- “Up to 30 countries could be on ‘green’ list for early summer holidays” – A ray of sunshine from the Telegraph this morning. Let’s hope it’s true
- “Government foot-dragging threatens to wreck a glorious summer of sport and music” – Just when you were beginning to feel cheerful, Iain Duncan Smith pops up on the Telegraph‘s comments pages to sound a note of caution
- “Risk of suffering serious blood clot after AstraZeneca jab doubles in fortnight” – New data from MHRA reveals that the risk of getting a blood clot from the AZ vaccine has gone up from one in 250,000 to around one in 126,600 – or a rise of four in a million to 7.9 in a million, the Telegraph reports
- “Covid vaccines will cut transmission” – A major new study by Oxford University suggests that vaccines are cutting infection rates, according to the Daily Mail
- “There’s a conspiracy of silence among politicians about the hidden victims of lockdown” – “Twenty thousand pupils seem to have vanished from school rolls,” writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph. But no one is in a hurry to find them
- “Social distancing rules for hospitality ‘a good way off’ being lifted in Scotland, Chief Medical Officer warns” – According to the Telegraph, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith thinks that the “proportionate” one-metre rule will be in place for a good while yet in Scotland’s bars and restaurants
- “What Johan Giesecke missed out” – Professor Martin Kulldorff felt there were a few important issues missing from UnHerd’s interview with Johan Giesecke
- “Pubs and restaurants need rational and evidence-based policy” – Hugh Osmond, the founder of Punch Taverns, explains in the Times why he and Sacha Lord are taking the Government to court over Covid regulations
- “Emergency Covid powers are becoming routine, warns ex-legal chief” – Sir Jonathan Jones QC told a committee of MPs that the Government has fallen into “bad habits” in its use of emergency powers, the Law Gazette reports
- “The Covidian Cult (Part II)” – Writing for Off-Guardian, C.J. Hopkins considers how the Covidian Cult became the dominant culture
- “Why is the BBC plugging Covid vaccine in pregnancy before trials are complete?” – The BBC’s Woman’s Hour jumped the gun, “dispelling fears” about the vaccine’s effect on pregnancy and women’s fertility before the trials were completed, writes Sally Beck in the Conservative Woman
- “The HART Bulletin” – The latest update from the Health Advisory and Recovery Team, covering mortality risk from COVID-19, vaccines for the pregnant, the risk of reinfection and more
- “We are so screwed” – Watch Dan Hannan tell the House of Lords that “the world into which we emerge from lockdowns will be poorer, colder, more pinched, more authoritarian”
- “COVID-19 curbs divide Italy’s coalition parties” – Italy’s National Unity Government is split over the country’s exit from lockdown, Reuters reports
- “The Vaccination Craze” (pdf) – A free preview of Corona Unmasked. New Facts and Figures, a book by Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi and Dr. Karina Reiss that’s being published on May 10th
- “Rollout of electronic bracelets to start in May” – According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel is going to start rolling out its electronic bracelets next month to ensure that incoming airline passengers comply with quarantine rules
- “Vaccinating everybody may not help Africa” – A mass global vaccine effort is “a classic case of medical colonialism” says Toby Green in UnHerd, “where rich countries bulldoze poorer ones into submitting to their public health goals”
- “Was Tanzania vindicated on Covid testing claims?” – President Magufuli was ridiculed when he abandoned testing after his “trials allegedly showed fruit juice and engine oil testing positive for the virus”, writes Sonja Elija in News Africa. But his refusal to place Tanzania under lock down now seems like the right call
- “Covid lockdown cost/benefits: A critical assessment of the literature” (pdf) – A working paper by Canadian economist Douglas W. Allen of Simon Fraser University which argues that “it is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history”
- “Fauci has chalked up 300+ media appearances over past year” – “For decades, Anthony Fauci was an unrecognisable Government bureaucrat,” writes Jordan Schachtel. “That all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic”
- “Not Even Gretchen Whitmer Wants More of the CDC’s Lockdowns” – Michigan has the fastest growing Covid caseload in the US, but as Ryan McMaken points out in Mises Wire, the Governor is resisting calls to impose a stay-at-home order
- “Vaccines should be available for all and mandatory for none” – “Vaccine passports could mark the crossing of the final frontier into a dystopia with no exit,” says Professor Ramesh Thakur in Spectator Australia
- “Fact-checking Covid vaccine experts” – A New Zealand vaccine expert claimed that “the risk of blood clot was 165,000 times higher after having COVID-19, compared to the risk after having the AstraZeneca jab”. Simon Thornley does a fact check for Covid Plan B, the Kiwi sceptics group
- “It’s not the mandates that matter, it’s behaviour” – Dr. Fauci was asked why Texas has a lower rate of infection than states with lockdowns. His explanation: “There is a difference between lockdown and people obeying the lockdown”
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No costly massive grid up-grade needed for the 24/7/365 coal-fired cathedrals of power, that up to 25 years ago were located in close proximity to centres of population and coal fields.
