Cost of living!

[pete]

9 hours ago, C8RKH said:

Er, the North Sea and the Irish Sea. Where did you think it came from?

We also have a large capacity to regas LNG shipments - but little space to store that and most of Lancashire is shitting on billions cubic meters of gas we could frack.

What's the source for that please?

Top right hand corner 

[Bazza 907]

19 hours ago, ChrisJ said:

My Dad worked for British Gas from 1967 to retirement in the early 1990s. He was a director of research, and when you smell gas, that is down to my dad. I'm sure he did other stuff in the 20+ years he was there, but this is the one always quoted in my family.

I know quite a few people responsible for the smell of gas too...

[C8RKH]

6 hours ago, TdM said:

For the reservoirs, they need to start making them subterranean. Other countries have huge underground reservoirs, have a guess what happens when it's sunny and bloody hot... That's right, nothing. The water is underground so it's still there and doesn't just evaporate like ours. 

We have a significant amount of water in aquifers in the UK. Same thing, just made by nature not man!

Also, reservoirs could be used for recreation too, so to provide jobs, opportunities and well being improvements for people. However, in the UK we seem to like to put up signs warning people of the dangers, whereas in say Germany, outside of Berlin you have the lakes that people are encouraged to use.

4 hours ago, pete said:

Top right hand corner 

Thanks. Bloody knew I should have gone to Specsavers.

[pete]

Centrica have a tax REBATE of £56million

[C8RKH]

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/comment/article-11124485/MAGGIE-PAGANO-Think-Britains-got-bad-look-EU.html

[pete]

Seems so obvious so why apply 1960s economics to today 

[100th_Idiot]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62585809

 

Japan says drink more to help economy 🤔

[Bibs]

One of the Directors' of Ofgen resigned over the weekend saying that they couldn't support the rises. 

If bills reach £6k pa as expected, that's 25% of the average gross salary in the UK...

[Frickin_idiot]

7 minutes ago, Bibs said:

One of the Directors' of Ofgen resigned over the weekend saying that they couldn't support the rises. 

If bills reach £6k pa as expected, that's 25% of the average gross salary in the UK...

And at this level we will have social unrest, it’s as simple as that.

The Government will offer some kind of support or risk the wrath of riots and being unelectable. 
 

The problem being that with support comes a massive bill. We are already living well beyond our means as a country, putting more money on the credit card is irresponsible and dangerous.

 

Successive Governments have failed to mend the roof when the sun was shining. You can only kick the can down the road for so long, when it bites, it’ll be nasty.

[Barrykearley]

There was widespread looting in one part of London last week. Not reported in main stream media

[Frickin_idiot]

2 minutes ago, Barrykearley said:

There was widespread looting in one part of London last week. Not reported in main stream media

It’s the start. Honourable and law abiding citizens will be forced onto the streets, you can only push people so far.  Perhaps it is needed, the Government need to finally understand that they work for us and, with the massive resource of Government we should have had a sensible energy policy in places decades ago. 

[Bibs]

22 minutes ago, Barrykearley said:

Not reported in main stream media

https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/oxford-street-chaos-shops-looted-24749280

This?

[Barrykearley]

Sadly not I’m afraid @Bibs  was something that popped up on one of the kids social media accounts. Could be “fake” news maybe ?

[Bibs]

Would be nuts if no news or media outlet showed it with the amount of 'citizen journalists' that would have been there. That aside, I'm sure with bills and inflation heading where they are, there's plenty more unrest to come sadly.

[C8RKH]

26 minutes ago, Frickin_idiot said:

It’s the start. Honourable and law abiding citizens will be forced onto the streets, you can only push people so far.  Perhaps it is needed, the Government need to finally understand that they work for us and, with the massive resource of Government we should have had a sensible energy policy in places decades ago. 

Quite right that you point out that the failure of government is successive, over decades, and cross party. I live for the chance to ask Ed Miliband in person, for one, as to how he helped to steer us away from this as Minister for Energy....

[Barrykearley]

@C8RKH in the need for balance here - I should point out it’s all thatchers fault 

[Frickin_idiot]

2 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

Quite right that you point out that the failure of government is successive, over decades, and cross party. I live for the chance to ask Ed Miliband in person, for one, as to how he helped to steer us away from this as Minister for Energy....

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that they are all thoroughly useless. We need joined up thinking with a well thought out energy security policy.

We have reduced our spare energy capacity at a time when additional pressures are being put on the grid through:

Higher population

Increased demand for housing due to life expectancy increases and more families breaking up.

More people working from home.

Increased use of energy greedy gadgets and tech

Increased demand through the forced transition to electrified transportation

 

I could go on. I’m just a normal middle aged guy and I have seen this coming for 15 years. Why hasn’t the government with all its might and massive resources? The state literally employs hundreds of people in the national Statistics office less than 20 miles from me. Why hasn’t this office reported on the trend rather than wasting time on completely fictitious inflation figures?

I suggest that it this is a case of gross negligence and a dereliction of duty.

 

[C8RKH]

From "The Post" via Unherd.  makes you wonder about sustainable, versus eco, versus all the other green bullshit....   

