The UK is seeking to join the EU emissions trading scheme. The UK set up a similar one on its own when we left the EU. Our scheme was less penal on power generation and industry than the EU one, giving us a lower carbon price. Our carbon price is now going up to get closer to the EU’s, meaning more costs for the industrial and energy businesses that have to pay it.
The UK also wishes to impose a carbon based tariff or border tax on imports just like the EU. That is a tax on UK consumers and businesses. Often we have to import as so much industry has been closed by high energy prices and taxes. The UK and EU may agree not to levy the new tariff on each other. The UK should make clear to the EU any attempt by them to levy it would be taken by the UK as a violation of our UK/EU tariff free trade Agreement. There is no need to submit to their carbon schemes to see off the threat of a new charge. The carbon border tax or tariff may well be challenged by other countries through the WTO and may be seen as a provocation by the US.
The UK’s insistence on high energy costs and prices is a main cause of the collapse of petrochemicals, steel, ceramics and other energy intensive industry. Far from boosting growth joining the EU carbon schemes would hit our industry further.
May 21, 2025
I’m being picky Sir John, but the UK isn’t seeking to join the EU’s corrupt trading scheme, the Labour Government, which got elected based on one fifth (20%) of the available votes, is seeking to join it.
Two-Tier seems to be on a mission to destroy every industry in the UK and to wreck the budgets of every household in the country. He appears to be deliberately dismantling this country. The only question is who or what is issuing the Orders.
May 21, 2025
First the pensioners, then the farmers, steel, coal aluminium, ceramics and paper production all destroyed by the uniparty . Now we have fishing and ever higher prices of electricity.
Anyone voting for thes chancers should be sectioned
Society has to be made to believe voting for the uniparty is socially unacceptable much like voting for the National Front is. Their wanton destruction of this once great country is beyond parody.
May 21, 2025
Hobson’s Choice.
Select your own candidates not from a political machine complied list.
May 21, 2025
I have a strong Suspicion that our dear leader has been leant on by persons knowing his penchant for Romanian scaffolders. It’s the only way to quantify the damage he is doing to this country.
May 21, 2025
Donna
“Two-Tier seems to be on a mission to destroy every industry in the UK and to wreck the budgets of every household in the country. He appears to be deliberately dismantling this country. ”
It’s looking increasingly like it!
May 21, 2025
@Donna; Nice rant, as usual. Do you actually understand Parliamentary democracy Donna, given some of your other comments I strongly suspect not.
In 2024 Labour got 33.7% of the votes cast, in 2015 Conservatives got 36.9%, by your logic neither Party gained a popular mandate (50.1%) or anything close. Both Parties gained a Parliamentary seats majority though, enough Starmer to enact his EU reset, enough for Cameron to hold a Referendum. If Starmer has no mandate to enact his EU ‘reset’ policy then Cameron had no mandate to hold the 2016 referendum – should the result of that referendum be Annulled and Void?
I won’t mention that Mrs Thatcher, by your logic, never had a mandate either, oops, I just have….
May 21, 2025
You could have made that point Jerry without the sarcastic passive aggressive tone.
Tru imagining you are chatting to friend or colleague.
May 21, 2025
Indeed. But it is surely a question of degree – given the structural lack of democracy inherent in our voting system. Gaining such a huge parliamentary majority on the basis of 9.7 million votes is not very democratic.
Labour got 1 MP for every 25,000 votes.
Reform got 1 MP for every 800,000 votes.
You need 32 times more votes to get 1 Reform MP.
May 21, 2025
@MW; But constituency MPs are not chosen, PR list style, via a proportion of the national vote, they are elected as a proportion of the constituency popular vote. Reform were simply not as popular.
Neither Mr Farage nor Mr Tice should be MPs, according to Donna’s logic, as neither obtained 50.1% of the popular vote in their constituencies, what is more in each constituency more voters *did not* vote for those gentlemen than did! Had PR been the election method, I strongly suspect Reform would have won even less constituency seats than they did, once second and perhaps third preference votes were considered.
May 21, 2025
I think you haven’t understood Donna correctly Jerry
She was talking about the percentages each party totalled in the elected Parliament.
Not the percentages for individual candidates.
May 22, 2025
@Sam; I fully understand Donna’s point. On the other hand you fail to grasp the illogical position of hers and @Mike Wilson’s comments, MPs are not allocated as a proportion of the national popular vote but of the local popular vote.
Even if we had PR, something similar to the German system perhaps, a Party such as Reform might still be no better off, more MPs but with little power as they are kept out of govt due to grand-coalitions of ‘anyone but’ type – as has happened in Germany, to keep the AfD out of govt.
