North East man profits in mass killing
It's a variation on the satirical local newspaper headline, "Essex man dies in New York atomic bomb blast." You can overplay the local aspects of a story, sometimes.
And you can overplay the local benefits when you're a rabid political hyena scavenging for votes in any marginal seat.
At least, that must be the explanation for shadow energy minister Charles Hendry defending energy firms from claims they were ripping off consumers.
"Are they making too much profit? These are the companies which we are asking to invest billions of pounds in the energy infrastructure of our country. If they don't, the lights are going to go out. And so what we are concerned about at the moment in terms of price rises will completely pale into insignificance when we start getting outages in 2014, 2015."
He also reassured us that the energy companies, bless'em all, are trying to protect consumers by investing in a mix of fuel supplies, including the use of coal - which could provide [wait for it guys!] a boom to the North East economy.
So let's bring our critical faculties to bear. I don't know a lot about economics, but I know enough to recognise the difference between an investment in energy infrastructure (which doesn't show in profits when it's actually invested), and a dividend which is paid to shareholders. Research by the Local Government Association found that the 'Big 6' energy firms paid out £1.6bn in dividends last year,a 19% rise on the previous year.
We've heard plenty of dark threats about the lights going out. Margaret Thatcher made just the same noises about us freezing in the dark in 1979, as an argument to build 10 new nuclear reactors. 16 years later we had one nuclear reactor at Sizewell, 100% over budget. The lights were still on.
And as for the possible benefits to the North East... the proposed new generation of coal-fired power stations such Kingsnorth and Blyth will rely in imported coal. We have the wrong type here. Even if we did, the I'm not sure that the tremendous opportunity to tear up swathes of our countryside once more and condemn new generations to emphysema and chronic bronchtis outweigh the harm to the rest of the world by our burning this uniquely carbon intensive power source. And we do have to breathe the same air after all, albeit now enriched with additves of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and uranium (a partial list). It looks like the profits accruing to the North East man will be rather less than the 'Big 6'.
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