Thursday
Nov052015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day, shameless edition
Bryony Worthington seems to want to reverse the tide of deindustrialisation her Climate Change Act has brought about.
[T]he Redcar situation... illustrates how important it is that we get our energy and industrial strategy right. There is a risk to dragging our feet and there is an urgency involved in sorting out our policies on how we are going to not just maintain but actively attract industrial players back to the UK to reindustrialise our nation.
I wonder if she goes to sleep at night thinking that all she has achieved in her life is to put thousands of productive people on the scrapheap. I really wonder.
Reader Comments (64)
Well at least she's starting to think now. That's progress! Maybe one day she'll connect the dots.
It's not just the people she has put out of work. It's the thousands of people in the future who will die because either there will be no electricity or they will not be able to afford to heat their homes or cook a hot meal; all because of the consequences of her lunatic Climate Change Act 2008.
She says "We are home to brilliant engineers and bright graduates". It's pity she didn't listen to all those brilliant engineers and scientists, but instead listened to green nutters and supported PPEs who think engineers are those chaps in overalls who come to fix their washing machines. How many brilliant engineers are there in parliament, or in the government?
Can anyone enlighten me as to the exact medical procedure & terminology for removing one's head from one's arse? Ms Worthington certainly needs this procedure very soon! I can think of many terms of nomenclature to label her & her like-minded friends, but wouldn't wish to be inaccurate!
UK large Industrial electicity costs are the highest in the EU.
Sweden pays 3.5p/kWh
Germany pays 8.1p/kWh
UK pays 9.78p/kWh
(DECCs own figures)
This might have something to do with the collapse of heavy industry in UK.
Amazing, chance of the lights going out and suddenly the scriptwriters begin to see the light!
Irish Industrial price is €1.201 - presently = 8.6 p/ kWh using exchange rate of €1.4 = £1.00. Only Cyprus is higher in the Euro zone . In Euro terms UK is higher still at € 1.38/kWh. No wonder UK heavy industry is uncompetitive.
It seems that her strategy for reversing the tide of deindustrialisation is spelt out in her third paragraph.
She's for doubling down on the green strategy:
"There are ways in which we can rekindle that industry, but it will not be through trying to push back the tide of green policy, trying to deny that climate change is happening or blaming green taxation for our woes; it will be the reverse".
Go long wool.
Let's get our priorities in the right order, which do we want to happen first: cheap, workable CCS or pigs to fly?
Her frenzied spell drafting the Climate Change Act on behalf of Friends of the Earth and their prize lackey the junior Miliband is probably largely a blank period now in her memory, and that may provide her with some protection from having any awful insights about what a foolish and destructive piece of legislation that was. It was a child of its times for some eco-zealots in the UK, however, and as ever such people are also protected mentally by their fervent faith that their intentions were good. What constraints are there, after all, on doing harm to your society when you are convinced that you are 'saving the planet', or some other such self-glorifying delusion of grandeur? Criticisms from despised outsiders merely reinforce their crusades by allowing 'enemies' and 'dark conspiracies' to be conjured up to help keep any waverers or wobblers, or thinkers for that matter, locked-in on the tasks in hand.
Bad news for the honourable Barroness Worthington after the Tax Credits fiasco Cameron and Osborne will be deindustrializing the House of Lords before Jeremy Corbyn gets the chance.
It appears that her strategy for rescuing an industry that cannot compete on price with Chinese steel makers is to INCREASE the costs of UK steelmakers by forcing them to install expensive and unproven CCS systems.
More expensive good , reduce costs bad - Wow
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cranial+rectal+inversion
I have nothing to add to any comment about Ms Worthington that would not have to be removed as ad hominem.
Judging from the whole of her speech, I doubt Bryony has any problem sleeping. Though I must confess I don't really understand her game plan. We develop expensive carbon capture and storage technology - using a £1 billion or more of taxpayers' money referred to by another speaker, plus any more we can cadge from the EU and private investment, and then the people of Redcar and elsewhere will live happily ever after - somehow. Is that it?