May 21, 2025
@Jerry, another sparkling response worthy of today’s society, you really know how to develope and evolve discussions
May 22, 2025
I do find it amusing that you think it is appropriate to demonstrate your contempt for opinions you don’t like – just like Two-Tier himself, who was forced to apologise to the female Plaid Cymru MP for his obvious contempt and unacceptable rudeness this week.
I understand perfectly well how our stitched-up Parliamentary “democracy” works. That doesn’t mean I approve of it or cannot identify how the Establishment uses it to defy the Will of a majority of the British people and impose policies which are against THEIR interests.
My comment, which I thought was obvious to anyone with GCSE level understanding of English, was regarding Sir John’s identification of the UK seeking to join the emissions scheme, when it is the British Government seeking to do it – a Government which was elected with a tiny minority of votes and which now, according to the polls, has the support of only 22% of the electorate.
May 22, 2025
@Donna; My reply, which I thought anyone *without* a GCSE level understanding of English could understand, was speaking to the following remark made from you; “the Labour Government, which got elected based on one fifth (20%) of the available votes”.
There is no stitched-up Parliamentary democracy, unless you wish to suggest very few governments have had a democratic mandate, and would you be complaining if Mr Farage was in Downing Street on just 33% of the popular vote, I some how doubt it! You just don’t like the democratic will of the people last July; you’re not alone in feeling miffed, Labour voters didn’t like the result of the 1979 election either, Thatcher elected on just 43.9% (her best result). Should all 1979-1992 Trade Union laws be annulled, after all, according to your logic they ‘defied the Will of a majority of the British people and impose policies which were against THEIR interests’, ho-hum, err…
As for the govt of the day loosing support, might I remind you that all govts loose support ‘mid-term’, Thatcher did, Johnson also, does that make Brexit void too?
May 23, 2025
You started with a personal comment Jerry
But you didn’t end with one.
What happened?
May 21, 2025
Good morning.
We are being hit with Stealth Taxes once again. We make making things here more expensive through energy tax, only to make it expensive when importing it. But the clever things is, we don’t see the tariff tax bill on the final receipt. So the expense goes up. There is less money in your pocket. And we have to borrow more to pay for an increasing inflation rate plus, to pay for the foreign currency we need to pay for things we have now made more expensive.
This is going to end somewhere, and it will not end well.
May 21, 2025
It may end well, but with a lot of pain on the way. If we had started the move to renewable energy fifty years ago then we may done it gradually, rather than in a blind panic because of fears that the planet is about to overheat.
May 21, 2025
Denise it’s impossible to run an electrical grid solely on wind and sun
There has to be inertia in the system and reactive power for stability. Renewables provide none of this. We need to get back to base load with nuclear and in the meantime more CCGT which require massive subsidies to run them intermittently.
We have arts graduates destroying our once world class power grid.
May 21, 2025
Am I correct in understanding Renewables without Battery backup [or nuclear, CCGT etc.] is very likely to cause the problems seen in Spain & Portugal recently?
May 21, 2025
Battery back up is neither here nor there when it comes to grid stability. That needs rotating machinery. You could do it with only renewables if you also had a good number of large flywheels distributed around the grid.
May 22, 2025
I increasingly suspect that the power outages in Spain/Portugal were a test to see how “the peasants” would react when nothing they rely on worked.
May 21, 2025
If we’d started fifty years ago by now we might have found out how to make it possible, assuming it is possible, and gradually spent the large sums of money which will inevitably be needed, and without ever giving the French the power to shut off our electricity because we object to them taking our fish.
May 21, 2025
‘the planet is about to overheat’.
A little bit warmer for some places in a few hundred years?
Sounds like the idiots who worry about a big sunami and hike up mountain sides to escape it.
May 21, 2025
Denis
Do you know the difference between AC and DC ? Because if you did then you would realise just how dumb and idea Nut Zero is, even if you started 100 years ago.
May 21, 2025
Yes, I do know the difference between AC and DC, and I also know that they can interconverted.
May 21, 2025
No, it will not end well. The 10 year Gilt yield just popped above 4.7% again, above the US treasury and a long way above Germany and France. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-bond-yield
Reeves must be feeling a bit queasy by now, wondering how much more government borrowing is going to cost and who will lend us the money. All the time 2TK keeps making us LESS competitive.
