Mr Miliband is celebrating this week. He has signed off the closure of our last coal fired power station. He sees this as proud proof that the U.K. is leading the world in decarbonising. He and like minded Ā Greens are always telling us the U.K. needs to go further and faster in closing down power stations and whole industries that use fossil fuels as then the world will follow us . So here are some questions for Mr Miliband.
Now the U.K. has completed setting an example of doing without coal power stations when will China and India do the same?
Indeed, when will China and India, the 2 largest coal burners even stop building new coal power stations?
The loss of around Ā 3% of our power capacity as the station closes leaves us more vulnerable to power cuts. What assessment did he make before allowing the closure?
He says renewable power will be cheaper than fossil fuel. So when will he replace Ā the lost coal capacity with wind or solar? How much does he think that would save?
If renewable power is so cheap and its quantities are clearly increasing why have you just put energy bills up by 10% instead of cutting them?
To reach his target of all ācleanā electricity by 2030 how much more capacity does the Grid need to install over and above their Ā£30 bn expansion by 2030 agreed under the previous government?
October 2, 2024
Closing down perfectly good coal fired station mandated by the EU and slavishly followed by all the uniparty is an act of stupid vandalism.
Germany today has 59 coal fired stations totalling 38gw, many burning filthy lignite. EU rules obviously not for them
I pray for a beast from the east winter so we have massive power cuts when 35gw of wind and 10gw of solar are only producing 2gw.
It’s time we brought back hanging.
October 2, 2024
Agreed Ian. Ratcliff on Stour was an efficient coal station and whilst 50 yrs old was likely cleaner than the new Indian and Chinese coal plants.
As for your wish for power cuts – these will come soon enough. By 2030 we’ll be down from the current 28GB to 14GB of gas generating capacity. We regularly need more gas generated electricity than this so the lights really will be going out under Labour.
October 2, 2024
+1 though I am not generally for capital punishment myself. But perhaps an exception for those who blatantly lied about the net harm Covid vaccines & even coerced these āvaccinesā into children & those who had had Covid already anyway. Plus the mad zealots who push the Chairman Mao style disaster of net zero or the other religion driven terrorists who bomb or murder people and even children.
October 2, 2024
@ Ian
+1
Milliband et al are all idiotic idealogues…
Though the very fact that he recently asked the boss of the National Grid whether his ambitions could be achieved, and was told it could not – tells us all we need to know!
October 2, 2024
Deluded PPE graduate his agenda not only threatens the economy, jobs, lives, freezes pensioners and tax receipts it cost billions, compromises the defence of the UK and also does huge net harm to the environment. Does nothing positive for the climate either.
October 2, 2024
I agree, except it isn’t stupidity.
It’s part of a deliberate programme by the Globalists and our “Green” Establishment to deconstruct this nation – and I include Charlie-Boy in that charge, breaking the oath he made to God in his coronation ceremony.
If you completely control the energy supply, the food supply and you impoverish people so they are dependent on the State, then you can control them.
These people aren’t stupid. They are evil.
October 2, 2024
Cold, hungry people with nothing to lose are very very dangerous. Iām pleased JR is no longer a member of the political class.
October 2, 2024
Donna
Question is, who are in on it, and who are the āuseful idiotsā who have fallen for the rhetoric?
October 3, 2024
Does it matter? The useful idiots are just as evil as those running the scam.
October 2, 2024
King Charles wants to be protector of all faiths so which God does he pray to, the CofE one the CofScotland if North of the border, the climate alarmist God, the God that gave him the coastal wind farm rents or one of the many others?
Always seems rather odd that religious beliefs get legal protections when rational beliefs get non. But I suppose so many of their followers are so irrational and often very āsensitiveā so some perhaps need it for mental health reasons.
So all four remaining, would be Tory leaders, claim to believe in the Manmade CO2 climate emergency religion. Are they idiots or liars? Kemi read Computer Systems Eng. at Sussex University (near Brighton) so I assume she has the odd half passable science A level. Math at least surely? So she surely should be able to work out that the climate emergency is A. a con trick and B. the solutions pushed – wind, solar, public transport, walking, cycling, heat pumps, EVsā¦ save no or save no sig, CO2 anyway. And C the rest of the world aināt going to follow our insane agenda anyway,
October 2, 2024
‘But I suppose so many of their followers are so irrational and often very āsensitiveā so some perhaps need it for mental health reasons’
You’re talking nonsense here, Lifelogic.
The following were devout believers in God: Sir Isaac Newton (biblical scholar), Max Planck, the guys who built Oxford and Cambridge and established our Parliament and Judiciary and guilds and grammar schools and Eton and Winchester and our beautiful medieval cathedrals and churches, and James Maxwell, Heisenberg (biggy in Quantum Physics), the Catholic priest Mendel who was the main founder of modern genetics, Edmund Burke, Carl Jung, Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Fleming, Cyrus the Great – unless you mean sensitive types in the arts – like Bach (and Mozart, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Michelangelo, Raphael etc)!
It’s precisely a decline in religious culture and values that is destroying Western civilisation (I’m not talking about belief in God as that would be proselytising which I am not doing here – and there are lots of atheists who would agree with me even if they don’t believe in God / god).
October 2, 2024
Computer āscienceā is not actually science.
October 4, 2024
All sorts of disciplines that are quite unlike physics or chemistry are eager to call themselves āsciencesā.
