Given that the energy companies have admitted they can’t survive without state support then the only thing to do is tell them they will be nationalised now, without compensation because bust businesses are worthless, and that this is necessary to guarantee continuity of supply.
The price cap – an action by govt – means that govt gets the energy companies for free?
I wonder sometimes if that was actually the plan and that Mrs May was much more far sighted than I gave her credit.
Instead of actually “doing something” about the impending energy crisis, she instead decided to bankrupt the energy companies, but stealthily. You know, one here, another there so no one would notice. But then the war came along and shafted them all at the same time.
Scottish Power is asking for a cool £100 bn low interest, long term loan from the taxpayer to subsidise a price freeze for the next two years*.
*(Nota Benny – years. This isn’t going to get fixed by 2023, and the price freeze would simply maintain the current ruinous cost regime for consumers, rather than get us back to early 2021 prices. A tourniquet, not a cure.)
It’s a measure of how fucked we are that this is by no means the worst idea being floated to deal with the immediate impacts of the energy crisis.
In the short to medium term, there’s no replacement for cheap Russian energy in the European market. Doesn’t exist. We can bring it into being, at great expense, but are still looking at lead times numbering in years to reap the benefit of new supplies and prices we can live with.
So… given that we still need to remain solvent during the short and medium term, mebbe Europe should try to walk back its disastrous sanctions on Russia. They’re obviously not working, unless by “working” we mean to bankrupt Germany and cause a wave of industrial and retail business failures across Western Europe. Take THAT, Putler.
Seems little chance of detente tho. Russia would demand a high political price for restoring supply, and the US would bitterly oppose any attempt by the EU to have its own independent foreign policy. Poland and the Baltics are eager for WW3 and would happily shiver in the dark if it’ll inconvenience Russia. The UK is locked into 1939 rhetoric, tho the truth is we’re an American satrapy and lack the institutional willpower to go against Washington DC on anything more important than minor local issues in NornIron, maybe.
Our PM in waiting is still writing love letters to President Zelensky’s regime as if it was still March 2022, and reassured everyone that she’s “ready” to launch thermonuclear weapons (which, tbf, would indeed unleash a lot of energy).
It’s almost as if our betters didn’t think this through, and refuse to learn from their own mistakes. Shocking, I know, after their splendid handling of Covid. But maybe I’m wrong and our Freedom and Democracy really do need to be defended in Kiev, for some reason. I’m old enough to remember our efforts to defend Freedom and Democracy in Baghdad, Tripoli and Kabul tho – so God help the Ukranians.
Otto is right, the war only brought forward the planned SHTF moment. We are meant to do without the energy, that’s the only explanation that fits, except maybe wilycoyotis.
so God help the Ukranians.
Bugger the Ukranians, gods help UK.
So, nPower goes bust, and that power station over there is worth nothing? Along with their fleet of vehicles, their stockpiles of coal, their workforce, their customer book, their whatever?
Asiaseen – after all the wicked things the United Kingdom has allowed to be done to its own helpless children I wouldn’t be too sure Vishnu, Allah, Buddha or Jehovah are going to take our calls.
But we’ll always have Sir Cliff Richard.
So, nPower goes bust, and that power station over there is worth nothing? Along with their fleet of vehicles, their stockpiles of coal, their workforce, their customer book, their whatever?
If no one wants, or is able, to buy allthat stuff, then yeah.
Do not underestimate the power of government to balls stuff up.
Wholesale construction of large treadmills for arrested Exhibition Rebellion protestors should not be dismissed out of hand. Once it gets cold they’ll tread faster!
Something similar could be used to keep the cross channel brigade out of mischief until such time as their asylum claims are rejected after while they will be released and allowed to return to their home countries.
I think in Murphy’s world he wants to be able to dispose of the entirety of the Asset Management industry’s Assets under management and all private sector pensions on his ‘Green New Deal’ without the asset holders consent, so the energy companies won’t even touch the sides of his voracious maw!
Don’t like it – you’re a populist/ neoliberal / fascist (delete as applicable)
Once again the mask slips and Murphy reveals that he’s just another frustrated totalitarian.
. . . after all the wicked things the United Kingdom has allowed to be done to its own helpless children . . .
FFS, you already crossed the streams with a Ukraine rant but now we’ve got expensive bills because abortion?
PJF – also: grooming gangs
Was it really a rant tho? In my head, I was talking at normal conversational levels. I rarely rant, unless it’s about the BLOODY BINS.
I’m strangling you and you exclaim ‘I can’t breathe’, is that admission that you can’t survive without my intervention?
That’s kind of like the strategy they used against the phone companies a century ago. They refused permission for them bury their lines underground, then paid them minimal compensation upon nationalisation because all those aerial wires were worthless and it was going to cost a fortune to put them underground where the stupid capitalists should have put them in the first place.