Reply Reeves said 4.38% on 10 year “ crashed the economy” when that was a peak for a day under Truss. Watch the 30 year, even more worrying. Under 4% with Truss, now at 5.45%
May 21, 2025
We don’t know how much Starmers EU “reset” is going to cost yet but I have to assume it wasn’t ‘costed’ in the last budget round. Rayner is busy pushing for tax rises but Reeves must already planning to go along with her. Labour don’t have the political metal to make the required cuts in expense. This is a very nasty downward spiral.
May 22, 2025
Was this costed – Ports demanding £120 million tax payer backed compensation for what will be, with Starmer’s Reset, obsolete border posts comprising various bits of infrastructure previously set up with funding from the Port Infrastructure Fund which did not in fact cover demand and which had to be funded by the investors who set up the facilities in good faith. They want their money back. More waste.
DT 21/5
May 21, 2025
yep – relying on media ignoring the massive car crash which are Reeves’ policies.
May 21, 2025
Indeed soon they will realise that higher taxes and daft politicies like VAT on school fees, their wars on Non Doms, Motorists, farmers, business, employers, landlords… and the insanity of net zero raise less tax not more and push up inflation as we all told the socialist dopes. They must cut the size of the state sector by about 50% or they will be forced too later!
Now we have to pay for free hotels and quarantine for German Shepherd dogs too it seems.
May 21, 2025
Why are the market makers allowing Theeves and 2TK to get away with their hopeless economic policy when Liz Truss was ousted by Bailey and his mates in the city for having the temerity to go for a real growth strategy ? They can’t all be socialists, can they ?
What are they going to do when faced with a newly elected Reform-led government ?
May 21, 2025
Mark B
It had better end soon or there will be blood on the street.
Another several hundred doctors, dentists and engineers arrived by dhingy this past week. We are blessed.
May 21, 2025
It’s going to end with “you will own nothing.” They are deliberately driving down living standards by making everything more expensive.
Two-Tier crowed about Brits being able to use e-gates when they go on holiday in the EU area, but failed to mention that it is going to cost them a great deal more to go on holiday and many of them won’t be able to afford to because they are deliberately making it more expensive.
May 21, 2025
What have the Greens got to say about all these Brits being encouraged to fly away on holidays….and Starmer building up millions of airmiles to keep away from critics here?
May 21, 2025
+1 Donna. I was looking at flight prices to Europe for my annual dose of the Mediterranean. They are well up on last year, and a major part of the cost is taxes of various kinds. Much more of this and they will prevent me from taking an annual modest holiday to Europe.
May 22, 2025
I’m sorry to say that is the plan: to price people out of flying.
May 21, 2025
@Donna – if are self-reliant, pay your own way and contribute, you are not wanted in this new Starmer World
May 21, 2025
The cost of energy both gas and electricity in the UK is about four times what it should be due to net zero lunacy, intermittent “renewables”, taxes and market rigging. So how can high energy industries complete? This while we sit on hundreds of years of coal, gas, methane and oil but governments refuse to extract it.
The cost of this heat pump, renewables, EVs, vast grid expansion agenda will be end up at well over £100K per household.
So now the Tories are in 4th place Rees-Mogg wants to do a deal with Reform but what is in this for Reform – it would badly tarnish their brand to do a deal with the Tories who dishonestly betrayed the voters for 14 years. Promise A deliver the reverse – not a mistake but a deliberate plan to deceive.
Anyway Kemi the Engineer (without a physics A levels) and her party are still backing the economic and engineering insanity of net-zero and membership of the ECHR. Not heard much from her about the two Lucy Letby and Lucy Connelly, or the appalling EU deal or much else either. She is fairly invisible.
Reply Conservatives pledged to repeal the re set and to reverse damaging net zero policies. People are not determined or dominated by what they studied at university. Many of us went on to learn many new things and gain other qualifications after first degrees.
May 21, 2025
I don’t know where your £100K has come from but with 28.4 million households that would be £2.84 trillion much of which would essentially be wasted, a misdirection of capital. Given that the government expects a gain of only £9 billion from its reset of relations with the EU, which I presume will bind us to its net zero target, I make that a ratio of up to £284 lost for every £1 gained. But we must not assume this is stupidity.
May 21, 2025
Sorry, 316 to 1.
May 21, 2025
To reply all I have seen from Kemi and the Tories on the totally insane net zero policy is a mere touch on the brakes.
Of course what people did at school and university is not everything but someone who chose to do say physics, chemistry, double maths and gets top grades at A levels is rarely the same type of person who chooses say History of Art and Italian in my experience. Many people are simply incapable of seeing that, for example, walking or cycling produces a lot of CO2 government web sites claim they do not. Or that bus occupancy observed by passengers is far higher than that observed by the driver. Or that CO2 is neither dirty nor pollution.
