"Basically free energy" - weekend fun

To round off our erudite session on flywheels: BTL on the previous post, one of our anons offered us this little Irish video for our edification.

It contains that oft-heard and seductive phrase "basically free energy", upon which we are told Ireland will build Europe's biggest hydrogen economy.  (Hang on a minute, hasn't German already discovered basically free energy?)

Well, the voice-over has a pleasant manner.  And we do get to learn about a grid-scale flywheel in action, if nothing else.  A moderately entertaining quarter-hour of your time.

ND

Flywheels for the Grid? Calling all engineers ...

The challenges posed to any electricity grid by ever more intermittent sources of power in the fleet are well known.  The UK grid (and others) is not bereft of means to deal with this - at a cost, and specifically a cost from which the said intermittent sources are shielded.  Indeed, advocates of renewable energy have largely been allowed to get away with putting their fingers in their ears and chanting LahLahLah on the subject for years.

There are two basic challenges, and grid has consistently expanded its toolkit to meet them, with plenty more ideas yet to be implemented.  The 'immediate' issue is the occasional instantaneous fluctuation that threatens to upset the frequency of grid output: the longer-duration issue is the near-complete non-availability of wind and solar power on other occasions, including just those times when they are most needed.  The ever-reducing amount of fossil-fuelled power available to the grid impairs its ability to respond to both challenges - but it still gets by[1].  The difficulties shouldn't be overstated, even as the costs shouldn't be understated.

Anyhow, it seems there's a new game in town.  One of the many ideas that have been floated over the years is the use of the good old-fashioned flywheel, and it seems the grid is going to give it a go.  (It only addresses the 'immediate' issue, by the way: of technologies currently available, only gas-fired power can systematically address the dunkelflaute, now that we have no more coal-fired plant.)

My question is: do we have any physicists or power engineers out there who can comment?  Some of these bright ideas turn out to be fads / daft / complete duds / ludicrously costly / several of the above[2], and personally I don't have a view[3]. 

Over to t'readership.

ND

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[1] To an extent once considered theoretically infeasible.  Ah, the perils of academic a priori reasoning ...

[2] Using hydrogen for the longer-duration issue comes to mind

[3]  I will, however, suggest that the putative savings the grid claims it will make using these flywheels - "£14.9bn between 2025 and 2035" - fail the basic do-we-believe-this? test by a long way.  FFS!

Port Talbot; Ratcliffe; Grangemouth - the plan unfolds

Q:  Does Labour - the party of, errr, labour - have an industrial policy?  Or an employment policy?

A:  Yes!  It's the "Just Transition" from bad old dirty, analogue fossil-fuel jobs to "good" clean new digital green jobs.  650,000 of them! 

Well, there go the dirty jobs alright: who needed steel, electricity or petrol anyhow?  So the retraining schemes will be getting into gear.  Remind us, how many people does one of those big new data centres employ?

Still, I suppose someone will be needed for building all those new houses we are told about. 

ND

"Best prepared new govt ever" - what? UPDATED

So the story goes, that the Liz Truss meltdown at the back end of 2022 convinced the world and his dog that Labour was nailed on to be the next government.  At this point, the money and consultancy-resources started pouring in, the media suspended their critical faculties, foreign governments started paying attention to David Lammy, Sue Grey was hired to ensure the would-be ministers were knocked into shape, etc etc[1].  

In short, this was to be the best prepared, most seriously focussed incoming government in living memory.  No more Johnsons, no more Trusses - the grown-ups are in town, taking names and kicking butt!

Well.  In announcement after announcement it transpires they've been winging it all along, and continue to do so.  Just a tiny sample of nonsenses.  Energy: we're obviously covering this one in detail as it unravels, but suffice to note here that in the past few days there's been loose talk from the new energy policy establishment suggesting that when he walked into his new office Miliband had no serious plan whatever to achieve his fatuous 100%-decarb-by-2030 goal, not even a figleaf or some blotchy notes on a napkin: he's now commissioned work to establish whether it's feasible at all[2].

Housing:  any fool could have told Rayner that the Grenfell Inquiry would inevitably result in urgent works to remove and replace cladding up and down the land, absorbing a material chunk of the building industry's available pool of labour.  OK, Yvette Cooper will be told to issue a million more work visas, but it still means Labour's housing targets are as empty as their energy plans.

Tax:  we read today that plans to tighten up on non-doms might raise either nothing at all, or maybe even less than nothing, because walking away is such an easy option for the people in question  -gangway for Mrs Sunak there!  (Is this the most pronounced Laffer Curve known to man?)  But, oh dear, Reeves needed £1bn from non-doms for, err, something worthy!    

You can no doubt chip in with your favourite examples of industrial-scale non-preparedness in terms of detailed policy.  And as for the ethos of casual money-grubbing self-enrichment ...

And then there's Sue Grey herself.  Exactly where is her genius for political management and administrative competence?  Can anyone point to a single manifestation?  The best anyone seems to have on offer - and these are Starmer-directed Cabinet stooges talking off the record in vain attempts to stem the tide of sewage coursing down Whitehall - is that she's really quite a good listener, and if they butter her up nicely they might get some airtime with Starmer just once in a while.

Someone will always say:  Thatcher looked pretty stupid in her early months.  I disagree.  She certainly suffered from Cabinet dissent - not something that Starmer seems likely to replicate - because she'd picked such a 'balanced' team, including some of the most independent-minded, initiative-replete heavyweights that UK politics has produced.  Well, dissent can certainly be a drag.  But she was a master of detail, knew her mind, and had the drive to bring everything with her.  (She also had some genuine capital-P Political strategists on the team: Morgan McSweeney is just a superior student politician of the Jack Straw / George Osborne variety.)  

Very late in the day, Starmer was fed the line that awkward decisions can be dodged if you simply Go For Growth, and that's about all he's got.  A slogan.  Oh, and it's his self-proclaimed responsibility to stop the embarrassing leaks.  Too late, mate, the media have un-suspended their critical faculties and scent blood - lots of it.

