From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
From the Mail:
Labour’s Ed Miliband was being blamed today after OpenAI – the tech giant behind ChatGPT – put its UK data centre on hold.
The California-based firm pointed to high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty for its decision to pause its Stargate UK project.
Stargate UK was announced in September last year as part of a combined £31billion investment in Britain by US tech firms.
The announcement of the investment, as well as a UK-US tech prosperity deal, was made during US President Donald Trump‘s state visit to Britain.
Stargate UK is a data centre planned for the North East in partnership with British firm Nscale.
The delay to the project is a huge blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s bid to turn the UK into ‘one of the great AI superpowers’, as Labour scrambles for economic growth.
The Tories heaped blame on the ‘Net Zero’ agenda of Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, for harming Britain’s AI ambitions.
Senior Conservative MP Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said: ‘Ed Miliband’s suicidal energy policy has just cost us another huge investment.
OpenAI pointed to high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty for its decision to pause its Stargate UK project
The Tories heaped blame on the ‘Net Zero’ agenda of Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, for harming Britain’s AI ambitions
‘The UK has top AI talent and labs but huge energy costs because of Labour’s mad Net Zero agenda.
‘If Labour let us fall behind on AI, British businesses will lose out to competitors.’
Full story here.
This particular scheme is just one of many making up the £31 billion referred to.
Nevertheless it is a warning sign that others may drop like dominoes. I suspect it is not so much the cost as the regulatory threat that is of most concern. Tech businesses have, of course, long known about our high electricity prices.
AI is here to stay, whatever the climate zealots may think. And they can pretty much be built anywhere. AI will be an ever increasing part of British life, just as the internet was 30 years ago and desktop computers a decade earlier.
We have the skilled workers to run it. Simply exporting our emissions to other countries achieves nothing.
Simply exporting our emissions to other countries achieves nothing.
Au contraire, it is achieving leadership in deindustrialisation of the economy. A work very much in progress. Mad Ed believes he is the climate pied pier and they will flock to his net zero tune.
With global temperatures continuing to rise, the impacts of the climate and nature crises—storms, floods, droughts, food and water insecurity, displaced communities—will be a profound source of global disorder. To engage only with the effects of climate change, war, poverty, pandemics or irregular migration when they arrive on our doorstep is to set ourselves up to fail.
This is why the UK needs to re-establish itself as a climate leader on the global stage.
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/edward-miliband/debate/2024-11-11/commons/written-statements/cop29-priorities
Still no word on the North Sea. I doubt there will be.
Most commenters go into conspiracy theory mode…It’s deliberate…He’s out of control…
Not even “What fresh Hell is this..?” doesn’t cover it…
An interesting thing in this context is
how many of those big tech investments and server farms ended up in the arab region.
A place where the initial temperatures seem too high to run any computers on a significant scale,
yet they’d rather go there and accept an additional 20 degrees of cooling handicap in favor of cheap, abudant fossil fuel energy.
Considering that those countries are barely above sea level and will either drown or become scorched earth by tomorrow 5 PM
it seems that the believe in AGW, Sea Level rise and cheap energy does not really exist in the corporate realm.
There are AI firms in Arab nations? I hadn’t heard that.
For latency, security, and reliability reasons, AI data centers must be located very close to major clients, including high tech companies, the seats of governments, financial centers, and military complexes. No one outside of the Arab region will be using the data centers located there,
That is highly speculative conjecture.
And this is even after being promised rebated power costs, to be paid for by unnamed sources. I.E. the consumer and small business. As Churchill said, you cannot lift the bucket if you are standing in it, welfare costs now outway income tax receipts so your average UK person gets more from the state than they contribute. Business and other taxes make the difference up.
your average UK person gets more from the state than they contribute.
Utter nonsense. The money goes not only on welfare, but by extension on the open border policy.
