A Place to Stand

This is a direct refutation of a previous letter by Tavish Scott saying what wonderful value £609 million spent on a rail link to Edinburgh Airport with tunnel under the main runway would be.

The other letter published is pretty devastating saying that his benefit estimates are not confirmed by his reports from independent consultants.

A previous letter on Saturday also disproved his claim that all other nation's major airports had rail links.

I think I eviscerated the case though this is shooting fish in a barrel in that the tunnel proposal is obviously economically insane but it will be interesting to see if Scott chooses to reply. 2nd Herald letter in a week which feels good after a dry spell in that publication. It was unedited.
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TAVISH Scott makes an interesting case for spending £609m on a tunnel under Edinburgh Airport (Letters, November 3) for a return of £1.35bn, but all is not so easy.

First, there is a certain slipperiness in the phrase "transport benefits" to cover the £1.35bn. This does not seem to mean the more traditional profits but merely estimated benefits accruing to somebody or other. All businesses have, or can reasonably claim to have, such benefits but traditionally work from profits. All could equally claim government money to allow them to provide third-party "benefits".

Secondly, the cost-benefit ratio depends heavily on the costs being kept to - the Scottish Executive does not have a good record here.

Thirdly, and most importantly, his assessment of "benefits" is amortised over 60 years. Any accountant will explain that an investment that doesn't start paying off heavily within four years and in full within 10 is, usually, at best a marginal one and not one he could professionally recommend in normal circumstances. This is because of interest rates. To repay 2.13 times your investment (ignoring that that we are talking of "transport benefits", not real money) implies an interest rate of 1.35% over 60 years. If the Scottish Executive offers me £609m on such terms, I could repay in pure profit let alone in job creation "benefits". I might even become a billionaire on margin, but would be willing to bear that burden. This long amortisation is reminiscent of the executive's previous argument that the parliament building was very good value if you amortise the cost over about 500 years.

I would be interested to hear of the results of his assessment of the alternative proposal put forward by a number of people, of instead building stations on the existing Glasgow & Aberdeen lines which pass within hundreds of yards of the airport & provide a moving walkway or other connection. This would be likely to cost in the hundreds of thousands of pounds rather than hundreds of millions. The Transport Ministry might be able to confirm that it would also have a comparably improved cost benefit ratio. It would also leave £600 million which, if used to cut business taxes, in the Irish manner, would result in several times that investment in the productive economy. It is not the grand white elephants of government policy which create a successful economy so much as the unencumbered day to day work of ordinary businesses.

A power shortage in Germany triggered a cascade of blackouts across Europe, halting trains, trapping people in elevators and plunging millions of homes into darkness. But the situation appeared to be back to normal on most of the continent by Sunday.

The private German company, E.On AG, said the problem began in its network in northwestern Germany, possibly after it disconnected a high-power transmission line to allow a ship to pass safely on the Ems River. But it stressed the cause was still under investigation.

Swathes of Germany and France were badly hit by the cuts late Saturday. Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain were also affected.

The German power company RWE AG said a shortfall in supplies to the European power grid caused many substations to shut down automatically.

This is a sign that the grid is working at maximum capacity. A whole load of substations all trip out one after the other because each closure sends the next into overload. Any problem of "overdemand" is at least equally one of undersupply & in this case is because Germany isn't building the power supplies it needs because nuclear, the obvious one, isn't politically popular, & windmills don't work. That this is happening so early in the winter, in what is agreed to be a light winter, so far, is very troubling. With the UK about to lose the 20% of our power (35% in Scotland) can we be far behind?

And can we expect politicians to accept that it is purely because of their own gross irresponsibility when it does?

A letter in the Herald today about the EU. The first for a long time. The edited out < > the reference to Jim Mather's letter yesterday about Scotland needing more & better economic statistics which was the hookm I was hanging my somewhat different anti-EU point on. I am thus quite surprised that, with the hook gone, they were still interested:

Dear Editor,
[Most] estimates of the cost to the UK of our membership of the EU have been around £50 billion a year but have been derided by the government as coming form opponents of membership.

< Paradoxically > the EU's Enterprise Commissioner Günter Verheugen recently said that EU regulations cost the entire community £405 billion annually which dovetails < very well > with the sceptics estimates for the UK.

< The government's objection that the estimates of the cost of EU membership emanate from their opponents is weakened by the fact that they > [ The government }have repeatedly refused to publish their own estimates.

Holyrood, which governe 8% of the UK population could usefully produce our own statistics. Whether one supports EU membership or not there should be no dispute that in a democracy we are entitled to the figures on which to make up our minds.

// posted by neil craig @ 4:48 pm 0 comments

A letter from me in the Scotsman today. Only the first sentence & a half appears (rest shown <>) still it means that 2 of the 4 letters chosen are sceptical about the warming scare. I like the way the "widely unreported" remark about the Oregon Petition, & by implication the entire sceptical view, was removed. But to be fair to the Scotsman they did print part of this & the Herald, which is my local rag, didn't. This letter also went out to a considerable number of other papers some of which I will miss, so if anybody sees it please let me know where. The Herald printed 5 letters, not one of which was sceptical.
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" We are told that there is no debate as to the reality of catastrophic global warming. This ignores Oregon Petition of 17,100 scientists have gone on record to say "Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. < To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."

Despite this on Channel 4 News last night John Snow, while reporting on the Stern Report said that "we are going to hear from all sides of the argument" which turned out to be David Miliband, George Monbiott & somebody who hoped the new taxes wouldn't hurt too much.

According to Channel 4 those who have even doubts about the theory are unpersons.

In another example of unpersonage I noted that last night on Newsnight Ross Finne said that there "was no argument in Scotland about the reality of warming" with a self satisfied aside about America. Sorry Ross, there may be no argument in the comfortable coffee klatsch of Holyrood but there is in real life.>
Faithfully
Neil Craig

Reference - Oregon Petition http://www.oism.org/pproject/"

// posted by neil craig @ 11:23 am 0 comments