Skip to content

What lunatic damn idiocy is this?

Last year, seabed options around the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland were awarded at much higher prices at a leasing round held by the Crown Estate. However, Crown Estate Scotland capped the lease payments at £100,000 pounds per km2. As a result the payment for leases per GW were 94% lower than the average in the English auction, said analysts at Bernstein.

The English/Welsh auction last year raised £9 bn, but that article doesn’t say how many GW or km2 were involved so I will accept the “94% lower” figure.

So it wasn’t really an auction at all, it was a freebie for those who were awarded the rights. I hope that Scottish citizens kick up a stink about this and that heads roll, starting with Wee Krankie.

Yer wha’ ?

19 thoughts on “What lunatic damn idiocy is this?”

  1. The English/Welsh auction last year raised £9 bn . . .

    That’s 900 million quid for the Royals. Which is why they’re so keen to promote green shit.

    If Sturgeon is taking a bung to cap the auction, well it’s all the same rotten stench.

  2. Chris, not exactly any more.

    Since the Cameron reforms, the old Civil List and Grant-in-Aid payments to the monarch are abolished, and instead she receives a Sovereign Grant that is a percentage of the
    Crown Estate revenues (with a guarantee to prevent it falling).

    PJF’s calculations assume it is 10% (£900 million of a £9 billion income), but actually I think it is currently higher, to fund a backlog of maintenance at the various palaces.

  3. Scots may be good with money, but socialists are universally terrible with it.

    The training seems to override the birth in this case.

  4. “to fund a backlog of maintenance at the various palaces”: in which case that bit doesn’t go to the Queen – it’s just being spent on upkeep of Crown Estate property.

  5. . . . in which case that bit doesn’t go to the Queen – it’s just being spent on upkeep of Crown Estate property.

    That’s right, regular old people can freeze to death in the dark so that some shiny palaces can be polished; palaces that are associated with, you know, no one in particular.

  6. @ PJF
    Regular old people can freeze to the death in the dark so that Ed Millionaireband’s fans can collect stupidly (or maliciously) large subsidies for having PV cells on the roofs and/or windmills that are utterly unreliable.
    If New Labour had decided to finance this bung out of general taxation I should still be paying for it but those on pension credit would not: I can afford it (however much I resent it) but they can’t.

  7. Off topic but the ONS answered a FOI request (17th Jan) on how many people died between February 2020 and December 2021 where Covid was the ONLY cause of death on the death certificate. It’s less than 7,000.

  8. What’s the surprise with the 7,000 figure? The disease overwhelmingly kills by hastening the death of geezers who are already very ill. Given the arbitrariness of what doctors write on the certificates you could argue that only a few have succumbed to pure “hot stuff” bias and written just Covid on the certificate.

    In a normal winter, how many certificates of ill, old people record only flu? I don’t know but I’ll bet that many mention something else, if only pneumonia. Does anyone here know?

    Put otherwise: the 7000 figure is pretty useless if you can’t answer “compared to what?”

  9. The Sovereign Grant was £85m

    Any year’s Sovereign Grant is based on Crown Estate revenue from two years previously.

  10. I think it’s 17,000 (not 7000) died recorded with Covid as sole cause.

    All cause excess mortality was something like 125,000. Take your pick somewhere between the two as the actual Covid total.

    Average age of Covid victim was 82.5, which is above the average life expectancy . . .

  11. Ah, 25%, not bad. Of course, the 9 billion doesn’t all come in at once so it’s not like the new Royal yacht can be doubled in length.

    No matter how closely you examine the figures, it doesn’t change the overall point that the Royals are incentivised to maximise the income from Crown Estates. Incentives matter, and that’s why the Princes of Idiot are clamouring for renewables. It’s in their interests for us to have an “energy policy” that is against our interests. So fuck ’em.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *