The fall of the Tory party

They'll just multiply it by three and have it as 'Growth, growth, growth,' surely?

'Groaning, groaning, gron!

I'm sure she said this very phrase in the conference speech!

You can't even take the piss these days without the Tories actually having done it for real first.

Yeh she did, was one of the only moments where she seemed passionate and not like a droid

As, of course, did Starmer in a speech in July.

So he did! Depressing in many ways.

Off the cuff I think Truss is fairly humanoid. I guess the handlers try to limit that as much as possible.

Anyway, moving on to unlit shitelands, those trade deals…

“Foreign policy - UK to designate China a ‘threat’”

This lady sure puts the U in turn.

https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson/status/1579944699129126912

Targeting renewable energy? Wtf?

From the guardian¦
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/11/power-giants-to-face-windfall-tax-after-all-as-liz-truss-delivers-u-turn

Renewable power companies will have their revenues capped in England and Wales, after the government bowed to pressure to clamp down on runaway profits.

There is something weird going on with how renewable prices are pegged to gas or something which means current prices are, I think, hugely exaggerated.

But just renewables is going to be a tough sell.

It's bizarre
And no commentary so far about why renewables profits specifically targeted

Perhaps because renewables like wind and sun are essentially free so any profit on them is up for grabs

They'd do better to separate the prices of renewables, and only windfall tax the fossil fuels, surely?

Bar the fact that the market is emerging and taxing heavily will limit investmen....oooohhhhh

Yep. Tax the oil firms and give tax breaks for actual renewable generated electrickery

The article seems to suggest that was tried but didn't work

Ministers tried to encourage companies to voluntarily move on to contracts for difference (CfDs), that cap profits above a certain level, but without much success

As long as you remember that the invisible hand of the market is lobbying and backhanders then it's just free market economics.

The problem with taxing the high profits renewables make in the summer is that if prices are still high, they won’t be able to afford to buy power in the winter to cover the fact that they tend to produce much less then.

IMO RE getting huge windfall profits off the back of the current crisis isn't particularly fair.

However, this seems like an occasion where hypothecation would be fair. So x% windfall tax with 50% going into RE projects and the remainder supporting household bills.

Obviously this isn't a serious suggestion as I recognise that any kind of nuance or thoughtful investment in the UK is beyond this government. Instead let's just frack on, given our huge swathes of homogeneous uninterrupted and sparsely populated landscape.

JRM on the Today programme this morning. It's been said many times but worth reiterating, what a massive cunt that bloke is

There is something weird going on with how renewable prices are pegged to gas or something which means current prices are, I think, hugely exaggerated.

The pricing of power is mental (I worked with power traders for a short time a few years back, and found it really idiosyncratic and tricky to understand).

I think it's because the power price is priced at the cost of turning on the last producer in the Order of Merit. The Order places the power producers in a list economically (cheap / wind at the top, expensive / coal at the bottom) and the operator turns them all, in the order of the list, until the the projected power demand is met.

The cheap stuff is always on, but there's never enough of it to meet the UK's demand, so there's always some gas on as well. Therefore the whole lot is priced at gas price.

I'm not sure of the reason for pricing like this - I'd have thought an average price of the whole order would be fairer to consumers, but not (I guess) if you're the producer that just got told to turn on their gas plant. Maybe the renewables need to be removed from the pricing completely as their prices (free) are so different to the rest of the producers.

edit:

I'm not sure of the reason for pricing like this

Maybe it's an incentive to gas / coal burning suppliers to invest into renewables? If they replace at least some of their supply with renewable, then they'll still get the same amount of money for their power but do so at lower cost to them?

Yes, completely agree.
I’ve just shouted “fuck off you cunt” and turned the radio off when he cropped up on the classic fm news bulletin.

I end up doing this every single morning listening to Today

I think it's because the power price is priced at the cost of turning on the last producer

If I'm a renewables generator I would be daft to sell my electricity for anything other than exactly what it costs from a gas provider (or 0.00000001p less).