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I am deeply concerned about the ramping up in rhetoric about Iran’s imagined nuclear weapons programme. I say “imagined” because there is no evidence pointing towards Iran doing anything other than they say they are doing – following a civilian nuclear power programme.
In fact, this bluster has nothing at all to do with the power of atoms, peaceful or otherwise. From my point of view, it’s all about controlling the price of fuel. |
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Economic sanctions against Iran are being considered on the basis of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and activities, and this I would consider highly deceitful. The “international community” may well impose further trade embargoes on Iran, but the underlying reason for such action has nothing to do with nuclear suspicion. I believe that applying economic sanctions against Iran is all about forcing Iran to export more fossil fuel – principally Natural Gas – and to do so cheaply. In fact, there is a two-pronged assault on Iran’s energy sovereignty taking place – not only are economic sanctions already in place, there are calls from the highest top table for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. People have been cheering this on because at first glance it looks like a carbon control policy, but in reality it will lead to Western economic occupation of Iranian hydrocarbons – an occupation, it is hoped, to be accomplished without finding some excuse for a military intervention. |
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Author: Jo
 | Here we go again – time to compare apples and oranges :-
So when will solar power attain “grid parity”, then ? Renewable electricity generation plant has to be paid for up-front, remember, whereupon it becomes a asset. Conversely, anything that burns coal, oil or Natural Gas remains a liability, despite its ticket price and longevity, owing to the price of the fuel. |
 | The scaffolding’s up.
As long as some solar photovoltaic engineers turn up at 08:00 tomorrow morning with some panels, I shall start to believe it’s actually going to happen. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get my paperwork processed before the feed-in tariff cut-off deadline of 12th December – the only thing that pushed the economics into the realm of the possible for me. Some may ask – why have solar panels fitted in November ? |
| My answer – I ordered them in July, but the global solar PV industry really wasn’t ready to take my order back then, despite seeing cold, hard, cash from me up front.
By Friday, I might be one of the UK’s new power stations. My neighbour four doors down is impressed – and I haven’t even got a system up there yet. | |
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Carbon Capture and Syngas
Back in the 1970s they were expecting global cooling – of the economy. There were oil shocks and shocking prices, and petrochemists beavered away, sweating over test tubes the size of football fields, whisking up synthetic fuels.
It was not the first time that the world had tried to synthesise liquid vehicle fuel. Hitler famously did it during the Second World War, and had it not been for Bergius and Fischer-Tropsch, Nazi Germany would have collapsed much sooner under the anvil of global economic sanctions. I mean, the history books insist the multi-pronged military assault was responsible for the Victory in Europe, but the final push would never have succeeded without the suspension of energy trade.
Various syngas and synfuel projects have continued in various places, mostly America, and although the first plants used coal and Natural Gas to make other things, these days the emphasis is on biomass.
We can expect to see a dramatic rise in the amount of Biogas and Bio-syngas produced over the next few decades, along with renewably-sourced hydrogen. It will all get fed into the global syngas refineries, and out will pop power, vehicle fuel and chemistry.
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Solar FIT to Bust #5
| Germany can do it, but not the British. The Collected Republic of the People can install solar power with great will and nerve, but not Johnny English.
Let’s be clear here – the people in Scotland have a vision for future Renewable Energy, and so do many people in Wales and Ireland, but it appears English governance listens to fuddy duddy landowners too readily, and remains wedded to the fossil fuel industry and major construction projects like nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage. |
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| What precisely is wrong with the heads of policy travel in Westminster ? Do they not understand the inevitable future of “conventional” energy – of decline, decimation and fall ?
It really is of no use putting off investment in truly sustainable and renewable power and gas. There are only two paths we can take in the next few decades, and their destination is the same. Here’s how it goes. Path A will take the United Kingdom into continued dodgy skirmishes in the Middle East and North Africa. Oil production will dance like a man with a stubbed toe, but then show its true gradient of decline. Once everybody gets over the panic of the impending lack of vehicle fuel, and the failure of alternatives like algal biodiesel, and the impacts of a vastly contracted liquid fuel supply on globalised trade, then we shall move on to the second phase – the exploitation of gas. At first, it will be Natural Gas. But that too will decline. And then it will be truly natural gases. As gas is exploited for vehicles, electricity will have to come from coal. But coal, too, is suffering a precipitous decline. So renewable energy will be our salvation. By the year 2100, the world will run on renewable electricity and renewable gas, or not at all. |
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I arrived at the end of the Peace Pledge Union remembrance gathering in Tavistock Square. I spoke with Professor Paul Gilroy of the London School of Economics. “All the war-mongering this year”, I complained, “I can’t stand it. The Libyan assault – it wasn’t even about Gaddafi.”
