Weekend Reading: Drax / Womens Rights vs Trans

Couple of worthwhile MSM press articles here - unusually good; and for the final one, an unusual source, too.

Drax - the papers are full of Drax at the moment as Miliband has partially caved in to the Starmer / Reeves growth-fixation.  OK, he's reduced the annual amount of subsidy for the Yorkshire tree-consuming monster, but he's extending our payments to undeserving Drax by another 4 years, on spurious grounds ("TINA": well, Ed, there are better alternatives), all for the sake of keeping options open for Drax to build a 'BECCS' plant, maybe, some time in the future of its own choosing, if it gets given even more £££, no commitments made at this time.  That's one helluva costly option, without any certainty of ultimate delivery.  Madness.

Several of the MPs taking a broadly anti-Drax line in Parliament of late, have actually screwed up in what they've said on this fairly technical topic; and the press have not been much better.  Even the FT is all-too-frequently disappointing in such BAU matters, silently and implicitly siding with, errr, BAU (and ad revenues?)  This, though not 100% accurate, is many times better than usual.  Oh, and quite a neat, perky little snipe from Nils Prately in the Graun, too.

Trans - also from the Graun is this, from the increasingly confident feminist pen of Sonia Sodha.  Here's a flavour (my emphasis): 

No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague... Peggie shared her account of what happened with the tribunal last week ... Dr Beth Upton, the [trans] male doctor in question, walked into the [changing] room while she was partially undressed... Upton put in a formal complaint, and Peggie was suspended for bullying and harassment... The greatest responsibility lies with Peggie’s employer, who, instead of making separate accommodations for Upton, expected female colleagues to ignore the fact he is male [sic!]... The attempted justification is that everyone must adopt the minority belief system that someone’s sex is not a scientific fact but a matter of their gender identity, or some sort of gendered soul.  As a personal worldview, that’s someone’s own business, but it is wrong – and, in a work context, unprofessional – to try to force it on others in relation to single-sex spaces, services and sports...

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change ... Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

'Misgendering' the doctor, by name, in print!  Go Sonia, Go Graun!

ND

US / Europe / Defence: some early thoughts

We had it coming.

1.  Trump's demand for increased European defence spending is (a) no surprise, and (b) totally reasonable.  So: what, in general terms, is Europe going to sacrifice, in order to move towards him on this?  Its freedom?  Because if Putin makes his next territorial move while Trump is in the job, that's what is at stake.  

I'm guessing it'll be Net Zero etc.  That particular policy desideratum is already proven to take second place to growth in most countries, when confronted directly with the trade-off.  I reckon it will come a poor third, when Russia actively raises dust in the Baltics / the Polish border / the Balkans.

2.  Bringing this issue home to a Parliament near you: will Starmer dare to continue holding back on his minimalist 2.5% GDP defence spending "aspiration"?  There's no timetable for that, beyond "by the end of the Parliament"; and thus far the MoD is in the firing line for Reeves' upcoming departmental cuts like all the rest.  

3.  Looking just a little further from home: when is the EU going to tell the Irish they need to pull their weight on defence??  They've been shamelessly free-riding forever, and some day it has to stop.  I know they have neutrality built into their Accession Treaty, but they can damn' well start paying cash for the defence they've been enjoying for free. 

Loads more to say, of course, so have at it BTL.  

We had it coming.

ND

War to the knife with Greens: Starmer going for broke

Going for growth?  There's every sign Starmer is going for broke - a slew of deeply controversial decisions either made already, or being readied, all in a rush.  Someone's told him it'll be a compelling, critical-mass message for all those would-be investors in UK plc that he's really open for business and will trample down all nay-sayers into the building-site dust.  (And presumably McSweeney has told him that 'all at once' is the best tactic.)

• Support for Heathrow third runway (already signaled explicitly)
• 'Nothing to stand in the way of new nukes' (yesterday)
• 'Likely to grant Rosebank etc oil/gas production licences' (yesterday)
• Extension of subsidies for Drax (Monday, by all accounts)

Everyone has their favourite 'hate' - mine is Drax; & I approve of Rosebank - and there is many a Green (and Red-Green) who hates them all with equal passion.  Perhaps there is someone other than Reeves who loves them all?  The construction industry, I guess, although they get nothing from the Drax announcement because Drax won't be committing to it's putative, ridiculous next-phase project "BECCS" in the near future - in fact, maybe never.

Wow.  Has McSweeney decided there'll be a month of massive sound & fury, followed by the usual amnesia?  Are the lefties who've just had the Whip restored so pathetically grateful, they'll take the required vow of silence?  Will the construction unions come swinging in with big support?

And Miliband ..?  Ah yes, we've mused about him several times.  He's swallowed LHR3.  He is in favour of nukes, and can probably swallow Drax (with much sophistry).  But Rosebank?  Lots of pundits are tipping him to quit over this, but I reckon otherwise: check his performance at the ESNZ Select Committee last month (linked to in an earlier post) - he very studiously repeated the exact wording of the Labour manifesto pledge: no new exploration licences.  Rosebank et al don't need an exploration licence, just a production permit.  I reckon he's swallowed it already, but we may soon find out.  His substantial cred with the greeny-lefties is going to be stretched to breaking-point soon.  What spectator sport this is!

Interestingly, only the nukes on that list above involve government money - and even that has (thus far) been limited to the ill-judged, probably ill-fated Sizewell C.  Everything else will either be private money and/or subsidies levied on energy bills.  So none of these 'announcements' is anything more than permissory.  Performative policy, on the cheap.  May never happen (aside from Drax grabbing the new subsidies with both hands, of course).

So:  let's see if there's a lasting political cost.  Maybe, maybe not.

ND

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Sorry, no links on this post - not easy from a 'phone.  You'll need to google it all yourselves!

Wouldn't normally quote Jake Sullivan, but ...

The Biden administration didn't in any way distinguish itself on foreign & security matters (well, on anything really) but here's a great quotation from the outgoing National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. 

If I had told you three years ago that Joe Biden was going to announce a special military operation to take Ottawa in a week and three years later that he was in the wheat fields of Manitoba losing thousands of soldiers a month with inflation over 10% and interest rates in America over 20%, 600,000 Americans either dead or wounded, and we're inching out little Canadian town by little Canadian town, you wouldn't sit here saying, 'Wow, America's really winning this war in a big way, that’s great for America'. You would never say that. But somehow we're saying, 'oh the Russians there doing great'. They are not doing great:  They set out on a strategic objective … and they have failed in that.

It's from an interview here.  He wants to be careful not to give Trump any ideas ...

ND

Trump's trade war may give us a new data-point

Trump seems to have fired the first salvos of a new global trade war.  Does he imagine, as did Putin with his shooting war, that opponents will rapidly fold and it'll all be over in days or weeks?  Well, maybe.  But Colombia might not have set the pattern.

Old Pa Drew was in the international foodstuffs game and, having been a WW2 soldier in his time, brought me up to the slogan "trade is better than war": and I'm a free-trader.   Well, but it was never a cure-all, as I readily admit.

On the other side of the account, history records nations who viewed sea-faring merchant activity as the work of the devil, and sought to ban trading altogether.  Which is a debate we perennially return to here at C@W in rather more subtle form: what's the appropriate degree of dependency on trade, as opposed to national self sufficiency?  There's no scientific way of resolving this question, even though there are metrics one might try to deploy.  

In any event, some trade-dependencies are faut-de-mieux:  I was once posed a deliberately provocative question in a seminar by a Chinese energy economist, relating to Europe's dependency on cross-border electricity trade to keep our highly interconnected grids functioning: this was surely a major strategic weakness and a Very Bad Thing, she demanded.  I politely replied that, yes, sometimes import dependency can work against you, and that *ahem* some countries were dependent on imports for their oil ...

