Day 4677: Ed Davey Throws Himself off Hinkley Point (metaphorically!)

Monday:

In a deal that’s literally radioactive, Her Majesty’s government in the form of Master Gideon and Bojo the Clown and, of course, Liberal Democrat point man Mr Ed Davey, have announced that there will be a new atomic power station (or two) at Hinkley Point in Somerset, built and run by the French, paid for by the Chinese and presumably using South African or Canadian uranium.

So, nice energy security there.

The price for their electricity has been set at £92.50 per kilowatt hour, which is about double the current wholesale price.

Not quite “too cheap to meter” either.

Okay, to be fair, if you bear in mind that the new nuke won’t start generating for at least ten years, that’s a (compound) rate of “only” about 7.5% increases every year.

On the one fluffy foot that almost seems moderate compared to the 8.2%, 9.2% and 10.4% price hikes announced this last week; on the other fluffy foot, it means the government are guessing that energy costs will continue to rise at two to three times the rate of inflation for the next decade.

Brrr!

It says a lot about the immediacy of the threat of global warming that a lot of very decent people who would previously have looked askance at the toxic legacy of the nuclear industry (where we’re still not quite sure where to put all the waste) have been convinced that the power of the atom is a clean green alternative to burning lots of carbon when it comes to facing up to keeping the lights on. Not that Gideon or Bojo believe in climate change, so what’s their excuse?

Personally, I still believe that this is a distraction from serious investment in our own renewable resources.

Having worried for ages about the ability of President Vlad the Bad Putin of Russia turning off the gas taps and freezing us (like he did to Ukraine), we seem remarkably blasé about letting Great Britain’s off switch fall into the hands of the Central Committee of the People’s Republic. Better hope that those notoriously unforgiving Mandarins have forgotten all about the opium wars, eh.

I think we should be making more of our own power and not buying in heavy elements to burn up. I should prefer to see at least one, and preferably three, tidal bores being tapped and a whole lot more offshore wind. And to counter those blowhards who protest that “the wind doesn't blow all the time”, time to dust off the plans for that Exmore pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme, and a few more, so we can store power from when the wind when it’s there and release it when the wind drops.

Because, frankly, I’d rather rely on when the wind blows than risk, er, “When The Wind Blows”.

Having talked about energy prices, though, there was for once a very good point in the weekend’s Grauniad (although heavily disguised as a bizarre attack on Morrisey’s autobiography).

The obsession among media and political types – archbishops and Mr Milipede included – with these 9% hikes in the price of energy is the obsession of people who already own houses and is blotting out the much more serious 9% average rise in the cost of rents for people who do not.

British Gas customers – that is eight million households – face an average increase of £123 a year. Bad, but nothing compared with the £835 increase a year for the 8.3 million households in rented accommodation – £835!

In this context, the second phase of Master Gideon’s Help-to-Buy scheme might as well be called Help-to-Buy-to-Let and is likely to drive up house prices and therefore rents even more, trapping millions of people even further below the first rung of the housing ladder.

The prospect of a meltdown at a nuclear power station might be the stuff of nightmares, but it’s the meltdown in the housing market that is truly terrifying.

Day 2770: A Nuclear Non

Friday:


Well, it’s not EVERY day that you get to see the Government’s energy policy AND environment policy both implode before breakfast.

We ARE going to need extra generating capacity if we’re to avoid the lights going out; we’ll need it NOT to be more fossil-fuel-based plants if we are to meet our Kyoto targets. But really, the whole idea that we could flog off British (Radioactive) Energy to the French and get them to build us the infrastructure on the cheap is just TYPICAL of this Government, particularly Mr Frown and his ENRON-ACCOUNTING PPP (or Pay Pounds Perpetually) schemes.

Ironically, the deal also failed because in their keenness to do GOOD deal for EDF, the Labour Government forgot that selling to France at below the market rate also toasted the private sector who said that the deal was off unless they got a fair price – including for the taxpayer!

But do we REALLY want to be handing over control of YET ANOTHER energy industry to another country? From moving to a position where the country could supply its own energy needs, through coal and North Sea oil and gas, we have allowed ourselves to drift into a state where we are at the WHIM of foreign corporations and governments and WILDLY fluctuating international prices.

