European governments have rushed to build fossil gas infrastructure since Russia invaded Ukraine. Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters
Just 2% of continent’s gas capacity has planned retirement date despite pledges to decarbonise, study shows
Europe’s “tone-deaf” expansion of fossil gas is accelerating climate breakdown and increasing reliance on hostile regimes, campaigners have warned.
Just four of Europe’s gas-fired power plants have a retirement plan and new projects will increase the continent’s gas generation capacity by 27%, according to analysis from the campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels.
It argues that the dash for gas contradicts the International Energy Agency’s recommendation that rich countries decarbonise their electricity grids in the next 10 years to stop the planet from heating 1.5C.
Governments must send a clear message to the gas industry that its days are numbered, said Alexandru Mustață, a campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. “This undermines our security, exposes us to volatile power prices and toxic emissions, and heightens the risk of stranded assets.”
A preschool age child playing with plastic building blocks, January 24, 2016
CHILD poverty hit a record high as only the top earners were better off last year, official figures revealed today.
Campaigners said youngsters were being forgotten as the statistics showed food insecurity soared by 53 per cent, 100,000 more working households fell below the poverty line and more pensioners were unable to afford basic goods such as food and heating.
The Department for Work and Pensions estimated 4.33 million children in households in relative low income – below 60 per cent of median income after housing costs — in the year to March 2023.
This is up from 4.22 million the previous year and the highest since comparable records for Britain began in 2002/03.
Medical equipment on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London, January 18, 2023
THE NHS needs a cash injection of around £8.5 billion a year over the next four years to improve the service, experts have said.
The figure is more than three times the £2.5bn promised in the Spring Budget.
A BMJ Commission on the Future of the NHS report said that amount, even alongside a £3.4bn investment over three years to improve productivity through digital transformation “certainly will not make up the significant shortfall that the NHS now faces.”
Nuffield Trust senior associate John Appleby and two colleagues warned annual spending on the NHS rose by just 1.2 per cent between 2010-20, compared to 6.2 per cent from 2000-10.
Labour is counting on the unpopularity of the Conservative Party to catapult it into power but in the absence of specific policies and failure to improve quality of life, electoral goodwill will quickly evaporate.
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Labour and Conservatives have become slaves to arbitrary fiscal rules even though they have failed to deliver almost every target relating to economic growth, inflation, public debt, investment and more. Labour emphasises that it wants to reduce the government debt to GDP ratio in five years’ time. However, no rationale is presented for such a straitjacket. No assessment is made of the consequences of removing billions of pounds from the economy. No rationale as to why low debt to GDP ratio is an indicator of the prosperity of a nation and why this should take priority over investment or redistribution. Analogies with household budgets or maxed out credit cards are misleading as governments, especially those with global currencies such as the Pound Sterling, can create money to achieve desired social objectives and levy selective taxation to eliminate inflationary effects. But Labour is no student of the modern monetary theory.
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Debt can be used to rebuild the economy even if Labour and Conservatives are hostile to it. The Post-Second World War boom was built upon direct public investment in new industries and social infrastructure. In 1946, public debt stood at over 270% of its GDP. This provided jobs and fuelled demand. It fuelled corporate investment as the state bought goods and services from the private sector. It laid foundations of emerging industries, such as biotechnology, information technology, aerospace and more specially as the private sector showed little appetite for long-term investment and risks. Within a generation, the public debt came down to 49% of GDP and I can’t recall our parents and grandparents fretting about the public debt.
Instead of a dynamic state, both Labour and Conservatives support further cuts in public spending even though that will reduce investment, slow economic growth, and inflict long-term damage. Too many public buildings and schools are crumbling away. The government response is that college spending per student aged 16–18 in 2024 will be 10% below 2010 levels, and about 23% below them for school sixth forms. Since 2010 local council funding has been cut by 23.3% in real terms, leading to degradation of public services and higher council tax on hard-pressed households. Hospitals in England have a waiting list of 7.6m appointments. None of this can be addressed by adherence to arbitrary fiscal rules.
There is a strong case for redistribution of income and wealth, but Hunt and Reeves ignore it even though higher disposable income for the less well-off has a greater multiplier effect. No amount of economic growth can be sustained unless people have good purchasing power to buy goods and services. Both parties reaffirm their faith in trickle-down economics which has seen wealth sucked upwards and prevent economic recovery. The UK has 171 billionaires with combined wealth of £684bn. The richest 1% of the population has more wealth than 70% of the population combined. The richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth, and the poorest 50% own just 9%.
The latest poll will do little to calm Tory nerves ahead of the general election, with a number of factions within the party looking at replacing Sunak.
A new poll shows just how much Tory support among the public has collapsed, as the party continues to trail the Labour Party and Tory MPs plot to remove Rishi Sunak.
The poll, carried out by YouGov for the Times, shows that the Tories are set to win just 36 seats at the General Election, handing Labour a comfortable 398 majority in the House of Commons.
It puts the Tories on just 19%, which is the same share the party received at their lowest ebb in the aftermath of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. Meanwhile, the Labour Party is on 44% of the vote, while Reform UK received their highest ever poll rating at 15%.