Anyhow: the rationale for trade is, of course, that it engenders efficiencies.  The Trump Trade War might just give us some hard data on just how costly are the inefficiencies his stymying of free-flow might bring about.

Then again, maybe everyone hastens to do his bidding...

Looking forward to hearing from some of you supporters of mercantilism and self-sufficiency out there.  (I'm caricaturing a bit, I know.)

ND  

DeepSeek: capitalism at its finest!

Trump is right that DeepSeek is a wakeup call.  For a very long time many on the capitalist side of the argument (including myself) have taken a degree of complacent comfort in the highly derivative nature of Chinese technology.  One of out BTL commenters even went so far as to say that reports of a Chinese stealth fighter couldn't possibly be true.  Of course, we've long noted the undeniable, gargantuan successes of China's mercantile strategy, but hey, that's how Japan, S.Korea and Taiwan joined the club. 

And now, DeepSeek!   Assuming it isn't a fake - and I think we may - it represents an all-time classic example of capitalism at its finest:  people with strong commercial motivation, creativity, and sufficient political freedom - highly qualified, but sufficient - to give rein to it;  and the innovations flow!

And of course in a frontier space like LLMs, random disruptions and breakthroughs are to be expected.  We just need to recognise that a western cultural backdrop is not the only fertile context.  

So 'wakeup call' is all we need to say.  Provided that those who hear it are not just the complacent, comatose denizens of Silicon Valley.  Now, what was it about that stealth fighter again?

ND

Labour headed for serious internal strife

The Starmer government has been trying the patience of Labour members from MPs downwards, ever since the 2-chid allowance and winter fuel payment things, not to mention the freebies.  Their mealy-mouthed stance on Gaza enrages further tranches of their base.  Kow-towing to Trump - and who knows what that might entail - won't go down at all well in many quarters.  But now Rachel Reeves seems to have cut loose altogether, and must surely be moving onto a whole new patch of extremely thin ice.

Growth as a panacea for, well, everything, has a moderately respectable economic pedigree (even if achieving it has seemed to be beyond UK politicians - and there are respectable theories about that, too).  Months ago we noted that the Starmer regime seemed to have come to it fairly late, and there's no doubt it's the only thing that matters now - to Reeves, at least.  It's also top of Starmer's rhetoric just now, but soon he may find he has a few competing priorities to juggle.  And ahead of any ultimate, actual growth-derived economic benefits arriving - a long-term prospect, at best - manic growth-stimulating policies come with a lot of near-term political downsides.

This all comes to a head when, last week, Reeves explicitly said growth takes priority over Net Zero etc.  Well, in that case, we can suggest several cost-saving measures right away!  That's after weeks of "the Cuts are Coming!", which is hardly music to the ears of the rest of the Cabinet - and the Party.  Then, to cap it off, LHR3 seems likely to be given the thumbs-up.  

Apparently, Miliband says he won't resign over LHR - and we know how exceptionally "loyal" he is.   OK, LHR might not technically be within his brief, so he might feel able to let it go.  But, seriously, if NZ is to be downgraded as a priority, there really are several material savings to be made there: Sizewell C is a current cash drain for no immediate gain[1], and numerous other smaller, stupid projects too (hydrogen for heating, this includes you - and many more besides).  Reeves' axe must surely swing in his direction as well as every other.  These cuts and blunt Go-for-Growth bulldozer measures will be pissing off Labour swing voters and NIMBYs everywhere on a big scale - and there's one helluva big, restive, worried labour backbench cohort.

Now I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I feel we see some of the bigger players starting to position themselves for genuine internecine strife.  Streeting is the one who caught my attention last week with his big, heavily-trailed "battle of ideas" speech - a sure sign; and of course Khan is always on the lookout for cues to work his passage back into Parliament and the leadership he fondly imagines is his by right.  They say Lammy is boundlessly ambitious.  Rayner is a joke, of course, but for completeness I feel it must be noted that Miliband is seriously radiating dynamic confidence & competence (that's "radiating", not "actually delivering"), and looks like leadership material [2] if anyone was in the market for it.  In a country like France, he'd have no difficulty in being a candidate to go round again.  Mandelson, of course, is always on expert manoeuvres and his favours are fairly fickle. 

Popcorn time, then.  And sooner than we might have expected.

ND

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[1] Not in energy terms, anyhow.  Of course, many say the underlying purpose of the whole civil nuclear programme is to subsidise the military nukes.  And I persist in viewing it as part of the overall craven France-mollifying strategy which of course involves the Small Boats issue.

[2] If you want to judge for yourself, view his performance at the ESNZ committee in Parliament two weeks ago - masterful stuff.

Does Trump know how to play Putin?

He's already winding him up mercilessly.  The context is that Putin's very substantial and prickly pride has been deeply wounded by being flatly ignored and personally banned by the entire western world for several years, and that his travel and international interlocutors are constrained to China, Iran, North Korea and, errr, back to China again.  He is absolutely desperate to be out on the World Leader circuit again, as fast as possible.  And in his optimistic moments his hopes are high.

Now, nationalist Russian sentiment is aggrieved - and is certain Putin is also angry - that Trump has failed to recognize with sufficient gratitude that Soviet Russia won WW2.  They say Putin will assuredly give Trump one of his "history-lesson" rants whenever they do finally get to talk.  He is given to rants of this kind: lengthy and rambling with a mind-numbing effect on audiences.  Nobody outside of the aforesaid China, Iran and N.Korea is trained to "listen attentively" to these things any more: the days of Fidel Castro at the podium are a distant memory.  

And in Trump, they have truly misread their man.

For all his gargantuan failings in many departments, Trump has a colossal amount of low cunning in the matter of personal encounters and human psychology.  Both he and Putin have made vast capital from their differing abilities in human engagement, so they both operate psychological theories of a kind.  But mano a mano?  When dealing with anyone other than meet-the-people walkabout audiences, Putin self-evidently relies on pure menace and intimidation - he even considers this a matter for pride and the TV cameras - a very Russian thing.  Look at the merciless, gleeful, premeditated way he literally set dogs on Angela Merkel, a well-known cynophobiac.  It'll be water off Trump's back: the man doesn't give a toss for such things (and probably won't even grant a face-to-face meeting).  But having already been baited, can we see anxious, urgent Putin going for everyone else's Plan A, viz abject flattery?  Really?

Both Putin and Trump are of course themselves the subjects of endless psychological analysis and speculation, professional and amateur.  But you know who can play them both?  Well, maybe Xi, who has the luxury of considering his chess-by-post moves very carefully, and never needs to make a move he's not totally comfortable with.  But Xi is unlikely to hold the key to restoring Li'l Volodya's fortunes in the Big World of Global Prestige.

The relevant answer is ... Zelensky.  If you've seen one or other of the lengthy TV documentaries on the man, you'll be in no doubt whatever that the little comedian / showman / war leader is absolutely masterful in his personal dealings - with whole crowds of foreign politicians as well as one-on-one encounters.  He, too, has had a very long time to ponder the arrival of Trump, but his conclusions and plans for this critical juncture will have been a lot more adroit than the twisted frettings of Putin.  I'd rate Zelensky's chances quite highly of making a bit of strategic hay over the next couple of months.

On the other hand I doubt very much that Putin's upside scenario  - Transactional Trump the famous isolationist, wants a quick PR win, and gives me everything I want - will play out anywhere other than in his most optimistic dreams.  The downside - still in the global naughty corner come summer, Ukrainian drones still falling nightly on my oil refineries, and another trip to Pyongyang in the diary - looks a lot more likely.  

And Zelensky will still have a ghastly, grinding war on his hands.  Perhaps with a few more weapons in the armoury, though.  And Xi will continue to sit there quietly at his own global chessboard, planning his Taiwan campaign.

