Ofgem has left us short of generating capacity and too dependent on imports. It seems the Regulator has been reluctant to see security of supply as a crucial prime requirement. There had been competition between the retail energy suppliers, but competition between different ways of generating power has been regulated heavily around carbon dioxide issues rather than relying on cost and price unsubsidised to be the main determinant.
Ofwat has left us short of water. Thev introduction of competition has been limited to supplying businesses and to the provision of service rather than to the costs of collecting and cleaning water. There is no great problem with moving to a competitive model. You would treat the pipe network as a common carrier with the company owners required to offer terms to other companies to use pipe capacity. The Regulator could adjudicate disputes.Oil and gas pipes are commonly shared under commercial contracts.
The railways can also benefit from competitive challenge. Were the government to return the railways to the private sector by creating regional companies that owned and reunited track and trains there would need to be means to secure regular use of track for freight trains and long distance passenger services which cross company borders. The Hull train service was greatly improved by allowing a new challenger to provide better services.
Competition introduces more capital, service and productivity improvements and innovation. Monopoly stifles these things . Regulated monopolies leave us short of capacity.
August 29, 2022
Good morning.
From the OFGEM website, under our-strategy-and-priorities section :
The reason why we have such a poor generating capacity is because the government have created legislation that prevents anything producing energy that its primary source is from fossil fuels.
Sir John
Please stop blaming others for this. We are not stupid and can find the truth for ourselves.
August 29, 2022
It’s quite sad to see Sir John resorting to “blame the Regulator.”
August 29, 2022
But the regulators ARE to blame – ALONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT, of course, even though Sir John seems to want to omit this last bit. Ofgem and the government are guilty of focusing on net zero rather than self-sufficiency. And Ofwat and the government are guilty of allowing foreign companies to get rich while doing nothing at all to stop leaks from pipes and the discharge of sewage into our rivers and seas. The plan put forward the other day by Useless Eustice to end sewage discharges by 2050 (yeah, no hurry mate!!!) is a joke. It allows the companies to put the cost of doing so onto customers’ bills, rather than taking it out of the profits and dividends of the foreign companies.
And no, Sir John, you can’t magic up competition in the water market, for two reasons: (i) the capital costs involved in setting up a new company, and (ii) the timescale involved. Who is going to decide to build a new reservoir, for instance, to supply the market? The timescale is too long and the cost too steep, with the rewards not secure enough to justify the investment and all the work involved. No, for water a regulated monopoly is not a problem, as long as it is STRICTLY regulated, so that it is FORCED to provide a good service at a reasonable cost.
August 29, 2022
+1
August 29, 2022
+1
August 29, 2022
John Redwood is as much a ‘party animal’ as any of the other Westminster creatures.
By the way, Mr Redwood. Is it true that Liz Truss has claimed £5000 in expenses to offset here gas and electricity bills over the last five years?
Given the very real hardship caused to British citizens not least by your current leaders infatuation with Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions against Russia, but also by successive Tory leaders policy of ‘net zero’, can you assure us that ‘we are all in this together’ ( remember the liar David Cameron? ), and no members of the Parliamentary Tory party who are all on at least £80K per year, will be accepting any furthe tax payer energy subsidies?
Reply I do not know what Liz has claimed in the last five years. Claims can only be made on second homes needed for the job.Clearly MPs living outside London do have to stay overnight when we have late sittings. I have not claimed any energy bills myself.
August 29, 2022
JR: “Clearly MPs living outside London do have to stay overnight when we have late sittings.”
Ever heard of the Ibis or Premier inn hotel chains?
MPs could stimulate the hotel sector in London, instead of running a expense scam at the expense of the tax paying public.
After the destruction wrought on the sector over the last three years, the sector could do with some help.
Reply Yes some do stay in hotels and some like me have bought our own flat so we do not charge rent to taxpayers.
August 29, 2022
Mark. You are totally right in what you say. It is entirely the fault of successive governments that we are in a mess. Yet still we hear RR is selling modular nuclear units to other countries but to date – and I may be wrong- I’ve heard nothing about SMRS here or coal mines or actual drilling or fracking. The idiots in charge have been rather silent and one has to ask is it by accident or design we find ourselves here? This could prove to be the downfall of this country as many businesses are already folding and they won’t be the last. There will be many out of work leaving the burden of propping up this mess to fewer people through their taxes. WHEN IS SOMEONE ACTUALLY GOING TO SHUT UP TALKING ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS AND ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING? For FFS it’s not beyond their mental capacity is it if people here can see what’s needed? Honestly John it’s got to the stage where we all feel there is no government and even when there is they are so dim the lights have already gone out.
August 29, 2022
12 years Shirley 12 years. Not successive govt’s. This govt. It is in power and could be self sufficient in energy. It CHOSE not to.
Illegal immigrants not worrying about energy, food health care, education etc all free while in four star hotels. Again, this govt’s policy to provide everything for free at UK taxpayers expense while UK citizens can get cold or starve.
August 29, 2022
You are correct FedUpSoutherner
August 29, 2022
You are right to highlight the change in Ofgem’s mission where, now, consumer interests are subservient to net zero. It all comes from Government not the regulator. Truss and Sunak favour net zero. Indeed Sunak was recently explicit in saying the public are going to have to get used to higher energy costs.
August 29, 2022
And there’s no longer any competition or difference between the main political parties…they all have the same net-zero policies
August 29, 2022
The Force is with them.
August 29, 2022
I emailed my LibCON MP, Chris Loder, during the Hypocritical COP26 Boondoggle, after he flew to Glasgow to put in an appearance, asking if he really believed people were going to vote to be made colder, poorer and have restricted lives. And I confirmed then that I wouldn’t be voting for anyone who supported the Net Zero lunacy. I expect many more LibCON MPs will be getting similar emails over the coming months.
August 29, 2022
It’s ‘Blame the Regulator’ day!
Regulators are notoriously useless. Their failures cost a fortune particularly in financial services.
Government appoints the regulators and has ultimate responsibility for their failures. Lack of action often suits government anyway.
It is much worse than quangos which, though vehicles for political patronage and stuffed with deadbeats, have less drastic and immediate impact.
August 29, 2022
Quite, the Tory Government set up this dogs dinner of ‘semi-privatisation’ and now trries to blame a part of it rather than the designer.
We have here, I’m sorry to say, Sir J. displaying dogma over common sense. If he had said, we need to find out WHY these semi-privatised industries are not performing as needed, and then look at solutions, I think we’d give him a chance. But no, it’s a glib ‘give the system a tweek and lets give it another 5 years’.
As I have said, if you mix private and public investment in one product or service, the private side takes the profit (if no profit they go away) and the public side takes the loss. A transfer of money from public purse to private pocket. You have to think again.
August 29, 2022
Agree – all our current problems stem from the climate change act and the climate change committee which this government and 99% of MPs are in fear of repealing
August 29, 2022
Mark,
As you noted previously, The CEO wrote the Climate Change Act! Who in their right mind would have him in charge of Ofgem if Cameron claimed “Red Ed’s” policy was “Marxist! Tories!”
Absolute bunch of idiots in govt. I cannot wait for 2024. The worldliness awaits Tory party.
August 29, 2022
higher energy costs we understand! Crippling enough to be unable to pay, even after absolute minimum use is not acceptable. Apart from the usual weak placatory words by those who could pay 10 times the latest sky high estimates, just what is this excuse for a Government actually going to do?
August 29, 2022
was a reply to MPC ….oops.
August 29, 2022
Mary M
I answered your question from yesterday about Rwanda. I mention it now as it has been passed.
August 29, 2022
Electricity capacity is procured through Capacity Market auctions with BEIS deciding the auction parameters on advice from National Grid. These parameters are proving to be optimistic in the credit they give to intermittent renewables and interconnectors, and the process of procurement four years and one year in advance is proving not to be robust now that we need increases. It should more properly be labelled the coal closure mechanism, as it was used to deny funding and market access to coal stations. The most recent auction failed to procure the capacity it sought at the maximum allowed price. Cue panic in BEIS. National Grid are now being openly mocked by electricity traders for trying to pretend that there won’t be a problem, as reported by Bloomberg’s Javier Blas and as you can see for yourself in the weekly Grid Transparency forums, published at the NG website. You will be aware I have been flagging the problems for a long time now.
OFGEM do have a say in the investment made by National Grid in the electricity network and interconnector investments. They decide which projects go ahead, and set limits on financial returns. However, since National Grid provide BEIS with the Future Energy Scenarios it has been very easy for them to push for ever bigger National Grid investments.
