, and the possibility of blackouts, they have woken up to the fact that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, or possibly Britain.
Now of course this is all being blamed on Brexit, or ClimateChange™ by those in whose interests it is to so do, but the reality is that if anything, the issue is the mindless political blanket imposition, of a technically inappropriate solution by the European Union’s Renewable Obligation Directive.
And instead of pointing out that Brexit gives the UK the opportunity to go a separate way, Carrie Johnson has decreed that the solution to the failure of renewable energy is much much more renewable energy.
The failure of supply chains is partly systemic, in that long distance freight haulage has been badly paid and had inferior conditions attached to it, and partly exacerbated by COVID, in that a lot of hauliers simply used that as an opportunity to retire, whilst the DVLA stopped processing licenses altogether.
BBC has gotten lots of mileage from the goodwill of the British people. Not sure how much longer the climate scam can last though when those British people start freezing due to power cuts and high energy bills. Everyone’s got limits to their goodwill.
Exactly so. When Theresa May lost the support of rank and file backbenchers she was a dead parrot.
Boris is currently liked, but he has rivals who are more liked, and he has to deliver.
Not sure the BBC gets much goodwill, other than from leftie luvvies.
I think you’re right, and also, maybe, the CAGW narrative makes them feel guilty, as the nation that started the Industrial Revolution, and hence feel that they are basically the people responsible for destroying the world. Which is stupid, but guilt is a very powerful irrational thing.
Maybe theGrauniad should be claiming credit for this emerging disaster Its what they wanted and worked so hard for and derided contrary opinion as denier maunderings
BoJo, Trudeau and Macron made fun of Trump and his ignoring the Climate Scam while he and Energy Secretary Perry kicked onerous methane and fracking -water regulations to the curb and drove drove the US to Energy Dominance.
Now Dementia Joe is the benefactor of that foresight until his EPA flying monkeys and DoEnergy clowns can screw it all up again.
Who’s laughing now?
Thinking people basically foresaw at once that an ill begotten totalitarian governance, fronted by a phony climate crisis which was crafted by moldy European neomarxists to destroy the Western economy, culture and civilization would be a human disaster.
This ideology has killed at least 100million people. What is it with Europeans not being able to let go of this marxist horror. At least Marx thought he was freeing up the poor, the laborer. These people are actually knowingly prepared to do several billion in!
The initiators Maurice Strong, Christiana Figueres, etc. said it was their duty to bring it about destruction of economies, culture, civilization. They made no bones about it. They told us what the scam was about.
The 20th Century death toll from totalitarians, the Marxists, the National Socialists, the family Communists, whatever you want to call them, is well north of 300 million bodies. Probaly closer to 500 millions if you count indirect deaths due to war displacements and starvation.
Grocer Heath was a disaster – except to those of us at school
The UK has no shortage of natural gas: it is just that prices have risen sharply.
Renewables energy production has no effect on gas price – if anything it means less gas is used, reducing cost.
The French power line is just 2% of UK peak demand -and anyway the new Norway line is coming into use for this winter. The UK is not dependent on French power, it is just that it can often buy it cheap when output of nuclear plants exceeds French domestic demand
would we still have a crisis with 100% fossil fuel? Yes…
Unless somehow the UK had fracced enough gas to reduce the price?
Densely populated UK has good reason to avoid the environmental impact of fraccing.
and above all it is essential to reduce the use of gas (all fossil fuel) given we DO have a climate emergency – that’s what the observations of science show us.
The forecast for the winter is given every year by National Grid: this year’s is not substantially different from previous years – it always ‘warns of power failures’ because it sets out clearly the possible power impacts.
Sad to see alarmism and hysteria over UK power based on such distortions of the facts…
…”that’s what the observations of science show us.”
Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I’ve seen one. The narrative of climate ‘science’ ignores observations.
Of course there is a shortage of gas Griff. If there was an oversupply the price would drop.
Britain has plenty of options for more power at an affordable price, like burning coal.
