Wind Generator fails.

[Andy Champ]

"preaching to the choir".

Andy

[Tim Watts]

Andy Champ wibbled on Thursday 11 March 2010 19:52

That would make the government Catholic Priests then, in the sense that they've been knowingly buggering the choir for years hoping noone will notice.

[Huge]

How long will she have to be gone before people stop blaming her for things?

[Tim Watts]

Huge wibbled on Friday 12 March 2010 13:13

While she may have been the first to start ignoring the energy crisis, the current lot have had years in which to start doing something.

[Huge]

That was kind-of my point. I'm fascinated by the way that people harp on about Maggie, even though there will be people voting at this GE who weren't born when she left office.

[Man at B&Q]

Followed by a further 13 years of gold plated fuckwittery.

MBQ

[The Natural Philosopher]

Never expect politicians who want to get elected, to look forwards. They follow public opinion slavishly.

Nuclear power has been politically unacceptable and really so has coal.

Windpower has been marketed as clean modern and cool. Its none of the above, but what the heck? Politicians can only just add up the majority in a constituency if they take their socks off.

Windpower is old fashioned, inefficient and a blot on the landscape frankly. There is a damned good reason the landscape is littered with defunct windmills - they were bloody useless.

If windpower had been any good, we would never have invented the steam engine.

Or the steamship, for that matter.

[Tim Lamb]

A common failure of all politicians is the desire to be re-elected.

Jumping to attention every time a lobby group stirs is destroying sensible governance.

We need a benign dictatorship:-)

On a practical point.... presumably it is only the reactor and the steam generator which reach lifes end. The generating hall, cooling towers and electrical infrastructure could continue if they could build a new reactor close by?

regards

[Andy Dingley]

When it stops being her fault, at the very least.

"Dash for gas" ? Terrible bloody policy.

[Andy Dingley]

Labour inaction certainly, but not quite as bad as the Tories beforehand.

The only person who seems to have done anything useful, and that only one part of it, was John Major and his involvement with wind and offshore wind in particular (particularly his career outside afterwards). Somewhat visionary choices which he was wrongly pilloried for soon afterwards.

[The Natural Philosopher]

well yes. But there tends to be a law of diminishing returns in old kit. EVERYTHING needs replacing and new standards have to be met etc etc.

In general its straight cost benefit: if brand new kit will generate more per dollar capex spent than refurbing old, go for new.

Capex also increases book asset value, refurbing does not. Straight off the bottom line, and depending what accounting rules you are under this may be better, or worse.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, an excellent policy *at the time*.

Rather than terribbly expensive unionised coal, cheap gas, and no need to pick up the nuclear hot potato, and it fuelled the boom that Brown inherited, and utterly destroyed.

Brown is pathetically naive.

He seems to think that spending money to create useless jobs equates to a healthy productive world class economy.,

[The Natural Philosopher]

Did he completely say it was utter rubbish then?

Somewhat visionary choices which he was wrongly pilloried

if you mean he was pilloried for saying offshore wind was a Good Thing, then he deserved it all. Its crap.

[John Rumm]

Indeed, it was fundamental to getting out of the unionised strangle hold that the country was in at the time.

old labour habits die hard (if ever)

[Mike]

The end of time.

[Huge]

*plonk*

[Mike]

It may have fuelled the boom but it certainly caused the long term bust, fallout was inevitable sooner or later. Pissing the vast majority of a century's worth of gas to the wall in a decade or so was nothing short of criminal.

Stimulating short term cheap electricity with a finite and valuable resource is as bad, if not worse than as creating a nation of public sector workers. If we had kept 'polluting' with dirty coal fired stations for longer, our starting point for Kyoto etc led cuts would be much higher and we probably wouldn't have such a struggle to meet those 'targets' nor be wanting for inward investment in new generation.

[Mike]

You are Maggies super sensitive secret love child and I claim my five pounds :)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Psst. No one is going to meet any Kyoto targets.

Its a complete farce.

No-one can, without reducing the living standards of its population to the point where in a democracy, they wont last in power, and in a non democracy, they wont have serious rioting, civil order, unrest, revolution and possibly civil war.

Look at teh polls: 20% pof te poulation who ARE going to vote are STILL going to vote for that one eyed scottish git who has bankruoted teh nation, ripped off teh thrify savers, taxed teh productiove back to the dloe, and sqaundered a decade of growth on giving people 'affordable houses' as if the ruddy things grew on trees. And peole expect,m that they dio, and if they dont, its the governments job to develop trees that DO grow houses.

If they are that stupid and selfish, expecting society to hand them 3 man years hard work on a plate for doing f*ck all, they aren't going to sacrifice their life style for the sake of a future generation they will never have to meet.

People are happy to have all this ecobollox thrust at them as long as someone else picks up the tab.

They wont tolerate it if they have to pay for it.

Ergo the only politically acceptable solution is to deal wityh global warming after it has happened, the same way we have to deal with a financial crisis after it has happened: Suppose 5 years ago G Brown had had the intelligence and guts to say 'WE have to rein back investment and job creation, sack half the public sector and double income tax in order to weather a financial storm that's coming' how long would he have lasted?

>

[Man at B&Q]

Why bother, even then?

The money involved would be far better spent on ensuring everyone had access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare, education and contraception. Oh, sorry, that would mean giving the third world a leg up, and we don't want to do that, do we.

MBQ