August 29, 2022
Unions don’t approve of competition as this undermines their power to control all things. Now, that these saintly organisations have shown they intend to cooperate to bring this nation to its knees over winter how does Truss intend to deal with the new threat from the Marxist clique that Tory governments since Cameron have appeased, pandered and encouraged?
Every single Neo-Marxist, progressive idea has been implemented by John’s party in government.
The Tory party needs to decide which side it’s on . I suspect the answer is their own side which may explain why Marxist ideas are now routinely taught throughout public education, even under a Tory administration
Sold down the river doesn’t adequately describe just how far the Tory party has sold its soul to the left. They now know what needs to be done
August 29, 2022
DOM
The old saying involving neck, urine and rain comes to mind mate.
August 29, 2022
Indeed especially real competition in areas like the NHS or State Education so they make you pay for them whether you use them or not. The state sector like monopolies but so does the private sector. The government should ensure free and fair competition all round. In transport, energy, banking too.
In the Telegraph today James Bartholomew is sound:- “The NHS was once seen as heroic. Now it’s a national embarrassment. With so many suffering unduly, Britain must urgently pursue ways to revitalise the service.”
Excess all cause deaths running at about 13% up mainly non Covid and at home surely mainly due to failures of the NHS to perform treatments in a timely and efficient manner or vaccine adverse reactions perhaps? Surely the government must know the causes? Would normally be expected to be below average due to higher brought forwards deaths in 2020. & 2021 too.
August 29, 2022
It decided Dom.
Cameron and subsequent chums implemented the Marxist policy of Red Ed. They only claimed otherwise to get elected (x3) and did the opposite, as the party did with Brexit, Economy, taxation, immigration, education, no law and order, no border controls etc etc.
I feel sorry for the likes of LL, who I enjoy reading, who tries scare about Labour when Tories who appoint former Labour ministers to quangos and not only implement but build on Labour policies and cultural Marxism. We now read Inspectorate body for private schools now forcing the LGBT Stonewall agenda on private schools! No,no, no. It must stop throughout the whole of education from 4-21 years old. I do not want my taxes so woefully wasted.
Back to todays topic, Debden and the other climate fear mongers need ousting from from advising the govt, same for SAGE.
August 29, 2022
Hope
I very much agree with you regarding LL and his Labour / SNP doom mongering. I like the fella but for someone so sensible most of the time he cannot see friend from foe.
August 29, 2022
Since 3 Governments in a row have proved to be so inept, it ought to be 3 strikes and OUT.
No matter how alarmist the alternative is worked up to frighten, proposed rulers need to know they will be shown the door.
August 29, 2022
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”
August 29, 2022
Please, please, please: Debden is a station on the London Underground Central Line, Lord Deben (please note difference in spelling) is (unfortunately) the Chairman of the Climate Change Committee.
August 29, 2022
Hope,
‘I feel sorry for the likes of LL, who I enjoy reading, who tries scare about Labour when Tories who appoint former Labour ministers to quangos and not only implement but build on Labour policies and cultural Marxism.’
I do enjoy Lifelogic bingo – but no ‘PPE graduates’ or ‘****ing down drains’ feature today.
LL thinks Labour would be even worse than any Conservative Government. I am not sure there would be much difference.
I suspect a narrow victory is many Conservatives realistic hope now. Eighty seat majority has been wasted by Boris.
August 29, 2022
I hope not…Monster Raving is a better bet.
August 30, 2022
Would be Labour/SNP an appalling prospect!
August 29, 2022
+1
August 29, 2022
Ah. Create a faceless quango and then blame it when everything goes wrong. “The Government is helpless. Not their fault.”
Clearly privatisation leads to the British public being exposed to the cold winds of global economic whim and reduces the need for Government. So cut Government. It is not the British worker on a stagnated wage driving inflation but the Government – Government is the coal mining industry of 2022.
Of which. The Channel crisis. I want to know:
– What lifeboat cover there is for ordinary citizens finding themselves in trouble at sea ?
– Who is funding the lifeboats ? Charity ?
– Are the lifeboat crews being paid for what must now be a full time job ?
– Why are there no medals or any kinds of awards for the lifeboat crews and their participation in what is clearly the biggest humanitarian crisis at sea that this nation has ever faced ?
… or is it all a cover for a Government that hasn’t the balls to set up a ferry service and tell the public what is going on ! Battalions of blokes shipped over every day and all the Government does is choose to deceive us… and blame quangos.
(We cannot afford this. I used to have a dental check up every year but have not had one since before Covid. People will be cold and hungry this year – the result of 12 years of Tory watch. )
August 29, 2022
I suspect there was a quiet agreement with the EU during the BRINO negotiations that we would take “our fair share” of the illegal migrants the EU had allowed/encouraged to walk in through their porous borders. But for PR reasons the British and French Government had to pretend the “free ferry service” was humanitarian because they couldn’t stop the dinghies.
Then the Albanian Mafia took advantage.
August 29, 2022
There can be no other reason why our government has been so treacherous against the wishes of the people
August 29, 2022
GC,
As George Carlin points out, in America lobbies and big money interests have politicians and the judiciary in their pockets. It is the same in the U.K. Our government are beholden to them. If they say take more immigrants and implement Net Zero the response is ‘How many?’ and ‘How soon?’. Boris, in particular, saw it as a way to feather his nest.
We are not governed as an independent nation state. You would need someone like Viktor Orban running the show for that to be the case. He shows it can be done – if you have the will – even if you are not a big economy.
August 29, 2022
Rather likely – but hopefully not.
August 29, 2022
N L A
Indeed, i think we are now up to 25,000 illegals so far this year.
What an absolute face and embarrassment, politicians talk about security, yet we let in tens of thousands of people who have deliberately destroyed their own identification documentation, so not having a clue where they come from, or what they intend to do when they get here, then we fail to do anything about it, yet we have Parliament stuffed with Mp’s who were supposed to be lawyers.
Result only 21 sent back in the last 18 months.
August 29, 2022
The government will NEVER stop tthis problem until they stop the ‘pull factor’ – the opportunity to live in the UK. And the only way to do this is to treat these migrants for what they are: illegal aliens with NO RIGHT to remain in the UK. Look at the fact that over 75% are granted asylum. There’s your pull factor right there! And why are they granted asylum? Because their claims are (i) considered on the basis of their allegations, without any need for concrete evidence; (ii) based on the generality of the situation in certain foreign countries, rather than the specific and proven circumstances of the individual; and (iii), most importantly, because they are based on claims which relate to the country where the migrant first came from, rather than the ACTUAL country of origin – FRANCE.
The point is that NOT ONE single migrant or asylum seeker comes from Syria, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Somalia, or Albania, or any of these countries. THEY ALL COME FROM FRANCE. And we know that France is a safe country. So there is NO NEED to even consider their asylum applications. We should have a RULE that NOBODY will be considered for asylum, because they have ALL passed through safe countries. And the fact that they have not chosen to apply for asylum in a safe country INVALIDATES their claim for asylum. Therefore they are ALL BOGUS and will ALL be immediately deported to their HOME COUNTRY (we can’t deport them to France as they won’t accept them) with NO right of appeal. As soon as we have deported the first 100 or so nobody else will even come here, and the problem will be resolved. It really is as simple as that. But the government will not do this. That’s why they won’t stop the boats and that’s why they are not worth voting for.
August 29, 2022
I want austere detention centres back open so Applicants cannot disappear into the black market labour or crime. Javid shut them as Home Secretary. He should now be excluded from public office of any kind.
Patel and Javid should have put the security and safety of our country ahead of their virtual signalling. Nor can we afford their stupidity at a time of 70 high taxation while UK citizens use food banks, cannot afford to keep warm and military vets homeless! Putting illegal criminals ahead of UK citizens is current Tory policy. What idiots vote Tory?
Who ridiculed Farage about Eastern criminal gangs Europeans coming here and the first in was a criminal. We now here and read about county lines, Albanian drug gangs up and down the country flaunting their cash in expensive cars etc. Does Patel actually know the criminal records of any of her mass imports? If not why is she putting them up in four star hotels!
August 29, 2022
Spot On
August 29, 2022
It’ll be interesting to see the desperate back-peddling by the Human Rights Brigade if the murderer of Olivia Pratt-Kordel turns out to be a member of an Albanian Drug Gang. Liverpool (Police Ed) are making it perfectly clear that it was the result of a drug turf war run by criminal gangs and it’s being reported that the leaders have skipped the country for “their foreign villas.”
