Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) increased UK interest rates by another half point today, as most had expected, taking them to 4%. But it also hinted that rates may not rise much further, if at all. I think the MPC has got this about right.

The decision to raise interest rates was still controversial. Indeed, two of the nine MPC members (Swati Dhingra and Silvana Tenreyro) voted for ‘no change’ this week.

Many argue that the current high levels of UK inflation (10.5% in December) are largely caused by external factors outside the Bank’s control, notably the fallout from the war in Ukraine on global food and energy prices. Higher interest rates could simply exacerbate the recession.

However, ‘core’ inflation (excluding food and energy) is now over 6%, so it can no longer be dismissed as ‘largely imported’. The shallow recession that the Bank is…

Leaders posing as controllers of the weather demand impossible to achieve and damaging energy policies. Is this (cartoon) where net zero is taking us? Ignoring the sun won’t work.
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According to the clerics of the Green Cult, once we blow up our last coal mine, send all diesel engines to the wreckers, stop using concrete, reinvent sailing clippers, cover the grasslands and hills with solar clutter and wind machines, and then slaughter all of our cattle… global climate will become serene – not too warm, not too cold, writes Viv Forbes (via climate Change Dispatch).

Wild weather will cease, and there will be no more droughts, floods, cyclones, or snowstorms and no more plant and animal extinctions.

But the records written in the rocks tell a far different story about climate changes. Even when nature was in full control, it was not a serene place.

A visitor to New Zealand who read the Natural and Built Environment and the Spatial Planning Bills would assume our country was populated largely by Māori tribes whose customs and traditional knowledge could solve resource management challenges. In reading the Bills in more depth she would infer the tribes were impeded in using their knowledge by a powerful, yet unhelpful entity termed “the Crown.” To her relief she would then “learn” that 183 years ago the tribes and Crown had signed a Treaty which stipulated principles and the Crown’s obligations in relation to Māori. Legislation based on these principles and obligations was being enacted to ensure Māori had adequate input into natural and built environment and spatial planning issues. So far, so good!

However, when reading the Bills in isolation she would not realise that self-identified Māori make up only about 16% of the New Zealand population, and almost…

Europe’s energy crisis is all down to its delusional reliance upon intermittent wind and solar, which is why the smart money is backing nuclear power, at any scale, including Small Modular Reactors.

The list of operators investing in SMR technology is growing at such a rate that could be described as an investor gold rush.

In the US, NuScale, based in Oregon, has cleared all of the regulatory hurdles and is ready to deliver 924MW reactors to those with the wit and temerity to acquire them (more on NuScale below).

Britain’s Rolls-Royce is well ahead of the curve, with a 470MW unit almost ready to roll.

Hot on the heels of NuScale and Rolls-Royce, UK Atomics – a subsidiary of Denmark’s Copenhagen Atomics, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, Holtec International, BWX Technologies are on the process of designing, developing and improving on SMR technology.

There is little new about SMRs –…