TRIGGERnometry - This Isn't Science, It's Ideology

00:00:00.000 the government is making us all poorer yeah and less safe yes and they're doing this for

00:00:10.760 ideological reasons as you start replacing those conventional generators with renewables

00:00:17.400 they can contribute to the problem we saw that in spain so we had an emiss in january what does

00:00:26.300 that mean katherine that we nearly ran out of generation we neither had blackouts we nearly

00:00:32.220 had blackouts because we nearly just didn't have enough power stations to meet demand

00:00:35.480 now they're going to introduce something called the carbon border adjustment mechanism

00:00:40.720 so what what are the products that we're talking about that are going to be taxed with this everything

00:00:46.280 clothes steel cars concrete wind turbines solar panels everything excuse my language are they

00:00:58.780 mental yes relax relax this is not an ad i just wanted to let you know that you can watch this

00:01:06.560 video without any advertising at all no interruptions no pop-ups nothing just go to triggerpod.co.uk

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00:01:17.640 with exclusive bonus content ad free katherine welcome to trigonometry thank you great to have

00:01:25.020 you on before we have a what i think will be a fascinating conversation about energy energy prices

00:01:30.380 in this country and net zero which we've talked about a lot on this show just tell everybody a

00:01:35.660 little bit about who are you your background how are you here and what's your expertise in this area

00:01:39.460 okay so i run my own energy consulting business i'm just coming up in april to my 10-year anniversary

00:01:46.000 i but i'm very much an accidental consultant i'm so i started my career in finance i i'm eventually

00:01:55.020 moved into energy i bounced between the trading floors of utilities and banks i'm and then at one

00:02:01.260 point i was diagnosed with some health stuff and i thought i'd take a sabbatical to sort that out

00:02:06.120 and my plan was to take about six months away and i started writing a blog and part of that was

00:02:12.060 because i i think by writing i process information by writing so i thought it'd be a good way of just

00:02:17.980 organizing some of my thoughts about what was happening in in energy and also i didn't want

00:02:23.020 people forgetting about me while i was on sabbatical um but people started reading my blog and asking me

00:02:29.060 if i'd come and do projects for them and so i never actually got around to finding another job

00:02:34.860 like the ones i'd had before um and that's what i've been doing now for almost 10 years

00:02:39.660 well and now you're advising people across the different parties in the political spectrum you're

00:02:44.300 speaking regularly at party conferences and lots of other things that you're doing which is great

00:02:48.800 because your message is incredibly sound um but for people who are coming at this who are not super

00:02:54.700 nerds uh as i hope i'm not offending you by saying that but i've listened to some of your

00:02:59.860 interviews the level of detail you can go into is very impressive um first and foremost i we hear

00:03:06.300 this idea that energy prices in britain are very high is this true yes it is true can you quantify that

00:03:13.160 well we have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world and the fourth highest

00:03:18.200 domestic electricity prices in the developed world so yeah that sounds pretty high high and is that

00:03:24.300 because britain is uniquely bad at producing energy or is it for some other reason we have the dumbest

00:03:30.420 policies which is saying something because germany gives us a run for our money on sheer dumbness of

00:03:35.820 energy policy um and in fact if you take a step back their policies are probably stupider but we're

00:03:41.180 just facing a higher cost premium and explain that to us what is it that britain is doing

00:03:45.940 to cause our prices the prices that we pay as ordinary people to be so so high well we're abusing

00:03:54.820 the retail market and using it as a way of collecting taxes in a stealth way so normally when the government

00:04:02.820 wants to raise money uh they create taxes or they increase existing taxes and that gets lots of scrutiny

00:04:08.260 by the ifs and other people um and it's all looked at in the round as part of government financing

00:04:15.200 and then they decided they wanted to encourage renewables and so they made the subsidies for

00:04:21.620 that be paid through bills instead of through taxation so it's effectively a hidden tax people

00:04:27.100 don't have any choice about paying it it's a mandatory payment mandatory addition to our bills

00:04:31.880 and that's worth billions of pounds a year but of course the renewables that we have are

00:04:35.860 intermittent um and they're located in places where you don't already have grid infrastructure so then

00:04:41.720 you add on billions of pounds to connect them up you add on billions of pounds to have backup because

00:04:46.700 it's not always windy and sunny you've got billions of extra pounds because we didn't keep pace with the

00:04:51.840 grid infrastructure so we're paying them to turn off a lot of the time and we're deliberately connecting

00:04:56.960 wind farms knowing we can't use that output what so in 2023 october 23 sea green opened it's a wind

00:05:04.020 farm off the scottish coast in 2024 two-thirds of its output was curtailed so it was turned off two-thirds

00:05:11.900 of the time why i have to get because there wasn't enough grid infrastructure to move its output down

00:05:16.560 to where it was needed and when that happens consumers pay a gas power station downstream of the bottleneck

00:05:24.760 to generate the electricity they actually use and then they pay the wind farm to turn off

00:05:29.540 and they get compensated at the subsidy level so it's the wholesale price plus whatever their subsidy

00:05:35.100 level would be so so it's more than double but this is saving is this saving the planet no

00:05:41.900 no and it's definitely not saving money i published a report earlier in the year that showed that since

00:05:48.520 2006 we've spent almost 220 billion pounds in today's money on net zero even the committee the climate

00:05:55.260 change committee says we're not going to see savings from net zero till the seventh budget period which

00:06:00.240 is 2038 to 2042 and their assumptions on cost are total garbage their 2030 assumption for wind is

00:06:08.640 basically double the current price of wind so it's really unlikely to halve in five years

00:06:13.020 i mean already i'm speechless because i'm right i'm gonna he's speechless i'm genuinely no because

00:06:23.020 what what these people are struggling people are struggling in this country let's just be honest

00:06:28.440 about this for most people if you make it to the end of the month food on the table bills paid rent

00:06:34.120 paid mortgage pays whatever it is that is a massive win and then you're looking at this and you're just

00:06:40.360 going this is money being fritted away which is then being lumped on the ordinary person this this

00:06:46.000 is this is quite frankly disgusting it is it's disgusting then they go all right we'll help out

00:06:51.180 some of the vulnerable people by giving them the warm homes discount well that is wealth redistribution

00:06:56.000 and the way it works is suppliers will have to phone at the department for work conventions and say

00:07:01.560 tell us which of our customers are eligible for the discount so they get the list then they work out

00:07:07.020 the cost of the discount they add on an admin fee and then they divide that between all their other

00:07:12.140 customers this is wealth redistribution it should be the job of welfare and the dwp it should not be

00:07:18.560 the job of suppliers so one of the things you're saying is this is all deliberately being hidden from

00:07:23.680 us the taxpayer correct and we don't know it's going on but we're all paying for it we are

00:07:28.860 yeah right and there's no scrutiny of it either so nobody's sitting there doing value for money

00:07:33.840 analysis the way they would on taxation if if you're going to say ed milliband wants to add

00:07:40.160 22 billion pounds of levies for carbon capture and a large part of that's going to be added to bills

00:07:46.780 now if that was going to be done through taxation then there'd be an assessment of value for money

00:07:51.700 but it's going through bills so that doesn't happen okay i feel like with with those headline kind

00:07:58.660 statements in place can you just take us all the way back and explain to us how electricity is

00:08:04.060 generated in this country what percentage of it comes from what what percentage of is it imported

00:08:08.580 exported as i just just give a kind of basic layman overview of the entire energy market so that we kind

00:08:14.640 of understand what we're talking about okay so in terms of what generates our electricity most of our

00:08:20.620 electricity is coming from gas we've got a chunk of nuclear although it's a declining chunk

00:08:26.780 at the moment we've got five nuclear power stations four of them are scheduled to close by 2030

00:08:32.320 one still got a few decades to go i actually think those four will probably get new extensions will go

00:08:39.040 to the early 2030s and then we've got we've got about the same amount of wind installed now as we

00:08:46.480 have gas power stations but they only work basically a third of the time so obviously it's equivalent of

00:08:53.140 only having a third of the gas power stations um and then we've got a little bit of biomass where

00:08:58.240 we're chopping down trees in america and shipping them over to yorkshire to set fire to them um and

00:09:04.640 then we've got imports we rely quite heavily on imports which is a bit risky because um right now

00:09:11.820 in norway they've got uh they're approaching 20 year hydro lows the hydro system in norway is kind of

00:09:19.040 unique because they don't have any pumps so once the water's used up that's it until next time it

00:09:24.180 rains or the snow melts and so if the water levels get too low they'll have to ration um and now they're

00:09:31.660 unless they have a wet autumn they're going to be in that sort of territory so they could very well

00:09:36.800 restrict exports or start importing from us now that's the capacity on that cable is the equivalent to

00:09:43.740 about two gas fired power stations so obviously we normally import if we started exporting that

00:09:49.360 would be like having four fewer power stations than we normally do we don't really have it to spare

00:09:54.520 so yeah it's not a very um not a very safe system i would say um now in terms of how electricity is

00:10:04.900 generated and i will do a little bit of the nerd stuff here please um so there are two ways in which our

00:10:11.900 electricity system isn't safe one is that we we're just running out of power stations a third of our

00:10:18.820 gas power stations were built in the 1990s and normally you'd expect these types of assets to

00:10:24.400 last for 25 to 30 years now they had upgrades in the early 2010s most of them that would give you or

