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What did they expect?
What did they expect? My house backs on to a railway line which is now exclusively for passenger trains. It wasn’t always this way though. There was a time when the relative peace was broken six times a day by the roar of freight trains heading up the Rhymney Valley. Their destination was the coal […]
Getting vacancies wrong
Getting vacancies wrong Like everything else that was shut down in 2020 and 2021, Britain’s job market was broken. As businesses attempted to reopen, they were faced with a massive labour shortage. Lorry drivers, for example, had all but disappeared. Skilled construction workers were also in short supply. But the biggest shortages were in traditionally […]
In Brief: The energy death spiral grows; Another bad omen; Hobsons choice
In Brief: The energy death spiral grows; Another bad omen; Hobsons choice The energy death spiral grows Although it is far from obvious, Ofgem – Britain’s energy regulator is supposed to act in the interest of energy consumers. As the UK government explains: “The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) regulates the monopoly companies which run […]
A small and deceptive word
A small and deceptive word In a previous post I referred to two “highly seductive and misunderstood words.” I dealt with one of these several years ago when considering the growing number of things that humans can do in theory but can no longer do in practice. This applied to highly expensive projects like sending humans to the moon […]
Our Predicament Re-stated
Our Predicament Re-stated There is a meme doing the rounds on social media… a picture of a vegetable patch, captioned “the time is coming when only those who know how to grow food will survive.” The idea being that, as our complex civilisation breaks down, we will be forced to return to a far simpler […]
Why Just Stop Oil will win
Why Just Stop Oil will win Just Stop Oil are the latest in a long line of single-issue campaign groups to take an Underpants Gnomes approach to politics. Phase one, apparently, is to have a load of upper-class white kids make a nuisance of themselves by throwing orange paint at things. Phase three is the UK ending its […]
Green spin
Green spin Concern over the steep rise in the price of electricity this winter has paved the way for rehashing the old misinformation about the relative cost of generation. So it is that Carbon Tracker – a non-profit which seeks to focus financial investment on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) – reports that electricity bills are far higher than […]
Tim Watkins: Anatomy of the Crisis
Tim Watkins: Anatomy of the Crisis
Welcome to the oil death spiral
Welcome to the oil death spiral There is something deeply tragic about watching people who would be dead within a fortnight without oil nevertheless calling for oil – and fossil fuels more broadly – to be banned immediately. It is possible, of course, that these people believe that food grows inside supermarkets or that the […]
Central banks are stealing underpants
Central banks are stealing underpants Let’s talk about supply shocks. Cast your mind back to the beginning of March 2020. Remember how everyone panic bought pasta and toilet paper? Except that it didn’t really happen – at least on a large scale. What happened was, in their usual underhand way, the establishment media paid supermarket […]
In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel
In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel OPEC and out The political fallout from the OPEC+ decision to cut its oil production target by two million barrels a day – which would leave the world economy around six million barrels a day short […]
Since when did banks produce energy?
Since when did banks produce energy? It takes a special kind of cynical self-interest to make people pay twice for something they already cannot afford, while claiming you are doing them a favour. This though, is the energy price relief package announced by Liz Truss yesterday. The package plays that old political card of being […]
In Brief: Trading safety, An inflection point, The crisis of under-consumption, A reign of decline
In Brief: Trading safety, An inflection point, The crisis of under-consumption, A reign of decline Trading safety Within the inner sanctum of one of the world’s oldest and most esteemed universities, an ageing professor sits in a battered leather armchair. Oblivious to the day-to-day sensations within the room – the slow tick and tock of […]
Nobody could have seen it coming
Nobody could have seen it coming Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was £1,287. Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to £3,582 in October and to £4,266 in January 2023. Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount. All but those […]
Net zero is dead – so what now?
Net zero is dead – so what now? There is a deep irony that Europe’s wind turbine factories were among the first to close in the face of our growing energy crisis. Nevertheless, it goes a long way to demonstrating the fundamental flaw in the net zero project – while the harvested energy of the wind may be renewable, […]
