TODAY'S MINI BUDGET from Kwasi Kwarteng MP

"AT THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA" Kwasi Kwarteng

Reward for the wealthy - turbocharge the economy - live off and depend even more on fast depleting resources like oil and gas.  This is cloud cuckoo land economics/ecology.  Get 2.5% growth every year for evermore so we can stuff our homes with more stuff, have 'em bigger and two or three homes each, at home and overseas as the magic money tree takes off from greedy growth.

Sir Jonathon Porritt said in the 1980s that 3% growth every single year for 25 years builds up nicely to production and consumption having doubled in those 25 years from a planet that is not expanding in line with our ever greedy demands placed upon it!

Worked out as:

End of yr 1, from £100 you have £103

Yr 2, this becomes £106.09

Yr 3, £109.2727

Yr 4, £112.55

Yr 5, £115.93

Yr 6, £119.40

Yr 7, £122.99

8      126.68

9      130.48

10    134.39

11    138.42

12    142.58

13    146.85

14    151.26

15    155.80

16    160.47

17    165.28

18    170.24

19    175.35

20    180.61

21    186.03

22    191.61

23    197.36

End of year 24: £203.28

Truss and Kwarteng want only 2.5% each and every year.  So,

by beginning Yr 2  £102.5

3  105.06

4  107.69

5  110.38

6  113.14

7  115.97

8  118.87

9  121.84

10 124.89

11  128.00

12  131.21

13  134.49

14  137.85

15  141.30  

16  144.83

17  148.45

18  152.16

19  155.97

20  159.87

21  163.86

22  167.96

23  172.16

24  176.46

25  180.87

26  185.39

27  190.03

28  194.78

by beginning of yr 29  199.65 - it's doubled!  In just under 30 years.

30  204.64

Budget for the wealthy to spend yet more and UK borrowing more.  Faster depletion of finite resources and especially fossil fuels as growth takes off - in a new era.  Biggest tax cuts for decades.  50 years since tax cuts on this scale.

Those on Universal Credit will have their benefits cuts if claimants are not trying hard enough to find work.  A tougher sanctions regime for people on UC, Andy Burnham called it and, he said this evening, he is against a deal to end the Ukraine War.

GRIM ECONOMIC/ECOLOGICAL TIMES THREATENED

Dear Laura, Linda and Deborah - and, copied to Anne Shaw (who leads from the front I have noticed and gets a big tick from me) and bcc'd to other key players who might share my concerns.

I would like a response, please from Laura on behalf of you very top women who might be able to do better than the men.  Apart from Johnson and Jack, below!

On Wednesday 7 Sept at 0710 hrs on the Radio 4 'Today' programme, I heard Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, say:

"The reason gas prices are so high is because there is less gas around.  If the world doesn't use less gas over the next year, we are going to run out."

"The entire economy is at risk here", said the BBC Business Editor, Simon Jack, later the same day on the 'Jeremy Vine Show'.

I believe what follows is basic ecology/economics.  For me, HS2, Metro, Sprint are symptomatic and the reality of the fact that we are living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet.  Living unsustainably.  Somewhat dangerous and foolish!  All three transport projects are self-indulgent and greedy at a time when the nation is even more awash in debt.  We need to tighten our belts and not splash out on wasteful, extravagant and totally unnecessary projects.  We insist on business as usual, with not even a nod in the direction of the multiple crises - climate, energy, inflation, cost of living and, funding of the Ukraine War amongst others - confronting the nation and regions.

I have tried to make this accurate but light-hearted, in the spirit of British pompous pricking and satire:

 16 (not so?) SNAPPY SENTENCES

A REQUEST

With Metro WBHE Phase 2, you are putting the "bus on rails" trams on the UK's very last, ready built but unused railway "of national strategic significance".

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

You have now done so at the Wednesbury end.  As you are keeping the sedate trams on the Phase 2 section of another 2 Kms of this nationally important railway, perhaps now keep it on the same railway to allow it to connect to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  In this way, at Merry Hill, you:

1. save my magnificent guerrilla garden from being wiped out;
2. save the only public open space at Merry Hill;
3. save nature - of which we are part and depend on for our very existence;
4. save the view of five lovely hills from the canal towpath and from the boats on the high canal embankment; and 
5. save all the 10,000 sq metres of land designated for housing - after some decades still available for very low cost energy apartments for the poor.
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

With best wishes for a reply from Laura, please

Tim    (Weller, 0791 380 4363)

Brindley Drive housing scheme for High Plateau

Many thanks, Richard.  (Richard Harris, Court Collaboration Consultation Team)

There is no Brierley Hill scheme by anyone.  That is the problem!