00:10:30.140 the early 2000s that would give you the 30 years rather than the 25 years but you're starting to come to

00:10:35.160 the end of that we have no replacement plan for these assets and to buy a new gas turbine now is an

00:10:41.480 eight-year lead time so if they're going to start retiring by 2030 and you could lose a third of the

00:10:47.900 fleet this is a major security of supply concern and we need to have already started planning for

00:10:54.060 that replacement and we haven't done anything um so the other risk that we have is a stability problem

00:11:01.920 and the stability problem arises because our power grid uses alternating current and renewables and

00:11:09.940 batteries work on direct current and trying to put direct current into an alternating current grid

00:11:15.620 is like putting a square peg into a round hole it's technically difficult to do and one of the things

00:11:21.240 that stabilizes the power system are conventional generators so the way that works is to create the

00:11:29.720 alternating currents you rotate one magnet inside the magnetic field of another magnet and so you've got

00:11:34.880 these magnets on the turbines and stuff and that creates current and voltage that varies sorry in

00:11:41.940 a stable cycle you have a nice wave and that wave is linked to the speed that the turbines rotate so

00:11:49.740 in europe they rotate at 3000 revolutions per minute and that gives you 50 cycles of your voltage and

00:11:58.040 frequency and current per second and that's called the grid frequency and it's a really really

00:12:03.000 important parameter in the electricity market um equipment across the grid is very sensitive to it

00:12:10.280 and so they all have protection measures that will basically they'll turn themselves off if that

00:12:15.040 frequency goes out of whack and it's also linked to supply and demand a bit like water in a pipe so if you

00:12:22.340 put more water in the pipe than you take out eventually the pressure goes up and the pipe would burst

00:12:27.020 if you put more electricity into the grid than you take off the frequency tries to speed up

00:12:32.580 and then the opposite is true if you're taking more out than you put in it will slow down

00:12:36.860 and if it slows down too much then everything turns itself off which is basically what happened in

00:12:42.600 iberia everything turned itself off because the frequency went outside the range that it was supposed

00:12:48.040 to be in now other stuff caused that but then that was the actual reason for the blackout so it's

00:12:54.780 really important that you control that the other thing that you get from conventional power stations

00:13:00.660 is not just that they set up that nice wave in the first place because they're big heavy lumps of

00:13:05.760 metal they resist changes to their speed of rotation so if you get a reduction in generation and your

00:13:13.000 demand has gone up and it's trying to lower the frequency which would mean slowing down the turbines

00:13:17.520 well they're not very inclined to do it so they're providing this thing called inertia which is

00:13:22.440 basically a resistance to that change and that makes changes slower and it then becomes less likely

00:13:29.100 that stuff will be turning itself off but as you start replacing those conventional generators with

00:13:34.460 renewables they create this alternating current through electronics the electronics don't have any

00:13:41.560 inertia they're actually quite even more sensitive than other types of equipment to frequency changes

00:13:48.100 and so they can contribute to the problem we saw that in spain we saw solar in particular and wind

00:13:55.080 tripping off when frequency was actually still inside its operating or what was supposed to be its

00:14:00.740 operating parameters so they disconnected and then that caused the frequency to drop to a level where

00:14:06.860 everything else turned off because then it did go outside of their safe parameters so the more you try

00:14:12.880 and replace conventional generation with renewables the less secure and stable your grid becomes

00:14:18.960 uh and 11 people died in the iberian blackout let's talk about the iberian blackout because

00:14:24.160 i won't pretend to understand the full intricacies of it but we have we have a super fan of trigonometry

00:14:30.100 who's objectively the most intelligent person that we have ever met who who works somewhat in this

00:14:35.560 area and when he knew you were coming on the show he said absolutely make sure you talk about this

00:14:39.820 because he messaged me the day that that blackout was happening and he said this is this is to do

00:14:44.820 with renewables yeah and most people and nobody i don't see that covered in the media remotely

00:14:50.060 remotely that wasn't part of the narrative nobody said anything about renewables net zero but what

00:14:56.940 you're saying is this is a direct consequence of what happens when you become over-reliant on these

00:15:02.480 systems that aren't i mean are we being charitable and we're saying they're not there yet

00:15:08.000 or is that too charitable i think that's too charitable they're never going to be i don't

00:15:13.140 think so no i mean i was i was actually asked recently to write a blog about whether we could

00:15:19.000 actually create a direct current grid because you can do little micro grids that are direct currents

00:15:25.060 but actually to do anything large scale you would it wouldn't work it wouldn't you wouldn't be

00:15:29.700 able to get the stability the technology doesn't exist to do that and so no you couldn't you'd still

00:15:36.160 have to have alternating currencies that's why i asked about yet could we not develop technology i

00:15:41.040 mean we've we've you know there was a time when we didn't have certain things and now we do is that

00:15:44.780 okay well maybe but we don't currently see a trajectory for it okay so explain for example that

00:15:51.400 we might be able to make nuclear fusion work but we're very far away from that being commercialized

00:15:57.120 at the moment so we can't really include it in any sort of useful planning so explain to people in a

00:16:03.080 more in a kind of basic way what happened in in iberia exactly and why is it that wind and solar

00:16:09.500 in particular you you did some of that briefly but just explain it right so what happened in iberia

00:16:15.600 was the first thing was they noticed some funny frequency oscillations that were at 0.2 hertz

00:16:24.020 and the spanish grid operator said well these were a bit funny but we've been seeing these in the

00:16:31.220 european grid for some time so they're not unusual now i would say that maybe you're normalizing

00:16:37.640 deviance there and that's not necessarily smart but never nevertheless then a little while later they

00:16:44.980 identified 0.6 hertz oscillations now coincidental to both of these frequency oscillations you had

00:16:52.380 fluctuations in voltage so it was both a voltage disturbance and a frequency disturbance now the

00:16:59.340 uh the system operator wrote a report that sort of implied that they were causing each other but i

00:17:05.960 think that was just poor use of language because it was a translation so the english version is a

00:17:09.720 translation it's a little bit like saying uh sunshine makes plants grow and sunshine can give

00:17:15.840 you sunburn but plants growing doesn't give people sunburn so anyway so you had this 0.6 hertz

00:17:21.980 voltage oscillation and the system operator tried to as a frequency oscillation and the voltage disturbance

00:17:28.280 and the system operator tried to engage some pretty static responses to manage what was a quite a dynamic

00:17:36.200 situation and to begin with they were successful and then and then it sort of wore off and the

00:17:43.520 oscillations recurred and also at the same time because it was the middle of the day and because there

00:17:50.540 was lots of solar at the time uh quite a lot of solar connected to the distribution network turned

00:17:56.360 itself off because prices went negative so that shows up as demand on the transmission system

00:18:03.680 and so all of a sudden you had more demand than generation and of course that causes your frequency

00:18:09.500 to start to drop now the voltage disturbance they were trying to control out with something called

00:18:16.280 reactive power controls and these are things that both conventional power stations and inverter based

00:18:22.880 resources like wind solar and batteries uh can help to address but there were two problems with that one

00:18:30.540 was there was widespread non-compliance with grid codes that both inverter based generators and

00:18:36.700 conventional generators just didn't respond the way they were supposed to under the grid codes the other

00:18:42.300 problem was that the system operator simply hadn't scheduled enough conventional generation

00:18:46.140 to provide the amount of conventional reactive power that was needed to stabilize the grid so it was a

00:18:52.280 planning failure plus a compliance failure

00:18:54.160 so the next thing that happened was we had some transformers tripped off and some

00:19:01.860 renewable generators tripped off and this was in response to that reduction in frequency now they tripped off

00:19:08.520 when uh the frequency was still inside what should have been normal operating parameters so this was

00:19:13.740 another failure to adhere to grid codes the loss of that renewable generation pushed the grid

00:19:21.580 frequency outside its operating parameters and that triggered conventional generators to trip so that

00:19:27.880 wasn't a grid code compliance failure because the frequency was now outside its operational limits

00:19:33.260 and therefore from that point onwards it the system wasn't saveable you had a cascading blackout each new

00:19:41.960 uh power station that tripped off caused another reduction in frequency that made something else trip off

00:19:47.280 and then everything it just cascaded down to zero within seconds

00:19:50.880 the that original 0.6 hertz oscillation was traced back to a faulty solar inverter

00:19:58.940 so the grid disturbance that caused everything was a renewable asset a renewable generator

00:20:06.500 lots of renewable generators were non-compliant to grid codes both in terms of reactive power and in frequency

00:20:13.940 you might have got away with the reactive power you definitely couldn't get away with the frequency

00:20:18.560 and then you had conventional generation non-compliant with the reactive power obligations

00:20:23.680 um and then you had the grid operator who tried to use static measures to respond to a dynamic situation

00:20:29.680 and failed to plan enough reactive power and essentially just failed to schedule enough

00:20:34.160 conventional generation on the grid about two weeks before that they'd made a big song and dance

00:20:39.520 about running the grid with 100 intermittent renewables for a very brief period immediately after

00:20:45.620 the blackouts they started saying oh we know what to do to prevent this from happening

00:20:48.840 well that was just run more gas and that's exactly what they have done since they've run more gas

00:20:53.100 um so yeah renewables definitely were the cause of the iberian blackout and what's really interesting

