UKC

I've just read a Money Saving Expert email that I signed up to years ago to help swap energy suppliers.

So what, I hear you say?

Well the email states that from April energy fuel caps go up 54%

And in October they are likely to rise again a further 20% on top of that.

Will there come a situation, like in the days of the Poll Tax, where people simply refuse to pay and show their anger through Civil Unrest?

The alternative could literally be starve or freeze.

In reply to The Lemming:

Well I suppose the major difference there is if you don't pay your bills the energy companies will simply cut off your supply, Poll tax was there whether you liked it or not. I see your point though, a lot of people are really going to struggle when the prices go up in April. 

At the end of the day gas is (and therefore most electricity) a global resource and demand from around the world will drive up prices. I can't really see what government can do about it in the short term. But with gas and oil due to run out in about 50 years we're going to have to get used to paying more and finding alternatives.  

In reply to flatlandrich:

It would really be great if the country, was self sufficient and had a supply of gas on its doorstep to use.

In reply to The Lemming:

The problem is that the gas supplies "on our doorstep" (North Sea and Irish Sea) are dwindling, and now make up less than half of our consumption. The rest comes from across Europe, including Russia. And we don't store enough.

The problem with energy supplies is likely to get much worse unless we (global we) manage the energy transition much better than we are at present. If Putin starts turning off gas supplies, prices will really go through the roof.

In reply to John Stainforth:

We need proper investment in tidal and offshore wind, and hydrogen generation in the North sea.

In reply to Ciro:

What we need does not keep the wolf from the door right now.

In reply to The Lemming:

Isnt there a legal restriction on when supply can be cut off? Shortly before which the government will repeat its trick of a "rebate" which is simply the government handing the energy companies cash which all bill payers, regardless of whether they benefited from the "rebate" (eg if their landlord took went thanks for the cash but increased prices anyway), will have to pay long term.

Although those already forced onto a pay in advance scheme wont have any choice but I am not sure what percentage of the population they are.

In reply to The Lemming:

It's going to cause outrage in Scotland that's for sure when the bills go up.

If you are in the Highlands you pay more for your energy than people in England despite the gas coming out the North Sea and the place being covered in wind farms which in some days are providing about 20% of the electricity in many parts of England.

Then you turn on TV and watch two English politicians have a debate about what to do with 'our' gas and whether there should be 'windfall taxes'.   Never seen the English put a 'windfall tax' on the c*nts in banks in London or people who make money buying and selling houses.

If energy prices are on people's minds when Indyref2 comes YES will walk it.

In reply to John Stainforth:

It's amazing how few people are aware how botched the energy supply market has become in the UK thanks to recent governments and how the gas demand surge has exposed this. It's almost as if no experts had complained about the foolishness of closing most of our national gas storage or failure to ensure energy providers hedge against price changes. The same applies to the consequences of not following through on plans for improved energy efficiency.

In reply to John Stainforth:

While I would never lay claim to even 1% of the ability Putin must have to think sideways and round corners, it seems like that could be seriously counterproductive. an EU+UK with hugely expensive gas is an EU+UK where renewables replace gas at an exponential rate. And once the infrastructure that uses gas is gone, you can bet your bottom dollar it will never be replaced. Gazprom is the largest company in Russia and gas may already be living on borrowed time as a fuel source in EU+UK, Russia and Putin's friends and allies _need_ the profit it brings so will need to exercise great care when deciding how much to mess with the supply.

In reply to flatlandrich:

Nah.

Textbooks from the 1970s or 80s say the same thing. There _is_ a finite amount of oil and gas but it is a huge amount, we keep finding more of it, and as prices rise, ever more difficult reservoirs can be profitably exploited. On top of that, we may actually have already passed peak oil consumption as a planet, so as time goes on, our effective number of years of reserves will very probably be increasing rapidly.

In reply to Ciro:

No. It's a dead end.

Yes, it's getting there, but not quickly enough.

Maybe in the long term, but you can go a long way with just putting undersea cables from the Wind turbines to the UK and to Europe first. Relative to, say, covering the Sahara with solar panels, North Sea wind energy has a pretty short and easy travel from generation to use locations.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

While I'm not going to argue about the general thrust of this, it is worth noting that it's a lot harder to move an oil reservoir out of the UK than it is to rent a new office.

Also, isn't the latter group composed of about 75% of the population of the UK? I mean if you ever bought a house for X and then sold it for more than X in your life, you'd be in that group....