The sensible Nigel Lawson, David Starkey and Lord Lilly all started off with sciences but later switch to PPE or History or similar. The reverse move is rather less common. Lord Rees say he did maths because he was useless at Languages I was similarly bad at languages. Many different types of intelligence.
See the excellent EV mandates V Freedom Hillsdale College Video by Physicist Mark P Mills
May 21, 2025
@Reply – not something I think you want to hear – so why didn’t they when they with their collective responsibility, having the power and the opportunity? It was in their gift to serve the Nation and its People and not only did they refuse they consolidated a direction that more than 90% of the World is not engaged in
May 21, 2025
Labour must by now have realised that they are electorally dead. They seem intent on leaving behind a political minefield to maximise the difficulty for any incoming government. They govern for themselves, not the UK.
May 21, 2025
I was thinking this yesterday AG. It is almost a black earth policy. To make changes that are either impossible or very hard to undo and then leave the opposition the unenviable task of trying to unravel it all. Blair did significant damage to the UK in so many ways but it was done subtly and the true outcomes were not immediately obvious. Starmer doesn’t seem to care about ‘subtle’. Perhaps he thinks all this will be forgotten in four years time or perhaps he knows there will be no second term, so he has nothing to lose by taking the dogma chainsaw to everything.
May 21, 2025
Sad to see the Conservative Party has now been replaced. Labour too is about to vanish.
All that history blown away by becoming a member of the woke uniparty. Which is now going to vanish. The WEF young leader brainwashing is mainly to blame.
I can see the realignment is now Reform which is culturally conservative but economically central vs the liberals which are culturally left wing and also economically neutral (albeit divided between left and right).
Labour is now ripe to be taken over by sectarian immigrant politics in the urban areas.
The Conservative Party will keep
a few die hards who stay for the clubs and social scene.
This was all completely predictable even 15 years ago.
May 21, 2025
Reform: culturally conservative; economically central; nationalistic/patriotic
“Liberals” (there’s nothing genuinely liberal about them) : culturally left wing; economically left wing: international/globalists
May 21, 2025
Perhaps predictable – but I did not expect the serial treachery and electoral deception of the last 14 years this particularly of Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak. Mad net zero socialism, open door immigration, rip off energy, a vast increase in taxes, government and debt and the net harm vaccines and net harm lockdowns… then they lie to use that the vaccines were unequivocally safe. Still even now being pushed in to older people!
May 21, 2025
Good Lord. Really? You have been living in a fool’s paradise.
May 21, 2025
Two months ago I posted a comment about the estimated costs of achieving net zero:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/03/23/the-labour-government-misled-us-in-the-original-eu-referendum/#comment-1505501
“Well, if achieving net zero emissions by 2050 really will cost around a trillion pounds over the next 25 years:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/20/net-zero-far-more-expensive-than-public-thinks-lord/
then that could mean around £40 billion a year now, which would be roughly equivalent to 1.6% of GDP.”
And that could be a recurring loss of economic growth, on average 1.6% a year lower than the pre-2008 trend growth rate, year after year for the next 25 years, each year over five times the projected one-off gain of 0.3% of GDP over 15 years from Starmer’s EU reset.
“OK, so it is just coincidence that the previous trend growth rate was exactly 1.6% higher than the present trend growth rate … but the numbers are in the right ballpark to explain why Rachel Reeves, and all future Chancellors, will struggle.”, and that will not be solved by improving our goods trade with the EU.
May 21, 2025
@Denis Cooper – no UK Government or Parliament has thought it through. Simple one, to have that sort of money to throw at a project is all well and good if you have a system and structure in place to earn it. What has the UK Government and Parliament done since it dreamt up this ideology? They simply off shored the country’s earning capability, malicious banned all attempts to create money, then taxed the living daylights out of the Nation, then to top it all they now cause the people and the taxpayer to pay twice to just exist.
They also never asked why none of the UK’s competing nations took to punishment as a way to move in a different direction
May 21, 2025
Are not the EU member states some of those competing nations?
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/european-climate-law_en
“The European Climate Law writes into law the goal set out in the European Green Deal for Europe’s economy and society to become climate-neutral by 2050. The law also sets the intermediate target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
Climate neutrality by 2050 means achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions for EU countries as a whole, mainly by cutting emissions, investing in green technologies and protecting the natural environment.
The law aims to ensure that all EU policies contribute to this goal and that all sectors of the economy and society play their part.”
