Looks like the party is over....

[Beelbeebub]

One thing that would be good would be extending the "not lying in parliament" bit to all public statements by MPs. Anything that isn't obviously a private setting eg dinner with friends etc. 

 

So any press releases, comments at public events, conferences etc must not be lies and if found to be must be retracted and corrected at the earliest opportunity. 

 

Searchable web page on parliament website with all the corrections. 

 

House of commons library is given job as the arbiter of factual truth. 

[JamesPa]

4 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

Not sure id call it defeatist. More, realist. No doubt, from many decades of experience.

 

You on the other hand appear to be a hopeless optimist.

No.  I'm not an optimist.  If anything I am pessimistic, but I will stretch to realist:

 

Whether or not you or I like it we have to choose between the alternatives on offer.  That's how it is.

 

So you can complain all you like, but in the end you can either vote for whoever seems to offer the better bundled offer, or abstain and thereby relinquish any moral authority to complain about the outcome.  Your choice!

 

Actually there are two further options:

 

Become a politician yourself if you have the relevant characteristics.

 

Lead a bloody revolution

 

Which do you choose?

 

Vote for the best offer

Abstain

Become a politician 

Lead a revolution 

 

[JamesPa]

@Beelbeebub

 

(Almost) Nobody is listening to you because the information you provide doesn't support their prejudices and/or desire to blame others for their woes.  Keep providing it!  Policy based evidence making needs to be fought.

Edited Tuesday at 18:42 by JamesPa

[Roger440]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

One thing that would be good would be extending the "not lying in parliament" bit to all public statements by MPs. Anything that isn't obviously a private setting eg dinner with friends etc. 

 

So any press releases, comments at public events, conferences etc must not be lies and if found to be must be retracted and corrected at the earliest opportunity. 

 

Searchable web page on parliament website with all the corrections. 

 

House of commons library is given job as the arbiter of factual truth. 

 

Oddly enough, the welsh government proposed a bill to do that.

 

You wont be surprised to know they have now changed their mind and wont be proceeding with it.

 

And one wonders why we are cynical.

[Roger440]

2 hours ago, Crofter said:

 

I can just picture it.

Manifesto pledges based on the wooliest of weasel words. No possibility of genuine radical change. Politics becomes a futile exercise in centrism. 

Then, endless legal battles over the definition of each pledge and whether or not it's been fulfilled.

All against a backdrop of opposition parties deliberately trying to sabotage the efforts of the government, in order to stop fulfillment of pledges. The exact opposite of the consensus politics that this country desperately needs. 

And, of course, unseen circumstances will come along. Pandemics, global financial crises, wars, which will prevent even the most well intentioned government from achieving what they hoped to do. 

 

Be careful what you wish for.

 

I did say that was a bit extreme, and it isnt a serious suggestion. It was more to demonstrate the ridiculous position we have got to.

 

[Roger440]

22 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

No.  I'm not an optimist.  If anything I am pessimistic, but I will stretch to realist:

 

Whether or not you or I like it we have to choose between the alternatives on offer.  That's how it is.

 

So you can complain all you like, but in the end you can either vote for whoever seems to offer the better bundled offer, or abstain and thereby relinquish any moral authority to complain about the outcome.  Your choice!

 

Actually there are two further options:

 

Become a politician yourself if you have the relevant characteristics.

 

Lead a bloody revolution

 

Which do you choose?

 

Vote for the best offer

Abstain

Become a politician 

Lead a revolution 

 

 

Well i cant be a politician can i? Because i have some principles, and morals, im not going to get far am ?

 

Ive always voted. Sadly, it seems we get the same result each time. Just a different colour. The only good news is that our two favourite colours of the past, might not be the same two going forward.

 

Though, i suspect i will be business as usual as the new suspects get settled in to things and do exactly the same as the previous suspects with regard to enriching themselves. And lying.

 

But, more worryingly, from more extreme positions. Which in wales will be the far left, while england goes the other way.

 

But, no, you are niether realist or pessimist. At least based on your postings here. Which may or may not reflect reality.

 

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

 

But, more worryingly, from more extreme positions. Which in wales will be the far left, while england goes the other way

Agreed.

 

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

But, no, you are niether realist or pessimist. At least based on your postings here. Which may or may not reflect reality.

I think my posts reflect the reality of my thinking, but can I be sure?

 

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

Ive always voted. Sadly, it seems we get the same result each time. Just a different colour. The only good news is that our two favourite colours of the past, might not be the same two going forward.

 

Though, i suspect i will be business as usual as the new suspects get settled in to things and do exactly the same as the previous suspects with regard to enriching themselves. And lying.

