2025 Predictions Compo: results!

This one was probably inviting too many qualitative answers for easy adjudication, but here goes.  First, the factual aspects:

1. Name of first sitting MP defecting to Reform   Ans:  Danny Kruger

2. Date of Starmer's first Cabinet reshuffle, as defined. One bonus point for each correctly-named departure or clear-cut demotion. Two bonus points for any complete change precisely identified (named outgoer and named replacement) 

Ans:  there hasn't been one according to the definition, which excluded shuffles forced by resignation.  There was one of that type on 5 Sept (Angela Rayner).  It's arguable, surely, that the lack of a reshuffle is yet another signifier of Starmer's political weakness.

 3. Anything you care to predict about the German Fed elections    Ans:  the vanilla results may be found here.

 4. Composition of German government coalition by year-end   Ans: CDU/CSU and SPD

 5. Dollar / rouble exchange rate on Christmas Eve    Ans:  78 - 79 range

 6. FTSE100 on Christmas Eve   Ans:  9,890

Results:

1.  Nobody got this one.  (Wonder if any Tory MPs guessed?)

2.  Nobody technically on the money here either.  Several of us mentioned Miliband and it is rumoured he was indeed for the chop, but dug in furiously - and here he still is.  Mr Cowshed saw Rayner as perilously positioned, but not the cause of her exit.  He also saw Lammy as highly vulnerable - an excellent call.  SubOptimal got the timing right.

3 & 4.   Mr Cowshed correctly had AfD second, and Caesar H had the first three in the correct ranking.  CH and Sobers both called the coalition correctly.

5.  Sobers a comfortable winner here with 87 (though on incorrect reasoning, viz a Trump-enforced peace deal): everyone else had it higher & most had it >100.  The exact state of the Russian economy is a highly vexed issue, of course, with good data hard to obtain (FX, at least, is transparent).  Nabiullina is under colossal pressure from Putin to reduce the interest rate to 10%, which she has resisted thus far: it's at 16%, having blipped above 20%.  If she succumbs, and/or quits or is fired, let's revisit that FX rate again ...

6.  Nobody saw the FTSE rising!  Nul points.

From the above, there's a 3-way tie: with two ranking mentions each, it's Anomalous Cowshed, Caesar Hēméra and Sobers !  Well done all.

*   *   *   *   *

There was also a bonus wildcard essay question : at headline level, what will be the state of play in Ukraine at year-end?  We'll return to that one in a few days: but next up - the 2026 compo ...

HYN!

ND

Blogstats in a year of intense LLM "training"

Last year I noted the Top Six locations for C@W hits, as follows (in descending order):

Hong Kong / China / USA / Singapore / UK / Norway

2025 has been a bizarre year for blogstats.  Much as I'd like to think the upsurge represents long overdue global recognition for this blog, many other blogs have found the same and the widely accepted explanation is that the latest generation of LLMs, ever hungry for new "training" material, have been voraciously "reading" new bodies of text.  Obviously, the nearly two decades of flawless prose and compelling reasoning to be found on C@W make us a highly suitable educational experience for these eager students.

Anyhow, the "readership" has increased six-fold over 2024, with a mighty spike in June.  Someone in the LLM industry could doubtless explain this in detail.  Interestingly, while the spike has long since receded into the rear view mirror, it has left a pronounced tail in its wake**.  Presumably, the said LLMs keep coming back periodically to check on our latest gems: and I wonder if also their initial burst of reading resulted in a wider dissemination of C@W as a cited source, which ordinary ("human") www-browsers now access more than previously.

Anyhow, here is the Top 10 for 2025. 

1. Brazil - first by a good distance
2. Singapore
3. USA
4. Vietnam
5. China
6. India
7. UK
8. Japan
9. Bangladesh
10. Norway

Questions:

• Does this mean that electricity is cheaper in Brazil?  Or is it the cost of bandwidth?  I haven't heard of a rash of data centres being built there.

• To what body of hitherto untapped sources in the digitised world will the LLMs go for their next training binge?  What's left that is broadly literate, extensive, ignored thus far - and free?  The complete speeches of Stalin, Mao and Castro?  Might it be something of unspeakably awful content, such that LLMs will soon be effing and blinding like a docker and sharing pictures of nudified politicians ..? 

• May we hope that the wholesome diet of C@W wit, wisdom and literary excellence will raise the whole tone of AI output?  (*ahem*)

ND

PS: start thinking about your 2026 predictions ...

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** A company of my acquaintance that publishes a notable blog (as a promotional exercise) has suffered the opposite effect.  Its content having been extensively devoured in the same way, it now gets fewer hits, because AI searches give answers based on the LLM's reading and summarising of that blog.  These days, such searches do at least give links to the original source; but most lazy bastards go no further than the AI summary.  Which, to be fair, characterises much of my own use of AI - given the excellence of the summaries!  (Which is not necessarily a crass, circular assessment: when full reasoning & explanation are incorporated, you can pretty much judge that nothing salient has been omitted or "misunderstood".  And it's self-regulating, too: if the search is for an important purpose, obviously you dig deeper.)      

Some established business models are of course being actively trashed by the phenomenon - not to mention the upcoming fate of many professional, semi-professional and clerical-type jobs ... 

When the King invests in the bubble

Not only do human beings have a marked propensity to believe in perpetual motion machines, nuclear fusion, price forecasts and sure-fire betting scams wheezes, they love investing in a good bubble.  When a bubble really gets going - the classic case study being the South Sea variant - almost everyone with any spare cash piles in, accompanied by eejits who've even borrowed to do the same.  And by 'everyone', we mean (in the South Sea case) the King, the Court and, for good measure, Isaac Newton.  Yep, the suckers' propensity has little to do with brainpower or status.

So now we learn that a Trump family enterprise is getting into nuclear fusion, with the AI bubble in mind and the correspondingly vast putatively future demand for electricity.  Has the Orange One finally taken leave of his senses?   Well, note that the story says "the move would 'create one of the world's first publicly traded fusion companies'" which speaks more to making a killing on the share price rather than actually producing anything tangible like, errr, electricity.  So maybe it's quite canny.  What's more, who'd be surprised to learn that the Trump "50% share" is in the form of carried equity?  I'm just guessing here: but after all, his big contribution is surely to act as the pedlar of the snake oil** to his millions-strong legion of sucker-followers for whom he can do no wrong.

Needless to say, the announcement goes on to claim: "the combined company planned to begin constructing the 'world's first utility-scale fusion power plant' next year, with further plants to follow".  Well of course it does: what else would they say?  "Starting construction", as any dodgy building firm will tell you, doesn't need to mean anything more than clearing a site.