He asked after my interests in peace, and I described my ambition for renewable energy. The only way we can have peace and security is to have distributed energy solutions : homegrown climate-protecting energy in each country. |
| I paid my silent respects at the Conscientious Objectors Stone. White poppies placed on the memorial were blown to the ground by the humid breeze, and lay there, fallen, with the leaves. The fallen. Although it was unusually warm for the time of year, the day was quite grey, but punctured by hopeful, weak sunshine.
I sat down on a park bench to meditate on the poems chosen for the day, facing the British Medical Association, recalling how its stone facade was sprayed with innocent and misguided human blood on the day of 7th July, 2005. I was sitting under the weavework of the Hiroshima tree. I saw a woman making her way towards the plaque under the tree. She was carrying a movie camera. I knew why she had come. She saw my white poppy, and realised I could answer her enquiry. “Is the peace meeting here at 2.30pm ?” I explained it had been at 12.30. I invited her to sit down on the bench next to me, so we could share. |
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Solar FIT to Bust #4
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Rooftop Solar : Summer Highs
Image Credit : Intelligence Squared |
George Monbiot is right about a lot of things, but on rooftop solar power, I believe he is wrong.
Yes, he’s right that solar photovoltaic systems are being incentivised more than other micro-generation, but there are several good reasons for that. For a first, the unit price of an adequate rooftop solar power system is in the region of the price of a car. Most people use finance schemes to purchase cars, with monthly charges for example. |
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Similar schemes are not available for solar PV, where you have to borrow the whole amount for the system up-front – or take it from a savings account if you’re lucky enough to have one. It is the sheer size of the cost of home solar that means that people won’t do it without subsidy. The one overriding concern of people when I ask them about what green energy they could consider buying, is the size of the initial outgoings. |
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Renewable Gas : Balanced Power
People who know very little about renewable and sustainable energy continue to buzz like flies in the popular media. They don’t believe wind power economics can work. They don’t believe solar power can provide a genuine contribution to grid capacity. They don’t think marine power can achieve. They would rather have nuclear power. They would rather have environmentally-destructive new oil and gas drilling. They have friends and influence in Government. They have financial clout that enables them to keep disseminating their inaccuracies.
It’s time to ditch the pundits, innuendo artists and insinuators and consult the engineers.
Renewable Gas can stand in the gap – when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine and the grid is not sufficiently widespread and interconnected enough to be able to call on other wind or solar elsewhere.
Renewable Gas is the storing of biologically-derived and renewably-created gases, and the improving of the gases, so that they can be used on-demand in a number of applications.
This field of chemical engineering is so old, yet so new, it doesn’t have a fixed language yet.
However, the basic chemistry, apart from dealing with contaminants, is very straight-forward.
When demand for grid electricity is low, renewable electricity can be used to make renewable hydrogen, from water via electrolysis, and in other ways. Underused grid capacity can also be used to methanate carbon-rich biologically-derived gas feedstocks – raising its stored energy.
Then when demand for grid electricity is high, renewable gas can be used to generate power, to fill the gap. And the flue gases from this combustion can be fed back into the gas storage.
Renewable gas can also be biorefined into vehicle fuels and other useful chemicals. This application is likely to be the most important in the short term.
In the medium-term, the power generation balance that renewable gas can offer is likely to be the most important application.
Researchers are working on optimising all aspects of renewable gas and biorefinery, and businesses are already starting to push towards production.
We can have a fully renewable energy future, and we will.
| Jeremy Leggett of SolarCentury is just one of the sunshine power leaders begging the UK’s Coalition Government to hold fire on drastically cutting the state subsidies, early.