Taxpayers will shell out £4,191,780 a day on housing asylum seekers over the life of the 10-year contracts awarded to Serco, Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears Group in 2019. – Express
small boat crisis deepens as 2026 migrant crossings tops 5,000
Nearly 300 migrants crossed the English Channel in small boats in the past 24 hours – Express
When anyone tries to stop the boats they get banned…
Ten British activists have been banned from France after engaging in actions to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, the French interior ministry said on Wednesday.
It said the activists, who belonged to a group called Raise the Colours, had been searching for and destroying small boats along France’s northern coast, and were involved in “propaganda activity”.
Authorities have not released their identities. – BBC
How much was wasted on wind yesterday?
Yesterday, wasted wind cost Britain: £6,892,251
£1,435,259 switching off wind turbines
£5,456,992 buying energy elsewhere. – WW
All of it taxpayers money.
I just can’t understand what motivates people to like open border policies. Do such nations need more people? I recall maybe 25 years ago when I considered moving to New Zealand. I found out that if that nation doesn’t feel they really need your skills, you aren’t going to move there. Simple as that. There is a forest industry there so I probably could have been accepted if I had tried. Though by now, maybe they have the same stupid attitude as the state of Wokeachusetts which is trying hard to kill off its long shrinking forest industry- to save the planet of course.
It’s a very bourgeois school/university driven thing which got all its inspiration from august institutions including: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Brown, Columbia, Berkeley ad nauseam.
Take Berkeley…
Berkeley’s latest pedagogical innovation teaches undergraduates the fine art of flood-the-zone narrative management and associated memory-holing as a means to “preserve” history.
Professor of Ethnic Studies Juana María Rodríguez has cracked the code that eluded educational reformers for decades: how to train students to rewrite history while convincing them they’re documenting it. Her Wikipedia editing initiative has generated over 300,000 edits to LGBTQ+ articles, which is impressive output for the Ministry of Truth’s Junior Varsity squad.
https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/uc-berkeley-students-add-more-than-300-000-wikipedia-edits-documenting-lgbtq-history/article_a469e53f-e6b4-49d4-a845-95be927b5772.html
https://babblingbeaver.com/2026/01/29/uc-berkeley-training-students-in-winston-smith-archive-methodology/
What’s your local university up to?
My university? I don’t follow it- but it’s in the heart of Wokeachusetts- and it’s the state U with something like 30 K students- in Amherst, and close to several other elite colleges- it’s called “the 5 college area”.
Back when the US was a beacon of liberty to the world it inscribed the following on the statue of liberty “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. The problem with having a closed border policy is that it only seems to apply after the people applying it have moved somewhere. Humans have been migrating in search of a better life for tens of thousands of years and it is a much a human right as the pursuit of happiness or the right to bear arms.
OK Migration will commence unabated and You will be responsible for housing, feeding, clothing, and supplying health care for ten of them in your current domicile and with your current income.
The border is closed to ILLEGAL aliens, open to anyone on a Visa, Naturalized resident or an immigrant turned citizen with a passport.
It is so simple even a cave child understands it.
You have to be really dense to not grasp that the problem is whether the migration is legal or illegal. People don’t have an automatic right to move to any other nation. My grandparents all came to America and had to be evaluated at Ellis Island.
Do you leave your front door open at night? If not, perhaps you should consider for once the rights of the people who have inhabited a land for centuries to vet anyone who wants to settle there, and reject those they deem unsuitable.
“Give me your tired, your poor…”
Nice poetry. Lousy policy for 2026.
Utter nonsense—to use your phrase.
All of it borrowed, to be repaid by future taxpayers (i.e. my kids, grandkids, and so on…) in taxes, reduced services, diminished lifestyles, and extended working lives.
Wrong. As government debt, it will never be repaid. It will simply be rolled over for the next generation.
future taxpayers…
Just as my generation paid off the Napoleonic debt. (ending 2015)
My point stands. Even a nation’s credit card can be declined.