ND

"50 new gas-fired power plants for Germany" - and UK?

"German opposition leader vows to build 50 gas-fired power plants if elected", the story goes.  This is Merz, leader of the CDU and potentially Germany's next Chancellor (although see the 2025 Predictions compo).  50 is hyperbolic[1], but the point remains: Germany is hugely lacking in natural energy resources and, having bizarrely closed all its nukes on Merkel's whim, can't remotely rely on its large but actually not very impressive fleet of solar and wind power.  (Solar?  This is N.Europe.  Wind?  It has only a very small coastline, and that's in the wrong place.  Coal & lignite?   In abundance - but not "green", of course.)

So where would the gas come from?  Well, "imports": but lack of detail on this is just one element of the hyperbole, and his statement isn't any kind of practical plan.  But the point remains: the more wind & solar in a power fleet, the more strategic, long-term[2] backup power is required.  Right now, batteries aren't even remotely candidates for this, and won't be within a realistic planning period.   Pumped-storage hydro is great but in limited supply.  Imports of electricity are what Germany relies on right now but the Scandinavians are getting pretty testy about this - it plays havoc with their own markets - and may well pull the plug. 

Which brings us to our own shores.  Large-scale build-up of solar and wind - check.  Growing electricity demand (after more than a decade of decline) - check.  Declining nuclear capacity[3] - check.  Reliance on imports which might not be a practical proposition indefinitely - check.  So: continued, nay, growing need for gas-fired backup - check.  Even Little Ed Miliband realised this before the election, and now plans to retain the full 30-35 MW of our existing fleet[4] in his feeble "100% decarbonised by 2030, oops, make that 95%, it's what I always meant, it's the same thing" non-plan.

Here's the thing: these things are easy for a politician to say but that's not enough.  Capital plant can't equally easily be made to stand around doing nothing all year, but spring into life with ultra-high reliability on the odd, unpredictable occasion it's needed to be in action for a week or so.  That's not how the world works.

To be fair, HMG has gone one step further and has come up with a new subsidy for which backup gas-fired plants would qualify - but that's only the financial aspect.  The practical and physical aspects are legion, not least because if Mili's plans for decarbonising home heating progress[5] the overall scale of gas infrastructure[6] will be diminishing materially, and it would be comprehensive extant infrastructure paid for by someone else (as it is at present) that a rarely-used gas-based backup system would parasitically depend upon.

Yet another facet of the infeasibility of Miliband's plan.  He gave a very upbeat (and in fact, rather good - in political terms) performance in front of the Select Committee last week, and one can easily see how Labour MPs who don't understand the subject matter (evidently including Starmer and Reeves) would be inclined to view him very favourably and trust him implicitly.  But it's all destined to hit the rocks of hard reality at some point.  When?  I'm not sure.  Meantime, a heap of subsidy-contracts are gonna get taken by some players - and paid for by us.

ND

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[1] ... but music to the ears of hard-pressed Siemens!

[2] In this context, 'long-term' means weeks.  Batteries are only good for hours - which is very useful for some purposes, but not for Dunkelflaute

[3] Hinkley Point C start-up is a distant prospect, and the existing fleet is in decline, even if its life is prolonged to the max and the ONR throws safety considerations to the winds

[4] Numbers vary from document to document

[5] His targets won't be met, of course, but the gradual replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps is inevitable, even if at infinitesimal pace.  Ditto EVs

[6] By 'infrastructure' I mean not only the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG import terminals, but also the commercial and 'soft' aspects associated with there being a vast amount of gas sloshing around the UK all the time & particularly in winter:  lots of long-term supply contracts, gas traders, commercial, engineering & tech expertise, market liquidity etc etc - in other words, a thriving, extant gas industry of critical mass.   

Trump: using the levers of his very great power

A longstanding strategy which is often attributed to (e.g.) Israel is to nurture the reputation of being outright crazy, with the 'benefit' that everyone else thinks:  they're crazy enough, they really might do it!

Re-enter Donald Trump, who is already claiming - probably with justification - to have been instrumental in the (putative) ceasefire in Gaza.  It's pretty obvious his influence is already being felt elsewhere too, such is his hard-earned reputation for maverick behaviour, no guesswork required.  What interests me most is that over the past few weeks he's been showing some serious understanding of just how far this could take him, and just how extensive are the levers of (indirect) power he will enjoy.

Long-time readers will know I often praise Mandelson for having a genuinely broad and creative approach to what can be done with power.  There aren't so many with that degree of lateral thinking.  We been given glimpses now, as to just how widely Trump is casting his gaze and, allied with his "tariff is my favourite word" weapon, it's pretty revolutionary.

Start with his designs on US territorial expansion, a topic possibly considered dead since the Alaska purchase of 1867.  Greenland.  Canada!  People are already sketching out how it might be done.  Then think about Europe.  "Unless you guys increase your defence spending, NOW, to 3% GDP, I'm withdrawing from NATO.  You have three months to pass the legislation."  And so on - no need to give the man ideas.   

Perhaps Mandelson isn't such a bad choice for Ambassador after all.

ND

WFH "costs nothing". WTF? Polly Toynbee is a fool

WFH  -  "It’s free, it’s sensible and it makes workers happy. The government needs to accept that this is the new normal"

Guess which idiot wrote that?  Well, no prizes, it's Polly Toynbee, in a Graun piece entitled Labour has been sucked into the WFH culture war. It should know better. 

We'll let her make her case, as she bewails what she detects as government reverting to neanderthal office-bound working practices. 

... many workplaces have thrived because of it ... A perverse strain of rightwing thought opposes almost any social progress that improves other people’s lives ... Zoom meetings save time and wasteful travel, employers are free to hire talent from anywhere in the country, and employees have escaped escalating property prices in London and steep commuting costs. WFH has been a boon for the climate, too; according to one US study, two to four days of remote working a week lowers carbon emissions by between 11% and 29% ... hybrid working policies [are] key to attracting talent ... people value the ability to work from home two or three days a week about the same as they would an 8% pay rise.  Does [the government] want to be nice to employees, or nasty? ... new employment rights will help civilise working life. Growth-boosting plans to get “economically inactive” people with disabilities or caring responsibilities into jobs will only succeed with maximum flexibility. And WFH, remember, is free, which makes it look like a very sensible policy in a year when large pay rises seem unlikely. 

Setting aside the ridiculously hyperbolic conclusion one is supposed to infer from that deliberately misleading sentence on climate benefits, we can assess the force of what she's saying, before entering the counter-arguments (which, true to her miserable form, she does not acknowledge at all).

Efficiency:  yes, and nobody disagrees, Zoom etc as a facility is a fine thing to have and can make for all manner of efficiencies.  So what?  The telephone has been around for well over a century.  I attended my first "teleconference" in 1986: the resolution of the mug-shots wasn't great, but even then the sound was fine and it had the ability to switch to doc-display mode.  Presumably Toynbee inhabits a tech-free world of Graun chatterers who imagine it was invented in 2020.

And ...  and?    Well, excepting only the "costs nothing" point which we'll return to, everything else in her case is basically "staff like it".  Well, staff say they like a lot of things: more money, extra holidays, free childcare, slap-up canteen lunches, company car, health insurance, non-contributory pension, golfing away-days ...   and they all take their place in a businesslike assessment of how the trade-offs are going to work out.  So let's get to the trade-offs, eh, Polly? 

