Sixes and sevens - by Richard... Monday, October 18, 2010

Sixes and sevens - by Richard... Monday, October 18, 2010

I do wish The Daily Telegraph would get its act together, and somehow try and understand the subject it is writing on.

Trailing that idiot Huhne's "ambitious blueprint on Monday" to destroy transform Britain's power system over the next 40 years, the paper tells us that, "It is believed energy bills are likely to increase by at least £300 a year per household to fund financial support for the wind industry and other renewable projects."

Yet Booker does the maths in his column. Based on official projections, the outcome is that costs are likely to increase by £880 a year, with an extra £22 billion added to the cost of electricity generation.

Then there is Gilligan's recent piece which basically says that wind generation as an option is basically stuffed – which means that Huhne's ambitions of meeting the EU's renewables quota are basically moonshine.

One really does wonder how much further we have to go before the media wakes up to the reality – that our ministers are locked into an expensive and useless fantasy, which even in the process of not working is set to cost up billions.

However, it looks as if there is some small cheer, in that the plans for a 10 mile barrage across the Severn Estuary are being dumped. But this is not a sudden outbreak of common sense – simply that the project is so expensive that it cannot go ahead without public money and there is no money left in the kitty.

We are also told to expect good news on nuclear power, but why am I totally unconvinced an expected "go ahead to a new generation of eight nuclear power stations" is actually going to amount to anything.

The small print will tell us whether it can happen, but there is a strong suspicion that the continued uncertainties in the government position – not least its attitude to nuclear waste – will deter investment.

In other words, even after Huhne has finished tomorrow on energy policy, we will still be at sixes and sevens. But with a moron in charge of policy, reporting to a moron in charge of the government, there was never really any likelihood that it was going to be any different.

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Historical tides - by Richard... Sunday, October 17, 2010

When Merkel says it, she can get away with it ... just. And she has said it: "German multiculturalism has 'utterly failed'". She was speaking to a meeting of youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union party, and declared that the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily "side by side" did not work.

New arrivals to do more to integrate into German society, she thus says, a move that is seen to be courting "growing anti-immigrant opinion in Germany", which is home to around four million Muslims.

Furthermore, Merkel is not the first mainstream politician in recent time to break the taboo. Last week, Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria and a member of the Christian Social Union – part of Merkel's ruling coalition – called for a halt to Turkish and Arabic immigration.

Both politicians, though, are responding to pressure from within the CDU to take a harder line on immigrants who show resistance to being integrated into German society. And there can be little doubt that Muslims are the target.

In a recent opinion poll, the majority of Germans who responded (55 percent) believed that "Arabs" (aka Muslims) are "unpleasant people", compared with the 44 percent who held the opinion seven years ago. Another recent poll showed one-third of Germans believed the country was "overrun by foreigners" – aka Muslims.

Some of these people may have the sense to realise that they have outstayed their welcome, and get out of a country which has a lingering reputation for seeking final solutions to major problems. Once the tides of history start turning, they tend to develop an unstoppable momentum - and the difference this time is that we need to be alongside. You can abuse hospitality for only so long ...

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The revolting revolt - by Richard...

It should not pass notice on this blog, which is supposed to be interested in such things, that the Kermits have been revolting – more than they usually are. Embroiled in a general strike, it appears that as many as a million of them hit the streets last week.

However, while it is being said in some quarters that this invokes the spirit of 68, that seems hardly the case when the core of the strike is public sector workers and their big beef is pension rights. Somehow, that does not have quite the same caché as manning the barricades (or storming them) in defence of liberté, égalité and fraternité.

Furthermore, this level of upset is nothing really new. If you want a really entertaining read, there is little better than Alexander Werth's account of the great Paris riot of 6 February 1934, published in 1935 in his book France in Ferment (you can still get it on Amazon!). Forget the "spirit of 68" - go for the spirit of '34.

(What I found so entertaining, amongst other things, was how the police and rioters shared the same public transport - buses, etc. - to get to and from the riots, and were perfectly cordial during the journeys. Also, being Kermits, they all stopped for lunch - both sides - and then picked up where they had left off.)

