ArabiaTerra

Would this explain why I received an e-mail notifying me of a new PM, but there was no PM to be seen?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

And hasn't part of that supergrid already fallen to the wayside? Didn't Norway pull out? I haven't heard anything to that effect. Would you care to provide a reference? No it would not be fair to say. The idea that the National Grid would rip it's integrated network in half just to spite the Nats is patently ludicrous, unlinked. You're trolling this thread now just like you do so many others. Stop it.

Unlinked, John Tulloch is a climate change denier who has been promoting the lies of the denier industry in the Shetland News for years. It doesn't matter how often you point out his mistakes, he learns nothing. He's ideologically opposed to renewable energy and, here, is just stirring the sh*t for the sake of it. The integrated UK grid he mentions is actually being expanded and there are plans in progress to build an integrated European Supergrid possibly extending as far as Iceland. The idea that England would cut the cables at the border if Scotland voted for Independence is nonsense. Well, it all comes down to consumer cost in the end anyway, doesn't it? If you get your power from SSE for instance, then any charges SSE pay to the National Grid for use of their network will be incorporated into your bill. It's the way those charges are imposed on the generating companies that we're discussing The costs of maintaining BT's communications network will vary wildly across the network ranging from cheap in city centres to very expensive for isolated rural areas. It's the same for the Electricity grid. Yet BT's network works fine with a flat charge made to all users. Why can't the same principle work for the power grid?

Debatable point (I think) as Poll Tax payers would have been in receipt of similar 'easings' of the burden as current Council Tax payers are if they are on benefits. This government seems determined to 'punish' anyone on any kind of benefit and, regardless of personal circumstances, would have found another way of reducing the amount they pay out. It's just the old 'Rich commit the crimes, poor take the blame' scenario. Nationalise the costs, privatise the profit. That's the tory way.

Absolutely, if you're building conventional (ie: fossil fuel based) power stations. But we're (supposedly) trying to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, and generators like wind and marine need to be built where the wind and water are. You can transport fossil fuels to the traditional power stations, but you can't move the wind or the tidal rips so you have to move the energy as electricity after it has been generated. Edit: Woops, just re-read your question above and you didn't ask quite what I thought you were asking. I'll try again. I have no idea why it was set up that way. Presumably there was a need to encourage centralisation, maybe to do with greenbelt and planning issues? I know that at the time the National grid was set up the powers that be were trying to get power stations moved out of the cities to control pollution (remember the London smogs in the fifties), but they obviously didn't want them moved too far out. This is when the inner city stations like Battersea, and the place where the Tate Modern now is were closed down in favour of gigantic mega-stations like Drax. Can you expand a bit more on this, I have no idea what the transmission charging system is, but to my way of thinking the further away from the load the generator is located the higher the transmission costs are going to be and, consequently, the higher the transmission charge needs to be. Is this not, very roughly, the basis of the present charging system? Yes, that is the basis of the present system. (As I understand it anyway.) Think of it like the service charge you pay to BT for your phone. This charge is there to generate revenue for the network part of BT to allow them to maintain, expand and upgrade the network, and it is the same for everybody. This is despite the fact that the costs of maintaining Magnie's phone line down a two mile dirt track in Shetland is way bigger than the cost of maintaining Nigel's line which runs 20 metres from his central London exchange. Transmission charges serve a similar purpose, to allow the National Grid to maintain, expand and upgrade the grid. But they are not the same for everybody because when the system was set up there was a good reason to do it that way. That reason is no longer valid. Now the reasoning behind setting up the charging regime is pointing in the opposite direction, it needs to encourage a distributed and intermittent system of power generation where before it was designed to encourage a centralised system. What we need is a system where everyone pays the same based on the amount of power they produce (£/MW) rather than a system based on distance from the market. It all depends on how you define the costs. The ultimate source of fossil fuel based energy is the coal mine or gas/oil well the fuel is extracted from. The market (or point of use) is your home, office or factory etc. You could generate your power at the mine or oil/gas rig and transport it all the way to the market using power cables, or, you could install a small power unit in your basement and transport the fuel right to your doorstep but neither of these options are very efficient. What we actually do is move the fuel halfway, to a centralised point, then turn it into electricity and move it the rest of the way through wires. This means that half the transmission cost (if you think of it as a more generalised "energy", rather than "electricity") is not counted in the transmission charge, but rather is counted under the cost of fuel part of your bill. Now, renewables need no fuel. They get their energy from the environment. But this means they have to be built where the environment is energetic. Which means longer wires to get the power to the market, which means higher transmission costs. On the other hand, no fuel means no fuel cost. The trick is to balance the system of charging to encourage renewables where the environment is energetic so that the capital cost of building the renewables is kept down. Building your windmills in the windiest places ultimately means you need less windmills overall. (Ditto for wave and tidal.) (Oh and BTW, transmission losses over modern HVDC power lines are negligible. The losses over the length of the Interconnector will be on the order of 1 or 2 4 to 6 %*) *Just checked that figure, it's a little higher than I thought, but still negligible.

Instructions here: http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6048

Please do. It's always better to get both sides. (Though, personally, I doubt you will find anything convincing from the lying liars who lie outside of the Daily Fail, Torygraph or The Stun.)

When Czechoslovakia split into the Czech republic and Slovakia, were they already in the EU? And if they were, how was that handled?