00:20:59.480 is when the fault propagated into france you had a very small region of france that was affected and

00:21:04.760 had a short um a short um power cut basically france their generation mix is almost all nuclear

00:21:13.540 plus a good chunk of hydro which is another conventional source so big spinning machines that means that the

00:21:20.000 french grid has very high inertia and so the fault didn't propagate into france except this very small

00:21:25.780 region and they restored power into that region very quickly so that just shows the difference

00:21:31.640 between a high inertia grid and a low inertia grid and so if you lower your inertia too much you're playing

00:21:36.660 with fire if you're watching this interview chances are you already know how important it is to think

00:21:43.020 for yourself but with the war in gaza that is not easy the same events are framed completely

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00:23:13.060 so the question therefore is catherine why this obsession with renewables if they quite clearly don't

00:23:21.740 are nowhere near as effective as the older types of technology it's an ideology it's literal zealotry

00:23:29.780 it's not based on evidence it's not based on science it's based on wishful thinking so if that's the

00:23:36.320 case then what we have is people who are telling us so that we need to invest into this technology

00:23:43.840 billions and billions of pounds but it's not based on any type of scientific fact yes correct and yeah

00:23:52.520 you get people continuing to insist on certain things despite all of the evidence to the contrary

00:23:58.380 so milliband keeps saying that energy prices are high because of gas prices well gas prices are down 84

00:24:04.600 since their peak the whole bills are definitely not down 84 and the subsidy round last year a or six

00:24:12.280 offshore wind priced at 83 pounds per megawatt hour in today's money the average wholesale power price

00:24:18.400 in 2024 based on gas because gas is the marginal generation and so that sets the price was 73 pounds

00:24:25.420 a megawatt hour so offshore wind last year was 13 percent more expensive than gas just for the subsidy

00:24:33.740 and then you've got to add on the connections the backup costs the curtailment costs and the real-time

00:24:39.200 balancing costs because every cloud every gust of wind puts that supply and demand balance out and

00:24:45.920 obviously you've got to maintain the frequency really closely so you've got to keep the supply and demand

00:24:49.700 really matched in real time and that's adding billions of pounds a year to our bills so even that

00:24:55.660 first order level of the subsidy 13 percent higher and all stud cancelled horn c4 which was the flagship

00:25:02.880 project saying it was not enough money so yet they're still spouting this nonsense that renewables

00:25:10.160 are cheap renewables are self-evidently not cheap so they're ideologically captured yes we're pursuing an

00:25:18.880 energy policy which is not only unreliable but also far more expensive i guess the next question is

00:25:26.240 well the rubber's going to hit the road at one point when do you think that's going to be and what is it

00:25:31.860 going to look like so we had an emis in january when this market got far tighter than we'd ever expect

00:25:40.680 so i think what does that mean katherine there's a lot that we nearly ran out of generation

00:25:44.820 we neither had blackouts we nearly had blackouts because we nearly just didn't have enough power

00:25:50.300 stations to meet demand so one of the problems we have is that niso the system operators a bit rubbish

00:25:56.420 at forecasting demand so um after that near miss on the 8th of january um they were quite upset with me

00:26:04.660 uh and lots of journalists were quoting my work to them and niso tried very hard to discredit me

00:26:11.780 which the journalists were kind enough to tell me so i know that this was happening

00:26:15.040 um and then every week niso has this thing called an operational transparency forum that anybody can

00:26:21.240 dial into and a week or so after this event um they decided that they were going to do an audit of

00:26:27.760 their demand forecasting and the engineer who announced this said it had been 10 to 20 years since they

00:26:33.820 last looked at their demand forecasting now i'd written a blog about this because i'd said the

00:26:38.680 section of the grid code that covers this doesn't look as if it's been amended meaningfully since it

00:26:45.320 was written basically in 2001 which is when our current electricity trading arrangements were put in

00:26:50.300 place and this is part of the problem with our system of governance is actually isn't anybody's job

00:26:56.480 to make sure that the system is secure what about the energy minister no it doesn't fall with

00:27:03.040 anybody's remit nobody's responsible for security of supply so we have all of these industry codes

00:27:08.440 that govern how people should behave in the market like the grid code talks about how if you're

00:27:14.540 connected to the transmission system how you have to behave what standards you have to meet what

00:27:19.380 services you have to provide what you can and can't do um the this but that was written back in

00:27:27.360 the days when you had a relatively small number of power stations that were big and conventional

00:27:32.480 connected to the grid now you have lots and lots of much smaller power stations they're not all

00:27:38.000 connected to the high voltage grid a lot of them are connected to the low voltage grids so that means

00:27:42.760 that niso doesn't directly see them but they have an impact on the transmission system so really they

00:27:48.740 need to know and it seems like for batteries they have to tell them information about charging but not

00:27:53.780 discharging or vice versa and um and so it's all a bit nuts right it's never been updated and it's

00:27:59.780 not anybody's job on an ongoing basis to say well given the market change is this code still fit for

00:28:05.520 purpose if everybody follows the code and does what the code says they should do will the system be

00:28:11.420 secure and right now the answer is no because the code doesn't take account of the way the market's

00:28:17.020 changed so niso admitting that they hadn't looked at their methodology for demand forecasting in 10 to

00:28:23.420 20 years was quite shocking but i mean i wasn't shocked because i don't know how these things work

00:28:31.460 but objectively speaking how is it that nobody took a step back and said actually our demand forecasts

00:28:37.780 are a bit rubbish maybe we should look into how we're doing them you know just because we've used the

00:28:42.580 word blackouts and unless you've actually lived through a blackout like everyone can drink now

00:28:47.160 i lived i spend a lot of time in venezuela when you have a blackout that's very serious yeah what

00:28:52.760 is the what is what are what are the effects of a blackout on a country on the economy on people's

00:28:59.960 lives etc well i mean they think that the blackout at heathrow cost tens of millions of pounds

00:29:05.080 and that was just at one airport so imagine that across the whole country now in iberia 11 people

00:29:12.220 died and that blackout happened in what i call goldilocks weather conditions so it wasn't too

00:29:17.640 hot and it wasn't too cold the uh risk points for us in britain would be a winter evening that's when

00:29:26.260 we're most likely to have a blackout particularly a nationwide blackout that will be most likely to

00:29:31.280 happen in a winter evening now you think about london at 5 p.m in early december it's dark already

00:29:39.400 you'd have no street lights no traffic lights no ambient light from buildings all of those stupid

00:29:45.360 illuminated bollards in the road wouldn't be illuminated anymore you'd have car headlights

00:29:49.860 and you'd have people's mobile phones at 5 p.m in a december early december evening children are

00:29:55.580 still coming home from school so your chances of having traffic accidents and road facilities quite

00:30:01.300 high elderly people falling in the home people being stuck in unheated unlit lifts people being stuck in

00:30:08.100 unheated unlit trains anybody with health vulnerabilities there will be in trouble

00:30:13.440 people who rely on medical equipment in the home so the fatalities in iberia one was a death from a

00:30:20.340 house fire associated with the use of candles there were um seven fatalities because people were using

00:30:28.240 uh mechanical ventilators to breathe and the backup generators failed and then another situation where

00:30:36.800 there was a backup generator which it didn't fail as in stop working it started to give off carbon

00:30:43.860 monoxide so not only the patient but two of the patients relative suffocated so this is this is no joke

00:30:51.740 right a winter blackout in britain i think you'd see a lot more than 11 people losing their lives

00:30:56.920 so it's not only ideologically ideologically reckless they have been reckless with people's lives here

00:31:07.440 yeah and and also we have between six and eight thousand people uh dying prematurely each winter as a

00:31:15.560 result of fuel poverty so i've got a good chart in my report which shows wholesale gas and electricity

00:31:22.600 prices going back to the 1990s and household spend on electricity and what you can see is that up until

00:31:30.540 2021 wholesale gas prices were fairly low and stable wholesale electricity prices were a little bit

00:31:37.900 higher but fairly low and stable which is what you'd expect because gas is the fuel for electricity so

00:31:42.920 you'd have a little bit more cost coming in with that but then from 2006 so up until 2006

00:31:49.980 the retail price of electricity was also fairly stable so you had the wholesale price you add a

00:31:55.420 little bit to get of gas you add a little bit to get the wholesale price of electricity then you add a

00:31:59.980 little bit to get the retail price of electricity and that reflects the cost of delivering it and

00:32:05.080 the accounting you have to do for billing and stuff so that was all fine and then from 2006

00:32:12.780 the retail price started to diverge dramatically from the wholesale price and actually what you

00:32:19.360 then found was it had gone up in this big slope up to 2021 so then you had the gas crisis and

00:32:26.980 whole uh the wholesale gas and electricity prices actually leapt up almost to meet where the retail

00:32:33.900 price was um and so and the retail price was artificially reduced because the government suspended some of the

00:32:40.100 levies and stuff and started giving people the um the energy price guarantee which is effectively a

00:32:45.460 house subsidy to consumers and then you see the uh the wholesale prices drop off again but the retail

00:32:52.600 price actually went up before it came down so what you're really saying i'm converting so i'm always

00:32:57.300 trying thinking of how to convert this into simple language first for myself and for our viewers and

00:33:01.760 listeners what you're saying is effectively this is we're baking cakes right and the key ingredient in cake

00:33:08.100 is sugar right and the price of sugar stays the same it goes up slightly and in line with that the price