Future taxpayers won’t be able to pay for it, they will have their own tax debts to pay for
It taxes savings. Anyone who put a £1 away for retirement has seen the purchasing power diminished through inflation. The volume, types and rates of taxation are up now, the traditional services used to justify those taxes are diminished, corrupted or done away with. So its reduced purchasing power, increased taxes, diminished services, reduced Quality of Life (however you want to monetize that) plus rising costs to borrow, reduced returns on investments which causes insurance premiums and the costs of business to continue to raise the barrier to entry for others, which forces companies to cut costs which reduces competition, quality and quantity.
IOW, all borrowed fiat money hits every person in one way or another, those on pension, those still working and those yet to be born.
Enjoy the enshittification of All The Things.
CO2 IS AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FOR GROWING FLORA AND FAUNA; NET ZERO IS A SUICIDE PACT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-an-absolutely-vital-gas-ingredient-for-growing-flora-and
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The IPCC, etc., has endowed CO2 gas as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., denies the Little Ice Age, uses fraudulent computer temperature projections.
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Governments proclaimed: Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to:
1) increase command/control by governments, and
2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people, already for at least 50 years, extremely biased CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, NBC ABC, CBS come to mind.
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. CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the absorbable, low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures.
CO2 is a life-giving molecule. Greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an essential ingredient to:
1) increase green flora and fauna, reduce desert areas, such as the Sahara, and
2) increase crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
At About 30% Annual W/S Electricity on the Grid, Various Costs Increase Exponentially
The W/S systems uglify the countryside, kill birds and bats, whales and dolphins, fisheries, tourism, view-sheds, etc.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much, creates grid-disturbing difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and more costly (c/kWh) to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years, and recently in Spain/Portugal.
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All have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices (c/kWh) in the EU, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the moneyed elites who live in the poshest places.
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Native People Suffer Extra Burdens: Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations, already burdened by the wind/solar/batteries nonsense, and then further burdened by do-good bureaucrat and self-serving moneyed elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, uneducated, unskilled, ghetto-trash, crime-prone, poor folks, from dysfunctional countries.
Those folks are sucking from the multiple, government-program tits, while making 1) minimal efforts to produce goods and services, and 2) maximum efforts to be chaotic, culture-destroying burdens, the native populations never voted for.
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Minimal Temperature Change due to CO2: The climate is not any different, even though, atmosphere CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1850 to 420 ppm in 2025, 50% in 175 years. During that time, world surface temps increased by at most 1.5 C +/- 0.25 C, of which:
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1) Urban heat islands account for about 65% (0.65 x 1.5 = 0.975 C) of the warming, such as the UHI of about 700 miles, from north of Portland, Maine, to south of Norfolk, Virginia, forested in 1850, now covered with heat-absorbing human detritus, plus the waste heat of fuel burning.
Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/16/live-at-1-p-m-eastern-shock-climate-report-urban-heat-islands-responsible-for-65-of-global-warming/
2) CO2 accounts for less than 0.3 C, with the rest from
3) Long-term, inter-acting cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
4) Earth surface volcanic activity, and other changes, such as from increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
Churchill- I’ve got a biography of him. Started reading it a year or so ago. I should get back to it. I do recall how he escaped a prison in South Africa after he was captured by the Afrikaners. Courageous, gutsy, smart man.
Not so. Mommy paid a ransom to the Boers to let him go. The rest was Winnie-The-Pooh fabrication.
In the biography, it said he was in an outdoor area of the prison and he managed to get over a fence. Supposedly it was in a very rural area so they didn’t think he’d try to escape. But you may be right- I sense that he worked hard to build his heroic reputation.
OK, so what are the sources for that version of his escape?
Not true according to Gemini.AI:
“ [Churchill’s mother] did not play a direct, hands-on role in the tactical escape from the POW camp in Pretoria, her presence in South Africa and her high-profile fundraising efforts to support British forces formed a critical, supportive backdrop during the crisis.”
Given more time, though, she likely would have succeeded in her efforts to arranged for his release.
No place with an income tax has freedom. Direct taxation and a free people cannot coexist.