A good rule of thumb is that anything that calls itself a science probably isnāt.
October 2, 2024
hear hear …spot on Ian
October 2, 2024
Hanging? Thats a very unreasonable penalty for just being a village idiot.
I suggest the stocks outside H of C, with an ample supply of rotten fruit and veg!
October 3, 2024
The stocks were great!
(Private Eye etc is just a continuation of)
October 2, 2024
The electric chair would be more appropriate. Turn it on and wait for the wind to blow.
October 2, 2024
The Large Combustion Plant Directive was responsible for the closure of a lot of coal plant ahead of its 2015 deadline for plants that opted out of playing the game on ever stricter emissions limits that the EU was playing. The UK instituted a plan to phase out all remaining coal by 2025 to replace the LCPD back in 2015. Prominent politicians have taken delight in pushing the plunger to set off explosions to destroy cooling towers, including Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and Alok Sharma of the Conservatives. It runs alongside the failure to replace ageing nuclear capacity. It has been a Uniparty project, also sponsored by Lib Dems who provided coalition energy ministers.
Timera commented:
Whilst the GB market has so far managed the closure of coal via supporting existing CCGT in the CM, new build flex has been thin on the ground, with relatively little new gas being supported. As ageing nuclear capacity follows coal into retirement over the next few years, a large flex deficit is accumulating.
While there were some signs that Claire Coutinho had begun to grasp the seriousness of this there are no signs of Miliband doing so. Yesterday the final targets for procurement under the next Capacity Market auctions were published, being set at an anxious 6.5GW of additional capacity for a year ahead, but just 44GW for 4 years ahead with no improvement in terms that might encourage new dispatchable capacity to be built by guaranteeing it a long term future. This is no basis for a push to EVs and heat pumps. These are the levels previously communicated by Miliband to Fintan Slye on 18th July. They’re obviously planning for economic collapse.
October 2, 2024
Ed Milibandās policies are even more insane than Net Zero Mayās and the Covid Vaccines are āUnequivocally Saveā Sunakās.
Some more questions for Tomb stone Ed PPE Oxon Miliband. Why do we burn wood (young coal) at Drax when burning old coal there would be more efficient, cheaper and produce less CO2?
Why do we encourage people to switch to EVs when these produce more CO2 than keeping you old car, are far more expensive, pay less tax, heavier so more tyre and road wear & far less practical.
Why do the government push heat pumps when these will require a vast unafforadable grid expansion just for winter demands, are more expensive to buy and to run and less practical or convenient. Do not even save CO2 when properly considered.
Why do the government lie that there is a climate emergency caused by CO2 when the earth has has ice ages with more than ten times current CO2 levels. All the evidence suggest a bit more CO2 plant tree and crop food is a net good?
October 2, 2024
In short is Ed (and most of this mad government) a deluded, moronic net zero zealot or is he just on the make and lying? Similar questions for Lord Debden, Sir two tier Kier, The Right Honourable, The Lord Vallance of Balham Minister for Scienceā¦ (has he apologised for the vast Covid vaccine and lockdown net harms yet?)
October 2, 2024
Consider the hackneyed tale āThe Emperors New Clothesā.
Much quoted but so appropriate.
An ancient cautionary tale based on many very, very ancient cautionary tales.
Present a concept that will make you money, suggest that those who are unable to comprehend the concept are in some way lacking and hey presto..a totally pliable, plastic control mechanism with endless possibilities. It dovetails very nicely with all other political correctnesses.
But it does leave the Emperor totally naked!
October 2, 2024
How many of the 2.8million people in China & India have heard of Ed Miliband?
He should compete for power there and if they elect him as leader they might follow him then.
Confucius stated “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals; adjust the action steps.”
Milibandās warp speed net zero zealotry would turn Confucius into confusion worldwide.
October 2, 2024
I think you mean 2.8 bn people in China and India ? I’m not sure there are 2.8 million people in the whole world have heard of Red Ed! But this winter that will be corrected when they ask ‘why is my house cold, why can’t I efford to heat it, why do the lights and tv go off?’
October 3, 2024
Yes, thanks. 2.8billion was intended.
‘efford’ might be another literal missed.
October 2, 2024
Deluded and moronic. Just like someone who repeats the same politically ignorant often multiple posts ad nauseam.
October 2, 2024
Scientifically correct yes but Politically ignorant? I suspect not when people lose their jobs, the economy dives and granny freezes it is unlikely to be popular for long it is not that popular now.
October 2, 2024
LL. Perfectly legitimate points to make, but unfortunately Milliband and his ilk are zealots. Their response to such points is to attack the unbeliever who made them as a “denier”; no debate is possible, they are the truth and the light. Anyone opposing them is evil.
Also, their wealth and their power (and that of their mates) depends on them defending the net zero faith. All the more reason to destroy the unbelievers with laws against heresy (I.e. “misinformation”) and the rest.
October 2, 2024
The misinformation is coming from Government, Miliband, the BBC, MSM and much of social media too.
October 2, 2024
@ Lifelogic
I totally agree with you too’
October 2, 2024
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said owners of 154,000 Jeep plug-in hybrid electric SUVs should park outside and away from buildings or other vehicles until they get recall repairs completed. Might this repair be a new safer battery I wonder?
