Geezer

Britain was going to the dogs long before NL came to power. Their only crime is to perpetuate the problem.

And don't think for one minute that when the Tories return to power in a few elections time, things will get any better!

Geezer

mattstant

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=460320

Just in case Mr lewis misses this one.

By the way Your "Great Leader" has stated that he wasnt even there at the time and had his fingers crossed behind his back anyway so yaah boo sucks so it doesnt count.

His own party ejects an 82 year old man and treatens him with anti terrorism laws for daring to disagree and all he can say is i wasnt there.

A truly great man would take RESPONSIBILITY for his own parties action apologies profusely and demand that the persons responsible be disciplined immeadiatley.
A great leader doesnt resort to playground semantics to dodge the issue

But he cant Why????.

because these are his own policies in action and he is being hoist by his own petard

Mr Bliar is is great in three respects

1. To have the great good fortune to inherit a very stable and growing economy with a positive balance of payments (no I'm not a Tory support as the next line will prove this is just the truth)

2. To have the Great good fortune to be in power when the largest party in opposition appear to have trouble getting the annual alcoholics outing inneabriated in a distilliery

3.To be Great at spin and PR

logiclee

Tony is not the best leader ever but I can't believe that many on here think Thatcher to be the greatest leader of all time.

Every time you pay your gas and electric bill you should be thanking her. Yes she smashed the unions but she did it by wasting the UK's coal supply and artificially rigging the generation market in favour of gas.

So our natural gas reserves have been used up some 15-20 years early as it's been wasted on Electricity generation. We import 80 million tons of coal a year at a price some 40% dearer than our own. China the worlds fastest growing economy and energy user estimates it will have to import 300million tons of coal next year so the price of coal is set to rocket further still.

If every renewable project currently tabled gets the planning and funding approval it will just about offset the projected increase in energy demand and will not displace any current generating capacity. The current trend for planning approval for wind farms is not good.

Tony has said the Government will look at all options and is even talking of a Civil Nuclear program to keep the lights on.
The generators are already warning that if we have a severe winter and energy demand stays at near peak level then there will be power outages this year as we dont have the capacity to cope.

Cheers
Lee

hedgehog

The current state of the North Atlantic Oscillation is such that it is highly likely that at least some parts of the UK will have a colder than average winter, with some prediction engines detailing a very cold winter indeed. I know this and, therefore, I believe that the administration and the power companies know this as well as it is not a secret.

It occurs to me that it might suit them to have a very cold winter with power outages as that will force their hand into making a committment to nuclear, something which the current government are reluctant to be seen to do of their own accord in view of their close ties with the various "green" organisations.

They are already planning for the nuclear installations to go into the north of Scotland to reduce resistance among traditionally urban, traditionally English Labour voters who might not want a nuclear power station near their house. There are plans for a major upgrade of the pylons to link northern Scotland, the administration claim this is to allow the distribution of power from windfarms. However, windfarms are a well documented failure and the administration are well aware of this. The pylons are not for windfarm power and this leads us to ask what they are for. Of course if there were to be blackouts during the coming winter then I am sure the majority of the English population would very soon be supporting more pylons and more nuclear power stations, in Scotland of course.

TelBoy

Hedgehog, with respect, wtf has that got to do with the greatest political leader?

logiclee

Probably due to my response on the effect of Mrs T's policies on todays energy market.

But yeh, a bit off topic.

Cheers
Lee

hedgehog

Well, it was in reply to the previous post and it would certainly be a very clever bit of political manipulation to make people believe that they had decided they need more nuclear power when, in truth, the systems are already being put in place to get it up and running in Scotland. I will repeat the quote I recently heard about NL:

With new Labour the future is certain; it is the past that keeps changing.

I think that is an accurate reflection on the current leadership which comes down to "force it through and lie about it later."