Publicly traded, hmmm ... does this mean we'll be able to short the Hell out of this thing?   

Merry Christmas to all !

ND

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** The so-called Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, a dreadful scam that ran 2012-2018 before HMG finally put it out of its misery, provides a sobering lesson on such matters.  The promoter, one M. Shorrock, was evidently very good at getting people to part with their money.  Some of his investors were high-rollers (who definitely ought to have known better, shame on them) but he also persuaded hundreds of small investors to take a punt, frequently on the heartwarming pitch that it would provide lots of jobs and cheap electricity for the benighted town of Swansea.  In this way he raised, and spent, somewhere between £37m-£50m before the scheme went bankrupt.  You won't be surprised to learn that many of these millions went to others of M.Shorrock's companies in the form management fees and loan interest paid at 20%.  He has a very nice house in Gloucester.

Oh, and for his own shares in the enterprise (he held approx 23%), how much did Shorrock himself pay?  Answer:  £70.  Not £70,000.  £70 (seventy).  PS, had the scheme ever reached financial close (which, had HMG given it a 'green' subsidy, it probably would have - the banks were lined up), Shorrock would have been paid £14m.

It is not known whether he currently acts as financial adviser to D.Trump.  Possibly not, since he was last sighted selling solar panels in, errr, Vietnam.

Miliband & the perpetual belief in perpetual motion

There's something very deep in human psychology that encourages people to believe in magic swords, universal elixirs, price forecasts, perpetual motion machines etc etc.  It's out there - and it just needs that little bit more human ingenuity to bring it to reality.

Ed Miliband is (we are told) a human, and clearly suffers from this syndrome.  Here are some of the things he believes in:

• a "net zero electricity grid" by 2030
• nuclear fusion as a practical source of power
• "negative CO2 emissions" from burning trees for power and burying the CO2
• hydrogen as a wonder-fuel of very wide practical application
• himself as a dominant force in a post-Starmer UK government

A man can dream: but he's spending our money on the first four of these (and indirectly, one might say, on the fifth).  In a harder-headed world, they would disqualify him from the fifth.  

Sadly, I don't think they do.    

ND

Enron's plan for property-price derivatives market

Canary Wharf: cornerstone 

Following on from the post about the 'predictions market' & how various attempts to make financial markets in superficially prospective areas have sometimes come unstuck (water; bandwidth, weather): I'd mentioned that just before the Big Collapse, Enron was planning a property-price derivatives market, meaning futures / forwards at the outset, and ultimately options.

The rationale for there being demand for such a thing was this.  Many individual and commercial entities, as well as outright investors, can find they have a lot at stake as regards the variability over time of property prices in general, and the differences between property prices in different regions (technically, a source of 'basis risk').  Simple examples at the personal level: someone who hasn't yet sold their current property but has committed to buying a new one - needs a hedge against prices dropping while they find a buyer.  Someone who needs to move from London to Manchester for a couple of years but expects to return to London thereafter: needs a hedge against London prices outstripping Manchester over that period.  Someone who wants to lock in an attractive price they've seen the identical house next door fetching when it sold last week, but doesn't plan to move just yet: needs a hedge against local prices falling.  Etc etc etc.  

And of course once a market is established, speculators and punters can pile in: unlike weather (see previous post), people often really do have strong opinions about whether the property market is overheated or underpriced.

So how was Enron going to get the show on the road, back in 2001 at the time of the Collapse?  They put some of their best people on it.  Regionally specific price indices already existed - the sine qua non for derivatives.  Key to any market is liquidity, in turn requiring market makers and critical mass: and, with some aspects of derivatives, the ability to cash out into the physical.  They had a strong relationship with the Halifax (then a big property player and publisher of indices) and planned to start with the London commercial (office space) sector - and to ensure physical delivery, as an opening gambit they were going to buy Canary Wharf !

Sadly, we will never know how this would have panned out ...

ND

Kalshi billionaires & the "predictions market"

As fans of open markets, generally speaking, what do we make of the soi-disant "predictions market"? in which the firm Kalshi has made paper billionaires out of its youthful founders (one of which is the youngest ever female paper billionaire).

Well, first of all, good luck to them: I assume their investors are consenting adults, hopefully with a brain cell or two to rub together.  Investment bubbles help make the world go around: where would we be for railways if there hadn't been an "irrationally exuberant" railway-mania boom in the 19th C?  Just so long as it is private cash, hopefully not pension money, that someone can afford to lose 

But secondly, this is just a slightly exotic betting platform with good PR, right?  And will they ultimately prove correct in that it's possible to "monetise every difference of opinion"?

A story.  At the back end of the 1990s when Enron had triumphantly succeeded (against strenuous opposition) in becoming a highly profitable market maker in all manner of commodity contracts that nobody except them thought was remotely possible - indeed, some academics declared was a priori impossible - a lot of people in the energy sector and much-larger financial / insurance sector were looking for the Next Big Thing to commoditise, create derivatives on, and trade.  I could tell you an amusing but irrelevant story about the attempt to do this with water: and at the time Enron went bust (2001) it had a clever plan, never realised, for doing it with property prices.  But the one that's relevant here is weather derivatives.

It's clear enough that a great number of companies and individuals often have something of value to them that is riding on what the weather will be.  Ice cream manufacturers, energy companies, holiday concerns both buyers and sellers, brides-to-be, county fairs etc etc.  They often buy insurance, from long-established specialist insurers.  So what?

Well, in principle we can identify all the technical factors required to establish financial derivatives.  Financial issues at stake in very large measure, impacting on a huge plurality of players.  Gains and losses related directly to uncertain but measurable outcomes.  Data on said outcomes that are objective and not open to manipulation or influence by the prospective winners & losers.[1]  So the weather-related derivative products were devised and a very large number of players from several sectors piled in with traders, marketing teams, software, complex stochastic analyses etc etc - all the paraphernalia of traded markets.  All these costly resources created, they sat back and started trading - mostly with themselves.  but surely, the genuine "natural counterparties" / end-users (entities with something at stake), the 'locals', the outright punters, would come along in due course?  What's critical in any such market is transparency (easy), clearing & systems, but above all else, LIQUIDITY.  

Well, nope: despite this huge global investment the weather derivatives market market never took off on anything remotely like the predicted and expensively planned-for scale.[2]  Why?  Because no bugger has any view whatsoever on what the rain is going to do next August 13th at noon, in any regions other than the Sahara or Antarctica (where there's no end-user business to be had).  Not even inveterate gamblers of the Sky Masterson variety.  Somebody may well have a horrible exposure to rain at that precise time, but no broker or market maker will be able to find anyone willing to take the other side of the bet - when there's a perfectly good insurance-based alternative.  (For those interested in the technicalities of financial risk management, insurance is a completely different paradigm to hedging, with different applicability.)