Me, too, in my own way, I have been trying to address the Cabinet, through my Member of Parliament, who happens to be a Minister. I took the trouble to hand this letter in by hand at the House of Commons – or rather – the place where mail and post gets X-rayed before delivery, these security-challenged times we live in. |
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| To: Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP
1st November 2011 Re: Feed-in tariffs for domestic solar photovoltaic systems Dear Iain, I am writing to alert you to problems I have been experiencing in arranging an installation of a solar photovoltaic power generation system on my roof at home. If the installation does not go successfully, I expect I shall be one of several of your constituents who have been let down by the start-stop nature of the Coalition Government’s support for the advancement of this vital small-scale renewable energy. I am therefore asking for your support as my democratic representative in addressing this issue in Parliament. As you and I discussed in your surgery meeting a few months ago, increasing British solar power generation capacity is a highly desirable goal. For a number of reasons, solar generation is still expensive, not least because of the costs of hiring fitters and technicians. Yet as you yourself recognise in your role, increasing employment is for the benefit of all. The first phase of development of virtually all energy technologies since firewood and horsepower have required the support of the state and the financing of large research facilities. Eventually, the energy technology can stand unaided and compete in the marketplace, but that initial incubation is vital to its widespread deployment and creating the economies of scale in the production of equipment. |
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Conversations about small scale solar photovoltaic panel electricity generation continue on the Claverton Energy Research Group online forum.
You have to be prepared to dodge flying nuclear trolls, but apart from that you too can contribute, as long as you have an in-depth knowledge of the price of everything in the UK electricity generation network. |
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Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, Do you think it’s possible that nobody is immune to emotional reactions to the fate of the solar power industry ? For example, you say, “I find it most frustrating that others do not even attempt to contest the factual statements or assertions I make on the basis of evidence, but simply revert to the emotive and subjective.” And yet in the very preceding paragraph you say, “…the religious diatribe of the PV industry”, which some could validly claim is an emotive and subjective statement. You seem to be quite married to the idea that the sole focus of assessing the solar PV industry should be the differential pricing between installed cost and module cost. I’m not going to argue numbers with you, but let’s take a look at money questions, if that is your sole concern. You do not appear to take into account peripheral costs, such as the cost of the electronics necessary to hook a home solar system into the grid, nor the employment costs, nor practical details such as the cost of scaffolding. |
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I went to a film screening at Portcullis House yesterday, a kind of extension of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. The event was hosted by the APPCCG, the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, and the German Embassy. I had no qualms in accepting refreshments from the German Embassy. They offered jammy Danish pastries with coffee and tea. Very civilised, and loaded with fat and sugar. |
| We were treated to a showing of a fabulous film by Carl-A. Fechner and company, “The Fourth Revolution : Energy Autonomy“, which will soon be released on DVD with English sub-titles. I highly recommend watching it and reflecting on its proposals.
In the shuttered room, I was sat wedged between Caroline Lucas MP, Joan Whalley MP and Paula Owen, energy consultant who was the lead coordinator on the online ActOnCO2 carbon calculator for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. During the inevitable technical hitch with the Microsoft Windows platform to get the DVD restarted after it had paused (solution : turn it all off and turn it all on again), I leaned over and shook Caroline Lucas by the hand. “Thank you”, I said. “What for ?” she asked. “Everything you’re doing.” |
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With almost daily updates on the climate change and energy crises, it seems like we should convert all our power generation and fuel systems to renewable resources. As of yesterday. It would seem that sooner rather than later is the best timeframe for any adjustment and renovation of energy systems. |
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The current debate in the United Kingdom about state subsidies to solar photovoltaic electricity generation systems is strongly focused on financial aspects, but really should be centred on pragmatism. Privatisation of electricity generation has resulted in decades of under-investment. Many power stations and grid components needs updating or replacing. This needs to be done soon, as the Regulator Ofgem has reported in their “Project Discovery”. With such a short time to renew electricity generation, it would seem wise to adopt both a top-down and bottom-up approach, by investing in a range of electricity production systems of all scales. Yet there is a remarkable intransigence in the power industry. Those players with the access to credit and the capital that have the capacity to invest in new installations are simply not budging. |