Well Eric it doesnt have much in the way of a coal option. Very little coal is still produced in NW Europe – Poland is probably the neatest source – and Australian coal is uneconomic, and USA coal is also a long way away.
What it does have is the possiblity of frackable local gas, and nuclear power, except the likes of Griff and his Russian funded Guardianista chums have mounted massive campaigns against both. Must make sure we are all dependent on Gazprom, as even the Russians know that renewable energy simply doesn’t work.
Surprisingly Britain does import coal from Australia, though most of it comes from Russia and the USA.
(Source UK Government)
In any case I was talking about a coal reserve. An emergency reserve does not have to be the cheapest option.
Why have prices of Natural Gas risen sharply? Perhaps something to do with demand exceeding supply? Ruinables don’t seem to have reduced the demand.
Chinese demand. China is suffering energy shortages, so the asked Russia to divert gas from Europe to generators in Russia, to send more electricity over the Russia to China interconnecter
Not even wrong.
I think that reveals the sort of criminal naiveté that mindless followers of the green narrative display.
Britain has been forced away from nuclear and into the arms of gas and interconnectors as the most cost effective way of implementing the Renewable Obligation imposed by the EU.
Not only that, but it has been forced to pay Diesel and open circuit gas turbine plant – cheap to build, but very carbon intesive to use – as part of STOR to make sure that in the absence of anything else reliable, the lights wont go out.
Furthermore, as more renewable energy and interconnector energy is placed on the grid, energy which has no inherent ability to set or maintain the grid frequency, other gas plant is paid to be online, simply to add rotational inertia to the system to stabilise frequencies.
You, in your infinite naiveté, cannot see beyond the simplistic narrative that is fed to you that ‘renewables save gas, because they don’t use it’ .
The massive external impact the renewable disaster is having on the grid, technically and economically, is something you seem to be blissfully ignorant of.
Sometimes I wissh that I could be as stupd as you appear to be. Ignorance is such bliss.
“The UK has no shortage of natural gas: it is just that prices have risen sharply.”
Indeed, we have lots of gas and the price could be cheap as chips if we started fracking it, griff.
You could call it more sustainable than your preferred sources.
Our resident Black Knight strikes yet again!
(as an aside, this happens so often that I don’t even need to type it. I literally just type “Our” and the rest is provided by predictive text. I find that amusing.)
Says the man who has swallowed climate hysteria hook, line and sinker.
“Densely populated UK”
That’s the problem right there, isn’t it – how to thin down that “density” a little.
Or a lot.
I had to read that a few times just to be sure I got it right.
So there is no supply problem, prices are just rising because….. sorry I still don’t get your point.
I see lots of links to stories on Yahoo news and other sources about the energy crisis in the UK and EU, it’s not just on WUWT.
The thing that is most infuriating about creatures like you is you crow endlessly at each new announcement on renewables, and how most of the investment into the grid in the last decade is renewables and yet you insist that the rising energy costs and warnings of failures has nothing to do with renewables even as you state all the money goes there and to shutting in coal and gas.
If I had the skills I could do an attribution study showing that for every increase in Griff posts as to amazing renewable penetration there is an equivalent increase in cost of power and danger of blackouts.
It’s basically 1:1.
And I have to add..
Griff is clueless about supply and demand.
He has no concept of what those 2 terms might mean especially in relation to price.
The guy (girl?) is brain dead.
All gyms In the UK to be converted to power stations. It works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C93cL_zDVIM
If nothing else, it underlines the challenge facing humans without the wonder of fossil fuels!
It does seem like a waste not to harness the efforts of all those desk-dwelling idiots on treadmills.
I adored the tweet a few years ago that said
“let’s give a moment of thought for all those stuck in traffic trying to get to a gym to sit on a stationary bicycle to lose weight”
The good news here is that just as Heath’s ineptitude and Labour total inability to go against the Unions ushered in Margaret Thatcher, so hated and demonised by the Left that she must have got something right, we have a similar leader waiting in the wings, and N° 1 in the ConHom popularity charts
Liz Truss. Newly appointed Foreign Secretary.