Just to clarify something. The estimated/guaranteed income (20-whatever-million) will presumably now be getting revised upwards because transmission charges have been reduced? They were using a high figure in the projections, but now it is lower so the income will increase? Correct? I think we know the answer now.... Quite. Though, as I stated above, the charges as they stand have nothing to do with the costs involved. Rather they were a political arrangement to encourage the power companies to build their power stations close to the users. This means there is no practical reason not to change the charging regime only political reasons.

I didn't read paulb's post as an accusation. Rather, it sounded like a friendly warning to watch what you say about lawyers. They can get a little huffy when people accuse them of corruption and "I read it on a web site" isn't going to make much of a defence if they decide to take action.

On the subject of transmission charges: As I understand it the current system of transmission charges was set up decades ago, long before climate change and renewable energy was even on the governments radar. The way it was set up was intended to prevent generators locating their stations way out in the sticks, miles away from the cities. Thus, the charges bear no relation to the actual cost of transmitting electricity. (In fact some power stations close to cities actually get subsidised instead of charged for their electricity.) Now it turns out that the sticks is the best place to put renewables due to superior wind, wave and tidal resources. This means the current system of charges is not fit for purpose. Of course, the government, which is nothing if not corrupt, has avoided reforming this system due to resistance from the fossil fuel lobby who are a major source of campaign funding and of cushy part-time boardroom jobs for ex-ministers. Unfortunately, with the tories in power, I don't see much chance of significant reform taking place, at least not from Westminster. After all, it's ministers retirement plans we're talking about here. Maybe we'll just have to rely on Wee Eck and the Nats.

Looks like it's you, peenk, that's full of the brown smelly stuff. Note the Woops, you're absolutely right, crofter. My sincere apologies, sheepshagger peenk, too quick off the mark on that one. Presumably, the 35MW figure is the peak demand in any given year, not the day in question. I had a poke around the site but couldn't find anything. Pity, it would be interesting.

Lets google that: from here, top of page four. (warning: pdf) Orkney Islands Council. Looks like it's you, peenk, that's full of the brown smelly stuff. BTW, peenk sounds like sheepshagger. Please ban this troll, again.

Maybe that's a consequence of the Welfare Trust staff being transferred to the SIC? There's also the fact that the population is ageing with more dementia sufferers which means more demand for services and thus more staff to deliver them, and the statutory requirements for care are always changing usually in the direction of more care for more people. Just expecting the system to freeze at a certain point and no longer change is a gross simplification that doesn't explain the reality of an ageing population and increased care requirements. Once all that is taken into account, I expect most of the increase would be accounted for.

Krugman on Austerity: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/krugman-the-one-percents-solution.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Taking it to the next level:... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/social-housing-residents-told-to-sign-ambitionplan-as-part-of-tenancies-8590713.html

^^^^ Cheers for that, EM.

See this "Austerity" thing? There appears to have been a programming error... http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems#.UW2nufceHkZ.facebook Doh!

The debt is a lie... Edit: And on the wider subject of lying liars lies...

So you raise wages. Benefits are already so low that you can barely live on them. There is nothing further to cut. You must raise wages. Knowing this and not doing it, but rather doing the opposite, is not just wrong, it's evil. If you are a tory, this makes you complicit.

“A Dead Statesmanâ€, by Rudyard Kipling I could not dig; I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? Rot in hell, witch.

But seriously... It's not a false premise. Take a look at this page: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php There you will find every single claim the deniers have made about Climate Change, and a full rebuttal of that claim. Work your way through them, and if you still have doubts, post them here and I'll try to answer them for you.

It's not so much a case of blaming the rich, the banks (though they both deserve it), it's the fact that the entire cost of this debacle is being off-loaded onto the poorest in society while the rich bankers get off, scot-free. If the Government had punished the banks, corporations and the rich for their profligacy, really hit them hard, and then, moved on to the middle classes and the poor, if necessary, then there would be a lot less rage. It's the fact that they immediately went after the sectors of society who are least responsible for the crisis that boils the blood. That and the fact that this governments economic policy is exactly the wrong way to deal with the crisis, and is in fact prolonging the downturn. This governments policy is driven by an insane devotion to a bankrupt free-market ideology that doesn't work. It doesn't make everyone better off, it concentrates all the wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and impoverishes the bulk of the population. It is a return of the feudal system where everything is owned by the few and the rest existed only to serve the needs of that few. This government is trying to set society back 500 years and they're getting away with it.

Fair play and good for you. However there is an alternative argument that can be made. By choosing to save for a deposit and buy your own place, essentially you've committed a substantial portion of your earnings over the next 27 1/2 years to investment in your house which means that money is not available for spending in other areas. It essentially vanishes from the economy. Your friends and neighbours who didn't make that choice are spending that money on holidays, which pay the wages of airline staff, hoteliers, restaurants etc, cars, which pay the wages of car factory workers, garage owners etc. My point is that their money goes back into immediate circulation and keeps the economy ticking over. Now I'm not saying that all that money spent on cars and holidays directly benefits Shetland, but think of all the businesses in Shetland which depend on tourism. These businesses depend not just on people being able to afford to take holidays, but that they also choose to take holidays rather than putting that money into an investment which locks it up for decades. It's a choice. You choose to do one thing, your friends and neighbours choose something different. Both are valid. So for you pronounce a moral judgement on your friends and neighbours is a bit rich. Also, by taking a council property at council rent levels, you were able to save a deposit. If you'd been paying market price for the council property could you have done that? The availability of subsidised council housing was what enabled you to save that deposit. It's what gave you that choice. You've benefited from that ladder, now you're advocating pulling the ladder up after you. Where's the morality in that?