Why is this different to, say, the price of oil on August 13 next year?  Because there are very large numbers - sufficient numbers! - of people willing to take the other side of almost any number you care to put out there.  If I say $50/bbl, there will be loads of people with theories that say it'll be less, and loads who'll say it will be more.  The proof of this is the liquidity of the forward market for oil.  And any number of other commodities, as well as financial variables altogether more abstract.  Ditto big sporting events.

But weather?  Nah - or so it turns out.  Could this have been foreseen?  Some folks did, and saved themselves a bunch of time, money and effort.  But no so many.  Meanwhile, the perfectly healthy weather insurance market continues on its merry way.

So: a market in differences of opinion?  Well, sports and political betting are well known to be ultra-fertile ground for these things[3].  But if Kalshi is to break into new territory, it seems to me it needs to think of something a bit more interesting than "Will Trump attend another UFC event this year?" - and a heap less open to, *ahem*, manipulation.   (Guess who might be taking the other side of that bet?!  I think we can fairly be blunter: that kind of thing is really, really crass.)  

Nobody can rule out Kalshi actually finding a rich new seam of prospective punting.  But (a) this is a crowded field, and (b) it won't be hard for a load of other players to pile all over it.

Did I say "paper billionaires"?  They'd better try to cash out PDQ - as regards young(ish) female billionaires, I suspect Taylor Swift is the more solvent ...

ND

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[1] I am not interested in entertaining conspiracy theories about how weather data is systematically manipulated  by the Deep State or the Green Blob or whatever.  Obviously, forecasts are forecasts, and weather forecasts are substantially better than forecasts of commodity price & other financial variables forecasts which are seriously manipulated by vested interest all the time. 

[2]  Some AI disputes the notion that it never took off, suggesting it's a $25bn market.  That's derisory.

[3]  Is it unkind to laugh at Alasdair Campbell's son's sure-fire sports-betting syndicate?

Cost of Sizewell C, part 2

Part 1 was a qualitative summary of what the SZC deal looks like.  It isn't difficult to find more exact details - Mr W has provided several links & AI will yield more - though history suggests almost anything with a £ sign or a timeline will necessarily be a wild guess.  And even when apparently tied down contractually, EDF shamelessly just asks for more money / time whenever it feels like some, as the Hinkley Point experience amply demonstrates. 

We now turn to the questions posed in Pt 1.  

Why SZC's "identical design" won't cost less than HPC 

We've heard this story before: HPC would be a doddle, because Flamanville and Olkiluoto had blazed the trail for the EPR design.  But of course neither of those was remotely complete & commissioned before work started on HPC, so there was a distinct dearth of Lessons Learned from the outset.  Also, both had started development before Fukushima, so there were always going to be new considerations to contend with.  But EDF persisted with the "cookie-cutter = cost savings" promise: so now SZC will be even easier, even cheaper!  Nowadays, of course, with HPC being a complete fiasco in project management terms, they blame it on the UK regulators moving the goalposts / Covid / inflation etc etc.  Well, all those things to some degree[1]; but how about several outright, scandalous EDF failures along the way?  To give but one example: they failed to make an adequate geological survey of the HPC site, and thus missed systemic faulting in the bedrock.  Result: epic additional quantities of additional concrete being required for the foundations, and at least a year's delay.  There are several more examples of this kind which EDF - & HMG - find it convenient not to mention.  And it ain't gonna change: EDF is not remotely as competent an engineering concern as it ought to be, or as it claims, or as many would like to imagine.  

The other important factor to register is that the challenges for nuke projects on this scale are, in detail, very heavily site-specific.  It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that every big nuke is almost sui generis.  It's absolutely clear, for anyone following SZC in detail over the years as I have, that the Sizewell site poses a load of different engineering challenges that need to be addressed piecemeal.  And again, EDF has been doing this incompetently or, as many believe, deliberately skimpily so that it could keep down the early cost estimates and reveal the "unexpected problems" one by one over the years, thereby "excusing" the relentless increases in budget and timetable they'll drip-feed onto us.  To give just a few examples, of which 2 & 4 are outrageous:

1. HPC enjoys the benefit of an already-existing, conveniently close-at-hand dock for the import of very large items.  Sizewell does not.  SZB utilised a temporary jetty during construction: EDF has shilly-shallied about whether they need to do the same this time around.
2. Access to fresh water (needed in large quantities both during construction and in routine ops thereafter) hasn't been a big issue at HPC.  It's a massive issue in parched East Anglia, and the SZC plans approved by HMG (under the Tories) don't include a resolution of this issue.  (The Planning Inspectorate declined to approve the plans accordingly, but were over-ridden.)  We may be sure that whatever solution they come up with, it'll add significantly to the budget (or dumped onto general water bills!).
3. Faulted or not, there was at least bedrock close to the surface at HPC.  But just under half of the SZC footprint lies on a former marsh (a small river delta) with bedrock very far below surface level.  The piles that will need to be sunk will be very extensive and costly.
4. The coastline of Sufolk is subject to serious, constant, millennia-long erosion patterns - as eny fule kno.  Right now there is a shifting sandbar directly offshore Sizewell which has been protecting it for several years.  But it's on the move, and that protection won't last the 135 years (sic) that the site must cater for, such is the way decommissioning works for UK nukes [2].  So (a) the concrete platform on which SZC will be built, needs to be much higher than that of HPC: and likewise the sea wall.  Additionally, (b) there is a really obvious possibility of sea encroachment inland, on the north flank of the site (the marshy side - that old river inlet): the RSPB which manages that land reckons it'll happen within 50 years at most.  Experts have long told EDF they need an extension of the sea wall to the northern flank accordingly, as well as on the (east-facing) seaward side.  But only the latter is in the approved plans and the publicly-announced cost estimates.  Additionally, in the aforesaid 135-year timeframe, inundation of the whole area is inevitable, so a full operational plan is required for the contingency of the entire Sizewell site - SZA, B and C - operating in 'island' mode on its concrete plinth.  Again, this isn't in any published plan.  Diligent investigation by campaigners has recently revealed that EDF have known about this all along, and do in fact have unpublished "supplementary" plans for all of it.  But of course none of this features in any public "budgeting" or cost projections.
5. etc etc - I could go on.