Ms Worthington sleeps the sleep of one who knows that, in Chinese terminology, she has a golden rice bowl.
ROTFL were it not so appalling
"If we want to maintain our industrial activities and investment, we have got to have technologies that allow us to do that with low carbon—and that means CCS. It does not just mean CCS on its own; it can be combined with electrification, once we have a low-carbon power system. But CCS is going to play a huge role"
Ruled by idiots.
Also worth noting that the Michelin tyre factory in Ballymena which is now due to close, in a statement from Michelin they have said "Our energy costs are too high" as one of the reasons for it's closing. Statement can be read here:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/michelin-workers-reeling-from-massive-job-loss-blow-at-ballymena-truck-tyre-factory-34165389.html
Some of the Nazi Collaborators in post war Europe regretted their part in extinguishing life, even though they were handsomely rewarded at the time.
The only way she can redeem herself is for her to vigorously promote Thorium based nuclear reactors.
I'm afraid my prediction from a few years ago still holds.
1. The lights will start to go out.
2. The political agenda will be, "See! The market has failed. Power generation is too important to be left to profit."
3. The clamour will come for nationalisation (enthusiastically from the left, 'reluctantly' from the fake conservatives)
4. The power market will be seized by HMG.
Trebles all round!
The correct responses should be:
1. The lights will start to go out.
2. The political agenda will be, "See! The idiot greens and their lackies in govt, media and business have brought the country to its knees"
3. The clamour will come for SHALE, SHALE, SHALE!!! (enthusiastically from the true right, 'reluctantly' from the mainstream left – relabelling it: 'The People's Gas')
4. The lights will go back on.
I suppose arguing for a nationalised shale gas industry is a good compromise?
It sounds good to me, anyway.
State support for vital infrastructure that will occasionally have unproductive units while they explore new areas.
At least Baroness Briony has the decency to go on the record and thank Lord Oxburgh for his blinding role as a Collaborator.
The BBC and Guardian will still have difficulty seeing the smoking guns, in the freezing cold light of day.
Miliband should be seen as the Weapon of Mass Economic Destruction, but he did not do it without some useful tools, at the BBC and Guardian. Their heads should hang, in shame.
M Courtney 11.08 Excellent idea, provided revenue generated is used for good causes. This will mean culling all political activists from positions where they decide the nature of good causes.
A Win Win
When people like this talk of engineering and industry they mean niche electronics, software, dot come startups, basically high tech, low energy business. They don't mean high energy manufacturing. They even dream of a nation of home businesses turning into multi billion pound concerns. Sure, sometimes those things happen but most people haven't got what it takes to be a business genius. They need traditional jobs. Power shortages aren't a problem for the likes of Briony, they just switch to battery power and really can't see why the rest of us make a fuss.
All of history is against her "actively attract industrial players back" to an nation that lost it - for any reason. Manufacturing is not like a field of "open-range, organic" wheat that can recover in a couple of years. Industry that left built newer, more efficient facilities and simply will not even attempt to do a "build-back" plant in the UK. Unless a WWII national emergency, plants shuttered are gone forever. The anti-CO2 energy folks have won a permanent victory.
One should note be surprised at the predictable upcoming failures of the UK energy power production and grid. In fact, the entire EU are facing some very grim, and very cold, winters.
That Vinnie Jones National Lottery ad isn't looking that stupid anymore
Further to the comments on nationalising shale.
The trouble with allowing Government money, is Government wastage; witness the recent articles regarding UK Government aid to refugees in Syria where over half has been eaten up in UN admin (snouts in the trough), the same is so with the Catholic Church according to an article today that suggests that 60% of all money raised by the church for helping the poor goes to financing the Vatican and only 40% is spent on the poor. You can bet that of that 40%, much is then eaten up by on site charity workers etc so that the real aid which gets into the hands & mouths of the poor is probably down to 10% of the sum collected.
Large Government/quasi Governmental institutions simply eat and waste money.
The Road to Hell..... and all that.
"I wonder if she goes to sleep at night thinking that all she has achieved in her life is to put thousands of productive people on the scrapheap. I really wonder."