TelBoy

And OI!, Lee, don't sugar-coat the 80s. We were spending more at that time to dig out a ton of coal than it was worth. And the unions were happy to keep doing that thank you very much, funnily enough. The fact that we DO have coal reserves remaining should stand us in good sted should its price escalate as you're predicting - there's plenty still in the ground that we can extract as/when the time/price is right.

Where are you sourcing your statistics from though? Specifically about imported coal being 40% more expensive than domestic coal. And this 15 years too early statement - 15 years before when, exactly? This sounds like *just* the sort of scare-mongering headline that we've come to expect over the past ten years. Please substantiate the numbers, cheers.

TelBoy

Hedgehog, has there ever been a conspiracy theory you *haven't* believed?

I thought *i* was cynical, but you're definitely in the gold medal winning position!

logiclee

Have to be a little carefull what I post but currently UK Coal is mined at an average of around £1.05 to £1.35 a gigajoule. The world spot price of coal is volatile and has been upto £1.84 a gigajoule but it's averaging around 40% dearer than the UK's production. There are contractual issues that UK coal produces have been tied into by shortsighted company directors, most of whom have since left the industry but that's another story.
As for gas, the amount of extra gas that has been burned on electricity generation since the dash for gas of the late 80's would supply the domestic market for around another 15 to 20years. The extact volume figures I have but don't wish to disclose them on line but a google search would probably give figures anyway.

As for the future I can't see many choices other than continue with fossil fuels in the short to medium term with a view to Nuclear in the long term.
That's unless someone invents some mega super conductor technology and solves all our problems.

Cheers
Lee

Jason Knowles

It would have been interesting to know what the result would have been if they had one the war.Would England be a better place to live?

Ben WRX Bug-Eye

Nuclear power is the only sensible option. It's virtually an infinite supply of clean energy (appart from the radioactive waste). The sooner we move towards Nuclear power the better.

logiclee

But currently it's very expensive to build and maintain, no private company is going to do it so it would be down to the tax payers.
A brave Prime Minister who puts that to the electorate.
It wont happen until the lights go out like Canada

Lee

Ben WRX Bug-Eye

Agree it wont happen until a shock as in lights going out. I am under the impression that the main resistance to it is coming from the greens. The fact you have the radioactive waste to deal with isn't as bigger problem as made out and atmospheric pollutants (climate change) would be virtually zero.

I think its just something that people don't want because they think of Chenobyle and bombs. Most of the scientific community is now supporting the view that Nuclear power stations are the way forward. I agree as they are about to destroy huge areas with these hiddeous wind farms - much better just to have a couple of nuclear power plants tucked away somewhere.

Ben

paulr

[..

unclebuck

lewis has really scraped the bottom of the barrel with this post. Especially in the light of recent events.


I can't believe such a**eholes inhabit the UK. Thank god I'm not there atm.

mart360

lee, you have allready made it quite clear in other posts that you base your arguments on the fact that maggies stance on the unions was instumental on your outlook on the current state of the political status of the country...

somthing you may not be aware of, i am not grass roots down south paid up member so to speak, i came from an area near the locale in question, i however had parents who could see what was upcoming and moved before maggie and arthur went head to head.

what did you expect when two major factions have a battle of wills... tea and crumpets?? no one said it would be easy, the thing which you seem to respectfully forget when refering to this is that when all the dust settled and the issues resolved?? did the gent in question who was instrumental in this suffer any losses.. was he unemployed?? did he suffer financially?? dont recall him on the old king cole do you...

What would you have done if you had been one of the workers.. gone to work and supported your family and suffered the abuse and violence.. (peacefull picketing remember)... I dont profess to know all the detail and whys and wheres, but what was mrs t supposed to do, roll over and play dead.

at the end of the day there were no real winners, however it would seem that again the factions are using there flex to push tony back to some of the old ways... why??


M

hedgehog

It wasn't a conspiracy theory, honestly :-) At least I think I made it clear that it was just my opinion on how well flagged power black outs might work to the advantage of a government who want nuclear but are concerned about how unpopular it is. The government have, basically, openly said they need nuclear so the fact that they are going to get it is not a conspiracy theory and the fact that they are frantically building pylons into the north of Scotland is not a conspiracy theory either.

