From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Ed Miliband has been caught telling porkies again:
This excerpt came on Ian Collins Talk TV show this morning:
Miliband’s exact words:
“The truth is our country remains in the grip of fossil fuels markets, controlled by petro states and dictators. That’s why your energy bills are so high.”
Mr Ed is lying to you.
Your energy bills are high because of the billions added on for subsidising renewables.
Even before the year has ended, CfD subsidies have already exceeded £2.5 billion for 2025:
The average wholesale market price this year has been £80.62/MWh, which is well below the £113/MWh on offer for offshore wind in the new CfD auction, AR7.
Of course, this is not the first Miliband has told blatant lies about energy prices.
One reader sent me this clip from Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in November 2022 just before COP24 in Egypt.
It is worth watching from the start of the interview at about 10 minutes in, as the moronic Miliband tells of his plans to press Egypt’s President Sisi on the release from prison of that notable peace activist, the “British citizen” Alaa Abd El Fattah.
Yes the same Mr Fattah who we now learn is an extreme, hard line Islamist! It reveals just how long our great and good have been deluded by this anti-semite.
A minute later though, Miliband states:
“Solar and wind power in Britain are nine times cheaper than fossil fuels”
It was a commonplace claim back then, but never was true. It is remarkable how many still believe it to be the case.
We know that wholesale electricity prices briefly spiked in August 2022 to £363/MWh. But at the time of the interview, they had already dropped back to well below £200/MWh.
In comparison, the average CfD price for offshore wind was £187/MWh at the time.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/resources/scheme-dashboards/cfd-historical-data-dashboard
Market prices were still high by historical standards, but despite that CfD strike prices were even higher. CfD subsidies of £150 million were paid out in that October to December quarter:
Kuenssberg failed to challenge this self evident nonsense, just the same as she did with Chris Packham’s similar claims on the same show last month.
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This inveterate liar is slated as the next PM of the UK…a straight liar-for-liar swap…
I’ve noticed that Ed Miliband is an anagram of “I am blinded”. By his own dogma, presumably.
I’m not sure he’s lying. I think he’s really that stupid, like the people who voted for him. Reality and basic economics are hard for stupid people.
You may have just insulted the good people of Doncaster (many of whom, of course, didn’t vote for him).
COP27, I believe.
COP24/COP27 – does anybody care anymore?
There’s no lie like an in your face lie.
Marxist clowns like Miliband have never understood how markets work.
He’s singing from the same hymn book as our idiot Bowen, who never misses a chance to say power is expensive because of the coal fired power stations.
Minibrain is absolutely correct on this one.
Fossil fuels need to run 24/7 on standby in case wind and solar fail, therefore it’s all fossil fuels fault.
Interesting how the words “lack of” are silent in that sentence.
Drat, I skipped a couple of words in the initial post but couldn’t edit. “Lack of access to” was the intent.
After posting a comment, if you need to fix typos or add new info, move the mouse pointer to the lower right corner of the comment box, and there will appear a small gear wheel. Click on it and the instruction “Manage Comment” appears. Click on it and “Edit” appears. Click on it and your comment appears in light grey text. After making corrections, click on “Save” After posting comment or reply, you have a five minute window for making corrections.
I noticed that your reply was four minutes after your posted comment. You still had one minute for making corrections.
There is a time limit for editing, even if one remains on the page without reloading.
Hit the time out and you can’t make changes.
Just FYI.
He may have written awful tweets, but I don’t see how someone fighting for democracy can be an extreme, hard line Islamist. Religion and democracy don’t mix well.
And it has nothing to do with energy policy.
Renewables bring more independence from volatile fossil fuel markets.
The idea that someone fighting for democracy can’t also hold hard-line Islamist views is naïve at best.
History shows plenty of Islamist movements have presented themselves as pro-democracy when it suited them, only to push theocratic agendas later, just look at the Muslim Brotherhood during and after the Arab Spring.