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My nuclear devotee correspondent continued to press his questions, so I offered him some more replies. Part of me suspects he was personally behind the gush of comments on my little web log by the Thorium Trolls, so he might be trying to waste my time, but hey, a frank exchange of views can be productive, so let’s try. |
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To: Jo first – this is not “disinformation” – these are questions and very reasonable ones at that and secondly just conceivably the questions might be “mis-informed but are clearly not “disinformation” – I am genuinely interested, as are most people, in getting the best solution – this one puzzles me and I would like to know more To address the points 1 – I was commenting on the specifics of solar which elude me – the reference you give seems to me is a broad comment on renewables. It provides little hard information – so can you please be a little more specific as to the evidence of our need? 2 At least we agree that the present aggrieved sector is mainly building (and yes I think they have been let down) – but exactly how do you see the solar industry as having the potential to benefit us technologically – when at least for the moment people can buy across the world? I see other areas – tidal for example where we have a huge advantage but not solar. 3 solar cells have a life – and if the life is exceeded by the “payback” then it seems to me they are loss makers – “payback” in this context seems to me a bit of a misnomer 4. You write “everybody pays, but the amount is not that large, and the economic knock-on benefits from a subsidy to homeowners is enormous” – that of course is true if the numbers are small – but surely if everyone had the facility then electricity would hugely more expensive – and what exactly are the benefits and how do they appear? As I see it XXXXXXXXXXXXX’s points seem good ones and annoying as it is to some of us (me included) who were planning Solar the logic seems sound – but I am happy to be shown otherwise. |
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Exchange With Nuclear Devotee
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I have been in e-mail correspondence with a nuclear power devotee. He had the cheek to question the solar power industry by dismissing it as merely a construction project. What ? A nuclear power fanatic accusing another technology’s industry of being a construction project ? Of all the energy technologies out there, nuclear power has to be the granddaddy of all construction projects. And the neat trick they pull ? They never pay to clean up after themselves. That’s an uber-subsidy right there. But then, there’s the top-up insurance perhaps being offered by the state. And the “carbon floor price” or guaranteed payments under “contract for difference”. The nuclear power industry has been lapping this all up. They want the conditions to be right for them to “invest” in the UK. More like “dump”…Anyroad, I digress. Here’s part of the dialogue :- |
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To: Jo Abbess 1. why does the country need solar power? – we are at a very high latitude so it does not seem the ideal renewable to use 2 What sector is being grown? The sector seems to me mainly building rather than tech |
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Letter to my Solar Installer
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I made up my mind to be firm. So I just sent my solar installer an e-mail… Subject : Problems with installation at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Re: Contract for a solar photovoltaic system at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, |
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On 22nd July 2011, I completed paying you a deposit of £ 2,980.78 on a solar photovoltaic system. You set an installation date of 25th August 2011, and demanded a second instalment of £ 5,216.37, which I paid on 5th August 2011. You are in possession of £ 8,197.15 of my money. However, despite this fact, and despite having rebooked my installation date for 13th September 2011, it is now 1st November 2011, and I still do not have a solar photovoltaic generating system installed on my roof. I don’t know of any other business where people are asked to put down this kind of money so far in advance of receiving the actual goods. I understand that there have been problems with sourcing the components of the solar system design we agreed on, and I have been patient, not wishing to ruin your supply chain finances. However, I am now no longer patient, and I will no longer accept delays. Having missed all the benefits of solar power during the summer, I now find that the UK Government has decided to pull the rug out from underneath the home solar industry on 12th December 2011, and that I am at risk of missing all the benefits of the full rate Feed in Tariff, as outlined in our contract of July. I would be happy to agree with you an alternative solar system design from parts you can more easily get hold of, if it means that you can help me meet the full feed-in-tariff deadline. You have asked me to accept an installation date of 18th November 2011. I need you to know that if I do not have a working solar system of an appropriate design for the Feed in Tariff on my roof by the close of business on 18th November 2011, and I do not have a green MCS certificate in my hand from you, and the intaller certificates on that same date, I shall consider you to be in breach of our contract, and I shall be demanding the return of my deposit and second instalment, in full, to be in my bank account by 21st November 2011. A copy of this letter will be sent to my democratic representative. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Regards, Jo Abbess I received an Out of Office e-mail reply, so I immediately phoned the office to see if anybody was actually still in work. The helpful office manager said, “Is that Jo ? Your parts will be delivered on Wednesday”. “But”, I said, “the engineer told me that the parts would be delivered today, Tuesday. That’s already another delay…” And then I heard those ominous words. “Sorry. Can we call you back later ? We’re all just about to go into a meeting…” | |
