Huhne, Energy and daft electric vehicles

I read (also via Tim Worstall) that Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and "Climate Change"* wants to ensure there are no subsidies for Nuclear Power.

One could say this was noble, but considering we have not heard anything on ending the subsidies for wind, solar and water, that is worrying. Subsidy for one can mean a disincentive for another. For Huhne to say this is "not ideological" is being, I believe, a little disingenuous, as subsidies for other forms ARE.

Unless you end subsidies for all, you distort the decision-making process. What will a power generator build? Nuclear Power with no subsidies or wind with a subsidy? Of course, it depends on the levels of such subsidies. However, to have wind one needs a baseline capacity to support it when it does not produce enough power, which, even supporters now admit, is most of the time.

So if you to all intents and purposes demand wind and then subsidise it, it could be said you are indirectly subsidising the baseline capacity that is needed to make that wind viable.

Further, to expect Government subsidies to enable the most efficient and responsive allocation of resources is to be naive in the extreme. Subsidising wind has the capacity to divert research and resources away from other forms of generation that might be better or even away from focusing the minds of wind technologists from improving efficiency or embedding incumbents who make technology that is currently "good enough", so making it harder for new entrants to establish. All classic stuff.

So if Huhne is to be honest, he has to say his stance IS ideological and he aims to remove any subsidies for nuclear whist keeping subsidies for wind.

To me wind does have a use - synthesizing hydrocarbons. One can do this by drawing in CO2 from the air, adding water and energy and producing hydrocarbons and oxygen. This is an energy store, not an energy source, as all you are doing is pushing energy into a system (CO2+H2O) and then releasing it later when it reverts back to those constituents. Synthesizing hydrocarbons has advantages. The product is familiar, with a distribution network in place and can be burned in traditional engines with minor adjustments. It has most of the advantages of hydrogen, without the handling and storage downsides. If created using wind power it could be almost carbon neutral, as burning it will absorb the oxygen produced and expel the CO2 consumed in manufacture.

Why is this important? Well, there is still a frustrating need for car makers to either produce parallel hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, or all electric vehicles like the Honda Leaf (seen in various absurd videos that never just let you just hear the vehicle).

The Prius is inefficient. It cannot regenerate all the brake energy, has a complex drivetrain and mediocre performance and fuel efficiency. The Leaf is all electric and has an unusable range of 100 miles and a frustratingly long recharge cycle of 8 hours. Little better than a horse!

Neither of these two producers seem willing to come up with a series hybrid vehicle, which is basically an electric vehicle with a small on-board generator that can produce energy when the batteries are run down. These combine the range and flexibility of traditional vehicles, exceeding their fuel efficiency yet can provide electric only operation for most uses if desired. People generally only drive under 100 miles a day but they want their vehicle on hand in an emergency and capable of long journeys.

A well engineered series hybrid can get 100mpg+, so range is never an issue. Even if you just run it on fuel and cannot charge it on the mains - many live without off-street parking forcing them to park some distance from their home - it will be far more efficient and quiet.

* Is he a god?

Fusion Power: Polywell gets USD2m funding

Via Samizdata, CountingCats and Power and Control.

It is a small amount of money, granted, but sometimes fantastic engineering can be done with small amounts of money. Keeps it under the radar, gives focus, keeps the bureaucrats away, who are more interested in the delivery of progress reports than progress itself. This was one reason the US Navy kept their funding low and thus low profile.

Background: The Polywell fusion project, initiated by the late Dr Bussard, has the potential to create working ship and shore fusion power generators. In the Deuterium fuel model, it will produce practically no neutron, gamma or beta radiation - the stuff that crashes into your cells and kills you. It can be switched off almost instantaneously, with no long cool down or prospect of a China Syndrome or Chernobyl-style accident. If it scales properly, we can see the end of the Oil economy...and the "renewables" economy, too, for that matter, so no more ugly wind farms, no more food production taken to grab biofuel subsidies and no need for dams across the Severn that will disrupt the habitat. Most of all no more patronising control-freaks who in truth want us all to regress to living in mud huts on the Danube.

A Convenient Lie

Via commenter Jones on a post by DK, we see a roll-back in the all-pervasive power of the Religion of AGW.

As we know, AGW is the Enviro-mentalists Mad Uncle and has been locked up in the attic for a while now. He was used to scare the kiddie-winkies into believing anything and was so effective, a proxy was introduced - Climate Change - which was just as good at scaring thanks to the memory of the Mad Uncle but was far more flexible and needed fewer excuses for when reality did not match the myth. Of course, we have had a changing climate throughout Human history, but such details do not get in the way of rabid religions intent on subjugation, power and control, and that is what Governments, NGOs and flat-earthers covet and crave. It is therefore no surprise that such bodies have seized upon the Mad Uncle and then the proxy with such relish*.