You need imho to assess the probability that voting for 'change', or more specifically the change that such a vote might realistically deliver, is actually good for you, however much you dislike the status quo.  A large number of people voted for change in 2016 and, if the polls are to be believed, have apparently discovered that it wasn't actually good for them.  Is this going to be repeated?  It is your call to judge for yourself. 

 

As I have said all along you have to choose between the options on offer, none of which may be to your taste!

 

Perhaps you can some day make peace with the world as it is rather than continually expressing anger.  I do hope so!   

Edited Tuesday at 21:02 by JamesPa

[Beelbeebub]

My other crazy position is that parliamentary votes should be secret ballots..... 

 

Hear me out..... 

 

We have secret ballots for elections for a reason. It makes buying someone's vote much harder. I could give you money and favours to vote for me, but you coukd vote for someone else and tell me you voted for me. I woikd have to trust you (the person selling their vote) to be honest! 

 

Now with bills and votes in parliament things are so complex that the average person has no easy way to know exactly what a bill does and whether a vote for or against it is the right thing in the long run. 

 

When you throw in parliamentary procedure it gets worse. Someone might vote against the "don't lower the kitten into a blender Act" because they want it to go back for amendments, or prefer the "don't put the kitten near a blender Act" instead rather than actually wanting to lower the kitten into a blender (though there are some MPs who would 100% want to blend a kitten) 

 

This provides fertile attack ground later on when opponents can shout "MP. X voted against saving the kitten!" with no context. 

 

Then you have whips who basically blackmail MPs to voting for thr party line even when the MPs don't want to. 

 

All of this would go away if you had secret ballots. MPs could vote according to what they thought right. Whips would be powerless to strong arm MPs - the MP could swear blind they voted for the party line. Business lobbies and shady types coukd bug cash in brown envelopes to MPs to vote one way, the MP could trouser the cash and vote the way they were going to anyway. 

 

So everyone, whips, constituents, lobby groups etc would have to just trust that the person they empowered with their vote. 

 

Which is sort of what we should be doing anyway. There is no point in giving the person our vote then looking over their shoulder at which way they voted when we aren't privy to all the circumstances that made them vote that way. 

 

I'm not totally mad. There would be a sealed record of how each MP voted (as there is with election votes). And those records would be made public (along with any public statement on which way they voted so we could judge their truthfullness) at the end of each following parliament or after an MP resigns. 

 

Effectively the MPs legacy is the thing that holds them in check long term. 

 

In the short term it's whether or not they can convince their constituents of they hold their interests at heart. 

 

I am aware that there are charlatans out there who seem able to convince turkeys to vote for Christmas or that they are men of the people despite being clearly of and for the entrenched establishment. 

 

But they seem to get voted for anyway. 

[Beelbeebub]

2 hours ago, JamesPa said:

@Beelbeebub

 

(Almost) Nobody is listening to you because the information you provide doesn't support their prejudices and/or desire to blame others for their woes.  Keep providing it!  Policy based evidence making needs to be fought.

I do my best and will bring facts and figures to the party when needed, for all the good it will do. 

[Roger440]

1 hour ago, JamesPa said:

 

You need imho to assess the probability that voting for 'change', or more specifically the change that such a vote might realistically deliver, is actually good for you, however much you dislike the status quo.  A large number of people voted for change in 2016 and, if the polls are to be believed, have apparently discovered that it wasn't actually good for them.  Is this going to be repeated?  It is your call to judge for yourself. 

 

As I have said all along you have to choose between the options on offer, none of which may be to your taste!

 

Perhaps you can some day make peace with the world as it is rather than continually expressing anger.  I do hope so!   

 

Thing is, im not sure i actually want "change". Just people that can govern, honestly, in the best interests of the people and country. Where they sit on the political spectrum, actually comes a poor second. Id hapily vote for someone/people who i disagree with politically, if i thought they were honest and had integrity. Indeed, doing so might not even be good for me personally.

 

I suspect you are right that the the majority will vote for alternatives, probably ever more extreme. But thats simply a response to the abject failure of those who do win to actually do anything. Anything other than enrich themselves that is. Strangely, they, mostly, seem quite good at that. Some of them exceptional. Shame they couldnt put those talents to good use for the benefit of all of us.

 

Im not angry. Just resigned to the inevitable. I recognise and appreciate ive lived through the good times, probably the best times. But i think im ok to be "unhappy" with where its going. Though i guess i do get a bit worked up when they take my money, that ive worked so hard for, to try and provide for my impending retirement by continously moving the goal posts, at a stage of life where there is little i can do to recover it. Id imagine most people would get a bit annoyed by that. 

 

 

[JohnMo]

15 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

parliamentary votes should be secret ballots

Trouble the system is easy for MPs. They don't need to read a bill to vote on it, they just do as the whip tells them. Whip can tell if they were doing as they were told by the gate they walk through.