10,000 sq metres are lying unused, wasted, vacant for decades and no-one is the slightest bit interested!

Would you like to do so and transform that land for the benefit of the far too many who are badly housed and need low energy costing homes, as you are planning to do at Brindley Drive.

What is "Green and blue roofs for on-site water attenuation"?  More details, please.

EU expects to raise €140bn from windfall tax on energy firms

 Fossil fuel extractors will be asked by the EU to give back 33% of taxable surplus profits for the 2022 fiscal year, in a move that could pile pressure on Liz Truss to reverse her decision not to extend the UK’s windfall tax on oil and gas companies, which is set at 25%. Truss has ruled out extending the £5bn windfall tax on energy companies introduced by the former chancellor Rishi Sunak.

In a further sign of the UK’s post-Brexit divergence, the new prime minister has also stopped short of asking consumers and businesses to reduce their energy use over the winter.

In contrast, the commission wants EU member states to sign up to a legally binding target to cut electricity use by 10% overall and by 5% during peak hours, via efficiency campaigns and incentives.

The plan mirrors an already agreed voluntary target of cutting gas consumption by 15% until the end of spring 2023. “Demand reduction helps rebalance the energy market, lower energy bills, reduce emissions and makes us immune to Russia’s gas games. Without demand reduction, it is not going to work,” Timmermans said.

Founder gives away Patagonia to fight climate crisis

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said, “Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.”

“Instead of exploiting natural resources to make shareholder returns, we are turning shareholder capitalism on its head by making the Earth our only shareholder,” he wrote.

Chouinard and Patagonia have long been groundbreakers in environmental activism and employee benefits. In its nearly 50 years in operation, the Ventura, California-based company has been known for extensive benefits for employees, including on-site nurseries and afternoons off on good surf days.

In the 80s, the company began donating 1% of its sales to environmental groups, a program formalized in 2001 as the “1% for the Planet Scheme”. The program has resulted in $140m in donations for preservation and restoration of the natural environment, according to the company.

Each year, the money Patagonia makes after reinvesting in the business will be distributed to the nonprofit to help fight the environmental crisis.

from the Guardian, 15.9.22

Is this any business of faith leaders?

Is this just unfortunate, incompetence or is there more to it - like vested interests at play and improper influence?  Or, is there nothing to be concerned about and is just the way everyone behaves?  Is this the norm:

to waste and even destroy railway infrastructure:

• first the tram network wiped out in the 1950s; then one-third of the West Midlands railway network, followed by the tram network (Metro) rebuilt on the railway network closed but not yet completely obliterated;
• to give top priority to the most prestigious, extravagant and luxury projects like HS2, Metro and Sprint;
• and, replacing buildings that are sound but out of fashion and must be replaced with something brand new and modern to impress and wow the visitor and tourist?

Is it right to keep the asylum seeker, refugee and all of the badly housed of all nationalities well away from their own small, very low cost energy homes?  An example:

On land that has been waiting for them for decades but is still left idle, wasted, unused - like High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?

Cutting GHG emissions starts at home

What has the destruction of our railways and the rebuilding of the tram network on closed lines not yet obliterated, got to do with climate?

1. Everything we do impacts climate because we are so thoroughly addicted, so totally hooked on finite fossil fuels (but slowly getting better with renewables).
2. If we can't even run a sensible, unsustainable society, there is no hope for reaching a more socially just, sensible and sustainable one.
3. Destroying transport infrastructure creates extra GHG emissions from all the energy used.
4. Destroying the Great Central Railway may have contributed to HS2 that destroys nature for no good reason and uses up precious resources.  Precious resources like finite fossil fuels that are burnt in enormous quantities to build the thing to emit even more GHG!
5. Metro is very high in GHG because of so much concrete and steel in the construction of the trams and lines.
6. Climate activism means standing up against wrongdoing, idiocy and making public transport more off-putting by introducing yet more modes that mean more changes between them to get anywhere by shared/public transport.
7. The more we spend, the more GHG emissions and the more climate instability - but more renewables will help.