Heard recently talking about the need for nuclear power, and the Rolls Royce reactor project…
Amongst the buzz of ‘this isn’t the Tory government I voted for’ the signs are that she just has to wait for the right crisis, position herself in the right political space and she would be a shoo-in.
Especially if she does a Lewsinsky to Zombie Joe
In October 2011, she founded the Free Enterprise Group, which has been supported by over 40 other Conservative MPs.[37] In September 2011, together with four other members of the Free Enterprise Group, she had co-authored After the Coalition, a book which sought to challenge the consensus that Britain’s economic decline is inevitable by arguing for the return of a more entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture.[38]A further volume by the same authors,
Britannia Unchained, contained the assertion that “Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world”.[39] It was published in September 2012,[40] and billed as “an insightful and critical assessment of Britain’s challenges in the face of future uncertainty”. As part of a serialisation in The Daily Telegraph, Truss wrote an article previewing her chapter on the importance of science in education.[41]
Granted its part of her Wikipedia entry, so maybe it has been taken out of context, but a blanket diss of British workers does not fill me with confidence.
I’ve never worked out why Liz Truss is so highly regarded.
Me either. She certainly isn’t the custodian of the government’s other brain cell.
I suspect what she said was in the context of big company and public sector emoloyees. Who are exactly as described.
When you are not even a cotter pin, let alone a cog, in the vast machine of e.g. the NHS, there is no incentive to do anything other than not get fired, and wait for a massive pension.
However be that as it may, I think you will find that Maggie Thatcher was equally dismissive of such – and her attutude was to enable the non unionised working class to benefit through effort. One working class ,man I knew personally woirshipped her.
“She said if we worked hard we might buy our own houses, and I bought my council house and never looked back”
She has worked for Shell. She has an Oxford degree. I’d say she was better qualified than Boris, to actually run things.
But what you and I think doesn’t matter, what matters are the red wall voters, and the blue rinse twin set and pearls conservatives in the Shires.
Again I dont want to enter into personal opinions as to whether or not she would or wouldn’t be the ‘nation’s saviour’ – merely that ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’ (or woman) and that the conditions extant now are not dissimilar from those that propelled Thatcher – who was relatively disliked by many in her party – into power.
Maggie was put there to do one job. Smash the hard left union stranglehold on vital nationalised industries. And she did. She managed, with te help of the Falklands war to achieve a little more, but after that it was back to back stabbing and power politics inside the party.
Boris was put there to do one thing – deliver Brexit. Which he sort of has mostly done. Now we have two further crises – Covid, which he hasn’t altogether made too bad a fist of, and a global energy eco and woke crisis. Which he is making a massive cock-up of, frankly.
His talk is massively positive but of almost no substance. He appears to have no vision where to take the country next.
If we get a ‘winter of discontent’ then my guess is that the beneficiaries will not be Sir Queer Smarmer, and te Labour party, but Boris’ rivals within the Conservatives.
And there is one that is already ahead in the polls.
I agree Leo, as usual. The Labour Party cannot address the structural problems caused by government interference in energy markets because they are just as culpable and even more woke. Ed Milliband was responsible for the Climate Change Act.
Only a change of leadership and direction in the Conservative Party will fix this green morass driving energy policy. I have pointed out to my Cons. MP that if they are the incumbent government when the lights go out they will become unelectable for a generation – just like they shredded their “economic competence” over the ERM.
I think the back bench and more business oriented, non-Wet Tories are getting pretty upset with the direction things are going. That will be a cue for a change of leader, if things go badly this winter.
Having worked with a lot of Brits, including people in the public sector, most of the people I worked with were industrious and hard working. The problems in big corporations and the public sector which I saw are not caused by laziness.
Still not sure on Liz Truss but she certainly seems to be way ahead of her colleagues and the opposition in terms of competence. Whether that would actually translate to enough of a power base really remains to be seen though.
