Excerpt from a good article on Scriptonite Daily. Read the whole thing, it has a wide perspective.
Stupid, Corrupt, or Both
It was announced this week that the government as agreed a strike price for energy produced by EDF Energy’s planned new nuclear power plants. The strike price is the price the government guarantees EDF will receive per MegaWatt/Hour of energy produced. The current market rate is£47.50. The government has promised EDF £92.80. Yes, you read that correctly – the UK government has guaranteed EDF Energy twice the market rate.
As with Fracking, the government is using recent energy price hikes by the Big 6 energy firms as a case in favour of New Nuclear – implying or explicitly stating that prices will come down. However, in agreeing this strike price the government has guaranteed that they will not. They have fixed the price for energy produced by New Nuclear at twice the market rate.
Another bad deal for the taxpayer and the consumer, brokered by a government that consistently delivers for big business.
This is corruption. It is not the brown envelopes kind of stuff we are taught to think of as corruption. No, it is something far more insidious. It is a corrupted politics: a ring of privilege and mutually beneficial decision making that has become politics in the UK.
You see, there is an election in 2015. The Tories and Liberal Democrats are in the process of selling off as much of the family silver as possible to flatter the public finances in the short term. This will enable them to say ‘See, Austerity is working’, despite all evidence to the contrary. This is political corruption at a strategic level.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Both.
Sorry – I disagree – they are not stupid or corrupt or both – it is simply the working of an imperfect market. By giving into the greenies for so long and for tolerating antipathy to nuclear, successive governments have scared off most potential nuclear builders and have left only one in the field and even that one has been thinking of investing elsewhere. So they have deliberately run us into a dead end with no leverage at all against a monopolist. They have trumpeted that the country cannot do without nuclear, announcing that we are over a barrel.
So don’t let us blame EDF for profiteering, they are only responding rationally to a market opportunity handed to them on a plate. Nor excuse politicians by calling them stupid, corrupt or both – they are simply trying to protect themselves and their families from dismissal at the next election, hoping that the green veil will protect them from our gaze. They are still trying to convince us that decarbonisation is a necessity and that there is no price too high to protect future generations from AGW and/or depletion of finite energy resources. They do not yet know that Malthus is dead and that the wind is an unreliable energy source (something very well know to ancient mariners).
Within the narrow confines of their little world, our politicians, (remember that they are ‘ours” – we put them there) are acting rationally. For most of them, losing their seat would face them with the need to work for a living, without any relevant experience and with a c.v. that includes their voting record – not a comfortable outlook for people conditioned to respond to the threats of the Whips.
Perhaps the only thing that could bring them to face the facts, would be to close the Whips’ offices and all the bars in the Commons – permanently!
mitigatedsceptic:
The market is working in accordance with the law of supply and demand. Governments have scared away the widget suppliers, thereby reducing the supply of widgets, and are now looking for widgets to buy, thereby increasing demand. This is bound to lead to an increase in the price of widgets.
If UK politicians hadn’t backed themselves into the EU corner over so-called ‘carbon emissions’ there wouldn’t be any need to pay over-the-odds prices for nuclear power.
OB: It’s a long term malaise that has brought us to this situation. Successive governments threw away Britain’s engineering heritage and skill-base, leaving us incapable of undertaking major projects such as building a new nuclear fleet. Short term thinking, asset stripping, money market greed and fraud, lack of investment in keeping our manufacturing capability up to date, have all taken their toll.
Indeed TB, there have been many factors leading to this slow catastrophe. Politicians and the people have ignored the most simple fact – that, since the privatisation of the coal, gas and electricity monopolies, government can only stop things happening, it cannot initiate them. This deal with EDF is reaction, not proaction, and it is a last ditch before the lights go out. At that point there is no price too high to pay to keep them on.
The windfarm dream has become a nightmare but the bandwagon wheels are still turning diverting investment away from well-proven engineering towards pipe dreams of free energy and from traditional science to faith healing the climate.
Politicians are not stupid or corrupt – they are simply ignorant. The last ‘scientist’ in British politics, a lab assistant who turned lawyer, Mrs T, ignorant and opportunistic, got us into this mess, prompted by greedy greens and unsupported by a much too servile Civil Service and we have been sliding into decay ever since. I cannot think of anyone enlightened enough to get us out of it.
Its the Tory way 🙂
See the Spitfire fly over your house, as the whole shebang gets sold to foreign interests.
I think mitigatedsceptic sums it up very well.
Cheap energy was possibly the most significant factor in propelling the United States past European powers to global economic pre-eminence.
Conservative and Labour governments have been futzing around with energy policy for most of my lifetime. Many politicians probably never understood the ramifications of the cost of energy, but at least had a semi-competent civil service to keep the show on the road with the (formerly nationalised) electricity industry, plus the state-owned gas/oil production.
Despite various governments paying lip-service to market economics, any chance of a functioning energy market has been systematically eroded since the 1970’s. So now the nation finds itself to be a buyer in a seller’s market. The opportunity for cheaper solutions has been squandered. It’s ‘O’-level economics 101: An inelastic demand curve. And the sellers know it.
So it seems we now have the worst of all possible worlds. And laws have been passed that reflect the mentality of ecotards who want to save-the-planet and think that the cost of energy is not really much more important than the price of carrots at Tesco’s.
This thread is about; Accountability, government, Legal, Nuclear power, People power, Photography, Politics, propaganda, Robber Barons.
Isn’t it?
Well, the photograph of an individual’s ‘head up their arse’ covers the ‘photography’ aspect, but what of the other links?
I’ll post on these later (perhaps). 😉
Best regards, Ray.
Selloff of Greek state owned assets not going well
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23290392