Good ideas in the PM’s speech

It was refreshing to hear the PM’s speech yesterday. The world does not owe us a living. The heroes and heroines are all those who get up early and go to work to make sure we have water, power, broadband, food and other supplies. The anti growth coalition opposes practically everything that can keep the lights on, keep us warm, and keep us fed. They are the importers friend and the person on low incomes  nightmare. They stand in the way of doing and producing more for ourselves.

For too many years a combination of EU membership, EU rules and UK political bias against UK manufacture, UK fishing and farming and above all against UK produced energy has made us increasingly import dependent. Foolish CO2 accounting has forced companies and individuals into producing less here to  get our C2 count down, only to import things that have a higher carbon count in their place to prove we have reduced our CO2! We have been retiring our gas fields, failing to renew our gas generators, closing our coalmines  and blowing up our  coalfired power stations, in order to import manufactures from China and Germany that rely much more on coal.

Every time there is a proposal to extract more of our own gas, especially onshore, our own coal, or produce more of our own energy intensive goods there are protesters. Any road scheme to cut congestion which would reduce fuel use for each journey is likely to meet an army of protesters who do not seem to understand it is lorries and vans that keep them in food and Amazon parcels. Lix Truss was right to champion the producers, the workers, the strivers over the protesters, the strikers and the job refusers.

I look forward to a fight back for freedom and commonsense.




Bring on the extra energy

The Regulator’s announcement that they are seeking more gas supplies for the winter seems late when it has been obvious for a long time that we could be short of energy . There was a similar delay in coming to the late conclusion we needed to keep some coal fired power stations instead of demolishing them all, given the need for back up power for cold days with no wind. As it has turned out they have been running coal stations on and off throughout the summer on low wind days as well.

The best answer is still to get more UK gas out of the ground. The government changed policy some time ago to urge more UK production. The Chancellor’s Financial Statement included some energy projects without time frames or details of how much extra production they could release. There were several potential prospects that we know about missing from the list. The Energy Ministers need to push hard to get the licencing authorities to expedite additional production on fields already producing, and speed the link in of fields discovered close to existing production capacity and pipelines to be tied into those facilities. None of this need take too long, and the sooner we have more domestic production the better.

This should not be contentious. Home production means the big tax revenues on such activities goes to the UK Treasury, not to a foreign government. It means more better paid jobs here in the the UK rather than abroad. It means less CO2 is generated than if we imported LNG, which creates more than twice as much CO2 as domestic pipelines gas. It takes a lot of energy to compress, cool, transport and convert the gas back which you do not need to do with gas flowing down a domestic pipe. It means more gas delivered to home customers with secure supply.




Evendons Lane

A tanker stuck in a sink hole on Evendons Lane is  very disruptive to local travel and to the local school. I have written to the  company  to urge them to take more rapid action to remove their vehicle so the road can be repaired as quickly as possible. They are well aware of the need to sort the problem out but claim it will take time as they need to get a crane in. The sooner the better.




Conservative economic policy

Yesterday  we heard the Chancellor defend his tax cuts and explain the need for more supply side measures.
He is right to want  to boost the growth rate, and right to fight the recession the Bank is  forecasting. He needs to make numerous changes in a wide range of sectors to boost the growth rate to his target and keep it there.
During  our years in the single market we accepted a major decline in home grown food, home energy production, home produced energy intensive manufactures from steel and glass to building materials and aluminium. reversing these trends has to start with supplying more and more affordable domestic gas, oil and electricity. Grant  regimes for farming, fishing, green energy and much else need reviewing to see what works and what is necessary.

I would be interested in your views on the Chancellors speech and economic  plan.




Now for some popular spending cuts

As government ministers are talking about some spending reductions let me repeat some of my proposals talked about on this blog. A fuller version of this should be the Daily Telegraph today.

1. Stop the small boat people trade which will save the big hotel costs and the need to build more social houses to house them

2. Stop funding Councils to put in aggressive anti vehicle traffic mismanagement measures on our main local roads

3. Stop making grants to farmers to turn farmland into wilderness

4. Tell the railways the government will not pay increasing subsidy levels for those little used train services that are not wanted by the travelling public. railways should concentrate on increasing use of more popular services.

5.Tell the Bank of England it must not for the next year sell bonds at a loss triggering Treasury/taxpayer reimbursement for their realised losses.

6. Refuse more borrowing to Councils wanting to acquire a property portfolio

7. Remove from the overseas aid list all governments with space programmes, nuclear weapon development or ownership, and abusers of human rights

8.Remove tv licence fee cases from the criminal courts to ease pressure on the justice system.