Al Gore is going to have to make the biggest apology in history. I also want to see all those talking heads, all those government ministers line up and apologise, too. No regret - that is a Japanese mumble-swerve face-saving technique to avoid taking responsibility and admitting an error - but an apology and resignation. I suspect that there is going to be an army of people who will soon realise they have been taken for a ride. Suckered in. They will look back on their public pronouncements and realise they have humiliated themselves. The problem is with this digital age, all those statements now exist and can never be eliminated. Youtube and other such sites will be a place where the blatherings can resurface to haunt.

What is worse is that the kids will cotton on and there will be blood. Will they ever believe adults again? I hope the learn that this is a lie caused by vested interests, by those wishing to forcibly collectivise. You should know who they are.

Do we need to prepare for Climate Change? Hell yes we do. Rivers and coastlines. Floods, water supplies, power, navigation, insulation and most of all food production. We need to determine what might well happen and use risk, timeframe and probability-weighting to prioritise our activities. This needs to be addressed first before we ponce about with trying to "reverse" it, which is, frankly, impossible until India and China (and probably Brazil too) adopts technology not even established. 

*If you notice, most if not all the attempts to "control" or "reverse" Climate Change involves forcing people to hand over money, freedom or regress to some antediluvian existence. Preferably all three. The amount of rent-seeking in the sector is colossal.

Energy from low speed water currents

Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a means to extract meaningful amounts of energy from slow moving water.

The device absorbs the energy in vortices formed around an object placed in a water current. The innovator, Michael Bernitsas, had previously spent his time trying to mitigate the damage caused by these vortices as they swirled around submerged pillars, pylons and cables and induced harmonics and vibrations. He realised that there was energy in them thar vibrations and set about finding out how to harness them. The natural world already does - salmon use the energy from such vortices to assist their swimming upstream.

The prototypes have cylinders laid horizontally across the current flow. How simple is that? An added advantage is that the cylinders just oscillate up and down so are far less harmful to fish than great big turbines or propellers. The ability to operate in very slow currents means it would be very flexible. They expect 5.5cents/kilowat and 90cu ft per megawatt.

Can we stop building those ghastly wind turbines now?

Cheaper Biofuel

Biofuels have had a bad rap recently over  the concerns over food prices, and rightly so.

However, not all biofuels are created equal. The "easy" biofuels such as those from sugarcane sugar*, seed oils or corn starches impact food prices because they use the portion of the crop that would otherwise be used in food production. No surprise, because food is our fuel, so it is pretty obvious that this aspect would be the easiest or only part of a plant to be usable as fuel for machines.

However, this ignores the woody matter: leaves, stalks, bark. Wood is made of lignin, which, to many peoples' surprise, is in fact a very stable, complex polymer of glucose. Yep, it is, under all that, sugar. Because it is a very stable polymer, our digestive tract cannot extract meaningful energy from it. Bacteria can. Anyone on a high fibre diet will know that bacteria can convert woody material, the fibre, into methane gas...

Mankind has harnessed bacteria to break down lignin, but it has needed high temperatures and has not been highly efficient. 

However, the guys at Cobalt Biofuels appear to have devised a process to reduce the cost (and by that it means energy and waste) of biofuel production using the woody waste matter. Not only have they reduced the cost, but they have produced Butanol, which has a higher energy density, is more compatible with existing infrastructure and is far easier to handle than the more common biofuel output, ethanol. Ethanol is a bit scary, actually, as it is a colourless, odourless and transparent liquid. It looks, smells and, who knows, tastes like water - drink it and you will be unlikely to live long enough to discuss the merits of its complex lingering finish.

In all of this there remains, for me, a nagging doubt. If the process is developed, biomass may be removed from the cycle, even if it is usually burnt on site. To  me that suggests a change in the cultivation process, an impact. Such changes need to be understood and all the implications thought through - e.g. the need for more fertilisers etc. If biomass is removed entirely and not used elsewhere (this I doubt!) then biomass waste for biofuel production should have little impact. Alas, a cheaper process could mean more land turned over to switchgrass or other biomass crops, thus reducing potential food yields.

One good thing about biofuels is it has shown how Government meddling can create problems that would never have occurred. Governments have been subsidising biofuel crop production and up till now this has meant diverting food production into fuel production. We have seen how this can destabilise food prices, as it is an unnatural distortion. 

If biofuels are to make any sense, it would be produced from land otherwise not used for food production, not used for anything in particular, in fact. Biofuels can also be used first in places where their cleaner, less carcinogenic products of combustion may be at a premium, e.g. in domestic generators, food delivery vehicles and taxis**. In such cases I would wish it to just power a backup generator in a series hybrid, but then who expects common sense from ricebowlers who wish to keep their job at Toyota or GM designing cam lift profiles, eh?

* the distinction is important here.

** why we permit cities to be polluted by diesel vehicles is a mystery to me given all the other wibble going around. Taxis can easily be electric or plug-in series hybrid and B100 biodiesel produces hardly any particulates (soot), no sulphur and a far better balance of the other gasses.

EU: Out of Control

A very nice video explaining how the EU, far from helping the environment, is a major force in damaging the environment of Britain. 

