Bruce wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:44:28 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Bruce wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 22:59:50 +0100, "Falco"
wrote:
Six billion pounds of cuts to come - now I wonder where that is to come
from

You're wrong. The public spending cuts needed are of the order of
£60 billion to £70 billion per year for at least the next three years.

Labour wouldn't admit to it publicly, but Treasury documents show that
Alastair Darling had already planned cuts of £62 billion a year
starting from April 2011.

£6 billion is just the start, and it is just a tiny fraction of what
is needed to get the economy out of the mess that Gordon Brown left
behind, and told a pack of lies about to conceal it from voters.

That's an average cut of £1000 a year per head of population.

Compare and contrast with the total debt of around £50,000 per head of
population. IIRC

The real issue is that Labour 'Investment' wasn't 'Investment' it was
juts 'spending'


Absolutely. And most of the spending was not value for money. NHS
spending more than doubled yet the resulting increase in output
(patient treatments) was only 17%. Most of the money went on large
pay increases and the employment of an army of administrators with no
prior knowledge of health care.


Anyone can claim they invested money in a night out with a prostitute.
But it isn't investment, because there is no pay back.

It does however 'create jobs' for ladies of the night...


Interesting analogy. ;-)


Investment that really does create jobs that generate real wealth is
money spent on things like nuclear power stations, tax relief for export
manufacturing, education that actually teaches people how to think, and
solve problems and do something useful, and the like.


I's agree with all of that except nuclear power stations. Nuclear
generated electricity is the most expensive form of power generation,
costing even more than wind power which has to be very heavily
subsidised. Nuclear doesn't generate wealth, it consumes it.


No, its cost competitive with anything else and 3-10 times cheaper than
wind.

Typical CANDU figures based on a 40 years span and reasonable interest
rates and 15% decommissioning are about 2-4p a Kwh. Depending on the
profit/interest rate.



The LibDems are opposed to nuclear power. The Tories are opposed to
subsidising it. The generating companies want hefty government
subsidies as in France and other countries, or they won't build new
nuclear stations.

No, they don't. They want a guarantee that the policies wont be changed
to suddenly make it impossible to run them, as they did in Germany. Or
they wont get saddled by ridiculous standards of decommissioning.

Nuclear power is highly competitive and should be very profitable, in a
boring long term sort of way. IF its not handicapped by totally
unrealistic demands about how its operated and how the power stations
are finally shut down.

We are already critically dependent on imported gas
and the Tories proposed to build more gas fired stations to fill the
energy gap Labour has created. Where do we go from here?

Settle on a set of rules for nuclear, argue the case for coal, make the
decision and then step back and let private investment build the things.

And stop subsidising windmills. Or subsidise nuclear to the same extent.