Comment posted A reader writes: The day I discovered I was not a prostitute… by Dave McEwan Hill.
Andrew Reid
My comments were not directed at your thoughtful and acceptable piece but at the main article.
Just a little thought I should throw in regarding some other posts. In this world we have less than thirty years of good quality uranium left to supply the nuclear power staions we already have. We (UK) don’t have any uranium except what we have stock piled and we are entirely reliant on supply from others who may or may not be our friends – particularly as we will be in a very long queue for the stuff.
Is this why two proposed nuclear power stations in England have been cancelled and Germany is decommissioning all of hers. The Germans are not often wrong
Dave McEwan Hill also commented
- I’m always very wary of people who describe other people as stupid, ot mental pygmies and all the rest.
They usually think they are very clever themselves – and they rarely are.
They are usually not clever enough to realise they know very little and they quite are incapable of understanding how limited they are.
As a result we get this sort of aggressive, negative,condescending and simplistic nonsense.
Recent comments by Dave McEwan Hill
- SNP tightens party grip on local councillors in further chaos
Words fail me.
This is all complete and utter nonsense. - Withdrawals move numbers against proposed new coalition
I believe Richard Trail and Sandy Taylor have also refused to follow Robb into cloud cuckoo land so his position is completely sunk.
He has also effectively expelled himself from the SNP, a process that was going to happen anyway. - Behind the lines: SNP Constituency Association Convenor resigns, Russell isolated
To get back to the main point – the report that Bob Allen resigned is completley untrue and I see no apology for distributing this lie.
No doubt we’ll get lots of immaterial froth again but no statement on this. - Behind the lines: SNP Constituency Association Convenor resigns, Russell isolated
Of course it’s true. The SNP Constituency Association passed a motion without a single dissent in favour of saving Struan Lodge.
You are probably confusing SNP local policy with a policy adopted by the SNP led Argyll and Bute administration coalition which is losing its members steadily and got spectacularly thumped last week. As a matter of interest I am not the convener of any of the Cowal branches – nor do I know any SNP member in the Cowal Branches called Anne, though of course as we are gaining members faster than I have ever known I may have missed one. - Behind the lines: SNP Constituency Association Convenor resigns, Russell isolated
Quite frankly the above is illogical, inconsistent, incorrect in almost every detail and a total fabrication from beginning to end. In short it is a collection of lies.
I think it merits wider coverage in the more reliable press
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Finger on pulse of prognosis.
Our politicians, both local and national, need to learn how to effectively manage the managers (Civil-public-servants)
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the writter could check out Dr Leonard Coldwell
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Excellent piece. I might not agree with all of the views, but I tip my hat to someone with such a delightful grasp of sarcasm.
Hope the chemo etc goes well, take care.
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I hope the treatment goes well for you and that get to enjoy your dog, whisky and boats for many years to come.
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Simon says ——
Hear,hear
Well said simon
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“We’re Scottish and should be looking to a positive future rather than regressing to the 19th century, a time where people were also dealt with in hospital corridors.”
Well said. We should be using our brains. Power stations using nuclear fission are an interim technology, but better than coal. Nuclear fusion should be the goal and forward looking countries all over the world are investing in the science and technoogy necessary to achieve this source of clean energy, which will produce little or no radioactive waste. Meanwhile, we tax our people to give money to foreign makers of windmills. Stupidity. Tidal power is more predictable, but still 19th. century.
As for the National Health. Well, it’s a nationalised industry. The only one left in the UK. Remember the steel industry? Coal mines? British Rail? British Motor Corporation? All good industries that were ‘Nationalised’ and thus ruined by the small minds of politicians in a frenzy of envy. While our doctors, nurses and other medical staff may be the best trained in the world, our NHS is certainly no longer ‘world class’. Run by unaccountable civil servants through a bloated bureaucracy, where your post code and ‘business managers’ decide who gets treated and with what, it is an unaffordable disgrace and its founders must be turning in their graves. It is not ‘free’, it costs all of us a fortune. Other European countries and many more have health services where hospital beds are all in private rooms, where patients are not dumped in ‘school dormitories’, and where the doctor has a comfortable private consulting room, not a kitchen table in a corridor. And no, if you’re not well off, you don’t have to pay or get low quality treatment.