August 29, 2022
Hopefully Ukraine will offer to take all our illegal males for a ‘chain-gang’ set of work run by their army.
August 29, 2022
NLA, the RNLI has lost my support so I need to amend my will.
August 29, 2022
Snap. I used to always give to RNLI. No more.
August 29, 2022
A wealthy ex-banker has left his classic car collection worth around £1.5million to the RLNI so in addition to collecting the dinghy immigrants at sea they will now be able to drive them to their hotels.
August 29, 2022
with leaded petrol and high risk of breakdown?
August 29, 2022
Guardian report today – Only an ‘outline disclosure’ by the Home Office it seems but it has paid private companies more than £2.5 million to charter boats & crew to pick up migrants in the Channel. June up to January 2023. Regular voyages during last few days, various contracts, one company reportedly providing 3 boats for 6 months earning just under £2m.
August 29, 2022
I’m amazed the volunteer crew for RNLI continue doing it.
August 29, 2022
The water and energy regulators in the way they have performed in light of all the shortfall s really does beg the question are they really fit for purpose and value for money?
The utilities spend a lot of time and energy running a service that does not incur them financial punishment but what is not always to the benefit to their customers only their directors and shareholders.
How the water regulator allows any untreated sewerage to be discharged into rivers and coastal areas in 2022 begs belief. That supply networks are run at the lowest pressure they can get away with to avoid being fined for more leakages if they actually provided a service fit for purpose to the benefit of all its customers.
Mind you with the totally out of control of legal and dingy invaders immigration is it any wonder the bill payers are being trampled on and asked to pay for many could well be the ultimate price for trying to survive.
I find it incredible that government’s never apply the consequences process to all they decisions before going ahead with anything so critical to the population.
August 29, 2022
Remember that it takes electricity to pump water around, and those bills have increased enormously. TV pickup spikes in electricity use is in fact mainly caused by extra water pumping demand as millions of toilets are flushed. Expect a jump in water bils to pay for it.
August 29, 2022
Good morning,
The quangos have until now succeeded in their intended purpose of removing accountability from government, however accountability is the very thing that drives performance.
Adherence to outdated irrelevant EU diktats and woke fads, anything but serving the citizens that pay for these failed services, highlights the utter unsuitability of these institutions. Ordinary citizens are bewildered by the insanity of so many public institutions and this will shortly be reflected in the ballot box.
This institutional failure will continue until the quangos are removed and direct ministerial oversight is restored, with the accountability that entails.
August 29, 2022
Yes, in things such as pubs, bars, restaurants, consumer goods, and so on, competition works generally very well, because the quality of product or service offered is self-evident, and there is lots of choice for the customer, and those responsible for that quality are immediately identifiable by the.
However, that is not at the case in the privatised intrinsic monopolies or near-monopolies or, where they are required locally, local monopolies or near ones.
There are other problems in the private sector selling to public entities, but that is one of the worst.
August 29, 2022
Right, and the failed privatisation of the railways – a privatisation that needed massive public subsidies, and still does – is obvious to the consumer every day. No competition on price, and not much on quality of service.
The Tories’ economic thinking from Thatcher onwards has been based on what J.K. Galbraith called the ‘lemon-stand’ business model – fine for small and medium-size businesses, but for public utilities it’s not working. The idea was that the public interest would be safeguarded by the regulators, but as Sir John’s post acknowledges, this was far too optimistic.
August 29, 2022
De facto the railways have been renationalised, being entirely dependent on government subsidies to operate at all.
August 29, 2022
Government control using regulators is essentially nationalisation on the cheap. Free competition is always best for the consumer.
August 29, 2022
Free and fair competition. But the government is the main source of unfair competition. The NHS and education by taxing and then being “free” at the point of service (or more likely or rationing, delay or non service for the NHS) has restricted private car and schooling to a tiny minority. We have your money already so you have no choice beyond take it or leave it mate. Government interference and gross incompetence (especially the insanity of net zero) have also made a pigs ear of energy, transport, universities, housing, planning, banking, policing, defence (I see the absurd Prince Charles aircraft carrier without aircraft has failed), the legal system… The government FCA even effectively fix the rip off personal overdraft rates circa 39.9% it seems.
We need to be “Free to Choose” with our own money as – Friedman sensibly put it.
August 29, 2022
Freedom of choice used to be the by-word of a Tory
August 29, 2022
*by them.
August 29, 2022
Here is an example of competition
A person I know has jumped from
£35k per year as a junior doctor to £80k a year at a top management consultancy. They said they were fed up and angry treating “a large number of health tourists or people who were obese, alcoholics, or drug users who poor health was self inflicted”.
August 29, 2022
Health tourism is another problem this useless government seems to want to brush under the carpet. Perhaps the new ministerial team at the Treasury could look into it, ordering a survey. Not a British citizen? Pay in full – by card.
P.S.1 Despite being a very fit 62-year old, my travel insurer wanted to up my annual premium from £60 to nearly £300. I’ll take this as meaning that other countries’ health systems are better at extracting payment from foreigners than ours.
P.S.2 £35K for a young doctor is too little salary.
August 29, 2022
The solution to health tourism needs to be cheap and simple, both to introduce and to administer. And hospitals cannot be asked to deny treatment to a foreign patient injured in an accident, and bleeding to death, until he has paid. So here is the solution which ticks all the boxes: the government gets a UK insurance company to set up a scheme for ALL foreign visitors (including those entering under the UK/Irish Common Travel Area), which is included as a compulsory and automatic surcharge to their flight (or train/ferry) tickets. This means the insurance is unavoidable, and because it is spread over all visitors, young and old, it is only a small fee (probably around £5) which does not deter visitors. Sir John, what do you think?
August 29, 2022
The ones who come to the UK just to access the NHS would be delighted to get NHS treatment legally for a few £, I am sure! Remember the Nigerian woman expecting quads and came to the UK for the birth? She cost us £several hundred thousand, or so I believe.
August 29, 2022
You clearly don’t understand that health insurance is for emergency treatment. Those who want non-emergency treatment should si mply be turned away. I would have thought that was obvious.
August 29, 2022
I know a consultant surgeon who was earning circa £80k who did a law conversion cause and now earns twice as much with less hassle doing medical negligence claims. The system is very wrong.
Also your junior doctor is likely to have student debt of circa £150k and interest on it PA of about £9k so his/her net pay after this interest, commuting, tax, pension cont. and NI might be just about enough to rent a room in a flat in London. Is it any wonder the NHS are so short of decent doctors and surgeons?
August 29, 2022
Just for info, I looked at our surgery website and they published this: The average pay for GPs working at ****** Surgery in the last financial year was £98,987 before tax and National Insurance. This figure relates to 2 full time GPs, and 3 part time GPs.
August 29, 2022
did they report working ‘AT’ or working ‘FOR’ the surgery?
August 29, 2022
Thats not competition – it is taking a moral stand to leave the previous industry.
August 29, 2022
I fully understand.
I don’t think that many in your second category would be Remain voters, do you?
But why did you omit smoking, the greatest cause of self-inflicted ill health?
Oh, you’re a smoker?
August 29, 2022
I suspect that not smoking (which tends to result in snacking as a replacement) probably counts for a greater self inflicted health burden through obesity related disease. Smoking prevalence has declined very sharply. Of course, it was actually the truth when Sir Humphrey pointed out that smokers save government a great deal of money through dying early instead of much later of expensive to treat diseases. There is plenty of research to show they have lower lifetime health care costs, aside from the saving in pension payments.
I do not smoke, before you try jumping to conclusions.
August 29, 2022
crystal ball gazing again?
August 29, 2022
In the spirit of eliminating unnecessary beurocracy may I give you two simple suggestions:
MPs should lead by example, and their unredacted expenses should be posted online, open to public scrutinity, without committee oversight. This blog is a rare example of how efficient and cost effective MPs communication with the public can be.
MPs remuneration should be tied to median earnings, removing the need for remuneration committees.
August 29, 2022
Pat tied to the median earnings of their area? That would be interesting wouldn‘t it. There would be some serious pay cuts.
August 29, 2022
Also MP pensions changed to CPI rather than RPI. MPs changed every public sector bodies pensions to CPI, the only exemption MPs!
August 29, 2022
The government are not playing a straight game when they allow British vessels to enter French waters to lift dingy invaders. Had their boat sunk and were they physically in the water? If so where the hell were the French coastguards? They are extracting the urine.
Sorry but it’s time our RNLI boats are told to back off or face prosecution for openly assisting human traffickers.
