Nuclear power or save the planet?

A recent feature in the Guardian raised some interesting points about renewable power.

A field of mirrors focussing the sun's energy on a furnace can be used to power conventional electricity turbines. Several of these power stations have been operating successfully in desert regions around the world for many years. Engineers have estimated that covering just 0.5% of the world's deserts with these ingenious devices would meet the entire planet's electricity demand with ease.

It seems like the ultimate answer - there's lots of sunshine in Africa so they can get rich selling their electricity to Europe and solve all their problems. We no longer need to buy oil from the late Saddam Hussein and other undesirables. Global warming will be halted in its tracks.

So what's the catch? Well part of the problem seems to be that somebody wants to invest billions and billions of our money in a new nuclear power programme which will generate about 3% of the world's electricity by 2050 - if ever - at many times the cost of these ingeneous solar powerstations. The other problem apparently is that we would need a new pan-Europe high voltage electricity grid to move the power around - and that requires those same people who want their nuclear power to dig into their budgets and build one.

No wonder you're not heard about Concentrated Solar Power before. Doesn't it just make you feel that the planet is safe in the hands of our elected leaders? Erm.... No!

Ode to Saddam

It was predictable if nothing else to hear George Bush proclaiming that Saddam's execution was another milestone on the road to democracy for Iraq. But - and this hardly ever seems to get a mention - who says that democracy in Iraq is the right answer?

As far as I know there are no Muslim democracies - maybe that tells us something? Possibly that democracy and self determination are basically Christian concepts and that maybe Islam has different views on how to run things which should be respected.

What we are actually seeing is a re-run of the Crusades in all but name, orchestrated by a couple of fanatical Christian fuckwits. One of whom seems to think that the way to save God's earth is to open up protected arctic regions for oil exploration, the other presides over a government whose idea of a green budget is to raise the tax on biofuels.

That's what democracy delivers. Stop the world I need to get off!

To navigation the hard way

Call me old fashioned, but when I want to go somewhere I get the map out and plan the route.

Some time ago I was persuaded against my better judgement to buy a satnav. Most of the time it sits in the glovebox switched off, and to be fair it does have its uses in pinpointing an exact destination somewhere you're not familiar with. But the other day I took my son to Sheffield to show him my old uni. We took a detour over to Brightside to see the old steel making area - now all bulldozed and redeveloped. And then on the way back he keyed in "Bakewell" to the satnav to show us the way home. And that was where the trouble started.

It took us out of town a way I would never have thought of - but against my better judgement I thought we'd give it a go. We never did make it. After many miles slowly driving through the dark foggy roads across the Derbyshire Peak district we finally came to the A6 Matlock to Buxton road. A few minutes studying the map put us nearer to Buxton than Bakewell so the satnav was promptly switched off in disgrace and we came home via Buxton.

Thing is: this sort of thing happens every single time I use a satnav.

Where I live is on the A51 and the next village is about a kilometer away on the A53. You can travel along the A51 until it meets the A53 a couple of miles away or you can take the lane direct. A while ago I was walking home and a couple of cop cars flew by blue lights, the lot. I walked back to my house along the lane and as I arrived these same two police cars came flying along the A51. Exactly who they were trying to catch I don't know - but if he didn't have a satnav he would have got away on foot.

Green budget - NOT! My letter in The Independent

Thanks to the editor of The Independent who today published word for word my letter to his newspaper. I guess it ended up in Gordon Brown's press clippings for the day - and hopefully a few other people who can use the ammunition better than I can....

Brown's 'green' tax changes hit biofuel
Sir: Far from having delivered a green budget Mr Brown has just taken another step to killing off the embryonic biofuel industry in this country.
When he announced that road fuel duty was to be increased on petrol and diesel he also announced that the differential for rebated fuels would remain unchanged. Two of these rebated fuels are biodiesel and bioethanol, both of which are manufactured from renewable plant sources and are both carbon neutral and have extremely low emissions. Mr Brown has just increased the road fuel duty on these biofuels without saying as much.
The tax rebate for biodiesel is such that with a following wind it is just about possible to match the pump prices for fossil-based diesel - but with virtually no margin. Prices for raw vegetable oil, which is the key ingredient in its manufacture, fluctuate significantly and many of the producers are relatively new businesses that need all the help they can get.
Not only do we need to raise public awareness of the availability of these fuels, which can be used in today's cars without modification, but we also need to increase pressure on the vehicle manufacturers to take biofuels seriously, which at the moment they do not.
Most of the businesses involved in the manufacture of biofuels do it because of a passionate belief in the fight against carbon emissions and maybe the hope of profits some time in the future. Many of them have already closed down. Mr Brown has not helped.
RICHARD OPPENHEIMER

Green budget - NOT!

The thing about headlines is that if you look read the small print you normally find that they are a load of b@ll*x! - and this latest budget is now exception.