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Poor dear Greg Barker MP. As he attempted to answer questions in the House of Commons today on his disastrous decision to cut the solar photovoltaic feed in tariff, his face became progressively redder. His temper clearly became frayed as he got quite cross, and asked female Labour Members of Parliament to calm down, and even asserted that one question from a female opposition MP was “hysterical”, which I think was borderline sexist. |
| For some reason, nobody asked the Department of Energy and Climate the basic question – why don’t you increase the Feed in Tariff budget, instead of trying to whittle down the pence paid per kilowatt hour produced ? The Feed-in-Tariff scheme is working really well at the moment. It’s preventing the country having to subsidise the construction of several new power stations, and it has been providing, until now that is, new jobs and economic productivity. | |
| They may have been BESTed, but the climate change denier spooks and ghouls are still fluttering about like deranged rabid bats. Here is a draft of a letter I am considering sending to somebody in an organisation under which I serve… | |
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31st October 2011 Dear XXXXXXXXXXX, It seems to me that you are labouring under several false impressions of the consensus in science regarding global warming and climate change. For example, you do not appear to accept that global warming is taking place, a fact that is evidenced by over a century of data. And as another example, you do not appear to accept that global warming is causing climate change, a scientific reality evidenced by countless studies. However, I’m not going to guide you to the peer-reviewed science for those points. All I want to do in this particular communication is offer you a popular critique of one of your key arguments, and challenge you to check your sources. |
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Today, the Department of Energy and Climate Change of the Coalition Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government of the United Kingom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland made two announcements. The first was to tell us that over a 1,000 jobs would be created in the construction of two new centralised power plants by very large energy companies, who will almost certainly receive generous state financial support. |
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The second was to tell us that the full feed-in-tariff for home solar power installations would be pulled early, effectively meaning that 1,000s of jobs will be lost in the small-scale energy companies. The very generous full-rate Feed in Tariff that was expected to be granted until April 2012 persuaded many individuals and communities to borrow money to purchase solar power installations. People have been waiting for months for their systems, as demand has been so high. With the rug pulled from under this deal, many people and local power groups will now be out of pocket. Worse still, they could also lose deposits, if their installers become insolvent because high numbers of customers demand their money back. Greg Barker MP, of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, borrowing extensively from Gordon Brown, wrote in The Guardian newspaper that he wanted to see the end of boom and bust in the solar power installation sector. Obviously, he prefers just to see the bust part. Well, me too, I’m going to make an announcment today. It is clear from today’s British energy policy news that the Government favours big business over small enterprise. All the little people, the individuals with little spending power, and powerless opinions, do we ever have the chance to really change the spending decisions on energy in this country ? Here is my proposal. Don’t send me your money. But do send me your pledges. If you have £50, £500, £5,000 or £50,000 that you want to spend on small-scale renewable power investment, tell me. Save the money in an ethical bank, and send me an e-mail telling me you pledge to spend this money on community or local renewable energy installation. I will keep an online list updated with the sum total of potential investment money to be dedicated to small renewable energy projects. And when the figure reaches a potent amount, for example £500,000 or £5,000,000, I will gather a team to begin a dialogue with other investors, engineering firms, energy firms, financial institutions and the Government demanding appropriate structures for directing that money most efficiently into distributed renewable energy. Community groups need to have control of their bills, and generating electricity for themselves is a way forward. Transition Town energy projects want to make power at home rather than buy it from abroad. Householders want to support the national move towards renewable energy, so