Just 20% of world energy is delivered as electricity, and just 30% of that electricity comes from wind, solar and hydro power as renewables. That means that just 6% of the current world energy takes the form of renewable electricity, so beloved by the campaigners for an early and energetic move to net zero. To get to net zero China and India, the two world giants still increasing their CO 2 output need to go through major changes. To get there the bulk of energy currently burned in petrol and diesel engines, in jet engines, in domestic gas and and solid fuel heating systems and powering most of the world’s factories needs to be converted.

Those who say the world can easily switch over to renewables in the form of solar and wind power need to understand the magnitude of the ask. They need to tell us where and when there will be a massive expansion of electricity grids to take all this extra power. Presumably we will need three or four times the present miles of cable and numbers of pylons.  They need to say how most people and businesses will be persuaded to switch to heat pumps, electric cars and electric factories and how they will afford this. They need to tell us what the CO 2 impact will be of making all the things for this massive transition, and how the West will gain from this all the time China has cornered the markets in rare earths, minerals for batteries and the manufacture of EVs, solar panels and turbines.

If we are to rely more on renewables we need to know how they will handle periods of no wind, low sun power and an absence of water in hydro schemes. We need to know whether they will go for making plenty of hydrogen and its derivatives out of renewable energy so we will have synthetic fuels for our transport and heating? Will they want to up the percentage of green gas or liquid used in transport fuels and domestic heating or do they really think there can be the conversion of most to electric equipment|?

This all has to practical and affordable. It requires huge buy in by billions of people, and needs them to have the capital to replace all their current equipment. People will want cheaper and more practical proposals than a Tesla and a heat pump.

The EU in 2020 made a momentous decision. With the UK no longer having voice or vote to oppose, they decided to go ahead with large borrowing programmes at EU level. Germany was reluctant to see the EU become a transfer and collective borrowing union but was persuaded to let it pass.

Prior to 2020 the EU had borrowed just 30 bn in its own name. Now it has borrowed 400 bn. It plans to borrow the best part of 1 trillion Euros this decade, with 806 bn ear marked for the NextGenerationEU  fund and other money for SURE, the unemployment fund. Whilst some of the NextGen money is loans where the ultimate borrowing countries are meant to repay, the overall borrowing is on the EU account. The EU is evolving into a transfer union with a single larger budget.

Had the UK stayed in the EU the totals  borrowed may have been larger.We represent 15% of total EU plus UK Gdp. Member states are liable for their Gdp proportion  of the total. In practice though markets will hold all EU states jointly and severally liable for EU debt and the EU could demand higher proportions in a future decision for any member state.

So the UK would have added at least  120 bn euros to our state debt burden by accepting 15 % of this new debt. That is more than £4000 for every UK family of extra  debt we have avoided by leaving the EU.

The EU has also upped the amount member states have to pay into the annual budget of the EU by 0.6% of GDP. That would have been another £14 bn a year of contribution by taxpayers before any rebate.

Public sector service productivity has collapsed 7.5% 2020-23. This is without precedent and means taxpayers need to pay more than £30bn a year extra for their services, with all the extra costs of inflation on top of that. No wonder public spending is so high.

In an extreme case the Post Office, a nationalised industry, admits it wrongly prosecuted hundreds of its own staff and took money from them for losses they had not made. 25 years on from the start of these errors it has still not even repaid  the money it wrongly took from them in many cases, let alone paid them the compensation they are due.

In some NHS hospitals there have been bad cases of failure to provide essential care in the form of drinks, food and help to the bathroom. There have been deaths that should not have occurred. In the worst case a nurse murdered babies in the care of her ward.

In some areas schools fail to provide a decent education for young people and see too many youths give up or drop out of school with no qualifications. The NHS waiting lists are very long, but apparently the large numbers of administrators cannot vouch there is no double counting, wrongful recording or people on the lists who no longer need a consultation or treatment

Ask the Opposition parties about this and they usually say it is all down to a lack of money. This is despite record levels of funding and big recruitment drives for extra staff. Where the bad news comes from devolved government in  Wales and Scotland, or from Labour and Lib Dem Councils they still usually claim it is a lack of funding and demand bigger increases from government.

Many of the things that are wrong including the fall in productivity come down to bad management. A growing army of CEOs and top management on six figure packages has allowed productivity to fall badly, and in some cases has allowed standards and quality to drop alarmingly. In future blogs I will look at the duties and powers of political leaders and of the senior executives to put this right. What should we expect of public sector CEOs?

The government has sent out its latest update of progress in repealing, amending and incorporating EU law into UK law. It gives us the apparent good news that 2000 laws have now been repealed or reformed in total. This leaves another 4500 to deal with.

The latest list of laws repealed or amended continues with the official approach of doing many  repeals to items that are already time expired or did not apply to us in the first place. The first 3 on the list that I checked out from the latest report were:

Commission decision of 29 June 2005 (2005/477/EC) This was a temporary permission for plants Vitis L to be allowed into the Community from Croatia between January and March 2006. This was requested by Italy.
Commission decision of 9 March 2001 (2001/199/EC) This was a temporary permission for New Zealand potatoes to enter the EC from 1 March to 31 August 2001.
Commission decision of 29 January 2004 (2004/110/EC) was measures to handle the risk of BSE at a time when the UK had BSE in the cattle herd. This no longer applies with the end of BSE.

It is difficult to assess  progress when   lumping in  so many items that never applied, applied temporarily or apply only in circumstances no longer applying to the UK.

Many of the other items recorded in the list show how industrious the civil service has been to transfer many EU requirements into new SI s or Acts of Parliament, sometimes reinforcing their regulatory impact. The Aviation(Consumers) Amendment Regulations 2023 may well be important “restatements of EU case law related to compensation and assistance for passengers” but they are not repeals or deregulations. They keep us close to EU ways of doing this.

The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme Amendment Regulations 2023 “amended the EU 2014 regulations …to report additional information concerning ESOS assessments/energy performance data and provide an action plan with annual progress updates”. In other words this one strengthens and extends the requirements of the EU regulation.

There is plenty more scope to do some good by repealing the unnecessary and simplifying the important. I have set out many examples in previous blogs of what can be done.

I h ave tweeted today to remind people of the big win from Brexit. The EU has gone on a 800bn euro borrowing binge. If we had still been a member we would have had to stood  behind that and paid a big bill to help meet the interest on all that debt.

Facts4EU doing a good job

https://facts4eu.org/news/2024_jan_brexit_is_working