Kwasi Kwartang's brazen nuclear energy deceptions

Tory Energy Minister Kwasi Kwartang has released a short Twitter video boasting about the Tory government's nuclear energy policies.

The problem of course is that it's every bit as honest as you'd expect from a government led by the most notorious liar in British politics.

Kwartang's description of the government's nuclear energy policy states that it will deliver "clean, affordable power generated in the UK, for the UK". 

Every single word of this is either deceptive, or a downright lie.

Clean

The idea that nuclear power is "clean" is an absolute fairy story. In reality Finland is the only country in the world preparing permanent safe storage for all of their nuclear waste. Britain's nuclear waste storage is an absolute shambles. For decades we just lobbed it in landfill, buried it in trenches, threw it down a well at Dounreay, and even set ourselves up as the nuclear dustbin of the world, importing nuclear waste from as far afield as Japan.

Most of Britain's nuclear waste is stored at the Low Level Waste Repository near Drigg in Cumbria. This enormous 270 acre site contains one million tons of nuclear waste, in temporary storage, and it's at risk of coastal erosion and flooding!

Amazingly this huge nuclear dumping ground is being run as a private profit-making company, but when it needs clearing up, there's absolutely no doubt that it will be paid for out of public funds.

Around 75% of the most radioactive waste in the UK is in temporary storage at Sellafield. The most recent cost estimate (2015) for cleaning up the radioactive dumping ground there is an astonishing £117 billion.

Anyone claiming nuclear energy in the UK is "clean", when we don't even have a single permanent nuclear waste storage facility is quite simply lying through their teeth.

Generated in the UK

One of the main boasts in Kwartang's little clip is about the construction of the Hinkley Point C reactor, which will admittedly be geographically located within the UK.

But what Kwartang deliberately omits to mention is the fact the the UK government has bribed the French government (in the guise of EDF) and the Chinese government (CGN) to build it for us.

The reason Britain can't build its own new nuclear infrastructure is that the Tory government privatised away our nuclear expertise, with Britain's entire fleet of nuclear power stations eventually falling into the hands of the French government (EDF).

Have you ever been informed by the BBC or by corporate media about the fact Britain handed control of its entire fleet of nuclear power plants to the French government?

Maybe ask yourself why the majority of the UK population have been kept in the dark about this utterly extraordinary situation.

Affordable

The only way the Tory government could get the governments of France and China to build them a new reactor at Hinkley Point C was to bribe them into doing it by promising to pay them double the market rate for electricity for 35 years. 

The National Audit Office have estimated that the terms of this deal mean that UK energy customers will end up paying an astonishing £50 billion above the natural market rate.

£50 billion siphoned out of the pockets of UK energy consumers, by the state-run energy companies of France and China, and this deceptive Tory piss-taker is telling us how "affordable" it's going to be!

For the UK

The idea that energy generated in the UK is exclusively "for the UK" is another deception. 

In the case of natural gas, exports out of the UK have doubled during the energy crisis, because the profiteering private companies operating our energy sector are driven exclusively by the profit motive, not by any desire to maintain the energy security of whichever nation they're operating in.

The only reason the French and Chinese governments would definitely be selling their electricity to the UK, is that the UK is the only country on earth stupid enough to promise to pay them double the market rate for 35 years.

If the UK government seriously wanted to secure the nation's energy supply, they'd take the sector out of the hands of the private profiteers and foreign governments it's fallen into since privatisation, and operate it as a not-for-profit publicly owned business, run for the good of the British people and the British economy.

Only a fool would think that promising to pay the governments of France and China double the market price for electricity was a good idea, and something to boast about. And only a downright liar would try to pretend that it represents a strengthening of the nation's energy security!

Conclusion

The inescapable conclusion is that Kwasi Kwartang is a profoundly deceptive character, who either doesn't understand the first thing about his ministerial role, or is lying through his teeth.

But it's more sinister than just one Tory minister churning out deceptions. The whole department is rotten to the core. 

It's beyond doubt that energy privatisation has been an absolute disaster for the UK, but instead of bringing it back under public ownership, they're bribing the French and Chinese governments to build our energy infrastructure for us, and then dressing this absurd nonsense up as if it represents some wonderful safeguarding of Britain's energy security.