It's really odd because I would have thought lefties, softies and tree-hugger types would have been the first to acknowledge the absolutely critical importance of direct human contact.  Actually, many of them would.  Humans are designed for face-to-face interactions, it's utterly intrinsic in our makeup.  Whenever this breaks down, inhumanity takes hold.  That's an extreme statement of the case, but in a less dramatic form: you try negotiating a complex deal, or making an important new hiring, by any other means than regular over-the-table contact, F2F.  And over the coffee-break - and over a beer afterwards.  I guarantee that in direct competition with companies that insist on a solid percentage of time spent face-to-face with colleagues and counterparties alike, the company that says OK, WFH, sounds fine to me, just check in online a couple of times a week will lose out very significantly over the long run.  And everyone who is serious about getting things done is coming back to this view, albeit belatedly.

What we are running into is the world of people who advocate that anyone can self-diagnose with PTSD or ME and be "supported" by the state as they skulk in their bedrooms.  That any child who doesn't like school or isn't top of the class needs an individual SEND plan + tutor at school, or can be "home-schooled".  Contrary to what people with this mindset believe, there can't be a high percentage of staff who are truly more productive "WFH" four days a week.  For the avoidance of doubt, there will of course always be some people with genuine PTSD / ME / SEND problems / high unsupervised personal productivity etc etc.  But percentage-wise, not many.  Toynbee is extrapolating from her own working practices and assuming the rest of the world runs like hers: a self-motivated journalist tripping around from home-office keyboard to restaurant-lunch-on-expenses, and back to keyboard again.  The woman is a fool.

So:  "WFH is free"?  Nope, it comes at a serious cost:  net efficiency /  productivity / effectiveness at its most functional and cash-oriented; and erosion of face-to-face human contact at its most elevated.

As with many issues, the key is resolving the trade-offs.  Toynbee, pathetic polemicist that she is, doesn't even acknowledge them.  She is a fule and I diskard her uterly, as Nigel M would say. 

ND

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PS, this is all in the same week as Toynbee writes "Ignore Musk, ignore the critics – you’ll feel the benefit of Labour’s policies in your pocket before long".  What more do we need to say?

AI and government: what could go wrong?

That's about it, really.

Blair has obviously got at Starmer.  "AI Superpower"?   Well, if government has anything to do with it, AI Superpower, my arse.

Civil servants are crap at tech stuff (inter multa alia) and picking winners - look how many iterations of 'government portals' etc they go through, before eventually they get websites that actually work.  Then, they put everything online and make applications for stuff self-certifying, so that the slick system they've come up with is robbed blind by scammers.  We know this.  Do we need to rehearse the PO scandal, NHS databases, etc etc etc?

We also know that the UK is capable of being a superpower in all sorts of techie arenas: FI cars; computer games; FinTech;   ... errrr ...   And we haven't jumped with both feet to hobble AI with regulations, unlike the EU.  But electricity, there's the thing: the next generation of data centres will be ferocious power-hogs.  The US will take this in its stride (well, maybe not California) but we are looking shaky right now: Jan 8th was nearly blackout time, and data centres can't be doing with that.  Starmer has obviously been told about this one because he's muttering about SMRs - maybe he hopes the Big 7 will pay for his energy policy at the same time as gladdening his heart with multi-billion AI-related investments here.

The answer has to be: (a) facilitate it, planning-wise; (b) leave it alone; (c) buy, for government use, good products when they become available and are fully tested.  But for pity's sake don't pay for the DWP to be the beta site for some piece of premature vapourware.  Because that's what this all looks like.

ND

Middle-class morality tale: 'Rogues' ... continued

Having moved on from Jailbirds I have Known to mere Rogues, here's the story of a man we'll call Desmond.

I met Desmond via my in-laws, who lived in a classic and very respectable English market town.  A tubby, bustling, jovial fellow, Desmond was well known to all in the Rotary / Conservatives / Probus circles (Freemasons too, I'm guessing).  He had been brewery manager at a well-known county firm, and was now comfortably retired with his wife in a smart bungalow, very much playing the latter-day country squire.  When he wasn't out shooting, he attended every good lunch and dinner going - and that's quite a lot in a town of that sort.  He was easy to like, but behind his back there was a lot of cheery laughter at his expense, because at every meal, his roving eyes were on the lookout for extra helpings: "... If you're not going to eat those parsnips ...", and he would brazenly help himself to his neighbours' (plural) unwanted scoff.  This is not at all the done thing in these circles, but Desmond was shameless.  And tubby.

The other aspect of note was that Desmond plus Mrs were always off shopping in the smart stores in the bigger county towns, and would invariably lunch there too.  This small-scale but relentless extravagance was also widely commented upon - even well-off county folk tend to abstain from conspicuous over-consumption - and one day it came to a juddering halt.  The consumerist couple had, it transpired, taken out all the equity from the bungalow, spent themselves into the ground, handed the keys back to the bank and, accurately presenting as homeless and penniless, threw themselves on the mercy of the local authority.

By some miracle, they were immediately found a small but comfortable flat at minimal rent in a sheltered housing complex based around a smart 18th century town house in pleasant grounds, not two miles from where they lived before.  Doubtless, several other welfare benefits flowed: if means-testing was involved, they qualified!  After the immediate disbelief had worn off, the reactions of their many acquaintances were critical, but by no means terminally outraged: nor were Desmond & Mrs shunned from polite society.  Somehow in all this they had managed to keep the shotguns & car - and proceeded to continue with life much as before, less the shopping and lunching expeditions.  Well, there was nowhere to put new purchases any longer.  Amazing stuff.  Over time, the commentary perceptibly shifted from "feckless bugger" to "not sure why we don't do that, too!"  As periodic visitors to this saga of everyday county life, Mrs Drew and I were possibly even more surprised by the widespread eventual acceptance of Desmond's dissolute doings than we were by the deed itself.  We even half-wondered if we were detecting a faint new hint of "oh well, eat, drink and be merry, eh?" in the general attitude of Desmond's circles.

Anyhow, notwithstanding his shameless insouciance there was probably some stress involved in all this for the portly Desmond, and some months later he suffered a heart attack.  He lasted but a few days in hospital and suffered a fatal relapse after lunch one day.  Fittingly, his last words were reliably said to have been: "I never did get my pudding..."   Middle-class entitlement, eh?  

He would have wanted to go that way, everyone agreed.

ND

At last, the 2025 Predictions Compo!

OK, here we go for 2025.  In keeping with tradition, answers on a postcard BTL, if you please.

*   *   *   *   *

1.  Name of first sitting MP defecting to Reform

2.  Date of Starmer's first Cabinet reshuffle, as defined below.  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)

3.  Anything you care to predict about the German Fed elections

4.  Composition of German government coalition by year-end (if none finalised by then, say 'none')

5.  Dollar / rouble exchange rate on Christmas Eve

6.  Oh, all right then: FTSE100 on Christmas Eve

(For masochists)  Bonus wildcard essay question : at headline level, what will be the state of play in Ukraine at year-end?

Go for it!

ND

________

"Cabinet reshuffle" = two or more changes to the Cabinet roster, unforced by resignation or death.  Splitting of an existing Cabinet post into two or more new positions doesn't count per se - only if accompanied by reshuffle as defined above.

Ukraine in Kursk: quick assessment

The 2025 Predictions compo was coming along - but has to wait!  Because ...

A short while ago we suggested here that Putin was prone to forgetting that the enemy gets a vote; and that Ukraine, already shown to be adept at springing surprises, was likely to have a couple more up its sleeve before Trump convenes any kind of sit-down around a table somewhere.  Yesterday saw the start of one such: a significantly renewed Ukrainian effort on Russian soil in the form of several attacks from their Kursk salient and elsewhere in that vicinity.

