Did the Net Zero Secretary get the memo that the government wants us to be the fastest growing G 7 economy? Up he pops to halt new oil and gas development.
Between 1990 and 2021 the U.K. slashed output of energy from 219 million tonnes of oil equivalent to 106 million. The gross value added of energy to our national income and output slumped from 10.4% of our economy to just 2.5% No wonder our growth rate slowed. Energy production had boosted our tax revenues mightily and raised our productivity. As Labour closes down our oil and gas we will lose jobs, tax revenue and productivity. Jobs in energy have collapsed from  600,000 to 175,000 over 40 years. There was more oil and gas to find and exploit, onshore and off.
Some say the green replacements will offset. Truth is we are replacing home gas and oil with imports, losing all the jobs and tax revenue to abroad. Where we put in more wind turbines and solar panels  much is imported, creating jobs in China, not here.
If the government is serious about wanting a higher productivity better paid faster growing economy it should want to expand our oil and gas industries. That will help growth. It would also cut world CO 2 as we shed imported LNG. LNG generates so much more CO 2 to compress, liquefy, transport and re gassify. Why do all this when you can have local gas down a pipe?
July 12, 2024
Good morning.
He who pays the piper gets to call the tune.
I understand that a wealthy and well known environmentalist and supporter of, Just Stop Oil made a very large donation to the Labour Party. His business, which revolves around supplying renewable energy, receives government subsidy. Clearly for his business and wealth to be maintained it helps to remove some of the competition.
Soon we will have no jobs and no money to pay all those delivery drivers the government have imported. I wonder what they will do ? Will they leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere or, go on the dole like the rest of us ?
July 12, 2024
Indeed it is surely driven by crony capitalism and corruption there are no other sensible reasons for net zero it is pure job and economic insanity. Yet it is supported by 95%+ of MPs. But then with the exception of relaxing planning all the other labour policies are very anti-growth – more employment, open door low skilled immigration levels and other red tape, more government, higher taxes and worst of all net zero.
July 12, 2024
This may come as a shock to you but there are alternative views. You have been spouting this same line for years and nothing has changed. Boiler plated self belief.
July 12, 2024
Nigl, the problem is surely that net zero ideologists such as those now in Government don’t accept that there are alternative views. Therefore they don’t see a need to produce rational arguments, but follow only their own conviction politics.
July 12, 2024
Indeed they and the BBC only start from the deluded position that net zero is vital to save the World and anyway we have passed laws to this effect so have to waste ÂŁTrillions anyway. Almost no sensible discussion during the election on this. Just Sunak saying we are not going over the cliff quite so fast as Labour.
July 12, 2024
Well of course there are other views, but these views are clearly deluded. When you think them through for a few minutes. I meant more employment red tape and endless other red tape in my above comment.
One of the main problems in the UK is so many people, in totally unproductive jobs and many of them mainly inconveniencing the productive at every turn. In HR, woke lunacies, net zero, employment laws, the far âequalityâ industries, tax planning, insurance, planning, complicated tax management⊠Labours attack on the Non Doms and Private School VAT are idiotic anti-growth policies too.
July 12, 2024
Nigl, if there is a justification for importing oil and gas rather than producing our own and consequently exporting jobs, profits and tax receipts to overseas, please state your case, because what is going on is completely irrational.
July 12, 2024
He can’t state a case – there isn’t one!
July 12, 2024
+1
July 12, 2024
@Michael Staples +1
July 12, 2024
âThe U.K. will not grow faster if we close industries downâ
No nor if they export industries, nor if people cannot afford to get to work or are better off not working after the many costs of getting to work and of working. Not if they have 50k to 130k of student debt for a worthless degree in Sustainability or Grievance Studies. You simply cannot compete in so many industries with rip off intermittent energy, high taxes, high wages, high housing costs and vast government over regulation. Ask Dyson
who has just cut 1000 UK jobs.
July 12, 2024
The story is that we will all be on Universal Basic Income.
The money will have to be borrowed?
And there would be more and more and more people in need of it as more jobs go and more folk need it.
July 12, 2024
Everhopeful
Will the money have to be borrowed? Or is this what CBDC is all about? Money relates to nothing, it’s just numbers on a huge computer base?
July 12, 2024
Yes.
I reckon you could be right.
And that would bring total control.
July 12, 2024
But what fools would keep lending them the money?
July 12, 2024
We will see if the IMF are amenable. Terms will be draconian. Maybe bad enough to drive the migrants back across the channel.
The political class think money is free until there is none. They will not understand that until it happens. Letâs hope sooner rather than later. The longer it takes the deeper the hole.
July 12, 2024
WellâŠdonât know if this is correct but I did read that the word from âon highâ is that no expense must be spared in order to further the agenda. Spend whatever it takes.
( At some point in the madness there was that mantra âSpend, spend, spendâ.
Look what they did for political reasons re Truss.
July 12, 2024
The money isn’t borrowed it is simply created.For such a system to hold,requires the whole world to be subject to it.Russia,China and an increasing list of others beg to differ.
What do you think the wars between west and east are really about?The BRICS+ are creating their own system which does not require the west’s involvement.They already have vast natural resources and vast manufacturing capabilities,they do not need the greedy,parasitic,war-mongering,bankrupt west to act as financial intermediaries or make markets for them.
July 12, 2024
Not knowing the answer I humbly asked the question.
Thank you for enlightening me.