00:33:14.620 of cakes goes up slightly but what happens when you introduce all these levies is the price of sugar is

00:33:19.780 not going up anymore but the price of cakes has gone way up because the government has put in a

00:33:25.160 stealth tax on cakes that none of us really know about or get to vote on really yeah it's like them

00:33:31.180 saying you've got to add in like fluoride to cakes or something right and then that fluoride is really

00:33:36.300 expensive and actually you can't really absorb it through eating it in cake so it's a bit pointless

00:33:41.620 but you're still having to spend loads of money you're still paying for it and look i don't want

00:33:45.820 to skip over because i i think there's a danger in having these kind of conversations that we skip over

00:33:50.560 the reality of what you're saying i mean you are making an extraordinary claim catherine which is that

00:33:56.720 the government is making us all poorer yeah and less safe yes and less geopolitically safe we're more

00:34:08.960 reliant on all sorts of importation etc and they're doing this for ideological reasons can that really

00:34:17.340 be true entire countries maybe an entire continent of europe pursuing these policies that you say are making

00:34:24.620 us less safe and less wealthy and they're just doing it because you know this is what they believe

00:34:29.480 right so the less wealthy thing isn't just happening in energy um i don't know if you saw kemi

00:34:35.180 baddenhock's speech i think it was in march when she uh repudiated the net zero 2050 target and in that

00:34:42.000 speech she said that over the years we started to take prosperity for granted and i think that's really

00:34:48.260 true we've over regulated our economy and not just in the sense of energy but in all sorts of other

00:34:55.400 ways as well financial services where i began my career massively over regulated and inappropriately

00:35:01.260 regulated look at the water sector the entire problem with thames water is because off what didn't

00:35:08.040 understand its own price control it actually would have been better off if that price control didn't

00:35:12.900 exist now that might sound crazy that a monopoly supplier shouldn't have a price control but

00:35:18.720 actually if you hadn't had the price control um you could have had controls over uh dividend payments

00:35:24.920 there would have been no incentive for somebody like macquarie to come along and buy thames water

00:35:30.200 the people who would have wanted to buy water companies would have been pension funds because they'd want

00:35:35.820 long-term stable income they would not allow the erosion of the asset base the way short-term short

00:35:42.660 horizon financial engineers like macquarie do so it was because of the way the price control was

00:35:48.840 structured that whole situation happened and because you have rules-based um regulatory processes

00:35:55.580 which encourage you to hire loads and loads of people to set the rules and and monitor the rules

00:36:01.320 and train people about the rules and report on the rules and enforce the rules and punish people who break

00:36:06.620 the rules you have this whole cottage industry of stuff that does not contribute anything to growth

00:36:12.100 right it is a it is a make work activity they watch people doing work but they don't contribute

00:36:19.260 to growth or economic output and and often they make it worse because in energy suppliers have to

00:36:27.040 employ people just to respond to off-gem information requests like that's all they do day in and day out is

00:36:33.200 just respond to information requests from the regulator so this is this is crazy right so and across europe

00:36:40.260 we've seen this this this this belief that you can't just do stuff you have to do it nicely you

00:36:48.040 have to do it in a nice way what does that mean and the way that nice has been defined has been by

00:36:53.200 technocrats who aren't elected and who have some ideology about this that and the other like the

00:36:59.660 price control in the water sector we need to get rid of that we need to go back to principles-based

00:37:04.380 regulation you've got to fire hundreds and thousands of people who work in the regulatory space

00:37:11.160 if you go to principles-based regulation you no longer need armies of people writing rules setting

00:37:17.240 rules training people in the rules in energy for example you could take well i think we should adopt

00:37:22.240 the fca principles within energy so the financial conduct authority principles there's 12 of them and

00:37:28.720 they're all straightforward things like behave with integrity behave with due to skill care and

00:37:32.240 diligence cooperate with your regulator treat customers fairly you know these are not controversial

00:37:37.040 things now instead of setting detailed rules around customer acquisition and tariffs all often needs to say

00:37:44.800 is right treating customers fairly will deem it unfair if you charge existing customers a worse

00:37:51.280 tariff than you're setting for new customers for customer acquisition like job done like no need for

00:37:57.040 detailed rules about how that works it's a guidance and then they might look into it here and there

00:38:02.400 but then it's more like a controls based audit where you do it on a sample basis rather than trying to

00:38:08.360 look at every single little thing in the in the accounts that would cut radically the headcount

00:38:14.840 in regulation and then you just need to pay those people more because you need them to be really smart

00:38:19.760 i guess the whole economy becomes way more productive well that sounds amazing i guess what

00:38:25.960 i'm getting at though is first and foremost is i think it's quite a lot for people to wrap their heads

00:38:32.440 around that we are pursuing terrible policies for our country and it's because the people in charge

00:38:40.220 just don't care about science like that's that's that's that's a claim that for most just people normal

00:38:46.280 people who haven't studied this as much as you have it's quite it takes quite a lot to believe

00:38:50.620 that do you see what i'm saying okay but look at who the people in westminster and whitehall are

00:38:55.160 how many of them have any training in science look at this current government now how many of them

00:39:00.120 have ever worked in business how many of them ever run a business how many of them have ever done

00:39:04.640 anything other than be a politician or a trade unionist or work in a think tank and that's why the

00:39:11.360 budget was so terrible and why the economy is performing so badly it's because they have no idea what

00:39:15.400 they're doing because they see business as something other that they can just tax rather than being a

00:39:19.820 driver of growth and the same really applies when it comes to science they've all got history degrees

00:39:26.080 and politics degrees and ppe and whatever hardly anybody in westminster and whitehall has a degree in

00:39:32.120 any sort of scientific discipline you saw it in covid when they said all this stuff about follow the

00:39:36.340 science that is a ridiculous thing to say the science might suggest you kill everyone over the age of 80

00:39:41.380 doesn't mean you should do it you know and also there's no such thing as the science science is

00:39:47.300 never settled that's just how science works you can never prove something in science you can only

00:39:53.060 disprove it for centuries we thought that newtonian mechanics was it we understood how um you know

00:40:00.060 mass interacted with other mass and then along came einstein and relativity and we discovered quantum

00:40:04.900 mechanics and saw that oh well that doesn't apply at the very small scale like who knew like nobody

00:40:10.800 so science is never settled and you need to have people with scientific training in those positions

00:40:18.640 of authority and we just don't so it's not a surprise that they get misled somebody will say well wind

00:40:25.060 power should be cheap because the wind is free and that sounds very logical but building the machines

00:40:30.680 that turn the wind into electricity isn't cheap those machines are really expensive katherine i'm going to

00:40:35.820 push back on this because i don't actually agree with you okay okay and i'll tell you why so full

00:40:43.140 disclosure i've got a tutu in drama and english from essex university all right i am not an academic

00:40:49.060 genii yeah i've sat here with you you're not a genii anyway because that's a plural yeah exactly

00:40:54.420 thank you for doing my job but anyway my point is this i was able to follow it and academically i'm

00:41:03.440 quite mediocre these are people who've been to oxford cambridge yes they may have history degrees

00:41:08.160 they may have politics degrees but when it comes to academically we're talking about the we're talking

00:41:13.500 about the top one or two percent so there's part of me that goes i kind of get it but i don't buy it

00:41:19.520 right because they want to believe it so it's a mixture of lacking the training in science that would

00:41:26.360 give them those critical thinking skills look at the great barrington declaration during covid now in

00:41:32.200 retrospect most people think those guys were right but at the time they were considered pariahs for

00:41:38.440 saying what they said because policymakers did not understand science and when people presented them

00:41:46.400 with information they lacked the ability to say you know well that doesn't pass the smell test

00:41:50.740 i just don't buy it that just doesn't sound sensible to me and more so this is the other thing

00:41:57.040 because there's a manufacturing of consent thing going on here as well because i remember when we

00:42:01.240 had boris johnson on the show and in the in the substact section i challenged him very directly

00:42:06.560 on the fact that he was you know we were told he was this libertarian who really cared about people's

00:42:11.800 freedoms and i was like why did you lock down again why did you pursue all these covered draconian

00:42:16.460 policies they're absolutely so why did nobody say in the mainstream that in recorded history

00:42:22.580 no pandemic has ever lasted longer than low double digit months because when we were living through

00:42:28.220 covid everyone was behaving as if it was forever that the only way out of the pandemic would be a

00:42:33.240 vaccine and yet that was blatantly not supported by the evidence well what boris johnson said and this

00:42:39.720 is very much my point katherine is well by that point the public were they just wouldn't accept they

00:42:44.680 were demanding and that's because there's an let's just be honest there are narratives in the media and in

00:42:50.620 public discussion when people are afraid rubbish from that idiot at imperial college who never managed to

00:42:55.320 get any single forecast anyway remotely correct he was wrong about swine flu he was wrong about bsc or

00:43:01.580 whatever he was always wrong and yet they kept wheeling him out and he was like oh you know well

00:43:06.340 a million people are going to die by the middle of next week and everyone's like oh no shit well we've got

00:43:10.240 to do something about it well this is my point right this is my point exactly with net zero and all of

00:43:15.820 this green levies and all these other things if you go out in the street forget about your knowledge

00:43:21.280 and your expertise and your training and our opinions and the podcasting and i just talk to

