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Old 24-12-24, 06:37 PM   #11
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

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Most of the gas that doesn't come from the North Sea, comes by LNG tankers from the US and Middle East. We do not rely very much on 'european gas' (read Russian). We're so well set up with gas imports and a gas grid that the UK gas suppliers can make money re-gassifying LNG and exporting to Europe when market conditions are right.
Correct as far as I'm aware. Somewhat ironically, the US gas is generally a by-product left over because of their choice to rely on coal and oil.

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Also, UK coal-fired power stations could have been fitted with emissions-reducing equipment in the furnace chimneys: this was actually done very successfully at Drax when it was still a coal-burning plant.
FGD (Flue Gas Desulphurisation) was also fitted at Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal fired power station - that's why it lasted as long as it did, until earlier this year. The LCPD (Large Combustion Plant Directive) legislation that drove the move away from coal basically had a deadline of 2015 without FGD, and with a fixed total of running hours beyond then. The economics of 'to invest or not in FGD' is essentially what led to (from memory) Ironbridge, Didcot, Ferrybridge, Eggborough closing, and even caused Drax to push on with the somewhat dubious move to biomass wood pellet 'renewable' solution.

Putting aside coal as the fuel, there's the significant matter that any combustion causes large volume carbon dioxide emissions that the atmosphere [allegedly] struggles to cope with. (Yes, I know China, India, US, and other countries don't seem to worry to the same extent as we're being asked to.)

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...if the wind ain't blowing and the sun isn't shining, we're entirely reliant on gas supplies from Europe.
Not quite - interconnection keeps getting overlooked yet we've been busy putting in several new links to European countries, wth more in the plan. Across a wide enough geography it's actually very, very rare that the wind isn't blowing somewhere (which is probably why it's become the favoured industrial level technology, noting that scandanavia has a lot of hydro implementation and future potential). The challenge is how much surplus non-operating plant can we collectively afford and where do we put it - again the economics and structure of the marketplace come into play, as well as nimbyism and the politics of 'self-reliance'
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Old 24-12-24, 08:45 PM   #12
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

Hear hear.
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Old 24-12-24, 09:29 PM   #13
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

@Ruffy - interesting stuff, thanks.
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Old 24-12-24, 10:09 PM   #14
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

What Thatcher did is set us on the path that assumes privatisation of everything is automatically superior to government control. A few things spring to mind - is the transport system a "service" or a "business", it can't be both if the whole country is going to be included, obviously we would like it to be run as efficiently as possible. Not only is it currently being run as a business but a failing one with services being cut, prices high and general dissatisfaction felt by users. If we must have a franchise system , ensure it's totally UK owned - same for any nationalised industry.
To reiterate that: FFS stop selling everything off.



Creating wealth: Maybe in the 70s businesses were not averse to taking on risk for some long term future gain but those sentiments have gone and investors are demanding rapid returns on their money, the problem is that science and technology doesn't work like that. This is why government is needed to invest "seed" money to get new industries growing and not abandon them when things go awry. We also need to return to engineering, it shouldn't be a dirty word and we can't all work "in the city". Engineering built this country and supported a middle class.


I do accept that we have a serious problem with too many government departments having a stake in all of our infrastructure projects so it takes forever to get anything done. I remember watching a video where a charity wanted to erect a wind turbine, they asked the locals and all were for it since it would help with their energy prices, everyone was in agreement yet it took 7 years to get it approved.
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Old 26-12-24, 03:15 PM   #15
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

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What Thatcher did is set us on the path that assumes privatisation of everything is automatically superior to government control. ...
To reiterate that: FFS stop selling everything off.

Creating wealth: ...

I do accept that we have a serious problem with too many government departments having a stake in all of our infrastructure projects so it takes forever to get anything done. ...
All valid points. (My reducing edit of the quote is for economy of screen space only.)

Personally I don't subscribe to the binary theory that one of public or private ownership is better - things can be well or badly run as either private or public entities). Owbership is a distraction, service delivery is the important thing, as you point to. So I do agree that some things, like public transport, healthcare or water/energy supply networks, are better managed as natural monopolies with the overall social benefit and long-term widespread national service provision needing to be the priorities. And I also agree that demanding 'competition' and leaving things to 'market forces' is not always the right way to achieve the outcomes we need as a nation. Thatcher was extreme on that point, to say the least. But it's equally staggering to me how long it's taken for others to realise that there might be more sensible, balanced and refined alternatives, and then to do something about changing direction!

IMHO, it's a fallacy to suggest Government is not in control of everything - through policy setting, legislation and regulation - with appropriate and sufficient enforcement of course - surely it can always exert control? The debate for me is more about how tight that control should be, and how it should vary for different sizes of enterprise. Perhaps contrasting with my statement above, I think there are definitely some areas where 'just let folk get on with it' should be more allowed, e.g. much of local planning constraints as it affects individual residing homeowners (but not developers or commercial enterprises).

Tbh, I still remain unsure of the wisdom of lauding 'the economy' directly - I just can't shake the feeling that 'economic growth', 'economic heath' etc. are merely an agglomerated by-product of other things that we should more visbly attend to, and that we'd be better off defining more relateable targets. Of course, many parts of the system are circular or iterative which makes it difficult to figure it all out.

I'm going to resist the temptation to comment too much about government department behaviour. Suffice to say, I agree with your general statement and, based on my experience, there is interference, indecision, lack of alignment, and inertia, all of which leads to delay and extra cost for negligible benefit.

Sorry, another long post - It's a challenging subject area and it's interersting to explore the various opinions (including testing my own).
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Old 27-12-24, 12:49 PM   #16
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

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I thought we got well over half of our gas imports from Norway?
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Most of the gas that doesn't come from the North Sea, comes by LNG tankers from the US and Middle East. We do not rely very much on 'european gas' (read Russian). ...
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Correct as far as I'm aware. ...
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@Ruffy - interesting stuff, thanks.
Craig, it turns out I was possibly a bit misleading and/or out of date - your observation and understanding was correct.

I did some research of the System Operator reporting, that does indeed show that most of our gas comes from UK/Norwegian fields. (Although it's also still true that most of the rest comes from LNG imports and previous storage of the same. Only 1% was 'European' in November.) For electricity supply, the data shows gas does still dominate as a fuel source (at least in current colder months - I haven't looked at last summer data or trends) - link below.

As an aside, I was intrigued to learn that [in November] 22% of UK gas was for power stations (i.e electricity generation), but with 64% being cited for "Distribution Networks" (I imagine basically cooking & central heating for domestic & commercial premises. It'll be interesting to see the strategy in due course for how government intends to move the popoulus en-masse away from that.)

https://www.neso.energy/energy-101/g...y-energy-stats
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Old 27-12-24, 01:25 PM   #17
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Default Re: Why everyone hates Thatcher

As a relative newcomer to EVs and therefore being very interested in the price of electricity more closely, I can say that October/November/December has been more still in the UK than normal with lower than expected wind generation. It's also been cloudier than normal, so domestic solar systems have not reduced load as much as their owners would like. Effect of this is more gas being burned for electricity generation.
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