The Russian milbloggosphere is in characteristic turmoil over this, and with a new twist.  Previous big surprises - the Wagner 'mutiny' of last year and the Kursk incursion in August - caught them with very little information to go on, and they floundered.  This time, because the Kursk salient was already an area of active operations and an issue that exercised patriotic milbloggers greatly, they have a lot of contacts on the ground feeding them detailed, if extremely patchy and chaotic information.  They also have the usual kneejerk drivel from the Russian MoD, but they know that's always going to be mendacious and wildly complacent.  All in all, they haven't known what to make of it all, and initially resorted to parroting the official "all tidied up, nothing to see here, move along" stuff.  But they knew that wasn't right.

As of this morning, they've settled for a handful of agreed conclusions:  

• what's been seen so far isn't the main Ukrainian thrust, which is yet to come;
• even this "diversionary" activity has met with some success;
• Ukraine is deploying electronic warfare measures that are neutering Russian drones, along with some seemingly effective all-arms coordination in depth.

None that I've seen have made the obvious comment, which would be to liken this winter push to the Battle of the Bulge:  though one has suggested it is a "blow of last hope", which maybe amounts to the same thing.

Finally, the most knowledgeable blog-writers have held back from drawing preliminary conclusions altogether (and of course Putin, as ever in such circumstances, remains entirely silent and missing from the public sphere), which is wise because the Ukrainians are just as good at chess as the Russians and have had many months to plan this move.  The date of Trump's inauguration has, after all, been known for quite a while.

Am I going to fall into the first-draft-of-history-trap here?  No: just a handful of points.

• this "blow of last hope" should have been blatantly obvious to Putin et al, both in general and in detail: yet again, his ability to be thrown by tactical events seemingly knows no limits: we can adduce half a dozen such unforced errors around his sphere of (notional) influence since the Syrian debacle alone.  He may have a brutal 'theory of (long-run) victory', but if he trips up and falls flat on his face in the meantime, it might still not work out.
• plenty of time between now and Jan 20 for more ...
• this year has seen some deeply impressive mil-tech advances from Ukraine's still highly capable defence-industrial base.  I've been expecting the electronic warfare anti-drone breakthrough for 18 months - they really needed it for their 2023 summer offensive, but better late than never.  There may be more to come on this front, too: and while tech advances tend to be countered by the other side after a while, the issue right now is the next couple of months. 

On paper, Putin shouldn't even be worrying about Kursk - he'll get it back for sure in due course, one way or the other - but I'll bet he is.

ND

The Campbell Betting Syndicate: really, really funny

An important C@W morality tale

If you haven't caught it amongst all the holiday excitement, there's a remarkable story afoot of how Alastair Campbell's son Rory allegedly took a load of high-rolling mug punters for several million quid, and has now disappeared - along with the money, naturally.  It's said he's suffering from the mental stress of it all, naturally, and must be left alone.

If these allegations are true, this is really, really funny.  It merits coverage on C@W because (as well as being hilarious) truth be told, mug-punter "investments" are a perennial source of finance for capitalist ventures the world over.  This is an important morality tale.  It is every adult's job to ensure that they don't themselves join this gravy train, and that they do raise their children to recognize the danger signals.

And the biggest danger signal of all, flashing away in lurid neon lights, is - "I've got this infallible system ..."!  For Pity's sake, a betting syndicate!!  Or, as we should correctly term it, just another Ponzi scheme.  With the outside chance that things work out in the short term, but are guaranteed to crater when, as always, betting against the house doesn't work out in the long run.

Making things more delicious than usual, the endlessly entertaining, worldly-wise Campbell senior (+ Mrs C) seem to have sunk quite a bit of dosh into it[1] themselves.  We all hope they got out in time ...  *Ahem*. 

Was Campbell Jnr betting against the house?  Well, details are scant, but I think that's what we must infer: he and his oh-so-mathematical "system" [2] thought they knew better than the big Asian bookies, where liquidity is such you can go large without moving the market.  Well, it is indeed sometimes realistically possible to know better than the odds on offer in a big market[3].  But if you're so damn' smart, the risk-free approach is to arbitrage, not simply to indulge in naked speculation[4].  And then ... there's credit risk on top!  Not only might you not know better than the market - when you do come out ahead, the bastards might not pay!  Which is what, we are told, happened here.  I mean, an online bookmaker in the sub-continent?  Well well well.

Just to round off, read the last couple of paras in that story - the pugnacious press release.  This story, we are angrily told, is one of outrageous breaches of confidence by Master Campbell's investors, which naturally causes the former to withdraw his offer to compensate the latter.  It's all their fault, as anyone can plainly see.  

I wonder who on earth drafted that?  The old master is losing his touch, methinks.

We'll have our own fabulous C@W speculative venture here in a day or so ... the 2025 New Year's Predictions Compo!  Watch this space.

ND

______________________

[1]  It's not wrong - indeed, it can be truly honourable - for friends and relatives to back their nearest and dearest, of course: I've done it myself several times.  But only on businesslike terms that delude nobody, and satisfy everyone before, during and after.

[2] 'Mathematical' systems are the worst.  Very few people really understand probability.

[3] I have a friend who genuinely makes serious money on the horses - or did, until he was no longer physically mobile enough to work his energetic system, which is as follows:

1. study the form, exhaustively.  There's plenty of good data
2. go to the track on the day, and check out the horseflesh for yourself in the paddock.  It doesn't take much experience to spot a horse that is lethargic, skittish, spooked etc
3. arbitrage[4] the on-course odds (knowledgeable) against the Tote (mug punters watching a TV screen hundreds of miles away; sentimental betting on names that sound nice etc etc)
4. rinse, collect, and repeat.

This does entail a very busy afternoon scurrying around, however - plus a little bit of instant arithmetic.  And the credit risk at UK race meets is pretty low.  Incidentally, my man is always willing to be completely transparent: if you can keep up, he'll give you a precise running commentary as he puffs up and down, and you can emulate his every move - if you're quick enough.  Sadly, his puffing days are over.

PS:  the very fact that such a method can be successful, suggests to me that UK horseracing isn't particularly bent.  The dogs - ah, now that's another matter ...

[4] Pure arb in horse-racing is quite difficult for anyone except a bookie (or someone in league with a bookie) to do.  So I must accept that  'risk-free' here is too glib.  
 

What will 'President Musk' decree?

Stuff his new best friend won't much like, we have to guess - based on his attachment to EVs and immigration and the like, not to mention rogue outbursts in public whenever the mood takes.  

Where and when do we see this all coming to grief?  Overweening "superstar advisers" (Rasputin, Cummings, Gray, etc) rarely work out, even for a short while.

We can add this to the list of New Year prediction questions.  Coming soon.

ND

Guess the (blog) readership: RESULT

Further to the little Xmas blog-quizlet, I can report that the 2024 C@W top five countries-of-readership, as given by google-stats, are as follows, in descending order:

1. Hong Kong
2. China
3. USA
4. Singapore
5. UK

For reasons of fairness we'll amalgamate 1 & 2 because I can't imagine anyone reckoned on g-stats distinguishing HK and China: so 2-5 all move up one place and then it becomes relevant to note that #6 (becoming #5) is Norway.   HK+China is #1 by a country mile, BTW - rather gratifying.  And the total viewer-hits for the year was approx 800k, so it's not a particularly small sample (if not remotely premier-league blogging).  As noted before, maybe this is naïve but I don't really feel this is badly bot-distorted because the hits fairly clearly match subject-matter.  If clickbait was the only game in town you can guess what key-words we'd be majoring on.

I gave you a clue which was that the BTL ecosystem isn't at all representative (unless most of you live in HK, I suppose - and I know for sure that's not the case for several of our friends).

We had some pretty left-field suggestions: Belarus, North Korea & Yemen, to be precise.  But there's a clear winner, and it's Caesar H, with China / USA /  UK /  Russia /  Belarus.  Hon mensh to Matt who also got three countries correctly from the top five, but not so accurately ordered.  Russia, BTW, = #6 (revised ranking), reinforcing both the above awards as it featured in both their lists.

