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The UK energy rationing plan
The UK energy rationing plan The establishment media are suspiciously silent about the energy crunch facing Europe in general and the UK in particular. In October, when the wholesale gas price spiked at 400 percent above its January 2021 level, energy prices were headline news. So too was the sight of energy supply companies falling […]
Hogwash
Hogwash In the early 1980s, to Margaret Thatcher’s annoyance, union reps and managers at the steelworks in Port Talbot agreed a strategy to save the plant. As a result, Port Talbot was spared the post-industrial blight visited upon most of Britain’s ex-industrial towns. Now in private hands, and despite periodic crises, the steelworks employs some […]
Separating the self-flagellation from the greenhouse gas
Separating the self-flagellation from the greenhouse gas Speaking to the media at the Youth4Climate event last week, Greta Thunberg berated the UK for continuing to extract oil and gas from the North Sea while pretending to be green ahead of the coming COP26 conference. Not only that, but as the originator of the industrial revolution, Britain is […]
A red light on the dashboard
A red light on the dashboard On New Year’s Eve 2006-7, something unexpected happened. For most of the previous two decades, most of the pubs where I live had operated a system where they gave tickets to regular drinkers in order to limit the number of people seeking entry. This was a problem because one […]
The climate war won’t work
The climate war won’t work There are, in fact, no human comparisons for the effort required to reverse the global-scale damage wrought by 300 years of industrial growth. Nevertheless, people still reach for past human endeavours to try to spur our political leaders to an action which, in truth, is far beyond them. How many […]
This is not 1997
This is not 1997 Not that minimum wages are anything new. The USA introduced its Federal Minimum Wage as far back as 1938; although today each state sets its own rate. And the general consensus is that minimum wages help raise wages in general with little or no impact on employment as a whole. The broad […]
What then are we to become?
What then are we to become? According to Boris Johnson, the economic dislocation which appears to be gathering pace across the UK is merely “a period of adjustment after Brexit.” In Johnson’s formulation, those who would turn the clock back are tacitly in favour of the low-pay and poor working conditions which were encouraged when the UK […]
A crisis of affordability
A crisis of affordability Western capitalist economies don’t really do shortages. There are a few stand alone exceptions such as a music festival or a sporting event, where demand so outstrips supply that queues form. But for the most part – as we saw last week with the eye-watering rise in wholesale gas prices – […]
The march of folly
The march of folly It is of some interest that people have been contrasting images of British petrol queues this weekend with the petrol queues which formed back in 1973 as a result of the OPEC oil embargo. Not least because a more accurate comparison is with the fuel protests in September 2000. That is, […]
Crisis by design
Crisis by design Believe it or not, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has every right to stand before the nations of the world and lecture them on climate change. Not that Johnson himself has done much to address the crisis (indeed, given that having children is the single biggest cause of climate change at this point, Johnson’s inability […]
Wrong for a different reason
Wrong for a different reason Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – A well-meaning but not particularly bright left-leaning US politician – made a stir earlier this week by wearing a figure-hugging dress emblazoned with the slogan “Tax the Rich” to the prestigious 2021 Met Gala. Since the slogan was clearly political, it wasn’t long before the various political […]
A far from perfect storm
A far from perfect storm Global warming may yet prove to be the one thing which saves us from our largely misguided attempts to respond to global warming. This is because, while the crisis is real enough, the solution that we have bought into is an absolute stinker. While a great deal of corporate profit […]
Who determines prices?
Who determines prices? One of the consequences of the response to the pandemic and the disruption from Brexit is that labour shortages are appearing across the low-paid sectors of the economy. So much so that even the metropolitan liberal Guardian has begun to wonder whether the benefits of higher wages for the low-paid might outweigh the cost […]
A problem shared is a problem doubled
A problem shared is a problem doubled At seven minutes to five on the afternoon of 9 August 2019, a lightening strike caused the loss of 150MW of distributed power (i.e., a large number of small wind, diesel and solar generators) from the National Grid. This sudden loss triggered the safety system on the giant Hornsea […]
Crisis hiding in plain sight
Crisis hiding in plain sight Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic. And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the news that: “More electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second […]