As for Alaa Abd el-Fattah, his old tweets weren’t just edgy; they included antisemitic tropes, praise for violence, and rhetoric aligned with radical Islamist currents. He’s since acknowledged and distanced himself from some of that language, which matters, but it doesn’t erase the record or automatically make him a secular democrat.
His political connections and family background also point to ties with Islamist-leaning networks. Being jailed by a dictator doesn’t mean someone can’t hold authoritarian religious views – those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
So dismissing the Islamist angle because ‘he’s fighting for democracy’ feels like wishful thinking.
Religion and democracy can coexist, but not when the religious vision demands supremacy over pluralistic rule.
It still serves no purpose on articles about energy policy. Same with words like “moronic”. If this site wants to be taken seriously, they need to publish better articles.
You failed to answer my response to your claim about Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
You gave me a lot of statements without sources. What do you expect?
You do some research before making unsupportable comments.
Statements without sources, isn’t that your forte?
Whatever Mikey…
“It still serves no purpose on articles about energy policy.”
Point taken.
However, this site IS taken seriously, although there are fellow travelers such as yourself who contest that truth.
It is indeed taken very seriously. The use of strong language doesn’t diminish it. Honest debate and discussion needs strong language, not the effeminate, dodgy language too common in the academic and bureaucratic world.
It really is amazing what socialists choose to complain about.
I think you are mistaken.
You cannot be a hard line Islamist and also be fighting for democracy. The two are incompatible, contradictory in fact. One is a system of government by theocracy,. that is by a clerical class who attempt to rule, or at least claim to be attempting to rule, in accordance with Sharia and the Koran. Sometimes characterized as ‘rule by God not by man’.
The other which in principle attempts to give power to the people, to exert either directly or through their elected representatives, who they have the power to recall or change. Democracy means the effective separation of church and state and government by the state. This is a struggle that took place in Europe in the Middle Ages and through the Reformation and Wars of Religion. Its one that has yet to start in the Islamic world, and may well never start, certainly not in our lifetimes.
Given the riots in Iran lately, perhaps it is on the horizon. Time will tell.
The Middle Ages witnessed a long struggle between the Church and the State, whereby the Church fought against state interference in such matters as the appointment of bishops. The Protestant Reformation saw, for the first time, the imposition of fines on people who did not attend church on a Sunday. The State Church that is. In England, the King made himself head of the Church and anybody who opposed his will was likely to have his head cut off. On continental Europe, Protestant state Churches were established in Scandinavia and many parts of Germany. The Treaty of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years War, stipulated that the religion of a people should be determined by their ruler: whatever his religion was, that also should be the religion of his subjects. The Pilgrim Fathers fled from persecution by the state Church in England.
don’t feed the trolls
Democracy is only a means to an end for an Islamist.
“Democracy is like a streetcar. When I come to my stop, I get off.” — Tayyip Erdoğan, “President” of Turkey.
Hamas was apparently “elected” ! 🙂
He was not and is not ‘fighting for democracy, never was and is not now’.
As his posts make clear. You are fighting for democracy you do not advocate and fantasize about killing Jews, policemen. You don’t advocate the destruction of Downing Street – the UK Government HQ, where the Prime Minister and Chancellor live, and where Cabinet meets. You also do not post material which is pure hate directed at white people and the British in particular.
Your post is typical Corbynism, never met a terrorist he didn’t like, but when challenged on it, obfuscation and pretense that he meant something quite different. Comparable to when he attended a memorial for Black Sabbath, where he was ‘present but not involved’.
‘Comparable to when he attended a memorial for Black Sabbath,….’
Do you mean Black September?
Read Al Bhukari 51 34,
then you will know why the left loves islam and why all these things are happening to English children.
The Left in Iran supported the revolution and sided with the Islamists, when the Islamists achieved power they brutally purged the Left. This is forgotten by Queers for Palestine etc but they do make for useful idiots to those who would throw them off a roof given the chance.
Hard line Islamists are not in favor of democracy.
Not sure why you wish to start a flame war.
Can Arabs be anti-semite since they ARE semites?
The irony of it all is high.
In essence what is going on is a civil war with 2 groups of genetically related people fighting.