Our environment, food prices and energy are under pressure.

Our energy independence has been severely reduced, yet the EU does not care, for it controls our energy policy these days, thanks to the treason of our politicians. The EU does not care if the UK is not energy independent or even "not dependent". Far from it, I suspect, as a country that cannot keep its own lights on is easy to manipulate.

The EU is not our friend, it is an usurper.

Toyota Plug-in Hybrid Prius is pathetic

Take a look here (video) for the trial of a plug-in hybrid Prius. I must say this really exposes the feebleness of this car's "green" credentials. This is "news"?

It has only six miles of electric range. Yes, SIX. It then takes 1.5 to 2 hours to recharge the battery.

The Prius has always been a monumental dud, but works as an eco ego trip for the owner, who can prance about in a cloud of smugness exhibiting how green they appear, but in truth they are not in the least. Dust-to-dust carbon output, if you worry about such things, is higher than a Hummer, due to the highly complex powertrain.

The Prius has a complex powertrain as it is a parallel hybrid, in that it has both the electric motor and petrol engine mechanically connected to the wheels which, in my view, overcomplicates matters enormously. The petrol engine runs when the electric motor is not powerful enough or you need more range than a trip to your, erm, nearest petrol station. In truth there is no need to have such a feeble electric motor, but I suppose if it were any more powerful the range of the Prius in electric mode would be even more pathetic. It is a shame, however, for such a feeble motor is, unfortunately, incapable of absorbing much in the way of regenerative power. The excellent Mini prototype by PML Flightlink, which I blogged about some time ago, showed what a series/plug-in hybrid could be and the true extent of the energy that can be reclaimed from braking. The Mini has four 160bhp motors, one in each wheel and no friction braking. The 640bhp is needed for the motors to absorb the energy peaks in braking, giving 200 miles range in electric-only operation. In other words the Prius is literally throwing away energy. Not only that, the Mini uses a 250cc motorbike engine to hum away in a corner somewhere to give it 900 miles in total range, such is the effectiveness of the regenerative braking, series layout and motor control technology. Remember, this Mini with a 900 mile range from a 250cc engine has 640bhp on tap. 

The lesson here is that a series plug-in with a small, efficient generator is far preferable to some complicated parallel dinosaur compromise like the Prius. There is no need to keep the petrol motor connected mechanically to the wheels unless you are in the thrall of the various Mafia that runs Engine Management Unit, transmission, brakes, cam profiles and exhaust modelling fiefdoms and related ricebowls - all of which will have little to do of an evening once the ideal steady speed of the generator is arrived at, for who needs a motor that is "responsive" and "flexible" with high revs but low down torque when all it needs to do is convert fuel into electricity as efficiently and as smoothly/quietly as possible? All these roles will become far less glamourous, boys, so get used to it. 

Talking of glamorous, the PML technology has been chosen for the new Electric Lightning. 

This is nothing fundamentally new in concept, for Ferdinand Porsche was involved in one of the first series-hybrid electric sports cars...back in 1908. It could do 70mph, faster than the Prius can today. What makes the Electric Lightning an advance is the light, efficient and highly intelligent hub motors, removing the need for friction braking and the safe, rapid-charging and dense-enough battery technology, which is getting better by the day.

If you want to really understand how people can move to plug-in hybrids, give them a vehicle that actually makes SENSE, otherwise you just skew the results to suit your own parallel agenda.

UPDATE: Patrick, in the comments, reminds us of the EV1 by GM. This is an interesting though depressing situation. GM had, IIRC, a majority shareholding in the battery company that had some nice patents around NiCad battery packs, giving a range up to 150miles. They sold that shareholding to Chevron. I suspect this was not part of an "oil conspiracy" directly, just that GM feared its servicing revenue would be whacked, and correctly, so it decided to sell on to the last company that would want to see the battery tech widely adopted. While this was going on, Panasonic produced batteries that either used or infringed patents now held by Chevron. These batteries were installed in a Toyota RAV4 EV, fully electric vehicle. It had 120mile range, costing around £2 to recharge. Yes, £2. Most of us could survive on 120miles for a commuter car and the RAV4-EV could be upgraded to contain a small on-board generator to take over when battery power flagged, i.e. 95% of our journeys would be electric with overnight recharging and the rare long trips would be assisted by the on-board generator turning the RAV4-EV into a series hybrid. Chevron sued Panasonic and Toyota and the RAV4-EV production was rapidly halted. The chap "liveoilfree" on Youtube has some vids of him trolling around in his 2 RAV-EVs and, in particular, reviewing the Prius and its barking mad powertrain.

Golden Age of Flying: Two contrasting comments

An article in the Telegraph today talks about the end of a golden age - the golden age of flying, brought about in part by the crash of Flight038 to Heathrow which, miracle of miracles, belly-flopped onto the edge of the runway instead of into the back garden of il Castillo di Thornhillaggio - situated near the border of Ealing and Chiswick, natch. It could just as well have landed a few miles up the road in even denser populated Southall, ruining the day just as intensely for my fellow West Londoners as it would have had for me.

