Maybe you could have Engxit (Egxit? Enxit? Eggxit? Let's do it 1500s style and have a dozen spellings) and suddenly England leaving the UK and foisting all the Tories onto Wales, Cornwall, Man and Scotland (but keeping Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands).
UK Politics - BoJo and chums
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Do not forget the pricing mechanism concocted by the European Commission during that corrupt liberal pig Barroso's time. I don't know whether it's still in place in the UK but given it favours the oligarchs who have stakes in energy businesses I suspect that the tories didn't end it.
Energy gets "auctioned" in a reverse way: the most expensive energy becomes the payout. And prices are spot, not medium or long term averages justified by investments for production. The bankers who bribed the EC to get that in place called it "marginal cost pricing". Search about that. In fact I'm providing a link (warning: EU propaganda talk there) because people probably wouldn't believe the utter corruption of it otherwise:
In typical liberal (meaning: market fetishist) propaganda, they claim that this is the best of all possible worlds for consumers. "The alternative would not provide cheaper prices. In the pay-as-bid model, producers (including cheap renewables) would simply bid at the price they expect the market to clear, not at zero or at their generation costs."
Sure, just assume that in a competitive market all those offering to sell for lower prices would and could collude (hey, doesn't the EU claim that monopoly is illehgal? oh wait, that's only when the state is the owner oaf an utility...) to all present the very highest price, always.
It's utterly ridiculous propaganda, to defend an indefensible rip-off from consumers, and now that prices are speculatively getting higher every day, from states that have stepped in to "subsidize" this scheme. A blatant transfer fo public money to the oligarchs.
The people of the US, mind you, have rid themselves of the servants of these oligarchs in Brussels. Now it's up to them to kick out the ones in London. And Starmer is no opposition for that purpose, he's a liberal like the others.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Also regarding the energy situation in the EU and by extension the UK if it still operates with the same rules: the incentives are perverse in that the groups invested in energy production are getting huge profits from their cheap past investments, and need only the perception of continued scarcity of energy to keep prices (and therefore profits) hugely inflated. They need that marginal price high.
Therefore these investors will not take their extra profits and invest in new production. That is squarely counter to their interests, would reduce the current level of profit. And because european bank consortia are in on all the existing producers, they are not choosing to support new investment.
This kind of deranged "market structure" can only be the product of a ruling elite of corrupt looters. And necessarily ruins countries where lefty unchecked.
Therefore these investors will not take their extra profits and invest in new production. That is squarely counter to their interests, would reduce the current level of profit. And because european bank consortia are in on all the existing producers, they are not choosing to support new investment.
This kind of deranged "market structure" can only be the product of a ruling elite of corrupt looters. And necessarily ruins countries where lefty unchecked.
The energy unit sold at the same price regardless of how much it cost to produce it, was what I was alluding to. It is making fortunes daily for those companies. For example, wind power costs very little to produce, but is paid on the market as much as the highest cost set for gas.
Probably part of the reason why so many solar/wind projects appear.
Probably part of the reason why so many solar/wind projects appear.
I'm taking this all as true, because it seems relatively uncontroversial, but to me this just seems like capitalism working as intended. It's not specific to the EU, but you're making it specific to the EU even though we're officially and literally out of it. Any decisions around the current crisis fall squarely on our government (which you note, however briefly).
A feature of modern capitalism is the drive for ever-higher profits, which in turn necessitates a lack of investment in anything that isn't literally required to keep the profits from increasing. Much like how any business will inevitably turn from internal growth (there's a phrase for it) to acquisitions-based growth. It does so to keep up the increase in profits, year-on-year, and "success" is reflective of that (regardless of the actual product quality, etc). I get that you really, really, really want to blame the EU for everything that could possibly ever go wrong, but even here they're just a symptom. The problem is capitalism (which is very funny when you mention the US).
EnglishEdward
Deity
Regarding the UK, I will limit my comments in this post to a number of generalities:
(a) I believe the deranged state of the energy market in the UK predated the EU's adoption of their current regulations.
(b) The UK government created a false market of innumerable resellers who waste our time pestering us
(email, phone, text, post or street ambush) to switch to them but neither produce nor deliver electricity or gas.
Some of them sold power long at fixed prices and went bankrupt buying at spot prices, other suppliers
are still asking the government for billions of pounds threating to go bankrupt or disconnect customers.
(c) For older houses disconnection requires a house visit, and as Kryiakos has noticed some people have machetes.
(d) Many UK suppliers are largely EU state owned happy to gouge and export UK energy, it is not just the oligarchs.
(e) I recollect that Texas suppliers found it very profitable to intentionally reduce power capacity to
California to artificially create a peak time electricity shortage driving up prices to make extortionate profits.
(f) And I have a very strong suspicion that that was what UK suppliers were doing last summer.
Certainly a lot of storage (Rough gasfield) and generation (coal fired) were deliberately turned off.
(g) We were told that the recovery from the Covid recession meant that there was a surge in
demand (IMO pretty easy to predict and plan for).
(h) Nevertheless suppliers were trying to double prices last November.