I must stress that it is the bureaucracy that needs sorting, not the medical staff. Er… and the appalling starvation level hospital food.
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The original article writer has clearly got it absolutely right about the central position of wave and tidal power in future, but onshore and offshore wind power have to have an important place over the next two or three decades and then may reduce in importance after that.
It’s difficult to know where to begin with the confused and contradictory assertions submitted by Tony Gill. He is critical of the money being paid to foreign makers of windmills (and we did miss out on that one and should get in on the manufacture of tidal power equipment), but he seems blissfully ignorant of the nationality of the companies with whom the Westminster government is currently discussing its nuclear development programme. He also seems ignorant of the nationality of the companies who own English water, electricity, gas, steel etc and of the companies which will own up to 49% of the English health service in the foreseeable future. He is also clearly unaware of the excellent relative clinical and financial performance of the NHS in comparison with European and American health services. And he is clearly starry eyed about privatisation, but may want to check out what has happened, since privatisation, to UK fuel bills, UK railway services and English water company performance in profit distribution rather than investment in water preservation. by all means, Mr Gill, represent your views, but they would be more compelling if they were rooted in fact rather than fantasy.
p.s. EDF, which is 85 per cent owned by the French government, is the main operator of nuclear power stations in the UK, having purchased British Energy (which runs eight of the 10 UK nuclear sites) in 2008. EDF, alongside UK/multinational Centrica are the only major nuclear players left in the future programme, since the withdrawal from this particular race of German energy giants E.ON and RWE. Tony Gill might also like to improve his knowledge of the huge estimated costs of subsidising the proposed future UK nuclear development programme by considering this article:
http://tomburke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/subsidising_nuclear_26March.pdf
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Many years ago (25?) the Econmist reviewed the overall efficiency (availability x output) of the world’s reactors; the UK was near the bottom of the league, France at the top. EDF/BE are the only current UK nuclear operator and have 9.453GW of nuclear capacity of which 8.563GW is operating tonight. OK, we may well have shut the really bad plants down but over 90% efficiency? I would suggest that efficiency is down to the French; they are better production engineers than we are. But, we built these stations.
One other thing, the name of the game is carbon reduction; the UK has performed well in that respect, even though we’ve been blasting away with the opted-out coal power stations. An improvement that owes little to renewable generation but everything to nuclear.
ps GDF-Suez/Iberdrola (the former is also partly French gov owned) are also potential nuclear builders.
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I’m always very wary of people who describe other people as stupid, ot mental pygmies and all the rest.
They usually think they are very clever themselves – and they rarely are.
They are usually not clever enough to realise they know very little and they quite are incapable of understanding how limited they are.
As a result we get this sort of aggressive, negative,condescending and simplistic nonsense.
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apologies to Tony Gill for personally critical remarks, and any language he might have found offensive
no comment to Mr Hill other than to note that I did not use the specific words he ascribes to me
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Andrew, I don’t think Hill was replying to you, I think he might have been commenting on the main blog, and the reference to ‘mental midgets’ – possibly taking affront to this collective description of people who might just be SNP politicians?
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Mr Andrew Reid – That article was written by four journalist ( non scientists I believe ) who are so long term biased that you should blush that you even offered it up as evidence. If it needs a law altered to openly sort out funding for Nuclear Power then lets make that happen and long winded articles offered by Jonathon Porritt & Co. will be a thing of the past. As of the 30th of March 2012, there were 436 Reactors in operation worldwide with a further 63 under construction and many more awaiting planning. Is everybody else wrong ? ? ? Incidentally I though your attitude to Tony Gill somewhat supercilious – Tony is a friend whose views and opinions I have great respect for.
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Andrew Reid
My comments were not directed at your thoughtful and acceptable piece but at the main article.
Just a little thought I should throw in regarding some other posts. In this world we have less than thirty years of good quality uranium left to supply the nuclear power staions we already have. We (UK) don’t have any uranium except what we have stock piled and we are entirely reliant on supply from others who may or may not be our friends – particularly as we will be in a very long queue for the stuff.