What you don't find unless you really look for it is a small statement that the differential on rebated road fuels will remain the same. What this actually means is that the tax on biofuels is going to be increased in line with petroleum fuels.

I spend most of my evenings helping friend of mine to run his fledgling biodiesel business. Cold nights spent standing at taxi ranks persuading taxi drivers to use biodiesel because it's green. Trying to peruade them that it won't damage their engines - that it will run OK in their taxis. So far we've managed to keep the price a couple of pence a litre below the pump price for normal diesel - but we've been hanging on hoping and praying for a reduction in the road fuel duty that will make the business viable.

All around us we hear of small businesses trying to set up and make biodiesel but having to shut down because of financial pressures.

The last setback we had was a sudden increase in the price of rapeseed oil - the biggest single cost in the equation. Prices fluctuate a lot and without a decent margin there's not a hope of competing with petroleum diesel? So is Mr Brown helping the development of clean grean biofuels. Like hell!

And another thing - did you read the bit about income tax exemption for people who install micro wind turbines and get paid for the excess electricity they generate? Find me an electricity company that will pay you ANYTHING worth talking about. How about a bit of legislation forcing the electricity supplers to pay the going rate for wind turbine owners. But then that would mean upsetting the big electricty suppliers and we can't have that can we?

Litvinenko and the new russian connection

In all the discussion about the late Mr Litvinenko and his untimely death we have heard all sorts of theories about who might have done it and why. The smart money is on some russian state sponsored assassins - after all, the Polonium 210 that he was poisoned with didn't exactly come from the local garden centre did it? In fact, I have it on good authority that there's only around 50 grammes of the stuff on the entire planet.

So why? Observers suggest that Litvinenko was little more than a nuisance to the russian government - so why bother? Well - elsewhere we have heard about our beloved energy minister (Malcolm Wickes) celebrating having secured our natural gas supplies with contracts to import gas from Russia. (Our own natural gas having been squandered in the race to heat up the planet.)

The Russians however, have already shown their willingness to use their gas as a political weapon earlier this year when they shut off supplies to the Ukraine. Is the British government going to give the Russians too much grief about assassinating people on British soil when the supplies of natural gas can be shut off at a moment's notice? I don't think so. So maybe Mr Putin was trying to make a point - the Cold War is history, he has the upper hand now.

Malcolm Wickes, as I pointed out earlier, is not as clever as he likes to think he is.

Road Pricing and carbon emissions

Road pricing has hit the news again - and I have to say I have some sympathy for the idea. But in the debate about taxation of vehicles according to their carbon emissions, or taxation of fuel there's a key issue that never seems to get a look in - alternative fuels.

Alternative fuels - biofuels, biodiesel are available right now. Existing diesel engines can run on them without modification. They are carbon neutral and engines running on them have incredibly low emissions. What's more they totally eliminate dependence on oil imported from places it's better not to be dependent on.

So, if the government were as keen to be green as they say they are why aren't they promoting biofuels and giving generous tax breaks to encourage their use. Come to that why not scrap the idea of road fuel taxes altogether and just replace them with a carbon tax on fossil fuels based purely on their fossil carbon content whether it's to be used as road fuel or any other purpose.

Could the reason be something called Shell, or BP, or Exxon...? Or could it be an old friend of mine Malcolm Wickes - the Energy Minister - who's probably right at this moment licking Tony Blair's backside and saying "Yes Sir, nuclear power, sir. Anything you say, sir." Or, as another old friend of mine - the late and very well respected Earl Conrad Russell once confided in me: "Malcolm Wickes isn't as clever as he likes to think he is."

World AIDS day - Remember the boy who cried 'Wolf'?

I hate to queer the pitch on this one, but tragic as situation is - if you happen to live in Africa - there seems to be an atmosphere of out of proportion hysteria in the western world which is more of a danger than AIDS itself.

I can remember in the mid 1980s when scientists were trying to predict the spread of AIDS and their models were coming up with best and worst case scenarios. Even the worst case predictions showed that in the western world at least it wasn't going to be a problem. But even so the government decided to leaflet every house in the United Kingdom to warn of the dangers.

The outcome 25 years later: the spread of HIV has been EVEN LESS than the best case forecasts predicted. Pregnant women have been routinely screened for HIV for many years now and possible infections have been consistently below 0.04% i.e. 1 in 2,500 and very few previously unknown cases are dicovered by screening. The assumed rate of transmission between heterosexuals has been revised downwards from 1 in 800 to less than 1 in 1000. In other words, the random chance of catching HIV in the heterosexual population is less than 1 in 2.5 million. And of the 60,000 people who have HIV in the United Kingdom over half have come here already carrying the virus.

So why the hysteria? This is not Africa. Why create an atmosphere of fear which darkens many people's lives? Or is this just another case of the media blowing it all out of proportion while nobody dares to stand up and state the facts in case they get shot down in flames for telling the truth.