Are EVs and Hybrids still allowed on car ferries and in Channel Tunnel Trains? Caught an advert for a hybrid claiming 600mile + range. So what? It is essentially just a petrol car with a small battery and motor and can this be refilled in a few minutes anyway. So Range is largely irrelevant and not the issue that is is with EVs.
Until we get lighter batteries, cheaper batteries, longer life batteries, safer batteries, quicker charging batteries, larger capacity per KG and Litre batteries I will be keeping my old petrol and diesel cars. R&D then when and if we get these roll it out not before using bribes and tax breaks. That way you just get loads of rip off duff technology littering the place to dispose of and replace.
October 2, 2024
and when can an EV be push/pulled to start it, when the batteries are almost dead?
October 2, 2024
Lifelogic
Just returned from the South of France in our Diesel SUV, 950 miles @ 53MPG, (four people on board and fully loaded)
One fill up to start, another on the way, which took 3 minutes, did not see many charging points on the PEAGE (motorways) for EV’s. Our overnight stop did not have any charging points either.
Quality of their roads puts our roads to shame, they are resurfacing roads which are in a better condition and smother than our new ones !
October 2, 2024
Miliband, AND the Tories, get no pushback on mad Net Zero because there is nobody of political clout challenging the ‘accepted science’. This is the cause that needs a champion and real effort to save our economy.
October 2, 2024
When you ponder Ed Miliband, don’t think in terms of reason and logic. Think more in terms of ideology, bigotry and zealotry and you’re closer to the mark. You can’t reason with a man whose mind is closed to reason, you just have to hope one day he will snap out of his paranoia.
October 2, 2024
Unlikely …. however, you can hope that he has an early appointment with his Maker.
October 2, 2024
Perhaps he would be willing to swap homes with an elderly widow living in an old house with hopeless insulation, no central heating, a single bar element used sparingly, a small gas hob, a fridge thats on the blink, a few old blankets, draughts under doors and use kettles to get hot water for personal hygiene?
That might speed up his demise.
October 2, 2024
There’s nothing to be gained by engaging ideologues in rational debate, that way you simply endorse their validity. The aim is therefore to demonise them and portray them as an existential threat to the nation and its security. Unfortunately for the brain-dead Tories they also believe in this deceitful, totalittarian crap so they have no defence nor any platform to launch attacks on Miliband
We’re in a war of narrative and ideology, the truth and reality are now meaningless until the faeces hits the fans but by then the damage has been done.
The Tories have a platform to reject and condemn Net Zero, THEY DON’T so they can disappear up their own selfish, deceitful backside
October 2, 2024
ā Thereās nothing to be gained by engaging ideologues in rational debate, that way you simply endorse their validityā
They are going to do it anyway. Labour or Conservative – only the time frame may vary.
Perhaps it is more an instance of putting objections on record than āengagingā.
October 2, 2024
Agree – I’m not interested in Labour’s net-zero policy, I’m more interested in the Tory’s net-zero policy
October 2, 2024
Rasputin just stares with evangelical conviction. This creature of communist origins will see an end to Labour as surely as did Corbyn. As if on cue, the Middle East explodes in predictable warfare, so jeopodising our supply of fossil fuels and ensuring we pay yet more for them. The question is, how long will it take Starmer to waken to the realities of employing a zealot to manage our energy requirements.
October 2, 2024
I believe Starmer is just as big a zealot so do not hold your breath Agrcola!
October 2, 2024
What they are proposing (if we switch to heat-pumps as they wish us to) is to waste our hugely efficient and very valuable gas grid that delivers about three times as much energy as our electricity grid and to increase the capacity of our electricity grid (it will cost about Ā£100 billion and this extra capacity will be wasted for 70% of the year). About x10 will ne needed for the winter peak demand if we all switch to heat pumps.
Gary Smith get it. Though even he accepts the bogus climate emergency āscienceā perhaps only for political reasons?
āBritain faces āhuge social and economic scarsā under net zero, warns top union boss
Interview: GMB general secretary on why Milibandās green push risks ādecimatingā Britainās manufacturing industriesā
All this for a totally pointless, indeed totally counterproductive, war on the gas of life CO2. Net beneficial, plant, tree and crop food.
October 2, 2024
But then hugely counterproductive actions are a Starmer Government speciality:-
Abolition of Non Dom status, VAT on school fees, the war on landlords and small businesses, vast tax increases, ever more state sector & nationalisation, encouraging ever more low skilled and illegal immigration, all the woke lunacy, releasing violent criminals on to the streets, two tier policing and justice, road blocking, market rigging (education, BBC, housing, energy, carsā¦) net zeroā¦ they are appalling vandals just like Sunakās Tories but even harder and more deranged still.
October 2, 2024
SJR, why would you want to put intelligent questions to a blinkered idiot?
October 2, 2024
Laughable but not really. Hope Ratcliffe is in warm store because we shall surely need it.
Same old story as well – we will inevitably end up importing electricity through interconnectors that has been produced possibly from coal fired stations in Europe. UK’s speciality – moving our carbon on to someone else.
Cold October forecast – could be an early test.
October 2, 2024
The dilemma for Big Pharma we want them to give us cures but they benefit more from giving us or inventing long term conditions and encouraging lifestyles that need endless drugs. It help them too if organisations like MHRA who regulated covid āVaccinesā are funded by and compromised by big Pharma funding and other connections.
