The penny is finally starting to drop. Current batteries cannot possibly store more than a fraction of the energy needed to keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing and the sun doesn’t shine. The learned U.K. Royal Society has recently analysed 37 years of wind patterns across Britain and concluded there is a serious underestimate of the amount of storage required. Around 50 academics and specialists led by Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University state clearly that batteries are not the answer to the vast storage required. But like many learned people, wedded to the idea that it is possible to remove the fossil fuel source supplying 80% of the world needs in less than 30 years, they fall down at the practical level. Having lost batteries, the study goes for hydrogen, an idea only slightly less dumb than digging up the planet to produce vast quantities of limited-life batteries.
The Royal Society report envisages dissolving huge salt caverns capable of storing ‘green’ hydrogen. To keep the electricity grid functioning when renewables go off line, around two to three million tons of hydrogen would need to be stored for decades at a time. Wind not only stops for days during periods of intense cold in winter, but the Royal Society found recent periods when speeds were low for a number of years. Salt caverns are only available in a limited number of places in Britain, so a huge network of specialist pipelines would be needed to move the gas to turbines on constant standby. Over a period of time, hydrogen would leak from porous salt caverns.
The report, lacking a practical answer to wind and solar intermittency, seems to have been ignored by mainstream media. The news that batteries cannot play any significant part in the collectivist Net Zero project is unwelcome to those who have been betting the ranch on this solution for many years. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian sees the report as an “enormous improvement” on every other effort on the subject of large scale energy storage systems. But in the end, the authors’ “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future leads them to minimise and divert attention away from critical cost and feasibility issues. “As a result, the report, despite containing much valuable information, is actually useless for any public policy purpose,” he concludes.
What are the problems with hydrogen? Where to start. It is a highly explosive and flammable gas that needs careful handing. Its molecules are small and it has a low density. This means it escapes easily, while three times the volume of hydrogen is required to produce the same energy as natural gas. Kathryn Porter is an energy consultant and an associate member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group. She recently wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph about the gas and its possible role in Net Zero.
Hydrogen is also hard to move around. To get the gas to move through pipes, it has to be compressed and pushed along using compressors. This process requires energy: the losses in moving hydrogen through pipes are ten times greater for hydrogen than for methane; up to 30%. In other words you need to use up almost a third of your gas just moving it from A to B. …
The infrastructure for hydrogen does not exist, neither for the most part do the production facilities and they will cost billions to build. Then the underlying cost of storing hydrogen is probably at least four times that of storing methane. Huge amounts of energy are lost in each stage of the process due to the fundamental properties of hydrogen.
As a solution to storing renewable power, Porter is of the view that “hydrogen is one of the worst substances you could choose for this purpose”. But, she adds, because you can burn it in air without creating carbon dioxide, “it has been hailed as the answer to Net Zero dreams”. Both carbon capture and hydrogen are “square pegs” which people are desperately trying to force into round holes. It might be noted, in the light of this last comment from Porter, that the Royal Society traces its roots back to 1660, and published Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Its politicised track record on Net Zero has yet to live up to the highlights of its glorious past.
Lead author Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith notes that the need for long-term energy storage in a renewable electricity system has been seriously underestimated, and work on constructing storage caverns needs to be started immediately if the Government is to have any chance of meeting its Net Zero targets. Construction of a large green hydrogen production and storage facility would appear to be a “no-regrets” option, he claims.
Someone regretting the option might be the consumer. Francis Menton observes that the Royal Society’s hydrogen plans suggest a cost “to the grid” of around £120 per MWh, a figure described as high but not stratospheric. But this is the wholesale cost, not the one charged to the consumer. In addition, Menton wants to know how much a nationwide set of new pipes will cost, plus the entire new fleet of standby turbines capable of burning 100% hydrogen and providing all the power to the grid when renewables stop working. In addition, Menton notes a “low” rate of interest for capital costs of 5%.
“The whole thing just cries out for a demonstration project to prove feasibility and cost. I’m betting that will never occur before the whole Net Zero thing falls apart from the disastrous skyrocketing electricity prices,” concludes Menton.
Menton sees some honesty in the Royal Society report. But as regular readers will probably agree, the top award for an honest Net Zero commentary goes to the U.K. Government-funded U.K. FIRES project. In looking at a 2050 Net Zero world, this group of academics ignore as speculative all non-scalable suggestions around carbon capture and hydrogen, along with all the green inventions yet to be made. They point to a future with barely a quarter of our current energy supply. There is nothing more honest than telling people that this will entail no flying or shipping, drastic cuts in home heating, limited transport, no meat, few modern building materials and houses made of “impacted” earth. Worryingly, though, there’s no indication the authors see this as a reason not to go full steam ahead.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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‘GB News shatters climate consensus.’