We already have HUGE increases in the cost of energy, hitting the poorest hardest – and worse, it’s disproportionately harder because of the way they are excluded from cheaper deals like Direct Debit payment!

The Government should be taking RESPONSIBILITY for guaranteeing future supply.

And now, it would appear, that the Government has abrogated its duty AGAIN, and wants not only to inflict atomic power plants on us, but to inflict atomic power plants on us that are under the control of FRANCE!

If you WANT new generating capacity – and we do – just go and BUILD IT. For personal preference, I would rather build a dozen windmill farms, but if you MUST make atomic power stations then just MAKE them rather than insisting on doing something stupid and then trying to get some other fellow to do it for you. On the cheap.

Day 2705: Mr Frown Risks a Meltdown

Wednesday:


Just when you thought Mr Frown couldn't make his brand any more TOXIC, he decides that a heavy dose of atomic radiation is just what the situation calls for.

Once again he reaches out his great clunking fist towards the right answer – reducing our dependence on imported energy supplies by diversifying our generating capacity – only to BRUSH IT ASIDE and pick the STUPID option instead!

Earlier this week, Channel Furore showed the (rather sad) "Life After People" show where, after only a few thousand years, all trace of humans would DISAPPEAR! Except they FORGOT about RADIOACTIVE WASTE: the steaming great RADIOACTIVE sores we are going to be leaving on the face of the Earth for up to MILLIONS of years to come!

(Incidentally, we thought that the "Life After People" people cheated just SLIGHTLY when they said "we're not going to say HOW people went, just start from the moment that you're all gone". Because essentially, they had chosen the – quite UNLIKELY – "the whole population is teleported off-world by aliens" option. Any OTHER way of disappearing the human race – war, plague, natural disaster – would leave a LOT of evidence and certainly NOT just left the atomic reactors to quietly turn themselves off because they're all BOUND to fail safely just like Chernobyl didn't… er…)


Brilliantly timed as ever, our Prime Monster managed to reveal his whim (it can hardly be called a "decision" made as it was apparently without consultation) to build even more potential terrorist targets, just a day after the agency responsible for cleaning up after the LAST lot of reactors (Kim & Aggie) announced that seventy BILLION pounds wasn't enough to do the job and could they have ANOTHER seventy billion, please!

So much for the "limitless cheap energy" that they've been promising since the 1950s! This 'private sector' industry guzzles more PUBLIC subsidy than any other form of energy generation. Talk about throwing GOOD MONEY after BAD: isn't it about time we switched off the GIANT MONEY TAP and looked for something else?

Proponents of ever more atomic energy like to say it's only because of SUPERSTITION or PARANOIA that people are against increasing our reliance on a dangerous mineral element that has to be shipped here from all around the world because we don't HAVE any uranium of our own.

(Yes, between them Canada and Australia have most of the world's Uranium mines – though slightly disturbingly billions of tonnes of the stuff appear to be dissolved in the OCEANS, the Japanese have discovered – but even if it IS mined in nice safe stable countries… and let's face it, it is ALSO being dug up in LESS STABLE places such as South Africa, Russia, Uzbekistan and Americaland… even so it STILL has to be put on a boat and sailed here, subject to storms and pirates and crashing into the coast!)

Because the thing is, if you know a bit about the SCIENCE you will realise… THIS idea is EVERY BIT as dangerous and stupid as the superstitious paranoiacs think it is!

Even if it wasn't a HIDEOUSLY expensive waste of money that could more usefully be infested in a range of genuinely renewable energy sources and an industry with a PROVEN track record of failure to deliver on all its promises from cost to clean-up to containment, you just cannot get away from the fact that nuclear fission produces waste material that is both LETHAL and INDESTRUCTIBLE and the only solution that our scientists have managed to come up with is to bury it in the ground forever and hope it goes away.

Which of course it WILL, because it is radioactively decaying, but not for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time!

Mr Frown's EXCUSE for this nuclear option is the OIL SHOCK, and he has written to everyone to explain all about it.

And if THAT wasn't bad enough – because even in these ENLIGHTENED times, not EVERYONE reads the Grauniad's Comment is Free – apparently Mr Frown has taken to COLD CALLING the rest of the population.