I wager she has dreams about those people she has put on the scrapheap, but sees those as "sweat dreams". I wager she hates people just like most leftists.
"I wonder if she goes to sleep at night thinking that all she has achieved in her life is to put thousands of productive people on the scrapheap. I really wonder."
Well if you really wonder that, then you haven't begun to understand the progressive mindset.
@Richard Verney: Nothing has changed over the last 50 years it seems! Oxfam went through similar criticism years back when details emerged of their financing! I dare say ALL other charitable groupes suffer likewise. It's the nature of the beast! In days of yore when the rich undertook charitable work, presumably to salv their conciences, they paid charity workers from their own pockets, whils fund rainsing for said charity! Such work is now big business!
How do you define "psychopath"?
Are we forgetting the role of the Great Earth Mother of Global Warming's in closing down the coal mines and actually shutting down most heavy industry in the UK by the end of the 1980s ?
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history
'The UK Government became a strong supporter of climate research in the mid-1980s, following a meeting between Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher and a small number of senior climate researchers. This and other meetings eventually led to the setting up of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, within the Met Office.'
If Baroness Briony wants to reverse the mass slaughter of British Industry and employment, it is a bit late for her to acquire common sense, and credibility.
A bit of honesty and humility about her own complicity in crimes against humans in the UK, would be a good start, though the poor and dying in underdeveloped countries have nothing to show for her efforts to save them either.
She gets £300 a day for spouting garbage and using exhaled CO2 to do it. Perhaps we could CCS her first.
As shadow energy minister or something, she has clearly had to listen to people who know the facts and is realising she will be held responsible for millions of job losses and perhaps millions of deaths because of her crass technological ignorance. I also suspect the sisterhood has quietly told its members that IPCC's foney fizzicks means there is no real CO2-AGW and this game of renewable job losses has been a disaster.
Indeed, with Germany behaving like the last days of the Weimar Republic, and Na$is reappearing, the UK led by appeasers, it looks more and more like a rerun of the 1930s. A that time, to solve mass unemployment, technology evolved. Our (eco) fascists want a return to subsistence agriculture with windmills, despite potentially accelerating the death of two thirds of the population
Oh, how busy the Department of Unintended Consequences is getting....
Isn't it time to re-christen her: 'Baroness Irony'...?
A religious nutter who's disconnected from reality but managed to get adherence to her religion made part of state policy and has now found it politic to recognise some shortcomings. However, she's hardly likely to recommend anything but having faith and pressing on.
It's staggering how out of touch with reality such people are and that they've managed to put hands on the levers of power.
a subtitle of her 2010 article : "Industries that stand to benefit from the European emissions trading scheme must counter arguments that higher targets mean greater cost" shows she lives in Lalaland
"Those who have yet to accept the fact that weaning ourselves off imported fossil fuels and investing in a new clean energy system will boost the European economy have had their knives out"
boosted the economy of Redcar have you Bryony love ?
BTW note the comment by Tim Worstnall "I beg your pardon? Making energy more expensive will boost the economy? What have you been smoking?"
BTW she is right about the way the Carpetbagger investors like Tata turned up and made easy money by exploiting the stupid ETS ..and are now closing the same factories cos they can't make money.
hysterical quote from another article "But today, on sunny and windy days, large volumes of renewable power are being generated, causing energy prices to tumble."
There is no indication that this little lady has seen the light, she is too busy still building the tunnel:
"We are almost on our own in Europe in understanding how important CCS is and having a populace that supports us in that. Germany needs it but cannot deliver it. The only other countries that are close to us in terms of understanding are Holland and Norway."
Question: How much extra wind generation would have been needed to cover yesterdays 500MW shortage?
Answer: 26.8GW
Question: How much extra solar generation would have been needed to cover yesterdays 500MW shortage?
Answer: infinite - it was dark.
Question: How much extra coal/oil/gas generation would have been needed to cover yesterdays 500MW shortage?
Answer: 500MW
re Spectator...Nov 5, 2015 at 10:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterSpectator
Everything is more (use expletive of choice) expensive in Ireland!