ND

2024 Predictions Compo: RESULT

Tradition has it that around now we dust off the crystal balls and gaze into the year ahead.  So: while you're up in the loft looking for your predicting paraphernalia for 2025, let's look at how 2024 worked out against everyone's forecasting.

The questions from last year: 

1. UK GE: date (month); 
2. ... and number of Labour MPs after the GE 
3. US Presidency: who wins? 
4. Size of V. Putin's share of the Russian vote (as announced) 
5. By how much, and in what direction, will the FTSE100 change between midnight UK GE polling day and the end of 2024? 
6. Length of Sam B-F's gaol term upon sentencing (note: zero is a number). Extra point for size of the fine in USD 
7. Where will Man Utd rank in the Prem at the end of the '23-4 season, and who will be manager?

Answers:  

1. 4 July.  We all plumped for the autumn ... save for Mr Cowshed who said "early July"!  Off to a flying start.
2. 411.  What a fiasco.  Closest here was Caesar H, at 400.
3. Mostly Trumps here: two Bidens and, errrr, a "Haley"
4. 88.48%.  Another win for Cowshed, with 92%: see footnote on a curiosity.
5. As of 10am, it's plus 0.2%. Barring some amazing action this afternoon,  SubOptimal easily wins this one with +0.22%
6. 25 years / "repay $11bn".  Not sure that's strictly a fine.  Anyhow, several people went with either 20 or 30 years; nobody got close on the $$$.  An entertaining 99 years sentence from the retributive Caesar (thumbs down from him, then); and a lenient 3 from Lilith.
7. 8th / ten Hag.  The best all-round performance on this one: the majority saw tH surviving - well, at least that long - and clustered tightly around 8th.  An entertaining suggestion of Wayne Rooney from BQ.

Good sport!  But there has to be a winner, and the judges say ... Anomalous Cowshed!  With hon mensh to SubOptimal (who [s]he? - please do come again) and Caesar H.  

Up soon: 2025. 

ND

_____________

Note on Putin's vote:  the initial announcement was 87.3%, on which I had been tipped off a few days earlier & duly reported here.  However, subsequently it seems to have been revised upwards (a few late votes, perhaps - well, it's always hard to vote with a severely twisted arm.  And 87% was pretty demeaning).  A pity, because then I'd have won in this category - my prediction was 83%.  But there's no accounting for rigged votes.

Reality dawns on (some) lefties

In a world of echo-chamber opinion-forming, it's always important to keep up with What The Other Side Thinks.  My go-to for what is sometimes called the 'Movement Left'** is Novara Media, a fairly businesslike collective containing its rag-bag share of humourless, mulish identitarians but also some very intelligent people, occasionally with sufficient of an empirical bent to pay attention when it really becomes obvious they are barking up the wrong tree, doctrine or no doctrine.  The recent US election can have that effect on people.

By way of an end-of-year review, their three leading lights (Bastani, Sarkar & Walker) put out this video which I commend to you.  Note in particular the second main section - "Did 'Woke' Die in 2024?" - starting around 25 minutes in.  It contains some pretty trenchant critique of a lot of stuff their general political tendencies would have strongly inclined them towards fairly unreflectively in the past, as they pretty much admit.  Marks the (grudging) acknowledgement of a lost battle in the culture war, I'd say.

The best critiques of those baleful leftist manifestations often come from the more intelligent & reflective corners of the Left itself.  I can also suggest Brian Leiter and Adolph Reed (both American) for more of the same.  Self-professed Marxists all - but smart with it, and contemptuous of what richly deserves contempt.  (Kathleen Stock ditto, but I'm not sure she's a Marxist.)

ND

UPDATE - here's an infinitely more verbose capitulation from the same stable.  Much less honest (1,000 fancy words on "well, of course I never fell for it"), and much funnier, albeit unintentional.  But boy, some of these lefties can't half go on.  You'll pick up some new words, too - if you can struggle through it. 

______________ 

** Roughly speaking, comfortably elitist middle-class leftists outside of regular party politics, mostly youngish & protest-oriented, generally woke and prone to 'language-/ thought-policing' - and thus also inevitably further left than anything as boring as Labour itself. 

Xmas Quiz: guess the audience!

With the year-end readership figures all but fiinalised and the rankings being very clear-cut, we are in a position to pose a little teaser:  over the course of 2024 ...

... which are the top 5 countries-of-origin of the C@W readership? 

(per blogger-stats provided by google).  Answers in descending order, please.  

If anyone gets this right, I shall suspect it's CU or BQ, both of whom still have admin access, much as we miss them.  I couldn't have guessed myself.  Clue:  forget whatever you imagine to be C-O-O of the BTL commenter population, we ain't representative.

PS: someone might tell me I'm being naïve, but I can't imagine the answer is "actually they are all bots".  If I'm wrong about that, it means (a) that's one helluva lot of bots out there - what are they all doing?  (b) they must keep coming back a remarkable number of times - why would they do that?  (c) they are quite discerning bots because they come in numbers relating to the subject-matter of individual posts, as far as I can judge. 

Answers on New Year's Day.

ND

Credit where it's due (2)

Simple Stories from everyday life in capitalist civilisation ...  

Nearly two years ago I dished out the 'C@W Probate Awards' - a ranking of organisations in terms of their bureaucratic efficiency, based on one person's experiences.  Here's another personal tale.

A couple of weeks ago I lost my wallet.  Argghh.  Turned out it was probably 'mislaid for me' by a young family member during a game of hide-and-seek, because it turned up in a very odd place around the house.  Well, there ya go, all part of life's rich tapestry.  Anyhow, as a reflex security measure I promptly cancelled all the cards etc & had them reissued.  Here's the resulting ranking.

"No more than what I'd expect" award  -  'Sentinel' card protection scheme.  One call did it all, as regards getting the process started.  And, very promptly, they called back with a status / next-steps-with-helpful-details report from each of the relevant companies.

"Quickest off the mark" award - Amex.  This required a 'phonecall on top of Sentinel's actions, but the replacement card was in my hand and activated in less than 24 hours.  OK, Amex fees are relatively high, but boy, the service reflects it.

"Dealing with complexity" award - Barclays.  This isn't the first time I've praised B for this (see earlier story), though BTL on that post somebody gave us a very different tale.  To be fair, this time around only B really had anything complex to deal with, but anyhow they rose to the occasion.

"Sluggard" award: jointly to Santander and Transport for London (my 'BorisPass').  Each took a full week - and plainly, these things don't need to take that long.  It has to be said, though, that the lady in branch at S was the most pleasant person I've had to deal with in quite a while, and showed initiative, too.  So I'm generously marking it down as "not her fault"!

One final thing:  in the past I had sometimes mused, in the abstract: which would be worse - losing wallet, or mobile 'phone?  Based on this fairly satisfactory experience, I'd say: deffo the 'phone.  I needed it so many times to sort out the wallet thing (making temporary alternative dispositions, 2FA, etc), I have to believe it would be significantly more incapacitating to lose the 'phone.  An important learning experience.

Learning the hard way is always often tough, but hey, that's how we (well, the survivors, anyhow) move forward.  Any other stories that aren't too painful to dredge up?  

ND

Polly Toynbee, True Believer: hope springs eternal?

The public career of Polly Toynbee is a continuous source of mirth.  How many socialist saviours has she hitched her wagon to, only to have her hopes crushed.  Owen, Blair, Brown, Patricia Hewitt (sic), ... and now Starmer/Reeves.  Always bearing the imprint of the last person to sit upon her / brief her confidentially over lunch.  But before the worm turns & the Great Disappointment strikes, whilst her wagon still hitched there's nothing she won't do by way of providing what she thinks of as helpful outrider support.  Here's the latest - in the Graun, as usual: 

The Waspi women suffered outrageous misogyny, but in poverty-stricken Britain they’re not the top priority. The government is right in its decision not to pay the women up to £10.5bn in compensation ... a government [does not] have a financial duty to repair historical sexism.

