This interview by Peter McCormack of the energy expert Kathryn Porter, energy analyst and founder of Watt-Logic, is definitely worth watching.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
Economics |
A damning verdict on UK energy policy and Net ZeroJuly 14th, 2025 |
 17 comments to A damning verdict on UK energy policy and Net ZeroLeave a Reply |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
The international Western establishment is committed to this insanity – but the British branch of that international establishment is particularly closed-minded. And this is very much a feature of the system of governance here.
There is a lack of a system of checks-and-balances in the system of governance of United Kingdom – once the “experts” decide something it becomes “Policy” and officials ruthlessly push it, with elected politicians being little more than puppets.
And Parliament did pass the Climate Act in (I think) 2010 – although few Members of Parliament had a clue as to what it would be used for.
Again Parliament is not set up for a real difference of opinion – if one examines speeches in the House of Commons they normally have shared assumptions, with lots of angry rhetoric over details, rather than the central principles of a policy.
Real dissent gets shouted down – or just ignored. Ministers (and even most backbench Members of the House of Commons) do not understand something that falls outside the narrative prepared by “experts” and officials.
Paul:
I agree. You do not have to be particularly intelligent to be a minister, you just have to speak to your brief. An AI generated avatar could do it. Any minister with his own views, and who tries to make policy, will be accused of “bullying” and got rid of.
One of the first things a new government should do is get rid of the “Ministerial Code”, which is a trap to get rid of ministers the civil service do not like. The OBR should be the next thing to be abolished. Liz Truss tried to ignore it, but that does not work. It too has to go.
JohnK,
The first thing to is to reinstate the laws against treason and sedition which Blair removed, while giving the bureaucrats a meaningful look.
Mmm. Direct democracy.
New Zealand has ditched Net Zero since they got rid of the communist Ardern.
“Lucky us” Australia still believes in net zero!
JohnK – yes Sir, you are correct, the “Ministerial Code” is a trap, which helps turn ministers into the puppets officials.
However, I would go further – not with threats for treason trials for officials, but simply restoring the right of ministers to hire-and-fire officials. Just about the only policy matter I agree with Disraeli on, is his opposition to the creation of the “Civil Service” indeed of any agency where elected people can not remove the staff.
As Senator Conkling pointed out in late 19th century America – if the principle becomes established that elected people can not hire and fire (especially “fire” – dismiss) staff (officials) – then “elected government” becomes a legal fiction.
Personal are policy.
Eyrie – good for New Zealand!
Rossini – Australia will survive, not because its government is any good (as you know – its government is awful), but because you have such vast natural resources, in relation to your population, that it is hard (really hard) to destroy Australia.
Sadly this is not true of the United Kingdom – we do NOT have vast natural resources in relation to the size of our population.
The United Kingdom is going to hit hard times – very hard times indeed.
Stuart Noyes – Direct Democracy does not deal with the matter of officials. Although it may be a good idea in its own right.
Paul,
We had a referendum in 2015 that was poorly defined. Following we had parliament who already didn’t want to leave the EU do everything it could to not do so. If it hadn’t been for Johnson and those who caved into revealing the fixed term parliament act, i believe we would have had a revolution already. Someone once said that tyrants fill the space up to the people’s tolerance. That tolerance would have reached its limits and the nature of those who rule us laid bare. Forgive me but you’re one of those that ruled us I believe?
I’m given to understand Switzerland has held referenda where the federal government have at best dragged their feet enacting the will of the people? Such action should result in penalties. I’ll leave you to speculate the nature of appropriate penalties. One might suggest thus actions to be treason.
Britain has a circular government. Ministers act on the advice of civil servants, who in turn act on the instructions of ministers. No one is in charge, no one did anything wrong and no one is to blame.
Stuart Noyes.
The referendum question was quite clear – do you want to leave the European Union, and we said yes we do want to leave the European Union.
The problem was that there was a lot of talk about “Brexit” – a meaningless word that was NOT on the ballot paper.
We were told (by Prime Minister May who was against it, and Prime Minister Johnson who was supposedly for it) that we had NOT voted to leave the European Union – we had voted for “Brexit”.
So European Union regulations remained in force (indeed were incorporated into British law) and the borders remained undefended.
This “Brexit” thing appears to have nothing to do with leaving the European Union, nothing to do with independence.
It was essentially slight of hand – we thought we voting for independence, but we got “Brexit” (a meaningless word) instead.
Roue le Jour.
Just about right – but you left out the “Experts”.