00:43:25.580 normal people the the narrative is as simple as this the planner is in imminent danger

00:43:33.680 because of climate change uh if we don't deal with our carbon emissions right now

00:43:40.920 then by 20 it depends who you are 2030 2035 2050 but within our lifetimes within certainly within our

00:43:48.640 children's lifetimes we're all going to die the planet's going to burn and the only way to deal

00:43:52.920 with that is to immediately transition to renewable energy get to net zero so that we're not producing

00:43:59.040 more carbon than we are getting rid of and whatever it takes to achieve that oh that's the interesting

00:44:08.320 thing because that's not true in the polls people will say yes we want action on climate yeah but then

00:44:14.000 when you ask them how much they're willing to spend on achieving that they'll say something like

00:44:18.260 10 pounds a year right it's some ludicrously small amount but they're actually not willing to spend

00:44:24.220 but see it depends how you ask the question because if you say to people how much are you willing to

00:44:28.200 spend they'll say 10 pounds but if you say if you say to them look your energy bills have gone up

00:44:33.320 and it's because of the war in ukraine we won't tell you about the green levies and all this other

00:44:37.340 stuff and by oh green levies yeah it's to save the save the planet people are actually a lot of

00:44:42.340 people are on board with that because the money they don't feel that the money is being taken out

00:44:47.220 of their pocket that connection hasn't been made many people well that's because they've been lied

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00:45:55.800 subscription in the uk we are only responsible for 0.8 percent of global emissions so we could cut to zero

00:46:03.820 ourselves and literally it makes no difference to global climate change secondly our net zero

00:46:10.140 policies measure territorial production emissions by making our energy expensive we're incentivizing

00:46:16.620 offshoring of manufacturing so we could meet our target tomorrow by just shutting down all our

00:46:21.860 manufacturing but the result of that is global emissions go up and this is what annoys me so much

00:46:27.120 about what labor's doing is they just don't don't seem to be willing to accept that they're making

00:46:32.560 global emissions higher miliband repeats time and again we must act because of the climate emergency

00:46:38.160 all these factories closing all our um steel plants closing that happens we then start buying our steel

00:46:47.620 from china and things like girders and then you have to ship girders halfway around the world in ships that

00:46:54.320 burn bunker fuel which is like the dirtiest part of the crack shipping low value heavy bulk items halfway

00:47:01.600 around the world is a very stupid thing to do and that creates a lot of emissions so not only does

00:47:06.720 is the production more polluting because they have dirtier energy in china then you have all these

00:47:11.420 emissions that you didn't otherwise have from transportation but because our targets are just

00:47:16.580 looking at territorial production emissions then oh you can just virtue signal that we're you know

00:47:22.360 and british blokes are not getting the job because of it yeah so we're losing employment it's bad for the

00:47:26.880 economy we're having these artificially high energy prices it's putting more people in fuel poverty

00:47:31.940 and it's making emissions higher and how does that make sense and the key word that you use there

00:47:39.140 because i was going to that was going to be my follow-up question to you katherine is it's a virtue

00:47:43.300 signal yeah because we're still consuming exactly we're just getting somebody else to do it so that we

00:47:48.720 can look good right so here's the thing now they're going to introduce something called the carbon border

00:47:52.540 adjustment mechanism where they're going to tax imported goods that are made with dirtier energy

00:47:58.320 to try and make them equivalent to our emission standards this is going to be unbelievably inflationary

00:48:05.320 and so if the economy isn't in the toilet already it will be when this comes in so what what are the

00:48:11.280 products that we're talking about that are going to be taxed with this everything

00:48:15.260 sorry i know this is going to sound like what do you mean by everything clothes steel cars concrete

00:48:27.300 wind turbines solar panels everything excuse my language are they fucking mental yes

00:48:35.760 but this comes back to this how is it that you can have this widespread ideological failure if you like

00:48:44.440 but this has happened many times in history right look about look at um the reformation and the

00:48:51.520 spanish inquisition right you had a society then that believed that if you didn't follow the true faith

00:48:58.400 and different people disagreed about what the true faith was you would burn in hell for eternity now if

00:49:04.560 that's your belief then you can justify going to just about any length to try and convert somebody to

00:49:11.400 what you think the true faith is you can justify any type of horrible torture to convert them to save

00:49:17.040 them from eternal damnation right so now we would look back at things like the spanish inquisition

00:49:22.560 the uh english martyrs and all that stuff and we'd say that was ridiculous that was horrific

00:49:27.940 how could they crush people under doors that were loaded up with rocks just because they were

00:49:33.440 protestants instead of catholics and vice versa well that was that was the reason why this and but

00:49:39.100 everybody believed that nobody thought that was crazy well to your point about everybody believing

00:49:43.480 this is i think where another challenge for a lot of people comes it comes in i i remember actually

00:49:47.900 the moment when i realized how deep this rock goes because i i was on question time with a guy called

00:49:52.880 jake berry who's a recent defector from the conservatives to reform right and when i mentioned some sort of

00:50:00.080 skepticism about the idea that net zero is actually good for the country and in fact it might be making us

00:50:05.340 poorer he reacted with this furious response about how green jobs are the way forward they're going to

00:50:11.200 save our country and you constantin are the problem and all of this other stuff oh because you're

00:50:16.160 personally responsible for well whatever i'm just saying it look i i've got no problem with someone

00:50:24.560 having to go at ed milliband i think he he doesn't strike me as as you know the answer to britain's

00:50:29.780 problems but it's not just the the the loony left if you if this is how you want to label it i mean

00:50:37.240 the conservatives in the last government they have 14 years to deal with this what did we get

00:50:42.360 but now they've realized they were on the wrong track oh well that's a relief 14 years later well

00:50:47.960 okay but i can explain why okay in when gordon brown was prime minister he passed a law that made the

00:50:55.940 civil service independent of elected people right so civil servants do not report to their ministers

00:51:04.840 ministers cannot fire civil servants if the civil servant isn't doing what the minister wants

00:51:10.340 tough right and that's when you get all this talk about oh so much such and such a minister was

00:51:14.840 bullying their civil servants it's because the minister was trying to be assertive about well i'm

00:51:18.560 elected and i want you to do this and the civil servants were pushing back

00:51:21.800 that change happened not long before the conservatives came in in 2010 so the process

00:51:32.160 of the civil service became becoming politicized because once they no longer had to do what the

00:51:37.280 ministers were telling them they've basically started to form their own culture and their

00:51:40.620 own ideology which is pretty left-wing and this was a gradual process so conservatives didn't really

00:51:46.540 know it was happening because they were behind the wall if you like they would say to officials

00:51:50.820 right give me information about this that and the other and they'd get information and they would

00:51:54.940 trust it and they'd make decisions on that basis so then they lose the election in 2024

00:52:00.460 and now if they need information they can't ask the civil service for it they have to go and find it

00:52:06.460 for themselves and then suddenly they were like oh my god we're getting all this information that's not

00:52:11.300 the same as we were getting when we were in office they suddenly realized that they were only seeing a

00:52:16.820 subset of the available information not getting a complete picture they were basically misled by

00:52:23.240 officials now that might sound unbelievable but i would say if you don't believe that that's happening

00:52:28.900 watch the post office inquiry watch the testimony of both the officials and the ministers in that inquiry

00:52:35.800 those officials had no realistic ideological position there there's no reasonable basis for saying

00:52:43.880 that they believed the horizon it system was robust right that is not something that a civil servant should

00:52:50.180 have an opinion about and yet they restricted ministers access to information they prevented ministers from

00:52:57.140 understanding the breadth and scope of that problem and minister after minister came and testified to the

00:53:05.860 inquiry that they just did not know and they'd receive letters from constituents and the way that works is

00:53:13.000 you write to to if your mp is a minister you write to the to the minister the civil servants will read the letter

00:53:20.620 they will draft a reply they'll put it in the red box the minister signs it without having read the original letter

00:53:25.580 or read the reply because they've just got a hundred letters to sign they sign them

00:53:29.580 if you your mp is somebody other than the minister you write to your mp and then your mp writes to the

00:53:36.760 minister then the civil servant will give the minister both the mp's letter and the minister's

00:53:42.720 response and the minister might read them both or just might sign it right so you can see there how

00:53:49.040 information flows are restricted the civil servants could have said this is the 756th letter we've had on

00:53:56.860 this topic all saying the same thing they never did so the ministers were never able to build a picture

00:54:02.060 of what was going on and that was happening in an area where there was really no ideology to be had

00:54:10.480 so if that's happening where there is no ideological bias just imagine what's happening where there is

00:54:16.120 so effectively what we have is a civil service that is corrupt and is not fit for purpose correct

00:54:22.480 i mean number one that is well that's let's just be honest about that that's completely terrifying

00:54:30.640 but even labour has admitted this labour has said we don't run the country civil service civil servants

00:54:38.740 and quangos run the country and you saw it very clearly with nhs england where streeting kept saying

00:54:44.500 stop hiring people in in dei roles nhs england kept hiring people in dei roles and then streeting

00:54:52.360 turned around said right i've had enough right you're abolished that i meant it when i said no

00:54:58.560 more dei so there's going to be a lot of people who are listening to this who goes well if the

00:55:04.060 government aren't in charge and labour have admitted this then we don't actually have a democracy do

