What happened to my country?

Colin Brazier: Tony Blair’s legacy is toxic and anyone flirting with idea of a return ought to consider his disastrous policies 📺 Freeview 236, Sky 515, Virgin 626 💻 GB News YouTube: bit.ly/3vAYaw0

BREAKING: actor David Walliams has been suspended as a member of the Labour Party. David Williams had previously openly supported Andy Burnham for party leader in 2015. Russell Brand, similarly, had openly backed Ed Miliband’s Labour Party during the 2015 general election period. Not a good 48 hours for Labour celebrity endorsements…

The grid is looking precarious this winter. Grid balancing costs keep spiking off the charts. I've seen all manner of creative excuses this morning but this is a crisis tewnty years in the making. It was around 2008, or thereabouts, when I joined a large energy firm to do a highly uninteresting job, only made interesting by way of my co-worker being one of the lead programmers on the energy trading desk who explained to me in great detail how the grid works. I was already dimly aware of the overall energy strategy. The idea was that we were going to blow up our coal power stations and build windmills instead, on the presumption that "the wind is always blowing somewhere" and that the easter bunny would intervene in the event there was no wind. But we knew about dunkelflaute even back then. They knew very will the wind is not always blowing somewhere. But this was a manageable problem because there wasn't all that much wind capacity to offset. You could disguise the problem with importing energy through interconnectors. It was a relatively small problem that could be disguised. But then we did start blowing up our coal power stations, letting our nuclear power age out, and didn't bother to replace our baseload capacity. We instead built windmills. Rather a lot of them. We built them in far away places, requiring long transmission lines for intermittent power that the grid struggles to assimilate. Making up the shortfall always depended on gas because most large energy plants can't be ramped up and down at a moment's notice. The problems started when shortfalls were measured in gigawatts. The more windmills you added, the greater the instability. This was known in 2008 and the problem was never acknowledged. Even back then, realists were saying this only had one destination; rolling blackouts. It's been looking hairy since 2022, and the situation has only worsened, exacerbated by a deliberate decision to run down and close our gas storage facilities, making us more reliant on the day-to-day gas market - which is notoriously volatile, especially when wars break out in our vicinity. Some renewable energy enthusiasts did acknowledge this might be a problem, but they said it would be a small problem, and that by now, there would be millions of electric cars plugged into the grid that grid operators could use to even out shortages of wind. On paper that was a good idea, if only to even out the odd hour of wind loss. The strategy, though did not address the prospect of days and weeks of cold conditions with no wind, or the fact that nobody wants an EV. As more wind generation was added to the grid, this problem became bigger and bigger, with no real thought as to what was going to keep the lights on in a crisis. We also banned extraction of our own fossil fuel reserves meaning that we are now wholly dependent on gas imports from wherever we can get it. Now at this point, if you're not politically attuned, you're probably thinking this is a seriously dumb policy that's so dumb that our politicians couldn't possibly have been this retarded, so there must be some other explanation. If only that were true. The problem is that a number of subsidies and market incentives were put in place so that the energy sector would concentrate on building windmills. There was (and is) big money involved, so there is a very influential wind energy lobby that misdirects the national conversation and influences our MPs. They are easily bamboozled and incredibly gullible. Consequently, realists lost the argument. The warnings we've seen in recent years from the indefatigable @KathrynPorter26 (et al) are just the latest generation of energy wonks to notice that making your power grid weather dependent is a shit idea. Anyone raising the alarm is immediately accused of being a "climate denier" despite warnings from them that there are certain facets of the climate that we ought to pay more attention to. Namely that Europe is prone to protracted periods without wind and sunshine. While our Liberian energy minister can be forgiven for not knowing this, her many predecessors cannot. So we're now in a position where we have gigawatts of windmills installed, doing absolutely bugger all, at times when people are known to need heating and lighting. So now we're scrambling for gas from whatever we can find it, regardless of the cost - and making "resilience" plans for the near future when the grid stops working completely (which they will blame on Russian hackers). This is made all the more precarious because the European power stations we import from have more demand than usual, not least because of the dry conditions this summer, meaning hydro is less available, and we're feeding cruise missiles into a regional conflict that is currently demolishing European grid infrastructure. This would be a good time to fire up our redundant coal burning stations, but the last Tory government demolished them. This is a situation that energy analysts are describing as "bad". Of course, that is a matter of perspective. Should there be a cold spell where the grid trips out for weeks, or we're reduced to energy rationing, many of you will simply die, thereby reducing demands on the grid and other public services. This is a necessary sacrifice toward our green energy future which, after all, is the priority here. We no longer cling to the archaic idea that the grid should serve the needs of the economy. It is we who must change!

