Uk government pays wind farms £111 million to stop producing electricity for the grid.

a reply to: andy06shake

111 million could have been used to upgrade the grid
instead of using taxpayers money to pay the companies , whose share holders just so happen to be family members of MP's or MP's themselves

a reply to: sapien82

Same companies that are experiencing record profits whilst their customers both commercial and residential twist in the wind.

You could not make it up really sapien82.

It's a # show of epic proportions, and the fact of the matter is that come winter people are going to die!

a reply to: nickyw

It's pathetic nickyw

A bandage for a brain tumor really.

a reply to: andy06shake

Decades of under-investment since the privatisation whilst foreign investors have been sucking money out of this country and an elite few amass even larger fortunes.
Its obscene, amoral and a national disgrace.

a reply to: andy06shake

thinking of projects only in parliamentary terms from the 70s onwards was always going to create this kind of collapse that it looks to be truly societal and across the west is no salve for the pain to come across the West this winter..

on that i'm lucky to be on the southern coast with many northern and scots retirees, at worst I've seen a -10 but mostly its around 0 to -1

i will say this we need a Gladstone who can think long term, one who lives the rules they preach, not mps who are cushioned from the pain and divorced from the real world..

a reply to: Freeborn

and as the civil war and even the Atlee after ww2 the same people end up in the same positions of power be it private corps or nationalised entities.. the more it changes the more it stays the same just as Biden is as neoliberal as all the others.

a reply to: Freeborn

"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." Mahatma Gandhi

a reply to: nickyw

The thing is nickyw for some people, once they are over 65, if they cannot maintain an average temperature of about 70c in their homes, hypothermia can set in and take them out of the game, sometimes without even the realization that its occurring.

a reply to: andy06shake

well we f*cked that with covid.. I was in extremis last year and just dumped in a hallway to die, family told to jog on for the greater good by NHS and no priest last rites in sight..

that as a society we removed the familial and spiritual safeguarding of the dying told me our society doesn't have long left, its a dead society walking (lots of introspection when you're you're dying)

I came away from that thinking no society can survive that kind of shift in its treatment of its most vulnerable (the dying) and framing it as for the greater good was/is obscene..

a reply to: nickyw

i will say this we need a Gladstone who can think long term, one who lives the rules they preach, not mps who are cushioned from the pain and divorced from the real world..

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.
But I'd say more of an Attlee - in my opinion the greatest peacetime PM this country has ever had.
Someone with a grand vision and a joined up plan.
Someone not afraid to recognise talent and empower people to deliver their respective objectives within that plan.
A person of integrity and honour but also resolute and passionate.

I see no-one around at present with any of those skills and virtues.

a reply to: nickyw

Glad you pulled through nickyw.

End of the day civilizations rise and fall i suppose, aka look what happened to Rome, which fell from within as much as it was sacked from without.

The idea, all the same, is to learn from history and not repeat the same to similar mistakes of the past.

Its like they are trying to make it all fall down ffs.

a reply to: andy06shake

oh i get that.. and it bothers me that both the old and young are going to suffer, i have bon parents or grandparents left but do have a young grandchild who i worry will grow cold as i did in the 70s.. even down here on the so called sunshine coast..

a reply to: nickyw

When a society spends all its time and resources in merely trying to maintain the status quo its decline is inevitable.

a reply to: Freeborn

we also don't have the spirit which that society had, one of the docos I've always wanted to get my son to watch is "the spirit of 45" and without that spirit Atlees plans would be for nothing..

to be honest its like only through some calamity that we'll again be able to muster the forces to beat poverty, hunger, homelessness etc.. looking at Ukraine i really don't want that to be our Spanish civil war to herald in the next one..

a reply to: sapien82

Isn't this just a subsidy to ensure that it's worth people's while to invest, it smooths the curve out in the value of electricity.

You know, like paying farmers to keep land in agricultural use, and not to sell it off for houses, because that land might be needed in the future.

a reply to: Freeborn

very true.. I ended up on 3 wards filled mostly with the elderly.. at just 50 i was very much the younger ended.. but every night the wards sounded as i imagine front line wards would sound with the elderly begging for their god to save their mummies and daddies..

It gave me a clear insight into how broken our society is. I though watching the Romanian orphanages where bad in the what was it 80@S? but to be on one of wards our hyper acute (non covid) wards was horrific..

i can't help but judge our society on how it treats the most vulnerable just as my biased judged the Romanians for their orphanages..

a reply to: nickyw

I think the British people have always been at our best when our backs are against the wall and united in common purpose.
People have relied on that during wartime - post WWI & WWII people demanded something better.

That spirit and national character is still there, we just need something or someone to kickstart it.
Obviously we'd much prefer it not be a war.....but we need something.

a reply to: Freeborn

What the West in general needs is "that vision thing" ... that has been conspicuously absent since the Berlin Wall came down.

Cheers

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

The thing is, it's not hard.
I'm a simple man, nothing special in any way shape or form.....but I have a clear vision of what in my opinion society should look like.
It encompasses all aspects of our society. I know exactly what I would do, the bare bones of a joined up plan looking at every aspect of the nation and its needs.
Its requires basic project management with aligned objectives, goals, strategies and measures.
The 'how' is really simple, even the 'what' isn't that hard.....it's the 'who' that is the problem.

The thing is, the vision that is missing has been replaced by the Gods of greed, profit and private enterprise and maintaining the glass ceiling that holds back so many people of ability.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

I think they were paying it as a subsidy to the turbine/landowners because the grid itself cant handle the total output of all the wind farms in the UK.

according to this site the figure is a lot higher and its 650 million

dont know how legitimate these claims are

World’s Biggest Scams: Scotland’s Wind Farms Paid £650,000,000 To NOT Produce Power