(The Scum "wittily" suggests getting rid of him by reading him some of Lady Cherie-on-the-top's auto-hagiography. Yet somehow I feel that if I got the Prime Monster of the country on the telephone I MIGHT just think of something more CONSTRUCTIVE to suggest to him.)

He says:

"…we need to accelerate the development and deployment of alternative sources of energy, reducing global dependence on oil. Britain will increase its investment in renewables, including decentralised generation. We will build one of the world's first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage coal plants and we have committed to a nuclear building programme to ensure that the UK's emissions and dependence on fossil fuels do not rise as existing nuclear stations close."

Though, oddly enough, Mr Frown seems to OVERLOOK mentioning that he wants to INCREASE not just maintain our supply from nuclear power.

(He also appears to be suggesting that "carbon-capture" is somehow going to make burning fossil fuels into an "alternative" energy source. If his letter was about reducing carbon EMISSIONS then "carbon-capture" might be worth mentioning, but since he's talking about reducing carbon CONSUMPTION then it doesn't make any sense at all.)



Meanwhile, Mr Simon Jenkins becomes merely the latest commentator (and by commentator, I mean generally the people who think of themselves as the "great and the good" and who other people think of as "those people who get paid by the Grauniad or the Windy-pendent or the BBC to spout total rubbish")… Mr Jenkins becomes merely the latest to say: "since he's going to lose anyway, Mr Frown can do all the things he really wants to" meaning Mr Frown can do all of the thing MR JENKINS really wants him to.

WAKE UP!

If Mr Frown wanted to do those things he would have DONE THEM ALREADY. When will you get it into your heads that atomic power stations, Public Private Partnerships, tax loopholes for the super-rich, I.D.iot cards, detention without trial, testing, targets and invading Middle Eastern Countries are ALL things that Mr Frown wanted JUST AS MUCH as Lord Blairimort did. He wasn't some innocent bystander, trapped in the Treasury with no power except TOTAL CONTROL OF THE ECONOMY, unable to prevent Lord Blairimort's mad power-rush, but biding his time until he could set things right. He was COMPLICIT. He was GUILTY! He was IN ON IT up to his perma-creased FROWN!

Day 2565: Nuke Labour New Danger

Thursday:


The bright hope of the sixties that turned into a frightening nightmare relic of enormous expenses overruns and imminent danger of meltdown: it can only mean… fuchsia-finished old fraud, Mr Peter Vain!

Oh no, sorry it's the return of Nuclear Power.


What MOST turns me off the Nuclear Industry – yes, even MORE than the thought of becoming a GLOW-IN-THE-DARK toy! – is the way that their ADVOCATES cannot seem to control their TELLING of FIBS.

A typical one is the "you cannot rely on renewables – the wind doesn’t blow all the time" meme that they trot out.

It seems so SELF-EVIDENT, doesn't it? Sometimes the wind is blowing and sometimes it is not. And yet, it would really be ASTONISHINGLY UNLIKELY if the wind stopped EVERYWHERE at once. It is a case of making sure that you have windmill farms in SEVERAL places so that there are always some catching the breeze.

Though of course, there are parts of the country where the wind RARELY falls, particularly out at sea – funnily enough this is how SAILING SHIPS work and we seem to have found THOSE fairly reliable over the centuries.

Even MORE outrageous was the suggestion one of their mealy mouthed apologists offered on News 24: "oh well, Tidal Barrage only works twice a day".

Er, NO. It works as the tide goes in and then goes into reverse and works AGAIN as the tide goes out. ALL the way in and ALL the way out. And then all the way in and all the way out AGAIN (twice a day, you see).

A little learning is a DANGEROUS THING, said the Sainted Oscar, and you can see why: you think you know a LITTLE about something and then RADIOACTIVE MAN and chums come along and FOOL YOU!

They want you to believe that Nuclear has a TRACK RECORD – well yes, it has a track record of promising "energy too cheap to meter" and then delivering tons of deadly toxic waste that lasts forever and oops sorry no more cash, the government will have to clean it up. How can we POSSIBLY believe promises that the private sector will properly dispose of waste that will literally last longer than humans have been on this Earth?