Where does improvement in this government's performance come from?  It's not obvious, is it?  

ND

UPDATE:  a BTL Anon has just reminded me of something.  Before the election someone, probably Guido, wrote that Labour high command had been tipped off that a Serious Personal Scandal (within their camp) was circulating in the meejah, and would probably be disclosed during the election campaign; and that they had hatched a strategy for dealing with it.  Then everything fell silent.

If we want to go Conspiracy on this, it's not difficult.  The thing about nuclear weapons is: nobody ever really reckons The Moment has arrived to deploy them - there will always be an even rainier day when you'll need it even more.  The Tories had obviously given up the ghost already - why waste a thermo-nuclear device when there's no hope anyway?  Plus, what has Labour got on, errr, any of us?  Better hold back this time.  That would explain the silence ... but some of those Angry Spads would know ...

Or, there isn't a scintilla of truth in it!

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[1] One can point to several other amusing symptoms, my favourite being the odious Dale Vince who switched from being a financier of the revolting green yoof, to becoming a highly partisan Labour activist, to the point of very ostentatiously attacking the Green Party in seats where they looked like (and indeed were) a serious threat to Labour.    

[2] I can save him the bother, and my fees are modest compared to those of PWC.  The answer is 'Nope'.

Revenge of the SPADS: docs leaked to C@W

We've come by a transcript of the half-year performance review of a 30-something Labour Party SPAD.

*   *   *   *   *

Supervisor (Senior SPAD):  So, Sparquin - what do you feel are the highlights and the disappointments of your work over the past 6 months?

Junior SPAD:  Well, Molly - the Election, obvs!  I reckon I came up with some pretty good 'Lines To Take' when the awkward questions started coming in from the Beeb fact-checkers during the run-up.  Nothing as awkward as the last three weeks, natch!  But at least a couple of my 'Lines' made it onto the One O'Clock News.  One even got into the papers the next day.  Oh, and I managed to get that idiot - sorry, Secretary of State! - Pete to tone down his promises for how many units he was going to get built by 2028.  Pretty f-ing mental, he'd just made that number up, you know?  But I'm fairly sure we're off the hook now: his Department is really pleased.

SSS:   Yes, good catch, we all noticed, and Sir Humphrey loves what you did, the civil servants hate concrete targets - though you might want to tone down the crowing over it, you know?  Pete doesn't forget shit like that and he's a nasty bastard as well as a dumb twat.  Just a suggestion.  Anything else?

JS:  Well, in response to the diktat that we're all to come up with 'collaborative, self-directed, value-adding, no-cost workstream initiatives', me and three other J-SPADS have formed a little team - we call ourselves 'Spad-u-like', nice, huh? - and we've *self-directed* ourselves on a couple of little projects to improve departmental effectiveness around here, plus morale, too!  Oh, and before you ask, yes, we're totally diverse!   Though to be fair, we did all go to the same college ...

SSS:  Great!  And disappointments?

JS:  You need to ask??  FFS - it's getting a £5k reduction in salary!   And being on tenterhooks for three weeks before even that was confirmed.  I'm 34, fuckit - I've given the best part of six years to this Party!  And now we're not even allowed to take freebies off that hedgie wanker who used to bankroll our office when we were in Opposition.  Do you know what rents are like in Homerton?

SSS:  Tell me about it - and I'm in Shoreditch!

JS, under breath:  (You wish!  Half a mile north, more like it).  Out loud:  Oh well, Polly Toynbee says we can expect lots of money to be found down the back of the sofa before Xmas!  Hahah, silly cow.

SSS:  Anyhow, it's for the Cause, right.  Just hang in there, it'll all work out.  Now, how about looking forward - what personal goals are you setting for the next 6 months?

JS:   Finishing the Spad-u-like project to scupper the Gray woman, obvs.  We've made a great start over the past two weeks, made some good networking contacts, called in a few favours at the Beeb, all the good stuff.  Even forged some vibrant links with a couple of career civil servants that she's, errr, interacted with in the past.  Well, she's history, you just watch.  We're targeting end-November.  Finish laughing, clean underwear all round, then a big piss-up before Xmas at the Boom Battle Bar.  Hey, wanna nominate some faces for the axe-throwing targets ..? ...

As leaked to ND

The complex economics & trade-offs of 'net zero'

At the polar-opposite ends of the 'net zero' policy debate are two fatuous positions we may caricature thus:

A.  renewable energy is so cheap and creates so many excellent new jobs, the whole thing will easily pay for itself in economic terms alone (never mind "saving the planet"): it's just a matter of some easily-afforded up-front investment and a bit of planning;

Z.  the very attempt to bring about a 'net zero' economy will destroy the entire existing economy.

Along the spectrum between these two extremes are so many subtle trade-offs that have presumably been resolved to their own satisfaction [1] by those who've made their way to one of the extremes.   Except, we don't see their working displayed very often.

Here are a few:

• Renewables are in fact more expensive than the energy mix they are designed to replace.  True: but we often decide to pay more for a cleaner outcome (cf the Clean Air Act, the water industry, etc etc).
• The roll-out of what we might call a 'net-zero-intended' programme would create a lot of new jobs.  True: but the industries that will be made obsolete along the way will collapse (often "by mistake"[2]) before any kind of equilibrium, let alone positive balance is established.
• There are virtually no short term benefits of most[3] individual 'net-zero-intended' projects upon completion: and even the supposed long-term benefits are questionable.  True, but in certain circumstances the Keynsian insight about digging holes has a lot of force.
• Nuclear energy ticks a lot of 'net zero' boxes.  True, but nobody has truly resolved the short-term / long-term calculus on nukes.
• Something approximating 'net zero', as currently envisaged, would make us less energy-dependent on imports in the long term.  True, but in detail this is an exceptionally complex issue both to characterise fully, and still more to 'optimise'.

