Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, environment

Oh what a surprise!

So, as usual it seems, we’re now being told that the bill for Heathrow Runway Three is going to be much higher than is being said. Worse, that extra cost is going to fall on the taxpayer and not on the private enterprise (the airport). Yesterday’s Guardian reported former Transport Secretary as the person raising the concern:

“There will be a number of specific things we will be doing for Heathrow. The government and Heathrow need to come clean on what the cost to the taxpayer is going to be.” … While the [Davies] commission report estimated a £5bn bill for new roads and rail links, Transport for London put the potential cost as being as high as £18.4bn.
Heathrow said it had earmarked just £1bn, and that it only accepted direct responsibility for works to the M25, which the third runway would cross, and a few minor roads. The airport contends that it will be cutting traffic, despite adding up to 55 million passengers a year, and that revenues could offset the bill.

Oh? Pray tell me how adding 55 million passengers a year will reduce traffic.
Moreover:

Heathrow confirmed on Wednesday that executives would be paid bonuses, for securing a new runway, that would be expected to run into several million pounds.

And there’s even more …

Campaigners have highlighted an apparent admission that pollution is likely to rise in parts of London with a third runway, which they say potentially makes the scheme illegal.
The report, produced by Parsons Brinckerhoff for the DfT, said that Heathrow was “at risk of worsening exceedances of limit values alongside some roads within greater London, but this would be unlikely to affect the overall zone compliance”.
However, this is likely to be contested. Legal opinion obtained by the Clean Air in London campaign, from Robert McCracken QC, states that worsening pollution in any areas that already exceed legal limits would break the law.

That’s alright then, bugger the law. Oh we’ve already done that.
And don’t you just love “at risk of worsening exceedances of limit values”. WTF language do they think they’re writing? Can’t be Vogon; we’d stand a chance of understanding that.
So as usual it seems we’re not being told the whole story; there are hidden vested interests and conflicts of interest. And the whole funding situation is being fudged so that in years to come it will be too expensive (financially and politically) to scrap the project so it is completed with money we don’t have, provided by central government and filched from the pockets of the already screwed taxpayers — or worse borrowed on the never-never. (See HS2 and London’s proposed Garden Bridge for similar current likely examples.)
It’s another plane crash (in so many ways) waiting to happen. And government don’t get it. In spades. FFS!
PS. I know I live near Heathrow (though not under the main flightpaths) but I don’t care where this runway is going to be built. We shouldn’t be doing it. And we certainly shouldn’t be doing it — like most major projects — in such an underhand way.

current affairs, environment

Heath-NO!

So yesterday, quite predictably and after years of dithering, the government decided that it is going to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
They still don’t get it, do they? See a number of earlier posts hereabouts.
So why do they do it? I suspect it is a combination of (A) vested interests (ie. the business lobby and politicians share portfolios), (B) the fact that governments (like senior managers) have to be seen to do something and almost anything will do especially if it distracts from the real problems they should be fixing, and (C) vanity. And that, of course, is all that matters. Bugger the environment etc. etc.
Not that any work is likely to be done for 4 or 5 years. There is still to be (another?) public consultation followed by parliamentary approval. Add to that all the planning decisions, every one of which you can be sure will be appealed by someone, causing even further delay. Meanwhile the whole of west London — already a disaster jungle of concrete — has another Sword of Damocles (in addition to that of HS2) hanging over it.
So there is still plenty of chance the third runway will never happen, and even by the time it can happen some people will have got the message that (a) it will be an environmental disaster (wherever it is sited) and (b) we really should not need to be flying people around the world the way they do.
As someone commented yesterday, we suddenly seem to be building big things — most of which we really don’t need (eg. runway three, HS2). Moreover we cannot afford them — we have no money, at least so we’re always being told. Nor do we have the labour to either build or operate these facilities as unemployment is at historic low levels. So where do we find the cash and the workers? Oh yes, of course: inward investment and immigrants, neither of which will happen after Brexit.
There is still time for common sense to prevail, but don’t hold your breath.
Gawdelpus!

current affairs, environment

Climate Change and Airport Expansion

In a comment piece entitled Climate change means no airport expansion — at Heathrow or anywhere in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot has got his knife out again.
His thesis is that:

The inexorable logic that should rule out new sources of oil, gas and coal also applies to the expansion of airports. In a world seeking to prevent climate breakdown, there is no remaining scope for extending infrastructure that depends on fossil fuels … While most sectors can replace fossil fuels with other sources, this is not the case for aviation … Aviation means kerosene.

