If there’s one thing we ought all to have learned by now, it’s that few governments around the world gave a thought for the long-term when it came to Covid. In the United Kingdom, the reckoning has arrived in the shape of a massive tax bill which seems to have no end in sight. In Malaysia, the economy is in dire straits after the government advised its citizens to cash in their pensions to survive having to stay at home during the pandemic. It’s left the nation with a looming catastrophe. The Telegraph has the story:
With no furlough scheme and limited help from the government, [Malaysians] were forced to dig into their savings to survive. Many raided their pension pots after the rules were made more flexible to allow people of any age to withdraw money to survive lockdowns.
They took out billions of pounds, using their pension as a cash machine. Now, Malaysians teeter on the brink of disaster. Many have exhausted their retirement savings and now face living out old age in poverty.
It seems the Resolution Foundation think tank believes this was such a spiffing idea, it should be introduced in the U.K. Here’s the Telegraph’s summary of how the Malaysian system works:
Workers put in 11% of their salary and employers more than match it, making defined contributions of at least 12%. It is also considerably more flexible than those of many higher income countries.
The ‘two pot’ system has a second account, worth just under a third of the total, which can be used to buy a house or pay for education and medical expenses. The rest is locked away until it can be drawn down at age 55.
During the pandemic, millions of Malaysians were permitted to make four rounds of cash withdrawals from their pensions, totalling RM145 billion (£24 billion).
But urging Malaysians to cash in their pensions hasn’t turned out well:
With each round of pension raids the public demanded more, amid limited direct government support.
Now, millions face being unable to afford to retire.
Geoffrey Williams, an economist at the Malaysian Institute for Economic Research warns:
In the UK, it would likely lead to millions having inadequate savings and becoming reliant on the state pension and benefits with obvious implications for government spending, borrowing and higher taxes.
The Malaysians don’t even have the cushion of the state pension. And in the U.K. there’s talk that the pensionable age will have to rise to 71, and even then that it’s so costly the nation faces destitution if it carries on paying state pensions at the current level. Square that with the Resolution Foundation’s recommendations – if you can. The answer is simple. You can borrow from yourself. The Telegraph again:
The think tank’s report calls for savers to be able to have a “borrowable” fund in their pensions, of £15,000 or 20% of their pot, whichever is lower, to be paid back across with interest over a period of several years. It would essentially give every worker a ‘rainy day’ fund to fall back on.
You’re on your own then. Good luck.
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NET ZERO —–COST —-3 TRILLION. —-Who Pays —–YOU DO. —Will it save the planet or even affect global climate? —NO. —-So why are we doing it? ——Because it isn’t and never was about the planet or the climate.
Yes but did anyone poll the British bird population first? Then there’s all of those migratory birds…This sounds absolutely horrendous, like a massive cull for the avian community. Is anyone, such as the RSPB, even keeping tabs on the numbers of birds and bats being killed off by these bloody awful, useless monstrosities?
https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1821898014430031914
They are only a pawn in the game;
https://www.google.com/search?q=pawn+in+the+game&rlz=1CAHELE_enGB1053&oq=pawn+in+the+game&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDQ1NzlqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c66bb106,vid:ZIKrGg15eds,st:0
The Red Kite Breeds in Germany mostly and since birds of prey are always looking down for food, they don’t see the turbine blades coming and the Kite in Germany has been virtually wiped out. They have about 40,000 turbines in Germany and we are heading in the same direction. Wind is the absolute dumbest means of producing electricity there is, so if it is dumb we are looking for then who better to have in charge of energy than Miliband?
How can Millipede
make these decisions on his own without going through the HOP ? Also is it windier up there ? We really are being led by Cupid stunts , as if manufacturing all these turbines & installing them by laying down concrete foundations all over the countryside is more eco friendly than the odd self contained power station !
+ the turbine blades can’t be recycled, they just get buried !
I don’t have a Red Kite but I do have a red Angry Bird;
https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1821920762506158198
Brilliant
xxx
Does no height limit mean that it could fall on someone else’s property?
Think about the psychological impact of these structures scattered throughout the land. A monumental engineering achievement that will tower above almost everything else and look down ominously at the people. An Orwellian reminder of the power and superiority of the state. They may look like giant wind turbines, but they are really statues to honour the elites and to press home the growing feeling of subjugation and helplessness.
“landscape and visual impacts must be measured and taken into account”.
Translation:
“We don’t give a damn about local concerns but we’ll pretend we do.”