And so on.  

All this deserves better policy-making than we get.  And more transparent, too.  I am heartily sick of being lied to - by both 'sides'.

ND

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[1] Obviously that credits them with at least rudimentary intellectual processes that in practice may not have troubled them too much.

[2]  Watch, for example, the UK oil & gas industry, as illustrated here (always assuming the collapse of the mining sector isn't enough evidence already).  The Unions know this, of course.

[3] Most, but definitely not all.

Man City: day of reckoning draws near

The Premier League's case against Man City is now being heard.  Should a free-marketeer care about what private football clubs do with their money?  Is this just something to appease sports fans who'd prefer a more level playing-field (and a bit of justice & fairness)?  The same team winning every year is pretty bloody dull.  And if it goes against Man City and they get relegated, how will their quite ridiculously overpaid squad respond?

Personally my game is RU and I have very little interest in the details of this hoo-ha.  But I will summarise the RU precedent for those who don't know it: Saracens, who'd also been winning quite a lot and had comprehensively busted the salary cap -  systematically and quite creatively - to assemble a very hard-to-beat squad with a great many top notch players**; more than anyone else could remotely afford.  They were duly fined and relegated (via an insuperable points deduction).

To me, aside from evening things up a bit and dealing out some justice, the interesting phenomenon was that almost all their prominent players stuck with the team through a dull, and actually somewhat debilitating year in the lower division: they just didn't get sufficiently competitive matches to keep them fully sharp.  But they came back up after a single season via promotion in due course, and they all sharpened up quickly enough thereafter.

The loyalty was impressive.  Whatever money they'd splashed around illicitly, they'd nevertheless obviously built a team ethos that wasn't merely mercenary.

Views on the questions above?

ND

____________

** Plus Owen Farrell

Starmer's striking unpopularity, and a lesson

This past week has seen publication of Starmer's popularity ratings that, by comparison with the (downward) trajectories of the ratings of previous new PMs, show he has become staggeringly unpopular in an unprecedently short time.  We've noted before that Machiavelli advocated the new Prince carry out his unpleasant measures very early in his new regime; and also that the Prince should prefer being feared to being loved.

OK: but he didn't say it's a great thing to be deeply unpopular per se, never mind being thought of in terms of the specific negative attributes with which Starmer is increasingly associated - ask any pensioner of your acquaintance.  Is Starmer playing with fire here (assuming he's broadly in control of his actions)?  Mainstream commentary tends to reckon he's gone beyond setting expectations & establishing the smack of firm government, and is maybe even undermining the economy by the negativity of his early decision-making and his strident, stern messaging.

Here's a personal anecdote which isn't on a precise parallel, but it has a lesson of sorts that might have some bearing.  At the age of 19, I took command of my first troop of soldiers in the army - a scary business: there were 45 of them and my sheltered, essentially middle class upbringing[1] hadn't exposed me to the rigours of tough working-class mores where disagreements are settled with fist and boot, and the sense of 'fairness' (what soldiers consider fairness, anyhow) is never to be trifled with.  

On my very first day, I ran into a couple of 'Spanish practices' among the men that seemed to me intolerable, and I told the individuals involved - just a couple or three in each case - to desist immediately, and not to do it again.  Later in the week I inspected their lines (the accommodation of those of the men who lived in barracks - by far the greater number); and as well as marvelling at how in very communal circumstances (8 to a room) they fiercely guarded their personal privacy and possessions, I couldn't help but notice the 'Morale Chart' on the wall in the corridor: a rather neatly-drawn graph with daily entries.  With some surprise I noted that on the very day of my arrival, a huge up-tick had been registered! - and yet the only two things I'd done on that first day were the two bollockings I'd administered.

I short while later, I asked one of the more mature corporals what I was to make of this.  Oh, he said, it was great!  Straight off the bat, you locked up a couple of the blokes who were out of order! [I hadn't in fact issued any punishment, still less locked anyone up.]  Things had got much too slack around here!

There could be so many lessons to draw from this silly little incident[2], but the one that seems relevant here is that a couple of early "smacks of firm government" can - in some instances - actually improve morale as opposed to sapping it.  I'm not suggesting the parallels are exact: but I am saying that given how his own smacks have gone down, along with his general demeanour in government, Starmer shouldn't be remotely complacent about his own impact on the mood of the nation.

More popcorn, please, as we watch how this plays out.

ND       

________________

[1] My father left school at 14 to become an apprentice, and was conscripted as a private soldier.  But he commissioned from the ranks and despite some of his war-stories from the working classes, he'd firmly left all that behind; and my own upbringing could only be described as middle class.  Dealing with the soldiery was a big shock for me.

[2]  Another, rather more philosophical, is what I take to be the great theme of Hilary Mantel's superb Wolf Hall trilogy: that the received version of history is often not particularly accurate, even if (hopefully, sometimes) it captures some of the essence of what actually happened.  This categorically includes even very recent and very trivial 'history', e.g. 'what happened yesterday', as the case of Cromwell sleeping with the (woman) hotel-keeper when on his mission to parlay with Catherine of Aragon: the story of this minor event has already become currency - in a distorted version - back at his own house, even before he arrives home a day or so later.

Government looking for a fight. Several fights.

Today we've seen two things that strongly suggest to me that Starmer & his strategists aren't just hanging tough on controversial issues, they are positively looking for a fight.  Indeed, several.

Exhibit A: the NHS. Starmer, in today's 'NHS' speech [1] -

... So hear me when I say this. No more money without reform. I am not prepared to see even more of your money spent ... That isn’t just solved by more money - it’s solved by reform.

This was reinforced pugnaciously by Wes Streeting on all channels, and of course we are absolutely meant to cop the headline aggression. 

