Threat Of UK Tax Cut Staves Off Hostile EU
This is the headline on an article in the Sunday Times, which suggests that the UK may cut corporate tax rates from 20% to 10% unless the EU grants the UK access to the single market.
I don’t know whether it is speculation on the paper’s part, but it does illustrate how Brexit means that it removes a whole set of rules from the UK Government.
It is an interesting suggestion!
I think it could have these effects.
- Companies like Apple, Starbucks, Google and Amazon would look at the UK favourably.
- If a company was spending fortunes on research, the UK would probably be more attractive, as if say they developed a world-beating drug, they wouldn’t pay as much tax on the large profits.
But I never heard it mentioned in the Referendum.
It probably shows how our politicians all think inside boxes and that those in Europe do even more so!
Walloonacy
In Brexit – Signalling Implications For The UK, I quoted this from an article on Rail Engineer.
The endless committees to discuss and agree how the standards will be implemented do not get in the way. Whilst not suitable for main line usage (at least in the foreseeable future), there could be suburban routes around cities (for example Merseyrail) that could benefit from CBTC deployment.
So when I read articles like this one on the BBC, which is entitled Ceta talks: EU vows to unblock Canada trade deal, I do wonder if the EU has got its decision-making right.
Allowing the Walloons to block the trade deal with Canada, is a bit like giving a handful of MPs, the right to block new standards on the making of sausages.
When we leave, which is something I don’t want, the EU must surely reform itself to make it a more efficient and sensible organisation.
Coal’s Economic Victims
Coal still claims victims, but these days, the biggest ones are economic and corporate.
In the United States, this article has been published on Bloomberg, with a title of Coal Slump Sends Mining Giant Peabody Energy Into Bankruptcy.
The article makes these points.
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Biggest U.S. producer felled by cheap gas, China slowdown
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Environmental costs could complicate miner’s reorganisation
How many US pensions have lost value because Peabody was considered a safe investment?
As fracked cheap gas is given as the reason for Peabody’s fall, don’t think that the US is swapping one dirty fuel for another!
- When you burn coal, which is virtually pure carbon with impurities, you create a lot of carbon dioxide and spread the impurities, which are sometimes quite noxious over a wide area.
- But natural gas is mainly methane, which is one carbon atom and four of hydrogen. So burning gas creates a lot of water, as well as less carbon.
I seem to remember that to get the same amount of heat energy from natural gas, as from a given quantity of coal, you only create about forty percent of the carbon dioxide.
This page on the US Energy Information Administration probably can lead you to the answer.
In the UK, there are two recent stories on Global Rail News.
Rail freight is going through a bit of a crisis in the UK, because we are burning much less coal in power stations.
As coal is moved to power stations by diesel-hauled trains in the UK, from open-cast sites and the ports, the burning of less coal in power stations is having a serious effect on rail freight companies.
At least, if any train drivers are made redundant, there are plenty of vacancies for drivers of passenger trains and I’ve yet to meet a freight train driver, you likes the dreaded Class 66 locomotives, with all their noise, vibration and smell, that generally pull coal trains.
But it’s not all bad news, as this article from the Railway Gazette, which is entitled Freightliner wagons use recycled coal hopper components, shows. This is said.
Freightliner has taken delivery of the first of 64 open wagons which are being built by Greenbrier Europe using bogies and brake components recovered from coal hoppers made redundant as a result of the decline in coal traffic.
Freightliner Heavy Haul needed a fleet of high capacity box wagons for a new contract to haul construction materials for Tarmac, and decided to investigate the possibility of using recycled parts from redundant Type HHA 102 tonne coal hoppers. With assistance from engineering consultancy SNC Lavalin, Freightliner and Greenbrier Europe identified that with some modifications the bogies and some of the braking equipment would be compatible with an existing design of Greenbrier box wagon.
To a small extent, the movement of aggregates around the country by rail instead of truck, is replacing the coal trains on the the railways.
Did Aberfan Change My Thinking About Coal?
I have just watched a moving piece by John Humphrys on the BBC, which describes Aberfan now and compares it to what he remembers from fifty years ago.