00:55:10.300 we don't have a functioning democracy and this all comes back to gordon brown it does so what i mean

00:55:18.820 he could new labour as a whole they made the monetary policy committee independent they made lots of

00:55:23.980 regulators independent they made the civil service independent you've got all these quangos quangos

00:55:28.680 are technically responsible to parliament right right off gem off what all these other people responsible

00:55:33.560 to parliament but how does that work in practice right how does parliament exercise oversight over

00:55:39.360 these bodies typically parliament won't do anything until something's gone wrong and then they're having

00:55:44.120 inquiry into the thing that went wrong there's not really a mechanism from preventing it going wrong

00:55:49.100 in the first place so really the only way to deal with this is to is to repeal that gordon brown

00:55:57.280 legislation and to fire all of the permanent secretaries and the directors general and hire and make those

00:56:04.280 roles political appointments and move to a more u.s style of system because you're not going to be able to

00:56:08.880 remove this once it's politicized it's almost impossible to reverse that but that legislation

00:56:15.100 might take some time to pass so in the interim you need to create a separate government department

00:56:21.040 with responsibility for oversight over all of these bodies and the creation of that government

00:56:27.040 department would then require the creation of a select committee in parliament and then hopefully you

00:56:32.420 can sort of i wouldn't hesitate to manipulate but you're effectively trying to manipulate the setup

00:56:37.820 to create a scenario where parliament can proactively exercise oversight over these bodies rather than

00:56:44.900 just being reactive when things go wrong so is that partly the reason why people are so frustrated

00:56:50.580 with democracy and i understand this because i am as well where they elect governments governments

00:56:55.880 say they're going to do something for instance immigration it doesn't happen and then people are going

00:57:02.620 what's going on oh yeah well tony blair embedded human rights legislation in a whole raft of different

00:57:09.820 legislation so whenever you want to do something you've got to then address the fact that it's not

00:57:15.440 just one area of law that you have to think about it's a massive areas of law because he puts it in so

00:57:20.220 many different pieces so many acts of parliament have these human rights elements embedded in them so

00:57:25.740 unpicking that is is really difficult and and this is when i'll come back to the comment that kemi made about

00:57:34.020 taking prosperity for granted when we have created all of these regulatory structures we can't deport people

00:57:40.160 because of the way the human rights law is being interpreted we can't build stuff because everything gets

00:57:45.760 jailed by environmentalists and in an effort to reduce the risk of judicial review everybody creates masses and

00:57:54.360 masses of paperwork because that makes any uh digital review a lot more expensive and so it makes it less

00:57:59.880 likely to happen so it's the defense defensive measure size wall c the office for nuclear regulation

00:58:07.240 said that they would really not not say anything if size wall c was an exact copy of hinckley point c

00:58:13.480 so from a nuclear perspective that it would just be green lit size wall c is exactly next door to

00:58:21.620 size wall b and the decommissioned size wall a and yet there was something like 40 000 pages of

00:58:26.880 environmental statements to explain how this reactor which is identical to another one elsewhere

00:58:31.520 in the country exactly next door to an existing reactor was going to impact the environment like

00:58:37.540 this should have been two pages to say how it was different from size wall b and yes it was 40 000

00:58:42.380 pages now 40 000 pages that's you know i can say that's 40 000 pages but actually doing 40 000 pages that

00:58:49.420 involves a lot of people a lot of costs a lot of time and then you wonder why we're spending 35

00:58:54.560 billion pounds to build nuclear reactors when kepko in south korea is spending between five and six

00:58:59.560 billion u.s dollars so the whole system is essentially been ground to a halt yes on everything because of

00:59:07.780 legislation put in by new labor the labor government at the time which just means that everything has

00:59:13.920 come grinding to a halt so that nothing can get done yeah but i come back the conservatives contributed to

00:59:18.800 this but this is what i was going to say right they have 14 years yeah but we can't overlook this

00:59:23.040 we can't and so but the because they were like the frogs in the pot of boiling water they didn't

00:59:29.900 understand how the how corrupted the the civil service was becoming until they left office and i do

00:59:35.860 sympathize with that but they were fully on board with this whole regulating everything independent

00:59:41.300 regulators and all the rest of it so that was separate so you had uh you had this ideology of

00:59:47.120 having non-democratic bodies that were supposed to be populated with technical experts really making

00:59:54.460 key decisions um so that bit they were subscribed to but then they were making decisions themselves

01:00:00.120 based on bad information that they didn't know so i think the first they're responsible the second

01:00:05.120 that's not so much well since we've ventured into the realm of politics before we started you you

01:00:10.180 actually said something that triggered francis i'm still still taking me time to recover probably the most

01:00:15.580 controversial thing that's been said on the show for a while which is you think the conservatives are

01:00:19.220 going to win the next election yes you're going to drive me back to drink explain well i think

01:00:29.720 historically we've seen the conservatives win elections when the polls have said otherwise and

01:00:36.400 part of that is because people feel embarrassed admitting to pollsters that they're going to vote

01:00:42.000 conservative and partly it's because i think when push comes to shove people can hate the conservatives

01:00:47.780 but still think they're more responsible and trustworthy and i don't mean trustworthy in a kind of integrity

01:00:54.880 sense i mean trustworthy in the sense of less likely to screw up the economy than anyone else and and it's an

01:01:03.120 unfortunate thing that everyone's forgotten that the country had no money in 2010 though there was a

01:01:08.500 labor the labor chief secretary to the treasury left a note that said the money's all gone

01:01:12.820 uh now everybody's forgotten about that but and labor now blathering on about black holes and stuff well

01:01:19.000 conservatives faced one of those when they came in and of course they had to go through covid as well

01:01:24.600 the economic impact of covid had we had a labor government would have been even worse because they

01:01:29.100 wanted more lockdowns more furloughs more everything so i totally get that people voted um the way they did in

01:01:35.840 the last election partly because of massive fatigue after 14 years of misery but 14 years that 14 years

01:01:43.420 included a chunk of austerity that was a response to the labor's poor management of the economy and then

01:01:49.480 covid um so they were not really things that were within their control and i think now everyone's

01:01:55.420 realizing just how bad labor is um yes there's an appeal with reform but i think the problem there is

01:02:02.900 reform haven't yet shown themselves to be a grown-up political force so they come out with policy

01:02:09.840 initiatives that are i would say they prematurely come out with these initiatives that they they say

01:02:15.660 things like oh we're going to tax away the subsidies that renewable generators get under the contracts for

01:02:21.460 difference well you can't do that because those contracts have um a change of law provisions in them

01:02:26.460 that would compensate the generators for exactly that sort of thing so so saying that's what they're

01:02:32.620 going to do it that's unworkable they should take their time to figure out what will work and so people

01:02:38.620 are getting a bit frustrated that the conservatives aren't being more clear about their new energy

01:02:43.540 policies but that's because they're really doing their homework behind the scenes um and so i have some

01:02:50.440 visibility on that and i can see that they're putting in the work in a good faith way they want to get it

01:02:55.900 right in normal circumstances we're still four years away from a general election i think we might

01:03:01.360 actually have one before then but under normal circumstances they don't really need to start

01:03:06.020 getting really detailed with policy for another three years when they start putting the manifestos

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01:03:17.380 asset grew the most in the first six months of president trump's second term many of you probably

01:03:22.360 guess the stock market was the best since what's backing the most retirement accounts in american

01:03:26.720 today is that but from january the 21st through july 21st the doubt jones grew less than one percent

01:03:33.420 what about bitcoin president trump loves bitcoin so it must have performed well right well it did

01:03:39.380 it grew nearly 15 percent an impressive six-month investment but it's not the number one the heavyweight

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01:04:47.600 your lifelong self-directed ira partner are you not factoring in so i for example my dad who is

01:04:55.700 a floating voter but he's center right and has voted conservative for most of his life

01:05:00.320 he said to me after the previous 14 years he will never vote conservative again i think there are quite a

01:05:08.060 few people like my father up and down this country yeah but people can change their minds i think what

01:05:13.040 the conservatives need to do is start making sure right now that people understand the the extent of

01:05:19.900 the problem with the civil service and start warming people up that we need to radically reform the

01:05:25.380 civil service and really that that was a huge barrier to delivery under the previous conservative

01:05:30.340 government and and you know fairness labor's facing those same barriers to delivery

01:05:34.220 labor's talking about getting rid of the blockers for example well some of those blockers are the

01:05:39.840 civil service and that is not a straightforward thing to unpick that now i don't think labor really

01:05:45.460 appreciates the extent of the challenge but the conservatives do and i think reform has to be on

01:05:50.620 the same page with this as well that they need to start warming the public up that in order for any

01:05:56.740 government to be effective you've got to take back control of all of these arms of the state

01:06:02.600 and and so that's going to require legislation it really needs to be in people's manifestos

01:06:07.780 and it's not too early to start talking about that i think once the conservatives start setting out

01:06:14.360 their new uh policies their new vision for the country if they're sufficiently radical with that

01:06:22.300 then i think people who had said well we never vote for them again might very well change their minds

01:06:28.020 because they do have a track record of not completely destroying the country well and also

01:06:34.200 sorry i would just say that um you know we've seen the lib dems do very well historically in local

01:06:38.840 elections and fail to translate that at westminster reform could very well end up in the same boat

01:06:43.660 lib dems have never polled at the top of the polls right like no but we're so far away right now