The problem is incompetent people don’t want competent people around as that makes them look even worse.
Our government of Canada for example.
I think Trudeau is the most competent member of the liberal cabinet, and I wouldn’t let him tie my shoes.
Amber Rudd should bear a good part of the responsibility. IIRC, she went off to Canada and cooked up the bright idea that coal fired power stations should be legally forced to close.
For posterity, it should be known as “Amber’s Law”.
It was the green light to stop all investment in a large swathe of the UK power generating fleet. Power generating companies and many others steered their investments into the financially protected safe havens of subsidised investments.
Now that the coal fleet is nearly completely wiped out, the blatantly obvious consequences are plain to see.
Nobody had voted for this. The politicians never had the courtesy to even ask the electorate, collectively reserving “climate change” as off-limits in their electoral campaigns.
Idiots were let loose to destroy nationally beneficial assets. Idiots the lot of them, every man, every woman.
There have been politicians standing over the years who think the climate crisis is a crock. Up until now this has not been an important enough issue to get them elected. After this winter, who knows.
The sense I have right now, is that in Britain the politically smart move will not be to attack the climate crisis, but renewable energy.
The government has always tacitly supported nuclear power in the small print of its policy.
Brexit frees us from both the EU Renewable Obligation and Euratom.
We can virtue signal like mad that the only economically viable way to address climate change is Nuclear Energy. Whereas the reality is that it guarantees the grid and buys us energy independence.
In short it ticks all the right boxes except the waste/cost/safety ones, which are in the end political problems, rather than technical.
Naturally Gazprom will fund yet more people to do the AgitProp stuff against it, while Russia bangs in a few new reactors every year. But if someone with the guts to take on the worst of the eco terrorists comes along, mounts a massive PR cmapaign to support nuclear, the job will get done.
Tipping points in climate are nonsense. Tipping points in political narratives are not.
I believe we are reaching one – if not in the Climate Change, then certainly in the renewable energy narrative.
It doesnt matter how much the Grifflettes applaud the reneable energy increases, if it’s exceeded by a concomitant exponential rise in energy prices and reduction in grid reliability, and peole start to realise what the current policy of net zero actually looks like, that policy will become dead in the water.
And out of the EU, democracy works again.
And an unstable, expensive and unreliable electricity supply is not something the City, or big industry wants, either.
The answer is, when all the impossible alternatives have been eliminated, a no-brainer.
Either just a few nuclear reactors, at a stable predictable cost
OR
windmills, plus solar panels, plus batteries, plus gas backup, plus gas storage, plus interconnectors, plus hydogen, plus grid upgrades, plus Diesel and OCGT STOR plant…
I disagree with your comments Leo. If it takes the assumption of a CO2 problem to make the case for nuclear, then what is the case for nuclear when we take away the CO2 problem? There is none.
Russia can “bang in” as many nuclear reactors as it likes as it has plenty of recent history of trying to ignore economics and leaving itself impoverished. The simple fact of the matter is that nuclear generation cannot exist without a huge public indemnity to cover uninsurable risks, plus an “out-of-market” price guarantees to balance the massive up-front investment costs. Both of these are demands on the public purse, which means nuclear power is basically a public sector industry (take away the public sector support and you get no nuclear).
To suggest that nuclear solves a non-existent climate problem caused by CO2 is a sleight of hand.
Jordan, worse than that, in 2015 Cameron literally signed a climate pact with Labour and the LibDem leaders to all agree to do the same thing and wreck the country with green insanity policies.
Is this the Guardian? Golly. Do they still have “Safe Level 350ppm” on their weather page?
Just make it absolutely clear, it was not Heath’s government that capitulated to the miners. It was the UK voters who capitulated. Heath called a general election on the question: “Who governs Britain?” Although the Conservatives won more votes than Labour, Labour won more seats, although neither party won an overall majority of the seats. So the voters deserted the Conservatives and allowed Labour to form the government. Labour then gave the miners most of what they wanted.
