Back in early March, when the war in Ukraine was only 10 days old, I asked whether it was wise for Western countries to pour arms into Ukraine, since this could easily prolong the conflict, leading to many more Ukrainian deaths. Other commentators have raised the same question, including the New York Times editorial board.
A common answer is that Ukrainians want to fight. In other words, even if pouring arms in does prolong the conflict, that’s a risk Ukrainians are willing to take. And certainly, many Ukrainians do want to fight. But is this true of enough Ukrainians to give the argument force?
After all, Ukraine is under martial law. As of 24th February, able-bodied men aged 18–60 are banned from leaving the country – a measure which arguably violates their human rights. Even citizens who live abroad but happened to be visiting on the date of Russia’s invasion have been unable to leave.
At the present time, only soldiers and reservists are obliged to take up arms. But as losses mount, others could be drafted. And evidence suggests that losses are mounting. Zelensky recently told Newsmax that Ukraine is losing about 600 men a day – 60-100 killed, plus 500 wounded. Over a month, this adds up to 18,000 men. These figures almost certainly underestimate total casualties, as they refer only to the Donbas, and may not include those who are missing in action.
In a recent interview with Channel 4, one British man who went to fight said he wouldn’t stop others from going “as long as you understand the reality that you will be used as cannon fodder”.
Supplying arms to a country that has banned men from leaving is fundamentally different from supplying arms to a country that has a wholly professional (i.e., volunteer) army. In the latter case, everyone who takes part in combat was aware of the risks when he signed up. In the former case, this simply isn’t true.
Weapons the West has supplied to Ukraine may end up in the hands of men who never wanted to fight. And some of those men may die. Back in April, the New York Times spoke to a number of men who did not want to fight. One said he had two nephews in the Russian army, and did not want to “kill my own family”.
If the West is to continue arming Ukraine, we should – at the very least – insist that those men who wish to leave the country be allowed to do so.
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According to ONS:
£93bn saved for 28.4m households is £3,274 per household. I look forward to receiving my cheque.
Give him enough rope and all that.
The whole thing is a racket to line the pockets of those invested in the energy transition.
That is one aspect of it, but it was not designed solely for that purpose. It all emanates from the United Nations and their Sustainable Development Agenda. This filters down through all the national governments who sign up to it all with differing levels of enthusiasm, but typically the UK has to be the teacher’s pet and save the planet harder and faster than everyone else. This promise of cheap energy is about as deceitful as it is possible to get. It requires that we use even more wind and sun, but we already know that the countries with the most wind turbines (Germany, Denmark and the UK) have the highest electricity prices. Adding more wind will inevitably mean higher bills, but also higher costs for everything that is made using electricity. This cost will be passed on to us. ———-Green Energy is a complete FRAUD
It’s also to destroy the West.
The Government’s first trick is to load energy from gas power stations with a supposed ‘carbon cost’ of £60/MWh. This ‘carbon cost’ is some kind of calculation which takes account of the amount of CO2 released when gas is burned to produce electricity. I’ve no idea where this supposed ‘carbon cost’ comes from or how it is calculated.
CO₂ taxation.
It’s called carbon tax and is applied to any industrial activity that uses electricity or natural gas or oil in its production process.
We have been paying this tax for some years now, but few people know it.
Carbon tax is a Pigou Tax, designed to internalise an external cost into the selling price, otherwise not borne by the beneficiary, of a good. It is similar to Excuse Duty in that it is paid by the producer at their factory gate, then passed on and compounded through the supply chain to the end user.
It is an end-user tax, like VAT, except VAT does not get compounded along the supply change, and it is clearly itemised on the bill the consumer pays.
The carbon tax, like Excise Duty is hidden from the end-user to avoid a revolution.
These hidden taxes need to be itemised on bills, then something might get done after the lynchings start.
Carbon tax is a Pigou Tax, designed to internalise an external cost into the selling price, otherwise not borne by the beneficiary, of a good.
Better description: It’s an arbitrary fine people engaging in activities some politicians (claim to) disapprove of must pay to atone for their sinfulness. The sleight-of-hand with the external cost is just supposed to camouflage that. Even that there’s an external cost actually caused by the activity in question is a political opinion and the precise amount of it even more so.
Renewables appear to be cheaper than reliables because they government doesn’t artificially drive the price up through taxation/ fines for now.
Yes and then government and the bought and paid for media will try and tell you “Renewables are now cheaper than coal and gas”. A more disgusting example of false accounting and the picking of winners and losers for political purposes you could not get
In the Beatles song “The Taxman”, John Lennon sang of “taxing the air”. This was meant to be joke ofcourse as no one ever thought governments would do such a thing. ——They were wrong. We are now taxing the air.