Heh, I enjoyed your use of the conjunction "when", very optimistic

In reply to henwardian:

This is 100% wrong

I’m the UK natural gas fired power stations are essential in order for renewables to thrive because they are the most cost effective means of filling the gap on days when the wind doesn’t blow. The cost (mainly capital depreciation) of keeping gas fired stations on standby when it is windy is very small. Electricity storage whether batteries or pumped hydro are only good for a few hours . Not when a cold winter high pressure is anchored over the UK (we wish!)

Long term nuclear generation would be very low carbon but wouldn’t sit with renewables in the same way because it costs the same whether on full output or standby. However if gas prices and hence electricity prices remain high nuclear May become cost effective, albeit with a 10 year lead time

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Nope

Unlike North Sea oil most North Sea gas comes from the southern North Sea off the English coast and Morecambe Bay

Most off the off shore wind farms are off the English and Welsh coasts rather than Scotland 

In reply to kevin stephens: 

Indeed.

Interestingly though, the kind of grid scale electricity storage needed for a renewables heavy grid is also what’s needed to improve the economy of fission, by coupling fixed output reactors to the diurnal cycle of power usage.  SMRs open up more options.

Its also increasingly worth acknowledging the progress and private funding going in to diverse range of different compact fusion devices now, many with claimed timescales of years, not decades unlike the waste that is ITER.  Several businesses have $1Bn+ in investment through the door or lined up based on experimental milestones.  They’ve been building bigger machines and bigger funding rounds for a decade, make or break in the next few years….  Exciting times.

The launch capacity and £/kg of Starship from SpaceX also opens up the serious possibility of GEO orbital solar power stations beaming power down.  Assuming Starship works, of course….  This has full power, 24%, no night and no bad weather.  Despite the bad press from the disasters in Sun City 2000, the microwave link is inherently fail-safe and isn’t going to set fire to vast swathes of a city… 

I see the next 15 years as a real 4-horse race between renewables, SMR fission, compact fusion devices and space based solar.

Despite the public focus on renewables, recent years have seen a major  commitment towards fusion power from the UK government, big private developments in the south east in compact fusion, tentative UK government investment in space based solar through the UK space agency and continued development of the SMR concept.

If two of the non renewable horses pay off, that’s really interesting - I can see all the oceanic wind farms being decommissioned at end of life and not replaced.  

All four horses benefit from grid scale storage, and the coming move to aluminium battery chemistries solves that.

In reply to kevin stephens:

Do you know what the % symbol means?

In reply to kevin stephens:

I'd agree with most of what you say. I'd add Russian gas can go elsewhere if the EU stop buying. Where I'd disagree is nuclear... I can never see the current new builds as being good economics even if they do end up as an unfortunate necessity. With the way wind and photovoltaic prices are heading, burning hydrocarbons to produce electricity seems to me to be looking like a very expensive necessity for the UK and the wider world as well.

Longer term on nuclear I can see many possibilities for cheaper production. Even within nuclear, smaller scale plants based on different designs may be a better solution than the current big plants under construction. Also longer term there are other possibilities of storing energy, than battery and pump storage. Further out again, it's hard to judge given various interesting research.... UKCers have regularly highlighted some fusion systems that are not as well publicised as the one all over the news in the last days.

We are already using excess power from cheap UK wind generation to produce hydrogen and that could be scaled to run significant UK power generation to fill periods of windless days. The initial work in the Orkneys in particular is going well.

https://www.orkney.com/life/energy/hydrogen

In reply to The Lemming:

Pity about all that fracked has that is potentially available!!!

In reply to neilh: Fracking in the UK is a red herring. In the US the geological beds where fracking is used are nice and uniform making for easy and relatively cheap extraction. The UK pilot projects were to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of extraction from our much more churned up geology., as well as enticing speculative investors. I understand the trials weren’t very successful apart from causing some minor tremors due to the geology (which were on a similar scale to those from coal mining). If the results had been more positive there would have been much more of a drive to exploit the reserves

In reply to kevin stephens:

Ta for that. 

In reply to Offwidth:

You could easily argue the cap has caused the botch. Without the cap companies may have had stronger balance sheets and we might not now be down to a few alternatives. 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

what about the Natwest Bank that your lot stole?

RBS has a lot to answer for

In reply to neilh:

I know the UK's retail energy markets are a mess, but I think the problem is much more fundamental than that.  Over the last couple of decades world gas markets have become much more integrated, through the building of a network of transcontinental pipelines and the development of infrastructure for shipping liquid natural gas around the world.  Meanwhile demand for gas has risen everywhere, especially in East Asia (China and Japan) and North America.  So the UK (which accounts for about 2% of world consumption) ends up just a passive victim of price instabilities in a big world market.

