Feeding Frenzy at the Subsidy Trough

The EDF nuclear subsidy game rumbles on with another batch of orchestrated leaks. The stakes could hardly be higher.

And haven't the lobbyists and briefers been busy ! How convenient that the Telegraph can always be persuaded to publish their radioactive releases. From the EDF camp, we learn that unless HMG comes up with the readies (well, forces electricity bill-payers to come up with the readies), not only will there be no EDF nukes for the UK, the Japs will pull out too - along with every potential developer of UK infrastructure ! “'No big infrastructure investor will ever trust the Government again' if that happens, is the bleak verdict of one industry insider" - quoth the ever-helpful Telegraph. The whippers-in have indeed been out in force. Every b*****d wants a monster subsidy: who'd have guessed ?

So stick that in your pipe, David Cameron. And not just lots of readies are required, mind - it must be a 40-year deal, and government under-writing for the capital costs, and indemnity for EDF on cost over-runs. And to think all they wanted just a couple of short years ago was a carbon-price floor (already long-since delivered and banked, of course).

The government side wants it to be known that, err, they are prepared to walk away if they can't get a 'good deal' - such tough negotiators, eh ? - and will certainly keep the nameplate price lower than £100/MWh. But we all know this is fairly arbitrary when 40-year indexed-linked games are being played, and so much is on offer by way of guarantees. "The truth is likely to become much clearer in the next few weeks", opines the Telegraph. How very trusting.

Whatever we get to know about the dirty deal, it will go straight into the long grass of an EC State Aid review, and there will be no binding commitment from EDF for, oooh, 18 months minimum. So - no start-up until 2022 earliest ? Which means in turn that all the practical problems of keeping the lights on post the LCPD shut-downs will have to be solved without new nukes. Which means ...

It was not always thus.  A mere decade ago there was a parallel issue in UK natural gas: North Sea gas production was forecast to decline to the extent that new import sources would be needed from around 2005. The UK government had played a clever strategic hand several years earlier, but otherwise stood back and let the market work. Sure enough, the companies that make up the UK gas industry invested in sufficient new import pipelines and LNG import facilities to replace the declining North Sea production entirely, if needed (which it won't be for several years yet). Invested. Their own money, with no subsidies !

They did so because (a) there was a clear business case, and (b) there was no hint that subsidies might be forthcoming if they just held back a bit. Happy days.

[This post first appeared on Capitalists@Work]


All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

France: John Ward back up and fighting

Major UK blogger John Ward has just moved from Devon to south-west France, and is bringing the farmhouse up to scratch. But he still finds time to continue his furious examination of the worlds of finance and politics, which are so interlinked, corrupt and disastrous that he reflects on the survivalist advantages of his new home:

Over the last few days, it has become unnecessary here to have the main log-burner on 24/7, while sporting thermal underwear in bed at night. Today I didn’t actually light the fire at all until 7pm, and even now at 10 pm it is bubbling along without bashing out too much heat. The winters here are fierce, but short. This one has been longer than most, but it is at last releasing its frigid grip: buds are budding, winds are warming, and daffodils are flowering. You never know, it just might be Spring.

I’m still fixing things up. The last and most truculent floodlight has finally given up its resistance to my efforts to make it work, and is as I speak shining a light towards the old pig-sties down at the bottom of the front garden. There was an anxious moment when I had to figure out how to chisel a route through the door-jamb minus available chisels, given I lack a three-foot drill to go through the walls. But a steady hand and a hammer applied to a knackered old screwdriver did the trick. There was an even more stressful moment when – having rewired the obstinate little bastard – just prior to screwing it into the external masonry – it decided not to work. But then the kitchen lights flickered back on again, and I realised we’d had a power cut without me noticing. So all is well.