May 21, 2025
Indeed
May 21, 2025
He’s like a puppy welcoming the EU home with his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out, not caring about what he knocks over and breaks in the home.
Unfortunately he has moved on from just chewing our slippers and is now soiling where he lives
May 21, 2025
A good analogy, N S!
May 21, 2025
Yes Trump has noticed. Starmer conspicuously left out of the ‘calls to EU leaders’.
He might have to resign. But there is no adequate replacement.
May 21, 2025
OT but I was surprised to see the government put out a message saying due to their EU deal we’d be able to get on holiday sooner rather than having to queue at EU airports. I wonder what they will say in Autumn when we not only have to buy an EU visa-waiver but also join a massive queue to get our fingerprints and other biometric data taken. Quicker passage through SOME EU airports is at least 18 months away.
May 21, 2025
I travel to Spain several times each year, and I’ve never had to queue for more than a few minutes. I’m more concerned that people won’t be able to afford a holiday if their standard of living keeps dropping.
May 21, 2025
I see inflation is up once more.
How much of this was caused by the 15% increase in Universal credit received by claimants in April giving them extra spending power.
May 21, 2025
How else can the Government and this Parliament destroy what is left of UK Industry and commerce. We are heading for the Marxist/Socialist WEF ‘Great Reset’ as inferred by 2TK when issuing plaudits for WEF before UK as the way to rule
May 21, 2025
No we are not. We are about to crash into that wreck and add to the disaster. But it’s over. Globalists 0 Putin 1
May 21, 2025
Thank goodness for Brexit though or else we would not have the freedom to join the Evil Empire’s suicide pact. Wrecker Reeves and Wrecker Miliband must be ever so pleased.
May 21, 2025
Somewhat off topic, our economic malaise will not be cured by putting everybody in the whole country back under swathes of EU laws so that specialist cheeses can be more easily moved from one part to another:
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/northern-ireland/deli-owners-hope-new-uk-eu-trade-deal-will-help-ease-flow-of-specialist-cheeses-from-gb-into-ni/a214996958.html
“Deli owners hope new UK-EU trade deal will help ease flow of specialist cheeses from GB into NI”
I increasingly feel that it is a mistake to think that our politicians are too stupid to understand this.
May 21, 2025
I quote: ‘The UK is seeking to join the EU emissions trading scheme. ‘. No, it’s not the UK that is seeking to do this, it’s Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband and their fellow frantically-hysterical eco-zealots. I am part of the UK and I am not ‘seeking to join the emissions trading scheme’. This is a scheme that has been set up to extract money from taxpayers (you know, those hardworking people that Starmer pretends he supports), and to damage our nation in every way possible.
Both Labour and Conservative (and coalition) governments have been hell-bent on taking this country down the ludicrous ‘net zero’ route with absolutely no proof of any necessity and without even any debate let alone consultation with the people who pay their vast wages and expenses. It’s about time it stopped.
May 21, 2025
The latest Starmer ‘del’ is a clear indication of where Labour are taking the country.
They have decided the 20.4% of the electorate or just 34% of the votes cast at the last election is a greater authority than the 52% of the voters that demanded the UK leave the EU in 2016.
Starmer is locking the UK into the controls of the EU by desire and by political design, even though the majority of the people are against that direction of integration with the EU and its institutions.
Starmer was always in favour of remaining locked into the EU and has made every effort to undo the independence voting to leave gave us.
Fish, energy, border control and law are even defence policy are all now back under the malign influence of the EU? Sadly there is nothing this side of an election we can do about it without resorting to an uprising, which I do not recommend, in case the right think police department is monitoring this blog site .
We will have four more years of national destruction, like this reset deal with the EU, if we manage to sustain national status for that long.
The wealth is leaving.
May 21, 2025
Net Zero, carbon trading, carbon capture and all its works is so bonkers, but so entrenched in the thinking of those who govern us, that I dread common sense ever re-entering our politics again, because these deluded politicians have too much to lose.
May 21, 2025
+1. But in the end the laws of physic will win out. But how much money will be wasted by Ed Miliband’s and T May’s moronic agenda. If he is not removed for 4 years and he sticks to his lunacy it might come to about £2 trillion.
May 21, 2025
Undrrneath the higher energy prices and poor performance of the UK economy is the effect of our legally enforced Net Zero target.
Imports don’t get included in UK’s CO2 total whereas home produced steel, aluminium, ceramics, brick making, pottery, vehicle manufacturing, energy products like gas, oil, LNG and LPG all add to our CO2 total.