Eric Worrall calls Heath weak and ineffectual. I wonder what he thinks that Heath should have done but didn’t.
Incidentally, as well as the three-day week we also had three hours of electricity followed by three hours of no electricity.
That’s how I remember it too. Thatcher spend several years getting ready to confront the miners. I drove past Ratcliffe on Soar power station every day and watched the huge stockpile of coal grow every day. Ratcliffe is one of the three coal fired stations left in the UK. It took longer to use the stockpile than build it up.
I also remember police on motorway junctions intercepting NUM pickets, something the modern woke constabulary can’t do with a few ecomentalists.
You could say the British electorate got what it deserved from then until now.
Heath could have done what Thatcher did – built coal stocks using cheap imports, then stood up to the unions
If you are asking, “Who runs the country?” it is fairly obvious you won’t be answered,
“It’s you mate, didn’t you notice?”
If you don’t know, it’s not you.
Boris could simply give a go-ahead to fracking.
There’s more than enough natural gas in the shale under Bawtry, just up the road from me here, to refloat both the Titanic and the Hindenburg.
Inside a few months UK could be pulling Europe out of its energy mire, giving The Finger to Vladimir
AND be able to pay off the grotesque debt that a panic-stricken Boris ran up with Covid.
Running up a debt of 8 grand for every man/woman/child in the UK.
When a single multi-vitamin B,C and D pill combined with Zinc and Magnesium would have averted 90%+ of the damage
Cost of that: Work it it out.
Lets say 10 pence per day, for 50 million folks for 2 years.
Instead of £500Billion, and counting and not counting the collateral damage to the economy – double or triple that at least.
THAT is the damage Boris has done, simply by saying ‘no’ to fracking
Now then, was it Boris himself or the lovely (eco-warrior) princess who said ‘no’ to fracking?
Exactly. Fracking starting next year buys us the 10 years we need to go all nuclear and put the windmills back in the museums where they belong.
If the people of this country can tolerate 18 months of lockdown in the national interest, a few Richter 0.2 events are surely no big price to pay.
Especially with the money flowing into Red Wall constituencies.
You can’t just start fracking like turning on a tap to get water. There needs to be a huge amount of exploration and surveying before an economical well can be sunk.
It takes a few years before any gas can be tapped, plus another few more because every NIMBY, local council, eco-loon and his dog with have a say before that happens.
It would take an act of Parliament to change the law so as to speed up the process and I doubt that would pass even if it was a whipped vote.
Apart from that I agree.
Yes, it may be too late to fix the problem for this winter. But there’s still a chance.
Cuadrilla have surveyed the region and had sunk a test well before getting shut down. Oddly enough, the local residents have been for fracking, on the whole – most of the protesters at the time had to be bussed in from London to make it look like a local issue.
BoJo caved to the pressure from Green activists – there wasn’t a massive need for the fracked gas back then and his little mind was filled with globalist dreams and ambitions not the urgent need of the UK. Boris needs to go soon – we might see the first moves after COP26.
Boris has only been in power for 666 days or 1 year, 9 months and 26 days. In that time there was Brexit and the covid pandemic to deal with.
Blaming him is pretty silly considering there has been 30 plus years of poor energy policy in the UK from all sides.
We are where we are due to no long term strategy and the fact energy supply, whether it be for transport, domestic or industry has been downgraded from a strategic necessity to a distorted market supply.
In this time Boris could have ordered a large stockpile of coal and ordered upgrades to coal plants. The current situation would have been impossible if Britain had months of coal reserves and adequate affordable energy capacity.
Even if he ultimately failed, I would have applauded the attempt.
Instead he talked down reliable energy, and made the situation worse. Now he is reaping what he sowed
There are currently 3 active coal-fired power stations operating in the UK which have a total generating capacity of 4.52GW. (0.4GW output as I type) Gas fired output fluctuates by more than double that in a single day.