Transmission losses and costs minimised, fuel transportation costs minimised – an elegant and definitive solution available across all parts of the country.
Blown to smithereens by planet-saving energy philistines, in favour of a dog’s breakfast grid that burdens Britain with the highest unit electricity prices in the world.
Non-existent problem, reaction. non-solution. Go figure, Kommissar for Energy Insecurity, Edward Samuel Miliband.
The Kommissar Must Fall.
Exactly.
What Millibrain is doing is providing the blueprint for how to run a National power grid into the ground and provide societal upheaval as a supplementary topping.
It’s enough to make people like me believe that this is being deliberately orchestrated.
No, surely not.
It’s almost like it was all originally planned by expert engineers, who knew what they were doing and were thinking long term… fancy that
With coal, gas, nuclear supply could be planned to match anticipated demand, forecast from historic data of demand patterns round the Country dependent on time of day, season and weather. And, as you say, generation took place close to zones of high demand.
Intermittency. This cannot be done with wind and solar, which are situated where conditions are optimal, not where there is demand.
There is no solution to this, except the lunacy of paying to keep a second dispatchable system operational in parallel as back-up to plug the gaps.
So how does this work at the boundaries between zones?
Two houses in different postcodes supplied from the same substation charged different prices?
Yes. Intended to foster social cohesion. The boundaries will probably fall along sectarian lines because as we all know…
…diversity is our strength.
I think the zones would be based on Grid Connection Points; the demarcation from the (national) HV transmission network (“The Grid”) and the (local) Distribution Networks.
You are already assigned a grid number so that when the rolling blackouts start you will know when it is your turn to sit in the dark and freeze.
Net Zero moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
When I seek a quote to change tariff, I’m always asked for my postcode, which to me implies that there’s already some kind of differential pricing from one area to another. Perhaps that’s for gas? Does anyone know?
So they can identify you?
So they know where to send the bill?
What, when you’re only comparing quotes on one of those price comparison websites?
So they can sell the additional ‘insight’ to their ‘partners’… everything has a value
That makes sense. Thanks.
Supporters say the change will cut household electricity bills overall by reducing the need for grid upgrades
The only viable explanation for this statement is that demand will reduce in the South due to a lack of affordability, as prices increase beyond the ability to pay. Yet more evil treatment of the lower income population. Also, the last time I visited the Kent coast, the sea was covered by his spinning follies, the same as the Cornish moors. The seas off East Anglia and the vast fen lands are covered by the bleeding things as well as across the whole of Wales. So the question must be asked, where is this South that doesn’t have these mechanical monstrosities, or is the reality that there are enough of them, it’s just the wind to spin them that is lacking?
Maybe the real intention is to empty London of its newly accumulated rubbish and spread it round the country.
There is NOT a “North/South” divide.
There IS a South East/Rest of the country divide
The rural South West has a lot of poverty
If this bastard treats us as this suggests, there are going to be a lot of freezing people in the winter.
Basically the UK is a Poor country strapped to a wealthy city called London. All the jobs and industry that used to be in England have been given to people in India, China, Phillipnes etc so that they can bulid all the things we used to with cheap energy, which our elites then buy back into this country, so that they can tick their little box of Net zero and those of us outside London can look on whilst our jobs and communities are destroyed in order to reduce the worlds C02 by less than 1%.
I’d rather be poor in rural Somerset than rich in London.
Where we live – a small rural village – we are resolutely monocultural (culture is by definition MONO, as it pertains to a specific group of people) and so we have to use that ghastly phrase (remember Hazel Blears?
) real community cohesion, fresh air, and superb food.
Hear hear.