Is the horror really worth it?

Is it really worth all the horror, the suffering, the pain and killings to be really bothered about where the boundary goes and who your President is - Volodymyr or Vladimir?

The two nations are called cousins and many eastern Ukrainians speak Russian, I have heard.

Is life really so bad under Putrid that you have to kill and be killed to avoid his governance?

Is that really worth it?

If it becomes that bad, why not simply flee and become an asylum seeker or refugee, then?

For me, this is the tragedy of Ukraine and Russia for which, it seems, we (the American-led West) are partly responsible.  We failed to show magnanimity in the 90s and 00s, failed to maintain a good relationship with Putrid at that time and favoured triumphalism over restraint and empathy for the defeated 'enemy'.  It was an out-and-out extension of our reach eastwards to gladly take on board the former Soviet satellite states.  Even to military exercises, NATO membership and nukes in eastern Europe!

I thought it was fair enough for Putrid to claim that Russia's security was threatened by an American-led Europe and NATO coming right up to his western border by EU firebrands overthrowing Ukraine's pro-Russian President Yanukovych in Feb 2014.

Clear the undergrowth on Dudley's section of Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway

Dear friend - please reply.  Please do more to make your/our section fit to use without wellies!

Can your workers clear the undergrowth to allow the mud to dry out more quickly?

None of the 22 Kms, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway (from Fens Pool Avenue to NW Wolverhampton) has a hard tarmac surface with good drainage.  However, different parts of the South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton section are called Kingswinford Railway Walk, Monarch's Way and Valley Parkway.  They are popular with walkers, cyclists and horse riders.  That section has a lovely Woodland Trust property, called Himley Plantation with a car park beside the cycle-walkway.  In Wolverhampton, there is the Valley Park nature reserve and two old railway stations are cafes that are well used when open.

The Dudley section has two short public rights of way connecting it with the Crooked House, "Creative rustic cooking and local real ales served in quirky higgledy-piggledy old world pub."  (Google Maps)  It is off Himley Road and is well worth a visit for the mining subsidence that has caused it to be 'crooked'.  I've never seen anything like it for its visual illusions!

The whole 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway is clearly marked on the OS Explorer map as "Traffic-free cycle route" (from the map Legend or Key).  It has brown circles on the full length on the map that stand out so well.  On the ground, in Dudley, it is an utter disgrace in the vicinity of the Crooked House pub through to Barrow Hill Nature Reserve.

Tim Weller

"We are going to run out" (of gas)

On Wednesday 7 Sept at 0710 hrs on the Radio 4 'Today' programme, I heard Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, say:

"The reason gas prices are so high is because there is less gas around.  If the world doesn't use less gas over the next year, we are going to run out."

The other sensible person who speaks truth to power is the consumer champion, Martin Lewis.  They need to be joint/co Prime Ministers, in my opinion.

The lie promulgated by WMCA

We are given the lie that the UK's only 120 Kms mainline, half-used, railway "of national strategic significance" must be converted to a tramline, VLR test track and cycle-walkway, with passive provision being the magic solution built-in to the same tracks to allow conversion to freight and mainline railway at a later date!!

The second lie is that Metro trams, on this same track, are the catalyst to get the freight and passenger train services back on this line.  This was put out by Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director at Centro who wrote to me in September 2000:

"Light rail provision provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."  And this remains the case to this day.  It has never been withdrawn nor, has a correction and apology been forthcoming.

to Steve Wright of Railfuture

Hi Steve

Thanks for the phone call.  Good to talk to you earlier.

This railway map shows how the tram, in taking over the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby principal mainline "of national strategic significance", nicely destroys it!

 Map Wednesbury - Brierley Hill.pdf

The official leaflet with the useful map at the end:

 WBHE map in leaflet

Plan here shows you where the tramline goes but, after 40 years, it is still not too late for Phase 2 of WBHE (Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension) to keep the tram down the railway from Cinder Bank roundabout on the Duncan Edwards Way all the way to Stourbridge Jct!:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

My guerilla gardening landscape enhancement scheme from the 1990s to this day is against the high rusty iron wall that holds up the north side of High Plateau and the wall is at right angles to the canal embankment in the above plan.  My plants and trees are directly under the viaduct in the plan, above.

To Cllr Ian Bevan in 2020 - long and detailed, so leave for later!