In reply to wintertree:

I'm glad fusion is getting support, and I hope it works, but I do think people are still underplaying the huge unsolved material challenges of finding something to build the walls and diverter out of that can withstand huge neutron fluxes and very high temperatures.  And while the smaller devices are attractive on cost grounds, they actually make the materials problems worse as the energy densities get higher.  I very much hope this can all be solved, but I wouldn't put any money on it making a significant impact in this half of the century.  So it's all the more important to have a new generation of fission reactors (probably running at high enough temperatures to produce hydrogen from the process heat).

In reply to The Lemming:

Of course it doesn't - I'm not proposing a solution to the sort term problem.

What it can do is prevent us being stuck in the same position for next 50 years or so until nuclear fusion becomes viable at the scale required.

The tech already exists (although in it's infancy with plenty of scope for improvement as we implement and scale up) for a green, renewable based hydrogen energy system that can serve our needs and become a major revenue stream, supplying Europe with clean energy.

We have a unique potential due to the tidal conditions around Scotland. We already have a lot of infrastructure in place - depleted oil wells that can be used to store the generated hydrogen and pipelines to move it to the UK and on to Europe.

It wouldn't take long to build the generation capacity, and it would secure our medium term energy needs from geo-political instability whilst slashing our carbon output and solving the problem of balancing supply and demand from renewables.

In reply to Richard J:

Those price instabilities also reflecting in the profitability of the likes of BP and Shell where it is surprising how much money they lose in bad years . Some amazing  losses in recent years. 

In reply to neilh:  Not truly economic.  Kind of economic at current prices, but the moment they go back down , not very good at all.  Also quite low rates, and they have a high OPEX as you need to keep refracking, and that ain't cheap (and I know),

To Kevin Stephens- is that still true re. Southern Gas basin fields and Morecambe bay? I looked at the MOrecambe production rate a couple weeks ago and it wasn't much, and the Southern Gas Basin gas been winding down as long as I can remember.  I reckon most current gas comes from the North Sea gas fields, and late stage production of gas that was originally injected to stimulate oil production.

At the moment we reckon it's more economic to produce the injected gas than to maximise oil production

In reply to Richard J:

I totally agree on the challenges of materials physics - particularly in the diverter region.  Super-X came up on a thread last week…  

But, not all of the commercial runners are tokamaks and so don’t have the same diverter issues.   Some of the smaller devices remove some materials physics constraints by significantly decreasing the escaped plasma flux on to the walls through better confinement or non-curved confinement.  Of course, most of the private runners aren’t releasing anything like the same level of detail so we have to take them more at their word, and also ask if this is an investment bubble rising under its own hubris.  But my point is that it’s make or break for them - the big investment money is in, big machines are built built, big claims are being made.  For example Helion Energy say they are going for net electrical in 2024 (!); this is an FRC not a tokamak, and it’s pulsed with magnetic compression rather than steady state, and with D-T giving a low neutron flux. $1.8 Bn in funding now.  

It’s believe it when I see it territory but the moments of truth for half a dozen devices lie in the next 5-10 years, not the 50 year timescales of DEMO.  This is immensely exciting I think.  Perhaps they’ll all fail and it’s back to waiting on giant low beta tokamaks, but after a decade or following them its great to see the progress…

You’ve had some interesting observations before on future SMR possibilities that provide process heat; much lower risk than the fusion businesses and this should be an all horse race. 

(Edit: interestingly the solid state power electronics Helion need were apparently designed for wind turbine power converters.   There’s a lot of really transformative stuff landing from the push to BEVs as well in terms of solid state switching and so on.  Also reflecting in the new DC links coming on - we’re not far from the end of one proposed HVDC undersea link from the highlands to England to shift wind power south)

In reply to wbo2: you seem better informed than me in this particular matter, however I doubt the assertion that Scottish gas is still propping up the UK? 

In reply to wintertree:

How strong does the magnetic field need to be in the Helion system?  I know that in some of the other systems the strength of the magnets puts huge stresses on the materials they're made from, and that's another set of problems to overcome.  (Very well-sourced rumours reached me last week that the recent MIT/Commonwealth Fusion announcement concealed some big problems of that sort).  Anyway, as I've said before, I'm glad people are trying all this out, I just wouldn't want to put all my money on this one horse.

In reply to wintertree:

SMRs: small modular reactors?

I appreciate this is something pushed by Rolls Royce as an “off the shelf” solution based on them building small nuclear reactors for the UK’s submarine programme. But how does the  fuel cycle work? Do they require a higher % enrichment? How about reprocessing . What infrastructure would be required? 
In your reference to “Process Heat” are you really advocating factories in energy intensive industries having their own nuclear reactors??