I suppose though, that created money is borrowed, in a sense, from the future?
PS my responses seem to be disappearing again.
July 13, 2024
It’s never intended to be paid back,so ,mostly,it’s not really borrowed.
July 12, 2024
So nobody is going to work if we all get the same allocation anyway. What will we buy with the money?
July 12, 2024
Mark B:
An army of delivery drivers can provide up-to-the-minute reconnaissance to assist burglars, build fences, growing faster and paying their way from the proceeds.
July 12, 2024
Mark, look at it this way. The bigger and sooner the cock-ups from Labour on net zero the more chance we have a change in goivernment by 2029. But who to choose….
July 12, 2024
They will never last until 2029. Big crash coming in fast. Seatbelts everyone.
July 12, 2024
Financial?
Or something like the ONS figures released on the Friday of the Election.
I wonder if that was why it was called so early?
July 12, 2024
ONS figures are not reality. Big crash in reality! Big surprise for the reality deniers in Westminster, Washington and Davos.
July 12, 2024
It’s interesting that Milipede announced the ban whilst Starmergeddon was away.
I’m pleased they’ve started with the wrecking balk so soon, it’s just music for Reform. When Trump gets in and starts his drill baby drill routine it will show the liblabcon clowns for what they are.
Daily we are Importing around 20% of our electricity that’s where the green jobs are going, abroad. 9
July 12, 2024
Are you seriously suggesting that political donations only come from environmental and renewable energy interests? Seriously? Anti-competitive practices are part and parcel of “big business” you can either beat your breast over both or find ways to mitigate them.
Perhaps an outright ban on all donations above a small level and a bar on MPs and civil servants having any association with commercial and foreign interests during and for a period after they have heldpositions in government/authority. Good luck with that one.
July 12, 2024
Whatâs your explanation for the madness?
July 12, 2024
Not only – other âpolitical donationsâ from other corporates but other things. Thatâs what Corporatism is. The Corporations fund the politicians in exchange for accommodating legislation.
That way they can crush the private sector and force the people to fund the corporations (see the lockdown criteria where there were no viruses in Tesco but plenty in my 40 seater cafe). The politicians donât have to bother with members etc either, and people have Hobsons choice at election time.
Thatâs the blueprint. Do you recognize it?
July 12, 2024
Who?
July 13, 2024
Mike
Do your own research. I know our kind host does not want to court trouble as he is the publisher and the one to get all the grief should it come to it. So I do not post names out of respect for our kind host, not because I am afraid for myself.
July 12, 2024
â The U.K. will not grow faster if we close industries downâ
Unlike our European neighbours, or sensible American paleoconservatives, our British conservatives have never considered protectionism – for purely doctrinaire reasons.
So the French have sly barriers to entry and US paleos would restrict imports that affect all the important native industries.
The UK just lets foreigners do as they wish.
They can undercut us. They can buy up our best companies.
Nobody cares. They might even get help from our elites (if there is a few quid in it for them).
July 13, 2024
“They might even get help from our elites(if there is a few quid in it for them).”
Yes,there is an expression for them: the “comprador bourgeoisie”.
July 12, 2024
@Mark B – as a businessman, relying on the State for the guaranteed overpricing of his output, he knows that his protesting about the existence of alternatives will make him even richer
July 13, 2024
Oh, Ian you naughty cynic you đ
July 13, 2024
@Mark B – who is the cynic, me or the ‘man’. Today (Saturday) we read in the Media he is suing his critics under copy-write(?) laws he owns what he says in public and it is not for others to repeat the same when it is detrimental to his status. Confirming ‘Free Speech’ is no longer permitted in the UK as there is now no free parliament to support it.
July 12, 2024
George P. Mitchell. His invention of horizontal drilling and fracking has transformed the US energy landscape. This man was a genius. Note, he wasn’t a politician.
America, its people and its economy today thrive on cheap energy thanks to Mitchell. Like Boule (the father of our digital world) and other white male inventors, their contribution to our world go unrecognized as our governing class bow and prostrate itself at the decaying altar of racial and gender discrimination
July 12, 2024
I’m reminded of the old saw, ‘idle hands do the devils work’. Since the terror of nuclear obliteration receded after the cold war, we have not suffered the stress of a clear existential risk, an ideological vacuum perhaps, and so we have had to create one (or more). Prior to Putin’s invasion, we created the imminent Global Climate disaster. Our focus is now on a false risk, we need to redirect it back to real problems that are growing, and are truly existential threats – – WAR!
July 12, 2024
Why does the US have to rely so extensively on fracking?
How long do you think that economic supply by that means will last?
July 12, 2024
Fracking is cheap. It will last a couple of hundred years.
July 13, 2024
Fracking is fort hard to reach sources and costs are higher than “regular” oil well drilling plus it’s a more complex process.
Allegedly such operations are estimated to last 20-40 years, not hundreds.
It is not a sustainable solution.
July 12, 2024
@dixie – because they can. They don’t have a Government that bans things before finding resilient alternatives. Unlike the UK they don’t have Laws to force the export jobs. Unlike the UK they don’t have Laws forcing imports from the Worlds biggest polluters, which if their Net-zero theory (it is only a theory) is correct, UK laws create and add to the situation. Thy don’t have UK Laws based on personal vanity of a couple of individuals, they are a democracy. In all this our parliament are the hypocrites
July 13, 2024
But the nature of fraking is to extract from hard to reach places and at a higher cost, so why does the US need to do that. What are the consequences of relying on that, what does it say about the lengevity of their energy sources.