August 29, 2022
Turbo. Agree and I wish the BBC woukd stop describing the journey as hazardous and dangerous. There are no bodies being washed up kn our shores and so far this year alone over 24000 young fit men have made it across the channel. Hazardous my a**e. How can it be with Border Farce and the RNLI picking then up?
August 29, 2022
+many Turbo. This government is really taking us for fools. They entice illegals with the taxi service and red carpet treatment and have the gall to pretend they cannot stop it.
What is going on? They cannot be even half skilled workers else they’d walk in legally under the points system. They flaunt our laws, (some illegals? Ed) are self entitled scroungers, and ( extreme case could. Ed)put many of the public at risk, especially young girls. WHY are they so attractive to the government that the government throws all those benefits their way? I cannot see one single advantage of having them in our country. It makes law abiding tax paying citizens feel unwanted, except for the taxes, because we sure as hell are NOT getting what we paid for, but the illegals get it all and more besides!
August 29, 2022
I used to give to RNLI but not any more.
August 29, 2022
Bill B. It makes perfect sense. Me and my loved ones are far more likely to be hurt by an illegal driver waiting on an asylum list or being put to the back of the NHS queue than by drowning at sea. So I stopped my RNLI direct debit too. I spend the money supporting my local pub.
12 years of Tory rule and I’ve quit the RNLI, the National Trust and cannot stand any other UK institution – except pubs – either, and Tories seem determined to destroy pubs too !
August 29, 2022
I have close relatives in Australian (grandchildren and daughter). I am elderly as is my wife of nearly 60 years. Aaaah diddums!
If we rocked up in Australia on a plane demanding to live there, we might, on a good day, last in the country for half an hour.
I have equally close relatives in Abu Dhabi and Singapore… Draw your own conclusions there!
August 29, 2022
It is reported that smugglers are now offering a cheaper route into England via a flight to Dublin and exploitation of the Common Travel Area. This will be less conspicuous, but how will the immigrationists maintain their narrative of ‘desperate refugees’ on ‘dangerous journeys’ when they are crossing on real ferries?
August 29, 2022
Shouldn’t the owner of the security of energy supply problem be the Secretary of State at BEIS? If he’s not concerning himself with that then perhaps his department should be renamed.
August 29, 2022
BEIS – Business Extinction and Import Substitution.
As someone on here has wisely observed.
August 29, 2022
That’s brilliant
August 29, 2022
It has been. Business Eradication and Industrial Suppression.
August 29, 2022
Oh dear Sir John, you appear to have resorted to “blame the Regulator.”
The Regulators were created by the Government; either this one or a previous Government. They didn’t appoint themselves. They didn’t set their own remit and KPIs, they comply with the law and implement Government policy.
It is the Uni-Party’s policies which are wrong. The Uni-Party’s policies have left us with insufficient generating capacity with reliance on foreign imports and insufficient clean water. The windmills the Uni-Party has extolled for the past 10 years or so and which have been given vast enforced subsidies from taxpayers, are currently generating 3.7 GW. Solar, just 0.4 GW. So what’s the Uni-Party’s response? We need more of them!
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
The Uni-Party’s policy of importing millions of people every few years has left us short of housing and is responsible for our collapsing public services.
The Uni-Party’s policies regarding “Human Rights” and the ECHR has led to the free ferry service for criminal migrants in the channel and 1000 foreign criminals A DAY being brought into the country; given “free” accommodation, food, medical treatment, dentistry, education, legal aid, money and mobiles. British taxpayers, who are being clobbered by the Uni-Party’s other failed policies, are expected to pay for them.
Competition IS good, but we have a Uni-Party in Westminster which means when we vote, the faces may change (although FPTP ensures most don’t) and the same, destructive, policies implemented.
August 29, 2022
Donna I wouldn’t like to be quite so keen to give regulators and their appointment a pass. I note that the selection panel to replace Deben at the CCC is being run by civil servants with an underlined message that it is not a ministerial appointment. The CCC issues directives via Carbon Budgets which must be adhered to unless formally refuted. Ministers become passengers. See also how the Capacity Market works in my answer at the top of the thread.
It takes very bold ministers backed with depth of knowledge to even attempt to correct this system. The whole is in fact self feeding, and self selecting of mutual back scratching in the political, quango, civil service and consultancy spheres, reinforced by a largely compliant media. We saw the same over covid.
August 29, 2022
Donna :
Agreed.
August 29, 2022
Utter sophistry. You destroyed/distorted the market with the price cap. You utterly failed to invest in additional generating capacity knowing existing nuclear needed replacing, you decided that wind was going to replace traditional generation, you have refused to authorise fracking or a new coal mine and now trying to blame all rises u on Putin, you imposed green taxes and agree subsidies.
You separated rail track, set up the fractured rail network back in the day that everyone agrees was not fit for purpose.
You have politically ignored the massive outcry about leaking pipes, sewage in rivers, water companies being stripped for their dividends plus of course egregious profits from the oil industry.
So to the BOE you have added the regulators. Who will you blame next. I suggest you start closer to home.
August 29, 2022
If we had had no price cap the issues would have been coming to public attention over a year ago when markets first started responding to them. An extra year of preventative action, such as preserving coal capacity and getting on with developing resources to plug looming supply gaps would have been enormously beneficial. Instead we have seen policy dithering.
Pain is an early warning that something needs healing, and carrying on doing the same thing may be a bad idea.
August 29, 2022
As someone else notes. Competition hones skills and physiques to the bone – it does not provide excess capacity as in reservoirs, it chooses to raise prices and to ration when there are shortages and profit from under-provision rather than build in over-supply in case of global crises. Leaky pipes actually HELPS profits.
I’m afraid the Tories have been blinded by their own dogma to the point of myopia and lunacy.
August 29, 2022
You can create markets in spare capacity. To work properly, people need to experience shortage and decide whether they are prepared to pay a premium to avoid it. It’s why it would be an excellent idea to have an intermittent tariff that cut supply when the wind drops. Or do as Helm suggested, and require intermittent suppliers to team up with and pay for backup.
We are going to be seeing experiments via demand side response this winter, with people being paid to be cut off. In fact, I suspect we may end up with rotating power cuts at least during Dunkelflaute because anything else will be too costly. There will then be a huge clamour for capacity and cheaper supply.
August 29, 2022
And governments like your party’s and peope who dodge the issue by saying it’s someone else’s fault are responsible. Your leaders din’t want to make decisions – far too difficult. Much easier to sit back in the comfy chair and also go on tv and polish up virtue signalling skills.
August 29, 2022
Competition is fine for things I want but don’t need. If the price is too high, I can choose not to buy. This is not the case with water, and we can’t have a system where someone is priced out because they can’t afford drinking water.
Suppose I became the owner of a reservoir that was the sole water supply to a town below, as it had been for centuries. I work out I can raise the price ten-fold, because it will still be cheaper than the town getting water in by tanker. The next moonlit night the townsfolk would band together, pay a visit to the Angry Mob Stores for their lanterns, pitchforks and scythes, then make their way up to relieve me of my possession.
You can’t hold people to ransom for water because they don’t have choice. You have to have a system that supplies at a fair price without profiteering.
Reply Monopolies in the U.K. rightly have prices controlled by the authorities if they abuse their position.
August 29, 2022
Reply to reply
Still they can dump raw sewerage into open waters if they can prove special circumstances its no charge. Don’t wait to 2050. Pass a law that all untreated discharges will be costed at £10k a litre. Draconian yes but it will sure focus their operations. The cost of lack of investment must be the responsibility of the directors and shareholders not the customers. If the housing explosion needed cannot be supplied with a fit water treatment process the companies can pass the costs over to the land owners or developers as an off site costs and the purchasers will pay for the works in the pricing of the new properties.
August 29, 2022
I say pass a law that stipulates the customers of water companies must vote non-executive directors onto the board, and such directors shall have the power to withhold dividend payments in favour of spending on sewerage, reservoir investment, pipe repairs, lower bills and any other investment they consider for the benefit of the customers.
August 29, 2022
Almost everybody gets their electricity off ‘The Grid’ – you may have different organisations ‘selling’ it but its the same source, to me that is a monopoly – STEP in Government for abuse of position.
August 29, 2022
The abuse is that the government sets quotas and rules on the sources of power. Compulsory purchase of renewables. Guarantees that the most expensive renewables will get to sell in any market they can produce in. Exclusion of coal generation except in shortages, even though it is by far the cheapest source. If we had proper competition then a reliable and mostly cheap system would emerge with premium prices only for the highest demand periods.