In reply to kevin stephens:

The Rolls-Royce small modular reactor design is actually a fairly technologically conservative light water reactor that would run on conventional PWR fuel.  It doesn't have a lot to do with the sub reactors, apart from being a PWR, and is not actually that small - each unit is a few hundred MW.  Being a PWR the water isn't really hot enough to use as industrial process heat (though of course you could use it in district heating schemes).  I think the selling point of the Rolls PWR is the claim that they could get the programme going quite quickly and achieve economies of learning by making multiple units in a factory.  

For industrial process heat what is being talked about is a so-called "Advanced Modular Reactor", which would probably be a gas-cooled high temperature reactor (though alternatives like molten salt or molten lead cooled are possible).  I don't think you'd have one per factory, but it's possible to imagine, say, the licensed site at Hartlepool having reactors producing hydrogen to supply the petrochemical cluster on Teesside.  

In reply to Richard J: Thanks. Back in the days of Glasnost I did some energy consultancy work to support an environmental authority in a former Soviet country. A former nuclear engineer had been given a “grace and favour” job as our driver. He was very keen on every factory having its own nuclear reactor!

In reply to neilh:

I didn't said anything about the cap, but its hardly doing what it should. I hadn't realised until a few months back that many of the newer energy players were not hedging against sudden price increases: this was after hearing the CEO of Octupus complaining that this was being allowed alongside listing a whole other bunch of problems in the market. I thought you would be aware of this through the Economist... I don''t read it as much these days as I no longer fly regularly for work.

In reply to Shani:

In layman's terms, we're all being shafted?!

Nothing new there then.

In reply to Offwidth:

They will not have had the financial resources to hedge. You can only afford hedging if you have a reasonable balance sheet. 
 

Effectively the costs of the csp have been paid for by the companies. 

Not difficult to work out  and you do not need the economist to figure that out 
 

In reply to neilh:

The man from Octopus effectively said if you can't afford to hedge at all you shouldn't be in the 'game' as it is a terrible risk for the consumer and adds unfair cost to the sector that the ombudsman shouldn't allow. I agree with him.

In reply to The Lemming:

Remember the very British protests when fuel prices rose twenty one years ago?

What do you think people will do this winter when they have to choose between not eating or hypothermia?

I'm guessing that the antics of Extinction Rebellion will be like a kids tea party.

😪

In reply to Richard J:

Helion are one of the least forthcoming with details, aren’t they…. Up there with the strongest fields I expect.  The magnet construction is one of the key challenges for many of these designs - I gather the big funding for CFS is contingent on their test coil passing it’s tests.  To some degree FRCs trade some of the requirements from the pressure vessel lining to the magnets outer shells.  I think the pulsed nature of Helion would reduce this compared to the dark horse going on at Lockheed.

I’m glad that fusion is no longer a one horse race; different designs with different problems; more chances of something working and a possibility of it doing so before my hair is all grey (unlike giant tokamaks, I’ll be dead and buried before they could ever come online for power I suspect).

But yes I wouldn’t for a moment suggest backing only fusion as the solution to energy. But I’m very excited by the range of possibilities now that serious money is flowing into work other than ITER etc.  There are big synergies with other power sources too; as well as benefiting from the power electronics created for wind, the superconducting cables being made for some of the big fusion coils could be a key to solving the heat dissipation issues with orbital solar power.

In reply to The Lemming:

Where are they going to riot? Outside the Qatar or US embassies for not selling gas to us at a lower price?

In reply to Shani:

Yes - we have the same situation with electricity here in Norway. The country produces a massive amount of cheap electricity from hydro, but most of it is exported to the EU and UK to take advantage of the high prices abroad. The result is Norwegian consumers are paying vastly inflated prices for electricity while the hydro reservoirs are at record low levels. 

I can't say for sure but I strongly doubt the UK is a net exporter. There is no doubt some export but the UK produces <50% of its own gas.

Moderately peed off at least

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

It's going to cause outrage in Scotland that's for sure when the bills go up.

 If you are in the Highlands you pay more for your energy than people in Edinburgh despite the oil coming out the North Sea and the Highlands being covered in wind farms which in some days are providing about 20% of the electricity in many parts of Edinburgh.

 Then you turn on TV and watch two Edinburgh politicians having a debate about what to do with 'Aberdeenshire, Orkney and Shetland's' oil and whether there should be 'windfall taxes'.   Never seen Edinburgh put a 'windfall tax' on the c*nts in RBS or people who make money buying and selling houses.

In reply to kevin stephens:

It would be nice if fracking was not economic.  Otherwise it was a shame public opinion stopped it.  Despite testing 10 metres from my garden.  I didn't believe most of the objections.