I am biased. I declare an interest in wanting a new airport in the Thames Estuary, as I live in West London. I don't want to have a plane land in my garden and crumple my Apple tree and rose bushes*. The shed needs replacing, but that is not an excuse. An airport in the Thames would cut the impact of noise pollution upon people immensely. Yes, for Nature as a whole it just moves it a tad, but then most of the noise will be over water. Importantly the approaches would be too. Over water, not over row upon row of Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war terraces and semis**. Pollution would be dispersed over the Channel, not over London. London gets a vast new area well connected by transport links to build new housing - the old Heathrow site.

Back to the article, it basically talks of the lost golden age not just because of Flight038, but also due to restrictions on the horizon caused by carbon hysteria and synthetic costs created by the EU and other agents of World Government. Two comments leapt out at me. Polar opposites, if you pardon the expression.

The first, by a self-loathing, likey pinch-faced killjoy who needs to do us all a favour and log on to Bebo and get chatting...

Each Western baby selfishly conceived will have a "carbon footprint" over its lifetime equal to several thousand transatlantic flights.
Posted by Michael Purches, Abingdon, Oxon. on January 24, 2008 8:33 AM

So, Purches, be faithful to your belief and go stick your head in the oven, ok? Do us all a favour. Oh, and before you do that, cut off your sultana sized nads, roast and eat them so you need not worry about your DNA being used to produce selfish vile western carbon producing babies in future. Today would be nice.

The second is a cracker and I reproduce it here and give kudos to the writer, Ian May.

There is a golden age coming to an end: the golden age of global warming. The rise in surface temperatures over the past thirty years or so are as much apparent as real, these records being contaminated by the climatology community's refusal to take proper account of the urban development effect. The least bad measure currently of global temperature is the satellite reading of the lower troposhere. The recent downtrend in the chart on this referenced web page speaks for itself:
link
Incidentally, this decline in global temperature probably explains the shift of emphasis within Greenspeak from "global warming" to "climate destabilisation", or "climate impact". This is quite a smart move on the part of the socialists in the Green Trojan Horse as thanks to New Labour's ongoing assault on the educational tradition, not many people will notice the corollary. That is, anything we do beyond growing potatoes and hand basket-weaving, whether it results in temperature increases or not, shoves Mother Nature off her perch. This is axiomatically "bad", and activities thereof must be banned, or preferably regulated and taxed. (Regulated and taxed more, I should have said.)

Posted by Ian May on January 24, 2008 8:04 AM

Spot on. I wonder if Ian is a Libertarian?

Let us not allow the AGW creeps off the hook. Climate Change has occurred for 4billion years. Don't you miserable worms try and kid us that was what you were really on about you wretched Authoritarian scumbags!


* Noise is less of an issue, before you yell NIMBY. It is annoying, but not enough for me to demand the airport move, as I gain from being a 25mins drive or tube away. And before you say why drive if you have the tube, I do so because the intellectual pygmies who constructed the tube placed the stations as far as possible away from any of the terminals and put innumerable passages, stairs, lifts, gates and gratients between it and them.

**I know some greenies almost get a semi over the prospect of shutting down Heathrow, but not for the basic reasons such as safety, but for synthetic and soon-to-be-discredited reasons put out by a lying religion.

The Air Car Moves Forward!

A project I have been following for some time is the Air Car. It has been making progress and I am a happy bunny on more than one level.

The Air Car is an invention by a Frenchman, Mr Negre, it uses a lightweight but safe tank to store energy in the form of compressed air, produced via an electric pump. This is then released to drive a motor. As most kids educated before New Labour screwed up our schools and banished basic things like physics would know, when you compress something it heats up and when you decompress it cools down. The Negre innovation is to also have the decompressed air in the motor as the car runs absorb heat from the surroundings and so get a second bite at the cherry, i.e. it absorbs heat from the environment and then gains some additional pressure. This is used to assist in expelling subsequent decompressed air ready for the next charge.*

Tata is involved. India is a good place, I would say as it is highly likely the decompressed air would be able to absorb plenty of heat from the surroundings. Could probably provide a nice supply of air conditioning, too!

Newer models use full hybrid aspects, much as a very interesting Mini does, to provide an on-board fuel-powered compressor to extend the range even further. The article says up to 900 miles on a single gallon, but something there rings an alarm. Typo, I think - 900 miles on a single air tank + fuel tank, with 100mpg sounds more like it to me, unless the heat from the engine is to be used to assist in compression...maybe it is. Anyone?

What I like about it is, it is another step in busting the Antediluvian ambitions of the Sandalistas and Watermelon crowd who basically hate cars for being cars - the use of fossil fuels is a convenient stick, the real hatred I suspect is this personal private freedom and related aspects of individualism, "consumption" and rejection of the "egalitarian" herd/clay.

Go read the article.

