Monday 31 October 2011

UK Infrastructure; fighting the greens?



Of all the things the Government can spend money on, building infrastructure has to be the best public good. At least, in spite of costs, we end up with something tangible in exchange for the money.

Today, the Prime Minister announced two new power stations - one of which is a bit small really at 108MW of biofuels, but the other is a badly needed 1500MW gas plant at Thorpe Marsh. if the Government are determined to take us down a 'green' path then this is surely a good mix 95% of the new capacity is gas and 5% biofuels. No doubt we can deal with this and gas is the least polluting type of power station in any event (OK, nuclear, but I will leave the complex debate to Mr Drew on that point).

Anyhow, I question the other particularly the assertion that £1 of Government spending will leverage to £6 in the private sector - I bet that is a based on a spreadsheet with a rather large foes of assumptions and guesstimates on it!

No sounds from Chris Huhne today, perhaps economic reality will defeat the green brigade after all. Now all we need to do is let the shale gas explorers get on with their work and we can secure the Countries energy needs to 2500AD.

Sunday 30 October 2011

Sunday times

There was a time not so long ago when I would scour the Sunday newspapers, desperate to find some info on the latest take-over or move in the market in order that  I could plan my trading for the week. Now instead the papers are full of articles like this one in the Telegraph. Well written and coherent - it still reads to me as a someone writing in Rome in the early 5th Century AD.


It will be such a shame if all is really lost, but how do we get morality back into the system. Not being a church-goer this is a question I find hard to answer. Amoral markets I would accept, possibly, but immoral markets and Governments lead us to...well I don;t know. But at worst a new set of Dark Ages.

Oh for the Sunday evenings of but 4 years ago.