Poor projects that still go ahead to take investor money are a problem in many ways.

Bring on the four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse.

In reply to :

If the cap still means you are unprofitable then eventually any business will not not be able to afford to hedge as your balance sheet will have been slimmed down. And if you seek more money say by a share issue or whatever nobody will want to get involved. It’s a downward spiral all the way.

At least the cap is being revised every 3 months now. 
 

About the only good thing is that every economy is faced with the same issue at the moment. At least we have moved a long way in renewables in the U.K. it would be even worse if we had not. Maybe worth saying that we are luckier than most to have wind etc . ( well luck or good planning )

In reply to henwardian:

We will move the whole of Scotland out the UK and the oil with it.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh: and what if the Shetlanders want to move their oil out of Scotland?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Given Salmond's misinformation/borderline lies about oil revenues failed to swing the 2014 referendum, I think it is very unlikely that energy, with the age of North Sea Oil drawing to a close, will  be a factor in another referendum.

In reply to The Lemming: It looks like Northern Powergrid have come up with an acceptable compensation package to cover the energy price hike https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-60369098

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Trying to divide colonised countries and turn regions and ethnic groups against each other is SOP for the English.  Tried it all over the world.

Edinburgh couldn't put a windfall tax on anybody because it doesn't have the power.  For some strange reason Westminster retains power over Energy and the structure of taxes.  All England lets Holyrood do is vary income tax by a couple of %.  Can't tax the big landowners, can't tax oil or wind power, can't tax banks.

In reply to Offwidth:

Easy and ridiculous for him to say.  It means paying over the market rate for something that wasn't predicted in models or historical data, and means you can't offer the best rate in a market that relies on success via offering the best rate.  A fine example of getting lucky and being wise after the event-

I can't comment if the UK economy is very resilient to high energy prices/and or higher interest rates.

To David Riley - I really struggle to believe that small gas wells will be economic with 'normal' gas prices .  There is good data from the US where most of the small onshore oil and gas companies that were fracking out of shales have gone bust and been eaten up the big boys who can carry the cost of the capital small operators can't.  And that's where they more infrastructure and an easier, shallower reservoir, which really impacts the cost of the repeated frac jobs you need.   But basically they'll start with an assumed production rate and range, costs, and range of, and start the creative economics there

In reply to Robert Durran:

I think it is a near certainty that if people are struggling to pay energy bills and they realise that if Scotland was independent they wouldn't be and that the only reason for it is that the English are stealing from them that will influence their vote.   Scotland is an energy exporter and if it was control of its own taxes it would be doing great when energy prices are high.  

In reply to kevin stephens:

They don't.  Also Shetland is not a country.  Never has been.  Pretending Shetland's relationship with Scotland is the same as Scotland's relationship with the UK is ridiculous and offensive.

In reply to kevin stephens:

That will be between the Shetlanders and us. 

In reply to kevin stephens:

That's not the point.  90% of the people are in England.  You can easily have more wind farms or gas than Scotland and still not have enough to supply the demands of your population.  Scotland has far more than it needs to supply the demands of Scotland.  Scotland is self sufficient and a net exporter of both gas and electricity to England.  There is no reason for energy prices to be rising in Scotland, as an energy exporting country higher global prices for energy should mean more money in our pockets. 

The amount of tax needed to stabilise energy prices for Scottish consumers would be 1/10 of that needed to stabilise it for consumers in England.  Independent Scotland could easily sort this for the population of Scotland.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Lack of foresight by the Danes giving it away as a wedding present. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

It was a big factor in the last one which in terms of energy trends wasn't very long ago. I gave up on what Salmond had to say after his first car crash/snake oil debate with Alastair Darling but Sir Ian Wood's well-timed misinformation about Scotland's oil reserves was reckoned to have had a significant effect. 

However Scotland's geography and small population favours renewables, and oil needs to become a thing of the past, sooner rather than later. 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

If the real world worked like that, we in Norway would be paying next next to nothing for our electricity and not the highest kWh price in Europe.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

It used to belong to Norway, though, until it became the property of the Scottish crown as a result of the king of Norway* failing to cough up the dowry for his daughter Margaret's marriage to James III in 1469.  A highly democratic process I'm sure you'll agree.

* And Denmark, since the two countries had formed a political union about 100 years earlier.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Sorry you are so offended, maybe you need to dry your eyes?

the nations of Shetland and Orkney were under Norwegian jurisdiction up to the 14th century until annexed by Scotland  

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I seem to remember that the Shetlands were formerly part of the Norse/Viking kingdom - along with the Orkneys, Hebrides, and the far north of Scotland for that matter.

The Central Region (as it is now known) was a different country in those days. (For that matter it might as well be now !)