Just as the non-combatants in Gaza are not Palestinians.
First, Hamas overthrew the Palestinian Authority thus losing the political name.
Second I read that 55% of the people in Gaza are Egyptian, which makes sense given Egypt controlled the strip for a long time.
Oh, so renewables aren’t volatile?
You really think our friend al Fattah is fighting for Democracy rather than an Islamic theocracy?
Independence? Does the UK manufacture wind turbines or solar panels? Do they mine the rare earth’s needed to make these? Do they mine the rare earths needed to make the batteries they will need to keep this going?
There are many oil producing nations so competition between them exists. Canada can be the 2nd largest producer of oil when considering bitumen. Venezuela the largest. Plenty of gas here in the U.S. and the ability to move it to the UK exists.
So “ independence” is not a real argument for anything dealing with energy in the UK.
“Renewables bring more independence from volatile fossil fuel markets.”
LOL… That would have to be one of the stupidest comments I have ever read. !
Renewables ARE one of the main causes of the volatility.
Christianity and democracy coexisted for hundreds of years. Until Marx came along
“Mr Ed is lying to you.”
These words are tossed around so freely here, without a real effort to back them up. So we are told about a particular subsidy, but not the cost of gas, which is very much greater.
For a start, Mr M said, fuel prices were the cause of high energy bills, not electricity bills. Consumer s used about £18.7B worth of gas directly in 2024. In terms of electricity, about £6.8B worth of gas was spent in 2024 generating 88 TWh. Thes eamounts are far higher than CfD subsidies for wind.
Ed Miliband was right.
Here in France it was -4C this morning, but Meteo France are lying to us all. They keep claiming this very morning that temperatures are above average for the weeks to come..
The solar panels everyone is fitting now, are as much use as a chocolate teapot – we have massive fogs for weeks.
The ones on the local Mairie they claimed would drop the bills for the local school heated with GAS by 80%.
ahum..
fat chance of that, cos the panels were covered in snow and ice for days and will be again pretty soon, with short daylight hours and very little sun.
Lucky, they like us, still have GAS.
There is a strong wind, from the north which will be followed by snow, the same snow they claimed my children would never see, and then will be flat calm for days.
Funny how they keep banging on about “your carbon footprint” in France when fortunately the whole region is powered by Bougey NPP (nuclear), and when the unsightly windmills on the mountains opposite have no wind.
Milliband? A country that invented nuclear power then has to ask the French and Chinese to construct it. Ineptitude, stupidity, and quite deliberate lying, just like our local Mairie.
don’t feed the trolls. Even the house ones like lil’ Nicky.
Now do it for unit of energy consumed.
Miliband’s claim or hope is that if the country moves its user energy consumption to electricity, ie away from fossil fuels, and moves the source of the electricity to wind and solar, then the total cost of energy will fall. The country will spend less on energy – the implied assumption is, for the same amount of energy.
In Miliband’s view life will continue as normal, except the cars will be EVs, heating will be from heat pumps (air source in the UK), and electricity generation will have moved from fossil fuel to wind and solar.
In the second worst country in the world for solar generation.
This is wrong to the point of madness. Its not going to happen. This is what he is really lying about. Its not possible because of intermittency. Which he has no plans to address. That is one of the key underlying issues, and just pretending that it doesn’t exist really is lying.
He, and the Labour Party now, and before them the Conservatives, with the support of the Liberals, Greens, SNP and Plaid are taking the country to a real world of blackouts and energy rationing and soaring energy prices. This is the inevitable result of these insane policies.
Its not about global warming and climate change any more. Its about keeping the lights on at acceptable cost, and what he is planning makes that impossible.
‘ In terms of electricity, about £6.8B worth of gas was spent in 2024 generating 88 TWh. ‘
6.8 Billion spent on gas, and total electricity bills were 50 billion (domestic and industrial)
That makes 43.2 billion pounds of bills which were not gas.
People who say gas prices are high never ever tell you the price of gas. Nobody knows why.
The current price of imported gas to Britain is about 25 pound per MWH.
