The UK needs a lot of new infrastructure. It needs it to replace old worn out facilities. It needs it to lift to modern standards and to accommodate modern technology. It needs it to catch up with the big surge in population this century. And yes I did speak out against excessive migration, warning of stresses on housing and infrastructure.
Here is a list of some what we need
1. the 9 new reservoirs in early stage planning to match water demand
2 10 new gas fired combined cycle power stations to balance and back up the big increase in unreliable renewables
3 New oil and gas exploration and development to cut imports and CO 2
4. Complete the trunk road network to at least dual carriageway standards
5. Install digital signals on all main rail lines
6 Complete upgrade and installation of broadband to all addresses
7 Put in new hospital bed capacity
8 Renovate, not close, old prisons
9. More data centres
1,2,3,6,9 are all private capital needing state permits and back up infrastructure. The others require state capital to be met from within the existing budget total. Spending on carbon capture and storage should be stopped, and so called investment spend on non operational property and net zero projects by councils banned.
August 17, 2026
This is not going to happen.
‘ The others require state capital to be met from within existing budget total.’
That will never happen. Problems are always met with a request for more funding and people employed. Throwing money at things and expecting it to do the trick is how it works. Nobody demands results or punishes poor performance.
August 17, 2026
You’re not kidding. A snapshot of power generation on a quiet Sunday evening.
CCGT 45% max available due to maintenance
Nuclear 15% full load
Wind 2.5%
Solar 2%
Imports 19.5%.
This was on a demand of 25.6gw. In winter this would typically be 47gw.
There’s nothing in the armoury when the wind doesn’t blow and thevsun isn’t shining.
This will bring the government crashing down.
August 17, 2026
Today wind is down to 1.17% almost an historical low.
August 17, 2026
As we see with HS2 and Woking. Not their money so what do they care.
Woking council declares bankruptcy with £1.2bn deficit
Previous Tory leadership embarked on risky “investment” spree involving hotels and skyscrapers.
August 17, 2026
LL,
Sakara Gold posted yesterday about your repetitive posts. I noted that four out of eleven posts was not – by any means – a record breaker for you.
I now see that, overnight, your posts have increased to eight out of twenty.
Perhaps SG could make the best of it by keeping a score on your particular repeats ?
‘PPE’ and ‘doomloop’ would be an easy starter. Then, with experience, he might notice your old favourites that have fallen out of favour like the ‘drains’ metaphor.
August 17, 2026
I will probably stop saying “tip down the drain” and a “doom-loop” economy when they stop pissing tax payers money down the drain and stop pushing the economic doom loop lunacy.
As an engineer I could say positive feedback instead of doom-loop but this sounds “positive” it is not.
August 17, 2026
Good morning.
7. Make Private Health Insurance a non-taxable benefit and encourage people to go private. This would release some pressure on the NHS.
8. No ! Sell off all old prisons and those in London to developers. Use the money to build new prisons elsewhere.
9. Before we should be building Data Centres we should be building power stations (2) first.
The problem however is legislation. There is a raft of legislation that gives powers to QUANGO’s, NGO’s, government funded charities and pressure groups to stop most if not all of the above.
So. First things first. Address the legislation that will prevent all that is mentioned from happening. Otherwise we will be building £100m bat caves and cooling for fish. 😉
August 17, 2026
The imports were a staggering £192 per mwh which gas can generate fot around £50 per mwh.
August 17, 2026
+1
August 17, 2026
And the bill will come to…?
Pointless to discuss infrastructure proposals, however sensible, unless we know if they’re within the country’s means. The Climate Change Committee has come up with varying estimates over recent years of the cost of the Net Zero agenda. If we just take the carbon capture and storage subsidies the government has already earmarked, based on the CCC’s most recent Net Zero ‘budget’, that would save about £50 bn between now and 2030. Which would allow a very welcome relief for consumers who are mostly paying for it in their increased energy costs. But would they then be expected to pick up the tab for a big alternative programme of infrastructure improvement? If not, how would the infrastructure programme be financed? I’m not disagreeing with the need for it, just wondering how it would be financed.
August 17, 2026
I agree fully with that. But we alas have socialist, unscientific, doom loop, net zero morons in charge so it will clearly not happen.
There is a large waiting time for combined cycle natural gas turbine generators.
As to 3, yes this would indeed cut CO2 but that is not important anyway.
We also need another runway (at least) at Gatwick and at Heathrow and rather more houses or fewer people.