Personally I think nuclear is the way to go but personally I also believe that the nuclear power stations for London should go in London rather than in Scotland. If nothing else this will add some extra incentive to make sure they are safe and not contracted out to some dodgy company that the PM wants to get on to the board of once he retires!! Oops, another cynical comment that might count as a conspiracy theory :-)

I honestly don't believe conspiracy theories, but I do believe what the government openly says it is going to do. I worked with a very high profile politician some time back who told me that some people got mad at him for repeating the same thing but that he did it on purpose and kept repeating it until he heard others saying it, then he moved on to something else. With this in mind:

With new Labour the future is certain; it is the past that keeps changing.

:-)

dpb

Are they on course for Dounreay - to which the british taxpayer is forking out the 'decommissioning' to the tune of xxxxx millions a year.????..............

logiclee

No, we should never go back to the Union strong hold of the 70's and early 80's and the NUM and Mr Scargill carry their share of blame for what happened to the coal industry.

But what other forward thinking countries did was modernise the industry, invest in clean burning technology in there power stations and maximise their other natural resources. What Mrs T did was rig the generation market in favour of gas generation so instead of the 40% of mines that were uneconomical the figure rose to nearly 80%. Most of the reserves are lost forever.
Coal mined in the UK is the cheapest in Europe but in the early 90's Poland and Germany were flooding the market with heavily subsidised coal making imports artificially cheap. This wouldn't happen in any other industry, imagine if BMW were subsidised by the German government and started selling cars on the world market at 50% of the cost price.
The level of automation at todays UK mines rivals any modern factory and the number of employees has dropped from an average of 1500men per mine to around 420. UK mines are amongst the most modern in the world, trouble is there are only six left with little scope for helping out the generators this winter.

A large percentage of UK stations have de-sulphurisation plants and there are also proposals to pipe the CO2 into the North Sea Gas/Oil feeds so very little CO2 enters the atmoshphere.

But the UK can only do it's bit, we will try and burn our 100 million tonnes as cleanly as possible but China will burn 1.3 Billion tons this year with little thought to the enviroment.

Cheers
Lee

mart360

hmm have you been near a wind farm when they are all at full chat... i visit germany a lot, the noise they make is very annoying!!

the problem we allways will have is when industrys are privatised, it becomes profits before people.... and nationalised its run into the ground..

bmw is not without problems, the once mighty quandt famiuly are now no longer considered one of the big three

Ford interestingly enough has had its stock classed as junk bonds..

i seem to recall from working in the industry, that the 3 big players would be

GM toyota and one other...

who knows


M

danwrx1980

Hear Hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mattstant

Where is Mr Lewis ?????

unclebuck

Who cares.

Leslie

Lost his bottle!

Les

SJ_Skyline

He's like the candyman - say his name 5 times and he will appear.

Please don't do it!

mattstant

He is around i saw a post from him yesterday somwhere in general so he is officially a coward.
Shame i've not got much against him I think he adds colour (most of the time)

pslewis

Coward eh?

I've been busy with MUCH more important things than playing with saddos on ScoobyNet!!

But,as you have called my name 5 times ... here I am!!

I've just seen the Tories wetting themselves at some very mediocre speeches, with very average delivery and average charisma .............. plastic passion.

I don't think that anyone the Tories put up will move the nation like Tony did ..........

And they will not see power again in my lifetime .... shame

Pete

mart360

the biggest shame is you havnt go the ***** to carry out your threats...

your all bluff and bluster..

a sad twisted person who cant accept anything but the party mantra..

go home pete, your no longer funny or topical


M

pslewis

I understand your bitterness .... watching the pathetic Tories searching for a great leader to put up against another - and they can't find one.

Honestly, it IS a shame ... it would be good to have two great leaders fighting for our attentions ...............

No need to throw all your toys out your pram though!

Pete