Bad Management or By Design? You Decide.

 So, Rishi Sunak says he will tackle inflation, with no clear plan of how to do that. Well colour me not surprised, given that this inflation cycle has been decades in the making. It'll take decades of judicious and prudent financial steerage to win the day. I mark him as just another manager without a clue.

The energy crisis has also been decades in the making, with not just closure, but complete eradication of our coal fired power stations, the complete hash of the nuclear reactor replacements and the reliance on interconnectors with other countries to top-up electricity supply. 

Not many people know that Norway is a significant and important supplier of electricity to the UK. Not only topping up our inability to generate adequate supply when renewables don't cut the mustard, but also being mainly hydro-generated it counts towards our green credentials.

Sadly this year's lack of rainfall has reduced the level of Norway's lakes, so their ability to produce more electricity that they need is curtailed.

And this is where the madness of relying on external energy shows itself: Norway have quite rightly said they will limit production of electricity to supply their own domestic needs. They are stopping the production of electricity for external customers.

And quite right too. I would expect nothing less from a domestic energy supplier.

And this highlights the folly of the under-investment in energy supply in the UK that has gone on for decades. 

It seems that senior corporate and government management in the UK relies on someone else bailing them out of the shit.

Corporate criminal management has done the usual corporate thing: maximised profits. Taking ever larger amounts at the front end and chronically under-investing in the back end. Whether it be research and development, or the energy industry's over-reliance on external suppliers or reliance on external contractors for the provision of nuclear. 

It's all (quite expectedly) gone tits-up.

We are reaping the whirlwind. We are now facing huge price increases for energy, we are also looking at rolling blackouts to manage energy supply. How severe the black-outs will be depends on how much wind blows and whether the skies stay blue.

Sadly both can be missing and as there has been no serious R&D on storing renewable energy, we will be buggered on a calm, still windless night. The lights will go out and hospitals will rely on diesel generators.

When all our external suppliers say they are cutting energy production to meet their own carbon targets, or because they have a drought, 

Right now we need to step up. We need to bring nuclear back in-house. We need serious R&D investment from the corporations that for decades have taken the money and just handed it over to shareholders. If necessary the government should mandate a huge percentage in R&D for the energy generators. They should also find a way of locking shareholders in so they cannot bail just because they get a lower return on investment.

We need a realistic look at managing the UK as a whole. There has been too much reliance for too long on criminal mis-management. There has been too much asset-stripping and maximisation of profits. 

If I was in power I'd be looking at locking up the boards of these corporations for running down what is essential a National Security asset. Previous political leaders, managers and senior civil servants should also be in the dock for not sorting the mess out whilst taking huge salaries. I'd call it taking money under false pretences.

Such is my anger towards what was, decades ago, the most far-sighted energy supply industry in the world. We were developing nuclear reactors using UK talent and expertise, we also had a power supply grid that was the envy of the world, we were world leaders.

But no longer. We're buying in nuclear, which has failed to deliver in a spectacular fashion, our national grid is overdue for maintenance, we are actually buying in parts rather than get them from UK suppliers. No doubt because the UK industry hasn't been maintaining the grid so suppliers of pylons have either folded or gone off to produce other things.

It's a joke. Except I'm not laughing. And neither will other parts of the population this winter.