Compare that to the latest suggested CfD prices for AR7 of about 113 pound per MWh for wind power.
The amount spent on natural gas includes the amount burned by the power plants while they were acting as spinning reserve. They have to do this because they have to be ready for whenever the wind stops blowing, a cloud passes in front of the sun, and whenever the sun is more than about 2 hours away from the time of peak sun.
These plants can’t be shut down, because it takes hours to days to start them up from a cold start.
“because it takes hours to days to start them up from a cold start”
Just not true. A CCGT generator can take less than an hour from cold start.
A *modern* CCGT generator can take 1 hour from cold start.
Should we replace all our gas generators with the latest models to help achieve Net Zero?
No. You need enough to cope with fluctuations.
Incidentally this replacement is part of what the capacity auction proceeds should pay for.
“The current price of imported gas to Britain is about 25 pound per MWH.”
But a MWh (3.6GJ) of gas does not make a MWh of electricity. It takes about 3MWh, or £75 to make 1 MWh electricity.
Wow! What an excellent pin prick of point. How does 75 per MWh compare with the CfD price of solar of 75 per MWh?
Of course, the final prices for renewables for AR7 have not been published yet by Miliband. They are obviously going to be terrible news.
Miliband has already had to change the timetable so that bids supposedly coming in in Autumn 2025 are now scheduled for January 2026.
Don’t worry Nick. There is an exploding bomb coming your way about renewable prices but Miliband is trying his best to put off the day when it explodes.
“Wow! What an excellent pin prick of point. How does 75 per MWh compare with the CfD price of solar of 75 per MWh?”
The £75 for gas is just one component of the final price (a big one). The CfD solar £75 price is total, per MWh delivered.
Nick, even a pathological reality denier like you knows that renewable energy
a ) is driving prices higher
b ) can not survive, let alone compete with reliable energy.
That’s why the Green Party in Germany shut down nuclear energy.
Obama admitted that his policies will let energy prices skyrocket
and Stasi Merkel even said openly that ” energy is too cheap ”
Just as those promised ” millions of new, well paid, green energy jobs “(mandatory WEF mantra for western leaders) will never happen the cheap green energy won’t manifest.
This scenario is as fake as the Ukrainian one and only survives
by using some dirty rhetorical tricks and/or massive manipulation.
You don’t refute Miliband’s claim. The largest part of cost, even of electricity, is price of gas.
How can electricity bills of 50 billion have the largest part of cost being gas when it costs about 7 billion for the gas?
Homewood is claiming that is is because of a 2.5B cost of wind.
The argument then goes: because wind is free, it must be cheaper to generate electricity with it than with gas.
The same argument would show that nuclear must be almost as cheap as wind, because the fuel is pretty cheap. It would also show that sailing ships must be cheaper than coal or oil powered ones.
The tactic is to pretend that capital has no bearing on how much generation costs.
Once you refuse to do proper GAAP cost accounting and feel free to invent your own way of measuring profitability and costs you can show almost anything.
Net Present Value analysis.
In a way, this does make sense to me.
Assume a grid powered by gas that supplies England and Wales with electricity. Now install a single wind turbine and hook it up. No subsidies except that the grid will buy all the electricity produced by the wind turbine at the market price. Back off the gas plants a wee bit if necessary; wind droughts are no problem.
In this hypothetical, ‘The largest part of the cost, even of the electricity, is the price of gas.’ Without question. I don’t know if it would be worth it to build and hook up the single wind turbine in the first place, but that’s not what Fast Eddy is talking about.
I’m developing an aversion to the phrase ‘backup power’ in this context. All plants need backup for emergencies or even routine maintenance. But wind and solar need ‘supplemental power’ unless you’re willing to forego electricity for substantial periods of time. The more wind turbines, the more supplemental power you need. That’s going to get expensive.
Isn’t it called ‘slight of hand’ to assert and defend points that are technically (actually, if you prefer) correct, but that don’t really answer the question everybody is interested in.
If Mr Stokes watched the video in my post below and my comments, he would see Miliband is either lying or hopelessly ignorant, especially regarding the price of gas.