Exhibit B: Net Zero.  Chris Stark (of whom you may never have heard, he's Ed Miliband's "mission control" for Net Zero) at an event today - 

"The government is very clear that it will cost too much" [2] to put new Grid cables underground. On meeting the Net Zero goal he was “not pissing about” [3]

More ostentatious headline aggression.  This is all of a piece with blunt pre-election announcements that Starmer & Miliband intend to steamroller planning processes that might delay their fatuous schemes for 100% decarbonisation of electricity by 2030 (and new housing, too).  In this they are taking on a vast constituency of nimbies - ably represented in many cases by their Green and Labour MPs! - who are dead set against the countryside being covered by windfarms, solar farms and swathes of new Grid pylons.  (And new houses, too.)

Now Machiavelli, as we know, strongly advocated the new Prince carrying out his unpleasant measures very early in his new regime.  This isn't just getting 'em in, it's positively relishing them; and it starts to make the Child Benefit Cap and the Winter Fuel Allowance look, not so much as avoidable early miss-steps, as part of the bar-room brawler's "Oi'll foight any t'ree of yus".  Or thirty million, it seems.

BTW, Old Nick also advised that it was better to be feared than loved ...  Hey, we can do the second part of that for you, Kier.

ND

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[1] In response to Lord Darzi - an NHS surgeon - publishing a report saying that the NHS needs, errr, a load of money.  Did someone say this is an "independent" report?   

[2] He's not wrong about the cost, of course.

[3] In that case, sunshine, why not aggressively tell us what we all know to be true, that our electricity bills will be going up?

Starmer & winter fuel: break open more popcorn

Somewhat to my surprise, there's to be a pre-Party Conference set-piece in Parliament - tomorrow - on the winter fuel allowance thing.  The Deputy Speaker who allowed it obviously has a sense of humour - the Speaker's office evidently didn't enjoy being bamboozled and bullied last year over the Gaza vote, eh? 

And with Kier 'Bang'em Up' Starmer digging in at the weekend, and a hapless[1] junior minister being disowned by No.10 this morning, it's looking set to be another virility test.  

Of course, there are loads of simple ways Starmer/Reeves could sugar the pill a bit, but everything seems set fair for an outright 3-line whip / loyalty test on the blunt and brutal means-testing they've announced[2].  The most they've done so far is very pointedly to re-confirm the triple lock on pensions: but as everyone has chorused - so what?  OK, he's read his Machiavelli about getting your nastiness in early: but is Starmer really sure he's pursuing clever politics here?  There are also loads of ways of cracking the whip in an ostentatious and salutary manner: summary deselection of Mr 'Renters Champion' Athwal would be a start.  But a massive falling-out over an emotive social policy so very easily weaponised by everyone else, just ahead of Party Conference, for just £1.4 bn? 

It's not quite the same, but one is reminded of the wonderful line in Bolt's A Man For All Seasons:  

"It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales?"

Break open the popcorn - again.

ND    

_____________

[1] ... and I do know what 'hapless' means, unlike 95% of Guardian writers (And 'elide', ditto ditto.)

[2] Can't find it just now, but some bright researcher has found a clip of Reeves advocating means-testing for the WFA about 6 years ago.  So much for "we didn't want to do this" - she's always wanted to do it! 

Weekend Fun

So this weekend the wife has booked us in to a 'boutique hotel', and I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time.  The establishment offers a range of different rooms, of which this is one.

Wonder what attracted Mrs D's attention to this place ?

ND

Guardian Goings-on(2): Better news - and at Beeb too!

Having recently had a go at the Graun for its evident decision[1] to proselytise actively on behalf of a partisan position on contestable energy issues, this is by way of a follow-up suggesting that things might be looking up, both at the newspaper and also at the Beeb.

The paper first.  At the weekend, their rather good columnist[2] Sonia Sodha had this to say: 

Free speech is neither a “nice to have” nor a rightwing project: it is a fundamental tenet of democracy and when it is under threat, it is disempowered minorities who suffer most. Labour needs to stop seeing important free speech protections introduced by Tory ministers as expendable fuel for attacking their predecessors.

And on a quite different topic, Nils Bratley opined as follows: 

... before Drax is promised a penny extra from billpayers, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, should commission a properly independent review of the business model of burning wood pellets to generate electricity. It should cover both the environmental impact ... and the stupendous subsidies.

I strongly applaud both sentiments.  And both are clearly opinion pieces, which is the honourable way to go for a proper newspaper.

Now for the Beeb.  I am delighted to note that they have genuinely got their teeth into two stories that essentially reflect a proper critique / criticism of Starmer's Labour Party.  The first is the Winter Fuel payments issue, which Reeves and Starmer have strongly signalled they intend to tough out - it's in that category we highlighted of Reasons Aplenty for Ruthless Whipping.  But, patently, they can't be taking any pleasure in the way it's rumbling on.  The awful Alastair Campbell used to say that if an awkward story runs for more than 3 days, you've got a problem.  Well, this one is several weeks and counting, and the Beeb has taken it to its heart in ways that make the problem worse for the government.  As well they might - it's an early unforced error and an acute political test for Labour: but personally I had felt there'd be a longer period where the uncritical pre-election fawning over Starmer would be continuing in that quarter.  Seemingly not[3].  This isn't any more than their charter requires of them, but given past performance it's moderately encouraging.  Credit where it's due.

The send is their gleeful playing-up of the outrageous story of "Parliament's biggest landlord", the reprehensible Jas Athwal MP.  One has to pick through issues like this with caution, but in the background there's the sordid prevalence of a certain type of landlord mercilessly exploiting tenants of the same ethnicity as themselves - "own-country landlord" is generally how the victims ruefully express their plight.  Maybe Mr Athwal's portfolio is not of this profile - but the Beeb evidently knows.  Their ability to report on renters' profiles has however been hampered by the fact that the people they got interviews from were subsequently intimidated into silence, as the Beeb reported, and withdrew permission for their statements to be used.  Reasonable people will doubtless draw their own conclusions.  The Beeb clearly has it in for Athwal - a man parachuted into his seat in Labour's nasty little pre-election deselection campaign - and, often with smiles on their faces when reporting his twisting and turning, seems determined to run him to ground.  Once again, credit where it's due, & plaudits to them for their journalism.  