Also un-block the existing roads which have been blocked by bus lanes, bike lanes, islands, endless anti car red traffic lights, environmental areas, 20 mph speed limits …
August 17, 2026
Lord Woolley, the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, has accused the media of subjecting former Cambridge professor Jason Arday to a “toxic, vicious witch hunt” and called for an investigation into the intense “media onslaught” following Arday’s death.
I cannot help but think that anyone who says something as stupid as this is not someone who should be in the Lords nor head of a Cambridge College. The blame lies if anything with the academics at Cambridge who absurdly appointed this ( recently sadly deceased man dd) when he ( faced many questions about his stated achievements ed).
People like Lord Woolley (elevated by the dire net zero Theresa May) are the problem. People who want Top Trump characteristics to overrule merit & ability. Does he really want incompetent surgeons, civil engineers, aircraft engineers, power station designers… chosen on the basis of DEI top Trump characteristics so as to hit race, gender, sexuality, disability “disparity” targets? Equality of outcome regardless of merit is an evil and destructive agenda.
He was “chair” of the UK Government Race Disparity Unit advisory group between January 2018 and July 2020. He seems determined to drive the reputation of my old university even lower. Do not think the more sensible science, maths, engineering, physics, history, law, architecture, medicine types of subjects are immune – they certainly are not my experience.
August 17, 2026
Read the article, “Complex Systems Will Not Survive The Competency Crisis.” It is alarming.
August 17, 2026
Now, addressing the row publicly for the first time, Lord Chris Smith (Chancellor of Cambridge University) has criticised the “racist feeding frenzy” that surrounded Jason Arday. Is he trying to further trash the universities reputation?
Well Lord Smith – the racists were clearly the deluded DEI academics at Cambridge who used this convenient black fantasist as a diversity poster boy appointment – deal with these dopes please not free speach. This has clearly cheated far more suitable people out of positions, trashing the reputation of Cambridge University and rendering the appointment of the competent black people, women or disabled people (often those who had fairly won their positions) to unfair accusations, resentments or suspicions that they are also “diversity appointments”. So it does these groups no favours either.
I assume Lord Smith (an English graduate like Burnham) was a fan of Harman’s appalling, clearly racist and sexist “equality act” that has bankrupted Birmingham and many other organisations. Doubtless Smith is a climate alarmist net zero and pro EU person too. Time to grow up and get real Lord Smith or just resign.
August 17, 2026
Cambridge was founded as a Christian educational institution and run on Christian values and involving great scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton who spent hours every day studying the Bible – a biblical scholar.
This is what happens when a country rejects its Christian heritage and replaces it with secularism where anything goes, and chaos follows.
Not forcing people to believing in Christianity. But I am suggesting, we need to support Christian values and our Christian heritage. And lots of atheists agree with this. The demise of Christian values is key to the Decline [and Fall] of Western Civilisation.
Trinity College. Jesus College. Christ Church College. Corpus Christi College. Magdalen College. St John’s College. St Edmund Hall. St Anne’s College. St Catherine’s College. St Athony’s College. All Soul’s.
August 17, 2026
Well I suppose that depends on which Christian values you refer to. Not very impressed with the CofE bishops in the Lords, nor the dire new Archbishop of Canterbury with her mad reparations. Nor The Catholic Church’s conflict with/torture of Galileo Galilei centered on his defense of heliocentrism. Plus the Christians do seem to have fallen for climate alarmism and the new fiery hell on earth.
August 17, 2026
Lifelogic,
I’m Catholic but my mum was C of E and from a very church family with curates etc (I love the C of E of Jane Austen etc) – and also Quakers. Agreed about many of the C of E bishops. And don’t start me on what you mention here – awful things done in name of Catholicism (but don’t forget there were also intelligent people in the Church who did good things in science – I mean Oxford and Cambridge had strong connections with the Church from the very beginning). And don’t forget there are Catholic Church leaders like the good bishop in Victor Hugo’s Les Mis (remember, who famously showed mercy to Jean Valjean after Valjean steals his silver candlesticks)! People of Christian faith are of a broad church. From those who support the Conservative Party (95% of people I know, who are church goers – both Catholic and C of E – vote Tory). To those who support Reform, Lib Dems and Labour. Evelyn Waugh was famously on the right of politics. And Graham Greene famously on the left. Although in private life they were great friends.
