Power hungry

After all the suffering and hardship endured by Britons during World War Two, it was a cruel twist of fate that the winters that followed the end of that conflict were amongst the harshest and coldest on record and, with a national shortage of fuel, even relatively wealthy people, such as George Orwell, resorted to burning furniture to keep themselves warm.

However, at least the government of the time had a perfectly reasonable excuse for failing to meet the needs of the people for power - we'd just come out of a hugely expensive and incredibly destructive war. The government of today has no such excuse.

Ofgem are warning that "families face "unaffordable" energy bills and power cut" in a few years time unless £200 billion - yes, billion - is spent now to improve power supply and storage. You don't have to be George Osborne to work out that this puts Britain in something of a financial pickle.

Our energy suppliers are mostly foreign. They really don't give a damn if fuel bills are "unaffordable" - it just means they make more profit. They don't give a damn if British industry is crippled by power cuts - it just means they make more profit. These companies are not going to spend billions of pounds on our energy infrastructure unless there is something in it for them - and making less profit is hardly an incentive.

The "dash for gas" might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, anything that meant we didn't have to rely on bolshy British coal miners has got to be a good thing, right? Wrong - particularly if it means we have to rely on unstable Russian gas oligarchs, mad Middle East mullahs and dodgy French engineering.

We need to take back control of our energy supply and generation. We need to make sure that we can provide for our energy needs without relying on foreign support or favour. We need to realise that wind farms are never ever going to be able to provide this even if we carpet the whole of the United Kingdom in the ugly monstrosities.

We need to take back control of energy supply, generation and distribution. We need to make ourselves as independent in meeting our energy needs as it is possible to be. To do this we need four things.

First we need to re nationalise our energy industry entirely. Secondly, we need to give up this ridiculous pursuit of "renewable" supply which is currently incapable of providing us with the energy we need. Thirdly, we need to modernise our existing coal fired power stations and build lots more. Fourth, we need to make long term investment in skills and technology that will enable us to build our own nuclear power plants for the future.

Two of those we can do quickly. We can take back control of our energy industry relatively easily and we can withdraw from the pursuit of renewable nirvana in no time. The coal fired power stations will take a little longer as we not only need to build them, but we have to restore our coal industry as well. However, it will buy us enough time to do what is necessary for the fourth requirement.

Because that is the really long term goal. Those people who want us to go nuclear now are not living in the real world. The problem with that is that there isn't enough nuclear expertise to go around - and Britain is virtually devoid of it. Furthermore, such is the dire state of our education system that we are unlikely to be able to produce people with the skills and brains to do it ourselves - and reliance on foreign skill is not what I want because it is not good for Britain.

So, in the interim we keep what coal fired plants we have going. We build new ones. We re-open coal mines and dig new ones. That will give us the energy we are going to need for the next 20-50 years - because it will take at least that long to restore our education system to the extent that we are able to start, once more, producing the best of the best in engineering, design and technology.

Coal is our lifeline

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the year long miners strike which was to lead, ultimately, to the breaking of union power and also to the decimation of the coal industry.

Back then, it was one of the most divisive issues of the time - you were either for Thatcher or for Scargill - but it was never really as cut and dried as people make it seem. Neither Thatcher nor Scargill were entirely honest about their intentions. The truth is that the strike was never really about coal, but about who governs the country.

Scargill was an unreformed Marxist who believed that the unions represented the proletariat and that the proletariat was where true governmental power should lie. Never mind the issue of democracy - that was never a big deal to Marxists (still isn't) - for Scargill this was about the power of the working man to dictate terms to the ruling classes. That, on its own, could be considered a noble cause, but Scargill was also a self-important egoist.

He'd seen the almost legendary status that Joe Gormley achieved when he led the miners strike that eventually brought the Heath government to its knees and he wanted a similar confrontation to bolster his own reputation. Thatcher recognised this character flaw and set about preparing to give Scargill the confrontation he wanted - but this time with a different outcome.

Both sides had been preparing for this battle for years. The government had begun stockpiling coal at least three years in advance - easy to do as Britain was producing far more coal than we could actually sell, while Scargill had been sniping at the government and stirring up the miners to prepare them for the battle months in advance.

When the confrontation actually began it was portrayed as being a fight by the miners to retain their jobs against a government determined to break the union power which they believed - quite rightly - as being the single biggest barrier to Britain's economic progress. Many of those who supported Thatcher - myself included - supported her not because we wanted to see the closure of pits and the end of coal mining in Britain (far from it, in my view), but that we just wanted to see an end to that union power.

Those who supported Scargill often supported him more because they wanted to prevent pit closures and preserve their jobs, but weren't really interested in usurping the government which was Scargill's actually intention.

As it happened, the miners lost and union power was finally broken. Scargill's tactics had given Thatcher all the excuses she needed to bring in new laws to restrict union practices which most people in Britain actually agreed with.

What we didn't agree with was the rampant pit closures that followed. Britain was producing too much coal which we couldn't sell, but this was always going to be a temporary problem. There was no need to close so many pits - just cut back on their production so that they were kept open and viable for when we needed them again. Yes, there would still have been thousands of job losses, but the mines would still be there and the communities that depended on those mines would not have been ravaged when the pit closed.

The 1984-1985 miners strike was a folly driven by two massive egos and the consequences of that are still felt today. For Scargill, it was a folly driven by his craze for power and status, but Thatcher having won the confrontation then embarked on a folly of her own as the pit closures were driven by a desire to "punish" those who had challenged her government's authority.