The target then, of course, was not Sarkozy but Daladier, who was being accused of giving "free rein to socialist anarchy" and, at the same time, supporting "Masonic crooks". But then, any more than now, who ever said rioters had to be consistent?

Those riots back in 1934 actually presaged a moral breakdown in the French ruling class. Six years later when the "Hun" came knocking at the door, the whole edifice collapsed with barely a fight. And that much 1934 and now have in common – a nation that has lost its way ... in a continent that has lost its way.

Then, however, there was the brooding Nazi presence in Germany. Now, the threats are more diffuse, but nonetheless real. And what of 1934? Six years later, the world had changed forever. Here in 2010, can we be certain that in 2016 we will not be saying the same thing?

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Kill off the wrinklies - by Richard...

Booker has been doing some homework, on which basis he asks:

Is there any subject on which more nonsense is talked and written than the mind-blowing proposals being bandied about by the Government for meeting our EU target of generating, within 10 years, 30 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources? (That is roughly six times the current total, meaning that we have by far the most challenging target of any country in Europe.)

He then comes up with the total annual bill for the dream (nightmare is probably more accurate) of meeting our EU renewables target, which comes to at least £22 billion. That's considerably more than the entire wholesale cost of Britain's electricity generated from all sources last year, at £18.6 billion. He says.

In other words, these measures alone would much more than double our electricity bills, for producing on average – and very unreliably – barely as much energy as we get from a handful of conventional power stations.

In reality, Booker adds, there isn't the faintest chance that any of the Government's targets will be met. But the massive diversion of resources that it is doing its best to encourage will not help when it comes to filling the looming 40 percent gap in our electricity supplies, as 17 of the older nuclear and coal-fired power stations are forced to close. There is virtually nothing, then, in these plans to ensure that we can keep Britain's lights on.

To all that, comment levels are high, well over 100 at just gone midnight Saturday. One of the comments reads:

Being close to pension age with next to nothing in income, I'll just go without the heat and light. I'm sure the same will apply to many thousands even more vulnerable than me. It was Labour's policies that has brought on this energy crisis. But it seems a good way to cull the ill and aged - so should go quite some way to giving the new Tory government some of the savings it needs!

And that is the size of it. Kill off all the wrinklies and you slash spending. That has to be the reason for this policy. Come to think of it, the SS got it all wrong. If only they had called themselves "greenshirts" and designated gas chamber operatives as "green jobs", they might still be in business.

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It is a ...? - by Richard... Saturday, October 16, 2010

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, sh*ts like a duck, it is a ...?

If you have a series of, Anglo-French naval treaties, the kermits are paying you for your carrier development, you have signed an agreement on joint carrier operation, and you are about to ditch the JSF, the aircraft you are going to buy for your carriers is ...?

But never worry, 13th Century Fox is on the case. Close your eyes and sing this happy little song - everything will be alright.

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Blowing cold and hot - by Richard...

Even if early-season snow is not that uncommon in the area, it's still snowing in parts of the Adirondacks, USA, which are seeing the season's first significant snowfall. Two inches of snow fell Friday at Lake Placid and higher elevations experienced heavier accumulations. Snow also fell across higher elevations in Vermont. Killington had four inches of snow by midday Friday.

And the pic that tells the story comes from this report, showing a truck passing over Sherburne Pass on Route 4 in Killington, Vt., as an unexpected snowstorm dumped a blanket of snow on higher elevations in Vermont.

When it comes to our turn, and the brass monkeys are shedding spherical objects, German entrepreneur Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have the answer. From China, they are importing "small heating devices", which they have branded "heatballs."

Rated either at 75 or 100 Watts, these personal heaters also give off considerable amounts of light, which gives them a useful secondary role. For convenience, these translucent glass devices can be fitted into standard lamp holders, which previously took 75 or 100 Watt light bulbs of the type now prohibited by EU law.

On their website the two engineers describe the heatballs as "action art" and as "resistance against legislation which is implemented without recourse to democratic and parliamentary processes." We are not sure quite what they mean by that second statement, but we look forward to the first batch of heatballs arriving in this country, hopefully before the expected snows arrive.

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