The intermittency cost of wind/solar – that is the cost of gas power stations in continuous back-up, burning gas whilst not supplying the grid – is an externality that is not included in the supposed cost of wind/solar but which is included in kWh retail prices on electricity bills.
GB Energy – the NHS for electricity – will mean two parallel generating systems, one private and continuous from gas, the other State-owned inefficient, intermittent from wind/solar. Consumers will pay for both through both nostrils.
It is planned to phase out gas, but this will be impossible without grid failures and blackouts. However, if sales of gas generated electricity drop to make way for increased wind/solar input, revenues will be insufficient to attract investment to keep gas plants running or build new ones, and will not cover operating costs and contribute to profit.
Either gas back-up will cease and the lights go out, or Sir Kier Loonie will have to nationalise gas power stations. Alternatively, gas will require massive subsidies which has the advantage of keeping electricity retail prices down, but the citizens instead pay for it via their taxes.
Are our politicians this dumb, or is it just sheer wilful ‘up yours’ citizen insolence?
And don’t forget that there is always the prospect of using variable pricing to discourage use at certain times. Potentially feasible technically via “Smart” metering, including remote load management. A bit like a modern equivalent of the old fashioned offer of “Interruptible” supplies by offering lower prices as long as you want to gamble.
A government energy company whose sole aim will be to impoverish us with hard Net Zero is the last thing anyone needs, except possibly the brainwashed dreamers of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. I have a personal experience of why there is nothing that government does that private individuals cannot do better and cheaper. ———-I get my ear wax removed every 4 months at the local hospital, but this is the third time in a row that they have had to call me to cancel my appointment, with some pathetic excuses about staff being off sick. Can you imagine you are waiting for a new 3 piece suite to be delivered and you are told you cannot have it because the delivery man is not feeling well? This is absurd. But I can get an appointment at Specsavers to have my ears done in 2 weeks time. I would not trust government to run the church fair without making a pigs ear of it as they would turn into an excuse to brainwash us about global warming, gender self ID, or diversity.
You could have a look at this: https://grid.iamkate.com/ Lots of graphs for now, last week, last year etc. The prices actually vary continuously – the site mentioned uses APX spot market. Then there is Contract for Difference (CfD).
You need a decent size screen to make good use of that one, but it does cobble together a lot of data.
And dipping into it periodically shows that there are times when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining and it doesn’t matter how many bird choppers you have if you want to keep the lights on you need gas, nuclear and France who are often supplying 10% of our needs.
“Cheap clean energy”——Which means wind and sun. But wind and sun are the most expensive ways to produce electricity. So unless the taxpayer pays half of everyone’s electric bill then this is just more nonsense from another politician who knows full well that the public know next to nothing about energy or indeed about climate change which is the excuse used by the political class to fob us off with this Net Zero garbage which is supposed to be about saving us from a climate apocalypse all allegedly caused by the trace gas CO2, but is really about the UK bending over backwards to the UN and WEF by pretending to save the planet, and deliberately lowering the living standards of their own citizens because the UN’s Sustainable Development politics claims in their own words that “the lifestyles of the affluent middle classes are too high”. The whole political class (except Reform, or so they say) are fully on board with this eco socialism masquerading as science.
Anyone else remember “Free Broadband”? Starmer was running that campaign. This will be a hung parliament, get your votes in for Reform and get a slice of real change.
An excellent article filled with useful facts. The flat out lies used to inflate the supposed cost of gas generation while grotesquely overstating the energy production from onshore and offshore wind generation is hugely enlightening.
I doubt that a single Labour or Conservative candidate in the current election cycle has read and understood the information in this article.
The Reform Party should make opposition to Net Zero their whole campaign and position themselves as a proxy for the referendum that the Conservatives, Labour, SNP or Liberal Democrats will never allow.
It’s great to see a detailed breakdown of the misinformation/disinformation that is the government stated running costs of our energy.
In addition, I would like to see the effect of renewables on the upfront (ie now) captured carbon in the manufacturing of the windfarms etc to set against the long-term carbon of fossil fuel energy. And in addition to that, it would be good to see an economic analysis of the additional cost of keeping the dual sources of energy running because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy. Any experts out there?
I recommend eveyone reads David Craig’s book. It is simple to understandand and uses examples of media produced hysteria about that is happening to the climate going back 200+ years. It really is a a ‘no brainer’ to realise that the Net Zero and CO2 policies are going to be catastrophic for our economies with absolutely no gains for the main in the street.
I find it hard to fathom why politicians all over the world are so gullible and/or thick when there is so much evidence out there but unfortunately it is being manipulated by the green lobby who are making vast sums of monies, like the Big Pharma thieves and an apathetic public who do not question the false figures.
When he said he’s prefer DAVOS (WEF ) Thank The British Parliment, We knew he only has ONE plan: To Destroy Britain