Although I can't prove it, I remember saying even back in the mid-eighties that the pit closures would come back to haunt Thatcher and Britain. The dash for gas and oil based on North Sea reserves was always going to be nothing more than a bubble which would eventually burst and we would, eventually, regret not having the coal mining capacity to make use of our most important natural fuel reserve.

As we enter what I believe will be a prolonged and deep depression it is my opinion that we now need to start making use of those reserves again. The countries that come out of this depression best will be those countries who have something they produce that they can either use or sell.

As I have been saying since I started this blog - a nation that makes nothing is worth nothing. We don't make anything - but we could. We have coal in abundance and we need to start opening up pits and mining that coal right now. We don't have to restore the power of the unions to do that, but we do have to do it.

Return to Life On Mars

In the TV show, Life On Mars, DCI Sam Tyler spends his entire time trying to wake himself from the coma so as to escape from 1973 back to the present. When he eventually succeeds, though, he finds the modern world so superficial and banal he takes his own life in an attempt to return back to 1973 - which he does.

Turns out Sam may not have needed to do that anyway.

Prof Ian Fells, emeritus professor of Energy Conversion at the University of Newcastle, said the country will lose a third of generating capacity in the next twelve years as old nuclear and coal fired power stations close down.

With the current politicial situation making it difficult to rely on imported gas or oil, he said Britain will face regular power cuts lasting long enough to delay operations in hospitals, close down schools and bring cities to a standstill.

Ultimately he said the situation would lead to economic downturn and mass unemployment.

All very 1973. All Sam had to do was wait a few years and then he too would be able to enjoy 3 day weeks, power cuts, reading by candlelight and cooking his dinner on a one ring calor gas stove.

Back in 1973, though, this was all caused by a miners strike against the backdrop of an oil crisis. This time, although we have an oil "crisis" of sorts, the real problem is not miners, but environmentalists - the Environazis - who, through their successful propagation of the myth of man-mad global warming, have managed to paralyse government's management of our energy generation and supply.

The power cuts and 3 day week of the seventies was the inspiration for Thatcher's battle against union power culminating in the year long miners strike of 1984/85 which effectively ended union power in Britain - a move which was widely supported by the British public.

I expect a similar thing to happen again - this time with environmentalism - with similar "battles" and tactics - and I expect a similar backing for the move by the British public.

When the cuts start to bite, when people have to walk home through pitch black streets because there are no trains running on the electrified line and all the streetlights are off, when there is no heating or hot water in the house, no power to run the TV, computer, washing machine or tumble dryer, when schools are closed for days at a time and when millions are out of work because there is no power to run the industries and businesses that employ them - people will react with anger.

They will be angry with the government, of course - but they will lay the blame squarely where it lies. The AGW movement.

The folly of the belief in "renewables" will be laid bare and those who had pushed for such things will be derided and condemned. The AGW movement will be dead inside 15 years and environmentalists will have a hard time generating public support for their beliefs ever again.

Crisis? What crisis?

I don't know what it's like round your way, but many of the trees around here are already turning colour and losing their leaves. Given the rather dull and dreary summer we've had I'm not entirely surprised, but I was wondering if this is a sign of something - perhaps a cold winter to come?

Maybe there is some old country saying - similar to the red sky at night - that could tell me, but I can't be bothered to look. What I am bothered about, however, is the blase reaction of the government to what is, by all accounts, a crisis in our energy supply.

The era of cheap energy is over, a senior cabinet minister warns.

John Hutton, the Business Secretary, admits households will struggle to pay their heating bills this winter due to rising costs.

I don't know what planet Mr Hutton lives on, but for most of us the "era" of cheap energy ended some time ago as we've been struggling with rising fuel bills for some time. I guess living in expensive, tax payer funded opulence insulates our ministers from the reality of having to pay bills.

Hutton has ruled out imposing a windfall tax - a stupid idea as all that would happen is that the energy companies would recoup that loss through customers in some way - but offers no solution to our impending crisis. And that is exactly what it will be for thousands of people who will have to balance the budget choosing between ever increasing food bills and rapidly spiralling fuel costs.

To be fair to Mr Hutton, he is saying some of the right things as he refers to "energy independence" - something which can not be achieved by switching to nuclear in the medium term as this is something which we lack skills in and is therefore dependent on foreign (French) resource. We lack the skills because of the ridiculously short sighted further education policies which place media studies degrees as highly nuclear physics - this is a problem that will come back to haunt us in the future in other ways, but not one I wish to dwell on here.

Hutton also makes the right noises about Britain's most plentiful and cheap energy resource - coal.

[W]e cannot turn our back on any proven form of technology. We cannot afford to say no to new coal, new gas or new nuclear.

Coal is key in my opinion. We need to dig more of it and build more coal fired power stations as a matter of urgency and it is the government's responsibility to ensure that happens, but this government - and any future Tory government - are hamstrung by their belief in man-made climate change and the fear of ruining their environmental credentials.

Meanwhile, the (unofficial) predictions for the winter of 2008/2009 is that it will be a cold and harsh winter. Should this be true then millions will struggle to pay their bills and thousands of vulnerable - mostly the elderly - will die as a result of a severe winter. This could all happen within a few months. That is what I would call a crisis.