ND

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[1]  By way of explicit ratification, here's their resident green wingnut George Monbiot: 

"For every pound or dollar spent on ['climate crisis'] persuasion by an environmental charity or newspaper ..."

[2]  Inter alia, she's broadly sound on the baleful 'trans' issue, too.  How much sh*t must she get from the fundies at the Graun?

[3]  Of course, anti Starmer animus can easily come from several angles: many lefties hate him cordially, as much as does anyone with the slightest regards for probity & intellectual integrity

Battle of Kursk (2024) Revisited: illuminated by flames

It is well over three weeks of Ukraine's incursion into Kursk.  If they so choose, they can easily extend this into next month, maybe longer: the word in Moscow is that Putin has set his birthday (in October) as the deadline[1] for expelling them.  

His policy is consistent with the 'Stalin 1941' approach he has generally taken when hit with an unexpected blow: lie low for a bit (doubtless squaring away various issues and people behind the scenes), then tough things out - the policy equivalent of trading space for time, always Russia's default reaction.  Would be deeply unsatisfactory from the standard western point of view as regards being seen to respond with urgency, but doesn't seem to bother most Russians very much ("wait till the Tsar finds out ...").  Meanwhile his Donbas advance continues - with faint signs that manoeuvre warfare might even be breaking out there too.  Oh, the rush to get things done before the US election!

Putin's policy of not troubling too much over Kursk may be assisted by a phenomenon noted in France during WW1.  Primitive opinion-surveys determined that the population in the south of France - many hundreds of miles from Verdun - didn't care very much at all about what was happening elsewhere: northern France's peril didn't seem to move them.  The French powers-that-be took this so amiss, they instituted (inter alia) the rigid, universal school curriculum that had every French kid taught exactly the same thing - i.e. whatever the government dictated - at exactly the same time, wherever they were.  Knowing first-hand how brutally racist Russians are towards Ukrainians, it seems possible (though personally I have no evidence) that Muscovites don't view deep-south Kursk residents in a particularly sympathetic way either.  In any event, that 'word from Moscow' also has it that Russia as a whole is not much troubled by the Kursk incursion, distinctly limited in geographical scope as it will always be, however long or short. 

While we await further developments on all these fronts, Ukraine's ultra-successful drone-strike campaign is having a genuine effect on Russian oil supplies, petro-facilities being nigh impossible to defend.  The standard official Russian line is usually that "a drone was shot down over the refinery / whatever, and fragments caused a fire that subsequently spread".  Everyone knows this means the attack was successful: and as one milblogger acidly wrote, shooting down a high-explosive drone directly over its target is likely to be "a posthumous achievement" - for both the shooter and the target itself.  Incidentally, the fact that one of these fires has raged for 12 days now (and counting) tells this old oilman that the Russians have failed to fit non-return valves in their oil infrastructure (i.e. the fire is being fed by oil still arriving unpreventably into the facility from the pipelines it is connected to) - which isn't even remotely surprising: their whole set-up is truly primitive by western standards.  They'll no more be able to retrofit valves in a hurry than land a cosmonaut on the moon[2] - indeed, they probably won't even be able to buy them.

Of course, they can and will source oil from elsewhere and truck it in.  The lines of logistics, though, start to get very stretched indeed[3].  

ND  

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[1] Of course, Putin's deadlines, like his 'red lines', are eminently flimsy, as has been proven so often it's a wonder he still sets them.

[2] Amazingly (by western standards), the Russians have even attempted to bring the blaze under control by holding a prayer meeting at the oil depot in question, complete with saintly relics.  Sadly for these pious folk, an oil tank took the opportunity to explode during the ceremony.  Still: always gotta admire piety.

[3] Also, there will be a lot of folk taking a cut in such an ad hoc operation.  The beauty of fixed delivery-infrastructure is that once built, it's relatively hard for the usual embezzlement to take place along the supply chain.  But an operation based on thousands upon thousands of trucks ...

Guardian Goings-on (1) Electric Vehicles

For a while now, it's been clear that the Grauniad isn't just broadly on the side of the greens (hardly surprising), but that it has a positive editorial policy of proselytising, not to mention smoking up the embarrassing facts.  For example, it ran a 'myth-busting' series on heat pumps, which was straining every sinew to say "heat pumps are wonderful, don't let anyone tell you otherwise", except that the last residues of journalistic integrity forced it to admit that the first half of that statement needs qualifying (heavily) in several dimensions, to the point where the second part looks pretty silly.  Likewise, it ran a series on how wonderful electric vehicles are, not to worry about recharging etc.

Except, actually, EV drivers seem to fall out of love with their costly acquisitions, subsidised or not (and notwithstanding the acceleration, hohoh, with which even J.Clarkson is supposed to be deeply in love).  This clearly manifests itself in something long suspected by skeptics, namely that the resale value of EVs is turning out to be pitiful.  This is, incidentally, for very good reasons.

Someone in the trade has decided the ideal place for an attempt to arrest this highly damaging phenomenon is, of course, the Graun.  Which has obligingly let fly with a lengthy, risible puff-piece trying to talk up second-hand EVs: ‘Spectacular bargains’: why now is a great time to buy a used electric car in the UK.  

What sort of journalist could take pride in being told to write such tosh?  I haven't heard quite so much disingenuous 'talking his own book' nonsense since the Beeb allowed a representative of the used car fraternity to announce that, during some pronounced downturn in new car sales a few years ago, it would mean that prices of second-hand cars would be going up!  (... 'because nobody wants a new car, so they'll be buying second-hand cars instead and demand will go up'.  FFS, man, if there's a recession in car buying it'll hit the entire sector!)

