Shabby Britannia!

As I reported a couple of days ago, Mrs May's expedition to Japan turned out to be a salutary learning experience. Far from being welcomed as the harbinger of a new trade pact between isolated post-Brexit Britain and Japan, she was told in no uncertain terms that Japanese investment in the United Kingdom depends unconditionally on Britain remaining  in the European Economic Area.

While she was in Japan, David Davis her 'Brexit secretary' was making a fool of himself in Brussels by refusing to play the negotiations as the EEC [all 27 remaining countries] said they must be played.

There should now be no room for doubt in Mrs May's limited mind, that at least tens of thousands of jobs will vanish from the UK within a decade, as Japanese investment is shifted to continental Europe, unless a form of Brexit that is acceptable to external investors is secured. In a blatant item of propaganda which Dr Goebbels would cherish as a model of incompetence, Dr Liam Fox [who has been with Mrs May in Japan] said that the EU 'must' begin negotiations on the future trade relations of the UK with the the Union because 'business' is demanding that progress is made. It had been made clear in Kyoto and Tokyo that Japanese business, in particular, needs speedy reassurance as to Britain's future trading status. Japanese motor firms operating in the UK produce a greater proportion of their complete vehicles in the UK; but, like all the other firms, they need to buy some components from the continent. It is a fact that some parts of cars pass over the channel two of three times between different plant, and thus the future of the entire motor sector [as several others] depends on the free movement of goods and of the experts who manage their creation.

Britain is indeed under pressure, to take up a stance on Brexit that is uncongenial to Dr Fox, who is seen as a representative of the 'hard Brexiteers' who choose to imagine than Britain alone would be able to negotiate deals all over the world on terms at least as favourable as those now standing to the EU. This is nonsense: isolated Britain, with a market of 60 million people who have declining real incomes, would have a negligible fraction of the leverage that the EU has when negotiating for a market of 300 consumers who include millions of the richest in the world.

The EU representatives can just sit this one out, as the British government begins to learn in depth just how deep would be hole into which the United Kingdom would fall if the calamity of a 'hard Brexit' comes about; because of the stupidity and incompetence of Mrs May and her chosen team.

Meanwhile, that team is going forward with the unnecessary and excessively costly new railway from London to Birmingham, HS2. As the existing end-to-end journey now takes around seventy minutes, all that is needed is greater capacity on the existing line: especially to bring commuters into and out of London from stations much nearer to the capital then Birmingham [who would not be served by HS2 anyway; as a large number of stops to take on or drop off many passengers would slow the high-speed train down to a journey time longer than that for the existing line].

While Mrs May was in Japan, China announced that it was considering building an innovatory 600 mile-an-hour link between major cities, which are already linked by high-speed trains. It has been suggested to HM government - who have ignored the proposition - that the major centres of the thus far nugatory 'northern powerhouse' could probably be linked by such a system, more cheaply than the cost of building the unwanted HS2. This is just another example of the shoddy, limited thinking of the May gang. There will be no end to their stupidity: they should go soon. The idea of Mrs May standing in the next election verges on insanity.

Spinning Batteries

Stalin called it 'agitation and propaganda', Goebbels was 'Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment', the post-war democracies developed 'spin' and David Cameron was enamoured of 'nudge'. The present shoddy government does not really 'do' spin or nudge: they simply issue press releases or advance copies of ministerial speeches and leave it to the media to make the rest of the story.

A lead item for the BBC on the early News today was the story that Britain was to experience a 'revolution' in how electricity is generated and stored. It is well known to the nation, and deeply embarrassing to the political class - especially Tories and LibDems who have been in power for the past seven years - that there is no viable energy policy in the UK. The government [of any party] is compelled by law to get rid of 'polluting' coal-fired power stations by 2025, unless they are converted to burning wood-chip that has to be imported at vast expense [and may be depleting forests in less-developed countries]. One attempt to address the resultant shortage of energy is the madcap scheme from the Osborne era, whereby the Hinckley point scheme is supposed to construct an unproven type of French reactor [with Chinese funding] for which British taxpayers and/or electricity users will be charged a ridiculous amount over and above the predicted world price for power for the next two generations. A massive amount of money has been spent on windmills, afloat, settled on the seabed and ashore; all of which have the intrinsic disadvantage that they don't work when there is no wind, and they may produce more power than is needed at other times. The firms who have constructed the majority of windmills have been promised a price for the resultant power that involves a heavy subsidy of the provider by the consumers.

British firms, including Rolls-Royce, have been providing the power units for nuclear submarines for half a century, and could offer land-based mini nuclear power plant virtually ad lib; but the politicians are scared on the anti-nuclear lobby. Also, the politicians are scared of the responsibility for guaranteeing the costs of the construction and insurance of the potential nuclear solution; especially in the light of the row about Hinckley Point.

So they have spun the idea of diffused electricity supply, of individual owners of homes and small businesses installing solar panels and batteries. Solar panels are efficient and are becoming cost-effective, up to a point. But they only respond to the sun: so that they can make no direct contribution to the national grid in the dark. Householders can only sell power into the grid from their solar array when the grid wants it. Somebody in government has at long length realised that in the universities and in many firms high-quality brains have been working for years on improving battery technologies. In the USA Mr Musk has marketed his Tesla battery-powered cars very effectively, but worldwide motor manufacturers have been investing in battery powered engines and in battery technology. As a graduate of two universities I am battered with booklets boasting of their research achievements [and asking me for money] and it is clear that very significant steps have been taken over a long period, and that several of them are showing success. So the government has decided to present as a brilliant plan for the future a shabby little scheme to persuade the population themselves to buy and install panels and batteries from which the households can derive some of their electricity, and sell the surplus to the grid. The mass of the population would pay directly for this 'solution', with the stimulus of government-backed loans [probably provided by the commercial banks]; so that none of the cost would add to the statistics of direct government spending or borrowing.

If you believe that this is "the answer", you'll believe anything!