 BOTH SIDES OF THE CASE, here

This photo of mine shows part of the canal embankment taken for the 400 metre viaduct on the other side of the road and clock tower in this image.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

The 400 metre, heavily mowed canal embankment is a low quality nature site but is very important for sequestering CO2 by the soil, grass and trees.  Desperately needed, so do not cover it with concrete, brick, steel and tarmac for the viaduct!

I think climate adaptation and mitigation must include opposing every luxury, extravagant, totally unnecessary project like "bus on rails" Metro and "the bus that thinks it's a tram" Sprint, too.  Quite apart from the urgent need to cut back on oil and gas use, of course because they are finite - most inconvenient!

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

 

Similarly, the bizarre, the absurd, the stupid conversion of now two ready built, mainline railways to tramlines, right where we live!  Metro One, opened in 1999 on Snow Hill, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and now Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro on the Worcester to Derby Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance".

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

SUMMARY

The destruction of part of the desperately needed housing land given to Metro that also obliterates my guerrilla gardening landscape enhancement scheme, plus the only public open space at Merry Hill that are both converted into a 400 metre concrete and steel railway/tram viaduct.  Yet, the trams could stay on the railway to join the trains at Stourbridge Jct railway station under my suggestion that is not done under their plan.  The freight trains would need to operate at night.

The bigger picture:

Here is the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby Mainline being broken up into HR, LR, VLR and even, possibly ULR (ultra light rail or the Stourbridge Town Shuttle from Town station to Cottage Street, Brierley Hill where Metro terminates on the 40 year old plan)!!

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

PHOTOS:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

One line nicked by metal thieves!

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

Best wishes

David Cannadine on Suez

"The Suez crisis and fiasco which makes plain that Britain's continued pretensions to great power and potency had been rather savagely exposed as something of a sham."

to Cathy Bayton, Chair, Transport Scrutiny, WMCA

Dear Cathy

I am coming down on the bus to your meeting at 10 am to say, in my two minutes, this:

For the first time in my life, I heard a VIP say that "we are running out of gas".  This was on Radio 4's 'Today' programme yesterday morning.  It was Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.  The other sensible person who speaks truth to power is the consumer champion, Martin Lewis.

I need to say this.  It is also oil and even fresh drinking water, too!  And, never mind the climate emergency/catastrophe that is unfolding before us.

Therefore, you and your committee, in my opinion, need to unanimously tell your colleagues at 16 Summer Lane that they must scrap HS2, Metro and Sprint extensions.  And, I think, we must also immediately stop funding the similarly ecocidal Ukraine War with our armaments and training of their armed forces.

Somehow, our remaining supplies of gas and oil must be used, not for self-defeating nuclear and for warfare but for welfare and for postponing extinction by spending our finite resources on microgeneration solar PV on rooves/roofs (for electricity for the building beneath) and, for onshore and offshore wind turbines.

Best wishes

to Ed Lawrence, Chair, Future Council Scrutiny

Dear Ed

My wife is whisking me off to visit our daughter and her family on her birthday today, so I cannot have my three minutes in the public forum at 6 pm.  Would you be so good as to read this out in my absence, please?

STALLED SITES

With the multiple crises affecting our nation, region and borough, consumer champion Martin Lewis is warning of the poorest getting into such financial debt this winter that it will bring some of them into such serious difficulties that their lives will be at risk and, certainly, their health will suffer.

I am, therefore, asking that the decades of neglect over the housing designated land at High Plateau and Daniel's Land at Merry Hill must immediately be given to the poorest for very low energy cost housing of flats, apartments and terraced housing of the kind that my wife and I have lived in for the last 46 years in Halesowen.  Our energy bills remain very low.

Who owns the High Plateau and Daniel's Land?

I would suggest that our council and the WMCA follows the example of Germany's striking measures to reduce energy demand, by doing the following:

Cut flood lighting of buildings and reduce street lighting.

Turn down the thermostat to 19C for central heating of public buildings.

Do not reopen the swimming pool in Halesowen and, perhaps Stourbridge closed too over the winter.  Reduce the water temperature at the Duncan Edwards Centre swimming pool.

In Hanover, Germany showers at pools and at public sports centres will be (or, now are) cold water only.

Certainly, bring in shorter and cooler showers in public leisure centres.  Cold only in Germany.

Cut/reduce the car mileage allowance for officers on official council business.