* This is an example of simplicity that is obvious when explained yet is devilishly hard to realise beforehand and/or implement elegantly. I bet a number of you are saying "yeh so what, that's easy/obvious" - well, where were you, eh? Why didn't you do it? It is VERY HARD to invent/realise things like this. People who do not appreciate hard-won simplicity like this are the ignorant, unappreciative, contemptible swine.

Blueprint for a Groan Economy

The report is a beast (500+ small font dense pages). It would be great to get some bullet points from somewhere to see what exactly the report really suggests to do.

That there is no summary is a monumental red alert. Management Summaries are ESSENTIAL to enable the document to have structure, if only the for the benefit of the authors to see the overall message and to act as a framework for their thought. The readers need it to. It is all part of conveying the message - tell 'em what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you have told them, as the mantra goes.

By having such an inaccessible tome, the authors indicate that they do NOT want people at large to access their thoughts. They do NOT want wide scrutiny or to have to defend their views to all comers. They want this document to remain within a clique and to be discussed only by a select group. They want to spare themselves the trouble of raising the drawbridge by not bothering to lower it in the first place.

In trying to locate summaries and bullet points, the tips of the icebergs I perceived indicate rampant expansion of Statism, stifling bureaucracy and meddling interference. Moving authoritarianism from the centre to the regions or to localise authoritarianism is not to remove it, but shove it even closer into the faces of the population and hand power to amateur yet no less petty and zealous dictators. If this document was about freedom or liberty, about opening up and not about regulation and interference, it would not be so detailed and would almost certainly contain broad statements on intent.

An example is the document bemoans the lack of multi-use communities, you know, those sorts of places that were created BEFORE the State got involved in interfering in our lives and planning housing, towns and cities. This report seems to think that to reproduce them needs either more or a new kind of planning. Has it occurred to them that it happened in the long past because the State was NOT involved? Has it occurred to them that heterogeneous communities form organically and by themselves and have done so for millennia without Town Planners? No. When the patient is suffering, their remedy is more disease.

I smell a whiff of 1946, the heady aroma of Town Planning. Great for the control-freaks and those wishing to remain arbiters within the Establishment presiding over the spending of Other Peoples' Money.

In contrast, an example has popped out over the domestic flight tax as an indication of the "mutton headed factor" that is contained therein.

Too many domestic flights, they say. Bad for the environment they say. They suggest...tax the flights. This means UK efficiency goes DOWN. You are punishing taxing people who want to move faster and cheaper. This is plain daft.

The Roger way is: build more high-speed rail capacity so people CAN move faster and cheaper between centres. Europe has done this and seen domestic and short-haul flights dwindle. Precisely when the State could do some good - building large infrastructure projects to improve national efficiency and productivity and they prefer to pander to the rabid frothings of the retrograde lobby.

The document thus appears to be something from the 1940's and '50s but using the excuses and trendy language of the Green Religion of Unthought to give further force to its mindset.

That whiff and heady aroma appear to have been combined and cunningly obscured in this document by the pungent farmyard pong of the environazi's waterless privy. The document is not discussing "if" the State is involved everywhere, only "how".

p.s. see the Taxpayers Alliance for a sound response to the reports findings.

John Redwood: Right Diagnosis, bit fuzzy on the cure front

Reading John Redwood's article in the Telegraph was disappointing. It starts out promising but then does not deliver.

His diagnosis is correct. He detects the symptoms, identifies the disease but is a bit off target in my view for some of the remedies. He also does not articulate any real crystalline policy or mindset to move forward. It is not good enough to say 'privatise', for that is not enough. There is no point just swapping a State Monopoly for a private one. It is even worse, frankly, if badly done.

A couple of points he raises:

1. The school run. To me it is not an issue of public transport, but an over-supply of quality schools properly distributed. I say over supply on purpose. Over supply is THE way to ensure we have enough. If schools have space to tempt more kids and even more importantly their competitors have spaces to lure away THEIR pupils, then standards will be vigorously maintained. Plenty of good schools enforcing order and attitude will make walking or cycling to school both practical and safer. How do we get an over-supply of good schools? Vouchers and the dismantling of the LEA monopoly.

2. Railways. Some of the suggestions put forward are tricky. They ignore the issues in regard to mixing different kinds of rail traffic. Our trains are heavy because they share tracks with very heavy freight vehicles. This is for safety reasons. Imagine a road bus being shunted - a 14m double-deck crumple zone, or even a light rail car. The ideas presented would work on a new, isolated network. If you are going to isolate it, better to have a guided busway or a frieght version, both powered by electricity. If properly designed, such systems will allow buses and freight to easily move from the guided to normal roadways. Our ports should be the hubs for such guided freight routes, preventing the need for diesel tractor units to drag freight all the way to the port on the roads. With the right tractor units, they could perform the last miles from a 'guide rail head' on battery and/or series hybrid power.