I suppose withdrawing all sanctions, telling Ukraine they’re getting no more support and weapons, withdrawing Poland and the Baltic states’ NATO membership, agreeing to turning on NS2 might appease the mad fascist in Moscow for a few weeks before he starts yanking the energy chain again.
Perhaps we could add that we also believe that a female member of the Azov battalion secretly got in to Moscow, staked out one of Putin’s ideologues, planted a car bomb, detonated it remotely and then got out of the country without the FSB being aware, but then being so efficient the solved the case within 24 hours.
No doubt Steve and the likes of Mr Ecks believe that anyway, but we might as well all look gullible to appease him.
BiND – I suppose there’s always a danger that the clearly insane and totally irrational diabolical dictator Putin, who is the latest in a long line of Next Hitlers whom the US plus vassals have been ‘forced’ to fight, will try to take over Europe somehow. Despite Russian GDP being about the same as Italy and Russian birthrates having been underwater for 30 years, and despite the rosy promises of imminent Russian defeat we’ve been hearing since March. No doubt we’d also all be speaking Iraqi or Libyan now if we hadn’t destroyed Mesopotamia and the wider Middle East.
It’s a risk I’m willing to take, because we’ve tried the alternative and it’s a horrible shitty disaster. Thankfully we have wise, sophisticated and clearly sane people in charge, such as Mr Biden, Mrs Truss, and that funny little bald chap in Germany who insists on closing down their last atomic plants anyway. Because, eh…
How do you think our proxy war on Russia is going, on a scale of one to total economic collapse, human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria?
I give it two and a half stars.
“It’s almost as if our betters didn’t think this through, and refuse to learn from their own mistakes. Shocking, I know, after their splendid handling of Covid.”
What would you expect from the non-reality based community that is the political class nowadays? They’ve spent the last 10-15 years getting increasingly disconnected from anything approaching reality, and now inhabit a world entirely of their own making. They literally cannot conceive of what needs to be done, because that lies entirely outside their frame of reference. Hence the increasing batshit insane idea to ‘solve’ the current crisis that keep emanating from the usual suspects. Its like medieval medics – their mental map of what exactly they are dealing with and what needs to be done is a million miles away from the truth. So they just revert to the whatever course of action that makes them feel the most safe. The patient is fading fast, more leeches! Or in our case, more wind turbines and more chicks with dicks.
Steve, an internet rant is not necessarily the same as frothing at the mouth over council sustainability efforts to ruin your street environment. As I’ve said before, I imagine you typing as Bill Maher (maybe with some sneery PJW thrown in) – scoring gag points but rather vacant on the actual points, and zero interest in sustaining an argument.
. . . and the likes of Mr Ecks . . .
Is he still active somewhere? I don’t think I’ve seen Ecks here since before the Russian invasion.
Jim – Sadly so. I don’t know what they’re teaching Oxford PPE’s, but they really don’t need drugs. I’d still like them to take our border security as seriously as they do that of our greatest ally Ukraine tho. That would be nice.
PJF – I love you too x
@Steve
Our PM in waiting … reassured everyone that she’s “ready” to launch thermonuclear weapons
Would you prefer a PM who said they would in no circumstances ever use our deterrent? Because that would seem to render it a futile waste of (a lot of) money. There’s many things Truss can and should be criticised for, but this ain’t one of them.
Steve
Just because Putain doesn’t actually have overwhelming force at his disposition is no reason why he couldn’t crush anything “Europe” might seek to put up against him.
They’d still be debating what percentage of illegal immigrants should be made colonels by the time he’d swept through and nailed it all down.
I don’t think I’ve seen Ecks here since before the Russian invasion.
I suspect the staff revoked his internet privileges because he wouldn’t let the other patients use the computer.
Who would have thought Steve would propose going soft on a genocidal maniac?
Everyone, that’s who.
BiND,
Don’t forget the way an elite Ukranian covert-ops agent, able to come and go like the wind under the noses of Russian state security, operating tactically at Tier One while conducting tactical operations like a top-tier operator… accidentally left her brand-new ID card at the scene of the crime, just as elite special-forces types are trained to do so that nobody will know who carried out their attacks.
It’s on a par with Sir Pterry Pratchett…
“‘There’s a bit of sand on the floor,’ he said.
‘Another Clue, then,’ said Colon happily. ‘A Klatchian has been here. Bugger all else but sand in Klatch. Still got some in his sandals.'”
Chris – Would you prefer a PM who said they would in no circumstances ever use our deterrent?