Against all these cost-boosting special features of SZC, what are the much-vaunted cost savings we may expect from EDF?  Well, they sure ain't going into mass production for EPR reactor castings: they've vowed never to build another one after SZC.  Recently, EDF proudly announced - and the government proudly re-announced it - that they'd be re-using some rubble from a grubbed-up part of the SZA site, in the foundations of SZC.  Well pardon me if I'm less than bowled over by this astonishing feat of saving tax-payers' money.  

What else does all this leave us with?  Several things:

• As mentioned before, the government is clearly desperate (they know wind + solar + batteries won't suffice) which, coupled with the endless willingness to be bullied by the French[3], is a recipe for bad deals at the start of the piece and non-stop piss-taking by the French thereafter.  It's exactly what's happened with HPC, is still continuing with HPC, and has been happening thus far with SZC.  Why would it stop?
• Even if we reckon the SZC deals are struck and definitive now, think of the scope this cost-plus arrangement gives France to pass through, well, anything they think they can get away with onto the "Sizewell C" account!  Accountants are good at providing "alternatives" when it comes to cost allocation ...   Sizewell B costs;  general EDF engineering charges; "management fees" (much beloved of all "related-party" arrangements when one player pulls all the strings). etc etc.  Now EDF retains just 12.5% equity in SZC, so on any cost that would otherwise be for EDF's own account, but that its accountants reckon can be passed through the SZC books, EDF sees at least a seven-eighths reduction, or more: and that's if it's borne by the equity.  To the extent it's passed through on the cost base or the appalling overrun indemnity scheme, it could be anywhere up to a 100% reduction.   Moral hazard, or what?  
• One last thing: surely, you may say, there are audit rights for HMG to stop any such hanky-panky taking place?  Doubtless, this is true, in that the contracts presumably say so.  But here's the thing: when the astronomically-subsidised Drax was caught (by the BBC!) playing silly buggers with its fuels reporting, and was forced to admit to Ofgem and DESNZ that it didn't have adequate data to account for everything it was self-certifying, it got a rap over the knuckles (£25m penalty) but nothing more.  MPs clamoured for full audits to be conducted of everything before a penny more in subsidy was paid to Drax - we are talking billions, after all.  But at the Select Committee hearing, both DESNZ and Ofgem stated clearly that they had no resources to check everything Drax tells them in its self-certified reporting on its complex fuel-sourcing operation. 

Why do we imagine that with this new, multi-billion subsidy arrangement for another operation of enormous complexity, EDF won't be able to rely on the same shameless, shoulder-shrugging insouciance from DESNZ and Ofgem that Drax seems to enjoy.  Too big to fail - and too big to audit!  

What other reasons might there be for the charade?

There's a longstanding thesis, much peddled by the SPRU team at the U. of Sussex, that the unspoken motive for UK 'civil' nuclear policy is cross-subsidy for our military nuclear programmes.  This once seemed more of a conspiracy theory than it does now: read this, from Kier Starmer just last week - his "strategic steer to the nuclear industry".  

... Nuclear technology is vital to our country’s economic growth, energy security, and national defence. It delivers reliable, low-carbon electricity and supports our nuclear deterrent ... We are building on this legacy with clear commitments on the future of our nuclear deterrent, our submarine programmes, Sizewell C and the SMR programme. 

Surely, the only intended readership for this bellicose Starmerite "strategic steer" is one V.V. Putin.  I rather doubt L'il Volodya is quaking in his boots.

ND 

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[1] As blanket excuses go, Covid is particularly open to challenge.  Building works were never subject to lockdown, the reasoning being they are outdoors.  I know a great deal about another large construction project which was comfortably able to speed up its project schedule and reduce its costs during Covid, when (a) various restrictions arising from the need to work around nearby sites of regular employment were lifted, because these other sites were now shut down; and (b) labour costs came down because many construction-related trades found that much of their regular work dried up.  OK, maybe (a) doesn't apply so much in the middle of Somerset: I'm just saying "Covid" isn't a free pass on costs and schedules.   

[2] The way we decommission nukes in the UK involves taking away some of the radioactive stuff upon cessation of ops, then sheathing and just turning the keys on the rest of the site, walking away, waiting for cooling down & the half-life effect (venting into the atmosphere, BTW) to reduce the radiation enough for final clearance.  SZA is in that state right now; also HPA.  2160 is accepted by EDF as the relevant date for SZC.  There's no chance the Suffolk coastline stays as it is for that long: and some extreme scenarios suggest 2190 would be the date.

[3]  I mean, what else can they do to us?  Take even more of our money and do even more nothing about the small boats - check.  Be even more beastly to us over any attempt to engage in ordinary trade & diplomacy with the EU - check.  What favours are we buying when we give them everything they ask for on HPC and SZC, with fat cheques included? 

Sizewell C - what'll it cost us? (part 1)

Spoiler alert: nobody knows; and it's not clear anyone cares who has agency in the matter[1].  We've written about aspects of this any number of times - see the tabs below if you're interested.

Recap on Hinkley Point C:  granted a long and very flexible CfD (there's an extraordinarily lax backstop date for start-up, which the government glibly extended when EDF requested, so it can't be reliably built into system planning - which negates the supposedly vital aspect of "reliable baseload power" which is nukes' raison d'être) with a handsome, index-linked strike price.  It doesn't even compel EDF to build the thing at all ! The one aspect that might have been seen as in our favour is that EDF bears 100% of any hypothetical the absolutely inevitable monstrous cost overrun.  But even that is irrelevant because again, when asked, HMG just gives them more money.

SZC:  EDF nonetheless vowed never again to do another nuke on HPC terms (wonder why..?), requiring instead that they be shielded from almost all construction cost risk[2], but again with no meaningful timetable for completion; and that they be funded throughout construction, even if over-running[3].  They also demanded their ongoing costs be met via the electricity price after they (hypothetically) commission the damned thing - it'll be something like a CfD with a rolling cost assessment setting the strike price: though for some reason HMG et al are loathe to use the CfD / strike price nomenclature.  Oh, and EDF have successfully demanded hard cash - billions - upfront from HMG to fund "development work" prior to taking the decision to go ahead, even after having said it'll be the same design as HPC AND they'd been working on it for 10 years already.

This subsidy approach is being delivered via a variant on the Ratable Asset Base (RAB) approach, beloved of US utilities for decades, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, LHR T5 etc etc.  Bottom line, we all get to pay in installments, starting right now.  Remind me again, when will it start up?  Say after me: Nobody Knows and Nobody Cares. 