By getting all our energy intensive stuff made and imported by other nationd we shall soon be able to listen to proud excited politicians telling us that we have achieved our UK Net Zero target.
Not that it will have any effect on global average temperatures as world CO2 will continue to rise as a result.
May 21, 2025
@Martin in Bristol, – Johnson had the opportunity to repeal Mrs May’s Laws, so did Sunak and so does Starmer. The fact that none of them saw that offshoring, paying with lost jobs, lost abilities, lost tax contributions, then buying the same goods as before by sending UK money out of the Country was anything but a destruction of everyone’s future. That was/is just malicious destruction.
Then they never contemplated why is it none of the UK’s competing Nations not banning their future.
May 21, 2025
Ian B
I very much agree.
That’s the problem with following irrational random targets.
The decisions subsequently made are all targeted to achieving that target not making decisions which make voters better off.
May 22, 2025
They are implementing UN Agenda 21 and UN Agenda 2030.
They know full well what the consequences will be. They support them.
May 21, 2025
More insanity from our treacherous leader – there is no need for us to be aligned with the EU emissions scheme other than to bind us ever closer to the EU.
This yet one more nail in our coffin.
May 21, 2025
The last?
May 21, 2025
On May 20, member states of the WHO have approved the Pandemic Agreement
Another nail in our coffin – Thanks Starmer!
May 21, 2025
who’s WHO? China financed and don’t you forget it.
May 21, 2025
True
May 21, 2025
Words fail me. The previous Conservative Government was bad, but this Labour one is far worse.
May 21, 2025
ID cards by the back door.
By making such moves HMG ties us to smart phones and their dreaded electronic ID system.
Thanks Starmer – that’s another nail in our coffin!
May 21, 2025
Just steal and hack other phones and walk around with impunity.
The UK’s Government and Parliament have made it easy for the ‘hackers’ to flourish they have banned personal security as they(Government/Parliament) need a back-door to track everyone just in case someone steps over a threshold they personally don’t like. It has nothing to do with suspicion of wrong doing and getting court sanctioned access it is just general observations by anyone considered State authority
May 21, 2025
The biggest problem is that our loyal opposition likes ‘carbon trading’ and any and all related taxes ….the response from Kemi yesterday was weak ….even GB News are asking more pertinent questions
May 21, 2025
@glen cullen – could the response be any different when with the responsibility they could have stopped this situation arising but refused
May 21, 2025
On GB News they interviewed a very knowledgeable independent analyst of energy economics, Catherine Porter, who set out exactly why British electricity prices are the highest for industry by adding up the various subsidies and costs of building, maintenance and controlling wind and solar generation while providing backup by gas when it varies. This expertise is also provided by other qualified engineers such as David Turver and John Constable of Energy Watch.
But then, for balance, they had an unqualified pundit, Matthew Standen, on who assured viewers that it was because of the Russian invasion and consequent high gas prices that we have high bills. This ignored the fact that gas prices fell back after the peak and shortage and that all of the subsidies and backing have to be paid for. Presumably it is Ofcom that insists that government propaganda has to correct the truth from pewho can add up.
May 21, 2025
All I can say after the EU reset farce of just last weekend “summit” about “some-at” tossing aside a once in a generation referendum is based on Politicians illusion that we inhabit a “Treasure island with a forest of well irrigated Money Trees” and infinite cheap energy resources to boot.
This will not end nicely. Global Debt Reality is the worst 4 letter word they think won’t bite them.
May 21, 2025
Socialism dpends upon making and keeping people poor. Hence the WEF’s “you will own nothing” slogan. The Civil Service is following a scorched earth policy using Net Zero to sabotage our energy and economy coupled with the giving away of sovereignty such as we see with the Chagos Island, fishing and the “dynamic alignment” with the unelected EU Commission. Expect a lot more damage to come as they know they will not be in power after the next GE unless they cancel the elections which we know from the history of the last century is a very real possibility when the Far Left gain power.
May 21, 2025
The British in Britain have long been the poorest of the British diaspora.
But they were convinced that they had unearned wealth and must ‘give’.
May 21, 2025
DESNZ say in their ‘Electricity Generation Costs Report 2023’ that the cost of intermittent and unreliable offshore wind energy is £44/MWhr. The CCC say in their 7th Carbon Budget it is £49/MWhr and expected to fall to £35/MWhr by 2040. Well, the current (AR6) CfD price is £85/MWhr and Oersted have just cancelled Hornsea 4 at this price because it is not economically viable. This CfD price does not of course include all the backup and grid balancing costs necessary to run a reliable renewables grid. Renewables can only supply intermittent electricity and this is why our electricity is so expensive. And let us not forget that there is no scientific basis for believing that CO2 is controlling the planet’s temperature so the quest for “clean energy” is simply a scam to sabotage the western democracies.