I’d prefer we weren’t publicly talking about live action roleplaying the opening scenes to Terminator 2: Judgement Day or animated cryfest When The Wind Blows. Seems to me that total thermonuclear war would be a bad thing, but we’ve mostly lost the fear of Armageddon that helped keep the peace during the Cold War and are merrily escalating tensions with two massive nuclear powers. Sooner or later, somebody’s gonna get hurt.
BiTiN – They’d still be debating what percentage of illegal immigrants should be made colonels by the time he’d swept through and nailed it all down.
Yarpsolutely. The RAF’s plan to make Britain more secure in these troubled times involves getting rid of those bloody white men.
Personally, I identify as a stunningly brave Black woman, but idk why you honkeys are meant to get carried away in a foamy patriotic fervour in favour of institutions that despise you on a biological level.
Who would have thought Steve would propose going soft on a genocidal maniac?
Sorry, who are you? “¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
An oft-overlooked – and very unfashionable, despite being true – issue about (thermo)nuclear weapons is that they are not the automatic Armageddon of myth and legend.
Yes, a full-on Kahnian “spasm” (Rung 44 of his ‘ladder of escalation’) is megadeaths in the First World and a Mad Max-style dystopia for the survivors – but that’s limited to the old Cold War days of the US and USSR having 25,000 warheads apiece on hair triggers (like the USAF’s ‘continuous airborne alert’).
It’s not popular to point out that neither the one combat use (two early fission weapons, airburst delivery, both cities targeted rapidly rebuilt and thriving) or the extensive testing in the 1950s, actually ended all life on Earth, and that the old Soviet view that nuclear weapons were merely one more option to employ (with associated costs and risks) rather than “the End of the World As We Know It” – while I wouldn’t join Curtis LeMay in saying that the Western phobia about nuclear weapons needs to be cured or ignored, the reality is that they’ve got significant value (or else, why bother?)
However, perhaps the nearest we’ve realistically come to seeing nuclear weapons used, may have been 1991 in Iraq: where Saddam Hussein was rattling his sabre about his “weapons of mass destruction”, and was politely informed that while we, France and the US had a “no first use” policy, we reserved the right to retaliate in kind: if he started dropping chemical-warhead Scuds on Coalition assembly areas, some of his most valuable military real-estate (the stuff he’d depend on to retain power post-war, much of it conveniently located away from civilian population centres) would get buckets of instant sunshine delivered post-haste.
True? Don’t know. He did have the weapons, he decided not to use them, is all we can be sure of.
Nuclear weapons are, no argument, Not Nice: but they’re a means to prevent Worse Things. That includes, but isn’t limited to, Mutually Assured Destruction against other nuclear powers in a full-contact game of Global Thermonuclear War; it includes deterring where possible, or retaliating if necessary, against lesser but still serious threats.
But, anyone saying “of course I’d never actually use them…” has just… made them entirely useless, just as spelling out exactly where you would use them leaves your adversaries knowing exactly how far and hard they can push.
ADVISER: “Suppose the Russians have invaded West Germany, Belgium, Holland, France? Their tanks and troops have reached the English Channel and are poised to invade? Is that the last resort?”
HACKER: “No!”
ADVISER: “Why not?”
HACKER: “We’d only fight a nuclear war to defend ourselves. That would be committing suicide!”
ADVISER: “So what is the last resort? Piccadilly? Watford Gap service station? The Reform Club?”
Jason – Yes, a full-on Kahnian “spasm” (Rung 44 of his ‘ladder of escalation’) is megadeaths in the First World and a Mad Max-style dystopia for the survivors
I’ll never forget how that bastard stole the USS Reliant and tried to bury Captain Kirk.
but that’s limited to the old Cold War days of the US and USSR having 25,000 warheads apiece on hair triggers
It’s true there’s fewer atomic warheads in circulation, but it’s also true that arms reduction efforts have been stalled for years, and nobody knows how many the Chinese have, and American shenanigans in Eastern Europe have encouraged Russia to develop increasingly ridiculous supervillain weapons. Like the IRA, the possibility of Threads 2 hasn’t gone away, you know?
But, anyone saying “of course I’d never actually use them…” has just… made them entirely useless
Yarp, but it’s not really a zany hypothetical scenario right now. There’s a low, but not zero, chance we’re already in the phony war phase of WW3.
Promising you definitely would use nukes, while simultaneously escalating and internationalising a major regional conflict in Europe (Ukraine was ready to talk peace in March, before Boris flew to Kev to put a stop to it) /and/ threatening the Chinee with the stick/stick combo of economic warfare and Global NATO takes us out of amusing Jim Hacker territory and potentially into amusing Whoops Apocalypse territory.
In a world of big sticks, seems wiser to walk softly, maybe? Russia is forever running its drunken Slavic mouth about how it still has 5,000 warheads and therefore demands RESPECT, but I thought we didn’t want to be like Russia. War, huh? Good God.
