A Place to Stand

This is a letter I have had in the Scotsman today. It was in reply to a letter of 3rd December from a ocean energy producer supporting more windfarms. As both are feeding from the same public trough they are more mutually supportive than in economic competition. To be fair it is possible that some forms of ocean power may be competitive on the other hand they are currently so far from being built that cost estimates are pretty theorectical & building turbines in remote areas with strong tidal races may prove more expensive in real life than on paper.

Renewable resource


Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other receivers of government subsidy in the energy industry may be a sensible strategy, but Richard Yemm’s letter (3 December) in support of wind factories has some basic errors.

His claim that "today, wind energy and hydro electricity are the only two utility scale renewable technologies available to the market" ignores the fact that nuclear can be sustained over, at least , the next 4.5 billion years. As that is close to the lifetime of this planet, it seems unlikely that either wind or wavepower will be much use thereafter.

By any fact-based definition, nuclear is a fully renewable resource. If a definition is required to include wind and wave but exclude nuclear, perhaps the term subsidy-demanding technologies would be more accurate.

A further error is in the statement that "robust energy supply systems have invariably utilised a wide range of core technologies". Historically, most energy systems have instead relied for the vast majority of their power on a very few basic reliable systems, with the esoteric stuff being very marginal.

Scotland has, for example, relied on nuclear for 45 per cent of its power, hydro for 10 per cent and coal for the rest. In recent years, gas has replaced much of the coal power and it is apparently hoped that, at some stage, after subsidy of sufficient billions, wind may pass the 2 per cent mark.

However, France is currently relying on nuclear for 80 per cent of its power (at less than a third of the cost of wind), and the fact that it is exporting power to all its neighbours means that its supply system must be considered "robust".

NEIL CRAIG

They left out a bit about France supplying 5% of the UK's electricity, tho' keeping in the reference to them supplying all their neighbours. France is currently spending 3 billion on building a nuclear reactor complex on the Cherbourg peninsula which is badly placed to serve French industry but as well placed as can be to serve British. Since hysteresis losses in transmission will probably amount to 10% crossing the Channel it would, of course be 10% more efficient if located in England & presumably France will be making a profit on this.

I am dead chuffed to be able to repeat a posting of mine Jerry Pournelle has put on his site (The First Blog) this Saturday. This was in response to a news item about how, in Somalia, where there is no government free enterprise is actually working amazingly well & that, as an example, they have a mobile phone system considerably superior to their better, or at least more, governed neighbours.

Subject: SOMALIA: Cell Phone Service to Die For

If we are serious about providing aid to Africa I suspect the best thing we could do would be put enough equipment into geosynchronous orbit to run a cell phone network covering the continent.

I suspect it could be done for what we are currently spending on aid but on the other hand it wouldn't increase either the power or the Swiss bank balances of friendly dictators.

Neil Craig

I thoroughly recommend www.jerrypournelle.com to anybody who would like to see how the world ought to be run.

Carla Del Ponte on the way the media are reporting the Milosevic "trial of the century"

"We are pleased not to be under examination every day from the press, from the media, from criticism all around," she stated.

Indeed - Milosevic, having utterly disproven every allegation made against him by Ms del Ponte is now proving, in the defence side of the case, that the western leaders, her employers, deliberately & knowingly started the war & are personally guilty of war crimes, genocide & child sex slavery. The fact that the BBC & indeed the rest of the media are censoring reports of this trial must indeed be a great relief to her & to the other corrupt mass murdering nazi child rapists such as Blair.

It is perhaps not surprising that the government have been able to find one Scots judge, Lord Bonomy, willing to participate in such a corrupt "trial", after all without a few such judges where would government find people to impartially investigate whether Blair lied about WMDs. More serious is the fact that it is the duty of every honest Scots judge who knows of a fellow judge being corrupt to say so. Every uncorrupt Scots judge has done so - unfortunately there are no uncorrupt Scots judges.