3. Airports. I think I have outlined my view on what we need to do with England's main international hub here.

To me, the argument for privatisation does need to begin with showing where State monopolies cannot work effectively and to be brutal in showing where Private monopolies, PFI and other experiments do not work effectively. We need the "least worst" option. John Redwood's article does not land the punches I was expecting.

Still, I have not read the full report yet. Let us see what meat and what bones lie within.

p.s. I have a sneaking suspicion poor old JR is being lined up to be shot. Let John talk in the silly season, get slated, dent the polls, blame him and so Cameron the Cuckoo can oust another chick from the nest.

FibDumbs on Housing - more irrational dreaming.

Oh dear - The Fibberall Dumboldtwats have come up with another stream of irrational nonsensitude.

Sir Ming is a nice gentleman, but he really should stop listening to his party, as they are a bunch of morons, judging by this latest crop of ideas. I suspect in their impatience for results they did not wait for anything productive to grow, but just harvested the manure they spread shortly beforehand.

Sir Ming is right, sort of, when he says that Labour is ghettoising housing, leaving poor and vulnerable people living on large ‘sink estates’ which offered little hope or opportunity. He also said it was a national disgrace that one million children still lived in overcrowded accommodation and 130,000 children lived in temporary housing.

However, Sir Ming forgot to mention that it was not Labour that ghettoised people or created 'sink estates' per se. In my view it is the very concept of State-built/run/subsidised social housing that creates these problems. Sir Ming also forgets to mention the proportion of all these suffering children that were intentionally born into such conditions by their parent or parents and that the State actively encourages such births due to the prevailing mechanisms of Welfarism.

Sir Ming is, however, bang on when he says VAT should not apply to housing renovations, which are, in effect, necessities in most of the cases or if not they tend to increase Council Taxes. This is more an issue of taxation, not Social Housing, however.

Moving on to the other "ideas", we see they are strangers to reason.

Gerroff Moi Laaan'

He intends to allow local authorities to buy land zoned as farmland at farmland prices, re-zone it and then sell it on for a proft. This is almost jaw-droppingly naive, scandalous, corruptible, totalitarian hogwash. Local councils are bad enough without allowing them to get their greedy hands on land for redevelopment by their squalid golfing partners while taking a slice in to the bargain. On one level you can see that they have a point, for the council does get some form of payback for the increase in value of that land due to re-zoning but the mechanism and mode is so utterly ham-fisted and open to abuse. I have long considered Lib-Dems to be naive fools and this proves it yet again. Now, if the council built a tram line or electric trolleybus infrastructure - cables, transformers etc - to serve the land (note: not some poxy excuse of a bus service that will be withdrawn once the bunting is down) then I could understand more, for they would be seriously increasing the value of that land and integrating it into the community. However, as it stands the "idea" denies the original landowner its true value and tempts local councils to re-zone for fiscal purposes (which is polite) not community benefit. The scope for corruption is immense.

Would it not be better to allow land to be bought by developers of transport - rail, tram or trolley companies, for example - subject to local referendum, who then are the people to sell off the land for housing development once the infrastructure is in place? London grew like this. Surely we want people to live in houses with predictable, non-polluting forms of transport into centres of employment. Better still, build the housing right over certain stretches of the new railway and even over some stations. Hong Kong does this all the time. Each rail station becomes a massive high rise hub of housing, shops, offices. The MTR of Hong Kong works its assets hard and most benefit. Maybe it is indeed TfL that does the expansion into the Thames Gateway. They get the land, build the rail, tram, tube connections and develop the immediate station and air rights, then sell off the land around to fund the project. This might reduce some of the issues that happened around the Jubilee extension. If someone has a better idea, I am all ears!

Rental by Any Other Name

Another concept is equity sharing, but in this case the Lib-Dems want to not only control the price that the original property is sold at, but to also control the RESALE price too. This would mean, in effect, that once people are in such properties it is highly likely they will have to remain in such, limiting their choices in terms of purchaser and next home. They are unlikely to achieve "escape velocity" unless the housing market seriously crashes and then they would probably have achieved it anyway without the risk of a mortgage! Alas, this is a manifestation of do-goodery and patronising infantilisation of the population. It will simultaneously distort the market, imprison people and subject them to risks they would otherwise not encounter. They should be honest about what the true effect would be and just say they want to build Section Houses, Nursing Staff Quarters etc. for key workers and be done with it.

Communism by Any Other Name

The idea of spreading about the problem of sink estates has been bandied about by both NeueArbeit and the Lib-Dumbs. We already suffer from borderline Communism in planning where people are forced to build in "affordable housing" into their schemes which means the State has its dirty, interfering fingernails into each private housing project. This takes it further and seeks to spread out the sink estates like some perverse blend of homeopathic plague. Sink estates are not sinks because they are large, but because of the nature of some of the people in them and the nature of the relationship between the residents and their landlord, the State. Note that private Social housing rarely if at all becomes a sink estate. Spreading them about will not change the nature of the people, nor the landlord. In fact all it will do is make the total impact of the small number of dysfunctional residents more widespread. The State is an appalling landlord. "Social Housing" is by definition antisocial.