August 29, 2022
Reply to reply: Have you not noticed ? There is broad consensus here that privatisations have turned out to be failures.
August 29, 2022
Interesting to see, as I have expected for some time, that the Labour Party are cooking up a plan to bring in PR if they manage to scrape a majority with the SNP and LibDems. My bet is they will put this in their manifesto in a vague way so a referendum isn’t needed. They will also – without putting it in their referendum – take us back into the EU single market and customs union by replicating EU laws and regs and caving in on any dispute. Obviously the price of SNP support will be a new referendum in Scotland. There will be probably be one in NI also.
The next 2 years under Liz truss really are last chance saloon for the Conservatives (and for Brexit). Boris has squandered his majority.
August 29, 2022
Farage thinks that IF PR is brought in, Reform UK will attract millions of genuine conservative voters (including patriotic Red Wall voters) …. so it wouldn’t necessarily mean left-wing government in perpetuity which is what we’ve currently got with the pretendy-Conservatives.
August 29, 2022
Donna :
Mr. Farage may well be right if you consider that at the 2019 European Parliament elections in 2019 which are decided by PR the Brexit Party came first with 30.5% of the vote.
The Lib Dems were on 19.6%, Labour on 13.6% and the Conservatives fifth on 8.8%.
August 29, 2022
If Reform are going to get anywhere they must first produce a well though out comprehensive manifesto, attract some serious public support from widely respected people and show a slate of competent potential ministers able to do the media rounds. Then they have to break through the media ceiling, and get their views heard. They are a very long way from that at the moment. A populist but ill thought out programme to nationalise the energy industry does not make a potential government.
August 29, 2022
I expect to pay for my gas supply, with competition on who supplies it. However, I am now asked not just for the supply, but for the market price of the gas itself, because it’s been sold to the energy companies for them to exploit. As a British citizen, I’m entitled to a share of the country’s resources, and I shouldn’t have to pay for what is already mine.
What’s next. Will the government decide to sell my house that I’ve paid the mortgage off for, to international investors so as to plug a hole in their finances? My compensation will be a small reduction in income tax (until they put it up again), and will thereafter have to rent my own house which could be sold on to someone else for them to up the rent. To say that I would be annoyed is an understatement. Well, the government have sold off my share of national resources and I’m annoyed.
August 29, 2022
It won’t be long before such extremes are adopted. Sir John and his party are still supporting the sale of every asset we’ve got, justifying it and deceiving us that it is a good thing. I believe MicroFocus is the mext one and a big French stake in BT has been approved. Sir John doesn’t really mind. He raises no protest and if he did it would be easy to ignore because loyalty to the Tory party is more important that security of our country.
He and his party and government have put us in bankruptcy and will starve us all with NetZero.
August 29, 2022
Elections for EU MEP’S were under PR, and UKIP and the Brexit Party wiped the board at each of those elections, so Farage is probably right.
August 29, 2022
There was a point in the life of the Brexit Party when it polled around 40% on Westminster FPTP voting intention with the traditional parties at best on just over 20% each. That would have given it a landslide win of over 400 seats. Under PR the other parties would probably have stitched up to exclude it, much as they have done over the years with PVV in the Netherlands.
August 29, 2022
And who gives the regulator its operating terms?
This failure is a failure of government. In all areas a governments should set the environment and then get out of the way. The real skill of governing is not constant tinkering according to focus group whims, it is having the foresight to set the environment that is needed and within which competition can drive initiative.
August 29, 2022
Off topic madness:
https://euobserver.com/tickers/155886
“ECB to keep raising rates if need be”
“The European Central Bank is ready to keep raising interest rates to combat inflation, going beyond an expected 50-basis points rise in September if need be, the French central bank governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on Saturday. “Have no doubt that we at the ECB would if needed raise rates further beyond normalisation: bringing inflation back to 2% is our responsibility,” he said, Reuters reports.”
And nothing else counts apart from the 2% inflation target: business bankruptcies, member state government bankruptcies, mass unemployment, homelessness, family and society breakdown, none of that matters.
Thank goodness that we’re not part of that EU system and don’t need to follow down the same mad path with the same mad domestic response to mainly imported inflation.
August 29, 2022
Interest rates have been too low for too long. It’s not increasing them now that’s the error, it was reducing them too far way back.
The alternative to interest rate rises for government is continuing to subsidise borrowers in Sterling by reducing the value of Sterling, importing more inflation and eating into Sterling savers’ real resources.
That’s happening but it’s immoral.
August 29, 2022
Well, one certainly can’t go back and correct past errors, but one can perhaps avoid being stupid in the future.
The ECB or the MPC raising domestic interest rates will have a minimal effect on global commodity prices, under present circumstances the main cause of domestic inflation, but will potentially have a major effect on domestic economic activity. Putting the external value of your inanimate currency before the economic well being of your human population is in my view setting the wrong order of priorities. If the excess domestic inflation was being generated internally through an excessively high rate of economic growth then obviously that would be a different matter, but for the most part that is not the case.
At least in the UK we can have this debate and our government can possibly adjust the remit of the MPC.
August 29, 2022
Well we have had so called competition (with Government involvement) for about 30 years now, with railways, gas, water and electric and look where it has got us. !
A bloody expensive shambles.
Not sure that Nationalisation is the answer, but certainly we need better than this, either Government gets out of the way, or it takes full responsibility.
The problem is we need a long term solution, but we only have short 5 year thinking/action plans.
Dare I say it, but perhaps time for all parties to get together to agree a sensible way forward, and realise that forcing net Zero upon us before we have a proper workable solution will lead to disaster.
Given past history of political point scoring and entrenched views, I do not hold out much hope for any agreement or improvement.
August 29, 2022
With drinking water, you need to address quality for new providers to the grid. Taxpayers would also need insurance in case they went bust!
We would still have monopoly suppliers on many routes with your train proposal. Address this on busy lines by restricting regional firms to a basic timetable (e.g. one train per hour). Other slots would then be available for open-access operators. Continue regulating prices on quiet routes whilst keeping capacity open for innovative services.
August 29, 2022
Why do nearly 1000 people, all on salaries, work for Ofgem?
August 29, 2022
They need 1 person to increase the energy price cap and another 999 to justify the increase to Joe public….not us gov’ its covid, Putin, climate change, international markets
Anything but net-zero
August 29, 2022
Nonsense the reason why the British consumer was able to get a fair deal over gas was the strong position that British Gas as the monoploy buyer held when negotiating the original take or pay contracts. The rot set in when your party imposed the gas levy in 1981, (David Howell) depriving British Gas of 400 million pounds per year earmarked for infrastructure projects including storage. That was further compounded when there was failed attempt to put the full rate of VAT on domestic energy. Privatisation has been a disaster for our most vital strategic industries energy and water, security of supply at a fair price should be the goal, not war profiteering. The latest polling shows that even Tory voters support renationalisation and if the Tories go into the next election looking like the political wing of the Energy Companies even your seat is in danger from the Libdems.
August 29, 2022
Consumer gas prices were in fact very considerably above the monopsony purchase prices enjoyed by British Gas (under 2p/therm), allowing them to pay a large dividend to the Treasury on their profits from those purchases. The Gas Levy wad designed to level the playing field with later purchases, where gas production was subject to PRT. Norman Lamont gave the background at the time
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1981/feb/03/gas-levy
Incidentally, Powell was right about NI, but it took a long time to build the interconnector from Moffat.
August 29, 2022
One thing competition doesn’t do is provide incentive for spare capacity, since this is dead weight on the balance sheet. So instead of having extra reservoirs or power plants you just raise prices or implement rationing when there is a spike in demand.
August 29, 2022
+1000
In fact spare capacity is an impediment to profit.
August 29, 2022
Saying the word ‘Competition’ from this Tory government is rich
Competition implies freedom of choice to select the supply & products you want
Under this government competition is restricted to the social engineered green products that are chosen for you – you’re free to choice ‘only’ a electric vehicle to power your car, ‘only’ a heat pump to power your home…Stalin would be impressed
Soon you’ll have the competitive choice deciding which cycle-lane you want to use, the choice to walk to work, the choice to use recycled candles for lighting, the choice to eat vegan or vegetarian, the choice to have onshore or offshore wind-turbines etc
August 29, 2022
Our quangos are in the control of the communist fifth column.
Ofgem’s remit, together with their comrades at the North Sea Transition Authority (previously Oil & Gas Authority), is to deliver Net Zero by curbing the exploration/production of North Sea oil and gas and banning fracking to create energy shortages and high prices.