August 18, 2026
Also, Oxbridge isn’t just about science, the arts, education in general and culture, it’s also about BEAUTY.
For me, the most beautiful college Oxbridge college is Magdalen – Oxford. Named after a prominent Christian saint. Founded by a bishop. And even its bell tower, although built for secular reasons, is also connected to the religious heritage of the college (and not forgetting the religious/spiritual significance of bells).
And then you have the botanic garden, founded by Lord Danvers (the Earl of Danby) for, ‘the glorification of the works of God and for the furtherance of learning.’
Only the world of Christianity – not the modern secular world – could have built a wonderful botanic garden that looks out to the magnificent and dreamy Magdalen Tower.
Is it any wonder Oscar Wilde chose to attend, Magdalen – Oxford!
August 18, 2026
And, lastly, here’s Evelyn Waugh (a Christian believer), writing about Oxford, capturing the beauty of Oxford and its bells (a university steeped in Christian heritage), ‘Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days – such as that day – when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.’
Only the world of Christianity can conjure up such beauty (for without its Christian past, there would be no beautiful Oxford). Not the modern, secular world.
August 17, 2026
Also, one of the great tragedies of modern, secular life is that people think you can escape suffering in this life (no-one can – it is certain – just as gravity and death are certain too) and/or so much suffering is completely manginess. But it’s what we choose to do with this suffering that matters. We can waste it. Or hand it over to the Almighty to turn that suffering into blessings – into blessings of GOLD – for our benefit and others (including for our great nation – patriotism). And if we do this, we also, benefit two-fold, for we get the blessings of suffering / agony PLUS the blessings of the joy or ECSTASY that is meant to come in conjunction with the suffering or AGONY of life. The Agony and the Ecstasy. And it is this agony and ecstasy together, framed in the right way, that leads to a great culture and civilisation! (And the life of Joseph and his multicoloured coat – and to a degree, Queen Elizabeth I – captures this wonderfully).
August 17, 2026
Ed M,
Agree with you. Since we moved away from Christian values, so society has declined.
Mankind need to believe in and throughout time, man has had God’s to worship.
The modern new false religion of climate change has become our nation’s replacement for Christianity.
Deny MMCC you are a heraatic, rotating crosses on every hill. High priests in white lab coat vestments. Deniers (sic) are shunned.
August 17, 2026
More data centres…why?
It just means more surveillance, more state control, less liberty.
Reply It means more social media , more entertainment, more business success, more productivity, more freedom . Do you want to be rationed over how many emails you can send, photos you can take, film you can download?
August 17, 2026
Reply to reply. Capacity is fine now as far as I’m concerned. For me the threat of this technology greatly outweighs the potential benefits.
August 17, 2026
Data centres and AI also important for better education and business development and innovation. But it is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. Like Burnham’s appalling misuse of the mobile phone emergency alarms.
Mine is now switched off.
August 17, 2026
Reply to reply: ‘… or would you prefer to be rationed for the water and electricity you can use?’
Data centres guzzle water and consume a lot of electricity. There is currently a British Parliamentary enquiry into these issues, which are massive. Forecasts from the National Energy System Operator indicate that electricity consumption from data centres could quadruple by 2030. Astonishingly, the Environment Agency’s June 2025 national framework for water use failed to include the future water demands of data centres! They know what a hot potato this is.
August 17, 2026
Yes John, all of that plus reprioritise food production and agriculture. Take back control of our national waters and recover our fishing industry and rights from the EU.
When those basic/fundamental features of National survival/security is rebuilt, we will also need a military capable of defending it. Rebuild the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force fit and of scale to engage any enemy.
Reindustrialisation, to enable military capability, plus increasing food production using modern methods and technologies, would transform our economic outlook. It could be achieved….. certainly the foundations of that reshaped economy could be achieved in a single Parliament.
WE, just have to get on and do it.
August 17, 2026
Infrastructure or benefits?
Reform may be a little hopeful with their £50 billion in savings but at least they are asking the right question.
August 17, 2026
1, 2, 3, No chance . This country is run by ‘climate change’ obsessed Green loonies, many wearing a Red rossette.
4, This will happen only if they can toll them.
5, I thought this program was underway?
6, ditto
7, Governments constantly throw money at the NHS. But never control who is using it. Stop foreigners coming here and stealing our NHS service. Make all immigrants wait until they have paid tax for ten years, before getting ‘free’ treatment. Make health insurance for incomers, compuslory. Stop illegal immigration.