I presume your village is safely distanced from Bristol
Down here in rural Dorset – resolutely monocultural when I moved here almost a decade ago – we are starting to be “enriched.”
Fortunately it’s some distance from the “heavily diversified” Bournemouth …. and the resulting violent crime-wave which has wrecked what used to be a genteel seaside town.
So the Southerners who are outside of London but south of the Midlands are mostly dyed in the wool Conservative voters, wheras the Midlands upwards is now a battle between Labour and Reform. So Labour have decided to buy its votes in the North at the expense of the Conservatives in the South. (i do not live in the South) I disagree with this Socialist approach. Better to dump Net Zero and Milliband and drill baby drill, that way we can all prosper.
Milliband poised? Distinctly unbalanced, I’d say.
Since HMG and their acolytes started interfering in the UK energy markets all that has happened, after a very long period of fairly steady energy prices, is that the cost of energy has risen much faster than inflation. They have literally achieved nothing else, no greater energy security, no greater source diversity, no new technology, nothing; just higher bills.
Absolutely right you are, and it extends to all previously nationalized industries and public utilities, including water and transport, after they were chopped up, privatised and sold to foreigners. It was a huge mistake on Margaret Thatcher’s part. A total disaster for the British People.
Anyone believe this will make our bills lower? Anyone?? No takers?? Thought not.
So the windmills in Scotland that oversupply to the few users they have will not receive any constraint payments – yeah that will go down well. And then in the South East where there is a lack of supply so that we rely on the interconnectors – what then?
I think the Daily Sceptic ought to win a prize for funniest pictures of Ed Millipede.
If zonal pricing is introduced then every MPs’ house should be automatically rated as if it were in the top price zone, even after they leave Parliament and do not get re-imbursed.
Share the pain.
The real scam is that 100% of energy cost is based on the most expensive (back up to support so-called cheap renewables) which inevitably is the ever-more expensive imported gas!
The con is becoming ever-more transparent, yet even more unacceptable.
Perhaps an analogy:
You need to buy 12 bottles of prosecco @ £5 each
The shop has 11 bottles, so you add a bottle of champagne @ £50
In our dystopian world, you will be charged the price for 12 bottles of champagne!
It really is a con.
More lunacy from the Department for Energy Lunacy.
However, on the plus side it will wipe out the Labour Party from everywhere in the south, including London, where it won’t be long before we have Muslim Party MPs being elected.
Miliband is a blithering idiot, but a very dangerous blithering idiot. The idiot goes from ridiculous to absurd then back again and it almost as if he gets off on being a complete moron. You cannot run Industrial Society on the wind and sun, and as we add more and more wind the cost can only go one way —-UP. You will realise this is true by looking at your electric bills back to 2008 when the moron gave us the climate change act, and you should also realise it is true because whatever the imbecile says, the opposite will be true. So when he says bills will fall, you will know that the very opposite is what is going to happen. Miliband actually knows this as well, but he is a climate change grifter so is trying to deceive you for Political and Ideological reasons. ——So as you use more and more renewables you reach the boundaries of the energy reserve margin and we are all going to have a huge price to pay once the temporary government subsidies inevitably have to stop. We will also be suffering blackouts and the astronomical cost of storage, which will be many times more than the cost of the actual energy itself. —–This what you get when you put a UN lackey moron like Miliband anywhere near energy policy.
Another source of unfairness
How does charging me more because I live in the South where power used to be generated, lower my bills. Fxxxxxg lunatics, also in other news the Government has approved experiments to block out the Sun Mr Burns style, just as Billy no mates wanted. So we will be installing Endless Solar arrays and blocking out the sun simultaneously.
It doesn’t make sense.
How can charging more for something encourage increased demand for it?
The whole problem is there is an oversupply of electricity from wind installations that cannot be sold because either the oversupply occurs when overall demand is low, and/or cannot be sold locally.
The solution would be to lower prices everywhere to encourage use of the excess wind power in high demand areas, charging higher rates in those areas is counter-productive.
But there are technical problems. The oversupply cannot be fed into sectors of low demand to transmit to areas of high demand. Hence the recently proposed building of new HT transmission lines direct from remote wind installations to high demand areas – costly. Even then it won’t be possible to plan supply to match demand.
It is an intractable problem because of intermittency which cannot be solved by trying to defy physics and economics.
Claims it will overall reduce bills everywhere cannot possibly be true.