To resolve this:

• The Welfare State should be a safety net, not a hammock in which entire lives can be conceived, grow and then reproduce again.
• Housing to be provided mostly by the voluntary and private sectors where there is no "right" to housing, as all that "right" does is result in a hard, unwanted, unavoidable obligation on the taxpayer to provide it. If the obligation were truly desired, i.e. voluntary, then those individuals who wish to gladly pay money towards subsidised housing can fund the voluntary sector (OK?).
• Immigrants should not be provided State housing as they are, by definition, economic migrants and as such should be capable of looking after themselves.
• People who increase the size of their families while living in State housing either via additional children, marriage or the accumulation of "dependents" should not be considered for review of living space.
• Confirmed, granted Asylum seekers should be given time-limited assisted housing (say 6 months) until they are also economically active (which we are told they mostly are, right?) and then market rates should apply.
• We have many people not economically active including vast amounts of the 900,000 of Gordon's paper-pushing "salaried unemployed" whilst importing or at least allowing the inflow of labour. That needs to change.

The Lib Dem solution is like trying to cure dysentery by handing out nappies.

Fix the problem, not the symptom.

Question: Is Organic "Green"?

I wonder if anyone dares find out if Organic produce creates significantly more CO2 than "normal" farming?

If it does, expect to be deafened by the sound of knickers being twisted.

Crystalising My Mistrust of Econazism.

Snipped from a comment on a posting on the Bishop Hill Blog a couple of weeks ago (Hat tip: Devil's Kitchen)

I'm also not a climate research specialist, so would not comment on those aspects. I do know, however, that IPCC is an assessment of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, among other things. "Just because 2500 scientists agree". Well, you would trust a pilot to fly a plane, rather than ask the guy sitting down the end row without qualifications, wouldn't you?

Well, madam, if the pilots have baracaded themselves into the cockpit, pushed the stick forward and begun yelling "Allah Akhbar!" then my faith is in the old git at the back, even if he has helped himself to a couple of Johnny Walkers from a plastic cup.

How else can I express my deep distrust at the blind fanaticism of the climate Econazis?

The Green Religion Attacks Heresey

Here we have proof of the rabid frothing mouth that is Environazism. "Dozens" (should that be "Covens"?) of Climate Scientists are attempting to ban or significantly edit down the "Climate Change Swindle" DVD.

Thy hypocracy is staggering. It would be staggering even if the fraudulent, manipulative Gorezilla: Attack of the Disingenuous Icecores DVD was not being thrust upon young impressionable minds by our State Apparatus.

If the proof were clear and the objectives rational one would not need to attempt to ban contra-arguments. Michael Moore can curl out Farenheit 9/11, so why not this DVD?

hat tip: luckylucky via Samizdata.

Thoughts of Chairman Miliband

Further to my commenting on David talking authoritiarian rubbish (bin there, done that we are) I saw the documentary on Mao's bloody revolution. A blending occured.

Miliband encourages the formation of The Green Guard - earnest young types brainwashed in recycling and ecofascism. They carry aloft their "Little Green Books" containing the Sayings and Thoughts of Chairman Miliband. They denounce their own parents for not separating the paper from the card. They humiliate "carbon-roaders" in public with dunces caps and slogans, often with gratuitous beatings. They smash symbols of the old traditions of travel, freedom, individualism. Those who oppose The Green Guard are shipped off to the countryside to be "re-educated" amongst a bunch of bearded sandalistas and forced to empty the waterless earth toilet and collect pig manure for conversion into biomass fuel.

Once The Green Guard have ravaged the country and show signs of being a self-contained and autonomous upity organisation, Chairman Miliband will ship them off to the Sink Estates so they can "learn from the dependent underclass".

Bin there, done that we are.

More total nonsense from David Miliband who appears over-eager to gold-plate yet more EU Statist, authoritarian hogwash.

A bin tax. Of course, we see talking heads rabbiting on about how we are "running out of landfill" and we need to tackle or offset the "landfill tax" with "landfill credits". Er, excuse me - these concepts are entirely new and synthetic, a creation of the EU. Nice revenue earner. Nice way to control the population. Having a landfill tax means you need to find ways to reduce the tax and simultaneously pass it on to households and so some conniving scumbag has used this as an excuse to bug our bins.

Wheelie bins are totally incompatable with most homes. They are an eyesore. Any move to impose a volume tax will result in more fly tipping and cheeky sods trying to palm their rubbish off into other peoples' bins.

The best way is education, not fines and taxes. I don't need some fine to make me separate paper and glass but I will object seriously if some interfering little hitler wants to fine me because one particular week I have two sacks instead of one. The real issue is packaging and commercial/industrial waste, which I believe constitutes the vast majority of landfill volume.

Deal with this? Oh no, construction companies are best mates of the NeueArbeit Commissars.

BBC, the EU/Sociofascist/Statist Mouthpiece - Recycling.