Anyone in the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy with even the slightest clue what's actually going on knows perfectly well that it's a pack of deceptions and lies.

And any BBC/corporate media journalist who pays the slightest attention can see what a shambles it is too, and how deceptive Kwartang's being.

But there's a code of silence, so nobody speaks out.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

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Rishi Sunak the loan shark

Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced an insultingly inadequate policy of offsetting soaring energy bills with paltry but mandatory £200 mini-loans for all domestic energy consumers, which then has to be paid back in instalments over the next five years.

The £200 will be automatically discounted from all household energy bills, whether customers want to be drawn into energy-debt or not, then Sunak's five £40 annual repayments will be added onto all energy bills, regardless of whether the bill-payer actually received the £200 discount or not!

Let's consider how this policy will work for students, people working their way out of poverty, people who get a home of their own after a period of homelessness, or couples who separate/divorce over the next five years, which obviously amounts to a very significant number of people.

Imagine a multi-occupancy house, with say five adults. They can be students in the final year of university, or people trying to work their way out of poverty by house-sharing to save rent.

The household receives a single £200 energy bill discount between the five individuals, but then the household splits up and the individuals get houses of their own (the students graduate, the workers go their separate ways).

One household with one energy bill becomes five households with five energy bills, mandating five sets of five £40 annual "repayments".

A £200 loan ends up requiring up to £1,000 in repayments is the kind of exploitation you'd expect from payday lenders and loan sharks.

Separating/divorcing couples will also be forced to repay up to double what they initially received when they were living together.

As for the recently homeless (street-sleepers, squatters, couch-surfers, hostel-dwellers) who find themselves a home of their own in the next few years, they'll be forced to make years of repayments on loans they never even received a penny of!

When it comes to people who are lucky enough to be living in comfortable housing situations for the foreseeable future, Sunak's misleadingly named "rebate" is just an ineffective and insulting 'sticking plaster on a severed limb' solution.

But when it comes to people in multiple occupancy homes, the working-poor, separating couples, people escaping the horror of homelessness, and others in insecure housing situations, Sunak's strategy is pure daylight robbery.

Of course Sunak and his millionaire Tory chums don't give a damn about the young, the working poor, the recently-homeless, or others in insecure housing situations, and when they devised this crackpot policy, they probably didn't even consider the implications for people they perceive to be lower than scum.

But neither do most of the over-privileged UK media commentariat, who, let's remember worked tirelessly to keep these malicious and economically illiterate Tories in power (because they were so utterly horrified at Corbyn's proposal that the wealthiest minority like them should pay a bit more tax, so life could be a bit fairer for the rest of us).

Of course the £billionaire-bankrolled Tories are going to keep legislating against the interests of the young, the poor, and the marginalised, and of course most of the over-privileged commentariat aren't going to hold these vile and vindictive Tories to account for it, because the majority of them are simply far too concerned with promoting their own class interests, to bother about those of us getting trampled and exploited at the bottom.




Don't forget to check out my other article detailing loads of other problems with Sunak's mandatory energy bill mini-loans.

 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

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Seven reasons Rishi Sunak's energy bill mini-loan policy is an insulting joke

Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced that the energy price cap is going to rise by an astonishing 54%, meaning a £694 hike in the energy bills of ordinary households.

In order to pretend that he's doing something to help, he's announced that energy consumers will be automatically enrolled in £200 mini-loans, which will be subtracted from their inflated bills, but then be paid back in £40 energy bill additions over the next five years.

In this article I'm going to briefly explain why Sunak's absurd energy bill mini-loans are dishonest, inadequate, over-optimistic, complacent, ineffective, economically illiterate, and driven by hard-right capitalist ideology.

1. Dishonest 

Sunak's mini-loans are being presented as a "rebate". This is astonishingly dishonest because rebates (like the massive UK rebate on EU membership fees before the big flounce) are discounts that do not have to be paid back at a future date.

If it has to be paid back at a future date, like Sunak's deluded nonsense, then it's not a rebate at all, it's a loan.

