On 14/12/12 13:47, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Other Mike wrote:
On 14 Dec 2012 12:42:17 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2012-12-14, Nightjar wrote:
On 14/12/2012 12:05, John Williamson wrote:
...
In the '70s, '80s and '90s, we could have used the leeway that our
massive reserves of coal, oil and gas gave us to institute a
programme of nuclear power and some renewable sources.

Instead, we had the "dash for gas", used up all our resources
building gas fired power stations and stupidly closed the coal mines
for political reasons...

They were going to go anyway. It was cheaper to ship coal from
Australia than to get it from British mines.

Precisely. Simple economics.

With emphasis on simple.

Quite. Thatcher realised there was enough North Sea oil and gas to get
through any possible time she'd still be prime minister. Beyond that
nothing mattered.

To be fair, politicians - even half decent ones, and I think she was
half decent - have their hand full solving the problems their
predecessors have left, never mind looking ahead too far. One of the
things I have decided is that unlike the green fantasists, the world is
actually too complex to make it worth having more than contingency plans
for a few decades ahead.

In my time running companies I learnt to be very astsurte in delaying
decisions about things, on the basis that around 60% of all decisions
would be utterly irrelevant by the time the next board or management
meeting happened. If an issue made it to three board meetings in a row,
then generally it really was important, and generally by that time the
answer was a no-brainer.

Its getting that way now with energy. the answer is a no-brainer.
Fracked gas coal and nuclear. The problem is there are a lot of people
who have less than no brain at all.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.