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Wrong ! Roughly 83% of the UK population is in England. 8% in Scotland (including Orkney, Shetland & the Hebrides). The rest are in Wales, NI, the Channel Islands, the Scillies & the Isles of Man.

In reply to kevin stephens:

I wish Tom would change the record from time to time.

This hatred towards the English is just going to make you bitter.

In reply to Robert Durran:

If the SNP can come up with a proper costed plan for future revenues, AND show that Scotland can survive as in independent country I would not oppose that.....However, they just can't/won't. Our God fearing MSP, Kate Forbes, with her BA in history was great in her previous role, planting trees, patting babies on the head and looking after local issues. She can not however come up with a 'prospectus' on Scotland funding itself post independence. Her historian qualification seems to sum up many of her ilk, living the 17 hundreds and ignoring the challenges of the 21st century. 

Your replies have completely ignored the FACT that almost all of the UK's home produced gas comes from England, as anyone who live near Norwich heliport could confirm. Please can you address this issue? How can you be so annoyed that Scotland's gas goes to England when in reality England's gas comes to Scotland?

In reply to The Lemming:

As a Scotsman, or in RL Stevensons time, a Scotchman, I'm completely embarrassed by Toms anti English comments.  And yes, I support England and English sports people when they are playing anyone else but Scotland (and maybe Wales). I don't understand cricket but I love it when the English team beat the Australians. 

In reply to wbo2:

Read what was said again. How can companies be allowed in a regulated market that can't even cope with a small shock. If you don't hedge as a company you just risk bigger loses (fair enough if your pockets are deep enough to cope).

In reply to The Lemming:

I wish every time Tom criticises England he wouldn't get a load of lazy bankrupt responses of "You just hate the English."  Maybe he does, I don't know him, but I don't get that from him on here. It's like throwing the anti-semite stopper at anyone who disagree with Israel.

In reply to 65:

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and hates the English then what else can I say?

In reply to The Lemming:

Sorry; I think the Friday night covid threads had been acting as something of a lightning rod, regularly draining the xenophobic charge.  I see it’s now discharging all over the forums.

I see it’s no better informed when it comes to matters of history over the northern isles…

In reply to The Lemming: this is a useful  site for those interested in how the UKs electricity is generated at any particular time  (CCGT is gas ) https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

In reply to John Stainforth:

I'm pretty sure we don't actually get Russian gas - as all our non-locally-produced gas comes in by tanker there isn't the mechanism for getting it out of the Russian pipelines - we're simply suffering global gas price rises.

In reply to Toerag:

Apart from the 30% that comes via the Langeled pipeline from Norway. And what comes from other Norwegian fields via SAGE.

In reply to Ciro:

It's got some massive hurdles to climb, hurdles that perhaps cannot be climbed. The problems with tidal are as follows:-

Barrage systems - require a big tidal range and a large volume of water easily enclosed by a short barrage. This means using estuaries, and there are very few suitable ones. The ones that are suitable are important sites for nature, and thus inherently un-developable.

Open water - the strong flows required invariably occur around headlands and gaps that provide a funnelling effect. These locations also funnel vessel movements, so turbines need to be stuck on the seabed in deep water to allow continued navigation above them. Making turbines waterproof at depth is difficult and expensive, as is installation and maintenance. The alternative is the floating turbine like that designed by Orbital Marine Power which has the advantage that it can be maintained in drydock and towed into position to work. However, it's a hazard to navigation and thus cannot be used everywhere.  There have been research turbines in locations like Orkney and the bay of Fundy for decades, but they still aren't fully proven - I think the longest any have been in the water is 2 years.  Simec Atlantis claim to have a commercially viable one now, but even then the power produced is 5x what other generation methods can produce it for.  The simple fact is that the marine environment is very harsh and maintaining things in it is very expensive.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Two points Tom:

1. I'm English and I don't steal from anyone.

2. You're Scottish and you don't own any oil wells.

Nationality doesn't make you a bad person and fortuitous geology, a few hundred miles from your house, doesn't mean you're entitled to be a rich person.

In reply to Stichtplate:

The English stole Scotland's oil.  That is a fact.  The Westminster government had a report which had the true estimate of the size of North Sea oil and the likely prosperity of Scotland as an independent country with that oil.  The first referendum was fought by the SNP with the slogan 'It's Scotland's Oil'. The Westminster government lied about how much oil was in the North Sea, they lied about how prosperous Scotland could be with that oil and the thing which makes it criminal fraud and therefore theft rather than just politics is they classified their own report so they could get away with the lies.  The actual amount of oil turned out to be far larger than even the predictions in the classified report.