May 21, 2025
This is a link to a video on what should be the energy source of the future. The first liquid sodium cooled reactor is about to be built in the USA.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N6oSo9EA8OY&pp=ygUdbGlxdWlkIHNvZGl1bSBudWNsZWFyIHJlYWN0b3I%3D
Because the coolant does not need to be pressurised (unlike water cooled reactors), the construction is much quicker and easier. There is less nuclear waste and it can’t be used to make weapons grade material. They also use salt as an energy storage mechanism – which means the reactor can (as all nuclear reactors must) work flat out, but the rate at which energy is supplied to the grid can be varied, making the reactor the perfect solution for a grid with lots of renewables.
May 21, 2025
It’s a waste or time posting here if a perfectly relevant and informative comment does not pass moderation. I give up.
Reply It contained an allegation about a named individual I cannot prove.
May 21, 2025
Elsewhere…
The Climate Change Committee (CCC), has today been giving the government advise and being contradictory at the same time. Energy bills must increase to deter people from using electricity, but levies need to be reduced at the same time. We can’t get to NetZero unless energy is made unaffordable – where do we find these numpties.
We are led by the clueless, for what-ever the value is in changing direction is, as in NetZero etc. there should be an open clear exposure of the costs involved and how the money to achieve it will be created. It is alright those in government and parliament, pushing a costly agenda on the one hand. But when to change direction and raise funds consist of banning (malicious banning) instead of developing a real income stream you have to question their naive mentality – a tax increase (forcing energy prices up) is not the country earning to pay for tomorrow that is just punishment and cancelling tomorrow. Already the high costs of being in the UK is forcing people and industry out, so the money for government essentials diminishes.
The contradiction 2TK wants to pile in and support the EU with Taxpayer money. He wants to get involved in their carbon-trading, more price rises!
2TK’s friends in the EU want UK Money. Germany’s industry pays 30% less for energy than if it(industry) existed since it was banned in the UK. Germany now intends to subsidies its Industries energy to get its prices down to world levels. Someone is needed to fund the subsidy…!(2TK has volunteered the UK taxpayer) Germany as with France, Belgium and Sweden all stick to traditional methods and have the availability of high-quality steel. The UK has banned it, so our defence budget is spent importing the very thing we can make of high quality at competitive prices. We the UK pay twice, lost jobs, tax revenue then the Taxpayer has to support foreign industry.
The common thread throughout all countries in this wide-open world, is that to proceed to any form of NetZero require lots and lots of cash. Their common way of funding a tomorrow is for their countries to earn money to fund their way forward – earn to pay. The UK’s method is to ban everything, which as a consequence it means its own income streams(the money needed to pay for a future), before they have found a viable, self-reliant and resilient alternative. So, they (Government and Parliament) have banned everyone’s future
May 21, 2025
As with all of its ” negotiations” with other Nations, this hopeless government appears unable to focus on the simple objective of, “What’s in it for us”? “What’s in it for the benefit of British citizens and British firms?”.
No, they seem to be blinded by their importance of being in the company of other leaders and appear to grant them every wish, as long as they are eventually praised for LOL, ‘their superb leadership’ in the talks.
We should be very afraid of our current leadership because of their total gullibility and naivety when conducting any negotiation that affects OUR country and our citizens.
They are a clear and present danger to the economic health and future prosperity of the United Kingdom.
May 21, 2025
Dear Sir John,
You seem to be the first to criticise the government on approach the EU and ono some issues you are also right, however, you do ot seem very good at acknowledging that 65% of the population believe the Brexit was a failure?
May 21, 2025
Brexit is not fully implemented so we are disappointed, that does not mean we want to go back to the living hell which was being subborned to German Europe.
We expected to be 100% free. We are 60% free that’s better than 0% free, but still disappointing.
May 22, 2025
Absolutely spot on. And to those who now believe Brexit was a mistake, I say you are the ones who have fallen for the fake stories and deliberately planned disruptions and blocks to every step made to remove us from the jack boots of Brussels.
You have been conned, and I ask you not to be so gullible.
Just ask yourselves why any democratic country would want to be ruled by a group of unelected and unaccountable foreigners who set the laws that will dominate their lives? When the citizens have no say in the matter? And there is no way you can remove them from power!
