What if the wind ain’t blowing as per model …

 

There are days when I wonder if the various correspondents and reporters, the eminent opinion piece writers and their chief editors are so driven by being ‘the first’ with their products that they’ve unlearned to reflect and think.

Worse, in their zeal to serve both the paying plebs and their paymasters and propaganda advisers, their world is limited to headlines and social media guff. Their aim is to stay ‘popular’, selling printed papers or garnering clicks. They’ve not noticed – or aren’t saying – that more and more of us have abandoned their products, that we’re escaping, silently, their feverish opinion making.

Now then, firstly the obligatory look at this morning’s print editions’ front pages. The compiler, good old Auntie B, is telling those who only scan headlines what today is all about: Footie and China (link). Unsurprisingly, since footie today means ENG v WAL, The Sun tops the billing. 

I’ll leave the China ‘news’ for another day. Let’s just note that the same people who are now ‘celebrating’ the anti-lockdown demos in China were the same ones who demanded the harshest measures against those anti-lockdown demonstrators here in the UK.  

Instead, let’s look at the effect of Net Zero policies here at home. Yesterday evening I came across a report in the DT according to which we just scraped by a little black-out (this and all following emphases are mine):

“National Grid has narrowly avoided activating its emergency blackout plan for the first time this winter as low wind speeds and nuclear outages push supply closer to the danger zone.The company in charge of keeping the lights on said on Monday morning that it may need to pay households to switch appliances off during tea-time on Tuesday evening because of a looming power crunch. By Monday afternoon it said the unprecedented action would not be necessary after surging power prices in the UK helped pull supply from the continent.” (paywalled link)

And why, you might wonder, would there be such a sudden need for ‘moar electricity’ during tea-time this evening? Because of the footie! Irresponsible peasants would surely watch yon match and want to make a cuppa at half time! Now obviously TPTB cannot dare to blame the people for indulging in their favourite pastime. 

The DT has deleted the relevant sentence from their online report available this morning, but it’s still in the DM’s article published yesterday:

“National Grid’s system operator said it was considering the first ever live run of its Demand Flexibility Service – which is designed to avoid blackouts by rewarding  people for cutting demand down at peak times – on Tuesday evening. England and Wales are due to square off at 7pm tomorrow in a crunch World Cup game that both need to win to secure their passage to the knock-out stages in Qatar.” (link)

Phew. Isn’t it nice to see how caring National Grid is, how  hard they work for us! Of course, this near-evocation of the ‘blackout prevention scheme’ is blamed on ‘rapacious Putin’ who has ‘choked off’ gas supplies to Europe. Correct me if I’m wrong – but wasn’t there something like NordStream, wasn’t there something like ‘sanctions’? 

Moreover, are we now going to hear that Putin strangled the wind? After all, ‘Britain’s power supplies increasingly depend on intermittent wind speeds as the West shifts away from fossil fuels’ (paywalled link), something the Net Zero pushers have been working so hard for! And now this happened:

“This week’s problems are not as a result of gas shortages. Instead, National Grid was faced with forecasts of colder weather on top of low wind speeds on Tuesday evening, as well as lower output from both the French and UK nuclear fleet, which are both owned by EDF.  Several of France’s nuclear stations are offline due to maintenance or corrosion problems, which affects the UK’s power supplies as France has less to export and also needs imports.” (paywalled link)

It gets worse! There’s winter in France, who knew! And the Frogs, being ever so green, use electricity to heat their homes rather than gas boilers as we un-green Brits still do. Moreover:

“[…] two large ageing nuclear power stations in the UK have shut down this year and two reactors are down for maintenance, one for longer than planned.” (paywalled link)

Oh dear. That was so totally unpredictable, wasn’t it! EDF, which owns a runs all those nuclear power stations surely couldn’t be expected to’ve known that switching most of them off at the same time would have such knock-on effect!

Worse, ‘wind speeds in the UK were particularly low on Monday and are expected to increase on Tuesday, but will still be below seasonal averages.’ (paywalled link)! How dare the weather not behave according to Net Zero models! Clearly we need more bird shredders, correct?  

For today the Nation escaped having to follow this new scheme of switching off private electricity usage because National Grid paid through the nose to import electricity from France which is importing their electricity from 

“[…] Spain, Germany, a bit from Switzerland and some from Belgium, and they are sending it across the cables to us. They’re actually scheduled to import power from Italy, which is very rare. So power from Europe is going to route through France and into Britain.” (paywalled link)

Doesn’t this look like a subliminal hint that we’d be better off Rejoining? After all, the EU market ‘works’, doesn’t it, with countries generously helping out those whose electricity supply is damaged by nuclear power stations not being online or even being mothballed, thanks to green politics across the EU, especially Germany.

Before we’re grateful that brave National Grid has secured electricity so that today’s footie match can be watched, beware of the price paid! It’s a lovely example of making us pay through the nose:

“This has been managed through high prices in Britain, however. Prices in Britain for tomorrow’s peak are £1,066.47-£1,205.70 per megawatt hour, compared to £418.89 per megawatt hour in France, Belgium and Holland. Mr Hewitt [energy ‘expert’]  believes it is now highly likely that, before winter is over, National Grid will need to use its new scheme under which households are paid to curb demand at peak times.”(paywalled link)

Clearly, this pickle we’re in isn’t because of Net Zero, it’s because of Brexit! If we’d Remained, we’d have to pay less, correct? The Frogs would not have dared to demand so much money! We must Rejoin! Especially since “we” are going to be the champions of Net Zero, mothballing our gas power stations and scrapping gas storage facilities. 

Welcome to real life where the wind blows as it wants! We can blame others, like Russia and China for not playing according to our green hymn sheets. Instead, “we” have wind and if not “we” will pay because our worthless ‘green’ leaders in the legacy parties fondly believe “we” are rich.

Did they ask us paying peasants? Of course not! We just have to pay, as usual, and be grateful that we are permitted to watch telly!



Print Friendly, PDF & Email