Cancel the Dudley Tram leaving the mainline railway at Hart's Hill and keep it running down to Stourbridge Jct to connect it, once again, to the railway network.

Scrap the £15 billion (Feb 2020 figure) to 2040 for the 150 miles of eight lines and 380 tram stops of Metro tramlines.

Who are these people?

LibDem who became a Tory, an anti-monarchist to loyal royalist, a Remainer who became a Brexiteer, the Cameroon who became a Boris supporter.  What pragmatism, what flexibility, what bending with whatever way the wind blows for self-advancement!

Who is the low-energy Jeremy Corbyn?

Who is an attention seeker?

Responding to the multiple crises

TO BOB WHITEHEAD

I'm forwarding to you this follow-up email to Albert Bore whom I met on Friday evening when I gatecrashed his surgery.  I waited for him to see everyone else and, then, he kindly saw me - briefly but, it was worth the visit!

I've read your excellent email as Secretary of the W Mids Climate Coalition.  I do feel that these should be our transport priorities.  I will ask if they could be discussed at our LU meeting on Tuesday to see if there is any support or even unanimity:

1. Insisting that all Metro and Sprint expansions are now halted as the urgent, easiest and most obvious response to the multiple crises and emergencies the authorities and the people are facing.  WMCA has direct responsibility for Metro and Sprint that they don't have for HS2.
2. All fares must be scrapped on buses, trains and trams within the W Mids boundary as one of many responses to the crises.
3. The stick of road pricing to work in conjunction with the carrot of FFPT for all.  Essential business users register their vehicles to be exempt from the charge that is meant to hit car commuters who must take the bus, train, tram - or bike!​
    24 month experiment on Hagley Road
   ​
4. Commuter and regional trains, with the stations must be returned on as much of the 106 Kms as possible to cut GHG emissions from road transport.
5. We must try and get the Tories to oppose Labour and LibDems who are the most enthusiastic for trams to duplicate/replace buses and trains.  SEE:​
    Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...
   ​​
    Edinburgh tram costs
   ​Edinburgh City Council followed full democratic accountability with discussions, debates and votes.  Only in the early 1980s did the elected county councillors approve Metro but there was not even one elected councillor who opposed the trams, as far as I am aware - but Terry Davis MP for Hodge Hill did, up to a point and then gave up when it went on a mainline railway!

All the best

Tim

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Sept 2022 at 10:12
Subject: Thank you for seeing me yesterday evening
To: Albert Bore <albert.bore@birmingham.gov.uk>
Cc: Ian Ward <Ian.Ward@birmingham.gov.uk>, Liz Clements <liz.clements@birmingham.gov.uk>

Dear Albert - and copied to Ian and Liz for their information but, for your reply, please.

I wish to underline the points I was making or, began to make, to you.

• You remain a senior and influential member of Birmingham City Council.  What you say and do, really does have an impact.  So thank you for saying you will ask Liz Clements to give me some of her time.
• You are, I understand, the longest serving member of BCC and, for a total of eight years you were leader of BCC and, therefore, the leader of the seven W Midlands district councils.  You had the opportunity, then, to bring the other six leaders together, for you all to agree that stopping the destruction of railway lines and returning commuter and regional trains must be your top priority - and NOT Metro trams!
• You told me that for years you wanted to see the commuter and regional trains returned to the Camp Hill Line through Kings Heath, Moseley and Balsall Heath.  It therefore raises the question, for me, as to why on earth you did not insist on such a very obvious oversight being corrected.  And, now you are having to see Conservative Andy Street, instead getting the credit for the eventual re-opening of that line - I hope in this decade!
• I believe that throughout your time as a Labour councillor you have overseen and fully supported the development of Midland Metro from 1981, when Cllr Phil Bateman of W Mids County Council was one of the leading lights.  Perhaps, you were too, Sir?  Did you make any attempt to stop it, like Terry Davis did, only for it to be put on a mainline railway, instead of the commuter and regional trains?  Astonishing absurdity!
• Metro has been a disaster as railway lines continued to be lost or, used for freight only, and the Metro "bus on rails" tram took over two mainline railways.  One, to leave a worse service between Snow Hill, Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury and, now the second is breaking up the UK's very last principal, mainline railway "of national strategic significance".  The most extraordinary idiocy.
  