that we don’t need to have our taxes raised to pay for new costly nuclear power plants, or expensive Carbon Capture and Storage. Local power works for everyone, even the big energy companies. Large power companies prefer local grid generation as it prevents them having to load the main grids by running increasing costly fossil fuel plant on standby, and it makes it easier to load balance regional grids by having a number of local generators. Distributed power generation, on peoples’ roofs, on the tops of schools, hospitals and Town Halls, this is how to protect the UK from the rising costs of importing progressively more fossil fuels. Distributed power generation can be efficient, and very low carbon, and be a personal and community response to the risks of climate change. Small scale local power can create a million good quality jobs. Don’t wait for the Government’s Green Investment Bank. I predict it will be underfunded and less-than-optimal. Let’s save money with ourselves, the distributed way. Here’s the first personal pledge :- Jo Abbess : My personal pledge to distributed UK renewable electricity generation is £5,000. I am holding this money in an ethical account until an appropriate cooperative project is agreed by the Distributed Renewable Energy Bank. Join me. | |
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[ UPDATE : The full feed-in-tariff cut-off date has now been put back a week to 12th December 2011. Apparently that’s up for consultation. A consultation that closes on 23rd December 2011. ] |
| Once again the UK Government has failed to understand the Laws of Microeconomics and the need for consistency in energy policy. Once again, the nascent solar power industry in the United Kingdom will undergo disastrous reconfiguration. On Monday, it will probably be announced that the Feed in Tariff for small photovoltaic systems will be cut in half for new installations. That’s bad enough, but this widely-anticipated subsidy review would have a cut-off date of 8th December 2011.
Wait for the howls of frustration. Since the Chancellor George Osborne, the “Vicious Smirker” as some have it, appears to have no idea what will happen by bringing forward the cut-off date from April 2012 to December 2011 (or has every idea and just wants to make everyone suffer) and since I blame him personally for everything that is fiscally disastrous in this country (because it makes so much sense to have one target to concentrate all ones opposition upon), here’s the draft of an e-mail :- Dear, no, expensive, George (and I’m calling you “expensive” because you are costing this country a lot of economic woe), Since this is Monday 31st October 2011, and I expect the Department of Energy and Climate Change to be announcing a major, early reduction in the Feed-in-Tariff for solar power, may I be the first to congratulate you for destroying the small-scale solar power industry in the United Kingdom. I’m holding you personally responsible for this decision, as you hold the pursestrings of the nation, and you have well-reported but completely uninformed opinions about renewable energy, mirrored accurately by the faceless gentlemen of the press. Your total lack of perception about the impact of this decision does not excuse the fact that you will be directly responsible for the loss of high technology UK companies and the subsequent unemployment. On the plus side, you will be fulfilling your own prophecy about the low growth potential of renewable energy; but on the negative side you are going to make a lot of people very irritated. I can hear the faint rustle of votes being withdrawn as we speak. Your failure to understand the wealth creation and genuine long-term assets that renewable electricity and renewable gas can bring to this country means that you are unFIT to be in charge of energy policy subsidies. In my humble, aggrieved opinion. Here’s what an almost immediate cut in the feed in tariff will achieve. I’m basing this on my own individual circumstances, just to give you a flavour of the pain you are inflicting on your countrymen and women. |
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The Revolution Is Here
| Sorry to say, but I think the people camping on the streets at @OccupyLSX and other places are not the real revolution. The real revolution is in energy. Democratisation of energy is the future – distributed, multi-level production systems, integrated pan-continental networks.
What ? Power to the people ? This is why the energy companies don’t like it so much, and why the corporate masters of the developed countries, and their shareholders, don’t want to have people believe in renewable and sustainable energy. | |
| This is why the newspapers are full of people disparaging renewable energy – journalists and commentators who know nothing about energy, who are not engineers and who don’t know who thought their ideas for them first. Wake up, media people, the future of energy will be zero carbon and fully of the people.
A little unauthrorised translation of what I could pick up from the trailer of a 2010 film (sorry, my German listening comprehension is very rusty) : “We are awash in energy. We are dependent on energy. How much energy is left for us ? Have we enough energy for a revolution ? How much must we pay for power ? Why must California nearly use as much electrical power as Africa ? (French) “We have this enormous potential – with the youth, the riches of Nature, the trees, the biomass, agriculture…but there is no progress…the catalyst is not there. And that’s electricity”. Do we need the big energy companies ? (German) “…energy concerns will become democratic…” The fourth revolution. Energy Autonomy.”