01:06:48.860 you know even if a pollster says to you if there was an election tomorrow who would you vote for

01:06:52.980 that still isn't really true no you can't you can't place any reliance on that i i guess the

01:06:58.380 thing i think the part of the reason for the appeal of reform is my sense of it is it sort of feels

01:07:04.080 like we're drinking the last chance salute yeah economically from an immigration point of view i mean

01:07:09.800 the the country just demographically is changing so rapidly because of mass immigration a lot of

01:07:14.660 people feel like the country they grew up is just it's not salvageable is you're not getting it back

01:07:20.140 well i think people are seeing a feeling of unfairness yeah because they've seen a big

01:07:25.800 erosion in their standards of living and and that's that's difficult right but that probably

01:07:33.720 wouldn't really anger them except they see these people arrive illegally on boats with no

01:07:39.740 records of who they are whether they're criminals or good people they're mostly young men from

01:07:44.820 countries that don't share our cultural values then these people get put into luxury accommodation

01:07:52.040 with instant access to nhs doctors they get instant access to nhs dental care now if you're i'm a

01:08:01.380 homeless person say a single mother with two children that home made homeless and you approach your

01:08:06.520 council for somewhere to live you're going to be put on some list you'll be put in a b&b it's going

01:08:10.820 it's definitely not luxury accommodation you're you're uk taxpayer you want to see a gp you've got

01:08:16.500 to like do the 8 a.m phone rush and maybe if you're lucky you'll get an appointment in three weeks

01:08:20.660 you want to get an nhs dentist well good luck with that because there's large parts of the country

01:08:24.680 it's just not even possible right so then you see your standards of living falling and these people

01:08:31.080 turning up and they get this preferential treatment and i think that is making people very angry

01:08:36.880 and i think labor's playing with fire here because instead of listening to people's concerns

01:08:42.320 they're branding them as far-right extremists they're starting to get it i see a lot of people

01:08:46.860 now kind of got suddenly they've all realized the echr might be a bit of a problem well yeah i know but

01:08:51.800 so because they're starting to see so the extent of the opposition in the red wall yeah um it is not

01:08:58.900 far right to be upset that immigrants get better treatment than citizens especially illegal immigrants

01:09:06.760 especially especially illegal immigrants right so but but any sort of immigrant but particularly

01:09:11.800 illegal immigrants so i think what's what's driving a lot of the anger is this sense of unfairness now i

01:09:17.400 think in general terms it's quite difficult to get british people riled up it's why we've never had a

01:09:21.660 revolution and i know periodically we'll have riots and that tends to be in the summer and then it rains

01:09:26.540 and everyone goes home and everyone forgets about it i think if going into the autumn if we start

01:09:31.240 seeing that sort of activity in something other than hot weather that's going to be a huge problem

01:09:37.800 and by trying to restrict free speech and trying to stop policing speech rather than hearing people's

01:09:45.300 concerns labor is pouring oil on those flames they are so they are making this into a very dangerous

01:09:52.500 situation and i really hope that they stop because i'm not an anarchist i know it can be quite fun to go

01:09:58.900 oh we'll have some manicure but actually in real life it's not it's terrible not remotely fun it's

01:10:03.180 you know and so it's not something that we should be desiring in any way even if it probably would

01:10:09.540 prompt an early general election that's just the worst way to go about it absolutely and this is why

01:10:15.140 i wanted to bring up the economic situation because part of the problem here catherine i may be

01:10:19.200 misreading this but correct me if i'm wrong given that we have all of these things embedded in a way

01:10:24.960 that we can't really see in terms of the subsidies the levies etc if you get rid of that you're going

01:10:32.520 to have to find the money somewhere yeah so um so there are some ways of dealing with it the first

01:10:38.140 thing we need to do is to strip back energy supply so it's about energy supply and not social engineering

01:10:44.900 or any of the other stuff that they're doing i mean the energy company obligations another stupid one

01:10:49.080 um suppliers are supposed to help people install insulation like what do suppliers know about

01:10:54.840 insulation that's just kind of nonsense right so um and smart meters right no other country has

01:11:01.240 suppliers installing smart meters it's network equipment that's installed by network companies

01:11:05.500 duh you know so in the same way that the gp patient relationship gets abused by the government the

01:11:11.760 supplier consumer relationship gets abused by the government so you want to strip back

01:11:16.560 the job of suppliers to be about supply and so that means moving all the levies into taxation

01:11:23.520 now yes you've obviously got to then raise taxes to cover it but actually it's less regressive than

01:11:30.020 the current method because people on the lowest incomes don't pay income tax for example so they would

01:11:36.780 then not have to pay those levies and that would be fairer so um so so simplify the

01:11:46.400 simplify the supply segment now there is some stuff you can do to reduce those levies the legacy renewables

01:11:52.520 obligation you can use statutory instruments to change the parameters of that to cut costs

01:11:57.900 some of the um older projects for example would receive three rocks per megawatt hour they should only

01:12:04.580 get one so cut that and i think that's pretty straightforward and yes they might try and take it

01:12:09.420 through the courts but there's pretty well established case law that you're not entitled to continue

01:12:13.940 receiving windfall gains and i think if you're getting three and other people are getting one

01:12:18.360 you can call that a windfall gain so i think that's pretty straightforward um and also you can start

01:12:23.660 eroding the value of those and and also change the indexation so that index to rpi which means that

01:12:31.660 in real terms because it should be cpi um even though this is a legacy scheme and so year on year

01:12:38.540 projects are rolling off because their uh subsidies expired the actual cost of the consumer is going

01:12:45.020 up because they're using the wrong indexation and that's still going to carry on until i think 2037

01:12:51.060 um so yeah that that incorrect indexation is worse again billions of pounds a year so that should be

01:13:00.580 changed and also i don't think there'd be any legal way of really opposing that by the generators

01:13:04.840 you just call it a windfall gain that they're no longer receiving so there are some ways that you

01:13:09.560 could cut money out of that relatively easily then you've got to address the capacity shortages going

01:13:15.640 forwards so we should do what works kepco can build its reactors in under 10 years at a cost of five to

01:13:24.820 six billion u.s i would pass a law that says we're going to build this reactor on this site there's some

01:13:30.680 negotiation to be done with westinghouse because under their agreements with kepco kepco is not

01:13:36.880 supposed to sell its stuff in europe but i think we can get around that the westinghouse design isn't

01:13:42.260 as good so use the kepco one which is based on westinghouse but a bit different pass a law that

01:13:48.420 bypasses all of the regulatory processes and go to the bond markets and say we're going to build

01:13:54.720 these reactors with public money and refinance after construction because there's construction

01:14:00.280 risk that investors are scared of nuclear power stations are very profitable to run so this is a

01:14:06.680 great story that the bond markets will buy you issue specific nuclear bonds uh 10 15 year bonds that

01:14:13.020 you refinance at the end of construction and then happy days you'll have plenty of people wanting to

01:14:18.980 buy into those assets and in fact you could even do a public share subscription at that point as well

01:14:24.020 because why not have the public owner stake just the way they did a privatization i think people

01:14:29.820 would be queuing up for it it'll be the next telcid so um so that gets you nuclear um i think we might

01:14:37.280 have to bite the bullet and look at coal because you can build so my understanding is the lead time

01:14:41.860 for a coal turbine is three years if you're looking at eight years for a gas turbine you might just have

01:14:47.320 to bite the bullet and do that but then we can start mining our own coal again that would have an

01:14:51.340 economic benefit right you've said all of these things and i agree energy profits levy and go

01:14:57.260 gangbusters in the north sea as well and i'm sure they're great and they will all work i look at the

01:15:03.700 conservatives not all of them but a lot of them and a lot of them are still on the train a lot of them

01:15:11.180 are still profoundly woke a lot of them if you probably asked them there'll be a good selection

01:15:15.660 probably still don't know what a woman is even now and so that being the case i think are they

01:15:21.860 going to do these policies are they heck well so i i'm i'm more optimistic about it

01:15:29.800 i mean i think i think uh claire and her team are very much on board with what i've been saying

01:15:37.220 and i think kemi is on board with that as well she's got to persuade people as you say there are

01:15:43.220 people in the party who are still very much wet liberals and my view is they should the liberal

01:15:48.760 democrats if that's what they are um but that's a process right she's i think she's taking the time

01:15:57.880 that she has to really make sure that she's on top of what the policies need to be to get

01:16:06.100 a a defensible position that that makes sense that stacks up that people with real world experience

01:16:14.220 will get behind and then sell that both to the skeptics in her party and the public more broadly

01:16:19.780 and that process takes time because they were really shocked when they left office and they realized

01:16:26.200 the the extent to which they had not been given proper information and and claire when she was you

01:16:33.160 know coming to the end of her time and she wasn't um energy secretary for very long she'd asked the

01:16:38.480 civil service to do a cost of energy project so instead of looking at levelized costs to look at

01:16:43.880 the full system cost so all of that stuff i talked about not just the subsidies but the um the backup costs

01:16:51.780 the um the balancing costs the extra connection costs all of like the full cost to the consumer

01:16:59.180 of building renewables and and compare that with the full cost of the consumer of every other type

01:17:04.580 of generation and and that's a little bit tricky to do because if you look at nuclear for example

01:17:10.400 nuclear is required to have fully funded decommissioning plan plans before they even get built