Well, I suppose Kath Viner feels it's all hands to the pump.  I look forward to the next in this series - perhaps "why doesn't your village volunteer to have a small nuke planted next door?  You could get up a petition ..."

More on this 'journalistic' behaviour to follow.

ND  

Bullsh*t Book Blurb Award: the outright winner is ...

I have genuinely never before met hyperbole in this league: someone is really pushing the boundaries here.  My attention was drawn to it when encountering somebody laughing out loud in a bookshop - at the back cover of a document entitled Everyday Hero.  Deep breath, clear the coffee cups ...

• orchestrate soaring lives
• materialize your sovereign genius
• a calibrated blueprint for making true masterwork ... illuminates coming generations
• neuroscience-based techniques to turn hurts of the past into daily heroism
• wisdom to upgrade your aliveness, incubate sublime serenity and dignify the spiritual liberty that creates a beautiful life

... and so on.  The author of this astonishing literary, errr, thing, is one Robin Sharma - "a globally respected humanitarian ... one of the most widely-read writers alive".

Actually, no, he isn't.  I'd ask for my money back, except I didn't buy it.

Got any favourites to share?

ND

Mandelson on manoeuvres

Mandy's at it again.  You can always tell a Mandelson-scripted briefing, not least when he's seeking personal advancement.

That time, he wanted to be on the NEC.  Now he wants to be Chancellor of the university.  And here it is, spoon-fed to the simpering lapdogs of LabourList: 

... a Labour Chancellor could argue in favour of reform.  The combination of a Labour Oxford Chancellor and a Labour government could also change the tone of the wider debate around universities... A new Chancellor, alongside a new government, could promote higher education reform for the first time in 14 years.  

The lapdogs have helpfully provided links - twice! - for qualified electors to register for the vote.  Shamelessly blatant, or what?

The very thought of this makes me feel ill.  People went to some lengths to stop Harold Wilson getting this honour, and I suspect Mandy will also not be gratified. 

ND

"Battle of Kursk", 2024-style

Last week, a little OT exchange took place BTL here, thus:

Anon:  What I'm not so sure of is if this is a Stalingrad moment (in reverse), or if it's the Third Battle of Kharkov in reverse, where von Manstein recaptured a lot of the territory being fought over now.

ND:  Not sure everything needs to be mapped onto a historical precedent**; although when it can be done convincingly, it can offer useful insights.  What's interesting to me about this (apparently significant) Ukrainian incursion is:  (i) they - the Ukr side - are following Soviet doctrine! Many writers have suggested it was unwise (see 2023 offensive campaign) to attempt to school them in western military ways, when so many of their senior officers would already be very well educated in a different school. Or they may have found some kind of workable synthesis.  (ii) they seem to have managed Surprise: certainly tactical (generally possible if you put in enough care & attention) but maybe even strategic (unusual - but very desirable). Remember, this is a chess game where both sides can usually see all the opponent's pieces - the perennial Russian challenge out on the flatlands, and one which in the west (Eu, USA) we don't really have, the battlegrounds being characterised so much by extensive geographical relief features

A week on, things have developed a bit: we know it genuinely is a significant incursion, not merely a quick slash-and-burn raid.  But the full motivation and end-plan for what Ukraine thinks it's doing is still a matter of analysis & speculation.  Here's mine:

Backdrop:  for as long as the Russian army can maintain its brutal discipline (i.e. can keep throwing in the cannon-fodder remorselessly) there is nothing plausible that Ukraine can do, however resourced by the west, against eventual Russian "success" in fully capturing and occupying the four Ukranian oblasts it claims as its own, absent something game-changing.  (Just for the record, from the very beginning my line on this has been "and what's to stop them?")   One Russian milblogger has put this very neatly, describing the Russian operation as a tunnel-boring machine: it may sometimes need to slow down if it encounters something a bit flintier than usual, but basically it will "calmly" (his word) grind on relentlessly to wherever it wants to go.

Although in hindsight one can fault the 2023 Ukrainian counter-offensive (some of that fault lying squarely with western advisers), it proved beyond a doubt that Russian defensive preparations along the entire front as far as the Dnipro (though not necessarily south and west of that) are sound, and that without massive airpower that Ukraine will never enjoy, no sustained, strategically useful breakthrough on that very long front is achievable.

Therefore:  since nobody can foresee a Russian event "favourable" to breaking this iron deadlock - certainly not before the US election - more creativity is required from Ukraine.  Up until now, that's been represented by (a) a stunningly successful Black Sea operation; (b) an equally stunning drone campaign against the vast swathe of ultra-vulnerable targets across heartland western Russia, particularly oil facilities - and air bases,/ aviation ammo dumps which have taken some really serious blows.  (Note something else we've said from the start: Russia can replace absolutely anything except its airforce, which has caused Putin to husband it cautiously.)  But neither can be much more than a major, suppurating thorn in the bear's flesh, the pain and cost of which it can tolerate indefinitely. 

That being the July 2024 starting-point, Something Else had to be tried before November.  Well, this is it, and it looks entirely logical.  Apart from making the really obvious remark that the Russian ground currently dominated by Ukraine cannot remotely be held for more than a few weeks at the outside - and so Zelensky won't be intending to - I won't today be prognosticating on this ground offensive per se.  There are however a few more remarks we can make, in addition to the truly impressive 'surprise' mentioned above.