This has to stop. Killing ourselves with kindness.

‘WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.’ But are we? My full documentary on the First World War. I’d be grateful if you could share it, particularly with younger Britons.

I don't remember Nigel complaining about my methodology when I had Reform 9 points ahead...

🔥🔥🔥 Nigel Farage sat down with Laura Kuenssberg this morning and showed exactly why the BBC still struggles to land a clean hit on him. Great interview, many topics discussed once the gotchas were out of the way! @Nigel_Farage

Oh dear @bphillipsonMP

More than a dozen flight tests and years of development, with countless hours worked by SpaceX engineers and technicians, all come down to this: the first orbital Starship launch carrying advanced Starlink satellites bound for space. Watch “Go For Orbit” and experience the moments behind flying the most ambitious Starship mission yet

On Friday 6 November, Britain’s electricity system operator spent consumers’ money like a gold digger who just got her hands on a billionaire’s Amex, paying very high prices for additional electricity imports, with interconnector auctions recording clearing prices above £2,500 /MWh @neso_energy also accepted offers in the Balancing Mechanism at prices approaching £1,000 /MWh. So why was NESO buying so much expensive electricity when there was apparently plenty of domestic generating capacity available? My theory - on a low wind day it couldn't afford huge forecasting errors so it bought extra electricity on imports, turned gas generators up to SEL giving quick access to MEL if needed and turned down batteries to balance the market and preserve charge just in case @Miatsf @mgshanks @AndrewBowie_MP @ClaireCoutinho @HarrietCross_MP @ColinMoynihanUK @drlukeevans @Ashley7Fox @cmackinlay @TiceRichard @mattwridley @DavidGHFrost @Iromg @AllisonPearson @MerrynSW @EdConwaySky @afneil @CitySamuel @mattotele @Jonathan__Leake @ofgem @energygovuk watt-logic.com/2026/11/07/wa…

Has anyone ever seen a Labour Minister give a TV interview where they know what they're talking about or give a straight answer?

When I first raised Poundland last week, I was told by Westminster talking heads and the Tories that it was certainly “kaput” and the 12,000 jobs must all inevitably go. Some leaned in, arguing the “creative destruction” would be good. Others made a stupid straw man argument that I was proposing to nationalise it. As if you can’t even question bosses when so much is at stake. They showed scant interest in the workers, suppliers or frankly the taxpayer. My point was, and remains, why should a business be put into administration when there appears to be multiple offers to buy it as a going concern on the table? That doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the taxpayer, the workers or the suppliers. The taxpayer alone stands to lose hundreds of millions if this business needlessly goes under with unpaid taxes and benefits. And since I made this argument, we’ve learnt of more potential offers. There has been another in the last 24 hours. As of today, there appear to be at least three bidders - maybe four. I can’t opine on their credibility, but it doesn’t suggest Poundland is “kaput”. Gordon Brothers haven’t responded to my letter. They need to account for their actions. I’m pleased my intervention has promoted others to enter the fray, in government and in parliament. A government that cares about working people asks searching questions in these situations. It doesn’t throw workers to the wolves. That’s not anti-business, contrary to what some out of touch ideologues say. You can bet they would take a different view if it was a different type of business to Poundland. The employees of firms like this are to them, as a former Prime Minister once said to me when I was arguing over a similar point, “just fungible low wage workers”. Reform UK is the party of working people. We’ll unashamedly stand up for them. To defend free markets, you sometimes have to expose their excesses. Let’s hope raising this can save as many jobs as possible at Poundland this Christmas.

Most Popular Baby Names for Boys in the UK (1996-2024) 🇬🇧