July 12, 2024
And even better, Boole was the son of a shoe maker!
July 12, 2024
Get fracking in the UK mow (and drilling and mining) we have excellent resources for alas we have religious idiots or people on bought be the green crap, crony capitalists in charge.
July 12, 2024
Excellent Dom.
Starmer does not have enough new MPs to select as minister so he has appointed four from Blaireâs era! Jacque Smith now education minister! The same who resigned in June 2009 because of her fiddling expenses! Smith also stated disgraced MPs should not go to the Lords, but that applied to everyone else I guess.
July 12, 2024
It annoys me that the Left warn us over earth tremors for vital energy extraction yet celebrate when a non-vital Taylor Swift audience produces them.
July 12, 2024
earth shattering observation.
July 12, 2024
Ever looked at the Richter scale? Taylor Swift got 2.4 (=minor), fracking up to 5.7 (=moderate). As the RS is a logarithmic scale, it means that the horizontal/vertical displacement is roughly 1000 bigger for fracking than for âShake It Offâ.
July 13, 2024
hefner
In the UK fracking companies have to suspend work if they get a measurement of 0.5 or above.
July 12, 2024
The Net Zero Secretary is driven by dogma (CAGW) not by common sense. The man made global warming argument based on this dogma fails at the practical, common sense on several levels including:
1 importing energy instead of extracting it ourselves generates more CO2, the bogeyman gas according to dogma. So why import it?
2 The remit of the IPCC, the author of the CAGW dogma, is restricted to man made causes of global warming. It excludes natural causes. The dominant influence on climate is the sun not man. It is modified by the sun’s imperfectly understood behaviour (sunspots), the Earth’s trajectory around it and the Earth’s tilt and wobble. Add the unpredictable influence of volcanic action and cloud behaviour, acknowledged in the scientific sections of IPCC reports, and it becomes clear that attempts to forecast climate change are doomed to failure.
3 the temperature data used is itself dodgy because the methodology used was significantly changed c1990 and the influence this had on reported temperatures was not tested at the time by a parallel run. So it was like substituting the yard for a metre as a unit of measurement and being told they are the same. I asked the enquiry into climategate, set up by the then House of Commons select committee on science and technology, to ask for a parallel run to be conducted. The answer from the University of East Anglia was that was not possible because they had destroyed all their records.
4 Science is never “settled” as claimed by the dogma. It is constantly challenged by observation and experiment and modified as a consequence.
5 CO2 is not a pollutant, driving global warming, but a gas essential to photosynthesis and life as we know it.
Yet in this Labour government the dogma prevails.
July 12, 2024
Yesterday I read that. 240,000 jobs were to go because of Millibandâs ban on oil drilling.
Now I see they are saying that the story is a âcomplete fabricationâ.
July 12, 2024
Over 2500 gone at Port Talbot in steel for no good reason – just the mad CO2 is a devil gas religion.
July 12, 2024
I do so wonder what it is really all about.
Literally taking us back to a form of feudalism?
July 13, 2024
There is no democracy in the workplace and lasts only as long as the election in the civic space, otherwise we are in a feudal society – we are villeins/serfs obliged to give our lords and masters (civil servants) a share of our produce nominally for military protection.
Except, we must pay taxes and the protection, military or otherwise, no longer exists.
July 12, 2024
Banning UK oil will just increase the imports of oil and oil related goods …more costs to the people of the UK
July 12, 2024
OhâŠoh we are forgetting!
Those on the Left are blessed with the gift of cognitive dissonanceâŠthey can believe two totally conflicting things at the same time!
July 12, 2024
Indeed and different things with different audiences.
July 12, 2024
Only on the left? The Tories are brilliant at doublethink as well or hadn’t you noticed? They want to reduce the number of boat people because the failure to control our borders is bad optics but they also want to remain signed up to international agreements that make uncontrolled immigration inevitable. They claim they want to stop people traffickers when they know perfectly well that the so-called traffickers are actually facilitators who charge for their services.
July 12, 2024
Forthurst :
Correct.
July 12, 2024
Well – they are in the left too if you think about it.
July 12, 2024
Youâre spot on.
I think they are all left wing really!
Some more than othersâŠbut all tinged.
They certainly all espouse the same utter b*ll*cks.
July 12, 2024
@forthurst – the last 14 years of Tories demonstrated they were on the ‘left’. All the election did was replace the leader of the Uni-Party
July 12, 2024
The decline of the oil and gas industry started under our last consocialist government. Recent statements from the Labour government are merely the continuation of the same policy. The cheeks of the same backside singing in harmony.
Whatever they say or said in the past, these rwo cheeks are intent on the systematic destruction of UK economic independance leading to our ever increasing dependence on ever closer ties with the EU. The one positive is that Labour finance and support from the union movement that created them will rapidly dry up. The danger is tbat vested interests both at home and abroad will step in and make ul Labours deficit.
The governance of the UK is enjoying the last tenuous illusion that it is still a democratic state. It has largely been sold. All the main political parties are complicit, even your own who emphasised the lie in calling themselves conservative and unionist. So today the only beacons for freedom and democracy are GBNews in the media and the famous five of Reform in the Commons. The only hope is that they both get ever increasing support.
Reply I do not hold any Conservative position. My views are independent not Conservative Party ones.