 

Having to read and understand every bill one votes on, becomes a full time job, and that just wouldn't doing young fellow. Now get a grip.

[Crofter]

It's not really possible to have a perfect system. That's not to say we can't improve upon the current one.

 

It's very tempting to ban second jobs and external sources of income for MPs. But that then excludes anybody who is running a business, as well as professionals like doctors who may need to continue working at some low level for CPD purposes.

 

One area where I think huge improvements could be made is how everything is reported. Although policing social media is very difficult. We seem to live in a world where Joe public will believe whatever their favourite pundit says, and even when this is found out to be untrue it doesn't get retracted, no apology is issued, and the public just carries on believing what they want to believe.

There should actually be an incentive for everybody, from politicians to pundits, to only report things accurately. There seems to be no shame attached, any more, to being found out to have lied.

[Beelbeebub]

Yeah, being caught openly lying seems to have died a death. I think politicans have always lied but two recent politicians with notably stupid hair seem to have taken things to new heights. 

[Gus Potter]

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

The fossil fuel areas that the UK has access to are mature, that is to say they have past peak production. It costs about 3x to get a barrel of oil equiv (boe) out of the ground in the north Sea as it does in the Middle East.  This ratio has been getting worse as the oil and gas fields produce less per well than they used to. 

Agree, your statement is however cleverly worded, what you say is generally accepted as correct. But you are making a straw man arguement. 

 

Have you explored the potential of the Rosebank oil field? 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

Our refineries don't accept our oil, so we have to ship our crude abroad to be refined and import other countries crude for us to refine.

That is because we keep shutting them down. Have a look at what Ineos have been doing for many years in Fife Scotland. One reason it did well in the past was because it used sweet Brent crude oil from the north sea, more plastic and base chemicals, less heavy crud ( the crap) that is expensive to get rid of. 

 

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

A) we could increace our extraction which will result in much costlier oil and gas. This means we need to accept that burden on our economy or we need to subsidise the extraction. We then need to refit all our refineries to take this much more expensive feedstock and turn it into petrol, diesel etc. All of this woikd result in much higher prices for us in the UK and a huge drag on our economy.

No it won't in the grand scheme of things, anyway if we make the tax system attractive it's the oil and gas companies that will fund it. If we give them the same security as we seem to hand out willy nilly to the wind folk this should be welcome. 

 

It's accepted that to develop say the Rosebank field will take 10 - 15 years. Again here you are making the straw man argument. Even the development will create well paying jobs in the UK. It has less nasty stuff in it that is bad for the environment. 

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

As it happens Reform have significant links to both those groups.

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

B) we could do the "green" thing - reduce demand for the things (oil and gas) we struggle to produce ourselves. So electrifying transport as much as possible, electrifying heating and industrial processes as much as possible. Also reducing demand by things like insulation, public transport etc. And replace the imported energy with energy produced in the UK like wind and solar (and nuclear etc). 

I'm not saying this is not achievable, but it will be very much less achievable over say 30 years if we don't develop and maintain our oil and gas industry and collect taxes to fund it. As an Engineer I think you are economically naive. 

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

Nitw how almost all our crude is exported and almost all our Refinery input is imported

 

There is a reason for this. Brent crude is what we call a sweet oil, it has lots more useful and valuable compenents and less rubbish in it. That is why you often see it as the bench mark oil price. We have down the list a bit WTI (West Texas Intermediate) which sells for less. Then you have the stuff the Middle east sell. 

 

Again you are making a straw arguement as you are comparing apples with oranges. We have some of the best and most valuable oil off the shores of the UK. 

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

As it happens Reform have significant links to both those groups.

Again you just can't see the woods for the trees, mention Reform and some folk just can handle it. Is that the best you can do? 

 

On 02/12/2025 at 14:33, Beelbeebub said:

Crucially, the forward projections have the CCGT

But see that gas.. it does not magically come out the sea bed ready for use. It needs processed and use made of the other components. If you really are worried about the environment then we should be spending money developing our own access to sweet crude oils just 80 miles off our shores. We take them and process them responsibly. 

 

So please can you dispense with your straw man arguments as while some may fall for that type of deflection I won't. 

 

[Beelbeebub]

you say "strawman" alot

11 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

But you are making a straw man arguement. 

 

11 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Again here you are making the straw man argument

11 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Again you are making a straw arguement

11 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

you dispense with your straw man arguments

 

but i don't believe I have "Substituting a person’s actual position or argument with a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of the position of the argument"

 

 

I say your argument is that

 

"Net Zero is bad for the UK and we should improve our energy security by increasing the production of our oil & gas"

 

as evidenced by 

 

On 01/12/2025 at 22:26, Gus Potter said:

2/ Nett zero in the UK serves to destabalise our economy and reduces our ability to innovate. 