‘Ofcom cannot allow these statements to go unchallenged and uninvestigated.’
Caroline Lucas, Green M.P.
Socialist Fascism in action.
It’s all falling apart like the sandcastle it always was. The tide of truth is washing away all the nonsense so expect them to ramp up the rhetoric and design even more heinous plans to shut you down, shut us up, restrict, confine, and control you but just say ‘no’. Not the way we want to go. Get on yer bike, Lucas, and do that thing which involves procreating but do it ‘off’.
You’ve hit the nail sock on the head!
Jeez, ”My non-binary 7 year old..” You are the one with the mental illness, deluded lady, there’s nothing wrong with your kid!
https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1662205013207429121
Clearly bonkers and also perhaps an actress. Gaslighting normal people as terrorists!
Good grief Mogs! What is this world we live in? if its full “mothers” like that!
“Non-binary” is a complete nonsense. If you say “I am non-binary” to you, I am saying what I am NOT. Who gives a monkeys what someone is not? I am interested in what someone is, FFS
The excellent Pierre Kory dropping the truth bombs and wearing that anti-vax badge with pride ( not the rainbow kind ) in this mini-clip. ”These vaccines saved no-one!”
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1662102658415575041
Thanks Mogs always follow your links. Not sure why you’ve got the down tick Miss Spring must be up early with her verify team, keeping an eye on us conspiracy theory idiots.
Lol, thanks Jabba.
Red numbers are ever-present under my posts so I became desensitised to them long ago and stopped noticing. Now if I don’t have any red I find something’s amiss. A bit like when you leave the house and realise you forgot to put your undercrackers on. It just doesn’t feel the same. 
Yep..I agree, I don’t even notice them..I remember the ‘old days’ when people like Concrete used to get 30 or 40 daily! Now that was down ticking LOL!
Pretty sure I could top that if I insult Jeremy Clarkson.
Many thanks for the link Mogs.
“The BBC’s transparency initiative to counter misinformation and restore public trust will do no such thing”
Are those the real reasons for this initiative? Or is it designed to shut down opposition to positions dear to the BBC’s agenda? For “public trust” read “some people do not believe everything we say unquestioningly”.
I got banned from commenting on the BBC for daring to suggest that people die from other causes and not just covid. The BBC is arrogant and dangerous. How Marianna Spring at 27 thinks she’s arbiter of mis,dis,malinformation is hilarious and her lack of curiosity as an investigative journalist is staggering.
The BBC is a major problem for the UK. I expect Spring is pretty typical of modern “journalists”. I get the impression that like so many “professions” most of the people who join are frustrated politicians or activists whose real ambitions are not to excel at their “profession” but to “make the world a better place” – and of course there will be some who simply see which way the wind is blowing and pursue career advancement.
The first ” x/activists” I can remember were Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins who were actor/activists. At the time, I think Hollywood was bemused. No one was an activist. No one preached at the Oscars. Then like all fashions, it grew and grew. Humans are like this. At first, one person in the whole world wears jeans with a ripped knee. After a few years, it becomes a mass market thing where everyone wears ripped jeans. Humans are pretty daft.
We just ignore it. Radio 5 + 5X for sport, R3 when it’s not completely dumbed down. Junked the TB way back. May listen to Today now and again, in order to remind me why I don’t.
Works every time.
Just ignore them. They’re talking to themselves.
Oh I do ignore them (I am gradually withdrawing from mainstream life) but sadly others don’t.
Try ukcolumnnews. It´s great.
“How Marianna Spring at 27 thinks she’s… an investigative journalist is staggering.”
An insult to even the intelligent stupid although they would probably swallow her guff.
It seems to me she basically went to a private girls’ school that funnels kids into young writer schemes thus enabling them to have a CV of relevant work experience even before they’ve gone to university. They can then knock on important doors and land ridiculous jobs way before their time.
Even though she was interested in “the news” from a very young age, I don’t believe a 27 year old has enough data points for the pattern recognition that comes with living a long life. Bear in mind during the covid fiasco she was only 24/25.
“Risks and uncertainties surrounding Covid vaccines demand urgent investigation”
Yer, fat chance!
Oh, and by the way, downticking is not debate! Come on sceptic! Stop this nonsense! Downtick all you like but back it up with a view! Or no chance of downticking!