They actually lost the referendum but claimed they won because of a bullshit rule they invented about needing a percentage of the electorate rather than a simple majority of votes cast.  It turned out their percentage of the electorate was based on out of date rolls which had people double counted, people who had left the country and dead people on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Scottish_devolution_referendum

It's in the exact same fraudulent tradition as bribing the Scottish representatives in the Treaty of Union negotiations and the so called 'Vow' in the first independence referendum which was published immediately before the vote so nobody had a chance to reply and repudiated immediately after the vote.

Then Tory governments in Westminster spent the money and the main thing it went on was tax cuts which benefited the rich.  The rich in the UK are disproportionately in SE England and Tory voters. In other words they stole money from Scotland and spent it in SE England.  The other things it went on were the unemployment benefit needed to pay for Thatcher's decision to shut down the steel and coal industries.  Both of which had quite a large presence in Scotland.  And a couple of wars of course.

Not only that but because Energy is regulated by the Westminster goverment the oil companies put their senior people in London and hired people connected with the London establishment for top jobs so as to influence policy in Westminster.  BP employs far more people in SE England than in Scotland.  There's no city in Scotland which has the kind of wealth you see in other countries which had a trillion dollars worth of oil.  Because the wealth that comes from oil company spending on senior executives, lawyers, bankers, hotels, restaurants, accounting and all the services they need is mostly getting spent in London.  Then they tell us London subsidises Scotland.

If I was Norwegian I would be a hell of a lot better than I am as Scottish.  Norway and Scotland had pretty similar amounts of oil.  They didn't let the English steal theirs.

In reply to The Lemming:

The people paying the most for their electricity in the UK are the people nearest to the windmills which make it.

https://powercompare.co.uk/electricity-prices/

In reply to AndyC:

Plus the Netherlands and belgium, with shipped gas from Qatar.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Would those be the people who live in areas where the distribution costs are astrononical?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

The English did not steal Scotland's oil. Scotland was not an independent country at the time, so it is meaningless to talk about Scotland's oil. It was and is the UK's oil. 

Also, you really should stop talking about "The English" rather than England when complaining about Scotland's treatment within the Union. It comes across as xenophobic and undermines your case. Some of the most ardent independence supporters I know are are English. After independence there would be many English people living in Scotland and your tone comes across as very unwelcoming to them.

I do agree that if Scotland had been independent 50 years ago then it might now be rich like Norway. But it wasn't and it isn't. That opportunity has passed. Move on.

In reply to Robert Durran:

An amazing tale.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012s9s

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I'm English. Did I steal your oil?

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Where you hiding it?

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

I might have done.  Problem is knowing which bit, exactly, belonged to TiE.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Are you hoping you did and had forgotten about it? Be handy finding that you had stashed a few barrels of oil away after a few beers given the current prices.

In reply to 65:

Indeed Tom does not hate the English. He is just trying to piss them off for the double benefit of making them less keen on the Union, and for their inevitable responses to piss off Scots and make them less keen on the Union.

”I figured this out a long time ago.  The path to independence will be much easier if English voters want rid of Scotland.  That's why I put so much effort into annoying them.” TiE.

Tom is not a xenophobe - he’s just following the well trodden pathway of folk like Farage, Johnson, Le Pen, Trump et al back to Goebbels and beyond  who try to ferment hatred between peoples.

In my book that’s worse than being a xenophobe.

In reply to Dr.S at work

But, if so, I do think that his tactics are misplaced. The "peoples" of Scotland and the UK are far too interlinked and overlapping to sell independence via hatred. I think most people would want to see any separation to be amicable and pragmatic and would shy away an independence in any way based on the sort of bitterness and nastiness which Tom exudes.

In reply to GrahamD:

If it's in diesel format and in the lower half of your tank, just keep topping up, save using the whole tank for a Scotland trip, that way at least you'll be using scottish oil, for a Scottish journey.

In reply to Dr.S at work:

I don't think he is deliberately doing this in spite of his quote. All it will achieve on here is earning a ban. I do agree with Robert D that Tom's use of "The English" is clumsy, misplaced and looks xenophobic, and it does occasionally make me wince even if I am broadly on the same page as him. 

I've held back during bad tempered discussions about brexshit and Scottish independence on here and elsewhere from saying "You lot etc" because it would be very unfair on all of my friends in England and Wales (irrespective of their nationalities) who are as appalled and furious about it as I am. And it would look xenophobic.

I agree with that.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Same here, and probably mostly different people.

From that aspect yes, but move on from having my EU citizenship taken from me? Never.