8, and build more prisons.
9, Really?
August 17, 2026
Not so much when as where?
Far too much development in the south of England already. Here the need is to restore temperate rainforest to improve the local climate. Development would be better put in Scotland and revitalising the ghost towns. England is already water scarce and can’t bear any more development whereas Scotland has plenty of fresh water.
August 17, 2026
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team: “The BBC intentionally defamed President Donald J Trump, and now the BBC is seeking to harass him, his family and supporters by abusing the deposition process.”
THIS seems right to me – about time the BBC settled and stopped wasting licence fee payers money on lawyers digging an ever deeper hole for licence free payers. Tho only real argument is as to the appropriate size of the damages.
August 17, 2026
Once Lawyers are involved it costs everyone a fortune, those with the deepest pockets are often the winners in the end, hence “justice if you can afford it” wins again.
August 17, 2026
A good legal system for users of it (and for real justice) would be predictable, quick, cheap and with few court levels. A good system to enrich lawyers is the complete reverse, expensive, very slow, arbitrary, unpredictable, many levels of appeal, one that encourages endless litigation … but lawyers and politicians in effect mold & design the system so we get the latter.
In effect, yet another tax by the unproductive on the productive by essentially the state sector.
August 17, 2026
Lord John Redwood,
Many of the requirements you list would fade away if we stopped importing the world’s strays.
I would prefer the Small Modular Nuclear Reactors to the gas fired power stations.
I agree that the need for water storage resources are an essential piece of infrastructure needed now.
I know you were an advocate for grey water, and perhaps a government should explore that again.
There is no point increasing hospital bed capacity if we don’t have enough skilled staff to operate them.
Unless and until we sort out power and water supply, we can’t build data centers. Personally I feel the Gangster State’s push to force everything online is risky, especially given government’s past record of technology.
Reply We need new nuclear and new gas. All but one of our present nuclear stations are due to close this decade.
August 17, 2026
Data centres do not have to “use” water up they just need it for cooling (so it can be recycled) – perhaps build them by the sea or use the wasted heat to warm up local houses, offices or swimming pools or provide hot water.
August 17, 2026
Using cooling water for heating is not new, it was the system used by the Battersea power station when designed and built, it heated houses estates adjacent and opposite the site.
Remember it well when I went on a tour of the site, when an apprentice engineer way back in the 1960’s.
August 17, 2026
Same ole, same ole, someone in Parliament threatens to ‘do’ something! As far as I am aware none of them know the first thing about building, yet the can promise to ‘build’ – Its laughable.
The UK Parliament, its Government can only create the framework for others, they cant physically do! ‘The Market’ can actually do, build, achieve when it is allowed to do so.
All the major UK Housebuilders, because it is their job have what is termed a ‘land-bank’. Generally that means a store to give them 10 years of building opportunity, in front of them already to go. What doesn’t happen is a house builder that is after all a business breaks ground, start building unless there is ‘certainty’ of a ‘sale’. Spending money on manpower & materials that then sits there, is a loss.
As with all things if there is an earning economy, things get done. If the UK Parliament, its Government, takes money from peoples pockets, the economy, then there is nothing available to spend. It is that simple.
Building homes to house the invading criminals, is also the UK Parliament and its Government invading the economy, it does nothing to feed the economy – its a taker.
Parliament, its Government, needs to ‘but out’ of this socialist dream that they can physically do things. Its the People, those people they fight every day that get things done, and the one thing they need is being stolen from them – the money.
August 17, 2026
In the category of ‘what needs to be built’ that would be a good start, but there are so many things wrong with modern Britain these things would only scratch the surface of remedial actions required.
Money should be diverted from building ludicrous cycle paths that go nowhere and from creating LTNs (Low traffic neighbourhoods) to roads generally. In our congested road network, one false step by a driver causes mayhem and jams for miles around. IMVHO the police spend far too long in analysing such incidents for suspect results.
It is time the capacity of all roads was opened up for full use and that includes many narrow country lanes that should be made 2 lanes at least to help siphon off some of the worst of the heavy traffic after a motorway crash.
Instead of squeezing ever more homes into the over-crowded south HMG should make use of the vast open spaces in Scotland to build new towns.
If we have to build places for illegal immigrants then it should be of the same style they are used to – basic one room huts. Houses should be made available to those in need who would appreciate them.