Here are a few harmful effects wind turbines have on people and wildlife:
Vibrational noise from wind energy‐turbines negatively impacts earthworm abundance – Velilla – 2021 – Oikos – Wiley Online Library
(earthworms being “The Farmers’ Friend”)
Noise pollution from wind turbines and its effects on wildlife: A cross-national analysis of current policies and planning regulations – ScienceDirect
Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines – PMC (nih.gov)
“May 10, 2012 (San Diego’s East County) – With an increasing number of industrial-scale wind turbines around the world, numerous reports are surfacing to suggest that noise, infrasound and stray voltage (dirty energy) may be harmful to livestock and wildlife.
While evidence is largely anecdotal, incidences of mass die-offs of farm animals, chickens laying soft-shelled eggs, high animal miscarriage rates and disappearance of wildlife near turbines provide pause for reflection.”
“Discovery Magazine reported that a Taiwanese farmer blames the death of 400 goats on a nearby wind facility. His claim is backed up by a local livestock inspector who said unusual sounds can impact animals’ appetite, growth and sleep. The farmer has stated that the goats had been unable to sleep and began losing weight prior to their deaths.”
Dr. Nina Pierpont, author of Wind Turbine Syndrome, interviewed a horse breeder who lost six of eight babies after wind turbines were erected near his breeding mares. Some aborted early, others had no milk and others didn’t conceive.
“I’ve been in the horse business for 45 years,” the rancher said. “I don’t know whether there’s dirty electricity in the ground, I don’t know if they keep them from sleeping…but there’s something.”
If turbines are, in fact, causing miscarriages and other reproductive problems in large animals, what could this mean for the health of pregnant women and women of child-bearing age living in close proximity to the turbines?
The public has no answers, because governments have not required any scientific testing to prove that turbines are safe for humans or animals, despite the proliferation of massive wind projects approved or in the pipeline.”
“Dr. Nina Pierpont at Johns Hopkin University School of Medicine has concluded that Wind Turbine Syndrome occurs in people as well as in animals. “During my research interviews I collected anecdotal information on animal problems. I heard about moles, deer, dogs, horses, ponies, alpacas, goats, seals, sea eagles (Norway), killdeer, and frogs—all of whom disappeared, behaved abnormally, and/or had observed reproductive failure.”
” It is documented in the scientific literature that bats’ lungs and abdominal organs hemorrhage when they fly through the pressure shifts around wind turbine blades (Baerwald EF, d’Amours GH, Klug BJ, Barclay RM. 2008. Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines. Current Biology 18[16]: R695-96).”
This type of “internal shaking” of organs within humans has also been reported from people living near wind turbines in Britain.
“Animals can also be impacted negatively by stray voltage, also known as dirty electricity. Cows living near power lines, for example, have experienced reduced milk production and even been observed “dancing” in fields due to electricity in the ground, according to scientific research by experts at the International Conference on Production Diseases in Farm Animals at Michigan State University.”
I wonder where all the insulation for the wiring is going to come from? Clue it ‘aint hay nor reeds. yes you guessed it – oil.
Then where do all the blades go after the average life of a turbine which is about 17 years? ——–Landfill. —-Germany alone has 40,000 turbines. That is an awful lot of landfill, and that is just from one country.
I am so fed up with the vomit inducing ‘Net Zero’ mantra, and all the greenwash garbage spouted by Miliband and all the other brain dead rainbow unicorn followers.
Follow the money on who are the shareholders & contractors !! Remember nightingale tents !! PPH etc
Except – some company has to invest the capital to build them. As ‘free’ wind energy prices tumble as more windmills have been added to the mix, and because of intermittency, revenue streams are insufficient to cover capital cost, operating expense and make a return on investment.
And the writing is on the wall – subsidies won’t last forever. So many licences to build new wind installations are being met with “Thanks, but no thanks” – not just UK but elsewhere too.
The Govt has to keep upping the Contract for Difference strike price to get existing wind suppliers to supply. This means electricity bills won’t be reduced as per the Milliband creature’s claim by £300pa, but we’ll be lucky if they only go up by £300pa. Not a good look from the politics point of view.
The market system and economics always intervene to spoil the best laid plans of the political nitwits. What the Millicreature thinks he can make happen will meet reality… and the winner will be…
These have gone from eyesores to toxic and sinister projections of an anti-human agenda. They will now last. They will cause a lot of pollution. They will be found to produce nothing. We pick up the muck and clots beneath our feet and see this as good energy. Their agenda is a toxin a murrain and there is a desire within everyone to remove them.
This had nothing to do with environmentalism. It is plain destruction of the environment. Solar panels on agricultural land are an insult to nature. Wind turbines means the industrialisation of wild spaces. The net result will be the de-industrialisation of the UK and the collapse of our economy and living standards