See Dr John Campbellās video and the film āFirst do no Pharmā
October 2, 2024
The Forlorn Hope.
“A forlorn hope is a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the vanguard in a military operation, such as a suicidal assault through the breach of a defended position, or the first men to climb a scaling ladder against a defended fortification, or a rearguard, to be expended to save a retreating army, where the risk of casualties is high. Such men were volunteers motivated by the promise of reward or promotion, or men under punishment offered pardon for their offences, if they survived.”
This nation has been chosen by the Globalists to be The Forlorn Hope for deconstruction by the imposition of Net Zero, with the connivance of the British Establishment. They are setting us up for economic “suicide.”
The only question we need to ask Miliband is “have you been motivated by the promise of reward or promotion, or offered pardon for your offences?”
October 2, 2024
Just listening to the news about the invasion of Israel last night…. how long before our enemies realise that we have no means of producing electricity or steel? We’re a sitting duck!
October 2, 2024
We are being invaded, daily, have you not noticed?
October 2, 2024
Having Ed Milliband as energy secretary is possibly the most dangerous thing to have happened to the UK since the end of World War II.
Utterly clueless about economic and engineering reality, his ecoloon zealotry is dooming the UK to sky high electricity prices and eventual rolling blackouts. That means economic decline and misery for almost everyone. Freebie-addicted Starmer will eventually have to fire him for incompetence – it should be sooner, rather than later.
October 2, 2024
+1
October 2, 2024
Does he really believe that airport expansion can deliver growth without setting back NZ?
(Even a certain newspaper is a bit iffy on that one!)
All those holiday makers skipping up the aeroplane steps in their bare feet and hand beaten nettle flax coats. What I wonder will they use to pay for their trip?
Or as that about-to-be-made-redundant-by-robots docker said pointing to hundreds of containers full of imported goods āWho will have the money to buy that stuff? Who will pay?ā
But noā¦we must remain positive.
Look to the Net Zero airports! Therein lies the answer to global boiling!
October 2, 2024
Ballderdash , there is NO Global problem! Total lies and loons who believe the con!
October 2, 2024
Yes.
I was being āsarcasticā/āironicā
And trying to point out the lunacy of the whole thing.
Not to mention the hypocrisy.
I meanā¦do you think that airport expansion ( Labourās plan for growth) will help them achieve their unachievable ( weād ALL be dead) Net Zero? Or maybe you believe that a NZ airport is perfectly possible?
October 2, 2024
He needs also to be asked whether he knows what CO2 is, and how does it contribute to global warming. Most MPs seem not to know.
October 2, 2024
You may ask questions of Milliband, Sir JR. But don’t expect any answers …….
October 2, 2024
Sir John, you surely don’t expect that an idiot like Miliband could even think rationally. He simply doesn’t care about energy security or its cost, only that he can virtue-signal to the green lobby.
What I found so frightening is that Starmer and Reeves are content for him to play mudpies in the energy garden. Indeed, most of our national politicians pay lip service to Net Zero, all too afraid to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.
October 2, 2024
DANIEL FINKELSTEIN in the Times.
Tory hopefuls need to show Cameronās daring
As in 2005, the candidate who wants to surprise and excite the conference on Wednesday will be brave enough to tell the truth.
What is this silly Lord on about? Cast iron Cameron told a pack of lies on the Lisbon treaty referendum, on being low tax at heart, on climate alarmism, in being a Euro Sceptic, on to the tens of thousandsā¦ lies lies and more lies. Is Jenrick a Cameron Mk II?
Cameron even moronically made Baroness Warsi party Chairman with his evil diversity drive. That went well did it not!
October 2, 2024
and he lied to the people of Witney, his constituency seat, when saying he would serve them. On being rejected by the Referendum, he promptly threw toys out of the pram and resigned the seat.
October 2, 2024
He wants us to freeze.
October 2, 2024
Who is the physics Nobel laureate who recently described anthropogenic climate change as a scam?
Where is the evidence that CO2 levels during an ice age were 10 times higher than now?
How long before querying climate change becomes illegal
October 2, 2024
Dr John Clauser won the Noble Prize for Physics in 2022.
Per Wikipedia: āThere is evidence for high CO2 concentrations of over 6,000 ppm between 600 and 400 million years ago, and of over 3,000 ppm between 200 and 150 million years ago. Indeed, higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic Eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 million years ago. The spread of land plants is thought to have reduced CO2 concentrations during the late Devonian, and plant activities as both sources and sinks of CO2 have since been important in providing stabilizing feedbacks.ā I have not included scientific references.
October 2, 2024
If only you, Sir John, had attended the Earth Fair at All Saints Church in Wokingham last Saturday you would have been re-assured over energy supplies by an earnest lady on a stand whose name escapes me. She informed me that, since we are surrounded by sea, there is no limit to the number of wind turbines that we can install. For those rare occasions when there is no wind we can “switch on” nuclear power, the same power source that the environmental movement campaigned to destroy in the 1970’s. I restrained my response as I was in a church (!) but she was certainly a believer in something.
October 2, 2024
Lots of wind farms will cause man made āclimate changeā as they clearly will reduce wind speeds, change precipitation levelsā¦kill loads of bats, birds, raptors, butterflies, insects, mothsā¦ too.
October 2, 2024
Cutting our base load capacity just before Winter starts ?