Growing up in London, I remember the awful smogs of the 1950s caused by domestic coal smoke, so that might have had an affect on my thinking.
But I have been strongly anti-coal for as long as I can remember and I suspect that the tragedy of Aberfan, finally sealed its fate in my mind.
Coal mining tragedies used to happen regularly at that time all over the world and I probably felt it was just too high a price to pay for energy.
I must be one of the few people, who felt, through all of this country’s coal mining troubles of the latter twentieth-century, that the mines should be shut immediately.
I always remember an article in the Guardian, that stated that miners should be retrained into teams, that went round and insulated our pathetic housing stock. If you’ve ever put insulation into a roof, in some cases, it’s very much akin to Victorian coal-mining in reverse.
After all the greenest form of energy, is not to have to generate it in the first place.
I have solar panels on the flat roof of my three-bedroomed house, and even in the Autumn, I only use 50 KwH of electricity and 20 units of gas every week.
Music Across Races And Ages
The Times this morning has a small article which is entitled Chuck Berry To Release New Album At 90.
I was on a bus, when I rode it and showed it to black lady next to me, who must have been in her early twenties, saying that I had seen Chuck Berry in the sixties, at the Regal in Edmonton.
We were both surprised though, that Chuck Berry was still recording at 90!
We chatted for a minute or so, before she got of the bus.
I do think though that certain strands of music will always appeal to a very wide variety of individuals.
Now There’s A Thing!
I made a mistake in an Internet search and found there’s an actor called Donald Tripe.
He must be having an interesting time in the run-up to the US Presidential Election
Is The Sun The Future Of Energy?
I get up early and usually watch the BBC Breakfast programme.
On Sunday, this usually includes the short version of the BBC News on-line program Click.
Sometimes, it is rather wacky, but today they reported on something that will effect us all; solar power.
If you’d like to watch the short version of Click, it’s here on the BBC web site.
They have two segments that show the improvements coming in solar energy.
- In the first, the program shows how Oxford University are using better materials to improve the efficiency of panels.
- In the second, the program talked to a Swiss company called Insolight, who have developed a replacement panel that moves to focus the sun’s energy on highly-efficient tiny solar cells, which gives an efficiency of 36%.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of scientists and engineers to create a more efficient world.
A Tale Of Two Taps
I saw a Franke tap, that I liked in a plumbing shop, but the price of £240 or so plus VAT was too much.
So I looked in IKEA, where I got this very similar one for £80.
I shall add some more pictures when it is installed.
Pudding Mill Lane Pumping Station
Pudding Mill Lane Pumping Station is explained in this press release from Thames Water, which is entitled Olympic sewage site’s ‘Pinky and Perky’ scoop architectural award.
This is said.
The Pudding Mill Lane pumping station, which will take away sewage from the Olympic Park, can deal with up to 1,000 litres of sewage per second.
These pictures show the pumping station.
Unfortunately, it is all rather hidden by either wire fences or hoarding for Crossrail.
Pinky and Perky can just be seen in some pictures.
Marshgate Lane Goes Under Northern Outfall Sewer
Marshgate Lane is one of the main routes to get heavy equipment into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The pictures don’t tell the full story.
Before the construction of the Olympics started, it was a lane under the Northern Outfall Sewer, the massive set of four Victorian pipes which take away an awful lot of North London’s waste water to the pumping station at Abbey Mills before it is pumped to the Beckton works for treatment.
For the Olympics, the lane was not going to be used, but afterwards, it needed to be upgraded to a full height underpass, so that HGVs could get into the site.
So before the Olympics, a contract was negotiated to dig the underpass, through as the name Marshgate Lane suggests, not the best of soils.
I heard rumours from Thames Water engineers, that British contractors were rather pleased that the difficult contract was awarded to a German construction company.
The rumours also said that the Germans lost considerable sums of money on what was one of the more expensive projects for the Olympics.
At least they didn’t make the mistake of damaging the sewer and dumping the proceeds from over a million or so toilets all over the Olympic site.
They’d have really been in the sh*t then!
The Anonymous Widower 