Ofwat allows the water companies to sell reservoirs for housing to cause shortages of water supply that can then be blamed on catastrophic man-made global warming (CAGW).
Defra promotes re-wilding to cause food shortages and halts water pumping to prevent flooding.
These quangos are deliberately allowing service companies (public and private) to reduce maintenance and infrastructure improvements and by blaming CAGW when their service fails to promote the scam that CAGW exists.
Ofcom will be curbing free speech on the internet.
August 29, 2022
How very NOT amusing that the couriers, which no doubt played a part in the (EU demanded?) destruction of our postal system, can’t deal with the postal strike!!
Can’t cope with the increased deliveries!!
If you want to be competitive you must offer a BETTER service.
August 29, 2022
Every delivery scooter you see with ‘L’ plates (and that’s all of them) are not insured…but the woke police will never stop them
This illegal competition must be stop
August 29, 2022
glen, there was a photo in a newspaper of some sort of mugging in London by a moped rider with the number plate clearly showing and on checking with the government website it had never been taxed since 2008.
August 29, 2022
Ofgem and Ofwat annual reports make interesting reading, ofwat’s brochure full of pretty pictures saying how well they are doing. Ofwat have a year on year increase in household customer satisfaction of water and wastewater services. They‘re not getting the message repeated every day by our media that the water companies are seriously failing in the long term provision for water during short periods of drought in the UK, and polluting to levels that can‘t meet the Ofwat regulations.
Now these highly paid people who run these organisations need to be dragged into tv studios and made to speak up for their regulated industries and explain what is being done. Otherwise the departments they are reporting back to might as well bring them back in house and the Ministerial team have the money to spend £121m per year is a lot for one organisation to spend on self-regulation, it nearly all goes on high end salaries so what do they do to benefit the population they serve if they write reports saying how well they‘re doing when the media and Rayner is saying they failed, failed, failed. Just who are they protecting government ministers or the public that uses the services.
August 29, 2022
According to a recent poll apparently 50% of Conservative voters believe that the utility companies should be nationalised. I’m not sure I believe this, but if it’s true it would suggest a generational shift where half of Conservative voters are to young to remember how useless the utilities were in the public sector.
August 29, 2022
I am not proposing nationalisation of the water or energy companies, because I don’t think it is necessary. Effective and strict regulation is all that is required. But neither do I have some blind, dogmatic objection to nationalising a company – be it a utility or even a industrial manufacturer – where this is beneficial to the service provided or to the economy or to national security. But the fact that so many Conservatives support nationalising the utilities is proof that the government and the regulators have FAILED, utterly and abysmally.
Nationalising these companies would NOT make the service worse, becaused that is not really possible. Look at the leaking water pipes, or the sewage discharged into our rivers. Why do the government and the regulator allow this? It would cost the government NOTHING to IMPOSE rules on the water companies FORCING them to fix these problems at no extra cost to the consumer. Basically, the companies must be denied ANY profit until the problems are sorted. The companies are all foreign-owned, so why is the government so soft on them? They are sucking money OUT of the UK economy, while failing to deliver any benefit to us.
Reply The nationalised water industry of the 1970s gave us the name of dirty man of Europe complete with man6 sewage discharges and leaking pipes. Too little public money to invest in better.
August 29, 2022
Reply to reply: Just because the governments in the 1970s were too incompetent to manage the water industry properly does not mean that it CANNOT be done! Or are you saying that your government is too stupid to do so? What an admission of failure and despair that is! And as for money to invest, this is not is short supply. The industry should be run at a profit, even if nationalised, and the money borrowed to invest in it should be counted separately from other government borrowing.
reply It would still be state borrowing guaranteed by taxpayers
August 29, 2022
See also Dieter Helm, 2020, ‘Thirty years after water privatisation – Is the English model the envy of the world?’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36, 69-85, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grz031.
also available at dieterhelm.co.uk (with same title).
August 29, 2022
I would rather see the EU Directive/Green mindset knocked out of the regulators to be replaced with the kind of customer focused one that was incorporated in the original privatisation legislation. It has been creeping renationalisation by micromanagement against targets set not in consumer interests, but net zero inspired ones and green interests that has caused the trouble. Privatisations originally mostly worked well. There were a few kinks, but these were being ironed out before EU regulation came to dominate the agenda.
August 29, 2022
They don’t need to be nationalised, just put under the control of their customers.
Nationalised industries just invite union power. We get strikes and the people who suffer are those who have no control.
August 29, 2022
All as depressing as it is true – why is it that no-one else in government knows this?
Even more depressing is a piece in the paper yesterday suggesting that Truss would appoint Kwarteng as Chancellor. Is she completely nuts?! The guy who sleep-walked into an energy policy disaster, knowing nothing about energy, gets promoted to another job he knows nothing about? Unbelievable.
August 29, 2022
XY=OK²
August 29, 2022
Sir John says OFGEM has left us with insufficient generating capacity. This article in The Critic, make it very clear who is really to blame:
“Back in 2012, an Energy Departmental policy paper noted that we’d need 26GW of new gas generated electricity by 2030 to replace retiring coal and nuclear plants. The then Secretary of State Ed Davey responded by promising 20 new gas plants. However, a 2015 plan downgraded the ambition to 14GW, and two years later this was dropped to 6GW. Last year, Boris Johnson updated the goal to zero. In all that time, Britain managed to build a whopping three gas power stations, with 4.4GW capacity, one of which is due to close next year.”
“The Climate Act 2008 made the UK the first country to legally require itself to hit its CO2 reduction targets, with a target of 80% reduction below 1990 levels by 2050 (since revised to 100%), and carbon budgets limiting the nation’s carbon output over 5-year periods. From this moment, the Department of Energy had two, potentially conflicting, statutory duties — to keep the lights on and cut carbon.”
August 29, 2022
Donna
Your last sentence says more than I or anyone else could say or explain. Our own MP’s have lead us down this sorry path, no one else. They are to blame.
August 29, 2022
+1
August 29, 2022
Related to today’s topic, Dieter Helm’s ‘Former government adviser calls for overhaul of UK utilities regulators’, FT 28/08/2022.
August 29, 2022
Dieter Helmer is ALWAYS worth listening to. Shame our ministers don’t think so.
August 29, 2022
I am sure he is a good man, but he is rather late to this party.
August 29, 2022
Mark B
I think you will find he has been an advocate against all this suicidal charge to renewable dependency for years.
But it depends on who is listening.
August 29, 2022
No. He’s been banging on about the futility of our energy policy for at least the last 11 years.
August 29, 2022
Not at all. Helm offered detailed advice on a much better way to proceed here
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-energy-independent-review
That’s 5 years ago, and he had been talking publicly about it much longer.
August 29, 2022
And there’s also on dieterhelm.co.uk his paper/report of 2020 ‘Thirty years after water privatisation – Is the English model the envy of the world?’
where I dare say he pulverises a number of commonly made arguments … ‘suivez mon regard’/follow my gaze.
August 29, 2022
Sir Dieter Helm is generally very sound on energy.
He advised the Government in his 2017 BEIS “Cost of Energy Review” how to sensibly re-organise the renewable subsidies.
More importantly, he recommended that renewable suppliers should be paying for their intermittency costs and had this recommendation been applied we would not have spent £billions on useless wind and solar power.
In an interview on the BBC R4 programme “You and Yours” dated 10/02/2022 he said :
– “It is naïve to believe that we can achieve net zero other than at considerable cost and “there is a juggernaut of costs to come”.
– “We’re reliant on gas because there is no non-fossil fuel backup and the prices of electricity from intermittent renewables never include “the back-up bit, the security of supply bit, while we’ve been at the same time pursuing decarbonisation.”
– “Renewables have not reduced energy costs”.
– “Implementing Net Zero means we pay to zero our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions AND pay again to mitigate the climate change caused by China, India etc..
August 29, 2022
CO2 hypocrisy – Not Competition
Governments love space exploration so space rockets okay
Elites love private fast international travel so private jets okay
Rich & Famous love leisure pursuits so motorsport & powerboats okay
Military love powerful go anywhere vehicles so tanks, armoured carriers okay
Politicians love pomp & ceremony so ministerial luxury cars okay
That only leaves Joe public …..lets force them into meaningless reducing CO2 by taking away their efficient internal combustion engine cars
The Big EV lie –
August 29, 2022
The West is under authoritarian control and the left, the unions and Labour and their Marxist allies are lapping it up.