The man seems to lack any sort of common sense.
With the world becoming a more dangerous place, he wants us to rely upon interconnections, using generated power and fuel from abroad.
Hows our own (designed and built by others) nuclear policy going ?
More hot air and windmill promises from a man with no clue.
October 2, 2024
Perhaps he has his brother on side to arrange for rescues in the deep midwinter, however, his role might mean ignoring the UK. David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.
October 2, 2024
I remember International Rescue – Thunderbirds are go.
October 4, 2024
There’s no Brains in this version,though!
October 2, 2024
Miliband’s policies, from the Climate Change Act and beyond, are deliberate acts of vandalism: industrial vandalism, economic vandalism and social vandalism. He relishes his crusade. He is on course to achieve his objective of crippling the UK. Even more remarkable he has succeeded in brainwashing the majority of MPs in successive parliament’s to his way of thinking. That is why the reign of the traditional dominant parties needs to be ended and replaced by those who understand the realities and needs of a modern economy.
October 2, 2024
I believe he is on course for an early death!
October 2, 2024
And environmental vandalism.
October 2, 2024
We obviously can’t influence China and India with our elimination of coal but it seems we can’t even influence Germany and Poland who have a high percentage of coal generation, 60% in the case of Poland. We also have high renewables generation (wind, solar) but the highest business electricity prices in the world (3 to 4 times higher than in USA) – but aren’t renewables meant to be cheaper ?
However, the main and most serious question for Miliband is why does he seem opposed to nuclear power ? Why is he apparently not going to approve new plants in Wales ? Why has the earliest possible date for SMR reactors to be on stream been pushed back to 2039 ? Why is the UK choosing to invest in under-developed SMR technology development rather than in the market-ready alternative that already exists ? My suspicion is that Milliband is of an age where he and those on the left regard nuclear energy as “a bad thing” so he somehow wants us to do without that too.
October 2, 2024
Poland has much better Growth than the UK might cheap reliable energy help?
October 2, 2024
Most of the Polish workers left us and went home to create growth!
October 2, 2024
Ed doesn’t have to answer questions about his disastrous policies of pushing renewable energy and delaying nuclear while closing fossil fuel production and use.
The EU Commission has passed a law making ESG compulsory for anyone doing more than a small amount business in Europe. In addition they have to ensure that subcontractors also comply. The E requires acceptance of Climate Emergency doctrine, as called Global boiling by the UN Chief Idiot, and only investment is allowed in stuff approved by the EU Commission. Firms that disobey will be fined 5% of turnover. Even the USA has agreed to comply. They hurried it through in case Trump was elected.
The S is for social and means that everyone must finish up equally poor and cold. DIE or some other combination of the letters applies. The G is for governance and is to check that everyone in control is as daft as Ed. Intelligence and merit are to be erased.
October 2, 2024
We should all also be clear and ask many questions about where the notion of over population is leading us.
Are lives being forfeited to save the planet for example.
Is Save the Planet the new Hippocratic oath?
Are small boats being used to give us totally the wrong impression? To stampede us into compliance with the idea of not enough medical treatment to go round?
October 2, 2024
Seriously, home generator set anybody?…
October 2, 2024
Thing isā¦donāt they run off petrol or diesel?
Like all the planes in the planned, countryside-swallowing mega airports.
Are you even allowed to fill a can at the pumps anymore?
If we all get generatorsā¦where will all the necessary refined oil come from?
Just like our new electric worldā¦not enough to go round.
October 2, 2024
You can get natural gas driven ones – rather less tax on natural gas.
October 2, 2024
Got one already, and a changeover switch.
October 2, 2024
In California where their green energy policies have lead to blackouts and brownouts it is fairly common for those who can install them to have standby diesel generators.
October 2, 2024
G
Not yet, but perhaps an option to consider for possible emergency use during power cuts.
Only real problem is you need a decent sized unit for a sensible base load demand (lighting, freezer, fridge, TV, kettle, alarm system, etc) you even need electric power to operate the gas boiler, water pump and Gas hobs and Gas Fires (given many have electric safety Cut off switches fitted)
Where best to put the generator so that it will not annoy the neighbours (Noise, Fumes)
Not that expensive to purchase if you search around.
October 2, 2024
Yes.
I know all that.
My cousins in SA kept me well informed re outages and generators at least a decade ago.
But their main problem was sourcing fuel for them.
Maybe all your generators are solar then?
Where do you all think you will get fuel fromā¦
You knowā¦petrolā¦oilā¦all the things they are doing away with.
October 3, 2024
I’ve considered but rejected it for various reasons. Instead, I’ve bought bio-ethanol fires and have a year’s supply of fuel in the garage; a calor gas fire and two full bottles; a camping stove and gas canister; candles and matches.
October 3, 2024
where would I get fuel from ?
Same place as I would do now, a garage, although there will probably be fewer of them, and it will be probably taxed to hell and back.
Where will classic cars get their fuel, where will non electric lorries get their fuel, etc etc.
Diesel and petrol will still be around way after 2035 unless hybrid cars are going to be banned completely from our roads.
I cannot worry about and plan more than 10 years forward, because the goalposts may change yet again, just as they do for almost everything else.
What do you suggest ?
October 2, 2024
If the UK is decarbonising* how much is our trade off using carbon accounting? Has this shut down of a coal fired power station increased that trade off or decreased it?