Polly: calm down!  Starmer & Reeves - just like your former beau Brown - don't mind lying & brazening these things out.  It just doesn't bother them!  They don't need your sophistry.  Haven't you spotted how they are leading you by the nose?  Here was you, Polly, back in July in that self-same Grauniad: 

Starmer will bin the two-child benefit cap and outdo New Labour on tackling poverty – I’ll bet on it. I will eat my hat – or several – if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t soon find the money to bury the pernicious two-child benefit cap. In her first budget, expect Reeves to find the funds for this, and other public spending not yet announced... Some worry that Starmer and Reeves will be deterred by the campaign to force them to pay up, fearing it would signal their willingness to capitulate and splurge on everything else. I don’t think they’re that frit, with the markets and everyone that matters backing them. It would demonstrate surefooted self-confidence...

Any doubt about their good intent vanished with their creation of a new child poverty unit. ... Every Labour government always reduces poverty: this one will be no exception.  Expect no less from Starmer and Reeves, and probably more... And they will start by hurling the two-child benefit cap into the dustbin of atrocious Tory policies. 

Heart-rending stuff, eh?   Here's how her infatuation with Brown ended ...

ND

Labour & local government 'reform'. Hmm

Some years ago I had a long stint (3 terms) as a local councillor.  Local government has changed in various ways since then, but I remain very well tapped-in locally and have plenty of first-hand perspectives.  I like to think I've seen, and indeed participated in, some genuinely useful Local Authority actions over the years. 

Lots of folk reckon that giving local people "more say" in matters makes for better, more informed decision-making, as well as creating an important cadre of people that step up to take responsibility for stuff.  Doing this for the most part in the properly-constituted, formal Local Authority framework is only right to protect all concerned.  But we can also applaud, for example, the many benefits of healthy local media organisations, albeit precious few local newspapers survive that are worthy of the name.

From Burke and his "little platoons", through Simon Jenkins and his localist enthusiasms, to Andy Burnham et al with some decent track record to display, there are many advocates of wholesale transfer of powers to local authorities.  I should stress that I, too, see major benefits of localisation in sectors where / governance arrangements under which, it is shown to work in practice.  These should be carefully identified and reinforced.  But there are just so many examples of utter nonsense in play.  To take just a few:

• Lutfur Rahman
• the outrageous goings-on at the Teesside Development Corruption - sorry, Corporation, that would disgrace a banana republic
• Rebecca Long-Bailey

Ah, LRB - remember her?  In a substantial pre-GE 2019 document (by weight, that is, not genuine substance) she planned to hand the whole of our energy infrastructure, physical and supply, over to local authorities (the irony! when you see what a cock-up they've always made of their energy endeavours), right down to the level of parish councils and even "local communities ... of around 200 homes"; and of course all workers in the sector to be unionised.   200 homes!  That's when you know you're dealing with a doctrinaire head-case.  OK, nobody ever paid it any serious attention at the time; and she languishes, whipless, on the back benches now, having been the "continuity Corbyn" candidate in 2020, thoroughly trounced by Starmer, and reduced to feeble parliamentary protest-votes.  But still, it shows what some people mean by localisation.

There are other worries, too - see this article by the intelligent-for-a-Grauniad-writer Martin Kettle.

The Labour government itself is of course deeply conflicted on all this right now.  More power for LAs - but don't dare stand in the way of our house-building or energy plans, because we ain't gonna let you.  Ah yes, local people know best - until they run into a Thatcher or a Starmer who "really knows best".

What do we all think?

ND 

Miliband, China, & the feasibility of government plans

Last week Miliband published his risible "Clean Power 2030 Action Plan", piling on yet more nonsense atop the supposedly supportive NESO report of a couple of weeks ago which ostensibly provided cover for his & Starmer's disingenuous retreat from "100% decarbonisation by 2030" to "100% always meant 95%".  That's a lot of reading there, if you're so minded.  Don't expect much[1] intellectual consistency, though.

Anyhow, whatever target he finally declares to be what he really meant all along, one of Mili's ideas is for some kind of 'bonus' to encourage developers to use UK supply chains instead of, as at present, importing just about everything including the workforce.  I can report that would-be new renewables developers are all very keen to be given this bonus, in whatever shape or form it materialises - to the point where they are putting their plans on hold until they learn the details!  Unfortunately, even the fingers-crossed "endorsements" of Mili's breakneck 2030 timetable state that there isn't a nanosecond to be wasted (code for "it's impossible, matey") - so this new cause of delay (among very many one might list) could prove to be a pretext for yet another volte face.  Most likely, I guess, the ditching of the UK Supply Chain thing[2].  By way of support for this cynical view: FID has just been announced on Phase 1 of our very first Carbon Capture & Storage project[3] - and the developers have announced a "non-binding ambition" to source 60% of their stuff from UK supply chains.  How very amusing.

And of course the same goes for the building industry - in spades!  (see what I did there?)  1.5m new houses (sorry - homes: we now learn a significant % will be converted office blocks) cannot remotely be built with nothing but indigenous supply & labour.  Nor the building standards that so many activists believe they were promised would be imposed on housing developers - for energy efficiency / heat pumps / solar panels / disabled access etc etc.  There's another target ripe for downwards revision.

In amongst all this oh-so-cynical realism, we learn that in the New Year ... Mili is off to China!  - that well-known "developing country" (for COP purposes) which is the source of almost all solar panels and much else besides.  What, do we imagine, is the purpose of his mission?  To tell them they must locate their factories in Sunderland, & stop burning coal?  To lecture them on human rights?  To demand the return of Hong Kong?  To stop sending weapons components to Putin?  Do tell us, Ed - what will constitute success for your mission?  We only ask because we want to know.  

ND

___________________

[1] I was about to say "any / whatsoever" there: but in fact there is a thin strand of consistency detectable.  Having not formally decided whether or not to extend the wretched Drax's baleful biomass subsidies beyond 2027, Miliband pays lip-service at least, to the possibility Drax stops generating thereafter.  Personally, I'd be very surprised if he held his nerve against the blatant subsidy-farmers at Drax - but this formal reserving of the position is at least a modest positive sign.  

[2] See, for example, the sad little story of the Vestas Isle of Wight turbine blade production / job losses.  How are those "650,000 good new jobs" shaping up, Ed?

[3] Obviously this announcement of "CCS" at Teesside came with a great fanfare.  Look closer, and you'll notice that its primary sponsors, BP and Equinor, are committing only to the new gas-fired power plant at this stage.  That's the low-hanging fruit, of course, and in any event, CCS or no CCS, is likely to have a role as part of Mili's "fleet of gas-fired back-up" which he now realises he always meant to retain.  We'll believe the commitment to the actual CCS aspects when we see it, Ed ...

What Syria means for Russia

At the peak of its vainglorious Cold War pomp, the USA reckoned to maintain forces sufficient to fight two major wars and one minor war - simultaneously.  Well, it was never put to the test.  But perhaps there's the measure of a true global superpower.  Putin, of course, fancies his Russia as a superpower ...

I wonder how he'd assess his standing the day after Damascus fell.  To describe this as humiliating for him is an understatement: if you can't see it, you obviously don't read much from the teeming world of fiercely patriotic Russian 'milblogs'.  He must own to an intelligence failure on a par with Israel's, pre October 2023; the loss of a client regime in under a fortnight; in material terms, the loss of his logistical springboard to Africa, where he aspires to a buccaneering, influential and lucrative interventionist positioning; and in political terms, the loss of prestige.