01:17:16.620 like no other technology is required to even have a clue what they're going to do for decommissioning

01:17:21.120 never mind fund it so there's quite a big asymmetry in that that adds costs to nuclear that other

01:17:26.420 generation doesn't have so but to try and create a level playing field so people can understand

01:17:32.140 exactly what are the relative costs of all these generation technologies milliband cancelled that

01:17:37.820 project right so why would you not want to know that information because you're ideological and it would

01:17:46.900 contravene your ideology exactly so but the conservatives didn't have that information because they'd asked

01:17:52.200 for it but they didn't get it so now they're taking the time to try and get it but of course they don't

01:17:57.740 have the staff that they had when they were in government they don't have a civil service

01:18:02.760 they are now relying on either the goodwill of people like me to just help them out or where they

01:18:09.720 can pay for stuff to be done to pay for it but there's nothing like on the scale of when they had civil

01:18:15.180 servants providing them with information but you see i think this is another reason why people be

01:18:20.980 attracted to reform because they'll they will say the conservatives were in power for 14 years and i

01:18:26.760 take on board your argument claire i really do but there's a part of me that smells a rat was like

01:18:31.220 you've been in power for 14 he's talking to the minister now yeah not to you but you've been in

01:18:36.260 power for 14 years and you haven't worked out you were being lied to well no because if you're inside

01:18:42.100 the wall and just bear in mind as well that ministers do two jobs they are constituency mps as well as

01:18:48.540 ministers that's a huge pressure to put under people is it really reasonable to expect people

01:18:54.820 in that scenario to to be second guessing every bit of information that their officials are

01:18:59.900 presenting them with especially if they don't have the scientific training as well and just how

01:19:03.500 exhausting would that be as well yeah you know former ministers have said to me that you know

01:19:08.580 typically civil servants will come with you know two or three or four proposals uh alternatives

01:19:15.560 alternatives and then you'd be expected to choose from one of them and he said often he felt that he

01:19:21.220 needed to send them away and make them come back with a new set how exhausting would it be if you

01:19:27.940 would day in and day out no go away do that again give me another set i don't like that so even if you

01:19:33.120 were on top of it that is quite a difficult thing just from a human perspective to be doing day in and

01:19:41.100 day out just that interaction where you're effectively saying to somebody your work's not

01:19:45.040 good enough day in and day out no i'd love that

01:19:47.720 even i wouldn't and then you get accused of bullying so it's it's a really

01:19:54.760 look i i think and i know not everybody agrees with this but i generally think that most people

01:20:00.900 go into politics because they have a sense of public service i don't think the majority are in it for

01:20:07.520 venal reasons or vanity reasons or whatever and so and i think most of them are sincerely trying to

01:20:13.500 do what they think is right um and they're sincerely trying to be good people now not all of them

01:20:19.520 succeed obviously and you have corruption and bad behavior but i think in general they're they're just

01:20:25.000 decent people trying to do the make you know do the best they can but they're not necessarily

01:20:29.660 having the right qualifications and they don't necessarily have access to the right information

01:20:33.900 and then some of them have ideologies as well i'm less sympathetic to the ideology bit to be honest

01:20:39.560 but i think we do have to give them some benefits of the doubt and we particularly i think have to

01:20:45.940 give them the grace to change their minds because just to say oh well conservatives you did all these

01:20:52.300 dangerous net zero things for 14 years and that means that you can never change your mind and we're just

01:20:57.460 never gonna believe anything you say well kind of what's the point if you're not going to let people

01:21:02.380 change their minds then people will just get entrenched in their opinions they'll never listen

01:21:07.500 and you're never going to move forward in a constructive way yeah i think you've got to do

01:21:11.740 the like the sunk cost thing that's been and done now how do we go forward in a productive way those are

01:21:16.460 all fair points um i guess the the reason that it's somewhat different this time i feel and i'm not

01:21:23.740 advocating for reform or against reform i just kind of observing the lay of the land as it is at the

01:21:28.400 moment um many people will say well look if you just had the two main parties yeah then you've got

01:21:33.680 the conservatives have changed their mind that's wonderful what you have now is is another party

01:21:38.500 which to to which the ideas you're talking about are native effectively right skepticism about net zero

01:21:46.160 which was until very recently you know the the the prevail of the weaknesses on implementation

01:21:52.980 right tell us about so they don't know how to implement it as i said um richard tice saying oh

01:22:00.500 well we'll tax away the contract for different benefits well you can't do that because of the

01:22:05.460 make whole provisions in the contracts so that implementation piece isn't there for that

01:22:11.420 um they're very keen on fracking i keep trying to explain to them that we don't have proven

01:22:18.840 frackable resources we have potential but nothing's proven the appraisal work hasn't been done

01:22:25.200 i speak to some geologists who say absolutely we could frack loads of gas it would be super cheap

01:22:30.320 it's going to be a game changer i speak to other geologists who say the exact opposite no our geology

01:22:35.580 is too difficult we won't be able to extract lots of gas through hydraulic fracking the only way to

01:22:41.900 resolve this is to uh lift the restrictions that we have to put in place much more sensible limits

01:22:49.360 around seismic activity because i think at the moment at 0.5 well that's like dropping your pen on

01:22:54.240 the floor it needs to be more like three three and a half which is like your cup will rattle in the

01:22:59.680 saucer you start to get structural damage at five but this is a logarithmic scale so each point is 10

01:23:05.100 times bigger than the point before so five is 100 times bigger than three um and also you need some

01:23:11.060 sensible restrictions around water use because we don't have lots of spare water to use for this

01:23:17.240 so you need some sensible restrictions about that but beyond that the market should just do be allowed

01:23:23.980 to investigate let them put up their own capital and explore whether it's viable if it is brilliant

01:23:30.520 happy days let's use it and if it's not well never mind at least we know thus but reform seems to be

01:23:37.520 very stuck on this that oh yeah we should do fracking and it'll be amazing and we should have

01:23:42.060 smrs well smrs are also a decade away so we need stuff now we need stuff to be started to be built now

01:23:49.340 not started to be built in 10 years so yeah i'm absolutely fine with the idea of smrs although i do

01:23:55.340 think there's a piece of safety case that we haven't properly addressed as in so they're not in

01:24:01.820 themselves more dangerous but the idea is that you'd co-locate them with industry so the industry

01:24:06.840 tends to be dangerous as well normally with nuclear reactors you have an armed constabulary and heavy

01:24:12.440 security how do you scale that down and when you're co-locating nuclear stuff with already dangerous

01:24:18.580 stuff like a chemical factory well that would be quite an attractive target to bad actors so like even

01:24:25.700 if they came in and tried to blow up the nuclear bit and succeeded in blowing the chemical bit

01:24:29.300 that would be really bad right so you need to think about how you're going to manage that and

01:24:34.220 make it cost effective and nobody's really looked at that yet um but yeah i mean i'm perfectly fine

01:24:40.800 with the idea of small reactors i just think that we need big ones as a as a higher priority because

01:24:45.780 we know how to build them we don't know how to build the small ones nobody in the west has managed

01:24:50.100 to build a small modular reactor the canadian so g and hitachi have just started construction in canada

01:24:55.620 of small boiling water reactors and that's it and you can't use the ones that rolls royce has in

01:25:01.160 submarines because they use highly enriched fuel that's not licensed for civil use anywhere in the

01:25:05.540 world because of proliferation concerns so it's an entirely different design that they're having to

01:25:10.680 work on well hopefully uh people are listening across the parties i'd like i don't really care about

01:25:16.920 the parties i care about the policy so i hope labor and lib dems are listening to this and actually

01:25:20.920 and i've had people from parties that i would normally not be that interested in approaching

01:25:26.940 me and i will speak to anybody so i know i've probably come across as quite quite pro the

01:25:31.920 conservatives i am impressed with the way they're approaching this because i am talking with them and

01:25:37.260 i can see a little bit of what they're doing and if they're doing similar work in other sectors to

01:25:41.600 what they're doing in energy then i think that's really positive um and we should be encouraging that

01:25:46.980 really we should be supportive of people who are trying to make a good faith effort to get it right

01:25:52.800 um if ed milliband phoned me up and said like can we talk then i'd happily talk no he's a big fan of

01:26:00.700 the show so i'm sure i'm sure you'll be getting a huge fan of mine obviously

01:26:04.200 it's been great having you on thank you for giving us uh some of the detail on this stuff it's really

01:26:10.340 really important and uh i just think not enough people realize why things are so difficult to

01:26:17.080 build in this country why our energy prices are as high as they are why our industry is declining as

01:26:22.320 it is and all of these other things that really are very very important so thanks for coming on

01:26:26.460 we're going to head on over to substack to ask you questions from our supporters before we do though

01:26:31.280 what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be well i mean it was the civil

01:26:35.780 service piece um the fact that the government doesn't run the country i think people need to

01:26:41.740 understand that that we have to have radical reform of the civil service and these different arms of

01:26:48.260 the state that were set up to be independent but that has led to lack of accountability

01:26:54.940 karen thank you very much uh head on over to substack uh where we'll ask katherine your questions

01:27:01.100 can you talk about the direct relationship between per person energy consumption and living standards

01:27:08.220 you

TRIGGERnometry - September 28, 2025

This Isn't Science, It's Ideology - Kathryn Porter

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