Well put that man.
Wholeheartedly agree with you about nuclear. So well put you actually changed my view slightly. I'll take your word for those things about which I know nothing (methanl etc) but all sounds great.
A lot of observers, and I fear some of those are politicians who should know better, seem to make mistakes thinking "if my family was short of money we shouyld spend less, therefore when the country is short of money we should spend less."
But it's not the same, for starters the deficit has not (AFAIK) come about because we are spending more than we earn, so much as because we are earning less than we spend. That's an important difference.
If you lost your job (says he falling into the same trap himself) you may think "Right dear we need to shop at Aldis instead of Waitrose for a bit,"
but that wouldn't fix your problems. Your first priority would be to get another job!!
So the country needs growth more than cuts, the private sector
cannot fuel this growth as the bank aren't lending money. And growing a business using cash is rare and slow.
Consumers can't grow the economy as unemployment is rising and their ability to borrow money (against the predicted rise in future house prices) is vastly diminished.
Which leaves the public sector. They can borrow money or HMG can print money. Yes they have to be careful, aviod white elephants but borrowing to build reactors is fcuk inspired. (Once again qv JM Keynes.)
We get tech, we get a skilled workforce, we get a richer country.
But the politics kick in, the Right are ideologically opposed to public ownership, and make no mistake Osborne and co are very, terrifyingly, right-wing. I fear they are making Thatcher look like a kindly old matriarch.
We need a proper centre party who will not be afraid to use the private sector where they are better (short term) but are not against public ownership...
I propose a revolution, Graeme can be in charge. Anyone fancy coming to London tomorrow and we'll kick it off???
(Incidentally the boom-bust is not just down to the parliamentary system. This video is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk awesome. I am such a geek.
)
But what I wanted was a right winger to explain the current plan as well as g explained his plan. Still waiting...
(Worryingly a mate in work read something that the UK's current economic plan, massive cuts in a deep recession, was a novel experiment. First time tried. Very brave. Scary huh? Clare, my TV has a perspex sheet in front of it to protect it from the missiles I throw.)
graeme wrote:Anyone got any solutions then?
It's not the man on the street who needs to earn more than he spends, it's the country as a whole. We don't make or sell anything any more. We're importers of energy and manufactured goods and food. £160bn deficit on our GDP is geared way higher the EU recommendation, and it's only going to get worse.
Why it will never get fixed:
Our wonderful partisan democracy (which we seem to be so proud of that we bomb the sh*t out of other nations until they adopt it) does not allow for long-term decision making, because long term decisions are generally unpopular and painful in the short term. You make painful decisions (which take money out of the pockets of the voters) and you're out on your arse after 4 years. So, to stay in long enough to get anything done, you'd need to make popular short term decisions which would probably have damaging long term effects. Which would cost money and fix nothing. Even if the PM set the ball rolling on the big fixes and accepts that he's only doing one term as PM, the next party wins by promising to undo it all, wasting all the cash the previous party has already spent. That's how Britain rolls. We flip-flop from one side to the other, cancelling each other's projects, finishing nothing and wasting every penny we borrow.
How to fix it:
First of all, re-regulate the investment banking industry. Split investments from the high street. Looks like the FSA might be starting to think about banning a few financial "products" (whoever called them products should be shot - there's no product) which might mean they're starting to grow a pair. Good. So, now the city can't undo all our wealth accumulation overnight, we can safely acquire wealth again, which is very necessary because the only way to build a stronger nation is to have money to build with, which means a constant, unfaltering income with plenty to spare.
So, if we want income we either need to get armed with some flags and go build an empire again (which we'd get away with if it wasn't for those pesky UN kids) or we need to make stuff and sell it overseas like we used to in the good old industrial days.
If we can export more than we import (earn more than we spend), we should stay cash positive. If we're cash positive, we can fix our country with enough to spare for the flip-flopping wasteful overhead of democracy. If we have to spend every penny we make buying food and energy from other nations, those nations will be the ones doing the building, not us. So, lets think about our market. What will the world need a bunch of in the next 100 years? What will it demand that we can supply?
Clean energy would be my answer unless anyone has any better ideas...
So, we need to sell clean energy, which means producing clean fuel. Also, if we had our own supply of energy we could power our own industrial development cheaply. For example, our trains suck. The French have cheap nuclear electrickery, so they have cheap, fast TGVs. OK, that's a rather trite example, but lots of infrastructure and manufacturing costs boil down to the cost (the cost mind, not the price) of a kWh. If we're importing energy, we're a slave to the market price (yeah, that's some bad-ass Stringer Bell sh*t right there, bro). If we're exporting it we're still a slave to the market selling price, but we can still use what we need from our own stash and charge ourselves the actual cost. We're now OPEC-proof and war-proof. We can afford to make products again, and any spare kilowatt-hours can go on ebay or something...
So, we'll take 20 or 30 of your finest government-owned nuclear power plants please! No, we don't let private industry build them, they have to stay publicly owned or we're just as screwed as before.
Now we wait 15 year for those to be built. Hopefully we're not bankrupt by then.
So, now we have fuel. Except, no, wait. We have energy, not fuel. Fuel needs to be transportable and storable. So, what can we use as fuel? Well, we have heat coming out of our reactors, but heat tends to dissipate. Bad fuel. So, the usual steam turbines can make it into electricity for us, right? But then we'd need heavy batteries to store our fuel in, and batteries suck. Bad fuel. Hydrogen? Terrible, terrible fuel. Tends to release its energy prematurely, like while it's still in the tank under the rear seats of your Honda Clarity, just as you're strapping Jasper and Felicity in for the school run...
Nope, it's gotta be liquid at room temperature so we can move it around in tankers and pump it into cars and stuff. High energy density would be nice too. Something we can make without fossil fuels so that's petrol and diesel out.
Ethanol and methanol are the only viable long-term alternatives to petrol/diesel. So lets make 'em. Cleanly. We'll need CO2 scrubbers and some electricity of course. CO2 scrubber technology is coming along very nicely so we'll get in on that sharpish. Start making and developing them ourselves. The better they get, the cleaner (more carbon-neutral) our fuels will be. We can use our lovely nuclear electricity which we can buy from ourselves at cost. Great, now we can make really, really cheap, clean liquid fuels. Now, lets get our factories churning out fuel cells for all those who don't want to burn our new fuels in an internal combustion engine. More patents, more exports, more UK manufacturing.
So, 20 years from now if the UK doesn't supply the world with clean liquid fuels (except China who will still be burning coal and Tibetans) we've only ourselves to blame. Sure, anyone could make their own fuels, but only anyone with a surplus of cheap electricity and all the CO2 scrubber technology and the production facilities in place. Which is why we really, really, really, need to get the ball rolling with a few dozen nuclear power plants on the drawing board. Now!
Odds of it happening? Zero, because it will cost money with no short-term return, and worse, any government which signs the deal to build them will be met with greeny, nimby protests and will be voted out in 4 years and the plans will get scrapped.
The French will do it instead.
'99 - '03 Titanium S1 111S.
'03 - '10 Starlight Black S2 111S
'11 - '17 S2 135R
'17 - '19 S2 Exige S+
'23 - ?? Evora
I dont seem to have any more money left at the end of the month though 