Sorry Toby but I for one am fed up with this Shyte , or stick your subscription, I’m out of here!
You need to stop taking the bait Dinger. They’ll just do it all the more if they know they’ll get a rise out of you. “Don’t feed the trolls.”
And always remember, it’s a case of ‘Hamster penises all the way down’ with all the lurkers. Scroteless, pitiful saddos who lack purpose, hobbies and friends. You wanna let someone like that win?
Fair enough, but we do possess the tech to stop this nonsense! It’s supposed to be debate! Letting anyone down tick with no debate is playing into their hands! I’m sure just stop oil would love this “cancel with no repercussions” attitude
Seconded. I seem to remember we have had this discussion more than once Mogs over… how many years is it now
Dinger, just ignore the downtickers. Take a red one as a win just as much as an uptick.
And as Mogs states:
Don’t feed the trolls.”
Hey Mogs & Dings, I appear to have joined you despite only sporadic comment – I even got a downtick for my mini tribute to the late great Tina Turner! It amuses me no end that we are sitting inside someone’s effed up head for no other reason than wishing to comment and debate current issues. That, or someone just does a job lot – because DS, of course.
“It amuses me no end that we are sitting inside someone’s effed up head for no other reason than wishing to comment and debate current issues.”
Exactly, and so eloquently put.
Heehee yes bang on! The worst thing you can do is take it personally. Dinger needs to learn that. He need just look around and see he’s in good company.
I do understand that Mogs, but these people need to joint in, not tick and run! I genuinely want to know their point of view!
I think in this climate of bank accounts being cancelled, some people might not want to have Daily Sceptic on their bank statement. It gave me pause.
BTW your gnome article from yesterday was class. I am now enlightened as to all things Gnome-like, including how they are not a symbol of white supremacy!
Cheers – but I’m still not having any in my garden. Is that gnomist. d’you think?!
They might be women, in which case hamster clitorises/clitorae?
They’re just your resident ignorant trolls. Too cowardly to actually engage in some robust adult discussions but quite comfortable to express their dissatisfaction through a little, harmless downtick. I mean it’s laughable. It’s the sort of mentality that infests Just Stop Oil or XR – they are unable to debate, they just screech and cover things in orange powder or, in this case, downtick! Anyway, don’t put your travelling shoes on just yet, Dings, we need you here.
Seconded.
A list of organizations that Pfizer donated money to, so small wonder that the death jabs were pushed so zealously, even mandated in many places, across the U.S. The donations don’t appear to be huge sums of money, some very small, but this list ( all 28 pages in fact ) is only for the first half of 2021 so possibly some are recurring donations. That would mean a lot of vested interest in encouraging jab uptake and a lot of loyalty to Pfizer. Look at all the paediatricians and children’s organizations. Toxic tentacles of Big Pharma everywhere. Pure bribery.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23787007-pfizer-2021-report
I have had a quick look at the Pfizzer donations Mogs and this list would appear to be donations in the USA only.
Yes it’d be interesting to see where the poisonous tentacles infiltrate in the UK or EU. The data will be out there but I haven’t actively gone in search of it.
Meryl Nass also pointed out in her latest substack:
‘… I earlier saw where in 2020 Pfizer paid off the American College Health Association directly, along with the CDC, to study the issue of vaccine uptake. Those were bigger grants. The American College Health Association got a few million, if I remember correctly.’
“The virus panic drums are beating once again, but is anyone listening?”
No
Nope. Just hear birdsong. They won’t get away with it next time even if they try. They’ve lost, they know it and they’re desperate so watch out for more laughable comedy moments as the Keystone Kops of the WHO, UN, WEF et al fall over themselves as their truck veers off the tarmac and heads into the abyss…
Governments all over the EU are obeying the EU, saying “we need to give the WHO more power”!
So it´s bird flu next, or is it fish flu?
But if UK approves the WHO Treaty and the IHR regs. it´ll be enforced with ferocity.
“A huge oversupply of clean, hydroelectric power means Finnish suppliers are almost giving it away”
It’s alright for some! My last bill for 2 months was €900! Give me some finish lecky!
And we could build a thorium factory in Dounreay and ship a mini-power station to any town that wanted one.
Rolls-Royce have had them on the drawing board for years.
But Greenies oppose it . . .
“Australian Government agency censors breastfeeding tweets”
Men trying to breastfeed = child abuse!