 

the UK is the world’s biggest single consumer of wood for energy generation: “in 2018 [Britain] consumed an estimated 8.3 million tonnes, representing 21 per cent of all the wood pellets produced worldwide”. It may not be great for curbing carbon emissions, despite its technical status as a renewable resource, but energy derived from wood is at least renewable, reliable and relatively secure from dependence on a fluctuating global energy market. But only up to a point. Around 80% of the wood burned at Drax is imported from America. As Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng recently cautioned,“There’s no point getting it from Louisiana — that isn’t sustainable … transporting these wood pellets halfway across the world — that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”

 

He’s right. Wood biomass is a vital part of Britain’s energy mix until the proposed new nuclear power stations come onstream, but the market for wood pellets isn’t immune to the rising energy prices Putin’s war on Ukraine has wrought. Many of Western Europe’s power stations were dependent on compressed wood pellets imported from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, now cut off by the war and sanctions. As a result, the price of American wood pellets is already climbing, even leaving aside the undesirability, for the climate, of importing from the other side of the world a resource that literally grows on trees.

For the medium term, Britain should secure its own domestic supply of wood for energy generation, so here’s my modest proposal: cut down our conifer plantations and burn them. As environmentalists have complained for years, the Forestry Commission and other large landowners have blanketed Britain’s precious uplands and heathlands with non-native conifers like Sitka spruce for generations, with a devastating effect on our native wildlife. As the Woodland Trust notes, “approximately 40% (227,000ha) of the remaining ancient woodland in the UK has been cleared and replanted with dense non-native plantations”. In his excellent book Rebirding, the conservationist Benedict Macdonald observed plaintively that conifer plantations make up 51% of Britain’s woodland, “alien crops” which “come with no useful insect package, and do not ‘compute’ for Britain’s native wildlife”. As he notes, “There is, in truth, no larger single crop for wildlife prevention in our country.” His solution, “fell the conifers and regrow native trees in our national forests,” because “to get our precious woodlands back… we need to ask for the existing trees to be cut down.”

On the face of it, it seems an elegant solution: we already burn wood in vast quantities for energy, but we import almost all of it from the US. At the same time, we’re experiencing a collapse in our native wildlife as our precious natural habitats are blanketed in non-native trees for which no commercial or ecological logic exists. If we fell our alien conifers and burn them, replacing them with either native broadleaf woodland or other threatened habitats like peat bogs or heathland, we can keep the lights on and bring back Britain’s nature, surely a win-win solution. Sometimes a crisis really can be an opportunity: forget fracking, it’s time to get Britain logging.

[910Esprit]

Why anyone would be vying for the job of PM at the mo is beyond me.   Think I'd call  a snap election and hope Labour won.   You could the triumphantly sort out 'their mess' in 5 years time...   Looks to me like we are entering a period of 'readjustment' 

Edited August 22, 2022 by 910Esprit

[Frickin_idiot]

10 minutes ago, 910Esprit said:

Why anyone would be vying for the job of PM at the mo is beyond me.   Think I'd call  a snap election and hope Labour won.   You could the triumphantly sort out 'their mess' in 5 years time...   Looks to me like we are entering a period of 'readjustment' 

This is the problem with our politicians - all they care about is the immediate. Where is the long term planning? That’s right, nowhere. All they care about is kicking the problems far enough down the track that they don’t need to worry about it for a few more years. When we get a real readjustment it’s going to be catastrophic.

[910Esprit]

9 minutes ago, Frickin_idiot said:

When we get a real readjustment it’s going to be catastrophic.

It does make me wonder when I look at how 99% of the world population live compared to us...

[Frickin_idiot]

1 minute ago, 910Esprit said:

It does make me wonder when I look at how 99% of the world population live compared to us...

We are living way beyond our means, and our grandchildren are being left with the tab. We will all have to get used to having the state do less and we pay more. The interest payments on government debt is astronomical.

[C8RKH]

9 minutes ago, Frickin_idiot said:

We are living way beyond our means, and our grandchildren are being left with the tab

Just as our parents/grand parents picked up the tab for WW2.

Every generation leaves a legacy of good and bad for the next generation. Let's not pander to this generations snowflakes any more than necessary. I mean, should we be blaming ourselves for the ills done by our great grand parents during the industrial revolution? No of course not. And indeed, it was the innovation and wealth generated by the generation of the industrial revolution that laid the foundations for our solid way of life today and our relative wealth, health, and general prosperity. All at the expense, in many cases, of others!

This current generation, and the ones that come after will need to rise up to the challenges. Just like others have before them.

After 400 years or so the balance of human power is shifting slowing, but steadily, from west to east.  Population density is shifting also to the east and that is where fortunes are being made, and will be made, for the next 5 generations. The west is falling. The east is rising.  

[Frickin_idiot]

7 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

Just as our parents/grand parents picked up the tab for WW2.

Every generation leaves a legacy of good and bad for the next generation. Let's not pander to this generations snowflakes any more than necessary. I mean, should we be blaming ourselves for the ills done by our great grand parents during the industrial revolution? No of course not. And indeed, it was the innovation and wealth generated by the generation of the industrial revolution that laid the foundations for our solid way of life today and our relative wealth, health, and general prosperity. All at the expense, in many cases, of others!

This current generation, and the ones that come after will need to rise up to the challenges. Just like others have before them.

After 400 years or so the balance of human power is shifting slowing, but steadily, from west to east.  Population density is shifting also to the east and that is where fortunes are being made, and will be made, for the next 5 generations. The west is falling. The east is rising.  

Yeah I agree - the west is in decline and the  east in the ascendancy. I can’t help but feel that we have been the architect of our own downfall. Twisted priorities, failure to plan, a focus on personality rather than policy and a government that is afraid to say NO.

[C8RKH]

I agree with your every point above @Frickin_idiot apart from the last one. The Government is not afraid to say no, it's just that no one listens when it does say no as just like with our Politicians, self interest is the new order of the day.