We\’ve the usual screaming nonsense from The Guardian today about offshore wind power. Twats:
As well as hundreds of miles of cabling to connect the turbines to the shore, fleets of boats have to be built, including heavy barges for laying the foundations and turbines, and smaller vessels to ferry workers for construction and maintenance – which needs to be carried out regularly for the 25-year lifetime of the turbines.
Divers, port workers, onshore transport companies, road-building, connecting up substations on land – all of these are needed.
Investments of hundreds of millions of pounds in factories to make offshore wind turbines are now under review. But the investment potential is multiplied many times over if the many related industries are taken into account
These are all costs of offshore windpower, not benefits.
If optimistic predictions for the sector are borne out, according to the wind trade association RenewableUK, offshore wind could spark £3bn of investment in the UK supply chain by 2022, supporting more than 45,000 long-term jobs.
Costs!
Fuck me but these people are dim.
That\’s £3 billion (I assume per year) that we cannot spend on curing cancer, providing clean water in the third world or research into why unicorns poop rainbows. That\’s 45,000 people that cannot be employed building telecoms networks, wiping elderly bottoms or hunting across the Scottish Highlands for that all important Rabbie Burns treat, the haggis.
Seriously, people who don\’t understand the concept of opportunity costs just shouldn\’t be allowed to go outside unaccompanied.
Total and complete dingbats.
I liked this article better:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/29/wind-turbines-uk-firms-miss-out
Virtually everyone believes this. They think the purpose of economic activity is to create something called “work”.
You know me, I blame Calvin. Or possibly Max Weber. Or Adam Smith. Somebody or other anyway.
As well as hundreds of miles of cabling to connect the turbines to the shore, fleets of boats have to be built, including heavy barges for laying the foundations and turbines, and smaller vessels to ferry workers for construction and maintenance – which needs to be carried out regularly for the 25-year lifetime of the turbines.
No, they’d not be built, they’d be leased from existing specialist companies such as Saipem and ProSafe at commercial rates. In other words, you’d be spending at oil industry rates without oil industry revenues. There’s a reason why offshore engineering and construction is almost exclusively carried out by the oil and gas industry.
“That’s £3 billion (I assume per year) that we cannot spend on curing cancer, providing clean water in the third world or research into why unicorns poop rainbows. ”
Of which a sizable portion will end up in Government coffers. Do green jobs become an investment if you’re looking at it from the state’s point of view?
Hmm… A long term plan? Mandated inefficiency and complexity creating lots and lots of jobs and economic activity taxed at relatively low levels in preference to ever increasing individual productivity, efficiency and specialisation, high unemployment and high taxes on those with jobs.
They are almost stupid enough to try it.
Recently unearthed in Egypt, a clay tablet that appears to be the world’s earliest newspaper.
“‘Jobs For All’ Says Rameses II”
His divine glory our beloved Pharaoh has to today announced an ambitious programme which will bring jobs and prosperity for all the people. The centrepiece of the project is the world’s largest pyramid. Also to be constructed are sevral large estates of affordable housing in the immediate vicinity. It is confidently predicted by economists that Egypt’s unemployment problems will be entirely vanquished.
Said project manager Imhotep- “There’ll probably be so much work on this, we’ll even have to get the Jews in as well”. Nationalist parties immediately raised concerns about “damn slaves, coming over here and taking our jobs”…
The rest of the tablet is missing.
Please don’t give us another dose of crocodile tears over the ignorance of the hard left in confusing jobs with benefits. You know only too well that looking at life through the eyes of a watermelon destroys clear sitedness.