Utopia, you are standing in it!

That was the title of the presentation at yesterday’s lunchtime seminar hosted by Motu, the economics consultancy/research group. Motu has started up this series of public policy seminars – a laudable initiative, even if the costs mostly seem to be being met a group of sponsoring government agencies. The first such session was a month ago on minimum wages – I never got round to writing about it, but the summary is probably “not as useful or as damaging as is often claimed”. Perhaps it is going to be a theme, since a one line summary of yesterday’s immigration session could be quite similar.

A session on immigration policy is obviously timely, given that the government says it is cooking up changes to various aspects of policy (for which, despite a speech from the minister, there is still no supporting analysis or any details), and in view of the inquiry…

The Treasury will start to wind down the furlough scheme this week – and not a moment too soon.

To begin with, the support is relatively generous – and costly – and still due to last another three months. Under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), employees on furlough receive 80% of their normal wages for any hours not worked, capped at £2,500 a month.

Currently, the Government pays the entire 80%. The taxpayer’s contribution will be scaled back to 70% from July 1, and cut further to 60% from the beginning of August, but the scheme is not due to close completely until the end of September.

In the meantime, the number of people on furlough has already fallen sharply. The latest harddata from HMRCreported that about 3.4 million jobs were still furloughed as of April 30. But more timely surveyestimates from the ONS

Residential solar panels in Germany.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Sideka Solartechnik
The German energy crunch looms in the next few years, not unlike some other over-committed renewables enthusiasts, for example Britain. European countries don’t seem to see or admit the potential problem of relying on each other for imports. Somebody has to have an excess of power for that to work, but as more countries favour renewables over power stations the availability of on-demand electricity must inevitably decline.

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany, a poster child for renewable energy, is renouncing nuclear and coal.

The problem is, say many power producers and grid operators, it may struggle to keep the lights on.

The country, the biggest electricity market in the European Union, is abandoning nuclear power by 2022 due to safety concerns compounded by the Fukushima disaster and phasing out coal plants over the next…

Coal-hungry China [image credit: democraticunderground.com] Prosperity before flaky climate theories for Asia’s present and future industrial powerhouse economies. Once again we’re sold the myth of ‘cheaper renewables’, which always need subsidies — even for being turned off.
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Five Asian countries are responsible for 80 percent of new coal power stations planned worldwide, says Phys.org, with the projects threatening goals to fight the climate crisis, a report warned Wednesday.

China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are planning to build more than 600 coal plants, think-tank Carbon Tracker said.

The stations will be able to generate a total of 300 gigawatts of energy—equivalent to around the entire electricity generating capacity of Japan.

In this case the selection of the Democrat candidate for Mayor of New York City from the recent primary campaign.

Whoever wins the Democrat primary will go on to win the general election, given how corrupted and useless the NYC GOP is.

As of today the winner of the race appears to be one Eric Adams and although his lead is slim in the complex ranked voting system used, it looks like it will hold.

Now while you would think that the US Left would be overjoyed at yet another Black man rising to a prominent political position in the USA you would be wrong:

According to Lisa Lerer’s latest “Political Memo” for theNYT, candidate Eric Adams, a retired police captain, has “rejected calls to defund the Police Department and pledged to expand its reach in the city.”

Wait! What? I thought Defunding The Police was all the rage…