Why was this agreed?  The ostensible reasons are:  (a) the nuclear lobby has persuaded successive governments we must have more nukes;  and (b) "it's much cheaper this way" - a material portion of the total HPC cost is financing charges.  [Why can't French-government-owned EDF finance more cheaply than the UK government?  Very good question.  Always bear in mind, though, that for the French the Whole Point of HPC and SZC is as part of their grand strategy to get other nations to contribute to their humungous nuclear liabilities - see this post from 18 years ago.]  

Oh, and over & above this notional cost saving via lower financing costs (real enough, if you accept the premise), they also promise cost savings via the cookie-cutter effect, because SZC will be the same design as HPC.  We return later to this delightfully simple notion confected for simpleton politicians.

You can readily research for yourself that when the damn' thing inevitably overruns its "budget" (hah!) the taxpayer + billpayer combo picks up most of the tab.  So what, then, are the incentives on EDF to keep costs down?  Errr ...   Seriously, this is a massive and excellent question we'll return to next time.

Here's the thing: in having thus devised featherbedding that's comfortable enough for feeble, state-owned EDF to be willing to go ahead and build the thing, it's equally attractive for other investors, who are joining the fun and taking equity.  Centrica et al are anticipating low-risk, double-digit returns in return for stumping up their own capital.  [HMG is taking some equity: but why not all of it, HMG with its even-lower cost of capital and endless ability to dump costs on bill payers?  Another good question - to which the answer is presumably: they don't like it appearing on the Treasury's books.] 

Yes, folks, it all smacks of desperation.  And there's nothing you can't (/ won't) do when you're desperate and you can write cheques on other people's accounts.

Coming next:  

• why SZC's "identical design" won't cost less than HPC
• what else does all this teach us?
• what other reasons might there be for the charade?

ND

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[1] Curiously enough, some of the people who care are (a) several of the rather diligent French authorities, and (b) the French unions.  They are ignored by the French government.

[2]  The HPC contract already substantially shields EDF from the risk of costs rising because of changing safety regs etc.  Obviously, the cost increases EDF wants to be protected against are those resulting from their own bad decisions, flawed engineering, poor project management etc - which have been legion at HPC. 

[3]  Most householders know you don't pay your builders up-front without stern performance conditions.  Of all the companies not to trust with this, EDF is up there with the dodgiest cowboys in the construction market, as all experience shows.  Never will the government be able to say "how could we have known..?"

Budget chaos - open thread

First things first: Jim wins the compo for most correct guesses at Budget content - by a decent margin, too.  Well done that man.  A (very temporary) job awaits you in Whitehall as official Reeves-whisperer.

The OBR-induced chaos is all very odd.  FFS, Reeves leaked half the Budget, in detail, yesterday - the 'final final' leaks, which once would have been anathema to Parliament and MPs' privileges on being first to learn these things, once jealously defended, not least by successive Speakers.  Hugh Dalton felt obliged to resign in 1947 for less (though some suggest the skids were under him already, and he was glad of the pretext to go).

Anyhow: obviously in the circs, Reeves / Starmer felt they couldn't do anything other than play to their own back-bench gallery.  Feeble politics though it is, I think we all understand.  How much time does it buy them?  Maybe enough, actually:  it might be nicely judged for that specific audience.

On the energy front, the EV levy was inevitable and we may expect it to rise over the years, to replace fuel duty.  (Did any EV user ever imagine otherwise?)  I'm interested in 'pay per mile' - does this mean they are tracking vehicle movements (like Musk and the Chinese do), or is it a self-declared matter on the income tax form?  I would have thought 'pay as metered' would be better - seeing as how smart meters can supposedly detect and discriminate different types of load.  But maybe home charging would represent an easy dodge, even with an SM.

I haven't yet seen the trailed shift of 'green levies' from electricity bills onto general taxation: and I believe they've ditched the idea of scrapping VAT on energy.  Will update when I find out.  Anyhow, it's pretty clear they've completely given up on the £300 bill reductions that were to be achieved via "cheaper renewables".  Not before time: Miliband really does have to ditch that crass rhetoric once and for all, and stop making his DESNZ officials parrot it every time they are asked about bills.

UPDATE:  here's at least part of the energy thing which, I reckon, needs more detail to make total sense of: 

She told the Commons: “The Conservatives’ ECO (energy company obligation) scheme was presented as a plan to tackle fuel poverty. It costs households £1.7 billion a year on their bills and for 97% of families in fuel poverty, the scheme has cost them more than it has saved. It is a failed scheme. “So, I am scrapping that scheme along with taking other legacy costs off bills. And as a result, I can tell you today that, for every family we are keeping our promise to get energy bills down and cut the cost of living with £150 cut from the average household energy bill from April. “Money off bills, and in the pockets of working people. That is my choice ... Not to leave working families to bear the brunt of high prices, like the Tories did. But to get energy costs down now and in the years to come.

So, yeah: no contribution from "cheaper renewables" (- how could there be?)  And on a quick calc (£1.7bn across approx 20m households), that's only £85.  So the remaining £65 must come from some other levy-tweaking.  We need yet another update.

UPDATE 2:  yes, it's a direct transfer of subsidies from bills to general taxation: easy when you know how. 

Energy costs will be reduced by the ending of the Energy Company Obligation, which is currently funded through bills, and through the government funding 75% of the domestic cost of the legacy Renewables Obligation for three years. This is on top of extending the £150 Warm Home Discount to a further 3 million of the poorest households.

So: 150 + 150 = 300 & they'll say they've delivered the £300 reduction promise - for "the poorest households", that is.  BUT, as I keep saying, Mili's manifesto claim was that it would be delivered by cheaper renewables!

UPDATE 3:  the EV tax - eVED - is indeed on a self-certify basis.  It is assumed that the 'honesty' rate will be 98.5%, based on the 1.5% default rate on VED.  Hmm.  That surely has to be optimistic: people pretty much expect to have their number-plate checked by ANPR these days, but who imagimes HMRC will check their milometer?

Have at it all in the comments.

ND 

Sizewell C post ... coming soon

As we await the Budget: our learned visitor Mr Wendland asked for a post on SZC and its subsidy regime.

I've done the reading, sir, and it's a-comin' soon ...

ND

Ukraine: Europe must step up, bigly

If taken at face value, the 28-point plan is clever[1].  In my assessment there's only one clause that, pragmatically speaking, should give Ukraine serious pause - and we're still talking "at face value" here, as well as "pragmatic" - and that's the surrender of the territory in the Donbas they still hold: it's militarily crazy.  But - on paper - there's even an answer for that.

BUT.  No-one but an absolute imbecile would trust Trump with their lives - or, likewise, Putin.  Neither man can be trusted to uphold even a full treaty.  We are well into "It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe" territory.

