Posted in Environment

Is Hinkley C the turning point against nuclear power in Britain?

Nuclear_power_plant_worldDespite the government’s constant assertion that funding is impossibly tight and that any departure for a rigid status quo by the Labour party is unaffordable, there seems to be no limit to government subsidies gushing into the doomed nuclear project at Hinkley in Somerset.

Last year the government offered the French energy company EDF the contract to build a third nuclear power station paid for by increases in electricity bills over 35 years and Treasury-backed loans. Now confidence in the project is evaporating as it is increasingly realised that the same construction problems, delays and spiralling costs which have devastated EDF’s building similar nuclear plants at Olkiluoto in Finland and Flammanville in France will hit Hinkley C in the UK. Centrica, which was supposed to be a joint partner with EDF, pulled out. Continue reading →

Osborne learns to his cost that private markets don’t oblige

Osborne light bulbIt’s really rich that Osborne has tweeted: “Vital this (drop in the oil price) is passed on to families at petrol pumps, through utility bills and air fares”. He’s spent the last 5 years lambasting Labour in support of the Tory free market mantra that the State should get out of the way and leave it all to the markets. Now rather pathetically he’s pleading with market operators to show a dose of fair play rather than exploit a windfall for their own interests which is the natural instinct of capitalism. Continue reading →

20,000 London bus workers go on strike – with the public on their side

B7Omg--CIAAcsRlPicket lines were in place across London’s 70 bus garages today as over 20,000 bus workers working for 18 bus operators take part in a 24 hour strike to end unfair pay disparities across the capital’s bus network. With very solid support for the strike the bus workers’ union Unite urged TfL and the mayor of London to “bang the bus operators’ heads together” to get them to sit down collectively with the union to resolve the dispute.

There are over 80 different pay rates covering London’s bus drivers, doing the same job, even driving the same route but for different rates of pay. In contrast to tube drivers, there isn’t one collective pay deal for bus drivers in the capital, whose pay is negotiated on a company by company basis leading to pay inequality and disparities.  Unite says a refusal by the operators to address pay inequality has led to pay gaps of over £3 an hour for new starters opening up, with pay varying from £9.30 to £12.34 an hour depending on the company. Continue reading →

Fracking: Osborne’s latest 18th century-style ‘folly’

Gideon in Commons montageIt’s a safe bet that Osborne’s Autumn Statement this Wednesday will hail a fracking revolution as the start of a new energy cornucopia for Britain.   Like everything else politicians say 5 months before an election, it needs to be taken with a piece of salt.   Only one shale well has been fracked in Britain – Cuadrilla’s PH1 at Preese Hall near Blackpool – and that had to be suspended when in 2011 when it caused minor earth tremors.   Another attempt was made by Cuadrilla to set up a fracking operation, thistime on the mainland at Balcombe in the Sussex Weald, but that had to be called off as a result of determined opposition by the Tory rural brolly brigade, a resistance group that has now established a widespread network across the country pledged to fight fracking wherever it rears its head. Continue reading →

Nuclear power is turning out badly: why is the government clinging to it?

Warning sign with radioactive symbol and nuclear power plant on the coastThe news for nuclear gets worse every day. The latest news is that the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, the government’s flagship nuclear project is near the point of collapse. After Ed Davey, the LibDem secretary of state (there was a time before they joined the government in 2010 that the LibDems were solidly against nuclear) waved through the most expensive power station in history, and then the EU Commission suspiciously decided that the huge financial concessions (bribes?) offered to EDF did not mysteriously constitute an illegal state aid, it now looks as though Areva, the French designer of the reactor and the only company that can provide the equipment, is in a state of free fall. Continue reading →