And while we're at it, just what IS the annual carbon footprint of safely storing this crud? Because multiply THAT by a million years and factor it into your calculations before claiming that Nuclear Power is GREEN.



Meanwhile, the government is threatening to take away MP's right to vote on their own pay.

Typical NuLabour thinking: oh, some people do not like this thing; it must be up to US to order it changed!

It seems Ms Harriet Harpy does not believe that MPs can be TRUSTED with the responsibility.

Well, maybe they CAN and maybe they CAN'T but it is the VOTERS who get to decide on their MPs performances. The MPs are there to keep charge of the government, NOT the other way around, no matter what bossy Ms Harpy might think – and yes, they are NOT very good at it, are they. But just imagine how much worse they will be if their salary depends on being compliant with her.

Well, maybe they CAN and maybe they CAN'T but it is the VOTERS who get to decide on their MPs performances. The MPs are there to keep charge of the government, NOT the other way around, no matter what bossy Ms Harpy might think – and yes, they are NOT very good at it, are they. But just imagine how much worse they will be if their salary depends on being compliant with her.

Day 2237: "Something has gone clearly and radically wrong"

Thursday:


Not, it has to be said, entirely the BEST words to hear when you are discussing ATOMIC REACTORS!


The people from GREENSLEEVES have been to Court in order to call Lord Blairimort to account. Obviously, Lord Blairimort was found GUILTY.

This goes back to last year when Lord Blairimort announced a FULL CONSULTATION into whether we should build new nuclear powered terrorist targets all over the country or whether there might be something a bit cleaner, greener, safer and cheaper that we could do instead.

"Right… we're going to have these power stations. You lot… talk amongst yourselves," said Lord Blairimort, speaking at the start of the consultation. "I'm a busy man. Important haircut, radioactive glint in the eyes, melanoma cast to the skin."

Funnily enough, the judge thought that maybe… just maybe… Lord Blairimort DIDN'T ENTIRELY MEAN IT when he said it would be a proper discussion.

The judge has discovered that the government – you will be SHOCKED – did not give FULL information to the people on the consultation! In fact, they were asked to choose between:

A: pure atomic energy from this lovely shiny completely 100% safe, guaranteed by Lord Blairimort's personal word of honour, sparkling (no, that IS safe) nuclear reactor

Or

B: methane from this cow farting in a tent

Fortunately, our LISTENING PM has ENTIRELY taken on board the judge's criticism.

"Look…" he said, "I told you… last time. We're having these power stations… now you can go and do it all again… but you might as well… go whistle."

Good news for all those people voting on Lord Blairimort's CLICKBOX then!

Of course, things have moved along a little bit since last year: it is not only the atomic reactors that are in danger of MELTDOWN! It ought to be clear to the soon to be ex-Prime Minister that he will have a harder time railroading this through a second time with Mr Frown waiting in the wings and probably a good bit less keen on starting his own Premiership with RADIATION on his hands.

"My… ahhh… decision to… ahhh… axe Lord Blairimort's… ahhh… plan is entirely… ahhh… entirely down to the… ahhh… ex-pensive, imm-prudent and indeed… ahhh… ex-horbitant nature of these… ahhh… atomic deathtraps and… ahhh… nothing to do with… ahhh… kneeing him personally in the… ahhh…" as he might say.

Fortunately, there is BETTER NEWS to be had from the world of POWER, with the announcement that the plan to build one-hundred and eighty one GIANT WINDMILLS on the Isle of Lewis has been given the go-ahead.

(And a larger ALCOHOL powered power station will be built on the nearby Isle of Morse! Sorry!)

These 181 wind turbines should be able to generate up to 543 MWe of electricity – or 375,000 houses worth of electricity.

In comparison, a single modern nuclear power station produces between 600 and 1200 MWe – 400,000 to 800,000 houses worth.

Ah ha, say the sceptics, but the wind does not blow all the time! True, but neither do you have to turn it off in a hurry to avoid the CHINA SYNDROME. You may not have noticed this, but we actually get quite a LOT of wind in this country – especially in north Scotland – and it almost never ever stops blowing EVERYWHERE in the country at once. And – handily – it blows MORE in winter, when it is cold and people turn on their electric blankets more.