The “Experts” are not normally Civil Servants – they are normally in “independent bodies” funded by the taxpayers.
They (the “Experts”) tell officials what “Policy” is, the officials then tell ministers, and the ministers then rubber stamp it – and if they refuse to rubber stamp it, “Policy” is followed anyway, and the minister is marked for destruction.
As for lack of accountability…..
Under the rule of Sir Charles Trevelyan the population of Ireland fell by about a quarter (either dead or fled) – he was HONOURED (greatly) and created the Civil Service in the United Kingdom.
And after July 1st 1916 (the Somme) were 20 thousand British soldiers were killed (and 30 thousand wounded), the only General sent home (in disgrace) was Stuart-Whartley – for the terrible crime of NOT getting more of his men killed.
General Haig (also behind the insane attack at Loos in 1915 – and the Passchendaele nightmare of 1917) got an Earldom.
More recently it was knighthoods for the lunatic “Experts” responsible for Covid policy.
After 1831 a system of state schools was set up in Ireland – because Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) thought it would be a good idea, and sent a letter to his friend Lord John Russell (by the way they were supposed to be in different political parties – but that did not seem to mean much). The taxpayers had no say on the matter.
And in 1838 a system of Poor Law taxation was set up Ireland (taxes that were to explode later) – because Lord Russell thought it would be a good idea, again no one asked the people if they wanted this system or not.
If the British establishment ever believed in limited government (and I am not sure they ever did) – one would have to go back to the 1820s for a period where the establishment were not coming up with new ideas for state spending and regulation.
Although, yes, the total size of government did not reach its low point to about 1874 (at least in places where School Boards had no been set up in England and Wales after the 1870 Act) due to economic growth outstripping statism till about then.
Take just one year – 1875.
In that year Prime Minister Disraeli put unions at least partly above the law, even for paramilitary tactics such as “picketing” (obstruction by the military practice of picket lines) – and then the establishment claimed to be astonished by unemployment – so astonished that they put unions even more above the law in 1906 so they could have more unemployment to be astonished at.
Disraeli also passed an Act of Parliament demanding that local councils do about 40 things.
Think about that…..
The basic point of local accountability is supposed to be local councilors being accountable to local taxpayers – but there is the Prime Minister down in London telling every council they must do lots of things whether the taxpayers want the council to do these things or not.
Paul,
You’ve skillfully avoided the main thrust which is treatment of members of the state who fail to enact the results of referenda?
In all fairness to Douglas Haig, for the Entente to win WW I they had to figure out a way to attack the Germans and drive them out of France. With the tools at hand, this was a difficult task and a lot of very bloody lessons had to be learned along the way. No one had fought a war under those conditions before. And for the British, they were doing it with an Army basically created out of nothing, the pre-war professionals having been wiped out with the BEF in 1914. Training, logistics, doctrine all created from nothing while at the same time having to deal with the novel combat environment that everyone else was struggling to cope with.
Haig was not given a peerage for the Somme, but for the 1918 campaign that broke the German army and ended the war. That campaign was made possible by improvements in tactics learned from the 1915-1917 campaigns. Tanks helped, but the key development was the improvement in combined infantry/artillery tactics that broke the front open and logistics improvements that allowed continuous pressure to be kept on the Germans afterwards. That and the Germans thoughtfully throwing away their best soldiers in their final gamble in the spring. The German Army was finished when the Armistice was signed.
The “Lions led by Donkeys” narrative does a gross disservice to British generals in WW I. The Somme was a bloody mess, but the lessons were learned and it pales in comparison to the horror at Verdun unleashed by Falkenhym, or Luddendorf’s lack of any coherent strategic design in 1918 that meant a series of tactical victories were ultimately Pyrrhic setting the stage for Haig and Foch. By the end of the war the British fielded 5 armies in France with an order of magnitude more men and artillery than the BEF, an air arm and tanks, all of which required time and experience to utilize effectively. At the end of the war it was the most effective army in Europe.
WW I was the first major conflict between peer armies at scale with modern artillery, machine guns and small arms. All of the armies involved struggled to find a way to successfully attack well prepared defenses. The Germans found a tactical solution in the Stossstruppen, but ultimately the attrition of the elite assault troops wasn’t sustainable. The British and French solution around combined arms was sustainable, and the German army was beaten. If you want to cast blame for the disaster that was WW I start with the politicians that went to war in the first place. Grey deserves heavier criticism than Haig. The politicians started the war and then screwed up the peace the soldiers had won for them. Leaving us to go through an even more horrific war a generation later.