Trump, presumably, will be telling Zelensky he either signs or forgoes US support.  Well, he's a negotiator (of sorts), he expects a bit of to and fro.  

To me, they key is that even were he a man of his word, Trump couldn't deliver the "US side" of this unilaterally - it requires Europe to fall in line.  No Europe, no G8 nor several other clauses in the 28.  So now is the time for Europe to step in with some serious bargaining: we've seen the clear limitations of Team Trump, who evidently can't see the weaknesses in Putin's hand.  Once, it seemed, the EC was capable of pretty hard-nosed negotiating - but that was before the pathetic showing over tariffs.  Surely, there's someone who knows how to play serious, calculating power-politics in the whole of the continent?  Surely?

Trump needs to pay for his Nobel prize, not only with serious ongoing support for Ukraine, but with a conditional set of levers on him and Russia explicitly granted to Ukraine - and Europe[2].  Russia needs to pay for all that territory it has illegally seized with an oversight regime and a structure of tripwires that will keep Putin within his (new) borders.

For completeness, let it be said that the indemnity mooted for Putin and his war crimes sticks in the craw.  But that, I think, is one for Zelensky to chew on.

Finally, you gotta laugh at the implicit belief, written through this plan, that tying Russia closer with TRADE will act as some kind of guarantor of peace.  Ask Merkel about that one.  And - just who was it it who pointed that out to Germany in the UN ..?  Yep, it was the Orange One.

So: where is Europe's unblinking hard man?

ND

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[1] 'Clever' in the sense that Witkoff, apparently an accomplished businessman but patently devoid of the slightest sense of geography, history, Realpolitik, naked evil, or his own extreme gullibility, has done a plodding, comprehensive job against a long list of desiderata: there's an answer for (almost) everything in there, provided you make a load of truly heroic and optimistic assumptions about some deeply untrustworthy individuals.  He's clearly in that archetypal category of naïve-but smart Americans who see no malice in anyone and proceed in a purely rationalistic manner to address all difficulties piecemeal and with diligence.  They often achieve big things (vide the grand history of the USA).  But there are some things that are completely beyond them.  

[2] How to define "Europe"?  Well, whatever is the body of entities that is required to deliver all those clauses, that can't be done by the USA unilaterally.  In fact, we could say "the other members of the G7" too, were that not to include China.

Mahmood, fairness, and blunt speaking

Has any politician from any parliamentary party - I include Reform - spoken so plainly and indeed bluntly in Parliament on the topic of illegal immigration and "asylum" as Shabana Mahmood?

The Tories, in particular, must be wondering why they didn't come up with a package of measures along the lines of hers, several years ago.

If Polanski wants to carve out a metro-bedsit-space on this issue for the Greens, well, he'll find it isn't as big in electoral terms as he imagines.  

[Gotta feel a bit sorry for "Your Party": they'd love to be all over this and use it as a recruiting sergeant - but they can't prise their own fingers away from the throats of their comrades long enough to write a press release.] 

Let's see how Labour splits when it comes to a vote.  Plenty of abstentions, but not so many outright 'noes', I'm guessing.  They know what their own constituents are saying: they just hope the matter doesn't get raised in Parliament and polite society.

Both sides claim to be guardians of the British Sense of Fairness.  My very early experience as a junior officer in the Army is that what the middle classes think of as 'fair' can be starkly different to what the workers think.  You can  stub your toe badly on that.

ND

BBC: despite outrages, needs fixing, not scrapping

Cards on the table: I am a big supporter of an idealised concept of what the BBC can be at its best.

But, boy, do they inflict damage on themselves.  The Panorama[1] / Trump thing is a journalistic outrage, as even hardened anti-Trump lefties with concern for the integrity of journalism agree.  The Panorama "anti-semitism in the Labour Party" is another.  Looks like they had (have?) a rogue LGBTIxyz unit of some kind, busily censoring their colleagues.  Their climate / energy offerings are often pure green-blob output.  Etc etc etc. 

And then you get the opposite: the Panorama in 2022 on Drax and its baleful Canadian operations was masterly, with long-running consequences that haven't fully played out yet.

Even thin-skinned Trump should recognise the soft power of the Beeb worldwide, and how many western interests it buttresses.  (Incidentally, what possible damages could he claim to have suffered?)  What would step into its shoes?  Domestically, maybe the better ITV and C4 documentaries.  But abroad?  Just commercial and/or dangerous fake-news dross from very unsavoury sources.  

But I'll end on another condemnatory anecdote, starting with "It was ever thus".  

Many, many years ago when I was heavily involved in local politics, myself and Mrs D were approached by Panorama to be interviewed on the subject of Child Benefit, on our very own sofa at home, as a representative middle-class married couple with school-aged children.  As the evening wore on and they kept asking us the same questions over and over, it became apparent they were hoping we'd express thus-and-such opinions.  But we didn't.  They were relentless, eventually telling us fairly precisely the words they wished to put into our mouths.  Well, we weren't having it; so the extensive footage they'd shot was entirely abortive.

But not the entire evening.  During a break, they asked us if we could put them in touch with other couples in the area, with different profiles to our own.  We mentioned two things: (1) a couple we were willing to sound out for them, who exactly fitted one of the profiles they wanted; and (2) quite separately and en passant, that there was a vantage point up the road from ourselves where some of the most expensive houses in London looked out across a valley, directly towards a huge and fairly rough council estate on the hill opposite.

So what happened?  When the programme aired, whilst Mr & Mrs D did not make an appearance, the other couple did.  And against the backdrop of a camera shot panning from a big house across to the council estate, the introductory voice-over asserted that this was the view from the couple's own front room.  Except that they didn't live anywhere near that vantage point ...  a complete BBC confection.  Shameless, and deeply unprofessional stuff: but I'm sure someone who'd misinterpreted John Birt's "mission to explain"[2] just loved it.     

They shoot themselves in the foot, so many times.  And it seems they just can't help it.  My supportive view of an idealised BBC is, ahem, very idealised indeed.

ND

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[1] It's worth noting that 'Panorama' is as much a banner than a BBC department.  Individual programmes they broadcast under that label are generally made by an ad hoc team of independent reporters / researchers assembled for a single programme.

[2] A renowned journo of my acquaintance who'd worked at the Beeb in this era told me how it worked.  Birt's 'MtE' approach was: (a) first, researchers would do a load of rigorous research & analysis on some tricky topic; (b) they'd reach their conclusions on how the issues were to be understood and explained; (c) they'd go out into the world and find interviewees etc to "illustrate" what they'd concluded, creating an explanatory narrative.

