Miliband under the cosh already

We've already noted that Miliband's energy policy will come to no good - and there'll be a lot of disappointment for those who set store by either or both of a 100%-decarbonised electricity system and/or "lower bills for everyone, for good", both to be delivered by 2030.

The number of reports telling him this can't be done, in aspect after aspect, is becoming a deluge.  The latest and possibly the most damning is from the redoubtable National Audit Office which declares that his plans are critically dependent upon delivery of carbon capture & storage (CCS); but that he has no Plan B, and that Plan A is most unlikely to deliver CCS in the relevant timeframe without some highly implausible assumptions being made.  (Personally I'd go further and say, there is no possible plan and no amount of money that could deliver CCS on the scale and timeframe "required".)

Since the election, other bodies have variously told him that 

• he needs to find another £48bn if his wind and solar plans are to be realised (Cornwall Insight);
• he's on track only to achieve one third of the "necessary" emissions reductions by 2030 (Climate Change Committee - although to be fair, they are deeply compromised by their own inanities over the years)
• he'll need to commission new gas-fired power stations for his "reserve fleet", not just rely on existing ones (National Engineering Policy Centre, whoever they are)
• smash the gangs NIMBYs up and down the land (Resolution Foundation)  

Etc.  That's on top of dealing with the dreadful EDF on Hinkley Point and Sizewell, and fending off a load of legal actions that will be gleefully pursued down several avenues, notwithstanding Starmer's intention to see off all opposition summarily in whatever planning forum he meets it.

Obviously, we understand that every Tom Dick & Harriet is busily projecting his/her wish-list onto the government right now in every area of policy, along with urgent financial pleading; and most will be sorely disappointed.  Starmer/Reeves took care to limit their measurable commitments to as few as they thought they could get away with.  But not in energy. "Clean power by 2030:  families and businesses will have lower bills for good, from a cheaper, zero carbon electricity system by 2030" was the commitment.  Oh yes, and 650,000 good new British jobs delivering it all, also by 2030.  It ain't gonna happen.

And Miliband himself must be set to be a very early casualty.  Will he see out the New Year?  The first reshuffle?  Party conference? 

ND 

Britain's total defencelessness from air attack

Weapons development goes in cycles: and right now, defence against air attack is the big puzzle.  Against missiles, to be precise, which these days come in an every-increasing range of types - and numbers.

Ireland is often rightly criticised for hiding behind the whole of the rest of Europe when it comes to every aspect of defence, upon which it spends two fifths of bugger all.  As far as air defences go, we're effectively doing the same.  Any rabble that can get its hands on Iranian drones, UAVs and the like can inflict serious damage on even countries with advanced air defences.  Here in Britain, effectively speaking we have none worthy of the name.  Were we to be at imminent risk of salvos of drones, cruise missiles and hypersonics of the kind several hostile nations can muster these days, the best we could do would be to line up such of the Daring class destroyers as are seaworthy at any point in time (two? three if we're lucky): and (even assuming they aren't themselves eliminated in the first wave) when their limited magazines are empty, that's us done for.  A further handful of frigates with Sea Ceptors and machineguns, and men ashore with small arms left to tackle such of the slower-moving drones that they can see with the naked eye. 

The same is essentially true, mutatis mutandis, as regards the air defence of any "expeditionary force" we might send into the fray - see this sobering piece from the excellent Sergio Miller (an old comrade of mine) at the Wavell Room.  (On the subject of "projecting power", I won't even bother to mention the vulnerability of Gordon Brown's aircraft carriers, we've been over that many times before.)

Pathetic.

At least, someone has noticed: a fancy initiative (review?  committee?) has been launched by the MoD to address the higher-tech end of this threat spectrum - Science and Technology Oriented Research and Development in Missile Defence - 'STORM', haha.  Neat acronym, but it has a paltry budget, and I can't see Starmer really promoting anything 'defence' to the top of the list except a bit of rhetoric. 