Europe’s Decline: Europe has had a near-zero, real-growth GDP, decreasing real household incomes, moderate inflation, and increasing social unrest for at least 4 years. Europe is burdened by: 1) The Brussels’ myopic energy/enviro policies, such as wind, solar, batteries, biofuels, etc., 2) Much increased defense expenses, 3) The loss of selling goods and services to the lucrative Russian market, 4) The cost and chaos of a continued influx of undesirable dregs from Third World countries, 5) Paying at least $50 billion/year for Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
Europe, with insufficient energy and other resources, will suffer the most blowback from fossil fuel interruptions.
Europe adamantly refuses low-cost, reliable Russian energy and materials.
The economic course of Europe will be downhill for at least a decade or more, with greatly increased inflation and debt financing at higher interest rates. The bloom is off the rose!
Few countries in Europe have the luxury of being able to power a single AI data center, but the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and others absolutely must each build several if they want to keep any industrial, technological, or financial corporations. Their governments and military need them as well. Something has got to give, and it must be fast, for Europe to avoid a quick decline to third-world influence, it not living standards. The Industrial Revolution was necessary to create modern Western Civilization. The AI Revolution is necessary to advance it to the next level.
Right, you are, but first unelected, inane Brussels bureaucrats need to be ousted
Reality for Milibrain >>>
A typical AI-focused hyperscale data centre uses as much electricity as ~100,000 average households The largest ones under construction or planned can use 20 times more — equivalent to the annual power of 2 million households or a medium-sized city.
The power draw is enormous, many current big AI clusters will draw 100–300 MW continuously. Upcoming giant ones such as OpenAI or xAI-scale projects up to 1 GW or more that’s like a full-sized nuclear power plant dedicated to one facility.
Much larger consumption, up to the entire grid capacity of small nations will be required to support global AI.
Another useful way to assess data centres from the IEA
“An AI focused data centre is 10 times more capital intensive than an aluminium smelter”
IEA ‘Energy and AI’ ( April 2025)
“Reality for Milibrain>>>”
Considering his continued belief in the ability of rainbows and unicorns to power a modern industrial economy, shouldn’t that be Microbrain?
“‘The UK has top AI talent…”
They’ll most likely move to America- especially thanks to the astronomical salaries they can earn in the AI business. If they got such salaries in the UK, most of it would be taxed away.
Story tip – UK hydropower breakthrough could unlock clean energy in once unfeasible locations
6 – 20 hours of 10 megawatt small-grid scale power supply?
Why not put the same efforts & $$$s / £££s into small modular reactors that produce 300 megawatts of continuous power supply?
that’s a Monty Python’esque piece of humour right? “…blow to Labour’s bid to make Britain an ‘Ai superpower'”
good belly laugh!
Trump told AI companies they should build their own power plants to run their businesses, so as not to raise the electric rates on electric customers.
Anything like that in the Uk?
Would UK permit anything other than wind/solar for those power plants?
Good question.
It’s time for Solar and Wind to build their own data center without the grid 😉
Total Energy had paid almost $1 billion for federal leases to put up a few thousand MW of offshore windmills on the East Coast
Trump told them those windmills will not be built and we will litigate you for years, unless you agree to build GAS-fired CCGT power plants for AI facilities.
Total Energies immediately jumped at the deal. It will get its money back at the same rate as construction proceeds.
Those NG power plants need PIPELINES to get the NG to them. There is already a severe pipeline capacity shortage in the northeast. Intrastate and interstate regs for new pipeline construction will delay everything, and approvals hard to get. In some states, state laws must be changed to allow for pipelines and power plant construction. On top of that, enviro-wacos will be suing them every step of the way.
The major AI data centers will be up and running, built in other states, long before that happens.
Milibrain aught to get a clue. AI superpowers super power their AI with Reliable, Affordable Energy.
Energy is most affordable with Domestic Supplies of affordable fuel and generation components.
It’s all about fooling and subsidizing the voters to stay in power.
Miliband and the UK government are so inept I wanted to compare them to the Keystone Cops but that would be an insult to the Cops.