I am a big fan of windmills!

I know they are not to everybody's tastes. Some people prefer the gentle blue glow of a large concrete cube as it merrily IRRADIATES the local children, but I think that windmills look very LOVELY turning majestically against the horizon. Thonking the occasional passing seagull out of the sky.

Okay, SORRY, yes they do kill a few birds – but only about one or two a year per windmill. More than ten MILLION birds a year get killed by flying into someone's CAR – windmills don't do for NEARLY so many; we are hardly likely to build FIVE MILLION windmills, now are we?

(Not least because that would be enough to power the ENTIRE COUNTRY more than a HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY times over!)

I am particularly CHARMED that the two other complaints raised against wind farms are

1. The whirring sound can cause noise pollution
2. They get in the way of low-level aircraft training

Is it just me or does the DIRTY GREAT SCREAMING ROARING of the jet aeroplanes going past cause just the eensiest bit more NOISE?

It is even said that offshore windfarms might interfere with the nation's RADAR DEFENCE! Well, yes… if you assume that there IS an enemy capable of mounting an air attack on us any more AND that they are mad enough to fly their aircraft THROUGH a field of windmills! (see complaint 2 above!)

On the other fluffy foot, wind power is CLEAN, ABUNDANT, RELIABLE and AFFORDABLE. And it works! Oh, it also creates lots of new jobs (not just in construction) and at the end of their life they can be quickly and easily taken to pieces again. And they are popular – people LOVE windmills.

Saving the world can be FUN!

Still, if you don't think THAT is going to work, there will always be some other POTTY scheme along in a minute. Like THIS plan, clearly inspired by too much KATE BUSH, to float ocean going CLOUD MAKING YACHTS.


You couldn't make this stuff up, you know.

Day 1914: Nose Trouble

Friday:


Heave! Heave! Heave!

The Clangers have succeeded in pulling me out of the hole in which I was stuck. Major Clanger tied his fishing line around my big fluffy nose and they all PULLED.

My nose is VERY sore now!

Back down on Earth, I cannot BELIEVE how totally RUBBISH Mr Balloon has been about I.D.IOT cards, even after I told you all how VERY BAD the government's not-really-a-compromise was!

Even WORSE! Mr DAVIS DAVID who is SUPPOSED to be Shadow Home Secretary and TOTALLY against I.D.IOT cards only went and VOTED FOR the government’s amendment!

As my Daddy might say: construct a popular phrase or saying using the following words not necessarily in this order: TURKEYS CHRISTMAS VOTING FOR WHY WAIT SHOOT US NOW.

Mr Blair is laughing so hard we can hear him ALL THE WAY UP HERE IN SPACE! Even if there IS a vacuum between the Earth and the Moon.



Looking down on the Earth from up here, it is very LOVELY, even if you people are making it a bit GRUBBY! Could you not tidy up a bit?

Speaking of tidying up reminds me that it has turned out that tidying up all of you NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS is going to cost a lot more billions of pounds more that you thought it was.

Even though I am in favour of ELECTRICITY for television and DVDs and the Internet, I am a BIT worried about making it out of atom bomb material that you have to import from abroad. And leaving radioactive waste that lasts as long as the whole world and might make GIANT MUTANT LIZARDS is not a completely clever energy policy. I am not sure that the MAGIC FORCE FIELDS of Mr Blair’s I.D.IOT cards can protect us from GODZILLA!!

Here on the Moon, the Clangers make all the electricity they need to run their television from RENEWABLE sources. In fact it is Mother Clanger wearing NYLON stockings and taking a brisk walk around the craters – the static build up provides enough charge to run the telly all night!

However, if Britain does not have enough fast moving sock matriarchs, then perhaps you could consider some other renewable resources instead. Perhaps you could generate some electricity from Mr Balloon’s FLIP-FLOPS?

The Clangers do not seem very sympathetic about my SORE NOSE! In fact they keep giving me BLACK LOOKS and hooting amongst themselves.

This does NOT look good: now they appear to be constructing a GIANT MUSICAL CATAPULT…