My neighbour Ange came up yesterday. He’d heard the gossip about Jan and I, so was keen to know what was what. One thing that never ceases to stagger me about apparently rigid old French agrarians is how – when you go through the “sh*t happens” explanation of life – far from offering sour disapproval, they seem keen to sympathise, to help, and to discuss the philosophy of marriage, emotions, or indeed anything else you care to bring up. On a day-to-day basis I have very little in c0mmon with the local French farmers, but beyond tractors and seed costs you can (with perseverance) plug into deeper concerns. Ange’s wife Michelle, for instance, is a keen fan of certain French writers. Once I’d discovered her passion for Georges Simenon and Molière, we never looked back. Five years ago an undiscovered Dumas novel was unearthed, and so it was my great pleasure to give Michelle an internet link to the prose. We have also prepared melons together for charity dinners in aid of Mali, but perhaps I should draw a discreet veil over that.

Tomorrow the replacement dishwasher and the serviced/repaired tractor mower are due to make an appearance. I rather fancy that soon after this point, things will return to something approaching normal. Window boxes will be filled and watered, windfall kindling gathered up, water retainers reinstigated, and guests prodded to confirm arrival dates.

Of course, in the macro boulevards of all those financial centres beyond Slogger’s Roost II, things will continue to be perversely abnormal. The Dow will go up instead of down, Gold will go down instead of up, silver up instead of down, the euro up against Sterling and down against the Dollar, and the US, UK and Eurozone debts up and up and up and up. But to the folks down here, none of it really matters. One of the undeniable things about France is that it has the biggest land area per head of population and highest proportion of cultivable in-use land in the entire EU. So if every currency, bond, bank, and bourse goes tits up, the French will still have more than enough to eat.

Should we feel resentful about this? No of course we shouldn’t: rather, we should feel anger about our own UK élites’ inability to understand such basics. With careful thought, Britain could’ve continued to make things and poured investment into those people who wish to grow things. France still makes cars and exports them very profitably. It still plans crops to produce cheap bread – and produces enough milk, meat, fruit and wine to keep everyone cruising along nicely. It still has the best cheeses in the world.

There are major bits of French culture (for example, pharmacy advice and the tax system) that continue to confuse and worry me. But when it comes to the price of lunch, bread, beer, wine, fresh veg, wonderful tomatoes and magret de canard, down here in the South West it is hard to fault the way they live. The sense of community, the familial glue and the lack of crime all bear witness to an achievement which, let’s face it, Britain cannot even begin to imagine.Will the British ever be true Europeans? Within the confines of the EU, I very much doubt it. We are an island seafaring race obsessed with the idea that we might still have some major global role to play.In the banking sector, we do. But is that a role we should want to embrace? I would emphatically say no: the UK’s future prosperity lies in making high-quality items and then knowing how to market them in an equalising world. My instinct is to stay close to Britain, but my insight tells me that Britain has forgotten how to stay close to itself.

This post originally appeared here and is reproduced with the kind permission of the author. John Ward's current blog is here and the archives of his previous one (Not Born Yesterday) are here. Writing since 2006, John is prolific, sparky and always informative.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Djibouti: When giving is taking

Recently, Emily in Sierra Leone confronted burglars who had been her friends. What made the crowd gasp most was not her overlooking the theft, but her offer to continue the friendship. She comments, "Just goes to show you how they are more relationally minded than money minded."

On the other side of the continent, Rachel Pieh Jones was finding out how quickly money undermines those values:

My language helper…

Before she worked for me:

One day her son fell into the open, coal-burning fire pit and burned his hand. Neighbors heard the screams, ran for help, and within minutes the boy was in a car zooming toward the Djiboutian hospital. Someone paid the entrance fee. Someone else paid the taxi. Someone else brought meals while he healed. Someone else watched the other children. Someone else covered her hours mopping in the Minister for Sports’ office…

After she started working for me:

Her uncle died and the family needed money for the burial. “Get it from your American friend,” her brother said.

That same brother owed money to a Kenyan. “Get it from your American friend,” he said.

Her son fell off a wall at school and needed stitches. “Get the money from your American friend,” her neighbors said.

Read the rest of Rachel's guest post on Jessica Goudeau's website, "Love is what you do".

Both Rachel and Emily think deeply about their actions and don't necessarily expect the world to pat their heads and cheer them on. They are prepared to take risks and lose if need be.