An anecdote:
My elder sister so jealous after I was born that I was being fed by Mum & that sister was not the centre of attention, climbed onto my father’s lap, lifted up his shirt & latched on. Dad said that it hurt!
Otherwise I agree entirely with your post Dings
BB
“The great disinformation panic” ?
Dont panic, dont Panic mr Manwaring?
Just use your head! That’s why I didn’t have the clot shot and never will!
“HS2 manager’s discrimination claim dismissed”
Cancel hs2 before we pour anymore public money into “Fat cat” railway!
Good grief is this antediluvian dinosaur project still tearing up the countryside for the unicorn fantasy train to nowhere? What next I wonder? A smart cycle path from your home to Tescos, keeping you safe with a camera on every street lamp, irradiating you with 5G as you virtuously pedal along to get your gene-edited Brussel sprouts? What about filling in the bloody potholes, you useless local councils or doing some useful like providing more land to grow food on before we all start boiling our belts next winter!
I here leather boots are rather tasty too!, so long as they haven’t been worn too much!
”“Eco-fanatics kidnap the King’s lambs and attack Chelsea Flower Show” – Public sympathy is wilting as animal rights stunts are escalating, according to MailOnline.””
What public sympathy is that, and what planet are they living on?
https://www.cureus.com/articles/149410-estimation-of-excess-mortality-in-germany-during-2020-2022#!/
aussie17
@_aussie17
Oh-oh! Peer reviewed article on German excess death just published !
2020, deaths was close to expected.
2021, 2-standard deviations
2022, 4-standard deviations
These findings indicate that SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED IN SPRING 2021 that led to a SUDDEN and SUSTAINED INCREASE in MORTALITY!
It’s a mystery!!
From the same article….
Chief Nerd
@TheChiefNerd
“A similar pattern was observed for the number of stillbirths, which was similar to the previous years until March 2021, after which also a sudden and sustained increase was observed.”
Given the temporal relationship between the increase in vaccinations and excess mortality, it seems surprising that a respective safety signal has not been detected in the pharmacovigilance……
I clicked on the ‘cureus’ link and the page disappears immediately. I found this instead. Is it the same paper? I note the researchers were looking at excess deaths in the under 80s
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362777743_Excess_mortality_in_Germany_2020-2022
I don’t have a problem with the link..so I have got another one for you to try..
https://www.cureus.com/articles/149410-estimation-of-excess-mortality-in-germany-during-2020-2022#!/
It could be the same paper which has now been updated and gone through peer-review….as it’s new I would expect some of the clever usual suspects to pick over it in the next few days, and maybe then we will know a bit more…..
Thanks. I tried the link with a different browser and it worked.
“Veganism facing wilting demand”…
I don’t imagine for a minute that it will stop them trying to force this crap on us..but it gives me hope that if we all refuse to buy into it..we can make a difference..I think ‘bug eating’..will go exactly the same way…’Just Say No!’
Can’t overlook the article about Bill Gates, his young lover and her good friend… Russian superspy Anna Chapman in today’s Mail!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12128919/Bill-Gatess-younger-Russian-lover-links-notorious-Kremlin-spy-Anna-Chapman
All’s quiet and seemingly normal on the surface but it is quite clear that we are descending into chaos. We don’t notice it here in the shires but now and again, I hear people in shops expressing frustration. In a health food shop the other day, a woman was venting about the disappearing banks in the town and access to cash. There used to be 5 banks, now there are two. That’s three less ATMs. Older people like cash and get confused with online banking and all the passwords and verification steps you need to take before doing something simple. If you phone up your bank, you’re put on hold to listen to the Carpenters or some such 70s music (which I happen to like but not enough to listen to the same song for an hour or so), and are told that due to heavy demand or higher than normal demand – it’s always the same whatever the service, whatever the need. Customer service is completely the opposite of what it is meant to be. Everything is around the wrong way. Slowly the town’s shops are closing. I had a drink with an ex-councillor last night and he told me that the landlords don’t care about an empty high street, they want oodles of cash for rents but don’t need the dosh so they let them sit empty. This is a tourist town. The fact that landlords don’t care means a slight tightening. Younger people are more likely to shop online or use the omnipotent bazar that is Amazon. It’s a slow process this decline. Slow enough that it doesn’t shock but it is a decline…..which is why we’re taking matters in our own hands…
We want a vibrant community that nourishes and supports us, that inspires us and gives us hope. So we’ve initiated a town meeting that will look at people’s concerns and will start to knit the fabric of our community together…we hope. We can but try but watching as the town and county councils do nothing is not an option. I’l let you know how we get on…town meeting is set for 20th June.