* I dispute the need to decarbonise while fully supporting efforts to reduce pollution.
October 2, 2024
Miliband could not have achieved as much as he’s achieved, in so short a time, without the support from the civil service & the climate change committee, and the help from a great many tory parliamentary members ….would the past tory government have done anything differently
October 2, 2024
What has he achieved?
October 2, 2024
no replies yet?
October 2, 2024
The demand for the publication of the full cost of low skilled mass migration is finally coming to fruition.
The numbers are going to shock the nation. It will make the 2007 banking crash look tiny.
But worse still it will be impossible to fix.
October 2, 2024
Even IF they release this information, it won’t cover the full cost.
How can they possibly calculate the future, and therefore unknown costs, of the police, justice, prison and probation service? Or the future costs to the NHS of importing people and their extended families when they don’t know what medical needs they currently have, or will have in the future? The same applies to future welfare and pension costs …. even IF they have a job when they arrive, there is a very strong chance that their job will disappear in the future and they will claim the full panoply of welfare support.
At best they can estimate …. and we know how trustworthy their estimates are from the Brexit referendum claim that “only” 3 million immigrants had come from the EU when it turned out to be 6 million.
October 3, 2024
Here’s another cost: we are paying to build a nice comfortable prison in Albania, to accommodate 200 Albanian murderers and criminals the Government allowed to walk into our country, or ferried them in. It includes money to provide EV vehicles for the Albanian prison service!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/02/britain-helps-launch-state-of-the-art-prison-in-albania/
Ā£4 million a year in order to send Albania’s most common export – dangerous criminals – back to their own country.
You really couldn’t invent the lunacy of the British Establishment.
October 2, 2024
You need to be very detatched indeed to happily accept that our energy costs 75% more than it does in the USA when our potential sources of it are in geographical and geological terms much the same. We have abundant gas, oil, and coal beneath our feet and seas. We even have enormous potential sources around the Falkland Islands. Our costs are even 30% greater than those of France.
We are suffering a level of political insanity, driven by Nett Zero, and rest assured, it has only just begun. Not only will we freeze to death in some cases, but we will suffer de-industrialisation on an ever increasing scale. Much of the industry is strategic to our survival in an increasingly hostile world. Steel, chemicals, refining , and fertilizer come to immediate mind. I conclude that there are forces afoot determined to take us to a place that is against the longterm interests of the UK. As for the individual, it is a road to national dependency and vulnerability.
Only a socialist government using taxation and borrowing would invest in such an expensive commercial and industrial scenario. Private capital from home or overseas will not. The sooner they go the better.
October 2, 2024
The Globalists want us entirely dependent on the State ….. the State they control ….. and therefore controlled, docile and compliant (like the Chinese are).
October 2, 2024
you forgot the word ‘forcibly’ between the words ‘and compliant’.
October 2, 2024
It’s doubtful that the details scrawled on the back of a fag packet went into much detail, but one thing is certain – there will be no answer to the questions posed.
Taking away energy creation without replacing it with a viable and equal solution is akin to treachery against the UK people. It goes far beyond incompetence. Labour know for sure that there will be a shortage of power – how is that not preordained!
So not only will energy become more expensive due to its lack within the UK, there is no way that we can live, or manufacturer goods and commodities as we do now.
How much of the dwindling energy supply will be reserved to EVs? For Industry?
No doubt HMG will not be rationed – that leaves the rest of us to wither in the cold and die off.
October 2, 2024
The Tories opened the door to all of this madness. Boris/Carrie. That power station wasn’t closed on decisions made 12 weeks ago.
October 2, 2024
+1
It was planned under Johnson. Sunak delayed it by a year. Miliband is simply delivering the NaCP’s plan.
October 2, 2024
OH DEAR!
I did wonder about that article.
Apparently there hasnāt actually been any disaster in Suffolk.
Just imagination.
What a thing to do!!
What a brilliant way of undermining any anti green stuff argument.
I feel really āhadā.
October 2, 2024
What sort of Lunatics destroy proven cost effect methods of keeping the UK well-oiled, in motion and profitable before they have even found viable resilient alternatives.
Then add in not one single of those nations we have to compete with for our earnings, our tomorrow, is even contemplating the destruction of a whole people. In practice more coal fired power station are being opened by them regularly
A socialist creed to reset a nation, a people into your personal ideological mindset, you have to destroy the very fabric that supports them āThe Great Resetā. All with thanks to those that let ego get in the way of progress, Blair, Brown, May, Johnson, Sunak then Starmer and his loyal side-kick Miliband
October 2, 2024
The faux Conservative Party leadership contenders if the Media is to believe are proving themselves to be the same old continuity Socialists. They are all ducking the thing that makes a Conservative, the control of expenditure, the reduction of the State, the freeing of the people to excel to the best of their abilities. All we get is petty sniping on marginal things, no economy, no earnings, no addressing the stupid Faux Conservative NetZero that seeks to punish first think about the consequences another day. These guys would have trouble getting out of a paper bag
October 2, 2024
I want to know what the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, The Rt Hon Claire Coutinho, has to said …..steel plants closing, coal fired power stations closing, windfarms across the land etc etc
October 3, 2024
@glen cullen – she would say nothing UK NetZero is a continuation of Mrs May’s ill thought out Faux Conservative Laws and Policy – something the rest of our competitive World doesn’t have to contend with
October 2, 2024
Sir John, heās just another minister in the government of hypocrisy. How does he square the removal of guaranteed power supply with the increasing rush to EVs, and a requirement to build endless miles of pylons and cables. No domestic steel production equals more imports. We will be forever more in the power of other countries to supply our basic needs. So much for their plan for GROWTH.