Since 2014 politically constructed crisis after politically constructed crisis designed to bring us to a point in which, conveniently, only the Socialist State can intervene and solve with its collectivist solutions ie totalitarian power over once free, western populations
From Covid to NZ, from energy crisis to Climate change, from BLM to progressive totalitarianism. All political in nature and all utterly concocted with sinister intent
Why has the Tory party caved in to this ancient, vicious, hateful, resentful, destructive ideology? What I see today is NOT the Tory party but a dreadful incarnation of a once great, moral code usurped by Oxbridge grifters
The last straw would be centralised banking and digitalisation of our identity
August 29, 2022
Why is the right question, Dom. In my view it’s because there was once a Tory party that was strong on our national identity and interests. You don’t have to be an unconditional admirer of Margaret Thatcher to agree that the Tory Party in the 1980s was a force to be reckoned with. But because it stood up for this country, it was an obstacle to the globalist agenda, and had to be dealt with. Whether the damage has been done by the Oxbridge grifters themselves I don’t know. That remains to be discovered. We saw with the Covid crisis that an elected government’s policies were changed to suit technocrats and supra-national agendas. I think that goes well beyond Covid and into the areas you mention.
August 29, 2022
I also fear the full digitalisation of money and the end of cash……governments want full control
August 29, 2022
This is correct in theory only ! The days of the customer being king are long gone.
We are treated with utter contempt by both private and public organisations.
Just one example, how is it that a company gets to tell me how much I shall pay by direct debit? It should be up to the customer how much to pay per month not the supplier.
Another issue is the egregious “credit score” system, which nobody voted for.
Companies have been given far too much power in the customer/supplier relationship.
August 29, 2022
+many
Spot on.
I absolutely loathe the way things are now.
So rude.
Not a bit grateful for one’s custom.
August 29, 2022
+1
I also hate companies doing auto renewal
August 30, 2022
AUTO RENEWAL at the same price might be fine – but I doubt it ever is?
August 29, 2022
We are globally returning to the days of you must spend your ‘pay token’ in the authorised shop…..end of.
August 29, 2022
I’m pleased to read that Liz Truss is planning to raise the threshold for paying tax. I hope this is true! This is so much better than cutting the basic rate of tax, which has limited impact, both economically and politically. Raising the threshold takes lower paid people out of tax altogether, which reduces the cost of collecting their tax in the first place and has a huge psychological impact on them – motivating them to work and encouraging them to support the government! Also, by leaving more money in their pockets it reduces their need for benefits, which is another saving to the government.
It has always struck me as MADNESS – politically, economically and philosophically – to tax people with one hand and then pay them benefits with the other. Liz Truss needs to IMMEDIATELY raise the tax threshold for the basic rate of tax to AT LEAST £20,000 (and better still, £25K), which will benefit those who are doing the right thing by working, but who are nevertheless struggling. It also saves the government money, both administratively and in terms of benefits. Everyone knows that ‘first impressions count’ – how people perceive Liz Truss in the first few weeks of her premiership will affect how they vote in two years’ time. A BIG, BIG change to the threshold RIGHT NOW, affecting millions of people – largely blue-collar Conservatives – will wow all Conservative-inclined voters and ensure her long-term success. It is the ONLY sensible policy. Do you agree?
August 29, 2022
I agree! Been saying something similar for years!
August 29, 2022
Get rid of ‘In-Work’ universal credit benefits – it imprisons the employees to begging….the taxpayer shouldn’t be subsiding employers, they should pay up or fold
August 29, 2022
At last right-thinking ( get that?) will agree it makes sense. I’ve been beating on about it since Call me Dave had to give way to the Libs….but not much.
August 29, 2022
Cut vat in these times of high prices too.
Marcus Rashford fails to mention the squeezed middle who do not qualify for free school meals but can’t afford them either and so make packed lunches for their kids instead… let’s hope Liz Truss remembers them.
Wages must not be allowed to chase benefits in this crisis. It will be the end of the Conservatives.
August 30, 2022
X-Tory, +1, Indeed increasing the Personal Allowance from £12,570 to say £20k would benefit everybody by £1,486. Cutting VAT, which is mainly already zero on most staple food would not have such an impact, and cutting it by 5% on all types of utilities (electricity, gas, water) and (bus, train) transport would certainly be useful, but would it be that great? Only £150 would disappear from a £3k utility bill.
Then there would still be the case of those who do not pay income tax (eg, ‘pure’ state pensioners) would the VAT cut be enough? I don’t think so.
August 29, 2022
“There had been competition between the retail energy suppliers….”
Ofgem allowed the retail market to consist of many companies who had no chance of long-term survival which caused chaos and additional costs to the consumer.
August 29, 2022
“Ofgem has left us short of generating capacity and too dependent on imports. It seems the Regulator has been reluctant to see security of supply as a crucial prime requirement.”
Let us hope that with COP 27 coming up we do not see Ofgem/the Government blowing up yet another fossil fuel power station so as to prove to the World that having started the wicked Industrial Revolution (PM UN speech 22/09/2021) we are making amends :
Official SSE video of Cop 26 President, Alok Sharma, triggering the explosive demolition of Ferrybridge coal-fired power station last year :
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1429456184902393858/pu/vid/720×720/JwPnpycxEiyBmqVJ.mp4?tag=12
Fortunately Drax power station was converted to burn the false green wood pellets and hence avoided explosive demolition.
Since we now have an energy crisis, which will turn into an economic and social crisis, will the Government end this CAGW scam/Net Zero lunacy and supply Drax with our own home supplied coal and start re-building the coal-fired power stations they have demolished?
August 29, 2022
Alok Sharma should be brought before the trades description act for impersonating a Tory member while actually being a Green member
August 29, 2022
I am sure you are right, Sir John, particularly in your last sentence.
It is common sense really isn’t it.
Oh I do hope YOU will be involved in advising the Truss Administration.
August 30, 2022
Competition is theoretically a good thing. As it had been implemented then followed by the successive Governments it was a failure, a failure particularly of Parliament who was supposed to check that the regulators were doing a good job.
As pointed out by Sir Dieter Helm (his table 1) the first ‘business cycle’ of privatisation (1994-2008) showed an improvement of 3.2% in Total Factor Productivity (+/- compared to previously public ownership), the second one (2009-2017) only an improvement of 0.1%.
On Cost of Capital, Access to Capital, Balance Sheets and the shift from ‘pay-as-you-go’ to ‘pay-when-delivered’ (aka, the generational shift) plus how the benefits were more likely going to shareholders and CEOs than into investments, it is not clear at all that the model of privatisation that has been supported by Sir John for 35 years is better. It is (a right-wing) ideologue position that clearly has not shown its benefits.
August 30, 2022
Pauline, is Truss going to be genuinely able to pick her own cabinet? Or does she have to take people that will stop her in her tracks by not supporting her?
I love newspaper journalists that have assumed she will win and then proceed to tell her she’s got to have Sunak in her cabinet, the more lefties say she has to have…the more you think; oh dear, No! Then one journalist said she has to have Shapps, Raab, Gove, Patel, and Clarke, so that the journalist strongly believes the only change required was Boris. Mind you that paper should be renamed The Markle Daily.
We’ve all seen how many back-bench Tories elected with a specific task have said No once they have the power.
August 29, 2022
“Ofgem has left us short of generating capacity and too dependent on imports. It seems the Regulator has been reluctant to see security of supply as a crucial prime requirement.”
I read that should she become PM, Liz Truss will declare China to be a “threat to national security.”
Will she then call a halt to the economy destroying Net Zero Strategy and the intended consequential reliance for our energy on low energy density, intermittent wind and solar?
Wind and solar cannot be called secure sources of power when 95% of wind turbine parts and 100% of solar panels are supplied by China.
Plus the madness of the electrification of our heating and transport where China controls the raw materials for motors, generators and batteries.
It is making the same mistake as relying on Russia for our fossil fuel supplies.
August 29, 2022
Well put Original Richard….what Tory MP or Tory member could argue against your words
August 29, 2022
I believe we have no national water grid ? That would require government action rather than being left to competition.
August 29, 2022
internetgeography.net ‘Water transfer in the UK’
August 29, 2022
“Ofgem has left us short of generating capacity and too dependent on imports. It seems the Regulator has been reluctant to see security of supply as a crucial prime requirement.”
Ofgem’s remit is now the delivery of BEIS’ Net Zero Strategy, which at 367 pages must surely be the longest suicide note in history.
August 29, 2022
‘’’A spokeswoman for BEIS said the 16 March 2017 “We take gas security of supply seriously which is why we regularly and comprehensively test our assumptions and the latest evidence,” she said.