1. The Soviet-plus-western doctrinal synthesis being displayed by Ukraine is very 2024, and very nicely purposed to the precise conditions.  For a strategist, this is a fine thing to behold (and for Russia, absolutely appalling: think what could be done with this-plus-airpower ...)  A combined-arms assault, with depth, under cleverly assembled air-defence and electronic warfare cover, proving that such things are possible even from a sorely-stretched nation on the modern "transparent" battlefield.
2. The above point on Putin and his jealously protected airforce has been reinforced in spades.  The obvious immediate counter to a fast-moving assault deep(ish) into undefended open country is tactical aviation.  As for the past 30 months, it's conspicuous by its absence (not 100% absent, but not remotely committed to the task).
3. Very smart of Kyiv not to base this offensive around the newly-arriving F-16s.  As regards aviation, things can only get worse for Putin: his airfields, aircraft and ammunition being steadily depredated, with the F-16s still to arrive on the battlefield.
4. Just as the Donbass "tunnel-boring" represents its monstrous strengths, deep Russian weaknesses - in very many dimensions, military-technical and political - have been brutally been exposed over the last few days.  The embarrassments are set to continue for many days to come. 

I could bang on about these weaknesses for pages but will settle for now on four comments:

• Putin really, really hates what's happening.  He's swallowed a load of humiliation over the decades, but this is being dished out by Kyiv.  (I confidently await BTL comments that assert it's actually the US 9th Ranger division in Kursk.)  But as regards his response, of course that could go either way.
• Not only is he determined to husband his airforce, we see he's utterly determined to stay with the daft-but-significant rhetoric of "Special Military Operation" / "just a terrorist provocation" etc etc.  This is very telling.
• Even a fortnight of incursion has tremendous long-term consequences for Russia.
• To repeat: think what could be done with this-plus-airpower ...

ND

PS:  In capturing the main Russian natural gas crossing-point / transfer station, Ukraine has pocketed a splendid wildcard for future deployment ...  

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** Almost expected someone so say "Kursk 1943"!   Glad nobody did.  I was expecting "Battle of the Bulge" analogies right from the start, too, but personally I didn't run into one until yesterday! 

The nonsenses that are Drax - and police priorities

In amongst all the nonsense on the streets, somehow PC Plod managed to muster sufficient force outside Drax power station to arrest 22 protesters and disperse a would-be protest camp.  This was under the terms of a draconian court order obtained by Drax, the terms of which would make you think the Crown Jewels were contained therein.

As it happens, in winter months Drax is a pretty essential part of the UK power fleet, the biomass it burns being a significant source of despatchable power.  And the group organising the protest has in the past pulled off some fairly intrusive coups at power stations.  The reason for the protest is a good one, though: outrageously, Drax - the biggest emitter of CO2 in the UK by a country mile - is subsidised by the billion for being a zero emitter.  This is on the wholly fallacious, indeed laughable basis that somehow the trees it burns magically regrow instantaneously, sucking back all that CO2 from the atmosphere.  It's so crazy, it makes you blink with astonishment and yet, by an outright perversion of some arcane IPCC carbon accounting principles (which have nothing to do with the matter at hand, and indeed by the IPCC's own edict shouldn't be used in this way), Drax - and HMG - are allowed to get away with this fiction for the purposes of recording "decarbonisation".  And of course for justifying paying out those billions. 

Without this longstanding carbon-accounting trick, the UK would be even further away from "decarbonisation" than it already is.  And the Drax subsidies expire in 2027.  The shameless rent-seekers are of course demanding new subsidies to commence that year, until they are good and ready for their next shameless fraud, BECCS (= "biomass electricity with carbon capture & storage").  Because, of course, if you emit zero CO2 (on paper) and bury (some of) the actual CO2 you emit, tadah!, you have conjured up "negative emissions" - even more useful for the national CO2 account.

A shame this is all the merest bollocks.  And costly bollocks, too, in terms of both greatly reduced energy efficiency and cash subsidies - all for our electricity bills, naturally.  The decision as to whether this monstrous BECCS proposition will be allowed to fly (and of course the "bridging" subsidies for keeping Drax going between 2027 and, errr, "whenever") falls to Miliband.  He's really in a jam because, as every authority reporting on the matter has made clear, his crazy plans absolutely hinge on everyone believing the Drax story in all its blatant falsity.  AND it puts up electricity bills!

Whatever will little Mili do?

ND

Inchoate protests, inchoate framing

Social meejah doubtless play a role in getting the mob onto the streets; but essentially what's going on is spontaneous and barely organised.  We've seen variants of it before, with "summer riots" in Brixton and other areas over the years, and of course the 2011 "Tottenham" vintage.  On those earlier occasions it was the nastier end of the leftist spectrum that was kinda hoping it contained the seeds of the revolution; but no, just opportunistic hot-weather looting and anarchy.

Starmer (and many others) should be hoping that's what we're faced with now, though a lot of their own rhetoric - which we'll come on to - isn't helping.  One obvious scenario is that in a few weeks time it really is all over bar the backlog at the magistrates' courts, tempered by whatever scope the prison system has these days for exacting 2011-vintage Starmerite-DPP justice.

Otherwise, to be blunt, it carries on until someone gets killed: that's the horrible truth**.  What happens thereafter hinges entirely on the precise circumstances of that dread event: we could all come up with scenarios.

If - and it's not certain - it does carry on, how does it get framed by the London-liberal-progressive consensus?  The two tribes clash not just on the streets (with the Police in the role of King's Champion, maybe also with some lefty violence adding to the mix), but also in the ideo-conceptual space.

We know what the kneejerk left-liberal framing is, because it's all around us.  "Tiny thuggish minority" is the opening gambit, as it was (correctly) in 2011: but they couldn't help themselves moving directly on to "organised by the far right".  And this is where the utter stupidity of the left starts to become plain.

Yes, you'll be able to find some stuff in social meejah that can be labelled "organisation" if you're dumb enough to frame it that way; but what you won't find is a nationwide organising committee - because there isn't one (yet).  There isn't a political party involved, either.  The left cannot understand this - because their world is full of organising committees and micro-parties, and they assume that's how stuff gets started.  (Similarly, they always refer to 'capitalism' as if it is a political movement rather than what it actually is, namely is a feature of human behaviour.)  They really, truly don't want to consider the possibility of political spontaneity from the proletariat: they insist on, and believe in, having monopoly powers over that.  They are itching to have a proper little fascist party to demonise.  While they wait, it's just arm-waving at the notional "far right": they don't want it to be as difficult to deal with as would be Actual Proletarian Discontent.