The BBC is spinning the move to 14-day rubbish collections to be a boost to recycling (30% vs 23%...), utterly disregarding the fact that councils moving to fortnighly tend to introduce their enhanced recycling plans at the same time...I wonder why? Nice diversion, justification. The BBC is meant to be there to Fisk the hell out of these people, but I momentarily forgot - they ARE "these people"!

The reality is an increase in "bad smells, maggots and vermin". No change at New Labour head office then.

Heathrow: The State Is Out of Control

In a story here, we see a classic problem. Fix after fix, tweak, fiddle, botch, patch and munge just to keep something going that should be rethought or replaced. In this case, Heathrow.

Heathrow is in the wrong place.

Prevailing winds blow the fumes over London - this is why smelly and dirty industry was put into the East End.
Aircraft approach over densly populated areas, often across the entire stretch of central London.
There appears to be something in the soil that prevents engineers from building rail platforms anywhere near terminal buildings and vice versa.

Their answer? Expansion. Congestion charging. A tunnel for traffic fumes. All this to enable Heathrow to expand whilst remaining within EU directives.

Expansion: A new runway, more terminals. Results in a destruction of villages.
Congestion Charging: To push people onto public transport they say - anyone with more than 1 bag or in any way unfit is in deep trouble using public transport at Heathrow because it is such an utter dogs breakfast. Long walks, up down up levels and the slowest lifts in Christendom. Result - people pay more, Heathrow is less competitive, Government gets more unearnt, undeserved revenue.
Tunnel for Fumes: The aircraft make the fumes, so clean the road traffic. This is absurd beyond measure. This is like saying there is too much illegal gun crime, so ban legal handguns. Oh, they've done that. Figures.

And remember all this to enable BAA - a SPANISH private company to make even more money. It was bad enough when a BRITISH private company could get the government to dance! At least the profits would be booked in the UK before. No guarantee of that now.

The answer is simple and it solves many problems at once. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong would know the answer because the wise custodians of that place made some excellent decisions over their awkward, congested and busy airport at Kai Tak. Their answer was to build a new airport at Chek Lap Kok on an artificial island and link it to the city via a new toll highway for vehicular traffic (mostly high speed buses) and a dedicated ultra-rapid rail link from Central to the terminal. Passengers are disgorged, not to some subterranian dust trap miles from anywhere connected via a long, tortuous, badly signposted, drafty set of dingy corridors and broken lifts, but to a platform in plain view of the check-in desks on the way in. For arrivals, picking you up from a platform in plain view of and at the same level as the arrivals meeting area. It makes the "Heathrow Express" look like a caravan on the silk road.

London needs such an Airport. The best way IMHO is to build it anew in the Thames Estuary and link it to Central London via high speed express railway. It will be easier to protect from terrorism, fumes will disperse out to sea, aircraft will no longer need to approach over a city of 7m people, no land will be taken and it can be built to a high specification using all the good ideas of Hong Kong and other airports.

Heathrow can then be shut down or scaled back to a fraction of its size. Land can be freed for housing or industrial use, remembering that Heathrow has existing transport links and would make an ideal residential area for commuters into the City. Blight can be removed from swathes of West London freed from turbine drone at 90-second intervals.

But no, this Government is going to spend our money on propping up the monopoly and profits of a foreign-owned organisation and take even more of our money. It is like they are demanding their "cut" of the deal - "We'll help you expand Heathrow, but the Congestion Charge is OURS!".

Britian is made less competitive, more expensive, still under threat, more congested and still one of the ugliest and inconvenient major airports to arrive at.

What Gordon Brown Should Say This Budget

1: Flat Taxes, in particular a personal allowance of £12k so people doing a 40hr minimum wage job are under the banding. He won't because he loves to keep people dependent via "tax credits" and loves his social engineering. UKIP have made a reasonable fist of it so far. I think the rates can come down significanlty once it is running.
2: Own up to the massive off-balance-sheet debt. No, he won't do that, as this would expose him as the fraud that he is.
3: Reverse the Pensions "claw back", as old Labour would call this if the Tories did it.

In Education, I suspect Gordon will pledge to spend the same per child as the private sector and also impose new rules on Private Schools qualifying for charitable status, i.e. get his dirty fingernails into them so he can control what they do, who they take and how they teach them. His meddling may well ruin the schools, then he can say they are not value for money.

Fact is, if Gordon is willing to spend the same as the private sector, why not just let parents choose between private and State sector? As with taxes, Gordon loves to make people "grateful" and dependent and loves his social engineering. He knows people would flock to the private sector.

We will have "green taxes" but if Gordon was serious he would not have sold off Westinghouse part of BNFL to Toshiba, thus removing a lucrative advanced Nuclear Power Station technology provider. They could have cranked out power stations to remove our dependency on fossil fuels and thus reducing our carbon footprint to negligable levels. Dogma over prudence. Instead, they are going to crank out power stations for China and the profits go to Japan. The man is an ass.