Well done Aethelred and I wish you the best of luck
The little local shopping precinct near me sums that up – I’ve lived in this area on and off since I was born in the 1970s (my folks have stayed in the same house for 46 years.) The precinct is one of those vaguely 1950s-style, Swedish-design square blocks with flats on the first and second floors and with an open corner with grassy area at the top right. When I was a child in the early 1980s, the precinct had a Key Market, separate Key Market cheese shop, a betting shop, fish and chip takeaway, baker’s, hardware shop, barber’s, flower shop, pharmacy, green grocer’s, newsagent, women’s hairdressers, post office doubling up as a wool and sewing shop, and the ubiquitous NatWest, Lloyd’s and Barclays banks (with ATMs.) There was a public library above the Natwest.
Compare that with now: Chinese takeaway, fish and chip takeaway, baker’s, betting shop, pasty takeaway, unisex hairdressers, pharmacy (with a pharmacist in the shop about three times a week), Indian takeaway, newsagent (which might be closing soon), nail salon, kebab shop, an empty unit where Barclays was, a tattooist and a charity shop. The Key Market had become Gateway, Somerfield and finally the Co-Op, who were allowed to expand the shop, closing off the open corner of the square, turning it shadowy and dingy in the daytime and unwelcomingly dark in the evening. The library is only accessible from outside the square now. An ATM is in the newsagent, but often runs out.
When I was a child, we’d regularly run into people we knew there: people were always cashing cheques or paying bills. If my Mum was taking us to the shops, we’d often stop off at neighbours on the way and they would wander down with us and the children would run around on the grass. Almost no one goes to the precinct nowadays unless it’s for a specific item. The biggest business there apparently comes from the tattooists. There’s an Aldi a bit up the road amid the undeveloped, demolished, overgrown wasteland that used to be factories.
So that’s another part of the community’s cohesion gone.
I’ve been knocking around since the 1960s and I remember all the things you’ve mentioned! It’s so sad the the kids of today won’t understand the joys of a penny chew or the local ice cream van coming round or looking for old bottles in the hedge bottom to get the 5p deposit! getting your wellies stuck in the deep mud , playing in the fields and tin can lurky! Hide-e bo seek, coming home covered in muck and being told to “Take your boots off you dirty little sod look at you, where have you been?
Long hot summers, well, they seemed long and hot to us!
Great memories, Dings. Bit like mine – I’m from same era. We’d be out all day making camps, badly, but enjoying it nevertheless. Tired and grubby, we’d head home for fish fingers and baked beans!
Yes. Good times! I feel like the 1980s was the era that the country our ancestors had lived in died. My Dad’s parents died in the 80s – my Grandad in 1981 and my Grandmother in 1987. My Grandfather was born a month after Queen Victoria died and my Grandmother a couple of years later – my Dad was a late baby. Reading the letters and cards sent to my Grandmother after my Grandfather’s sudden death by people in the neighbourhood and from their church is very moving. They’re so formal, but they don’t lack warmth: it just wasn’t the done thing to emote excessively. They were so respectful. My grandfather’s first name wasn’t used at all: it was ‘Mr’ and his surname. To do anything else was to disrespect the dead.
I feel that, with the deaths of people such as them, the last vestiges of the country we were before WWI faded away. All the traditions died in the 1990s, our religion, the old songs everyone used to know, the old stories. Part of it was a consequence of postmodern mockery in the media, part of it left wing academia’s hatred of our past, part of it the new right’s pushy, aggressive money-money-money attitudes where fuddy-duddy tradition got in the way. The CofE started appointing useless Archbishops such as Robert Runcie and David Jenkins who didn’t even believe Jesus was resurrected.
There was a disrespectful brashness in the 1980s that became a ‘Year Zero’ ideology with Tony Blair, who wanted to create a ‘new’, ‘young’ Britain with the turn of the millennium.
I’m in my late 40s now and I don’t really feel this has been the country I was born into since the mid-1990s. And seeing the state of the neighbourhood that has always been my spiritual home – we moved here in 1977, our next door neighbours in 1978 – makes me feel like I’m walking among the ruins of our community.
For that matter, do you remember jumble sales? The school across the road always used to have them. Now the school is gated with massive railings and only opens to the public on polling days. So sad.
That’s sad to hear, Dom. I am truly hoping for a turnaround otherwise we’ve all lost!
Yes. What I neglected to mention was that the Co-Op, after its expansion had turned the square into a dingy hole, closed and the entire expanded shopping unit has been boarded up for two years.
