vivweb01

  Editor's note: Looking back on this blog from 2022, its clear that we haven't really managed to solve our energy problems in the UK, despite a change of government...and a lot of undelivered promises. A few things I covered back in 2022 have changed for the better: Inflation has been brought largely under control, although the full effects of the Iran war have yet to bite. The falling interest rate trend has been halted, for now at least. Reeves' treasury, although unwilling to fund our country's defence adequately, is still racking up debts to support inflationary public sector pay increases and pay the burgeoning benefits bill (courtesy the left wingers on the back-benches).  We have, at least managed to wean ourselves off Russian oil and gas in Europe. Milliband is still in charge at Environment, though, and still refuses to cough up anything to fund domestic solar, while encouraging as many new solar farms on our prime agricultural land as he can...and blocking an...

Making long term predictions about political outcomes nationally is a risky process indeed. In some ways it’s comparable to weather forecasting – the earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system and trying to predict its behaviour locally more than 2 or 3 days ahead with any degree of accuracy still presents us with many uncertainties, despite all our advances in predictive technology (including even AI!). And we’ve all seen recently how long a week is in politics nowadays, let alone a month, or indeed 3 years - chaos seems to reign there, also. Although 2029 is thus a very long way ahead from a political point of view, and Labour's leadership and cabinet teams will be focused on more immediate policy decisions, their advance planners will already be thinking hard, and I suspect with some trepidation, about their electoral prospects…and not solely for the next general election. After the hammering both major parties took in the 2025 and 2026 local elections, largely at the hands ...

 Editor's note:  Last summer's outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Iran sadly bore out the prediction made in the previous revision of this blog for the eternal Middle East 'powder keg'.  Some might say it was inevitable that this particular conflict would come to a head soon, given Iran's determination to get a nuclear bomb, and the old Ayatollah's openly declared intention to use it to destroy the state of Israel. The speed at which it happened does seem to have taken many by surprise, though. Arguably the Iranian regime has, by its actions over the last 40 years, brought its own inevitable destruction on itself. Unfortunately it's the Iranian people who will probably bear the brunt of the suffering that arises from its death throes, which now promise to be quite protracted......  For a more detailed look at Trump's options, and the likely outcomes, check out the most recent blog. Read on for some more background to the conflict.... -------- As ...