Not just emotionally: at another point in her blog Emily tells us, "I've already researched how to make sure they do NOT send in any Special Forces to rescue me if I decide to be an idiot and stay when things get bad."

Extract reproduced with the kind permission of Rachel and Jessica. All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Two great new stories on World Voices!

The smells of New York City, and how a Christian girl confronted Muslim burglars in Sierra Leone.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Two great new stories on World Voices!

The smells of New York City, and how a Christian girl confronted Muslim burglars in Sierra Leone.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

USA: New York Nose Nav

Since moving to New York I have developed a rather odd and disgusting skill of being able to differentiate between the smells of the city. Not the nice ones, like freshly baked bagels or cupcakes, or even hot dogs (I know they are gross, but why do they always smell so good?), but the bad ones. The really gross, I don't even want to know what that is, kind of smells. I can differentiate between dog, cat and horse pooh. I can smell a homeless person a block away and know the difference between the smell of vomit and garbage. Lovely.

Unfortunately, New York is a very smelly city. What with the rubbish being piled high on the streets and most public areas being used at dog toilets (I think it's worst on the Upper West Side and in Chelsea), my new heightened sense of smell had come in useful on occasion. I have managed to avoid (although not always) treading in various sorts of pooh, side-stepped a rather large pile of well-disguised puke and narrowly missed getting on a subway carriage with a homeless guy who last washed in 1987. I also know the stinkiest streets to avoid in my neighbourhood and the best place to stand at my local subway station.

A strong stomach definitely comes in handy when you live here, but I prefer to try an avoid the nasty smells when I can. I have learnt a lot about living in New York over the past 2 1/2 years, but I can safely say that being able to tell the difference between animal pooh isn't something I thought would come in useful!

Reproduced with the kind permission of the author, whose blog is here.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Sierra Leone: Forgiveness

Emily heard the religious call while in high school, put herself through medical training and left Oregon to work as a nurse in post civil war Sierra Leone. This is how she reacted to a break-in:

I arrived in Sierra Leone on Jan. 21^st but stayed near Freetown for about a week before I went up to the village where I work. While I was in Freetown I got a curious call from my neighbor, asking when I was coming back up. It seems that some people had broken into my house, stolen some things and were being held at the police station, awaiting my return.

 

When I dug around a little to find out who it was, my heart was a little bit broken. I had been pretty close to three of the boys before they left the village to go to Freetown. When I had girls teaching me to cook, I would call these boys to come help me eat the rice. After we ate we would all have game night. We had a scoreboard on my wall keeping track of how many times each of us lost at Jenga and they were often at my house when the lights were on so they could study. I’d thought we were close. Definitely NOT the first thing I wanted to deal with when I got back!

 

Since I had a couple days before I was going up (and they were still waiting for a couple more boys to be brought from Freetown), I started thinking and praying about how I was going to handle it. The neighbor who called me to inform me of this was devastated!! One of the boys was in his custody. When he called me he so angry he was almost in tears. He said that he was not raising a thief and wanted to take this as far as it could go in the court system. He was mad!

 

I understood. What happened was extremely shameful for him in the eyes of the community. He said that this boy was “trying to spoil my job here” and I later found out that this was because some people thought he should move on because if he hadn’t been there, the boy wouldn’t have been there and this wouldn’t have happened. It was serious!

 

But I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. One of my biggest pet peeves here is that it often feels like there aren’t any real consequences when a wrong is done. People show up late for work or don’t show up on time and nothing’s done. Security guards sleep all night….nothing. Policemen are constantly asking for bribes and everyone looks the other way. It’s just constant. And it drives me crazy. I tend to be a pretty black and white person (which can often be to my own detriment….I’m working on the balance) but this kind of thing is a never ending frustration for me.

 

What to do, what to do. Wouldn’t you know that the day after I found out what happened, I ran across this verse : “To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?”

I had a few things stolen from my house. The biggest item was a computer. I was an idiot and decided to leave my little netbook computer at the house since I didn’t think I’d need it while I was home. There were also a few missing headlamps, a bag, an internet modem and some notebooks. (These were the things that were recovered….I have no idea if there were other things missing. I’m just that organized).