Part of me understands the ’15 minute city’ concept is a mutated attempt to restore local communities, but I don’t see how it’ll work if the businesses and banks are abandoning bricks and mortar. I do miss it. I mean, supermarkets are too big. I wandered into Tesco today, but only briefly. I even do click and collect because it’s too much hassle searching the place with everything that gets moved about.
When I was a child, there were bushes in front of the factories that we children would all run in and out of and the Paper Converting Machine Company had three flags out the front on a smart stretch of grass. From the 2000s onwards, the PCMC office building was left abandoned and was vandalised for years; it was finally demolished following an arson attack.
Even worse, the grass verges and open grassland haven’t been mowed anywhere in my part of the city since last year, when it was cut once. The grass is hip deep (I’m six feet tall.) It breaks my heart to see everything looking so run down. It’s a microcosm of the country: if it was a house, it would be crumbling, the window frames rotted and the garden overgrown. And, if the grass stays uncut, it’ll get dry and become a fire hazard. It was really worrying last summer. Most of the ‘Apocalypse Britannia’ climate scare stories about fires last year seemed to me to be the result of untended public land.
We have exactly the same problem with banks closing and the shrinking of other services.
I have become a deeply suspicious person. I am sure it is not my imagination that road closures have become more frequent, and then these works invariably overrun. Signs pop up yet no work seems to be happening. So often I drive through temporary lights but all there are are cones, no holes, no work going on – they don’t need to be there. A journey that should have taken 20 minutes took me an hour and a half recently due to multiple road closures. Whatever they are doing, it’s not repairing potholes. Perhaps they are making more to discourage driving.
And then today, oh look, chaos at the airports and borders as the passport system mysteriously has a glitch, and on a bank holiday too. Are they hoping people will say “Sod this, I think we’ll go on holiday in the UK by bicycle next year.”
I’ve taken to driving straight on when I see ‘Road closed’ signs and invariably there’s nothing going on and you can do your normal route. I agree though, I think it’s deliberate. Slow down the traffic. Create endless diversions. It’s happening everywhere so it can’t just be me and you!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/our-official-statistics-dont-add-up/
An interesting article lambasting incompetence at the ONS which it transpires has been unable to calculate net immigration properly.
I worked for some years in the Civil Service and I and many colleagues were more than aware that immigration figures were hopelessly wrong. Strangely enough immigration figures were ALWAYS massively below the numbers of National Insurance (NI) numbers issued.
Now despite what the government puts out in MSM the fact is that once an immigrant arrives in this country he / she will have an NI number within six months and twelve months tops. No NI, no free dosh. It really is that simple.
By our reckoning the number of immigrants would be in the region of NI numbers issued plus 10% because a percentage, for whatever reasons would always keep themselves out of the system.
If the grunts on the shop floor could work it out why not the “specialists” at the ONS ? Not firkin difficult!
All’s quiet and seemingly normal on the surface but it is quite clear that we are descending into chaos. We don’t notice it here in the shires but now and again, I hear people in shops expressing frustration. In a health food shop the other day, a woman was venting about the disappearing banks in the town and access to cash. There used to be 5 banks, now there are two. That’s three less ATMs. Older people like cash and get confused with online banking and all the passwords and verification steps you need to take before doing something simple. If you phone up your bank, you’re put on hold to listen to the Carpenters or some such 70s music (which I happen to like but not enough to listen to the same song for an hour or so!), and are told that due to heavy demand or higher than normal demand – it’s always the same whatever the service, whatever the need – there is a queue. By the time you are answered, you’ve forgotten what it is you’re waiting for! Customer service is completely the opposite of what it is meant to be. Everything is around the wrong way.
Slowly the town’s shops are closing. I had a drink with an ex-councillor last night and he told me that the landlords don’t care about an empty high street, they want oodles of cash for rents but don’t need the dosh so they let them sit empty. This is a tourist town. The fact that landlords don’t care means a slight tightening. Younger people are more likely to shop online or use the omnipotent bazar that is Amazon. It’s a slow process this decline. Slow enough that it doesn’t shock but it is a decline…..which is why we’re taking matters in our own hands…
We want a vibrant community that nourishes and supports us, that inspires us and gives us hope. So we’ve initiated a town meeting that will look at people’s concerns and will start to knit the fabric of our community together…we hope. We can but try but watching as the town and county councils do nothing is not an option. I’l let you know how we get on…town meeting is set for 20th June.