July 12, 2024
I agree a great shame we did not get, perhaps the best of reform candidates Ben Habib elected. A very sensible Cambridge Nat Sci chap and businessman right on almost everything I have heard him say.
July 13, 2024
I am looking at the project2025 publication that is said to be the blueprint for a Trump presidency. Over 900 pages, so I have a way to go, but so far it clearly sets out problems in the government machine, identifies where policy priorities ought to lie, which laws will need urgent repeal, which quangos should be shut down etc. THe parallels with the problems we face in the UK are striking. I suspect that a similar effort will be needed to tackle the mess that Labour leave behind. Perhaps Habib could help lead such work in support of his parliamentary colleagues at least until he gets a good chance at a by-election.
July 12, 2024
Excellent Agricola.
Reply to reply. JR we accept you are no longer a Tory MP, however as Rees-Mogg stated earlier this week you all have to accept responsibility for the outcome.
July 12, 2024
sloping shoulders are alive and well!
July 12, 2024
THE MEMBERS OF GOVERNMENT have collective responsibility. NOT backbench MPs.
You must get the fundamentals right and listen more closely.
Agricola has had too much sun in Spain or wherever he is. Only THE KING can say âmy governmentâ. Redwood had NOTHING to do with the government. Thatâs the problem!
July 13, 2024
Lynne,
Of course back bench MPs have responsibility for their party, their policeâs, who they choose as leader etc. if not they serve no purpose to anyone.
You might want to consider how you are going to oust the majority of pro EU one nation Tories from the front and back benches currently still in the not so tory party to get the party back!
July 12, 2024
I would say some are a lot more responsible than others. MPs who never spoke out against the prevailing Labour-light policies in the last government – lockdowns but not quite as damaging as what Labour wanted, high immigration but not quite as high as what Labour wanted, and lots of wokery but not as much as what Labour wanted – those people deserved the outcome they got. Sir John did not.
July 12, 2024
To reply:- if only the Conservative Party had followed you sensible advice over your 37 years as an excellent MP. We would be in a far happier and wealthier place today.
July 12, 2024
SJR, at the moment nobody, especially the conservative rump, has any idea what they believe in. At the begining of the month we were aware that they were anything but conservative and unionist so the electorate out of blind misplaced loyalty voted for them in ineffective numbers. The wiser ones stayed at home or voted Reform.
I accept that you have left office, hold and express independent views, please continue, but assume you still retain membership of the CP. A detail you might clarify.
Thanks to a very unrepresentive electoral system, Labour are in power with a large majority based on a smaller share of the vote than lost Corbin his election. All down to your ex party failing to be Conservative and those who might have supported them realising it.
My prediction is that Labour, another pagan to the pope party will rot from within. However in the process they will decimate the country. The millipede has already begun by destroying our own energy. Society will be further inflicted with thousands of very early release criminals to join those the police and legal system fail to investigate or prosecute.
Your independent views need to be chanelled to the most vocal media outlet who will allow them. We are eight days in skirmishing at the outset of a five year war.
Reply My views have been on Sky, in the Telegraph and on GB News website over the last two weeks
July 12, 2024
You are apparently unable to comprehend that Conservative politics is divorced from The Conservative Party and has been for many decades. Sir John reflects Conservative politics. Therefore at odds with the Party.
Comprehendo?
July 13, 2024
Not so easy Lynne. JR along with the other conservative MPs could and should have done more to resist Cameron changes to march the party left. 1922 committee the same. People do not act in a vacuum they need others to make change only silent passive people should accept what they get. To think it just happened is for the birds. Trecherous May should never have became leader and she should have been ousted much quicker for her treachery to the party and nation.
Reply I and others opposed a lot but could not win votes to stop things as Labour supported the government or abstained.
July 12, 2024
Eggs Morribund is a misguided, messianic ,twerp. I hope that Starmer and Reeves will overrule him
July 12, 2024
As are 98% of the Labour Party. Only the Health Sec. that is saying the odd sensible thing about the dire NHS that I have heard so far & lifting planning red tape. All the rest entirely the wrong direction.
July 12, 2024
Of course they will not. Itâs agreed Government policy!
July 12, 2024
@David Peddy – no chance he is the New labour Messiah, bring about the purity of nonsensical Socialism to the masses
July 12, 2024
Based on Labourâs path of intent, Ed Milibandâs job title should be:
Ministry of Energy Insecurity, Overseas Gain and UK Unemployment Growth.
July 12, 2024
Minister for transferring wealth, manufacturing and jobs east to our enemies like China!
July 12, 2024
A role first produced by a Conservative Government.
July 12, 2024
The water industry regulator OFWAT has shamefully capitulated to the water/sewage dumping industry’s demands to soak their customers with stonking bill increases – to pay for increased dividends, senior management bonuses and “investment” in water treatment infrastructure. Mostly the dividends, but also to pay for their pollution fines
We need some joined up thinking about the funding of the privatised water industry. Their total indebtedness has reached an eye-watering ÂŁ76bn. In 2023 they paid out ÂŁ2.5bn in dividends while their total indebtedness increased by ÂŁ8.2bn (source; FT)
We have already suffered contamination of the drinking water supply in many areas. The public have had enough of sewage dumping and there is widespread support for the re-nationalisation of the industry. The water companies have paid out ÂŁbillions in dividends and management bonuses since privatisation, if the state has to take on their debts, nationalisation must be without any compensation for their shareholders or lenders
Reply The government has backed Ofwat, presumably because taking on the huge investment programmes and past debts needed would demolish the budget rules and be unaffordable for taxpayers.