 

When I was home, I saw Les Miserables for the first time. I didn’t know the story before I entered the theatre and I spent the majority of the movie near convulsions as I was sobbing so hard. It was weird. It was really weird. Even after it was over I was so affected that I couldn’t stop crying. So of course one of the first things I think about is the priest. (Slight spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it!) That beloved old priest who gave food and shelter to a man who later stole all his silver. When the police brought the man back with the stolen silver the priest said, “No. It’s not stolen. I gave him that silver. Here, you forgot these candlesticks. There was no crime here.” The man’s life was changed forever!

 

I don’t know what the right thing to do every time something like this happens. Obviously there have to be consequences when evil occurs. But in this instance, I knew what I wanted to do.

I arrived in the village and the next morning went to the police station with a couple of my friends. My stomach was in knots, knowing I had to confront these boys and not sure how the community was going to accept what I wanted to do. Bleh. I hate confrontation!

When I arrived I asked to speak to the boys. The policemen were a little surprised but agreed to bring them out. As everything here seems to go, there was very little privacy and I had about 20-30 people watching while I talked to them. Oh gosh.

 

As the six boys filed out, the three that I had been close with wouldn’t make eye contact with me. They stood in a line in front of me and I began talking. I was nervous because they wanted me to try and speak Krio and in vulnerable situations like this I always want to speak English!! But I whispered a prayer for help and started muddling my way through.

I started by telling them that when I’d heard that someone had broken in and stolen some things from my house, I’d been angry. I needed those things! I needed them to do my job, to communicate with my family back home, and to help others in the community learn about computers. But when I found out who was involved, I became more sad than angry. I reminded them of the times we’d spent together (imagine little gasps and “shame, shame’s”coming from the peanut gallery). We’d been close.

 

Then I told them about the verses I’d read right after I found out what happened and how this had turned my thoughts to Jesus. Jesus. My Precious One who has forgiven me of so much. How could I not forgive when I’d been forgiven of so much? It was inconceivable. I talked our relationship with God that had been broken until Jesus came to restore it. He showed us, he showed ME mercy and forgiveness when I was his enemy. And that’s Who I love and that’s Who I follow.

 

I pulled out the charger for the computer (that had been with me so they hadn’t taken it) and handed it over to them. I then pulled out the money that remained in order for them to be released from jail and gave it to the chief policeman. And I told them it was finished. They were forgiven. The things they’d stolen were theirs to keep. It wasn’t because I didn’t need them, but it was because I love Jesus and therefore love them and want our relationship to be restored. And as far as I was concerned, it was. We were fine and they were welcome at my house any time (this is where I got the biggest gasp from the crowd. Just goes to show you how they are more relationally minded than money minded).

 

I told them that I recognized that what I was doing was dangerous. There was a chance that they would come back and steal again. There was a chance that others would hear about the grace extended and would also come to my house and break in, believing that there would be no repercussions. But Grace is dangerous. The grace that God extends to us can be (and often is) not accepted, mocked or abused. But I trust that God will be the defender of my rights. If people keep breaking in and taking my things….God, who can do anything He wants, STOP anyone He wants doesn’t think I really need those things. And one day, God will make everything right. Until then, I will trust Him to defend my rights. So that was that.

I’m not really sure how the boys took it. They didn’t say anything. One guy piped up and said, “You see? This is the difference between you Christians and we Muslims. We don’t forgive like this. We would never forgive like this!” Of course that’s not true. I know many Muslims who are very forgiving*. But I was so so SO excited to see that they saw Jesus in this, and not just my white skin! So often the things I do are just attributed to my “being white” than to my “following Jesus”and I had been begging God to let them see Him. I was so glad that some did!

 

So that was that. My little bit of village drama to start off my third year. I was hesitant to share this because….it just feels weird. But I was so excited about Jesus showing up that I couldn’t resist. It’s such an adventure to follow Him!

 

(*Ed: as shown in this incident - and this.)

The above is a slightly shortened and edited version of the original, which is on Emily's blog here. Reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.