So when the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and a load of Tory MPs; and Britain's woefully biased media hacks keep describing these loans as "rebates", they're being profoundly dishonest.

2. Inadequate

You don't have to be any kind of maths genius to figure out that a £200 loan is insufficient to cover a £694 price hike.

3. Over-optimistic 

Sunak's decision to force a "borrow now, pay later" strategy on all UK energy consumers relies on the very big assumption that energy prices will quickly fall back to lower levels by next year.

But what happens if they don't fall back, and remain high, or even continue inflating even further?

The answer of course is that UK energy consumers would then be facing sky-high energy bills, with repayments on Sunak's mandatory loans piled on the top.

4. Complacent 

Sunak's complacency is obvious if you just care to look at what other European nations are doing in the face of inflating energy prices.

The left-leaning Spanish government have temporarily scrapped energy taxes, banned energy suppliers from cutting off non-paying customers, and introduced windfall taxes on energy company profits.

Meanwhile in France the liberal-capitalist Macron government have imposed energy windfall taxes and limited energy bill rises to 4%.

If the Spanish or French governments had allowed prices to soar by 54% and offered anything as pathetically inadequate as Sunak's mini-loans, there'd be massive public protests, especially in France.

But Sunak complacently expects the British public to just quietly suck it up like good, obedient little plebs.

5. Ineffective

Sunak's shoddy little mini-loans are a spectacularly ineffective sticking plaster on a severed limb sized economic problem.

What's needed is serious consumer protections, and urgent reforms to the UK's absolute shambles of an energy sector.

Here are a few ideas:

• The Energy Price cap should only have only been increased at the rate of inflation, if at all.
• There should be new legislation to protect non-paying customers from being cut off.
• Windfall taxes to be levied on the obscene profits of private energy companies.
• Energy suppliers that go bust should be renationalised.
• Energy infrastructure should be brought back under public ownership in order to put the energy needs of the nation above the profit-seeking behaviour of private businesses.
• The government should implement a Green New Deal to speed up adoption of renewable energy, in order to end the UK's dangerous over-reliance on expensive imported gas.

But instead of any real action to combat the current crisis, or to protect the UKs energy security in the future, all we get is Sunak's insultingly inadequate energy bill mini-loans.

6. Economically illiterate

Anyone who has ever run a business will know that there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking out loans in order to make investments, in things like property, machinery, or training. 

But if you're taking out loans to cover the cost of your day-to-day expenses, like payroll, materials, or bills, then you're in really serious trouble and veering towards insolvency.

Rishi Sunak is so economically illiterate that he thinks that loans to cover expenses are such a good idea that he's going to forcibly sign every energy customer in the UK up to them!

Surely now it's time to turn the persistent myth of Tory economic competence into the joke it should have been ever since they started enforcing their ludicrous and economically illiterate "let's cut our way to prosperity" austerity ruination agenda in 2010?

7. Ideological

Sunak is allowing profiteering energy companies to keep their unearned gains, while insulting the British public with the fake-help of these ludicrously inadequate mini-loans.

His decision to protect capitalist interests while throwing insulting crumbs at the public in order to pretend he's helping is a product of his hard-right capitalist ideology.

The entire purpose of the modern day Tory party is to prioritise the interests of capital above what's best for the British people and the British economy.

Just look at who bankrolls the Tory party operation, and look at all the multi-millionaires in Johnson's cabinet of hard-right ghouls, topped by Sunak himself.

You'd have to be hopelessly naive to expect the Tories not to side with capital, and against ordinary British people, which is why some of us have been consistent in our advice to "Never Trust a Tory".

Conclusion

Sunak's energy bill mini-loans are clearly dishonest, inadequate, over-optimistic, complacent, ineffective, economically illiterate, and driven by hard-right capitalist ideology.

But the Tories firmly believe they can get away with offering nothing but this insultingly inadequate fake-help in the midst of the worst living standards collapse in decades.

After all, the British public have let the Tories get away with an entire decade of economically illiterate austerity ruination, so why on earth would they suddenly rise up and demand change over soaring energy bills and Sunak's woefully inadequate insult of a response?
 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

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