eublues

Full UKIP policy paper now published.

UK Independence Party - UK Independence Party Energy and Environment Policy: January 2008

Anthony Butcher

I just had a look through this document, and it seems very well put together. It looks serious and competent. I don't necessarily agree with it all, but that is irrelevant to its primary purpose - building credibility.

My only criticism would be the lack of any costing. It really does diminish the authority of the document. This is really a statement of aims and beliefs, rather than a policy document. If one of the big three parties published this they would get ripped apart for lack of detailed funding plans and impact assessment.

Overall I would say that it is a significant step up from the 2005 fag packet manifesto, but is not sufficient to compete at the top level yet. Still, I would take a lot of encouragement from it if I was a UKIP member.

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mkpdavies

I think it would be quite hard for any party to cost things seriously, until they see the shower of ***** they actually inherit

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C_steam

generally good. Professional and well put together and certainly a step in the right direction.

personally, I think the 'anti-agw' bit is too long and opens UKIP to attack but this is a minor point and, on balance, there is much to be praised overall.

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Anthony Butcher

Even some rough estimates would be better than nothing. UKIP is proposing a major change in energy strategy, rather than a continuation of the existing one... and that needs financial exploration.

It has been argued before that Nuclear power stations are extremely expensive to construct, which means that short term building funds have to be accounted for. Is this going to be borrowed? Will they use PFI contracts?

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douglas denny

Of course it's expensive. So is the lights going out.

It has been done before more than once with no problem of construction costs. The cost of say a billion each is peanuts to the government, all they need do is issue a few more bonds into the money market or filtch it from the taxpayer as usual. Construction with borrowed finance, and interest payments over something like twenty years is the usual sort of set-up.
The money is not a/the problem, the politics is.

We are paying through the nose presently for nuclear generated electricity from the French nuclear stations into the grid via power cables under the English channel - I suspect this is one of the reasons the government has been sitting on the problem - it suited the French.

They had better get building quickly. The lead-time for a nuclear station is around ten years - five if they are desperate, and they are gettting desperate. The North Sea gas which has been firing a lot of our power stations is running out fast. Going back to coal will not be acceptable with today's anti-CO2 emissions hysteria.
Nuclear it is - fast - or the lights go out. Make your choice.

DED.
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Britannist

I agree Douglas.

We cannot power our homes, offices, farms, factories, hospitals, motorway lights, military bases and trains on ugly wind turbine eyesores which do not work for the majority of the time.

And we should not be relying on any foreign nation to supply us with electricity. The French would not allow themselves to get into a situation where they were reliant on another nation for something as important as the electricity supply.

Anthony Butcher

As true as that may be, it just doesn't wash as a serious political proposal though, does it? If a journalist says "How are you financing your proposals?" you can hardly answer "money isn't a problem" can you?

There are so many unexplored financial issues there and we are talking about vast amounts of money.

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douglas denny

I do not see where you are going with this at all. In fact I cannot understand what worries you about it. Finance has never been a problem with large scale capital projects of this kind even when there has not been a definite financial reward offered at the end of it.
The Douneray fast breeder reactor for example was purely experimental and very costly - but it was built nevertheless. Nuclear submarines are very expensive indeed - but they are built, and in their case entirely with taxpayer's money. All that's needed is the incentive and the will to do it.

I have'nt just said money isn't a problem with my previous post, (which it isn't), I also said government can raise the money by bonds or taxation in that posting, which I note you have completely ignored.

There are many other ways to raise big sums of money which have been used in the past for large capital projects. It is done all the time.
There is more than one way to skin a rabbit.

In the case of electricity production, government can 'fix' the long term parameters for raising money from the end-users by guaranteeing generous fixed prices per unit of electricity, and guaranteed increases in costs to the customer every so-many years, as they have done with the ridiculously stupid wind-powered generators, which gives more than generous incentives to private financial markets to invest in the capital project.

Wind generation incidentally, to a physicist is the most idiotic idea of all time for large-scale electricity power production - but that has not stopped the government from promoting it, and fostering it with the kind of incentives mentioned, and ensuring huge costs to the end-user for all this nonsense, and for what? stupid moronic ideology that's what!

Anyone with more than two brain cells (one in each cheek of their bottom) can see the facts that the power output from any wind generator is miniscule compared to the demand, even if you covered the lanscape with them from John O' Groats to Lands End. And anyone with eyes and the aforementioned two brain cells can see the fact that the lights go out when the wind stops. It's sheer lunacy in promoting them!
And as it is clear the politicians cannot see these facts, the corollary must be they must have less than the two brain cells mentioned.

You want to see the mess they have made of parts of the Lake District with the disgustingly ugly monstrosities waving their three fingered salute across the fells! The people who promoted these gross blotts on the landscape should be strung-up by the b@lls and kicked senseless at half hourly intervals for their folly.

There are dozens of ways of meeting the capital costs. That's the whole idea of capitalism; and where that is not incentive enough, governements can underwrite the potential losses either directly or in various devious ways to hide it and thus promote the investment; or they can take on the whole finance on behalf of us all - the users - in which case it is called nationalisation.

If they can spend billions on Northern Rock (which will fail eventually anyway and will have to be sold off over a period to even try to break even to save the taxpayer's money - which it won't!) they can easily find a few 'piddlin' billions for a nuclear power station or two.

Like I said: it is no problem financially. Their real problem is political, in particular with the anti-nuclear brainless nuts who want us all to go back to horses and carts and oil lamps, instead of electric lights and eventually electric or hydrogen cars.

Regards,
DED.

mkpdavies

That was pretty lame. Of course you could rob the taxpayer blind for anything. However, if that is the intention, then you need to make that clear in any proposals, otherwise you are not only as bad as the old lot, but worse.

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