All are privately owned. All 3 are constrained by the markets. If it was economical for them to burn coal they would. If it was economical to upgrade them they would.
Even if Boris could pull the Sim City lever everyone thinks he has in front of him to make things happen instantaneously it wouldn’t make any difference.
I dislike Boris for what he’s become, but blaming him for the current crisis when it’s been forecast for years is silly.
The best we can hope for is a harsh winter with the lights going out for long periods of time. People will die because of it, but only when this happens will there be a clamour for change.
The current crisis is Boris’ fault. He could have ordered more gas storage or recommissioning of coal plants as a national security priority, stuff the profitability. He had enough time to create a buffer against supply shocks. He didn’t do any of this.
No he couldn’t. It would have required some sort of emergency legislation and that would have needed to have been passed in Parliament. There’s no gaurantee to get such through.
When are people going to realise that the UK is not a dictatorship and that the PM cannot just snap his fingers and 5 minutes later things are fixed.
There is an entire civil service bureaucracy and decades of law to get past before any PM could get what you think should have been done.
He didn’t even try. If he had tried and failed, I would have recognised and applauded that. My article about Britain’s current problems would have been about stupid MPs, not stupid Boris.
Sorry, you simply ignore the reality that all the “constraints” on coal (and gas to a lesser constrain) are imposed by government fiat.
In exactly the same way as renewables are given advantage in every conceivable way starting with massive subsidies.
By government.
Remove all of that across the board and there would not be a single copper invested in renewables starting tomorrow
That’s just how it is
Rusty – I don’t blame Boris for getting us into this mess, I blame him for not doing enough to get us out of it.
+97
bonus if it gets cold and dark the illegals might leave for elsewhere?
funny how the heat one room and be frugal advice seems so hard for the masses
when the poor and pensioners live like that every day anyway
I recall visiting the U.K. in the late ’70s and vividly remember being puzzled as I asked myself,
“Does anybody in this country work?”
Just askin’ about this, because aside from the lack of logic involved in a government not doing its job (don’t get me started about ours), but in regard to home lighting are kerosene/oil lamps not available anywhere in the UK?
Only asking, because I have two of them – used to be my great-granny’s stuff – for emergencies, and they only need new chimneys and new wicks. They have to be well over 100 years old, but they still function when needed. And lamp oil doesn’t cost a lot.
There’s a fellow in Indiana who does demonstrations on how to cook in the 18th century way, which is really effective if you have nothing else. You can cook in the fireplace if you have to, which is how the po’ folks – people who lived on one to two-room homes — did it and managed quite well. If my house were suitable, i’d have a wood-burning fireplace in my little house, because we have an outage every winter now. Doesn’t last long, but still, when it’s cold and snowing….
Why are the people in the UK just not looking into stuff like this? Just asking, NOT criticizing.
Funnily enough, I’m in the UK and was looking at purchasing an oil hurricane lantern.
Not wishing to be a drama queen but I’m definitely concerned what the coming winter will bring.
My old man was an operator in a coal-fired power station in the Midlands (Meaford), now rubble.
The stories about managing load, spinning up the turbines in advance to predict demand spikes are still fascinating.
All I can say, Gurnsy, is good luck to you. If you can get thermal clothing, do it now, as well as the kind of winter jackets that allow you to add an insulating section to them. You may need them.
Looking pretty grim in Europe as well. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/luongo-europes-entire-energy-crisis-manufactured
As Hillary would say–it takes a village. A village of idiots to fabricate an energy crisis out of thin air and policy. On the back end of the crisis you need one of the designated idiots like Edward Markey to meekly state “who could have known?”.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/the-real-shortage-we-face-is-political-honesty-brian-monteith-3397090
https://climatechangedispatch.com/a-perfect-storm-is-brewing-in-canada-as-energy-crisis-looms/?fbclid=IwAR0SKmsDktpF8wt3NmIT9vlZxdSzEJb5p1-z4mgRE5seHb6BpVAxBGMAr2A
Just so you know, the excuses of low wind for UK wind power or multi-year low in natural gas storage sounds a lot like the excuses in U.S. alternative energy projects. There was the one about reduced solar yield at Crescent Dunes, Nevada and “less-than-expected” geothermal yield also in Nevada. Solyndra Solar was a unique cylindrical solar product that was un-economic and un-fundable by Wall Street or banks. What it had going for it instead was a PT Barnum promoter in charge and political connections in Nancy Pelosi to make the taxpayers take the hit instead of any private investors or company execs who got their bonuses anyway.