Essentially The UK cannot meet it’s climate change commitments now and building another airport runway (whether at Heathrow, Gatwick or anywhere else) is only going to compound the problem.
We have to fly less — for both business and leisure. Business has to wake up to the fact that it doesn’t have to fly people around the world — or even drive them around the country — to meetings. We all have to wake up to the fact that we cannot afford — environmentally, and probably soon financially — to jet off around the world on holiday several times a year.
I know I keep saying it, but it really is time to wake up and smell the coffee at home!
[And no, Monbiot doesn’t make this stuff up. There’s a fully referenced and linked version of the article at http://www.monbiot.com/2016/10/19/the-flight-of-reason/.]

current affairs, ramblings

Brexit Scrutiny

Law and Lawyers reports that the House of Lords EU Select Committee has issued a new report, Brexit: Parliamentary Scrutiny.
There are three key findings:

  • It would be in the interests of Government, Parliament and the public for Parliament to vote on the Government’s Brexit negotiation guidelines before Article 50 is triggered.
  • Too much is at stake — including many key aspects of domestic policy — for Ministers and officials to be allowed to take decisions behind closed doors, without parliamentary and democratic scrutiny.
  • Allowing Parliament to provide timely and constructive commentary throughout the negotiations would increase the likelihood of Parliament and the public accepting the final deal.

But critically, as Law and Lawyers quotes from the report:

The forthcoming negotiations on Brexit will be unprecedented in their complexity and their impact upon domestic policy … it seems … inconceivable that [the executive] should take the many far-reaching policy decisions that will arise in the course of Brexit without active parliamentary scrutiny.
[The government must] recognise a middle ground between the extremes of micromanagement and mere accountability after the fact.
Within this middle ground, Parliament, while respecting the Government’s need to retain room for manoeuvre, should be able both to monitor the Government’s conduct of the negotiations, and to comment on the substance of the Government’s negotiating objectives as they develop. Only if these principles are accepted will Parliament be able to play a constructive part in helping the Government to secure the best outcome for the United Kingdom. Such scrutiny will also contribute to a greater sense of parliamentary ownership of the process, strengthening the Government’s negotiating position and increasing the likelihood that the final agreement will enjoy parliamentary and public support.

Which, in my view, is quite correct. However I perceive two flies in the ointment:

  1. There is an underlying assumption that government will actually listen to, and act upon, the views expressed in Parliament and not just ride roughshod over Parliament’s wishes. Governments (of whatever persuasion) don’t have good track record on this.
  2. Having full and open Parliamentary debate and scrutiny perforce puts the content of that debate in the public domain, and thus exposes, in advance, the likely negotiating strategy to “the enemy”, thus allowing the EU to easily negate the UK’s position. That is unlikely to bring about the best possible outcome for the UK, although it is the only strategy which is likely to provide buy-in from the electorate without accusations of fudge and the protection of the elite’s vested interests.

Honest, open and considered Parliamentary scrutiny is essential.

current affairs, environment, science

Hinkley Point

After halting everything for a few weeks to allow time for a review, Prime Minister Theresa May has now given the go-ahead for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.


And I have to say, about bloody time too!
While I accept that nuclear power presents us with long-term waste storage issues, we desperately need nuclear for electricity generation. Renewables, in my estimation, aren’t going to hack it even if we do cover the country in windmills and manage to constrain our thirst for ever more energy.
No, nuclear isn’t without its challenges, but it is a whole bunch cleaner, less productive of “greenhouse gases”, and indeed overall safer, than coal, oil, gas or even biomass generation.
And yes, like many, I’m not entirely happy with the major involvement of a French energy company (EDF) or the need for Chinese funding and technology — but then we go longer have the skills etc., largely due to past government neglect of science and technology. So I still believe this is, overall, the right decision for both the country and the environment.

current affairs, environment, topographical

Lumley's Folly

So, Joanna Lumley and Thomas Heatherwick’s pet vanity project, London’s so-called Garden Bridge, is coming under increasing scrutiny. And it seems to me rightly so as the whole thing appears to have been stitched up behind closed doors with a total lack of transparency, especially around the financing.
Finally London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has instigated a full review of the project. Khan had previously declined to commit further public money to what is basically a private, commercial, project. The review is to be undertaken by Margaret Hodge MP, the former chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
While we don’t know the details of the review’s terms of reference, it has to be a good thing providing Margaret Hodge is, and can remain, independent and unbiased.
Meanwhile London blogger Diamond Geezer has taken a somewhat cynical (and sarcastic) look at the project.
In my view it is high time this appalling project was kicked irredeemably into touch.
PS. I decline to (re)post images of the bridge design etc. but if you want some pictures of the location then do look at Diamond Geezer’s post.

current affairs

Brexiteer Appeasement

There was a scathing article form Nick Cohen on the Guardian website yesterday (so I guess printed in the Observer) pointing out what I said some while back that the EU has no reason to be helpful to the UK leaving the EU. In fact the EU hold all the chips except the timing of invoking Article 50.
I give you a few choice side-swipes …

The lie … which some Leave supporters may even have believed, was that there were no hard choices. We could have it all. Immigration controls, prosperity, access to EU markets, without compliance with EU laws … Whatever we wanted, at no cost at all.
An honest [campaigner] would have gone to the Nissan car workers in Sunderland and said words to the effect of: we may be able to deliver the immigration controls you want if we leave the single market but there is a risk that you will lose your jobs if we do.
We cannot strike agreements with 50 countries currently covered by our EU arrangements until we strike a trade deal with the EU, because everyone else will want to know where we stand.
We won’t strike a deal with the EU, for — what? — three, five 10 years? How many jobs will be lost and foreign investors driven away in the process …
Boris … says we are a great country. Not any more. What greatness we possessed came from our alliances. By voting to leave we have ignored the advice of every friend we had in the world. Now we are asking the countries we spurned to help us and they are finding reasons to look away.
The right says the EU will want to give us a better deal out than we had in because the EU nations will still want their exporters to sell to us. They don’t look at how politically impossible it would be for Europe’s leaders to tear up EU rules when they are having to face down their own xenophobes and Europhobes.