In the budget debate Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said:

"Can [Mr Brown] explain why his boasts for the performance of the UK economy are not matched by the Scottish economy, where unemployment is significantly higher and growth significantly lower. Who is responsible for that failure? Is it the Chancellor or the hapless Scottish Executive?" Independent

The correct answer, which Gordon Brown cannot give, is that it is the Scottish Executive's. The growth rate of 3.5% achieved by the UK is really rather creditable by historic UK standards. Our growth rate of no more than 1.5% looks pretty sick by comparison & the only real different factor is Holyrood. One virtue of federation is that, by allowing different areas to try different solutions you find which works best. Unfortunately Holyrood's role here increasingly looks less like a Good Example than an 'Orrible Warning.

Since Gordon can't answer Alex's question truthfully he cannot then go on to castigate the SNP as they also deserve. Alex is an economist to trade & Jim Mather their economic spokesman has said some decent stuff but consistently the SNP have attacked the Executive for not spending enough (fisherman's subsidies, highland subsidies, small hospital subsidies, windmill subsidies, national grid subsidies) - all good populist stuff but ultimately damaging to the economy.

The SNP suffers from a split personality - most of it's activists are left wing but most of it's voters, particularly in the North East where they win, are right wing. I was in the audience during the TV debate for the Euro election when the SNP candidate said that SSP voters should vote SNP because "their policies are a copy of ours". The SSP's policies are economically insane, or as they put it "not costed". This may not do to much harm for a party that does not aspire to be more than a lobby for their own supporters, though even then it does some harm, but it would be a disaster in government.

Every poll shows that independece is neither popular nor a priority (an opinion with which I agree) & so long as our politicians cannot demonstrate a level of competence at least equal to Westminster it is unlikely that the Scots people will choose to be rid of Westminster. The SNP should concentrate on proving themselves fit for government first (fortunately for them & unfortunately for us the standard isn't high).

The result of George Galloway's libel action may be a belated defeat for the Telegraph but overall it actually enhances the power of the press to lie whenever it wants by enhancing the traditional Reynold's defence (cica 1999).

Firstly, it yet again proves that it is an incredibly risky venture for any individual to try to get the media not to lie about them & George has shown great bravery in pushing this when all he had on his side was the truth. The judgement decided that the Telegraph's fault was not in publishing lies but in overegging the pudding by accusations such as treason. Had they not gone so blatantly over the top they would have won & George would have been bankrupted.

Theoretically this means that if I were, while randomly looking through a filing cabinet, to find an indecipherably signed document saying that Telegraph readers/left wingers/CND/Tory MPs/George Bush/traffic wardens were part of a pedophile ring/selling atomic secrets to the Albanians/shape shifting aliens (all of which it would be clearly in the public interest to know if it were true)it would be perfectly safe to publish this lie as long as I did it in a balanced way. This, of course, ignores the obvious fact that it is even more not in the public interest to be lied to on a matter of importance.

In practice, if you compare this with the LM magazine V ITN libel case where ITN (& the judge) accepted that LM's case that ITN had faked their notorious concentration camp video was proven but that LM hadn't proven that the faking was deliberate, it is quite obvious that the judiciary are likely to sum up for the big media.

In essence we have a situation where the victim has to put up 100s of thousands just to get to court & risk everything they own (unless they are as rich as Maxwell) in a case where the truth "doesn't matter" (quote from the ITN judge's summing up).

It is worth noting by comparison that the US Christian Science Monitor immediately settled & made a complete apology to George when they found it was untrue & in the LM case the article in question was purely a reprint of something already published in Germany - ITN decided they could sue under UK law but not German to suppress the truth. No wonder the British press has its unsavoury reputation when it is so thoroughly protected.

A point worth noting is that the press complaint's commission, who represent almost the entire press in their duty to "maintain the highest standards of the British press" have not had a word to say against this. Thus proving exactly how high the highest standards reach. (I have had runs in with the commission before & do not respect them)