July 12, 2024
It will be interesting to see when Starmer and reeves announce their first growth policy. So far they have moved to close down the major industry of oil and gas (and of course as pointed out yesterday that means heavily energy dependent industries such as steel also), and have indicated that they will ban or heavily disadvantage 2 minor industries, private education (also a successful expert service sector) and hunting (which will also kill some ancillary business in rural areas).
We will not get growth by closing industries and banning activities which people want to do and are prepared to spend their own money on. I imagine they think growth will come if they put up taxes and spend the money on picking winners in favoured sectors. Oh dear.
July 12, 2024
They want growth so that they can tax and spend more on their agenda.
Well I for one won’t play ball. I work hard enough and the idea that my extra effort is just going to be taxed away is no incentive.
If they want the finances to look better, they can start by shrinking the bloated state. Happily this is what they will end up doing, as tax receipts fail to come in and the money markets are spooked by their financial failure.
July 12, 2024
It is a shame that in our so-called democracy, nobody ever gets the chance to put these points to Miliband in a public forum.
July 12, 2024
MW :
The only way it is possible to “put these points to Miliband” is to write a letter to the DESNZ.
July 12, 2024
To put it simply about using more of our own gas and oil. Firstly we don’t have the refining capacity for oil and secondly we don’t have the storage for the gas we collect from our local shores. We only use about 10% of oil produced within our shores because we can’t refine it.
July 12, 2024
Well we certainly earn tax revenues on UK gas and oil, which we don’t on imports.
Since we also seem to be busy importing liquified fracked gas from the US (and presumably storing it) does it make sense to liquify our local surplus gas for storage. We had Rough but I thought Centrica’s business model failed because of imported LNG from the US?
July 12, 2024
No-one is going to invest in the necessary refinery equipment when the government signals that it wants all refineries to close. Not only will that push up our fuel prices, because there is a much more limited choice of suppliers of refined products than there is of crude oil, and they are shipped in smaller, more costly vessels, but also we will lose the petrochemical industry and downstream manufacture of goods. All to be replaced with imports.
July 12, 2024
I agree gas and oil are important as transition fuels but there must be focus on what the goals are for sustainable energy. If that is a diverse mix of nuclear, renewables or whatever then where is the drive to fund the R&D and more importantly fund and accelerate local development of technologies, solutions and skills?
Say the lobby group succeeded in re-establishing a realistic oil & gas industry that is still only a temporary fix and does not provide a sustainable solution. What is the long term goal and what is truly beneficial for citizens in this country?
If wind power is an important element then why is there no effort to ensure and grow UK based manufacturing and the ownership and control of that manufacturing.
Being the world leader in buying large windmills just means we are the world leading buyer of someone else’s products. Similarly importing all our energy when the local oil and gas run out/become uneconomic is not a sustainable goal.
July 12, 2024
Mr Miliband’s decision is a clear example of dogma replacing joined up thinking.
But there again he is not alone in Westminster.
July 12, 2024
If we should re-establish metals processing would it not be better to first focus on recycling than primary ore processing. For example, Recycling aluminium requires only around 5% of the energy needed to produce aluminium from ore. The same reduction in energy and environmental impacts would probably apply to many other materials
Wouldn’t it be easier to re-establish strategic metals production, for example, by this route – leave the high energy initial processing to other suppliers.
July 12, 2024
The supply chain for particular metals starts with mining before assorted processes of enrichment, extraction and alloy blending before forming and milling. Each stage can have its choke points from limited supply. China has understood that the best tactic is to get involved by owning mines at source and then controlling the subsequent supply chain. Being tail end Charlie (tail ends are low grade ore residues) leaves you open to any constrictions in supply higher up the chain.
Metal extraction and processing is highly energy intensive: the best aluminium smelters use about 13kWh to produce 1kg of metal, after alumina is extracted from vauxite via the Bayer process. The best security of supply comes from being able to run as much of the supply chain in your own country as possible. That is why cheap energy is so important.
July 13, 2024
“Recycling aluminium requires only around 5% of the energy needed to produce aluminium from (bauxite) ore”
My point is that if we can recycle the metals after use we are no longer vulnerable to upstream choke points and the material is cheaper than if we have to fund or perform the full ore to product processing.
Once the metals have been produced it is far cheaper in energy and environmental terms to recycle and reprocess. It would ensure a far more stable supply at far lower cost than at present.
Processed metals are a valuable commodity and we should not be shipping them abroad for reprocessing.
The UK citizen gains from this approach and there is less environmental damage and wasted energy
July 12, 2024
Carbon accounting needs to be completely discredited to the extent that opposition MPs can quote it regularly in the House of Commons and in interviews.
The view that carbon is bad has become entrenched to the point that no one is listening to the counter arguments but if carbon is bad then why generate more carbon by outsourcing production. Opposition MPs need three sets of figures, the UK production of carbon and then the UK use of carbon when outsourcing and the figure that would be if we generated it ourselves. The latter figure would win the argument.
July 12, 2024
Knew it would happen as soon as Ed Miliband was given the Job, he is deluded, so nothing would surprise me any more whilst he is in place, and he will stay in situ for a long time yet, as Starmer was aware of his views before putting him in place.