Not this “wind is free” crap again.
The numbers have been gone over time and again here.
Renewable energy makes energy bills increase, by a lot.
Says the man dictating a ruinous UK energy policy.
Mix Millipede + the BBC and get ANYTHING BUT approaching true statements.
The same organisation that had paedos Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards on prime time..
eg. Edwards received a salary of £475,000-£479,999 while grooming kids.
Time to break the BEEB up, and dump Millipede.
Mad Ed is away with the fairies
You flatter him.
The son of Adolphe hates us just as much as he did. Another dodgy migrant.
A prime example of someone using toilet paper as a napkin, with so much shit coming out of his mouth…
A happy New Year in advance, may 2026 be a crucial step towards the end of this “western” idiocy.
If you can stand more of the execrable Miliband here’s the October 2025 interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the same show, starts at about 9 minutes 20 seconds in.
Note, the UK gas wholesale price was about 60p a therm before Ukraine and about 80p at the date of the interview (Google AI says.)
Also ‘investing’ in extending the grid is not necessary regardless, it is required because of remote and widely distributed renewables and the increased need to import/export electricity to accommodate their inherent unreliability. CCGT etc. and AI centres can be easily built adjacent the existing grid.
https://youtu.be/Rj0w5vLS-Tk
““Solar and wind power in Britain are nine times cheaper than fossil fuels””
How do I multiply something by nine to make it go down?
in·nu·mer·ate
[iˈno͞omərət]
We are living in an alternate dimension.
Miliband is living in an alternate dimension.
We’re living in reality.
Delusion may, perhaps, be the better word.
Fossil fuels cost 9 times that of renewables for making electricity? If that is true, why is this Minister not switching subsidies from renewables to fossils? Nine times the bang for the buck! Miliband is truly either extraordinarily stupid or extraordinarily evil. How about a new word, stuvil!
The electricity market is broken. Managing the generation vs demand is increasingly difficult and therefore costly. I’ve said it before – electricity is not energy – which made me wonder who actually gets paid for the energy we use.
This is where it gets absurd. Corporate entities can invest into guaranteed returns via the CfD system. The auction pricing ensures that prices go up, never down.
Further, the ‘supplier’ is rarely a significant source of energy. Also note that energy delivered by electricity is only a small part of total energy use.
Finally, the ‘competitive’ market for the energy that is available is now controlled by a small number of suppliers, all keen to receive government backing.
This is the antithesis of a free market. That’s why prices will always rise.
I have noted that Octopus now claims to be the largest electricity supplier. Their software system which allows them to play the market has been used by many other countries, but it is just that – market manipulation, encouraged by government to promote Net Zero.
“Mr Ed is lying to you.”
More like, he’s extremely ignorant.
let me fix that for you “more like
he’s extremely ignoranthe’s extremely dangerousIf he truly believes what he says, he is not lying.
We are skeptical he believes what he says.
Kuenssberg is a media (w)hore. A parrot on a neoliberal perch
All the MSM are.
Miliband hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. If he has then he should be locked up. He certainly not have any position of power, as he is anti UK.
The discussion of solar panels is all wrong in my opinion.
as a 70 year old UK pensioner I resent having to pay more for my gas and electricity in order to subsidise renewables even though they have given me a fuel allowance payment and I always have a surplus on my energy bill. The UK is being destroyed by mass immigration in my opinion.
It’s the political version of find the pea under the cup game. Eventually people get tired of games.
If Miliband is right and renewables are so cheap, why is he having to delay and delay and delay the announcement of what renewable prices will be in the latest Allocation Round? (AR7)
The latest renewable prices must obviously be terrible news for Britain, as Miliband is delaying the release of the prices.
What are they hiding?
“Kuenssberg failed to challenge this self evident nonsense, just the same as she did with Chris Packham’s similar claims on the same show last month.”
Why should we expect her to? She probably knows nothing about these matters, apart from what the staff at the BBC tell her.
This is akin to saying rape is caused by women because they exist.