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Occupy your mind #7
| So, after rumours and quashings of rumours, Giles Fraser has resigned as canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, “resigned in protest at plans to forcibly remove demonstrators from its steps, saying he could not support the possibility of “violence in the name of the church”…Fraser, a leading leftwing voice in the Church of England, would resign because he could not sanction the use of police or bailiffs against the hundreds of activists who have set up camp in the grounds of the cathedral in the last fortnight.” |
But just why did Giles Fraser resign ? What has it achieved ? What could it possibly achieve ? Now he’s no longer in the Cathedral organisation he cannot influence what happens. What pressures has he had to endure behind the scenes that gave him no option but to jump ? Somebody I know has been praying that there would be heavy rain in London, just so the conditions would be impossible for the Occupyer camp to continue; that they would have to pack up and go home. What on Earth is this @OccupyLSX protest for ? A camp of principle, to defend the right to protest ? A camp of demands, pursuing a just economics and a just society ? A camp of non-violence, when it deliberately provokes a stand-off between demonstrators and police forces ? How can the Occupyers claim to be peaceful when they know their actions have a fragmentation bomb-like effect on the society around them ? How can the Cathedral Campers evidence their intentions for a juster, saner, economic system, when the net effect of their actions is likely to be a huge law court struggle at taxpayer expense ? It’s not a revolution, it’s an irritation – or at least that is the way that it will continue to be viewed by the governing authorities. Somebody on the inside track of campaigning in London has told me that the Occupy protest is destined to transmogrify into a Climate Refugee tent city in late November, early December. If it survives that long, then at least it can claim to be a piece of living art reflecting what is happening around the world because of climate change disasters. Unless and until the Occupyers can take on relevance, everybody with even just a slightly-left-of-centre agenda will attempt to co-opt the Occupy London camp for their own purposes. Remember, dear Occupyers, you are not “rising up” like the people in Libya – they were supplied with arms from around the world, forces overt and covert from Qatar, Europe and quite possibly America, and fed into a huge psychological operations narrative, ably supported by the media. The Libyan conflict wasn’t about Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, may he rest in peace. The information management of the North African and Middle Eastern unrest shows that mass propaganda still works, and that media consumers continue to fall for the same fabrications, time after time. | |
| Kirk Sorensen is apparently a one-man propaganda machine. His personal energy must be immense. He keeps turning up everywhere.
Never since the days of Tesla versus Edison has there been such an energy-related public communications coup. He is a social media god. He has to be – he’s running an enterprise start-up marketing an unproven energy process. |
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It appears that Bryony Worthington has been scooped up. But then she backed carbon offsetting and Carbon Capture and Storage. Can we ask if her judgment has improved lately ? And Friends of the Earth have been hypnotised. Or maybe not. George Monbiot was taken in a while back. From now on, I can predict British environmentalists from every sector of society to call for the development of the Thorium Fuel Cycle – although I think it’s a waste of time and resources, and in my view cannot be scaled up quickly enough to be of any use in dealing with the global energy crisis. All we have so far is a massive, well-researched sales pitch. And Kirk Sorensen’s done his homework on networking the institutions. In fact, I think that’s all he’s capable of – talk. I sense he is a Master of Spinology. |
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The European Union Question #2
Image Credit : Debbie Portwood |
Unbelievably, yesterday, people in the British Government sacrificed their careers rather than vote with David Cameron’s three line whip against a Referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. I say “unbelievably”, but I know full well why it happened. Democracy is broken in Britain, and there is every reason to point the finger of blame and accusation at the media, for their continued massacre of the issues in political debate. They should be observers and reporters; but instead they are influencers and arbiters. |
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Here’s how it goes : the Daily Mail, to take just one example, raises the outrage level, and repeats arguments that have little substance. People act on the basis of what they read in the papers and see on TV, and they develop poor reasoning, and do things like sign an ePetition. The thing gets publicly debated, partly in the media of course. And then finally the democratic representatives, the Members of Parliament, have to make a choice to stand with the stirred-up outrage or instead, vote with sanity. A vote on Europe would be a disaster. The wording would be over-simplistic and hide the true agenda. It would be too easy to sway people to vote for the worst option. |
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