Perhaps Labour will even Start up HS2 again, such is there thinking. !
July 12, 2024
Good try Sir JR, but you’ll never get that past the Green zealots, wokesters and half-wit politicians who seek only to virtue signal rather that confront the reality.
July 12, 2024
It will certainly destroy wealth, damage the economy and make people poorer and colder. The number seems about right to me.
July 12, 2024
I wonder if Shetland and Orkney are drafting plans to secede from the UK and apply to again become part of Norway.
Norway isn’t currently destroying its oil industry ….. although it IS part of the WEF’s First Movers Coalition, so I guess it won’t be too long before its politicians start the process of destroying it. Scroll down and you can watch Jan Christian Vestre, Minister of Trade and Industry in Norway boasting of the Norwegian Government’s intention to do just that.
https://initiatives.weforum.org/first-movers-coalition/partners
First Movers Coalition: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, UAE, UK, USA
This is not a democratic process. It’s dictatorship.
July 12, 2024
If our, past two decades, policies of net-zero hasnât achieved anything on the global stage, nor advanced/retreated sea levels âŠ..only a madman would continue with the same policy
July 12, 2024
If it was about sea levels, billionaire globalists and mega-wealthy politicians climate-change scaremongers wouldn’t be buying-up $multi-million properties on the coast.
July 12, 2024
And people impoverishments. They will just have to wear cast off Ski Gear for half the year and take tepid baths once a month needed or not.
July 12, 2024
While confined to their 15 minute “you are a worker pleb” city zones zones.
July 12, 2024
We are importing electricity as a government policy.
We are importing gas as a government policy
We are importing oil as a government policy.
The Labour Government is determined to carry on with those past/last government policies.
As you say Sir John, we once used our own resources, employed our own workers, drew down healthy tax levies from a very profitable industry that advanced GDP but not any longer.
The question we all want answered is, why?
July 12, 2024
RE :
To cause a crisis from which they can grab more power.
July 12, 2024
To make us dependent …. and therefore controllable.
July 12, 2024
The westâs living standards were out of kilter with the world average, an a block on One World Government with one world population.
They have had to impoverish us because they canât lift the rest of the world to our level, in order to impose world Government.
Thatâs why. They have been discussing this problem for decades. Reducing the numbers of the âwealthyâ population also helps. When they are a minority, and preferably sick, they will be overwhelmed.
Iâm not sure JR will publish this, but that is what Bilderberg and itâs cohorts have discussed and planned for decades.
Incidentally the existence of the Bilderberg Group was always denied. I put a complaint to the Standards and Privileges Committee re Clark QC MP because I wrote to him and Blair and they contradicted each other. The report on my complaint was the first official document that conceded the existence of the Bilderberg Group.
Reply Bilderberg has been acknowledged. As I understand it it has no governing powers but encourages like minded influential people to discuss their prejudices together. The things they believe are all out there in the UN debates and international treaties which the U.K. / EU sign up to which then do affect what Parliament can do. That is why as an MP I opposed new Treaties and took us out of the especially restricting EU ones.
July 13, 2024
Alec Douglas-Home was the Chairman of the Bilderberg Group between 1977 and 1980. Gee, what a secret group âŠ
Some people really love unearthing secret groups, it gives them something to do with their life, ie âdenouncing all these conspiraciesâ. Obviously as an âAtlanticistâ group it must have ruffled some pro-Russian feathers.
July 12, 2024
@Rod Evans +1
More than just Government Policy, Parliament approved Laws that none of our Competing Nations could ever envisage forcing on their people.
Its better to cancel jobs, raise taxes and borrowing so you can have the self-gratification of knowing you helped destroy the UK’s future.
July 12, 2024
“Why do all this when you can have local gas down a pipe?”
Yes, why indeed Sir John? Some of us have been asking this for some time but answer came there none….
July 12, 2024
Tax revenues were ‘mightily raised’ but all wasted. No Sovereign Wealth Fund for the UK such as for Norway. We allowed the oil giants to empty the North Sea as fast as they could for the quickest big buck, again not like Norway. How we could do with some of that production now. Governments cannot be trusted – they make decisions in their own and their friends benefit and always short term. This lot will be no different. We have always had some sort of crisis for most of my life due to poor decision making and ideology which usually turns out to be wrong, hence where we are.
July 12, 2024
The North Sea fields are NOT empty. Go figure.
July 14, 2024
Stupid, as usual
July 12, 2024
You can only have a wealth fund if you run a budget surplus. Otherwise you are borrowing to fund it, and it is liable (being run by politicians) to waste taxpayer money in vast quantities and impoverish the country.
July 12, 2024
Of course the Net Zero Secretary got the memo and is acting upon it. There will be increasing GDP, caused by importing in the millions, legally and illegally, delivery drivers, cleaners and gardeners required by the elites as opposed to the doctors and engineers wanted by the hoi polio. At least according to the figures from the captured OBR, ONS and BBC.
Not GDP/capita because the far Leftâs goal is always to stay permanently in power through the impoverishment of the population. The unilateral de-industrialising Net Zero Strategy is the perfect tool for this job, whilst fraudulently misleading the population that by impoverishing themselves to net zero their 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions they are âsaving the planetâ In the same way as âwar is peaceâ and âfreedom is slaveryâ.