The surge in gas prices on 1 March came days after the government, which is under pressure to lower heating bills, introduced a law in parliament that would cap energy costs for 11 million households for up to five years.
The price spikes also come at a time of increased focus on the security of imports following tension with one of Europe’s main gas suppliers, Russia’’ https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-gas-exclusive-idUKKBN1GV187
THIS GOVERNMENT KNEW FIVE YEARS AGO – AND DID NOTHING
August 29, 2022
Sir John, here’s a tax idea for you to consider if you are, as rumoured, given a job by Liz Truss: SCRAP VAT ON ALL GOODS UNDER £10. This would eliminate VAT on all daily goods, like toiletries, as well as on the cheapest shoes and clothing, and so would benefit those on lowest earnings most. It would also cut the rate of inflation, and be very easy to administer. Any comments?
August 29, 2022
shoes under £10 – — WHERE WHERE the people yell !
August 29, 2022
Of course you can find men’s shoes for under £10 – and even more so under £12, which is £10 + VAT. Just try doing a Google search before posting!
August 29, 2022
How long will they last? They might be OK to use at home as slippers/ballerinas but outside with possible stones/puddles. Furthermore these extra cheap shoes are likely made in … China.
August 29, 2022
So are they order online? – you can’t see them, try them on? return free or does the mug, I mean buyer beware, to pay postage back?
I obviously need educating on just how cheap cheap shoes can get.
You wear them, I’d rather not.
August 29, 2022
Not all countries have VAT, some have a sales tax some have nothing….its the EU, UN (WTO, WEF & IMF) all pushing to stansrdise VAT and VAT rates
I’d back a simple purchase/sales tax
August 30, 2022
Simply not true, EU requires VAT but very different rates are applied over the EU27. I had already pointed that out but … long time memory seems to be in rather short supply with some here.
europa.eu ‘VAT rules and rates’ then click on ‘VAT rates applied in EU countries’ .
The only constraint is that the standard rate should not be below 15% but the reduced rate which applies to different products in different EU27 countries is anything between 2.1% (super reduced rate in France) and 18% (reduced rate in Hungary).
And why has the UK Parliament/Government not decreased the VAT in the UK (Britain and NI)? And why is Sir John unable to give us a straight answer?
The amount of misinformation (from Sir John) and of Boeotian credulity (from some contributors on this blog) is incredible.
In France they had ‘yellow vests’, here even not ‘yellow chickens’.
Most of the EU laws/regulations have been integrated into UK laws on 31/12/2020 (legislation.gov.uk). While there are about 150,000 of them overall in the EU and about 50,000 in the UK, only 3,000 have a practical impact here. We were told after Brexit that we would see a ‘bonfire of regulations’. Why are we waiting? Why are ‘they’ waiting?
Since then the UK government and the so-called Minister for Brexit opportunities could have moved but the Minister preferred spending his time asking Express readers what laws are to be changed or checking offices empty of public servants. Why is the guy paid £84k+£31k (+ various expenses for staff, lodging, office costs, see researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk
‘Members’ pay and expenses and ministerial salaries 3020/21’) for doing what seems to be rather little?
August 29, 2022
Good afternoon Sir John, all Regulators operate to the Terms of Reference given and owned by the Government (of the time) and thereafter the current incumbent Government. E.g. ttps://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/terms-reference. Successive Governments remain ‘accountable’, not the Regulators who are just ‘responsible’ for operating to their Terms of Ref. and meeting the targets therein.
I think it’s time Liz and the new Cabinet fix all these obviously ‘poor’ Terms of Reference PDQ and make the targets cost & security/mix of supply, not just the green stuff. We are where we are because of these dreadful Ministerial mistakes over decades. No lessons learnt from the 1970s imvho, we’re heading back to one warm room, a 3 day week, recession and similar levels of inflation….
Get fracking now, drill/mine/store like crazy. Place orders and fastrack SMRs. Sort out some reservoirs. All fixable, just waiting for the leadership to press the unreasonable demand button once again.
August 29, 2022
+1
August 29, 2022
Addendum:
Government owns High Level targets / Terms of Reference for each Regulator and Industries involved.
Regulator’s TOR must translate and be clear each industry group about their roles/responsibilities about what is the strategy and who does short/medium/long design/planning of infratructure – with measureable targets and service level agreements. Likewise the operation and maintenance.
This of course can include competition clauses, security/mix of supply and cost levels. I read the whole of Europe has run on spot gas prices for the last 20 years, served them well too, until now.
Trump was right when he flew over and warned EU (& UK) about these risks. Result – de nada, masterly inaction failed miserably and the only way out is to admit these mistakes and frack on.
August 29, 2022
One meter one vote should be the way to end this con party F up, they been shutting down oil, gas and coal for 12 years now, only 3 coal power station still standing, need at least nine.
In 2010 you were sold a pup by the con party and have voted for them ever since because of Brexit to which never really happened but you got the green tree instead with a man on tv in 2010 driving sledge with dogs and big fur overcoat on with hat and gloves to go, 12 years on that mans vision is now real.
August 29, 2022
UK natural gas futures were trading around the 650-pence-a-them mark, close to their March peak, underpinned by prospects of further supply disruptions and elevated demand from the EU. Russia’s Gazprom said it would cut flows through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany for three days of maintenance at the end of August, exacerbating concerns about supplies and raising the risk of a recession in Europe if Russia’s natural gas squeeze widens. The state-owned energy company Gazprom has already reduced flows through the Nord Stream pipeline to roughly 20% of its capacity, citing issues with turbines. On top of that, exports from two of Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s three mooring points at a Black Sea terminal have been halted, according to the company, citing a damaged pipeline as the cause. At the same time, outages at Norwegian and UK gas fields also lent some support. The government has three months at the most before the entire country is on the verge of bankruptcy and the government will fall. We are at war to not take our most vital strategic industry back into National Control would be like handing Fighter Command to Herman Goering in 1940.
August 29, 2022
The best thing that can happen sadly is to have to endure the winter from hell.
Then you will see massive changes in people’s thinking and the party who comes out with real common sense options and can then say we told you so are going to blow apart the green religious brigade that are destroying our lives with bowing to all this Net Zero madness. Over a thousand scientists have all come out against this. They all can’t be raving nutters. The only deaf ones are following the money as they have invested into the biggest scam ever known.
August 29, 2022
+1 Only warmth and full bellies has been keeping the lid on things.
August 29, 2022
Kelvin Mackenzie is on Mark Stein now. He says if we get a Labour government it will be worse than now. We will get more of the same but worse. We’ll have Lib dims in the South and Labour in the north and the Tories will be reduced to nothing for many years. Your party owes it to the nation to show some metal John and leave all the woke and net zero crap behind. Sort out immigration and start understanding what your policies mean to real people.
August 29, 2022
The data below is for the 24-hour period 00:00 to 23:59 28 August 2022.
Number of migrants detected in small boats: 0
Number of boats detected: 0
Royal Navy all on extended leave for the bank holiday
August 30, 2022
Off-topic, but hats off to you Sir J, for taking the criticism many of us sometimes throw at you.
I can’t believe many of your colleagues would host such a lively and open blog.
August 30, 2022
At present Russia is competing for land ownership by overt dirty games, Iraq is suffering due to lifestyle competition , The jews are now suffering in Russia due to religious competition and finding their way back to Israel , The Uk people are fighting against the competition between energy giants . The basic laws of wanting more(greed) , wanting everyone to be like us,( silly religious conviction ) power searchers ,( in all shapes of atrocitiy) are all channeled into aggresive competition . When will we learn to collaborate and leave competition to sport?
September 1, 2022
If competition is the best regulator, why haven’t you got an element of competition in the Health service between hospitals? With staff bonuses based on treatment outcomes, patient satisfaction, number of successful treatments and deductions if a patient that has been sent home has to come back within two weeks.
If a State hospital was a private business, one of the first things I’d look at is how to bring more money in to use for more treatments so that the hospital got paid more and more customer satisfaction, so people weren’t constantly having to come back through A&E because they were discharged too early or they hadn’t had all the scans the doctor had asked for in the first place!
If you paid hospitals to house medically fit patients in single-sex wards with more beds and the dividers you used and had available for the nightingales, would the hospitals be moaning as much? If people were ‘medically fit’ they wouldn’t need so many nursing staff, they couldn’t they have care workers on the ward? If these patients were moved from an operation recovery and acute wards, this would free up nursing staff. They wouldn’t need beds with medical equipment around them.
What happens with all the Spanish nursing staff and medics that treat tourists from March to August?