Tuesday 10 November 2009

Enough Energy to Raise a Smile

- but only just.

Miliband (Ed)'s much-trumpeted nuke-and-coal
announcements yesterday offered no meat that wasn't already on the table, and just about enough collateral comedy to raise a thin smile.

Firstly it offered us the
plaisanterie of EDF's Vincent de Rivaz trying to argue that a government guarantee to ensure a price-floor on CO2 emissions wouldn't be a subsidy. Hohoho, monsieur. Then, we had Paxo's opening question to little Ed on Newsnight last night (8 min 45 into the prog).

Paxo: "so: will all these 10 nuclear plants be built ?"


L'il Ed: "did you say 'will they' ?"


Paxo: "Will they be built ?"


Li'l Ed: "err, err, well, that's err, err" (etc)
(hint: no, they won't)

And all this cheery banter on the night his brother apparently confirmed he won't be accepting the nomination to be Europe's Lord High Whatever, thus dashing Ed's hopes of succeeding Brown next year. Tough shit Ed, but you had it coming.


Seriously, though, Miliband Minor must be credited with being the only member of Brown's Cabinet who instead of whimpering into his handkerchief
is trying to conduct business as usual.

But what sorry business it is.


ND


+ UPDATE +
this apposite Grauniad piece should add to the gaiety of the nation.

8 comments:

Budgie said...

The chances of a brand new nuclear power station planned, accepted, built, commissioned and producing for the national grid by 2017 is pie in the sky. The chinese whispers from the real planning engineers doing the critical path analysis to the off planet dreams of the politicians ensures it won't happen.

Electro-Kevin said...

Enough energy to raise a smile ?

That generated by the cordite packed into a bullet casing should do.

Old BE said...

"Vincent de Rivaz trying to argue that a government gaurantee to ensure a price-floor on CO2 emissions wouldn't be a subsidy"

That was hilarious, and my flatmate was getting annoyed with me shouting "but is IS a subsidy!". Then they had someone on immediately after saying something like "there will be some discussion as to what the word subsidy means". Hahaha.

Will my bills go up? Yes. Will my taxes go up? Yes. QED.

Mark Wadsworth said...

ND, have you kept count of how many times they've flip-flopped between more nukes and no more nukes; between more coal/gas and less coal/gas?

Nick Drew said...

Mark - funnily enough it would probably be the Tories who have flipped-n-flopped the most: the luxury of opposition, & no-one has been listening anyway

as for NuLab (since '97)

Nuke:

hostile (Blair believed it was a vote-loser); then trying-to-hint-hostile but actually silent-in-order-to-disguise-pro (this was Patricia Hewitt, & only Polly Toynbee was fooled); then pro

Gas:

formally hostile (Mandelson imposed a short-lived, token moratorium in '97, as a hat-tip to the miners); then neutral (i.e letting the dash-for-gas continue unabated); now still neutral, really (since they know in their heart of hearts it's the fallback when all else fails)

Coal:

pro for atavistic reasons but irrelevant (since no-one was proposing any new ones); then anti-but-embarrassed (hat-tipping to the miners again); then pro-as-long-as-it's-"clean"

Renewables:

pro; then more pro; then even more pro to the point of complete lunacy: reductio ad absurdum !!

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Well maybe they will and maybe they won't.

But if nothing* gets built, then we truly are f****d.

Milliband possibly gets this; he has, presumably, been briefed by the one or two people in the UK pubic service who still known what's what - as his predecessor was.


* In this connection, "nothing" includes windmills.

Nick Drew said...

WY - connection is the word !

rwendland said...

Why would anyone excpect gas generating plant to be planned or ordered now? They are obviously going to wait to see what happens first in actually definitively ordering longer lead-time plant, and what life-extensions are agreed on our current nuclear fleet. And for more signs of what the recession is doing to demand. Then they will fill in with an appropriate amount of quickly built gas plant.

Isn't that how you'd expect a profit-optimising market to operate? Or do people here want to go back to CEGB planning?