Ah, prestige.  Who uses that term these days?  In my earliest soldiering, I found myself briefly under the tuition of a Chief Instructor who'd fought in the closing 12 months of WW2 and in many a campaign through the '50s and 60's.   He told us that everything he'd done, all across the globe, was for the sake of upholding and extending British prestige.  If, today, we are too post-imperial to care about such things well, across most of the world and most definitely including Russia, prestige matters immensely.

Putin and his Russia just aren't up to it.  How much does he look forward to his next meeting with Xi?  With Kim?  With Erdogan?  The man who can't prosecute a mid-sized war in his own back yard, nor prop up a single strategically vital client on whose territory he maintains sizeable naval, army and air assets.  The man who, for all his much vaunted experience of decades and supposed statecraft, even now doesn't realise that the enemy gets a vote?  Even after Ukraine indeed turned out, as predicted, to be Finland rather than Georgia. 

See, Volodya, superpowers need to be cognisant of how, when they extend themselves in foreign lands, it's necessary to do a great deal more than plonk down some forces, kick a little ass, and then assume everything's bought and paid for.  Check out Rome in its prime, Britain, the USA - and note just what an all-enveloping, wrap-around approach needs to be taken to hold what you think you've got.   How many snipers and opportunistic hit-and-runners you need to be prepared for.  What all those other carping, jealous powers can do, with so little effort and just a little hostile intent, to incommode you and your positions on your faraway clients' turf.  How (in the military idiom) if you want to hold the line at a river, you must hold both banks.  Oh, how much all-round capability it all requires!  Capability you just don't have.

If you ask me, this humiliation will result in Putin lashing out, and bodes worse for Ukraine than anything else so far.  Which other cat can he kick?  But even there ... the enemy has a vote.

ND

Even the Guardian notices 'Net Zero' is expensive

UPDATE:   Seems Kier 'Re-set' Starmer has resiled from "100% decarbonisation by 2030" already!   Now to be 95%, it seems (see prescient comments BTL)   Amusingly, his relaunch isn't on the Guardian front page yet.  Greg Wallace is, though ...  We'll have another post on this shortly

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Something I find depressing is the way so many perfectly well-meaning people have swallowed the deception that renewable energy is cheaper - all the way to "much cheaper" - than fossil fuels.  We needn't summarise the arguments or facts.  But here's a sad, earnest example from a 'community energy' project: 

A staggering 13% of households in England experience energy poverty ... Rising energy prices and inflation have started to affect people’s life quality, health and well-being ... Fortunately, there is a way to counter energy poverty, reduce energy bills, and keep them low going forward. Renewable energy is the cheapest and cleaner option to produce electricity ... The country is reducing its dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets and creating sustainable solutions for energy security. Renewable energy developments are crucial in ensuring more affordable energy for all.

*Sighs*.  Not much point in having this lady directed to Prof Dieter Helm**, I guess - the fine essay to which one of our anons directed us BTL on the previous post.

Is there hope?  Well, maybe: the Graun seems belatedly to be catching up with reality: 

• Will Labour’s 2030 green energy goal cost more than 2035? They should come clean ...costs to the consumer shouldn’t be ignored   
• Starmer has discovered a tricky truth about the electric vehicles transition: there’s no gain without pain ... the move to net zero won’t be cheap or simple 

The first, by the redoubtable Nils Pratley, is quite punchy as far as it goes (& we may suspect he knows well that he could have gone a lot further).  The second (Gaby Hinsliff) is, errr, not really in the Dieter Helm league.  otta start somewhere, I suppose.

ND

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** I have often disagreed with Helm on several issues (sometimes to his face in open debate) but his summary of the issues in the first part of this is masterful 

Two big social experiments of huge significance

One of the great virtues of the USA is that individual states have a great deal of autonomy over large swathes of policy-making, and can effectively conduct experiments that the rest of us can watch.  Could be viewed as an extension of 'fail fast, fail cheaply' capitalism that confers those systematic advantages that so bewilder socialists and statists all over - because of course when they take an action, it's because they are right - and there'll be no going back or letting empirical failure get in the way of determined execution of the policy. 

If that's the hardened mindset, then the warnings of conservatives like Burke and Johnson against making changes without serious proof of benefit, are doubly appropriate.  What are we to make of the two ultra-significant social experiments about to be kicked off?

Australia's move to ban under-16s from having social meejah accounts is perhaps in the 'US states experimental' category.  A relatively small western country, with representative social concerns, is trying something prima facie of enormous difficulty but with clear social ramifications.  Perhaps it's so implausible they'll succeed as to make it all a bit hypothetical (I don't recall the illegality of underage drinking stopping me buying a pint in a pub at the age of 16**).  What if it has a genuine impact?  FB et al sure as hell don't want to trip up complacently on this one, and have it sweep the rest of the world.  How will they react: ultra-cooperative? dismissive?  faux-cooperative?  Go Australia!, I say: let us know how you get on. 

Here at home we have the looming Assisted Dying Act as the Bill goes into further stages.  What have people made of 'experiments' etc elsewhere?  To hear the Bill's sponsors, they've thought of everything.  But here's an interesting article on the Oregon 'precedent', which shows how what we might call "legal interpretation creep" is an ever-present possibility.  We also know that some proponents of euthanasia have every intention of broadening the scope at the first opportunity.  Why couldn't the Act be for a trial period of, say, 5 years with a sunset clause?

I'm sure there are many wise thoughts out there on both issues (Kev has already contributed on the second), which I hereby solicit BTL.

ND

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** I'll bet many of you have the same experience.  The principle in those days was: "Lads gotta learn how to handle their drink & take their turn at bar billiards quietly in the corner". 

Cheery weekend update: Mandelson thwarted

Cheeringly, Mandelson came a resounding 4th in a final field of 5 for the Chancellorship of the university.  He had really pulled out all the stops on this, including blow-by-blow briefings to LabourList (who must have groaned, but still published it all through gritted teeth - I expect he indicated there'd be something in it for them.  Or issued some kind of threat, he is never slow with the menace**).

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke.  We read that what he's really going to be doing over the next few years is be Ambassador to the USA.  I can just see him now, wheedling with Bum-Steer Kier: "what you absolutely must have, is someone who can effectively negotiate with Trump in the only ways he understands ... What my many US contacts tell me, is that he only respects people who've been in the game for a long time, with a lot of personal money and a track record of dealing with global issues in a transactional, realpolitik way ..."  

Will it work?  I'm told not: but strange things are happening quite a lot these days.

ND

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** I have told this story before.  Many years ago I had an office in No.4 Millbank, a fine Edwardian building you will be familiar with from its roof terrace and staircase because, overlooking the Lords, it also houses the Beeb's Westminster offices and they conduct many a TV news clip or interview from there.  At the time, the Labour Party also had a suite there - it was just before New Labour's great 1997 GE victory - and Mandy was in his prime, calling all the shots.

One day I happened upon him in a corridor with a small gaggle of very young Labour staffers.  I have no idea what was the context; but in a soft, conversational manner, he berated them thus:  "... and if you ever screw up like that again, I will make sure you never work in London for the rest of your lives".  Such a nice chap.

Votey McVoteface - the Great British SOH strikes again

 Gotta love this crazy 'new election' petition.

The famous British GSOH in full flight !  Ridicule & satire are sometimes the most powerful weapons.  After 14 years, HIGNFY (e.g.) had become an anti-Tory gagfest: but I'd say that, the inevitable woke luvvies notwithstanding, it's rapidly going the other way.  So many figures of fun; so many targets.  And such a short period since that last election.  Almost makes up for the loss of John Prescott.

ND