Interest rates v inflation

They did try. With a coalition government steamrolling isn’t an option.
Out of coalition the majority government was able to sign off on building nuclear.

I think Tim is talking about the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) model which is being built in Hinckley. The ones in Flamanville (unfortunate name for a town with a nuclear reactor) and Olkiluoto were over a decade late each and the commissioning of the hot bits was a chunk of the delay. HPC will still be a test of the reactor model which already has a designed replacement (the inventively named “EPR2”).

Should they not redesign the bits that break before they weld the whole thing together? If there is a version 2 it's surely not too late to incorporate it!

It troubles me that we are using large swathes of our arable land to place solar panels when there is a potential for food security to be just as big an issue as energy security in the medium term. Surely it makes more sense to put them on the roofs of all these big warehouses and data centres we're building which have nice big expansive flat roofs.

To be fair, the majority of the solar farms I've seen alongside the A1 are used for grazing sheep still.

As to environmental and financial sustainability. Some of the environmental side is green loony stuff.

All residential planning of new developments in some council areas has been put on hold indefinitely due to Nitrate Neutrality. The councils don't know how to deal with it so they have stopped all development. It's ridiculous virtue signalling nonsense and is stifling development by small businesses like myself.

Surely a levy on water rates ought to cover such legislation. Somebody is going to make a killing advising on this nonsense and the ultimate cost is going to be paid by small businesses that can least afford it.



I have a large terraced property that is currently offices, but due to the local council installing a cycle lane and removing all public parking from surrounding roads and making them residents only, it has killed its viability as a commercial property. However, I can't apply for conversion to residential, despite office to residential being permitted development down to this stupid nitrate thing. Meanwhile, I'm stuck in limbo trying to see it as is or wait indefinitely paying full business rates for the privilege. 🤬

The developer building opposite me had to put solar panels on to get it to pass EPC. I agree, it should be mandatory.

Not mandatory at all and it depends on the development and the area.

A new build estate about 10 miles from us had a requirement to instal solar panels on the roofs of the houses - that is exactly what the builder did. However due to the naivety of the local planning office, they didn't specify that there needed to be anything other than the panels, so that's what they have! We know someone who lives on the estate and he has been told it will be just as expensive to put all the wiring and electronics in to make them work, as it would have been to install from scratch with new panels.


My brother is a senior planning officer in charge of his town and surrounding area - I can tell you first hand that common sense doesn't run very deep in planning departments and they are more interested in the whole holistic ideal. He told me recently when I complained about a square box extension that was put on a house down the road which looks completely out of place, "it is important that you can look at the house and see the timeline of changes that have been made". FFS it has the architectural merit of a coloured lego brick and a sympathetic extension looking the same/similar to the existing house would have been a thousand times better.

Too windy ?

That is really interesting though,just moved house and the wind is pretty strong and I had no idea these small turbines even existed.

The house is on the side of a hill with nothing to deflect the wind , the prevailing south west wind hits the house at a 45 degree angle.
My brother in law was looking at these things which is what first made me aware of them.

I hadn't looked at the reviews - apparently its a  scam.

There's a house I regularly walk past with a non bladed turbine, it's at the end of a road but fairly sheltered and I'm pretty sure it's always spinning.

Not mandatory but our house had them as the estate is on green belt land. Ours is one of the earlier builds so we have 8 panels but those built later on have either 1 or 2 panels even on some of the 4 or 5 bed homes so we are producing a lot of electricity, so much so my summertime energy bills have been as low as £30/month and most of that is the service charge (that was back when energy was cheap!)

We are using about 25% less gas and 20% less electricity than we were last year and our monthly DD is just under 3 times what it was 18 months ago!

We turn off lights, everything is LED, we use the microwave instead of the oven and if we use the oven we use the small one instead of the big one. The dishwasher doesn't go on until it is full or it smells and we hardly use the tumble drier any more - all of that and it only saves 20%. I want to know what is happening to the other 80%. I appreciate that a certain Jaguar probably eats about £40/£50 a month but still how are we using nearly £2,500 worth of electricity?

This is chart represents electricity generation sources from yesterday. Orange is gas with solar in yellow. Wind is the light blue (cyan) line. We’ve spent £70billion on wind. 

You say fascinating I say terrifying!