 

and...

On 01/12/2025 at 23:21, Gus Potter said:

The UK oil and gas energy resource is not "fininite" in terms of the next 50 years. There is plenty!

 

Is my summary of your position incorrect?

 

My counter argument is that we cannot increase our oil and gas production levels because our resources are mature and declining.  The other arguments about refinery capacity, ease of extraction and world market prices are secondary to this.

 

As evidence I showed graphs from a government source and, just in case anyone were to say "well they would say that", an industry source.

 

 

(industry source shown) 

 

Bear in mind that today (2025) we only produce about 50% of the O&G products we consume.

 

If we go out a decade to 2035 we can see production will be at most about half today's, ie 25% of demand.

 

The "at most" is important because that includes opening up new fields.

 

You mentioned Rosebank and the optimistic production forecasts are in the region of 70,000 boe per day.  As you can see from the graph that isn't even 10% of today's production, or 5% of today's demand.

 

There is no scenario where we double O&G production from today's levels.

 

Are you arguing that increasing our production by 5% in 10 years time will give us energy security?

 

I argue that, to reduce our reliance on foreign (and often hostile) energy sources we need to:

 

a) reduce demand - basically energy efficiency for heating, industry, transport

b) reduce our consumption of the energy we cannot produce domestically (oil and gas) in favour of ones we can (electric from renewables but also nuclear)

 

This coincides with the "net zero" policy.  Far from stifling UK innovation, it will allow it to flourish in a new sector which is rapidly growing globally (renewables).  Our expertise in hostile environment offshore operations will be very useful to the offshore wind industry.

 

 

 

The O&G we do produce should be kept for things where it cannot be substituted (chemicals, some industry and aviation) - as has been pointed out the stuff is vital for the modern world, which is why we should be lighting it on fire unless we absolutely need to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ProDave]

11 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

 

If we go out a decade to 2035 we can see production will be at most about half today's, ie 25% of demand.

 

The "at most" is important because that includes opening up new fields.

 

You mentioned Rosebank and the optimistic production forecasts are in the region of 70,000 boe per day.  As you can see from the graph that isn't even 10% of today's production, or 5% of today's demand.

 

There is no scenario where we double O&G production from today's levels.

IF those points were argued clearly and correctly by the main stream media, I strongly suspect the declining oil reserves would be a far more compelling reason to adopt more renewable generation and a great deal more people would support that, than some mythical suggestion that if we don't the world will end in climate disaster.

[JohnMo]

12 minutes ago, ProDave said:

those points were argued clearly and correctly by the main stream media

But don't you find the reporting and investigation behind the reporting is lacking. Most nights you get two news articles that should feed into each other, but never do. The other night, one article was about new doctors not being able to find jobs in NHS, being paid for by the NHS, the next not enough doctors to reduce backlog. Why aren't they questioning this state of affairs?

 

Same is true for every sector including energy security. They let people off with news grabbing headlines, that may or not be true, and they just report it without due diligence.

[-rick-]

Just now, JohnMo said:

But don't you find the reporting and investigation behind the reporting is lacking. Most nights you get two news articles that should feed into each other, but never do. The other night, one article was about new doctors not being able to find jobs in NHS, being paid for by the NHS, the next not enough doctors to reduce backlog. Why aren't they questioning this state of affairs?

 

Same is true for every sector including energy security. They let people off with news grabbing headlines, that may or not be true, and they just report it without due diligence.

 

Saw something the other day. The BBC has cut its news budget by 40% in real terms in recent years. Given the big names command high salaries it seems likely that they are consuming a greater and greater amount of the budget with back ground research/beat journalists getting massively cut.

 

Papers are similar. Their business model is crippled by social media and the lack of money in adverts these days.

[Beelbeebub]

I was sold on the need to shift as much from fossil fuels to renewables as possible because of the climate arguments but the real clincher was the declining production. 

 

I had thought that it was a straight pick between 2 options:

 

A) continue a fossil fuel economy (and co2 emissions) dependant on UK sourced fuels

 

B) transition away from fossil fuels (and lower co2) towards electricity that we get from wind and solar (which are also UK sourced) 

 

And you can argue back and forth about the choice between A and B depending on your views on CO2, the costs, the effect on the economy. 

 

But actually because of declining production, option A doesn't really exist 

 

Option A) is actually "to continue a fossil fuel economy (and co2 emissions) dependant on foreign sourced fuels" - in a Union Jack coat.

 

And B) is your only option if you really care about the UK's energy security.