October 2, 2024
I wonder if Germany will follow the UKs example?
October 2, 2024
Hi sir John
I’m not worried about losing my
heating allowance
as we won’t have have any power supply to spend it on.
October 2, 2024
look on the bright side – lower bills.
October 2, 2024
Although Mr. Miliband is gleeful to see the closure of our last coal-fired power plant he is of course simply following the policy decision already set by the previous Conservative administration.
Not that our energy policy is decided by Parliament anyway following PM Mayās decision to set Net Zero by 2050 into law (without a vote or costing). So it is now decided by taxpayer funded climate activists such as ClientEarth and High Court judges. . Certainly no longer by engineersā¦.
October 2, 2024
There are many additional questions for Mr. Miliband and comrades :
If renewables are the cheapest generators of electricity why are subsidies and CfD contracts still required?
What is the storage plan for when the wind doesnāt blow and the sun doesnāt shine?
Where are the costings for Net Zero?
Who will be making the decision on the selected Net Zero Pathway? Since these Pathways require ācustomer engagementā and ābehaviour changesā will the public have any say via a referendum?
Why is nuclear delayed/ignored (only 5% in the NGESO Pathways) despite it being the only low CO2 emitting generation which is affordable and reliable?
How can it be safe to place all our energy eggs into one electricity basket when the grid can be hacked or suffer a catastrophic Carrington event? Is it safe to de-industrialise and buy all our energy infrastructure from a country our security services describe as āhostileā? How will our depleted armed services protect all the wind turbines, solar panels and undersea cabling spread out over half the North Sea?
October 2, 2024
They know there is no climate crisis. The UN Sec Gen may say we are in an era of āglobal boilingā but the UNās own IPCC WG1 Table 12.12 (āThe Scienceā) can find no signals for climate change (precipitation, droughts, storms) other than some mild warming leading to the loss of some ice and snow. Recent research published in the Science journal (science.org) shows that the planet is in a very cold period compared to the last 485m years of temperature history. We also know that we have had warmer periods since the most recent ice age ended. In Roman times vines were grown up by Hadrianās Wall and Icelandic Norsemen colonised Greenland for several hundred years prior to the Little Ice Age which required temperatures to be 5 degrees C higher than today.
According to UAH satellite data the planet is warming at just 0.14 degrees C per decade. The IPCC WG1 (āThe Scienceā) states on P95 that doubling CO2 (which would take 170 years at the current rate of increase) would increase the planetās temperature by a mere 1.2 degrees C (0.7 degrees C according to Professors Happer & Wijngaarden).
It is also clear that CO2 does not determine the temperature. There is no correlation between temperature and CO2 over the last 500m years when both have been at levels much higher than today and wildly fluctuating. The Antarctic Vostok ice core data shows CO2 following temperature for the last 450,000 years when both have been exceptionally low. There is no anthropogenic CO2 emissions explanation for the warming which brought us out of the most recent ice age just 11,000 years ago.
And BTW, any respectable engineer will tell you that the transition to expensive, chaotically intermittent renewables from hydrocarbon fuels is impossible without a massive drop in standard of living and population. Only the elites will survive. It is interesting to note that the only low CO2 emitting energy which is both affordable and reliable, nuclear, is entirely ignored by the climate activists. As is the CO2 emissions from China, India, Indonesia, Russiaā¦.
October 2, 2024
+1
Inconvenient truths for the “Green” Zealots.
October 2, 2024
I can now see, how he will reduce our power bills by Ā£300. It will be because of the reduced power usage during the black outs.
October 2, 2024
Another question for Mr Miliband. “When are you going to visit your psychiatrist”? Your net-zero crusade is crazy.
The ideals are way OTT because the UK is small fry when it comes to global emissions. Our efforts will not even dent the global totals, which are dominated by China, India, and the USA.
So the problem is that this man is on a deluded ego trip. He believes he will be the ‘toast of the world’ when (if ever) this country achieves “net zero”.
In reality, they think he is a LOL, ‘super genius’, for buying THEIR equipment for his plan for renewables to cover the country. And importing foreign energy at higher costs when our “new” systems fail. Which they will!
And I thought all politicians must put their country before any personal ambitions. And there lies the problem with the UK today.
Those who have governed during this century have become self-centred and pressed on with their own personal vanity projects rather than accelerating growth and lately, restoring the country after the detrimental effects of the mismanagement of the COVID-19 lockdowns, et al.
The reasons why any Party is elected to govern OUR country.
October 2, 2024
Quite so, Sir John – except I doubt you will get a sensible reply, if one at all.
October 2, 2024
Could anyone point me in the direction of a simple spreadsheet indicating the net-zero, economic and social views etc; by comparison of each of the leadership candidates
Iām feed up of hearing platitudes, āIāll do whatās needed for the countryā etc ā¦.I want to know the ānumberā of acceptable legal immigrants, pro or con EVās, pro or con heat-pumps and tax level ?