The Net Zero Secretary will know via Jeremy Corbynâs brother, Piers, who has a first class BSc degree in physics and an MSc in astrophysics, that CAGW is hoax. The IPCC WG1 (âThe Scienceâ) only attributes a mere 1.2 degrees C to a doubling of CO2 (P95) because of a phenomenon known as IR saturation and Table 12 in Chapter 12 shows no signals for climate change other than some mild warming. There is no anthropogenic CO2 emissions explanation for the warming of the planet out of the last ice age which ended 11,000 years ago or for many other historical facts such as the Icelandic Norsemen colonising Greenland for several hundred years prior to the Little Ice Age which required temperatures to be 5 degrees higher than today.
July 12, 2024
Ahh but that’s the rub.
This alleged intention is at cross purposes to netzero which will close down our industrial base and reduce our economy to a 3rd world standard.
The plans in effect for 2020-29 require that our industries start to close down, with a host of Mickey Mouse solutions suggested to get over problems created. We will run out of raw materials and factories will go empty.
So how can the current regime lie to us about creating a growth economy when the elephant in the room will trample all over those ideas.
They have no real plans – it’s all wishywashy incomplete cigarette pack scribbling.
Isn’t it time that all of this insanity was out in the open?
July 12, 2024
@Bryan Harris – but surely isn’t lying the only thing they have any talent for?
Why are the giving our taxpayer money to those that do not have to comply with these ludicrous UK NetZero Laws. Why is our Government forcing us to buy from Countries that have not signed up to their ridiculous Laws(In reality all our Competitor nations, those we are forced to buy from – do not and have no intention to have the Laws the UK Government its MP’s have forced on us – their people wouldn’t stand for it)
July 12, 2024
@Ian B
You ask why…
We no longer have governments that work for us – They are driven by wasted minds that have been perverted by ideology and their own demons that seek the end of all times.
The what question is “What do they want to achieve?”
Answer – A society that bows down to the elite, does its bidding and is happy to own nothing.
July 12, 2024
The graph of Energy Use as related to prosperity of a nation shows, without exception, that they are directly proportional,
i.e. high energy use equates to high prosperity, and low energy use relates directly to impoverishment.
There are no exceptions of low energy use in highly developed advanced countries.
Why are we ruled by people who are impervious to reason?
Does it really take a whack on the head from a baseball bat to catch the attention of the green zealots?
July 12, 2024
I think they have had a whack on the head already.
July 12, 2024
J+W :
They know all of this. Impoverishment and third world status is the key to obtaining permanent power.
July 12, 2024
This is just a continuation of Uni-Party destruction. We should ignore what they say and pay close attention to what they do.
We have been an âundevelopingâ country for a long time.
July 12, 2024
@RichardP +1, so very true
July 12, 2024
Just how stupid are our MPs, on all sides of the house, that they don’t understand a successful economy is based on cheap reliable energy. We should never be importing it from anywhere when we have adequate supplies available to us if we had the sense to use them.
The Conservatives now have to review and learn a painful lesson. Voters expect a conservative government to be conservative. Either they become conservative again in word and deed, or they will die. I voted conservative but came awfully close to voting Reform.
Labour support will collapse in a year or two because they will make things worse, but will my vote in 2028/9 go to the Conservatives or Reform. I also believe a majority of 170ish is likely to vanish like smoke by the next GE!
July 12, 2024
@Keith from Leeds +1
Then the Media offers us the next Leader of the Conservative Party from the ranks of those that have been the collective responsibility of the Previous Governments that have driven us into the ground. Any MP associated with the collective responsibility of the last 14 years isn’t a Conservative so by default isn’t eligible to run the Conservative Party
July 13, 2024
A party can nly give effect to conservatism if it believes in it. The Conservative Party does not. It is a broad church. It believes in anything that might win a few votes from whatever quarter.
July 12, 2024
Have you ever heard of a swing like this: a sitting MP gets 65% of the vote, then without any change to his character or politics, it goes down to 3.2% of the vote at the following General Election.
The canvassing shows that the pledged vote was increased from 65%.
Do you think foul play might be seeping into our electoral process? If so we can forget Democracy altogether.
July 13, 2024
You’re talking about Andrew Bridgen, who faced the problem that he had to beat not only the Tory party machine, but also a Reform candidate, who got 20% of the vote. I think it just shows how much getting elected for Parliament depends on having the organisation in place to get round and reach upwards of 70,000 voters. Large parties do, independents don’t. I don’t call it foul play, just electoral realpolitik which you and I might deplore, but which a new party such as Reform will have to adapt to, if it is to succeed. As Matt Goodwin pointed out recently, Reform aren’t even at the level of local organisation UKIP reached in 2015.
Reply Lots of people will not want to vote for an Independent as they want to help chose which main party will form the government.
July 13, 2024
Yes, and lots of people – about 40% of voters – didn’t care which party formed the government, or didn’t think it even mattered. Let’s see if they were wrong.
July 15, 2024
Lots of people contributed to Bridgenâs campaign, lots still do. The polling showed he would win. That vote counting has become more important than voting, as in the USA, is of great concern.
You should speak to Bridgen JR.
Reply I did talk to him when he was often lonely as an MP without party in the Commons. If he wants to talk he knows where I am.
July 12, 2024
There is no way you will win against the control and propaganda of the CIA and MI6 of western countries, they are in complete control of the west along with western militray conplex, so dont waste your time.
