Cost of Living Crisis

Is pot noodle safe to eat?

After Maguireā€™s head itā€™s the biggest container devoid of any substance on the planet.

Is that a tentative ā€œYesā€?

3 Likes

Not surprising - what that shows is that the coarse rice is consumed by lower income people, and they are shifting their overall consumption toward staples. I suspect consumption of coarse rice goes down in better economic times. Classic example of an ā€˜inferior goodā€™ in economics, something that has inverse relation between consumption and income.

2 Likes

In France, energy increases have been capped and are now running at 4% year on year. The French energy company EDF (largely state owned) sells energy to the UK - currently at a highly inflated price.

Profits from EDF are then mostly returned to the state and are utilised to subsidise the cost of energy for French consumers.

Basically the British people are paying for French energy consumption.

I am confused as to whether this is -

A) Levelling Up
B) Building Back Better
C) Releasing the UK from EU regulations
D) Getting Brexit Done

Maybe all 4?

3 Likes

Don`t get your energy from EDF :grin:

Not really highly inflated, they are selling at the (post-Brexit) post-clearing price of the EU IEM. Basically, the EU market clears, then additional power capacity is sold at the subsequent marginal price. There is an oversimplification there, because transmission capacity enters into that, but it is substantially correct. It is one of the really, really big questions about Brexit that never seemed to be answered. As far as I can tell, the UK (not sure if Ofgem or not) never really considered the import scenario, only the export scenario - and so chose a market position really meant for a country like Norway.

4 Likes

It gets better. The UK then effectively sold its energy security to EDF in the form of a mortgage fit delivery of Hinkley C and Sizewell. If they were to be finished tomorrow they would appear on our bills as well.

Sadly the UK has lost the nuclear expertise it had.

Thereā€™s also the plan to sell the next reactor to the Chinese.

Amazed to some of the forward price curves for UK electricity. At those prices, the price cap level is going to be inadequate. I have to wonder how much further the retail energy sector can go. There will almost certainly be another wave entering administration, likely in about three months.

The decision to cut back the pace of photovoltaic deployment now looks like absolute folly, the market price will be far above the breakeven price for PV power.

2 Likes

Pretty sure that was dropped some years back after Cameron failed to get a deal done. In the last couple of years the government has been pretty vocal on China and the threat it thinks it poses to national security.

2 Likes

It was folly to begin with, never understood it apart as to satisfy the investors (big oil companies mainly) in windmills.

Hitachi (Japan) were in line to design and build a new reactor at Wylfa (North Wales) a year pushing 2 years ago but pulled out at the last second.

Iā€™ve not heard a sensible reason why as yet. They left quite a few people embarrassingly hanging on that one.

I think thereā€™s still plans to proceed with that development.

Itā€™s been in the pipeline you years, might need a quick google to see if it was cancelled or just put on hold?

China has stakes in both Sizewell and Hinkley but both are EDF designs and operated. They were in line for a new reactor at Bradwell but with Huawei etc. nothing done as yet.

That said given this governments ability to scream for independence on every level while sacrificing any say it has in aspects of that independence and then signing over huge chunks of UK infrastructure to foreign investment would not be a surprise to me.

1 Like

I worked on that project as my then-employer was a government contractor on the project. It had nothing to do with the NHS and everything to do with the government appointed non-clinical bureaucrats who picked wrong providers of software whose project was based on a small area of the US. It could never scale to meet the demands of the NHS.

2 Likes

Why do I immediately suspect that the system they chose is owned by a company with links to the government?

1 Like

Donā€™t know the details but someone definitely bought the companyā€™s over-confident claims. When they couldnā€™t deliver, to the best of my memory, one of their founders committed suicide. The company had to declare bankruptcy

1 Like

Dear me, thatā€™s bad. Potentially quite scandalous too.