Peter Walsh, Dublin
Nov 5, 2015 at 1:50 PM Dung
Here is an indication that she may have seen the light.
I also thank specifically the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for her contribution to the debate and wish her well in her future endeavours as she steps down from the Opposition Front Bench.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldhansrd/text/151104-0001.htm#st_78
4 Nov 2015 : Column 1641 - second paragraph.
She is abandoning the limelight, and responsibility, of the Opposition Front Bench and retiring to the obscurity of the benches.
It looks like £2,500/MWh has shaken her little fantasy world as reality bumps up against unicorn farts.
Miliband should be seen as the Weapon of Mass Economic Destruction, but he did not do it without some useful tools, at the BBC and Guardian.
Nov 5, 2015 at 11:17 AM | golf charlie
Indeed. The 2008 Climate Change (Destruction of the Economy) Act.
There really should be some simple tests before people are allowed to be MPs. Tying up your shoes for example. Putting them on AFTER you have put your socks on. Along those lines, so that we can be sure that have **some** level of capacity as am operational human being. Such a test would have saved us both Milibands, for starters.
Clive: "High energy prices ... This might have something to do with the collapse of heavy industry in UK."
It's much deeper than that. For at least the last 40 years, the UK political establishment have been vehemently anti industry, anti-engineering. E.g we saw the old "science and engineering" commitees get replaced by "Science and Technology" (aka what academics think they do and what they think they should be credited with producing).
Likewise, we saw the wholesale assault on industry via Thatcher, the Blair dug in the knife using the proxy of CO2.
And all this time one organisation has been the root cause through its incessant pro (academic)"science"anti-industry" "industry is the past" - "industry is killing the planet by creating plant food ... invective creating a culture in the UK that is probably the most anti-industrial culture on the planet.
And the organisation responsible is the "Public service" BBC. Pro-green anti-industry, pro-academia anti-engineering, pro-"wildlife on 1" anti "economic reality"
When reviewing anything the good Baroness might say regarding industrial competitiveness and energy, I would advise keeping the scorpion-and-frog fable in mind.
Because in the end she will revert to her nature.
Of course, unlike in the fable, the Greenpeace helicopter (twin turboshaft engines) will arrive to pluck her to safety so she can do it over, and over, and over...
Sherlock1 says ......
"Oh, how busy the Department of Unintended Consequences "
Another one was delivered by her on Tuesday night to the House of Lords.
She has now realised that there is a little industry of small scale diesel generators now commissioned to keep the lights on when the 'renewables' don't work.
By shutting down highly efficient coal energy plants like Longannet she has achieved the worst possible world
Intermittent energy supply
Highly polluting nitrogen dioxide as well as CO2 from the diesel plants
The highest cost electrical energy in Europe
Factory closure on a grand scale
All this from the HoL shadow energy minister of the 'workers and poor folk' party
Several spectacular own goals!
In the light of day, Greens want to be seen as enlightening. When it has gone cold and dark, they can't be seen, but can still be remembered.
Miliband has left both the UK and Labour in worse states than he found them. The BBC and Guardian ought to be given more credit for Miliband's achievements. They have deserved it.
Baroness Worthington has just announced that she is stepping down as shadow Energy and Climate spokesperson and returning to the back benches.
Alan the Brit,
No, there is no known cure for autoproctolepsy.
Er... No. We currently either produce Steel or reduce 'emissions' (of Plant food). Unless the good 'baroness' has just figured out how to harness Fusion.
She strikes me as one of those individuals that will attend a protest against 'austerity' while calling for HMG to borrow more money to keep the fantasy alive.
Baroness - We can borrow money to buy our Steel from better governed nations or we can produce it here - Simple.
(And let us not forget the obscenity of borrowing money from eg China to pay for our unemployed too)
These people are a joke. In the case of The UK, a terminal joke. Don't worry though, just invest elsewhere if you ever want to see a pension. Eventually it will occur to investors, those we keep borrowing 100bn a year from, that they will never see their money again. At that point, think high interest rates or possibly Greece.