How this worked in practice was:  a bunch of people - generally lefties - who had no genuine expertise on the topic, would sit at their desks discussing and arguing for weeks, with a few facts and opinions thrown in.  They'd reach their conclusions essentially a priori from their baleful assumptions and leftist worldview, and write their narrative.  They'd then set out to find and interview (and of course put words into the mouths of) people that were selected as archetypes, often outright caricatures, of the various viewpoints featuring in their narrative, in order to bring it alive for a TV audience.  Then air the programme.

Little or nothing of this process represented genuine, open-minded journalistic research, and at worst was the kind of pre-ordained confection we still see in such outrages as the Trump speech-splicing episode. 

Mamdani, charisma and the Left

The whole Mamdani phenomenon is quite exceptionally interesting, n'est-ce pas?  The Left, Greens and progressives generally, everywhere, are hoping upon hope they can ride on his coat-tails to woke victory.  Can it be Polanski?  And yet ...

Generally, the real politicos of the Left hate the idea of needing to depend on personality-centred leadership.  Magnetic charisma is even worse.  These objections are doctrinal for them, and, you suspect, visceral, too.  The Revolution comes, not when an individual galvanises gullible voters, but When Economic Conditions are Right, and the working masses rise up as one (along with the less-than-charming, less-than-working bedsit brigade).  Of course, the sainthood conferred upon Lenin rather goes against this; and "whoa, Jeremy Corbyn" / Magic Grandad; but ...  

The fact is, even ordinary-grade charm is dangerous, never mind outright charisma.  The Blairs and the Johnsons (and even the Mandelsons) of this world glide through life asserting their exemption from ordinary constraints, and getting what they want.  When we get to Clinton, we are talking weapons-grade, Elvis-level powers, particularly over women.  (I've no intention of getting into Godwin territory.)

When working for a US multinational, I once attended a management conference in the States.  On one occasion we were addressed by a speaker who had a novel but pedestrian consultancy-type idea to sell - a lens for categorising & analysing problems according to some classic 2 x 2 matrix of his devising.  His ideas were worthwhile, but - objectively speaking - no more than just something to digest, hoist on board, and deploy where useful for a bit of an additional insight.

The thing was, he was as charismatic as all Hell (and the Devil is really quite charismatic).  In the coffee-room afterwards, the discussion - amongst supposedly professional people, mostly senior engineers, went (or rather, gushed) like this.

- Wow!  Wasn't that great?!  I heard him say X, and Y.  I really agree with that.

- Yeah - best we've heard all week!  I heard him say A and B - that really resonates with me.

And so on.

Now with my cynical but quite useful Oxford training in philosophy and logic, I was mentally at one remove from all this the moment the guy flashed his enigmatic smile at us.   And, if you'll forgive the arrogance of my reckoning I can offer an 'objective assessment', I can assure you he said none of X, Y, A nor B: some of the supposed pronouncements attributed to him were mutually contradictory!  What he did do, was absolutely enthrall his audience, who then individually projected onto him everything each of them wanted to hear when their emotions were roused.  Amazing stuff, this snake-oil: believed to cure all known conditions.  Harmless, on this occasion ... but we all know where this sometimes goes.

Let's watch Messrs Mamdani's and Polanski's careers with interest.  

ND

More weekend wisdom: understanding Russia

A favourite endeavour of mine.  And this video is really worth watching.  Periodically, we have visitors around here who side with the pro-Russia narrative to a really striking degree.  Well, watch and learn, from someone - Serhii Plokhy - who is genuinely expert.  (Yeah yeah, he lived in Ukraine as a boy.  So what?  Check out what he says, & then read it up for yourself.)  And finish it off with the block quotation at the end of this post.

We might all note, in particular, Plokhy's comments on how Russia can, at the same time, be performing really badly in Ukraine (see this blog passim since 2023) but also be a genuine threat to Europe.  So often we get - from Aaron Bastani in this vid, and from some of our trolls BTL commentators here - "well, they can't be both".  Well, maybe they can: see what he has to say.  And the corollary is both chilling, and food for serious thought for our lamentably substandard political leaders.

Note also how the good Bastani keeps learning things he should maybe have already known, and is consequently amazed by - in this vid, and in others of his excellent interviews.  You might wonder why I regularly cite and link to Bastani's Novara Media, a bunch of supposedly irredeemable progressive lefties, as they would see themselves.  Well, the highly articulate** leadership triumvirate of this bunch are, on their better days, definitely open to argument; and their slow, inchingly slow march to the right since 2017 has been amusing and instructive to watch.  They might even, somewhat reluctantly, admit it.  Bastani in particular is quite clearly a social conservative, and more so with each passing year (marriage, a family, home ownership, and moving out of London can have that effect ...)

[Their problem is, they have so much empty space in their heads where some genuine knowledge of the real world should be, that they - particularly AB again - are inclined to swallow almost anything they are told by people who seem to know.  Their suckering by Gary Stevenson, "once the no.1 [self-styled] trader in the world" (my arse) is highly amusing: and AB has also been well taken in by, e.g., Brett Christophers and that old hippy-rogue Dale Vince: he laps up their stuff in a culpably uncritical way, because it's all so new to him & he has no relevant frame of reference or ability to reality-check it.  All that said, they present some really thought-provoking stuff and, as I said, some of it clearly rubs off on them.]

Ho hum.  Just watch the video when you have 90 mins to spare.  And for good measure, let's add the following, from the remarkable commentator Kamil Galeev, which fits very neatly: 

The Soviet American war was supposed to be fought to somewhere to the west of Rhine. What you got instead is a Soviet Civil War happening to the east of Dnieper.  If you said that the battles of the great European war will not be fought in Dunkirk and La Rochelle, but somewhere in Kupyansk ... you would have been once put into a psych ward, or, at least, not taken as a serious person. The behemoth military machine had been built, once, for a thunderbolt strike towards the English Channel. Whatever remained from it, is now decimating itself in the useless battles over the useless coal towns of the Donetsk Oblast

You would understand the course of this war much better, if you consider that on February 23, 2022, Putin considered Ukrainians as Russians. Perfectly integratable, assimilatable and draftable.   Take control over Ukraine, and increase your Russian population by over 1/3.   Now the next generation of Russian leaders will not see Ukrainians as Russians anymore. The integration of Ukrainians into Russia proper will not be seen as either possible, or even desirable. It will be seen as a hostile foreign country, and a hostile foreign population.   So, this may be the most important final result of this war. The unity of Soviet world, only partially affected by 1991, is now firmly and irreversibly shattered. Too much blood spilled, too much mutual hatred & suspicion arisen. Return to how it used to be is no longer possible

That said, recall Plokhy's salutary point above:  all this can be true, and yet Russia can also still be a threat to Europe.  Make that 'is'.