Building accommodation will help to revitalise Britain if done at a pace and with less policy restrictions, but can we trust labour to that in a fair way that allows private builders in without penalising them. We need private investment for building homes – we already have enough council housing that quickly becomes a slum.
August 17, 2026
After many years contributing to this site, I have decided to direct my efforts to helping Reform win the next general election. I wish John and my fellow contributors well for the future. I believe that this country has one last chance to turn things around, and this can only happen with a single strong right-wing party. That party must be Reform; otherwise, we, as a country, are doomed.
August 17, 2026
@Christine +9999999
If only the other right wing parties will join in to guarantee that success – that’s what we need to push for.
August 17, 2026
Whichever way people want to ‘shake it out’ this Century has seen us saddled with a Parliament and its Government that is not fit for purpose in the Modern World, it looks ‘in’, it is personal ideology driven, is seeks isolation hoping the World we go away and leave ‘them alone’. As such we have had tinkering, after tinkering that has nothing to do with anything, certainly nothing that allows the people to thrive, get on and attain. So promises unattainable promises is what they rely on. Promises they know they haven’t the personal abilities to achieve
With the Parliament it is all about their personal ‘them’, ‘self’, they refuse to engage and work with others outside their cabal, choosing to fight them instead. Daily we seem them fighting everyday people that achieve more in a single day than Parliament dreams of doing in its term in office
Start with the basics parliament is is too big and too massive, clunky and clumsy to arrive at a cohesive purpose, half the MP’s would be too many. Then we have the loss of or maybe the failure to gain the status of being called a Democracy. You cant be a Democracy if those that are to represent the ‘People’ are not chosen by the People. Having fanatical ‘Gang Bully’s’ telling people this is who we will have in your constituency, that will stand up for ‘our ‘ ideology – not yours. It starts with a threat of the least worst choice. It has nothing to do with working for and with to achieve for everyone equally – UK MPs don’t recognise service.
How stupid does stupid get? This weekend saw some people randomly and in random parts of the Country receive a ‘warning’ a ‘warning intend to send an alarm should World War 111 breakout that for them a barbecue might not be a good idea. This was signed of by Louise Haigh the MP found guilty of attempting to defraud the ‘taxpayer’ and now serving as First Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in this Government. This is the contempt the UK Parliament has shown for the People of this Nation
The real bit they don’t get and seem to be hoping it will go away ‘Its the Economy Stupid’
August 17, 2026
Your list is what the new PM should have been doing these last few weeks. Shut in his office at No 10, reviewing and working on these kinds of proposals with Ministers and Civil Servants. That is what a serious and intelligent new PM would have done. It is pathetic to take less than a pound a week off our electricity bills, while not ensuring security of supply. The so-called Burnham bounce amazes me and shows that some voters are just as lightweight as the new PM.
August 17, 2026
Instead he is talking drivel about Prof. Arden the product of Harriet Harman’s “equality” act and alarming people about fires and BBQs.
One crass trivial photo op after another and ignore every large issue. Hope in every heart and migrants, rapists, stabbers, shoplifters, phone snatcher & other criminals in every postcode. But you get £1 of your bus fare if you are not a barrier jumper who all get travel for free,
August 17, 2026
Much of the time Labour builds only a mess.
August 17, 2026
We have a 3rd world level of mobile phone coverage. Large swathes of the countryside with no or poor signal.
Long sections of A roads with poor or no coverage. Basically no improvement in the breadth of coverage in the last 25 years.
Julian
August 17, 2026
The Question is as always the wrong way around, it should be how does the Nation therefore is people earn to provide for all future aspirations. The UK has a £3Trillion debt to finance with what little money coming in being not spent on debt payments but spent on personal Political ideology.
A weird weird collection of 650 people calling themselves MPs, standing up for cancelling ways to earn, standing up for cancelling tomorrow, spending other peoples money without even having a means to control, not even reflecting on what they are doing – they just don’t care. It just personal political ‘ego’ a look at me I am better than the kids over there
August 17, 2026
One of the big issues in UK infrastructure is how long it takes just to get to the start of construction and then how much it costs. Measures to address this are required to make future investments much better value for money and thus more likely to happen
August 17, 2026
Add to that build more naval ships.
Add to that turn the A1 between Leeds and Edinburgh into a motorway.
Add to that complete stop to intra company transfer visas for the Indian outsourcers.
Add to that the removal of indefinite leave and British passports from people who simply got them for working here a while.