October 2, 2024
Don’t Panic
Mr Milliband is, as we speak, working tirelessly on:
1 Getting sunbeams out of cucumbers.
2. Manufacturing fairy dust
3. Breeding unicorns to run in giant hamster wheels
4. Wishing in to existence a perpetual motion machine
October 2, 2024
But he’s doing all that, using taxpayers money
October 2, 2024
There is no need to repeat all the criticisms of Miliband’s extreme Net Zero policies.
It’s down to those of us able to be self-sufficient to future-proof our homes from the inevitable power cuts that will be with us by 2029, thanks to the closure this week of our last coal-fired power station, and the imminent decommissioning of almost all of our current nuclear power stations during the term of this government.
Today I’ve been looking into installing a stand-by diesel generator. This will be a worthwhile investment which will be economical to run and cut in automatically at the start of a power cut.
It will power the whole house, quietly and efficiently, for up to 150 hours on one tank of cheap Red Diesel.
We’ve already fitted a new gas fire in the lounge so we don’t have to run the heating throughout the lower floor of our house in the depth of the winter. We’ve also prepared a space in the garage next to our current five-year-old gas boiler so we are ready to fit a second one to future-proof our heating system while we still can.
October 2, 2024
It has nothing to do with socialism if it hurts the people.
There is not a lot anyone can do whilst people believe a lie.
The disrespectful childishness I am faced with in my work underlines the anger as people try and put myself as Advanced Nurse Practitioner down.I and others do what we do and the best we can,but there are daily slights from other professionals and patients who lie about theANP role and what we actually do.They redirect and attribute it to those professionals who can’t do these things.They live a lie and believe it themselves.
On a bigger scale and putting the similar personalities,who are more interested in worn out old fashioned social divisions for self importance,one can see the problem is the big ‘I’and lust for power by taking it away from others.
Professionally it means nothing to us.We just observe backward attitudes.
October 2, 2024
“He [Mr. Miliband] and like minded Greens are always telling us the U.K. needs to go further and faster in closing down power stations and whole industries that use fossil fuels as then the world will follow us.”
Our primary geopolitical rivals with scientists who understand physics and climate are watching gleefully as Western government take down our energy infrastructure and industrial base without having to fire a single shot.
As Sun Tzu said, āThe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Physicist Richard Lindzen :
āHistorians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the World ā that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.ā
October 2, 2024
Lindzen is spot on. So few MPs did any science beyond 16. Parliament is stuffed with generally scientifically illiterate PPE, law, politics, philosophy, english and history graduates. Though some history graduates JR, Starkeyā¦ are rather brighter than most – like the dire Lord Gummer!
October 2, 2024
Just as they wonder, O.R., how any mass delusion has ever taken hold, yet the answer is usually the same. Fear of an overwhelming threat, desire to be saved, and the ability of unscrupulous influencers to strengthen their power by playing on people’s fear and gullibility. That’s how Project Coronavirus worked, after all.
October 2, 2024
It seems you don’t have to be qualified in any discipline, least of all engineering, to be given a sledgehammer and destroy our rich heritage and infrastructure as would an enemy of the past.
Madness reigns supreme. Rational thought is banned. 1984 has arrived Comrades.
October 2, 2024
Never let facts get in the way of a good story. During 2020 the net methane (a significant greenhouse gas) output on earth increased significantly. It seems that mankind’s activities have a measurable impact on the atmosphere but, surprisingly, not in a simple or fully understandable way. Of course during mankind’s Covid economic standstill the planet increased its temperature (and CO2) at least at the same rate as before.
I well remember the significant effects on the climate back in 2001 after 9-11 when there were far fewer flights. Fewer clouds led to measurably higher daytime temperature and lower nighttime temperatures.
When scientists first came up with the theory of mankind’s increase in atmospheric CO2 they believed it was a good thing. While life has been on earth CO2 levels have been much higher. Surely we should be trying to adapt to the environment not fix it to some level. Humans are just animals but we wear appropriate clothing to account for the weather (usually it is too cold for us). Many more humans die from being too cold rather than too hot.
And most plants grow better with higher levels of CO2. The first lifeforms on Earth lived off methane and CO2 – Oxygen was a byproduct of early lifeforms.
I really do despair of our current generation of politicians.
October 2, 2024
I do not see how due legal process can be applied in any case involving effects of CO2 in our atmosphere when information flow is being shut down .
When a Nobel prize winner is cancelled by the IMF for bravely stating his views then truth , which can only come from open discussion is damaged .
October 2, 2024
āHe [Mr. Miliband] and like minded Greens are always telling us the U.K. needs to go further and faster in closing down power stations and whole industries that use fossil fuels as then the world will follow us.ā
I think a more likely reason is to trash the UKās energy and economy in order to make us the āsick man of Europeā and hence provide a reason for the PM and his comrades in Parliament to re-join the EU.
October 3, 2024
Part of it, certainly; the Globalists want us in the outer tier of the EU when a two-tier structure is created (Eurozone and Associated Nations). They are deliberately making us dependent on EU-based inter-connectors ….. but then so was Johnson.
October 3, 2024
First thing Miliband asked of the National Grid after he made his initial plan known was āHow do we do it?ā He had 13 years in opposition to sort that out and then blurts out his plan after a few days in office. When will he figure out that there might just be a shortage of copper !?