Is this why two proposed nuclear power stations in England have been cancelled and Germany is decommissioning all of hers. The Germans are not often wrong
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What nonsense – The Germans have a potential earthquake risk somewhere in their geology and they panicked – and OF COURSE – they have a certain green political influence and some Liberals. The reason 2 companies pulled out of building nuclear in the UK was because the lilly livered Germans cancelled the contracts that gave those companies the long term guaranteed income to finance further long term expansion into the UK and elsewhere. I really despair when people bring up Fukushima as a nuclear disaster – Fukushima was an incredible event caused by an earthquake and the most massive tidal wave of water you could imagine – no buildings could stand up to that – look at the video – its totally frightening but nobody is ill or has died because of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. Yesterdays news – They have just built the highest tower in the world – where ? – TOKYO – an earthquake area ! ! As for the ‘Germans are not often wrong” I presume you have little knowledge of History.
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You’re being more than a bit economical with the Fukushima actualite, Malcolm – the reactors were ‘fail dangerous’ because the external emergency sytems to safely shut them down should’ve been designed to be ‘tsunami proof’ but weren’t, and there’s a large local population that had to be evacuated to escape radiation sickness – and won’t be able to go home for goodness knows how long.
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Malcolm – Er, Dave McEwan Hill didn’t mention anything about nuclear safety or Fukushima – he was pointing out that nuclear power of the only type currently economically and technically feasible is not sustainable because suitable uranium is a limited-supply fuel.
Must admit though that I did smile at the ‘Germans are not often wrong’ comment – well, no perhaps not often, but certainly on a couple of occasions in the last 100 years! Certainly nowadays their technical and economic astuteness is pretty undeniable.
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Robert – everything you say is perfectly true – if the invading water had not got into the back-up cooling pumps, then the resulting situation would have been very different – but it did. No doubt there will be other areas of that coast which will also not be rebuilt after the lessons learned from being hit by a 50 foot high wall of water moving at great speed. For 40 years Japan has had nuclear power generating up to 30% of their needs. They are in the process of again firing up several of their nuclear power stations at this time, having carried out stringent inspections and assessments. Even our own government has delayed the go ahead on our new nuclear plants for a year to see if they can learn anything from the Fukushima disaster. You also have to remember that that disaster was a mighty act of nature never experienced before in that area.
Tim – my references to Fukushima were in reply to Andrew Reids attachment at 6 above which I had read. By the way the price of uranium at the moment is down 20% – stock up now ! Joking apart – I really don’t care what produces our future electricity demands as long as we have a constant reliable supply and in fact gas, being much cheaper, should be the way to go. What I am sure of is that renewables are a total waste of our hard earned cash. I repeat last weeks findings for wind generation Monday – Friday / 8am – 8pm when electricity was most needed -
Mon 3.35% – Tues 3.95% – Wed 0.9% – Thurs 0.77% – Frid 0.76% and the owners of these windless turbines got a subsidy of £2.8 million for their meagre output over those few hours -over and above the price we payed for their electricity.
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Malcolm: just to pick you up on your comment: “that disaster was a mighty act of nature never experienced before in that area.”
While the earthquake was indeed very large, the tsunami was not the largest to have historically hit the Japanese coast. The nuclear plant was designed to resist tsunamis of less than 6m in height whereas tsunamis of almost 40m have been recorded and safety estimates for the Fukushima site suggested tsunamis of 15m could hit the site. The nuclear incident was in fact predicted and could have been avoided through a much larger sea wall and better designed back up facilities.
This all might seem very remote from the seismically quiet British Isles but we have been hit by enormous tsunamis in the past though these are very rare. The east coast of Scotland was hit by a 20m tsunami in 6100 BC. Our island is more vulnerable to tsunamis caused by sediments rapidly slumping down the continental slope, often triggered by earthquakes rather than tsunamis directly driven by the earthquake itself.
So the UK government was quite correct to look at the safety of the UK’s reactors in the light of the Japanese disaster.
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I accept everything you say – never too late to learn !
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Oldbury – one of the two most likely new nuclear plants to be built – was the site of a possible 7.5m tsunami less than 400 years ago.
Over the probable life of a nuclear plant a one-in a thousand-year event has a one in ten chance of occurring.
The odds need to be a lot better than that when planning nuclear power stations.
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Bit sceptical about APPL (Or Apple, take your pick, but not APPLE)’s “fall from the tree”. Fairly sure I would have noticed if that had actually happened. e.g.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/09/did-the-dividend-decision-affect-apples-share-price/
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