Reform UK has announced their energy bill plan. They say they will cut VAT on energy. Reform says this takes around £85 off the average household bill. They will scrap the Green levy and carbon tax. Reform claims this saves another £115. This will be funded by £2.5 billion in cuts to quangos.
If it's taken 25 or more years to get into this mess (probably much longer), it will take that long to undo the mistakes that have happened. Nothing is fast in the development of energy production.
You write a lot about any centre-right party programme of government needing to have a plan both for initial election, AND for re-election to a second term. Which I agree with.
My worry re anything akin to denazification is that it ends up running even longer term - or being completely open-ended.
Your post here reminded me of a video by Academic Agent, which was pitched as a Frankfurt School thing, I guess, invoking Yuri Bezmenov as the hook.
But the last few minutes were memorable in that they discuss how denazification after WWII led to this kind of open-ended monster, or Blob, that forever-expanded the definition of 'nazi'. Eventually, right up to the present, where it encompasses things like British colonialism and American slavery as 'nazi', and even 'whiteness' itself.
So any similar program to weed out activists in government and energy would probably need to have a built-in 'Endif' test, rather than looping forever until there's no energy - or government - left at all.
It's a problem with practically everything that started out with good intentions - eventually people's livelihoods depend on the evil they are fighting, and well after the 'war' was won.
You have a tendency to overcomplicate everything Pete. Policies aren’t needed for everything. Sometimes, most of the time in fact, you let managers manage and this is as true for the public sector as the private. Task them with ambitious cost reduction tasks and if they fail change them.
When I did my MBA there was a question which helped to guide investment decisions. Does a certain decision add value, or does it simply add costs? The question really is, does an expenditure result in a benefit commensurate with the expenditure, or does the value of the outcome simply increase costs for no beneficial result? Of course the benefit can be objective or it can be subjective. Bearing in mind also that not making a decision and doing nothing is in itself a decision.
I really like your ideas and viewpoint and agree that we really do need someone or a group of thinkers with the required knowledge to get into the detail of policy in order to provide an effective government that gets the things that we want.
Three years is not a long time to get all these things figured out and bulletproof.
How are we going to get such a group together? We need some well educated people familiar with all the problems. The difficulty is that most of those are already in the civil service and are formulating policies based on leftist ideology. How do we overcome that dilemma?
If it's taken 25 or more years to get into this mess (probably much longer), it will take that long to undo the mistakes that have happened. Nothing is fast in the development of energy production.
You write a lot about any centre-right party programme of government needing to have a plan both for initial election, AND for re-election to a second term. Which I agree with.
My worry re anything akin to denazification is that it ends up running even longer term - or being completely open-ended.
Your post here reminded me of a video by Academic Agent, which was pitched as a Frankfurt School thing, I guess, invoking Yuri Bezmenov as the hook.
But the last few minutes were memorable in that they discuss how denazification after WWII led to this kind of open-ended monster, or Blob, that forever-expanded the definition of 'nazi'. Eventually, right up to the present, where it encompasses things like British colonialism and American slavery as 'nazi', and even 'whiteness' itself.
So any similar program to weed out activists in government and energy would probably need to have a built-in 'Endif' test, rather than looping forever until there's no energy - or government - left at all.
It's a problem with practically everything that started out with good intentions - eventually people's livelihoods depend on the evil they are fighting, and well after the 'war' was won.
For ref, the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niiF8hCSrYQ
You restrict the parameters.
First there’s a price cap on energy providers at a % of world prices.
If green energy can t compete, tough.
Any long term contracts to be honoured, but civil service staff in the sector to be transferred to work in migration.
Negotiators not needed as the price of energy is already pre determined.
There will be times when the % is too generous other times when it’s too tight, you don’t need many to check it out.
Energy that’s too expensive loses out, cheap energy wins.
The nonsense over net zero removed as it’s an embarrassment.
You have a tendency to overcomplicate everything Pete. Policies aren’t needed for everything. Sometimes, most of the time in fact, you let managers manage and this is as true for the public sector as the private. Task them with ambitious cost reduction tasks and if they fail change them.
When I did my MBA there was a question which helped to guide investment decisions. Does a certain decision add value, or does it simply add costs? The question really is, does an expenditure result in a benefit commensurate with the expenditure, or does the value of the outcome simply increase costs for no beneficial result? Of course the benefit can be objective or it can be subjective. Bearing in mind also that not making a decision and doing nothing is in itself a decision.
I really like your ideas and viewpoint and agree that we really do need someone or a group of thinkers with the required knowledge to get into the detail of policy in order to provide an effective government that gets the things that we want.
Three years is not a long time to get all these things figured out and bulletproof.
How are we going to get such a group together? We need some well educated people familiar with all the problems. The difficulty is that most of those are already in the civil service and are formulating policies based on leftist ideology. How do we overcome that dilemma?