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  In all my 74 years of life and 54 years of them living and working in Brum or Halesowen, I have never seen greater stupidity or such growing and appalling congestion and pollution on our roads and railways (up until Covid).
• Albert, you still have the seniority and political weight in the corridors of power to have an important influence.  Please use it to, finally, bring some sane, sensible and climate championing decisions to be made.  URGENTLY!
• The elected members, like your good self, are meant to make the decisions for the officers to implement, I thought.  Or, have I got that wrong?

With best wishes and thanks

Porritt on nuclear power stations - the 'solution' that worsens the problem!

My summary with Porritt's quotes from his blog -http://www.jonathonporritt.com/sizewell-c-just-the-latest-nuclear-scam/

The nuclear alternatives are more sensible, a lot cheaper and can address the problem much more quickly.

HMG is responding to their own climate emergency and the energy/cost of living crisis - the uncomfortable NOW - by ordering nuclear power stations that take a decade or two to come on stream!

Only foreign companies like the French EDF have the know-how.  Yet, they are in financial straits but, almost wholly owned by the French government.

EDF is not known to build anything on time or on budget.  Half of France's nuclear reactors are closed: "31 reactors closed – out of a total of 56."  It will cost them 20 bn euros in lost revenue when EDF is already in debt.

Nuclear is the most expensive way in the world to generate electricity.

Hinkley Point (EDF) is way over budget and delayed.  Cost is now £26 bn, with more cost hikes becoming inevitable.  HMG's new idea (financing scam): Pay Up Front and Pay Again Later for what will still be very expensive elecy.

All our billions should be going to insulate our leaky houses and to build very low energy demanding homes for very minimum energy bills.  Invest in reducing demand and creating the green economy.

Net zero electricity is impossible with nuclear elecy when GHG emissions are so massive through the long years, even decades, in building the energy-intensive concrete and steel power station!

Instead, double down on offshore wind and resurrect onshore wind because "it’s by far and away the cheapest source of electricity, between a quarter and a third of the cost of nuclear"

Improving the energy efficiency of people's homes is seriously lagging behind what the govt is doing.  For example, David Cameron got rid of 'all the green crap'. This was "compounded subsequently by both Theresa May and Boris Johnson writing off energy efficiency and retrofits as irrelevant to the Government’s purpose."

Why is the successful retrofitting ECO scheme paused?

Committee on Climate Change reported this year: ‘its (govt) shocking gap in policy for better insulated homes.’

" ... a £19bn commitment to improve the UK’s appalling housing stock was actually part of the 2019 Tory Manifesto. And if there was one thing that might save their rancid bacon in Red Wall seats, it would surely be to follow through on that commitment."

We must have full investment in a full-on Green New Deal.

The nuclear billions must go on retrofitting and boosting wind and PV solar on rooves.

Going for nuclear elecy is inextricably linked to nuclear weapons.  The one depends on the other - in skills and supply chains.

French President said, 'Without civilian nuclear, no military nuclear; without military nuclear, no civilian nuclear.’

Tim Weller   1 September 2022

John Crace on Truss/Sunak as the duo finally finish

Conservatives will choose between a halfwit with half an idea and a flatlining ideologue with no ideas.  All mediocre things have to come to an end and the six weeks of Conservative leadership hustings finally limped to a close in London.

Finally. This is the end, beautiful friend. The end. Well, let’s hope so. For now at least.

In the absence of the government doing any actual governing, we’ve been forced to endure the tedium of a drawn out Tory leadership contest. A niche psychodrama for the 160,000 people allowed to vote. One with very little actual drama as we’ve all known who was going to win from the moment MPs reduced the candidates down to the final two.

Given a choice of a halfwit with half an idea and a flatlining ideologue with no actual ideas, the Conservative members were always going to vote for the most hopeless. There’s even less to Liz Truss than meets the eye.

Cardiff three days explore

We've just had three days exploring Cardiff and environs on foot and hire bike - Ovo Energy bikes sit up and beg heavyweights!  Travelled by train from Brum to Cardiff and stayed in a hotel for two nights.  A very active three days of exploring on foot and one day on the Ovo bikes, plus boat trip but well worth it and a most impressive and varied terrain of city, country and beach visited.  Our first time in Cardiff area, too with the most beautiful sweeping curve of very posh St David's Shopping Arcade, leading on from the more ordinary Queen's Arcade!