National Security.

 National Security is a phrase that seems to have been demeaned in the current global age. Open trade, free movement of people, reliance on global supply lines, offshoring of manufacturing.... all foster a sense that the Nation State is no longer important.

But Brexit was a push back from the people to say that no, the Nation State concept isn't dead and we'd rather like to be independent rather than be subsumed in some unaccountable political machine.

Now the Nation State and especially National Security is coming to the fore.

I could go for the obvious issue of illegal immigrants crossing the channel, but I won't.

Instead I'll go for security of supply. The pandemic showed how reliant we were on China for the simplest of things. Paper Masks, for godssake, couldn't be made here?

Now it seems that Western Europe is reliant on Russia (yep, those people we still point nukes at), of all people to supply gas. And guess what? Yep, the Russians are playing silly buggers with supply and have reduced the amount they are supplying to Europe. Who would have thought that would happen? Er, everyone with common sense! 

I mean, it's not like they have form... they've restricted supplies of gas to other countries when they wanted to make a point, or effect regime change, or just to show who's the boss. Worryingly it's usually a precursor to some military action by the Russkies. Will Ukraine get the full invasion treatment now that Russia has established a decent land bridge between Russia and Crimea? 

We really need to be working on security of energy supply. Right now we take a small amount of natural gas from the North and Irish seas, but that's not enough now that we have swapped coal-fired power stations for gas-powered ones. In fact we haven't just replaced the coal-fired capacity with gas, but we've also added more to provide a backup for renewable sources. We are hugely reliant on  imported gas now.

So Russia supplies gas to us and we also top up using LNG tankers.

We've also reduced the storage of gas in the UK. The gasometers that used to be a feature of every town to help during fluctuations of supply have been removed over the decades so that we now only store gas in it's liquified form at the point of delivery. Distributed storage like that worked wonders during wartime because we didn't have all our storage in a single vulnerable storage facility. 

Because the supply of gas from Russia has so far been reliable, we've become complacent and reduced storage capacity alongside centralised storage. Big mistake.

We now need a huge push to guarantee security of energy supply. It's in the national interest to do so and do it quickly. Obviously energy supply is now in the hands of private companies so they need incentives to build the storage infrastructure. Not through loading tariffs on top of bills (they are going to rise sharply in the short term anyway), but instead reduction of tax for companies that build storage facilities. 

We also need to start looking at nuclear. Not the old Magnox reactors, or the now old-fashioned PWR reactors. But instead on cleaner future nuclear reactors. China is already well advanced in looking into Thorium reactors. We should be looking into them as well. 

Just what is the Atomic Energy Authority for otherwise? Billions are being spent on Fusion research, but we need cheap and relatively safe and clean fission reactors now, not pie-in-the sky fusion reactors in decades from now, by the UKAEA's own (in my opinion wildly optimistic) estimate, they will have a fusion reactor working by 2040. 

We'll be frozen to death by then. 

What this boils down to is a lack of strategic leadership. A failure to plan ahead,. see the long game and ensure the security of the UK in all aspects.

The plentiful supply of energy has made successive governments complacent and lazy and we really need top start asking serious questions about national security of energy provision.  Fuck the greenies, we need stable, secure energy supply and we need it now. Granny will be frozen to death waiting.

Inflation.

 I was blogging about the UK Government and the Bank of England's policies stocking up inflationary pressures over a decade ago. Back them Alastair Darling was chancellor. But borrowing and printing money are in Labour's DNA.

Cut to 2010 and the coalition government and still the money printing went on. Under a new name: "quantative easing". It's still printing money.

Then when Cameron got in on his own, this inflationary practice still didn't stop. 

The only reason that inflation didn't take off was that companies were able to suppress wages by importing cheap labour from Eastern Europe, along with offshoring manufacturing to China. There comes a point when suppressing wages far enough makes the job untenable. That point comes when you can only do a job when you share a house with 20 other guys. When the job doesn't pay rent, or finance a mortgage, then really the tipping point has reached.

Instead of wages rising, government allowed house prices to rise to make people feel more affluent than they really were. But now renters almost outweigh owners because low wages can't finance a house purchase.

Now Chinese workers want decent wages, and the Eastern Europeans have gone home. Tick, tick, tick, that inflation-ometer started rising.

Then the pandemic forced the Government to borrow more money to pay people's wages while they stayed at home. Tick, tick, tick, some more.

Now we're in a perfect storm: A decade or more of inflationary practices, inability to suppress wages and therefore prices of goods, lack of strategic planning by successive governments, it goes on and on.

Biden's policies in America started the upward trend in energy prices. First cancelling a pipeline and re-subscribing America to Kyoto accords.

Hence the price of fuel has risen steadily since Biden got in, as companies start to implement contingencies regarding Biden's actions. 

The sad thing is that as always, the poor will be hit hardest. Those of us just existing, working and just about covering bills will find this winter quite tough. 

"It's Nothing to do with Brexit"

 There's currently a meme on Twitter featuring a lady at a fish market complaining about inflation and the price of container shipping during a BBC (natch) interview.

Sarcastically she says to the camera "It's  nothing to do with Brexit", as if to infer the opposite.

Sadly for her, she's wrong. The cost of shipping containers has increased massively globally. Pre-Covid we could ship a container from Japan for £1500. The cheapest rate is now £9000 post-Covid. 

Brexit has nothing to do with it. It's supply and demand. After the global shutdown, companies have sold out of stock during the post-Covid restart and are demanding stock to be shipped to them, more than likely from China. 

That's EVERY company globally. Can you imagine the sort of demand that generates? There just isn't enough capacity to deliver EVRY container to EVERY company in the world within pre-Covid timescales.

So there will be delays. You want priority shipping? You pay for it. The lady in the Twitter meme was complaining of container shipping going up to £19000. I can believe it, if you have perishable goods (she sells fish and seafood) and you want the container delivered quick enough so your stock doesn't go off, then you'll have to pay a higher price than everyone else to jump the queue. 

That's just the nature of supply and demand love. Globally. Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with Covid, the global shutdown and the restart. 

It's not just us. One of our suppliers has been told there will be a three  month delay in getting alloy wheels shipped to the UK. From Malaysia because the factory/foundry has taken months to restart and the Malaysian company have months worth of orders already placed with them. 

Nothing. To. Do. With. Brexit.

Absolutely.

Just as the shortage of lorry drivers has nothing to do with Brexit either. There is a shortage globally as well. Just look at the companies complaining in America. Sad to say a portion of drivers (not the fittest in the world) died during the pandemic, plus a number of drivers hit the age at which they could no longer drive trucks, or weren't able to renew medicals (everyone knows how bloody difficult it is you see a doctor face-to-face at the moment) and new drivers weren't able to take tests to replace the attrition of the older, retiring drivers. 

HGV driving is a pretty shit job too. So much regulation (medicals, driving hours, tachos and the like) the VOSA vultures ready to pounce on trucks to see if they are a couple of kilos overweight and most companies treating them like shit (not allowing them to use toilets, etc), it's no wonder that having had a rest during the pandemic, a number of drivers have not returned to the job.

In the UK the situation is compounded by East European drivers moving back home, to be with family during the pandemic and/or taking better-paid jobs in Germany, closer to home and within the EU. That's mainly a reflection of the poor wages paid to HGV drivers in the UK. Most East Europeans are now concentrating on local courier van deliveries. Less red tape and regulation and less time away from home, with comparable wages.

Again, nowt to do wi' Bloody Brexit.