Who in their right mind wants to rely on breezes and sunshine for a continuous uninterruptible supply of electricity? Intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine, has not, and will not, run the economies of the world, as electricity alone is unable to support the prolific growth rates of the medical industry, military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures to meet the demands of the exploding world population.
Only healthy and wealthy countries like the USA, Germany, Australia, and the UK can subsidize electricity from breezes and sunshine, and intermittent electricity at best. The 80 percent of the 8 billion on earth living on less than 10 dollars a day cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag. Those poorer countries must rely on affordable and abundant coal for reliable electricity, while residents in the healthy and wealthier countries pay dearly for those subsidies with some of the highest cost for electricity in the world.
Now they mention the “C” word-cost, cost, cost!
“Everyone knew that the energy transition would not be cheap.”
What Governments Got Wrong About The Global Energy Transition (yahoo.com)
Well if it’s all too Green and controlled they should simply follow Elon’s lead-
Tesla moving headquarters to Texas from California (msn.com)
Sounds like it is time for Parliament to have a “No Confidence” vote on Boris and the Boris administration.
A resounding “No Confidence” could force Boris to make some changes.
Well, the US now has a President more incompetent than Jimmy Carter, so that 1970’s feeling of malaise is shared in both countries.
And the mess will get worse. If Boris fails he will be replaced by a far left, even more “green”, Labor. If British conservatives don’t do a 180 real fast you are doomed.
It’s a race to the bottom on policy tone deafness….
Federal agencies on plans to help Americans handle climate change (yahoo.com)
A question for Eric Worrall. Is it possible that what we are seeing with China’s alleged energy supply problems is that the CCP is preparing the country for an energy supply shock which might be one consequence of a soon-to-be made decision to invade and conquer Taiwan?
That thought occurred to me, but if this is the case, the conclusion of the exercise must surely be that China is not ready.
Thanks, Eric. I’m looking at that, too. Invading Taiwan does not seem like a good idea at this point.
Yes, they need to work out how to keep a wartime economy going without access to the global economy.
Afghanistan could be a big part of that plan. Afghanistan has things China needs but doesn’t have, like a world class supply of iron ore. But Afghan warlords do not recognise Afghanistan, they’re all independent. A deal inked by one warlord is rarely respected by the next group of bandits.
If China pushes forward, and they really have no other options at this point, Afghanistan could be in for a period of bloodshed and brutal repression which will make the locals wish they had the Soviets back. Xinjiang could have been a trial run for their Afghanistan plan.
Oh, “a period of bloodshed and brutal repression”…. Oh, my. what an understatement.
It’s really only a matter of time, y’know.
Seems poor timing with E10 rollout may have exacerbated the fuel shortages at the bowsers-
Was switch to green fuel behind the petrol crisis? Retailers blame E10 (msn.com)
Trust them they’re from the Gummint and they’re here to help change the climate.
Margaret Thatcher was probably the second greatest British Prime Minister (after Winston Churchill), but she made the mistake of promoting global-warming theory in its infancy as a means of defeating the coal-miners’ unions. This move may have helped secure her re-election during the 1980’s, but it allowed a movement against fossil-fuels (not only coal, but also petroleum and natural gas) to fester into a worldwide doomsday cult to deprive a growing population of the energy they need.