July 12, 2024
This crowd just as the last are all followers of the Socialist WEF cabal. You know the foreign self-opinionated individuals that no one voted, no one empowered. The ones that are not accountable or responsible to anyone, not unlike the EU Commission, they hand out diktats and those we vote into our Parliament, we empower, we pay, ignore those they swore to serve, and say yes Sir, Mr WEF you want us to jump, âhow high do you want us to jump!â.
There is no point in having elections if we just get those that serve foreign master. Exaggeration? It canât be they are exporting UK Jobs and Wealth against the wishes of those that elected and pay them. So, our members of Parliament have demonstrated they want to destroy the UK.
Everyone ask, your MP how many members of the BRICS trading block, now said to be the Worldâs largest, have forced laws on their people to cancel industry, cancel wealth creation, export wealth, rely on imports, therefore cancelling having a future â the answer is none of them. Then ask your MP why are they not working for their constituency and its people, why have you dedicated yourself to impoverishing those that voted for you. When an MP says ânot meâ ask who are the UKâs Legislators, the only ones that can legitimately make, amend and repeal UK Laws.
This is not a Labour or Conservative thing, a Left or Right thing, it is an elected Parliament fighting its people, fighting the peoples right to exist. We have forced on us Laws that our Competitor Nations do not have do not have to comply with. These same Laws force us to buy/import from the same Competing nations that will have nothing to do with this malicious destruction of their own people – it is our Parliament that has gone AWOL
July 12, 2024
Itâs ludicrous to ban things that are needed for our existence. Then the idiocy is to ban us having the money and the wealth to create any alternatives.
Th UKâs tax and borrowing is perilous for all of us, then to have Governments that we pay and empower cancelling our jobs, exporting UK wealth, i.e. the UK Government is removing the very life and soul from the Country.
Any sane Government would have focused of the economy, the wealth creation so we could fund the changes that may or may not be needed. Maliciously cancelling the UK by Law â says it all about todayâs Political Class
July 12, 2024
Itâs in their manifesto. At least most of the job losses will be in Scotland where they were enthusiastic Labour voters. They have also reversed the decision to open a new coal mine in Cumbria so weâll have to import that too.
July 12, 2024
So the Milliband debacle is or isnât true..
And the MOD has denied that permission was granted for Storm Shadow missiles to be used by Ukraine in Russia.
Labour had the cheek to accuse the tories of chaos.
How many days is it now? Scarcely seven.
Imagine fourteen years of âhe said/she saidâ!
July 12, 2024
Apparently, we import 90% of prescription drugs.
July 13, 2024
Worse than that, I read that China holds the ‘precursors’ to many of these.
July 13, 2024
It is almost guaranteed that they will be adulterated with something poisonous.
July 12, 2024
Graphcore, a UK computer company thought to be potentially a competitor to NVidia in AI chip design and applications, was bought today by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. For the time being it will stay in Bristol.
July 13, 2024
Thanks for that mate. More of our tech to go to benefit others.
July 12, 2024
From their actions or stated positions, the reality is that Labour, Lib Dems and the so-called One Nation conservatives all want to run our country down over time. Making our country more dependant on hers, importing rather than producing, and loading high energy costs onto our industry to make it less competitive, so in the end we are all poorer, is clearly a deliberate malign aim. Why that is so, I cannot understand.
July 13, 2024
Net Zero Watch (NZW) have recently published papers linking Net Zero not only to economic decline but also to the growing inability of the UK to sustain its defence capabilities. Germany and France still produce much of their own steel despite their support of EU Green Energy. Germnany has recognised the limits of Energiewende. Germany and Denmark store hundreds of days worth of gas. The UK’s Rough facility, recently re-opened, stores less than a week’s worth. It is all commonsense but so strong is the belief in the sophistry and fantasies of Net Zero propagated through the Climate Change Committee, UK’s education system and Woke Left Wing propaganda that we are left with the UK on a path of self inflicted weakness and vulnerability to threats from the world’s dictators.
NZW has also published a paper exposing the conflicts of interest, corruption, hypocrisy and fallacies of the Climate Change Committee and the frightening new appointments by Starmer of Net Zero Zealots to his Net Zero Mission Control.
Well worth reading.
July 13, 2024
I don’t criticise individual ploiticians lightly but amongst Labour’s ranks, two in particular stand out :
The first is Yvette Cooper who lied regularly in opposition and has no workable solution whatsoever for illegal migration. She knows this only too well yet she continues to spout the same nonsense. My contempt for her has no bounds.
The second is Miliband E, who has nothing like the sharp brain of his brother ( it must be all the bananas Miliband D consumes). This idiot is determined to bankrupt the country through his totally unaffordable Green Crap agenda and accelerated but completely unachievable “progress” towards net zero by 2030.
If that isn’t enough, Miliband E is determined to make things even worse financially for our economy by foregoing many billions in UK tax revenues by destroying our North Sea oil and gas industry !
In this, our new Chancellor seems fully complicit. All they will achieve is INCREASED emissions through the import of LPG and oil from overseas producers !
Their two government departments are now run on political dogma and left wing ideology that even the trade unions detest, but that is the choice that a majority of ignorant British voters made on 4th July !
July 14, 2024
I was interested, and slightly alarmed, to read elsewhere that UK exports between 60 & 80% of it’s north sea oil and gas production, yet we must import way more.
Some export is no doubt inevitable, but maybe this points to there being insufficient UK capacity to process and store so that would presumably need to be addressed if new north sea licenses increase UK energy security and not just increase a bit of tax take