The French and the Germans created the EU for the benefit of France and Germany. We were seduced into a “Common Market” described by Tory Enoch Powell and Labour hard Left Tony Benn as “undemocratic”. And they were right. Any ruler who is unelected and unaccountable to the people cannot be democratic. We’d be selling our soul and that of our offspring a government reneged on the decision of the people in our democracy.
May 21, 2025
Not that it lessens the stupidity of the ‘millstone’ of Net-Zero polices coming out of DESNZ but, some of use still remember when a certain govt. chose to extend VAT to domestic fuel bills, some of us still remember when a certain UK govt chose to irrevocably place swaths of the UK’s abundant (and relatively cheap) coal reserves beyond exploitation, leaving the UK open and locked into to the fluctuating international price of oil and natural gas.
Whilst world oil and gas prices had caused problems throughout the 1970s, commonly known as Oil Shock I & II, the UK successfully mitigated their effects, by way of having a degree of control of our own national assets, via BNOC & NCB, never mind the State owned energy utilities being run as ‘not for profit’.
May 21, 2025
The Climate Change Act is still sitting there on the Statute book after 17 years and 10 years of Tory government. The constant arguments about when we should aim to achieve ‘net zero’ or how to achieve it whilst not doing serious damage to the economy are now getting tiresome. An economy which does not use gas or coal cannot be driven by ‘renewable’ energy. If something is renewable it means it can be renewed when required, not when the sun shines or the wind blows. Nuclear fission which is known to work and nuclear fusion which is not known to work outside of celestial bodies would still require enormous investments for plant and more for a completely upgraded power transmission infrastructure to supply home, office and factory.
The quality of governmental decision making in this country is so poor that it will take power cuts to move politicians to transfer their attention from matters which have nothing to do with the national interest and in most cases are contra to them by which time it will be far too late to correct those policy errors which brought about the dire situation in the first place.
May 21, 2025
Energy is relatively cheap in the world markets, its all the net-zero climate change added taxes thats putting up UK energy costs
May 21, 2025
49 criminals were smuggled into the UK yesterday; and escorted from the safe country of France…
May 21, 2025
It’s not just energy that’s expensive here !
We order stuff from all over the world, and just this morning i was searching for an item which costs from a supplier here £650 plus delivery (£5).
The exact item can be ordered direct from the manufacturer in China via Alibaba, for just $108 plus shipping. I checked, and it is an item that attracts no tariff or additional taxes, just VAT. The price to us would therefore be just £99.80 plus shipping for which I expect a quote tomorrow. Note this is the price for a sample to be sent for evaluation.
Buying the minimum order of 50 units, the price comes down to about £80.00
.
This is not an unusual situation, and I am not accusing the UK supplier of profiteering, it is just an example of what busineses here are forced to charge in order to make a decent profit, given the ridiculous overheads they face to do business.
May 21, 2025
Can we have your thoughts on Starmer conniving to undermine a future UK government by agreeing to massive tariffs against us if that government will not agree to continue his plainly disgraceful deal, particularly over fishing ?
I thought no government could bind its successors, but this seem exactly what Labour is trying to do. The next election will see Labour invoking Project Fear Mk ll.
May 21, 2025
A never ending story:
More than 800 small boat migrants have crossed the English Channel today, a record day for the year so far.
GB News can exclusively reveal that 828 migrants have arrived in UK waters so far today.
The total smashes the previous one-day record for the year, when 705 migrants made the illegal journey on April 15. It takes the total for the year so far to more than 13,300.
‘I’ll stop the boats’ – yeh right!
May 21, 2025
…..and no one saw them coming
May 21, 2025
The reason why this country is collapsing (and the West in general) is CULTURE – not politics (important as that is to a degree).
Culture is husband and wife marry. Husband goes to work and works hard. Wife stays at home raising the kids. Kids grow up with strong work ethic lots of maternal love and freedom to play and healthy imaginations. Healthy, balanced human beings. Who are going to be moderate in politics but radical in work ethic, family values, and patriotism Relying on family instead of state. And so low taxes. Including much, much healthier people, body, mind and soul, and so far less burden to NHS, to the law courts, and so on.
If the right do anything too radical, then the left get back into power and undo it and then do something radical. And then the right get back into power and undo it and do something radical. And so the political pendulum swings. When we don’t want swing but stability which is only possible by ultimately focusing on the culture – not politics (important as that is to a degree).
May 22, 2025
825 criminals were smuggled into the UK yesterday; and escorted from the safe country of France…
And the news media is telling us today that immigration 2024 is down …it isn’t, the rate of annual increase is down, with another 431,000 net immigration last year, who’ll probably never go home