ND

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** Again, on their better days

Budget compo: and, yes, Miliband - again!

With the Budget looking to be one helluva political set piece drama, it's time for C@W to predict the content.  She's gonna do something big, but what?  Over to you all.  Compo question: which levers will Reeves pull?  

(I have always reckoned that simply adding more bands at the upper end of the Council Tax meets all the political and technical tests: it's fast, 'progressive', virtually impossible to dodge.  If that isn't one of her measures, she's even madder than previously thought.)

AND of course it all leads to heightened leadership speculation.  AND as you all know, I have long championed the notion that Miliband's prospects are a great deal better than most people say - in that Doomsday aspect, if not for keeping his job under Starmer.  Right on cue, here's Guido: 

The Times picks up on rumours that Ed Miliband is a viable replacement for Starmer come the PM’s defenestration. As Guido reported back in September the Energy Secretary went on major manoeuvres after the PM tried and failed to remove him from post at the Phase 2 reshuffle. He is blamed by senior figures in Labour for a series of inflammatory briefings whose aim is to undermine Starmer. No surprise then that with Keir’s possible end on the horizon someone has decided to start whispering Miliband’s name in hacks’ ears…

I agree.

ND

Weekend wisdom: interview with Martin Wolf

Here's something that's worth an hour of anyone's time: an intelligent(ish) interview with the super-intelligent Martin Wolf, FT, doyen of economics commentators and billed here as the World's Top Financial Journalist (a title he disowns, BTW, claiming only tangential knowledge of finance). 

Mostly, it's a case of listen, learn, reflect: Wolf is impressively thoughtful, not least on the matter of what's genuinely uncertain in our present stressed circumstances.  But there were a couple of things he expresses serious interest in, which I'd push back on:

• Citizen's assemblies.  Yeah, but who gets to run them?  You know perfectly well that a cleverly framed set-up will get any answer that's wanted by the establishment that commissions them**.  I mean, seriously, this is bonkers.
• Workers' representatives on Boards: he thinks Germany has done well with this.  Hmm.  I have some experience, via a lengthy consultancy gig I undertook in Germany, with an archetypal large German co.  The workers' board member was given a nice office, and frequent, carefully curated 'briefings' on all manner of topics.  He was a nice enough cove, completely out of his depth.  Those carefully selected mangers giving him the briefings said he barely understood any but the most basic topics, and was a pushover.  Maybe that was exceptionally helpful to the co in question!  But I doubt it's what Wolf means.

He also seems to be warming to proportional representation.  Well, too big an issue to dilate upon here, save to note that, barring some political event not even dreamed of right now, the next GE will be conducted in genuinely uncharted electoral waters.

Enjoy.

ND

_________

** Fair enough, I once reviewed in detail the output of a CA on use of biomass, which was (I consider) fairly well set-up with balanced opening presentations, and which clearly surprised the organisers as to how strongly the majority was against tree-burning (which as not the answer they wanted).  HOWEVER, the official take on it mis-used the actual voting data.  Having failed to rig it, they still tried to bias the one-liner takeways.  And you know they'd have rigged it even more determinedly for a sequel.  You'll all keep voting until you give the right answer.

White elephant houses [still] for sale

The amusing and long-running tale continues of the luxury 7-bedroom Croydon houses being offered with no garages and profoundly awkward vehicular access - at, errr, £1.65m apiece.

Well, they still haven't sold - despite the steeply-inclined driveway being nicely paved now, and one or two other cosmetic finishing touches being added (saplings, gates, handrails on the steep concrete steps, see these recent pics).

Steep prices, steep driveways  -  & no garages 

But they are now also being promoted by yet another estate agent - which specialises in marketing properties intended for buy-to-let.  

Can multiple occupancy and asylum-seekers be far behind?  They wouldn't have seven cars to go with the seven bedrooms ... (at least, not until they've "joined the labour market") and would be glad of the five bus routes that pass the front door, some of them 24/7, on the busy A232 'Red Route'.

ND

The French farce of 'one in, one out'

As our friend Mr Hēméra kindly pointed out BTL yesterday, my vision of a single small-boater being recycled endlessly between France & Dover & back to gain credits for the Frogs under 'one in, one out', may have come true almost immediately.  The Beeb led with the story yesterday, although the Graun kept it off their front www page altogether: we can imagine which approach goes down better with ministers ...  And the Beeb also announced that Mr Frog is no longer reckoning to puncture or otherwise intercept the boats in shallow water ... citing 'Elf-n-Safety!  (Have you ever seen a wheelchair user trying to access the Metro?  They have absolutely no concept of E-n-S there.)

All very entertaining.  And the supplementary questions are so easy to generate, it's almost embarrassing to do so.  But here goes, for starters.  

1. OK, chapter and verse, please, on how exactly the 'one in ...' points system works in such cases ...
2. ... and was it meant to be, errr, a deterrent?
3. Does this enterprising chap get another round of free legal aid in order to plead his case all over again?  With added sobbing and explanations of how France is unsafe for human habitation?
4. Where did he get the money for a second voyage?   (maybe the Louvre heist ..?)
5. How come the meejah all have interviews with him??  
6. Have the handful of (volunteer) Rwanda deportees also come back?

Just askin' ...

ND

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PS: thinking again about 4 & 5 above: along with two packets of 'Duchy Original' oat biscuits, did his "HMG farewell goodie-bag" from last time include €1,000 and an i-phone?

All up for Miliband?

Last week before a Select Committee, a bunch of genuine energy industry experts effectively demolished Miliband's plans - at least in his risible 2030 timing for de-carb and price cuts, if not in totality.  Their numbers and reasoning cannot be gainsaid.  Even the Grauniad has noticed.

And yet he & DESNZ still keep mouthing the same nonsense. "It's all the fault of gas. £300 bill reductions by 2030 are a commitment. 95% decarb elec by 2030. Both will come through investment in renewables, and that's the only way." 

Emperor. No clothes. It's too serious, just to point & laugh.  

I know he thinks Net Zero is his life's mission on earth & redemption for losing the 2015 GE; he's resilient, determined, politically adept and relentlessly optimistic: but how long can he last in office?  Before he's simply pushed by Starmer, or baited beyond endurance by Reeves, or his intellectual pride causes him to throw in the towel?

UPDATE, THURSDAY  -  not saying "you read it here first"; but this morning's Graun reckons it is indeed all up for Miliband's policies & targets.  Can he last until Xmas?  The Budget?

ND