(i) The Russia-Ukraine business that escalated in February may have made things worse,
but more importantly for suppliers it proved a convenient cover for gouging.
(j) A thorough restructuring of the nominals of the energy supply industry is required in the UK.
(k) The rollout of onshore and offshore wind power often remains obstructed by NIMBYs.
These are mainly wealthy conservative types who the government chooses to pander to.
(l) The current government and Parliament are sadly incapable of carrying a restructuring out.
(m) the legalities of any UK restructuring might clash with the so called trade deals.
(a) I believe the deranged state of the energy market in the UK predated the EU's adoption of their current regulations.
(b) The UK government created a false market of innumerable resellers who waste our time pestering us
(email, phone, text, post or street ambush) to switch to them but neither produce nor deliver electricity or gas.
Some of them sold power long at fixed prices and went bankrupt buying at spot prices, other suppliers
are still asking the government for billions of pounds threating to go bankrupt or disconnect customers.
(c) For older houses disconnection requires a house visit, and as Kryiakos has noticed some people have machetes.
(d) Many UK suppliers are largely EU state owned happy to gouge and export UK energy, it is not just the oligarchs.
(e) I recollect that Texas suppliers found it very profitable to intentionally reduce power capacity to
California to artificially create a peak time electricity shortage driving up prices to make extortionate profits.
(f) And I have a very strong suspicion that that was what UK suppliers were doing last summer.
Certainly a lot of storage (Rough gasfield) and generation (coal fired) were deliberately turned off.
(g) We were told that the recovery from the Covid recession meant that there was a surge in
demand (IMO pretty easy to predict and plan for).
(h) Nevertheless suppliers were trying to double prices last November.
(i) The Russia-Ukraine business that escalated in February may have made things worse,
but more importantly for suppliers it proved a convenient cover for gouging.
(j) A thorough restructuring of the nominals of the energy supply industry is required in the UK.
(k) The rollout of onshore and offshore wind power often remains obstructed by NIMBYs.
These are mainly wealthy conservative types who the government chooses to pander to.
(l) The current government and Parliament are sadly incapable of carrying a restructuring out.
(m) the legalities of any UK restructuring might clash with the so called trade deals.
It is clear that it is affordable, if we can afford those two floating white elephants we can afford to keep the lights on. The question is if subsidising fossil fuel usage is the best way to deal with the problem, instead of say subsidising insulation.
I’m not sure you’ll find many takers for reducing the capabilities of the armed forces given the past 6 months! Ok you could argue whether the air craft carriers were the right investment. I spent a year at the shipyard in Govan helping to build them so I’m biased
I 100% agree with you that I would support spending if it was investment: new wind farms, insulation, PV, bio-methane, new North Sea gas (if there is any…). Covering peoples bills is not affordable. To say this is going to last just two years seems an incredibly rosy view.
I guess it depends what you mean by "affordable" in this context. If it means "Within the set of possible actions a democratic country could take" then both the aircraft carriers and support for those in energy poverty are both affordable. If it means "Things that the tory party will do to get votes" then I fear you are correct, the aircraft carriers are the most "affordable".
Blair presses the nuclear button
· New generation of atomic stations endorsed by PM· Failure to act would be 'a dereliction of my duty'
Should have listened to Blair. This article from 2006 is oddly prophetic. And not really that far from where we currently find ourself.
EnglishEdward
Deity
And how many new nuclear power stations were completed/started under Tony Blair's administration ?
EnglishEdward
Deity
Two things:
(a) I am remarkably cynical about departing leaders advocating what they have themselves seemed to fail to do.
(b) My brief search failed to find a good graph of nuclear power stations completions and new starts
so I don't know the answer to the question I raised. I suspect it is none, just empty rhetoric.
(a) I am remarkably cynical about departing leaders advocating what they have themselves seemed to fail to do.
(b) My brief search failed to find a good graph of nuclear power stations completions and new starts
so I don't know the answer to the question I raised. I suspect it is none, just empty rhetoric.
MrCynical
Deity
The most recent nuclear power station to come online in the UK was Sizewell B back in 1995. The still much argued over Sizewell C could be claimed to be a result of Blair's government's initial idea in 2008, but has been through rounds of debate and delays through every government since then. So I wouldn't give any individual government the credit/blame for that one. There's also Hinkley Point C (again, long delayed, and still nowhere near generating power).
EnglishEdward
Deity
@ MrCynical
Thank you.
IMO privatisation and the failure to agree a site for the long term storage of nuclear waste together
doomed the UK nuclear power industry, and that was very definitely several governments' fault.
But the major mistake (apart from the false market) were in running down coal in the dash for gas.
Now the technological maturity of wind and solar power technology render Tony Blair's case out of date.
Thank you.
IMO privatisation and the failure to agree a site for the long term storage of nuclear waste together
doomed the UK nuclear power industry, and that was very definitely several governments' fault.
But the major mistake (apart from the false market) were in running down coal in the dash for gas.
Now the technological maturity of wind and solar power technology render Tony Blair's case out of date.
I suspect tidal power will play a part in the future as well.
It has high initial costs compared to solar and wind power and there are ecological concerns too but it has the advantage of being much more predictable in terms of its output.
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