Boris Johnson rode the Brexit wave to become Prime Minister, and if he had played his cards right, he could have led the UK to economic dominance over the European Union, mired in its bureaucratic mismanagement by the European Commission. But he has squandered this huge opportunity by following the ignorant global warming fear-mongers down an impossible path of economic irresponsibility.
The Tories are traditionally known as promoters of economic freedom, capitalism, and prosperity, and the Brexit movement was supposed to give the UK sovereignty to determine its own economic destiny independent from the stifling EU bureaucracy. But by pushing the UK into “net-zero carbon”, BoJo will alienate the energy-producing sector, including the coal miners, and push them back into the arms of the Labour Party, who will then push socialism when they take back power.
Boris Johnson’s policies of trying to ration fossil-fuel consumption is not only economically stupid, it is politically stupid–effectively giving back the power to the Labour Party that Thatcher had taken from them. If the Tories in Parliament were smart, they would hold a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson, and replace him with another Prime Minister more favorable to fossil fuels.
What’s happening in the UK is history repeating itself, 20 years later. During the late 1990’s, Al Gore put out his “Earth in the Balance” book about the global-warming scare, and his 2000 campaign talked about putting coal miners out of business. That didn’t go over well in West Virginia, whose economy is almost entirely dependent on coal mining. West Virginia was traditionally a Democrat-leaning state up until then, but turned against Gore in 2000, and has become more and more Republican ever since. While most of the attention during the 2000 election was on the extremely close election in Florida, if Gore had won West Virginia, he would have been elected President even while losing Florida.
West Virginia continues to play an outsize role in American politics today. In 2020, Republican Senator Shelley Capito was re-elected in WV with 69% of the vote, and Democrat Senator Joe Manchin is up for re-election in 2022. Manchin does not want to betray his coal-friendly voters by supporting Biden’s huge socialist “reconciliation” plan, which includes lots of anti-fossil-fuel policies, so he is one of only two Democrat Senators blocking the total transformation of America into a socialist nation.
Boris Johnson could learn a crucial lesson from Senator Joe Manchin. Fighting Old King Coal is political suicide.
The UK’s “best in the world” recipe for energy stupidity:
1. Make an enemy out of the main source of energy on which society and human life depends – fossil fuels. Declare an idiotic war on energy itself.
2. Make an enemy of the country which is the largest regional supplier of fossil energy – Russia – and incite your population into racist hostility against Russian people. The scratch your head in genuine bafflement when that same racial-enemy country shows reduced enthusiasm in supplying fossil energy to Europe.
3. Make the fossil fuel industry and its workforce public enemies and choke off investment and exploration of fossil fuel sources. Allow all natural gas stored stocks to drain to empty, repeating to yourself as you do so, “what could possibly go wrong?”
4. Allow yourself to be persuaded by the nonsensical notion that intermittent demand anti-correlated low intensity “energy” sources such as wind power and solar, can replace on-demand load-following fossil fuel. Sterilise your population of understanding of what terms like “intermittent”, “baseload” and “load-following” mean. Punish understanding, reward ignorance.
5. Wrinkle your forehead affectatiously in bafflement when gas prices rise sharply higher and energy poverty and people freezing to death becomes a widespread and inescapable reality.
6. Prepare tens of thousands of Darwin prizes to send to the homes of the many impending victims who will freeze to death in the coming winter which – contrary to computer model predictions – will be cold. Especially when you have in your home no heating. Or even warming.
Heath is solely responsible for the UK joining the Common Market back in 1973, effective Jan 1st 1974. No vote, no mandate, he just did it. Typical Tory ruling class type. More coal mines were closed in the 60’s under Wilson than under Thatcher in later years but she still gets blamed. Thatcher Thatcher the milk snatcher! I recall what it was like in the UK back in the 70’s with food and energy shortages. Wasn’t fun.
When Wilson held a referendum on EEC/Common Market membership in 1975, 67% of voters supported staying in. Almost all regions of the UK voted in favour only Shetland and the Western Isles voted against.
Like closing the gate after the hors has bolted. Pointless.