What if we just… defended our own borders, minded our own business, and didn’t get involved in extremely gay unpredictable foreign military crusades, for a change? Might even work.
Ukraine was ready to talk peace in March, before Boris flew to Kiev to put a stop to it
So the only person in the world who obeys Boris is Zelenskyy?
#notalotofpeopleknowthat
Jason, thank you for making the point that was lost / wilfully ignored regarding Saddam. We know he had some nasty stuff – Robin Cook MP 1998 ” Saddam has not accounted to UNSCOM for 600 tonnes of chemical precursors for the VX nerve agent. That would be sufficient to produce 200 tonnes of the agent itself. One drop of VX is enough to kill”.
In the run up to and aftermath of the 2002 invasion, the left and MSM memory holed this little snippet and the fact we didn’t find any WMD (in Iraq – how much if any went into Syria?) doesn’t mean he didn’t have any, because we know he did.
Chris – of course not. Boris was delivering a message on behalf of his boss, Joe Biden. Here’s how the (fervently pro-war and anti-Russian) Ukrainian media described it:
The second – much more unexpected – “obstacle” to agreements with the Russians arrived in Kyiv on 9 April.
…
As soon as the Ukrainian negotiators and Abramovich/Medinsky, following the outcome of Istanbul, had agreed on the structure of a future possible agreement in general terms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kyiv almost without warning.
“Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. We can sign [an agreement] with you [Ukraine], but not with him. Anyway, he will screw everyone over”, is how one of Zelenskyy’s close associates summed up the essence of Johnson’s visit.
Behind this visit and Johnson’s words, there is much more than a simple reluctance to get involved in agreements with Russia.
Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined.
Think about this for a second. There was an opportunity to stop the biggest conflict Europe has seen in decades, stanch the outflow of refugees, end the slaughter of Ukranian (and Russian) troops, stop burning countless billions of pounds in a gigantic money fire, and stop the massive economic damage headed Britain and Europe’s way… and Boris flew in to stop peace breaking out.
Consider also that if our position is it’s pointless to negotiate with Russia, there’s no possibility of a peaceful end to the war. Only more killing and more destruction until one side can’t take it any more or both sides exhaust each other.
Ukraine is now in a position where it only exists because of regular infusions of Western (mainly American) money and weapons. If the money taps stop, the government very rapidly ceases to exist. Zelensky has no agency to pursue an independent foreign policy, he is entirely at the mercy of his Western backers. The Soviet satellite states were more meaningfully independent than the current regime in Kevin.
Early this year, the leaders of the collective West had convinced themselves regime change in Moscow was both desirable and attainable, through a combination of economic and actual warfare. We now know that we’ve strategically bumfucked ourselves and the collective West looks a lot more likely to fall apart than Russia does. Six months in, there’s still no plan for victory in Ukraine. Hohols are simply being fed to the meat grinder in the increasingly delusional hope of weakening Russia, while President Zelensky makes lots of crazy promises about Steiner’s division coming to liberate Crimea. Well, Crimea river. This nonsense has gone on too long.
Because we are the ones who are weakening. We should cut our losses and try more profitable ways of engaging with the world. Little chance of that soon tho, like the predictable and predicted disaster of Net Zero, they only know how to double down.
Yes Addolff, but crucially there is a four year gap between Ginger Beard’s proclamation and the invasion of Iraq. Saddam got the wind up and rid himself of his chemicals ( probably by giving them to Assad ) and abandoning his super gun . It is a bit like Gaddafi suddenly trying to detente with the West because he knew that he was next. As much as good as it did either. Moreover, how accurate was the assessment in 1998 when it was abso-fucking-lutely wrong (ie made-up) in 2003 ?
Enoch Powell (pbuh) was against nuclear weapons, because he applied logical rigour and realised that they didn’t make sense, why have weapons that one will never use ? Well he was right, but the whole Cold War balance of terror kept the peace precisely because nuclear weapons don’t make sense.
Problem is we now live in Clown World. The old Soviet Union was not an autocracy, there were too many hands on the tiller to allow a General Secretary to push the button on his own account. But now we have an autocrat in charge in Russia. We also have India and Pakistan who probably have no qualms about lobbing a nuke at their neighbour if it gets too lippy. Above all if Iran develops a weapon, it will consider blowing up the world a small price to pay for destroying Israel.
@otto
i think you missed the point
It isnt that we have weapons that ‘we will never use’, its that we have weapons that we would only use if someone else used them on us
Another point is that one of the few nations to have unilaterally disarmed its nuclear forces has subsequently been invaded by a nuclear power
True starfish
but the “other side” wouldn’t have used them either.
It’s that circularity that made the system work ( there were several near misses, but the fact is that The Big One never happened )
But we now live in a world where those “certainties” no longer exist