To put in perspective the breadth of the challenge, consider how Russia is addressing the problem, which they feel pretty acutely, too, with their huge land mass and multiplicity of large, soft targets of high value (airfields, oil refineries, strategically important factories and the like).  They are trying to throw everything anyone can think of at the problem:  passive measures (camouflage and shelters for aircraft, laying tyres on aircraft wings [sic], installing 'barbecues' (metal frames) above the hatches of tanks, erecting wire screens around oil facilities) and active steps (licensing oil refinery firms to acquire small arms [sic], experimenting with anti-drone ammo for existing guns, issuing shotguns to infantry units, stepping up electronic warfare measures, considering a huge fleet of very light aircraft armed, WW2-style, with machine guns against slow-moving long-distance drones) etc etc etc.  But they've been at war now for nearly 30 months and they are still taking huge casualties and damage from the air (and inflicting the same, of course).

We haven't even mentioned the threat from seaborne drones etc ...

Who in the West is taking any of this seriously?  Our reliance on nuclear deterrence is now complete.  Under its umbrella, fingers need to be pulled out, and rapidly.

ND

Weekend humour: Vaughan Gething - comedy gold

He'd already given us the "takes out onion" routine in the Senned.  Then this gem ... (lowers voice, moves into Disappointed Headmaster mode):  you've let me down, you've the school down, but most importantly you've let yourselves down. 

"I had hoped ...  period of reflection ... I now hope ... I know our country can be better ...

Oh yes, and 

"... people who look like me ... feel personally bruised and worried by this moment ..." 

What, you mean that a blatant grifter who took £200k for his own personal ends from a highly dubious source, who was caught red-handed organising the deletion of messages specifically for the reason of dodging FOI requests, and then lashed out at someone he wrongly suspected of grassing him up - such a person should somehow be entitled to get away with it because of his colour?  

As political contributions go, £200k in Wales is an astronomical sum.  For pity's sake, £50k gets you a peerage in Westminster!  And this is Wales - famous butt of Robert Bolt's excellent joke. 

These devolved political leaders, eh?  Phff - Toytown stuff.

ND

Great times for the Great Man Theory of History

We should define our terms here, and personally I don't choose to go the whole hog with Carlyle, who claims that the whole of history can be written in terms of the stories of Great Men.  But that overlooks important 'materialistic' or 'economic' insights - such as those of Marx (someone else we won't be going the whole distance with, either ...).  I shall stick to something far more difficult to shoot down, and go with: at certain key points the course of human history is (sometimes) fundamentally determined by the purposeful actions of individuals.

In 2024, what more do we need to say?!  Whether Biden steps down is a decision he seems to have reserved to himself: I see no "economic" factors at work, just a painful case of very human personal vanity.  Whether Trump survived was a matter of chance (it seems), but a Trump presidency will - I think we might agree - set the USA and most probably the world** on a different course than any plausible Democrat victory this year.  (American isolationism has always been there, for more than 200 years, and its triumph over pragmatic internationalism has often been possible but never guaranteed.)  Neither is it a given that Russia would be in the hands of a dictatorial, brooding, fretful revanchist at this hour: nor that China would be in the hands of an all-powerful monomaniac nationalist. 

It seems to me that if one wants to argue against any of this, one has to have a thesis that requires stepping back to so distant a perspective (1,000 years?  5,000 years?) that all meaningful granularity is lost for any but anthropological, almost biological purposes.

ND

_____________________

** Some, though not I, hold that a Trump presidency will result in the US being withdrawn from global cooperation on actions related to climate change - with globally damaging consequences.  Interestingly, those folks are often highly materialistic lefty-greens.  If they couple their theoretical materialism with their fear of Trump, it must give them some uncomfortable ideological pangs.  (Of course, the whole of Reality ought to be fairly painful for them at frequent intervals ... ) 

Conspiracy theories run amok: and a nice Russian turn of phrase

Oh dear oh dear.  Perusing current US social meejah material - of both left and right this time, strongly suggests we need some kind of gullibility text to qualify for the franchise.  Sure as Hell, there's a heap of unanswered & genuine questions out there - but that doesn't stop people rushing in with Man-from-Mars theories of a pretty scary kind.

In the middle of all of this, there are plenty of Russian spectators online too, wondering with the rest of us what to make of it all.  Here's one with nicely-chosen phrasing - typical sardonic Russian stuff, always ready with a colourful idiom: 

In our opinion, hitting exactly the top of the ear with a bullet from an assault rifle from a distance of 130 meters, killing and wounding civilians, and then going to the next world yourself is top-notch aerobatics.

It's not funny: but it is.  If you see what I mean.

ND