Yes, precisely.
We have shot ourselves in both feet.

current affairs, ramblings

Banking on the Mattress

So a couple of weeks ago the Bank of England reduced interest rates lower than ever to 0.25%.
They hope this is going to stimulate the economy. It isn’t. At least, as Mary Dejevsky pointed out in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago ever-lower interest rates have failed; so why should they work now?
Anyone with a mortgage has never had it so good. They are paying peanuts in interest. Meanwhile those of us who paid off our mortgagees years ago and are now the much vilified savers are being shafted — savings interest is struggling to match inflation.
The banks seem to have forgotten that people like me, the savers, are an essential part of their business. Without our money coming in, they don’t have money to lend. They need us, just as they need the pension funds etc.
But all the banks have ever done is shaft my generation. When we started our mortgage in 1981 we were paying 14.5% interest on it; within six months that was 17.5%. And we were being encouraged to save for our retirement — which we did as much as we could. That was barely sustainable; and totally unsustainable compared with today’s rates. We were being priced out. No wonder the bubble burst and people ended up in negative equity and the banking sector with a merry-go-round of toxic debt.
Having saved, against the odds, we are now being shafted for having done so by not getting a decent return on our investments. We’d almost be as well off with our investments in the Bank of Mattress. And we’re supposed to feel happy about this; go out and spend our money; make the economy grow and recover.
Sorry but why the f*** should I? That money you want me to spend has to support me for maybe another 20 (or more) years. If you aren’t going to give me a decent return on investing it, then I’m going to hold onto it for dear life and milk as much as I can from all of it.
On the same day as Mary Dejevsky’s piece, Simon Jenkins wrote (also in the Guardian):

Want to avoid recession? Then shower UK households with cash.
Just give people the money. Give them cash, dole it out, increase benefits, slash VAT, hand it to those most likely to spend it: the poor. Put £1,000 into every debit account. Whatever you do, don’t give it to banks. They will just hoard it or use it to boost house prices.
Britain is suffering from a classic liquidity trap. There is insufficient demand. Yet all the Bank of England [has done is] wring its hands, blame Brexit and go on digging the same old holes.
They are labelled lower interest rates, quantitative easing and more cash for banks. Those policies have been in place for some seven years. They have failed … Not one commentator … thought cutting interest rates to 0.25% would make any difference to the threat of recession.

And again …

In the present climate, there is not the slightest risk of inflation — the traditional hazard of monetary expansion: £1,000 “printed” and moved from the Bank into every household account would still cost less (at £30bn) than Hinkley Point or HS2 … There could be vouchers, scrappage schemes, Christmas bonuses and, horror of horrors, cash for the undeserving poor. Why not try it? All else has failed.

Yes, and out of the change from cancelling HS2 you could probably give every university student a decent maintenance grant and/or scrap student fees!
It’s a novel idea. Raising saving rates would be another. For indeed all else has failed.
It’s time for a new and different approach.
It might even be a vote-catcher!

current affairs, ramblings

Astute or Stupid?

So Theresa May is now Prime Minister. And one of her first decisions must have taken quite a lot of balls to pull off.
She has named Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.


I’m not sure if this is a very stupid, or a very astute, move.
If Boris continues to be a complete clown, regularly tactless and a loose cannon, it could well turn out to be a very stupid move. In such circumstances would you want him dealing with Russia, or China, or Iraq? Or “owning” MI6 or the Diplomatic Corps?
On the other hand there is an argument that if you have a trouble-maker or a loose cannon, you keep them out of mischief by giving them a big job. One where they have to do some work, to behave, to think, to be tactful and diplomatic. And a job where they are close to you, where you can keep them on a short leash and keep a beady eye on what they’re doing. If that’s how this works out it is a very astute move.
But even better than this, it could be Boris’s comeuppance. Maybe someone has finally been able to call his bluff. Because as Foreign Secretary he is going to have to be involved in the Brexit negotiations. And he’ll have to be dealing with his counterparts in Europe, who know full well he is the clown who largely got us into this almighty mess. He could get a very rough ride, especially if he starts being the pillock we know he can be. He might just finally have had his balls nailed to the mast.
I would like to think this is a very astute move by Mistress May. If it is, and if she carries on in this vein, we should expect quite a few more egos having their balls broken. And that could be quite a good thing.
Interesting times we live in!