In reply to 65:

I didn't mean moving on from the independence debate; there are many strong arguments for independence. But I think it is long past time to stop going on about "Scotland's oil" as if we were still in the '70s.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Yes. Mainly because as a hopefully progressive nation we'll be looking to move away from it. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

We (UK) used North Sea petroleum revenues very badly. But, would an independent Scotland have done any better? Norway did, but their trump card is hydroelectricity.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Farage et al. did a pretty good job of selling Brexit via hatred, despite the peoples of the UK and, err, the UK being interlinked and overlapping.

In reply to Dr.S at work:

All it makes me think is I want independence from TiE and not Scotland. Ion my experience other that the odd person like Tom (every country in the world has a collection of Tom's) the Scottish are great people, friendly and welcoming and bloody good company. 

Tom also seems to think England is the South East, that maybe where the money is Tom but there are a lot more English people who don't live in the South East than do so quit blaming all of us. 

In reply to Dax H:

I hear a lot about the supposed commonalities between Scotland and The North, generally couched in opposition to anything within easy reach of London, especially if it has money and a plummy accent. I think there was something in this during the Thatcher years but not now. I’m afraid I don’t get it.

UKIP, brexshit, the tories and worse (EDL, etc) all have very solid Alf Garnett followings in the North whereas you’ll struggle to find much of that up here unless you go to a Rangers supporters club or speak to a titled Borders farmer. I’ve worked a lot in West Cumbria, Northumberland, Wearside and Leeds and it’s a foreign country to me, though as I grew up in Fife the Yorkshire dourness was familiar.

If there’s one place in England I personally feel any affinity with it’s London. The Labour and Remain voting, outward looking internationalist aspect of it rather than the top hat wearing, Bentley driving, money laundering part.

I have sympathy with the ‘Independence for Yorkshire/The North’ thing but I don’t take any opinion as it’s none of my business. But with the greatest respect and hand of friendship, I really don’t want The North of England joining us if and hopefully when we escape from Brexshit Island.

In reply to Dax H:

And 100% this.

In reply to The Lemming:

Well this thread has definitely lead to Civil Unrest!

In reply to kevin stephens:

Ha ha, at least it’s mostly civil.

In reply to John Stainforth:

There's a case to argue that most of Norways oil money hasn't been spent, it sits in their sovereign fund. What it has enabled is low state debt, employment opportunities etc.. then the tax revenue from those is what greases the wheels of the economy. They also didn't sell or privatise state oil industry(statoil, now Equinor ASA). Yeah, there is nothing to suggest in uk mentality that Scotland would have taken a similar route. Norway has an iraq oil engineer migrant with both hindsight and foresight, plus a massive dose of chance to thank for it's current position. 

In reply to 65:

A good and refreshing series of posts...

....just thought it needed saying.

In reply to ExiledScot:

I can vouch for that. Around the third most expensive country in the world in terms of cost of living. I pay income tax at 47%, VAT at 25%, also taxes on assets and savings. You pay to access the health service (unless you are on benefits).

(I had to laugh when I broke my arm - queued up for an X-ray and they asked "do you want to pay now or should we send you an invoice?" Trying to extract a credit card one-handed was challenging!) 

In reply to AndyC:

Yep, not sure the Norwiegen economic model is something to offer to the average Scot, £9 for a beer might be a bit of a hard sell! Down here in Bavaria local brewed at €0,75c per litre seems okay though.

In reply to The Lemming:

That wouldn't surprise me. Definitely, the price of eggs is going to rise!

In reply to AndyC:

I’ve never been to Norway but a couple of friends lived there. All these figures like the price of beer, tax rates etc are all well and alarming but what is the lower to average income wage like and how does it relate to the cost of living? Paying a pension, running a car, heating, food, that kind of thing.

And how does the general infrastructure of the country function compared to say, the UK? 
Or Germany for that matter.

In reply to 65:

Somebody living in Norway told me it was better for people on lower/average wages as that is more of a good enough wage than a poverty wage.

In reply to 65:

If you believe the figures then someone at the lower end of the scale is probably earning the equivalent of £30,000 per year - which would be barely enough to exist on. But childcare is something they have got right so most families are able to earn dual incomes which makes life bearable. On the whole, the average standard of living is probably slightly better than the UK. 

Property around Oslo is massively expensive, further out it gets cheaper but it's all relative. There is a lot of inherited money being passed around, but I think many people are maxed out on credit.

Due to taxes, car prices are astronomical compared to the UK although people seem to be able to afford them (or at least the monthly payments). Electric cars were heavily subsidised hence every other car around here is a Tesla. There are toll roads everywhere - another tax! 

Public transport is fairly good around the cities and the trains run well most of time. But we have our share of signal failures and staff shortages.