Cuddly toys for all
My last column, castigating the ludicrous and irritating TV cartoon characters Gaz and Leccy, really struck a chord. These inventions only appear in purchased TV advertising slots, and are the creation of a rather shadowy organisation called Smart Energy GB.
This outfit is funded to the tune of approaching £50million a year, by the various domestic energy suppliers – and so eventually by all consumers. The message is a simple one: get a so-called smart meter installed, and your fuel bills will no longer be estimated. Big deal.
According to its’ Annual Report, Smart Energy GB ‘s largest item of expenditure is on these ads. The last one I saw focused primarily upon a domestic toaster and its apparent impact upon the gas meter – which, given that toasters can only be fuelled by electricity, was presumably always nil.
Promotional expenditure is not limited to ad purchases. Lots of furry toys, resembling vaguely the TV cartoon figures, have been manufactured at Smart Energy GB’s expense. You will be delighted to gather that a couple of these stuffed toys has been handed to every Member of Parliament who has ever shown any interest in the roll-out of this programme, intended to place 53 million meters into SMEs and homes throughout Britain. At an overall cost approaching £14bn
Overseeing these absurdities is apparently a senior management team consisting of four people, who between them last year were paid no less than £532,000. This works out an average of £133,000 per head. This is certainly far more than the annual remuneration received by either the Government Ministers or civil servants who ostensibly oversee their work. I leave it to my devoted readers to decide whether such salaries are as richly deserved as their beneficiaries undoubtedly maintain.
Atoms For Peace?
For years, informed observers have been warning about the cross subsidisation between civil and military nuclear interests. The Government has always stoutly denied any such connection. But now a civil service mandarin has blown the gaffe on what has long been the official line, of a complete separation of budgets.
Stephen Lovegrove is now the permanent secretary – the top official- at the Ministry of Defence. Significantly, immediately prior to that, he did the same job at the now defunct Department of Energy and Climate Change. He would therefore be in the prime position to know about any crossover arrangements.
He was giving evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, in a session that concerned the cost-effectiveness of the contracts he had signed in his previous job, to approve the £19.6bn Hinkley Point nuclear power station, Committee chair Meg Hillier asked whether “Hinkley is a great opportunity to maintain our nuclear skills base?”
Lovegrove answered: “We are completing the build of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. So somehow there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. “
He then crucially added: “I don’t think that’s going to happen by accident. It is going to require concerted government action to make that happen.”
The underlying presumption now must be that the Hinkley Point project is maintaining a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills, without which there is concern that the costs of UK nuclear submarine capabilities could be insupportable. And that changes in the government’s policy on nuclear power in recent years are effectively allowing Britain’s military nuclear industry to be supported by payments from electricity consumers.
“Bumbling, small-brained idiots”
At last month’s party conference, the Conservatives proved willing to sell any space to corporate lobbyists — even space on their delegates’ own chests. Hence each of the passes that hung on the identification lanyards advertised two US nuclear firms Fluor and NuScale Power. The sponsorship will have netted the Tories a handy £15,000
These two companies want to build some of a new wave of (as yet non-existent) “small modular reactors“ — mini nuclear power stations, which they promise will be cheaper than the wildly overpriced Hinkley Point reactor.
Unfortunately for Fluor and NuScale, many of those attending the conference noted with amusement that their passes were in a very distinctive yellow hue. A hue akin to that to be seen in the perennial Simpsons cartoon series, indeed just like the idiotic Homer Simpson’s ID card for the endlessly hazardous Springfield nuclear plant. Guilt by association?
The dog that isn’t barking in the night
You probably read about the National Audit Office (NAO) report into the “fundamental failures” by the government agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which led to its bungling a £6bn clean-up contract covering 10 decommissioned Magnox nuclear reactors. This has left taxpayers with a wholly unnecessary minimum £122m bill.
This appalling administrative blunder was initially revealed last March. That precipitated the NAO investigation. At the same time, the government also announced an inquiry into what had gone wrong. It was to be headed by former CEO of National Grid Steve Holliday. It would, we were told, report this autumn.
Eight months on there is nothing on the public record whatsoever about this. All the Department of Business is prepared to confirm that it has “commissioned an independent inquiry into the affair and strengthened governance.” No meetings, no calls for evidence, no advisory board or secretariat. And certainly no publicly available conclusion.
Whilst the NAO report is valuable, it is strictly only a “report to parliament.” It is not an official government inquiry. Since March, both the chairman and the chief executive of the NDA have departed. Meanwhile the new management is still deciding whether to take the work in-house, or to launch a fresh tender. Whichever option is chosen, it will almost certainly be far more costly.