To the extent any party is even vaguely in the frame, it's Reform (of course). But only peripherally so, because Farage is manifestly keen not to be outflanked by anything whatsoever to his right.  His recent performances scream this so loudly, it ought to be really obvious to anyone.  His strategy is to monopolise the right flank of British politics (whilst staying firmly on the polite side of outright violence), and roll up the Tories from right to left until he has a workable Parliamentary block: he desperately wants to avoid the irritant / potential stumbling-block of there being any genuine 'political' organisation to his right. 

The point is: there's no such thing - yet.  What if the left somehow goads one into being?  It wouldn't  be very good politics because if Reform gets outflanked in that way, eventually it gets subsumed by the Tories as happened with the Brexit Party in 2019: and the 2029 election looks rather different.

But long before 2029 is in view, what happens if a micro-party forms, that is more than just an instantly-outlawed EDL?  The answer is: it starts to have demands, and offers itself as the entity you need to negotiate with if you want the (ex hypothesi) continuing violence to stop!   Which leftist dickhead wants that to be the dynamics of the situation?  

But they just can't help themselves.  In their uncomprehending denial of genuinely widespread discontent that could lead to widespread non-organised action, their doctrine effectively insists on framing its way into having a concrete bogey - of no genuine substance, but possible actual existence in a formal sort of way.  An actual group of people with a name.  A British gilets jaunes, if you like: coherent enough to have an identity (of a rather amorphous and hard-to-treat-with kind).

One interesting potential outcome is that Starmer might act as though he is indeed responding to concrete demands from a putative political entity, and preemptively start trying to appease it with whatever he kind-of guesses its demands might be.  (He won't need to try very hard to figure that out.)  Funnily enough, the marxist left absolutely understands this situation: it never had any difficulty understanding the impetus behind Brexit. 

Right now, however, Starmer seems to be parlaying events into a belated attempt to re-gather the lost Muslim vote.  He has to be careful, because a parallel development is likely to be the formation of Muslim self-defence groups which he'd quickly need to distance himself from, and eventually to act against.

The Tories?  They can sit this one out because of course they have already been outflanked on the right.  Their task is to devise a mirror-image of Farage's strategy: a plan for rolling up Reform from left to right.

Genuine pragmatism from Starmer would be to drop the 'far right' rhetoric (and tell the Beeb to follow suit); give the Police a pay rise; and carry through with the other line we've heard from ministers, which is to draw parallels with football hooliganism - and act accordingly.  Then go gangbusters - literally - on the small boats issue (it's in the Manifesto!).  Get some money into the hands of responsible metro mayors, with significant strings attached.  Oh, and drop all ideas of votes for 16 year-olds.  

ND  

UPDATE:  see the last section of this lefty broadcast for a manifestation the left-tactical debate I'm talking about here.

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** when I was a local councillor I sat for a while on the Road Safety Committee.  Residents were forever coming forward with their demands for additional safety measures, always under the banner "Does Somebody Have To Get Killed Before You Do Anything About This?"  Basically, sadly, the answer is "Yes". 

Labour whips MPs harshly & with good reason

There was quite a lot of surprise when Labour withdrew the whip summarily from seven MPs after the child benefit cap vote.  Simple outrage from the Left, of course; but even some of the more measured commentary was along the lines of "these minor revolts have happened under many a previous government without such draconian reactions" - and the suggestion that Starmer's was a gratuitous & rather undignified piece of macho posturing.  Hey (*beats chest*), it wasn't in the Manifesto so that really means we ain't rushing to do it!  And we are really gonna have some discipline around here, you better believe it!

OK, everyone knows the perils of a big majority buts surely, there's more to it than chest-beating.  Starting from the trivial: who in Starmer's position wouldn't want to take an early opportunity to suspend, ideally to expel, Corbynite throwbacks the like of Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon & Ian Byrne?  This is a man who fully ejected the saintly Corbyn himself.  And Apsana Begum, Imran Hussain and Zarah Sultana can confidently be recognised as part of the 'independent' tendency Starmer has every electoral wish to suppress.  Let 'em all defect formally to a new Parliamentary grouping: the sooner the better.

Next up, just look at how few there were of them!  Without a merciless whipping operation, might we not have expected dozens of protest-voters?  A quick look down the list of back-bench Labour abstainers gives an indication.  Obviously, the likes of Dianne Abbott have been shaken into sullen compliance.  When they want to lull themselves to sleep at night, they can all tell themselves the Polly Toynbee story: don't worry, the two-child cap will be removed in the autumn for sure.

Well, but will it?  Toynbee is perennially hyper-ventilating her characteristic brand of premature wishful thinking: served up confidently as fact, but so often to be so sadly disappointed.  More realistic (and these days quite panicky) leftist commentators seem extremely fearful that the autumn will bring measures that in their terms means a fully-fledged re-run of Osborne Austerity, even if it will be sprinkled with a few tax measures they'll applaud.  The winter fuel announcement serves only to heighten their fears.  The child benefit whipping operation was couched in terms of "you all signed up just six weeks ago for the Manifesto": and that very document is exactly the flag under which Reeves claims to be sailing.  Cite her 'Keynesian' Mais Lecture all you like: that's not what the Manifesto says. 

IMHO, this bears every sign of (a) prudent attention to Machiavelli's dictum that the new Prince should set the tone by getting his punitive first strikes in at the earliest opportunity; and (b) a leadership that expects to be whipping hard and frequently on many an uncomfortable Parliamentary occasion in the months to come.  Cow those waverers good and early: their political will needs to be broken right from the off.  

Many of them must be trembling at the thought of what they're going to be told to vote for.  The Smack of Firm Government, eh?  And a summer of riots still to come ...  Kier "I banged them all up in 2011" Starmer will be in his element.

ND