Merry Christmas everyone, have a lovely time over the festive period.

Sometimes in politics, at least for those of us who have been around for a fair time and have long memories, you come across politicians who you can only assume must think people are stupid or inhabit worlds where recollection doesn’t stretch back more than a fortnight.

When I first started becoming involved in politics, nothing more exciting than a bit of leafletting in the 1987 General Election the attack lines of the Tories back then after having been in power for eight years was very much to concentrate on attacking Labour for events in the 1970’s.

That’s a little taster about this post. We’re going to rake up something that one would presume David Cameron should be aware of and if not then here’s a little history lesson to go with his latest publicity stunt, sorry, meant to say informed and well thought through policy initiative.

From the BBC today. Cameron announces how the development of ‘green coal’ or to be more precise systems that allow the capture of carbon emissions from the burning/gasification of coal and subsequent safe storage, yes I know, not quite as catchy as ‘green coal’ but more accurate.

Your humble Penguin takes a keen interest in energy policy, in particular energy related security issues and this announcement by Cameron brought back a few memories from a conversation I had with my father in the early 90’s.

My father and I don’t always agree on every subject but I respect him as a very intelligent man who has an uncanny ability to see things long into the future. He also has an amazing ability to recall conversations and information from decades past, something I myself seem to have inherited.

So back in 1993 when Michael Heseltine as Trade Secretary was announcing what was in effect the death of the British coal industry, my fathers reaction was this:

“The stupid f*ckers! You wait and see, in 20 years time when all the North Sea gas is running out and we’ll have to import it all from bloody Russia they’ll realise they’ve dropped a b*llock. It’s all very well saying these new gas power stations are cleaner than coal but we’ve (as in British) been developing clean coal technology for years and you mark my words if the b*stards don’t pull all the funding on that too. You watch, in 20 years time we’ll have to go back to coal and we’ll pay for it because the mines will have flooded and we’ll have to buy the technology that we started back off some other country because those b*stards (the Tories) are too f*cking stupid to see what’s coming.”

You can probably guess that my father felt quite strongly on the issue and no, he’s not an ex-miner.

OK, it’s now almost 15 years later but apart from the timescale, I think my father pretty much got it right. The Tories through what I can only deduce was a political motivation, brought about the demise of our coal industry. They didn’t foresee what, if it was obvious to my father back then, presumably some expert at the time might have told them. Put simply, policy decision made back in 1993 following on from what occurred in the 1980’s led us into a position where we as a country are in an increasingly difficult position regarding our ability to generate our own energy requirements and more specifically threatens our future energy security.

With this recollection in mind I decided to have a little look around about what happened and came up with some interesting articles well worth a read. First up comes from the archives of the New Scientist in April 1993. That June, this article also appeared in the New Scientist by Ian Fells, professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, of which I particularly like the final couple of paragraphs:

” For a country with extensive coal reserves, why isn’t Britain developing its technology by way of a demonstration plant? On the idea of building a clean-coal demonstration plant in Britain, the White Paper points out that such a venture would ‘not materially affect the number of coal mines kept in operation in the UK this decade’ and so could not justify supporting it.

So, Britain watches its initial lead in this vital area slip away to its competitors. Long-term R&D is the major casualty of the ’short termism’ engendered by a market-led energy policy. Britain is in danger of destroying its innovative industrial base and becoming an offshore ‘banana republic’ buying licences for high technology engineering from its European partners. The government will be forced to balance the books by turning UK Ltd into a gigantic theme park with tourists visiting sanitised coal mines and gas works to see how Great Britain was in the old days.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself really.

So what did exactly happen to Britain’s leading edge technological advantage in the area of clean coal? The actual process wasn’t all that new. The original concept dates back to the 1960’s but in the days of the nationalised coal industry there was the Coal Research Establishment which formed part of the National Coal Board then British Coal Corporation. However with passing of the Coal Industry Act in 1995 it became the Coal Authority and was subsequently privatised.

Back in 1993 the research arm, the CRA found itself in difficulty because a substantial amount of its funding came from the industry which with the massive closure of pits led to less income meaning that for a short period the Government injected some funding with the usual reassurances that come before things get closed down.

Questions were asked in Parliament, notably on the 22nd March 1994 where the clearest indications of the level of importance the then Tory Government had regarding the development of coal technology can be seen in the statement by the Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP after the token bit about how much money the Government is putting in:

“Precise funding needs after that will be agreed following the planned review of the programme involving the industry in 1995. We are also establishing the new Advisory Committee on Coal Research, to replace the coal task force and advise on United Kingdom coal research needs across the board.”

For those of a cynical nature you’ll probably all know what happened next. Industry wasn’t interested in the research and development after privatisation. They’d got the assets that they wanted and true to form the CRE (actual research part of it) closed in 1995, I think it still exists in name as some quango but as for actually doing any research it’s long gone, along with the clean coal technology that we had a chance to lead the world in. If you’re interested in a visual representation of what the Tories did to our research into clean coal technology you might want to have a look here. Caution, it’s depressing.

Of course it has been developed by other countries, notably Germany where they implemented the first ‘clean coal’ station but there again, the German’s didn’t have a Government that systematically went about destroying their coal industry like we did. Sad to think that Britain was in a prime position to dominate this emerging technology and now we’re reduced to buying back the fruits of that technology from the development of other countries into an area that we started. Let’s not get on to tilting trains either shall we?

Sometimes in politics you can completely miss people. Hopi Sen’s cracking bit of investigation revealing Tory photo-fiddling brought up just such a person, Karen Lumley, Conservative PPC for Redditch. Her website is here. Love the piccy with Davey boy Cameron by the way, at least that one doesn’t look like it’s been fiddled with.

While having a little look around I noticed that the black bar at the bottom where it does the published by bit looked funny. There were some white dots along the bottom of it which for anyone in the business the first thing you think about is whether there’s a load of keywords dropped in with the same background colour to boost search engine optimisation. It’s an old rather dodgy trick and despite most search engines being able to spot it and risking getting de-listed if caught it still goes on although not to the extent that it used to.

The easiest way to spot it is to try and highlight the text with the mouse. In this case, no not any dodgy SEO tricks but simply a copyright notice and a created by so-and-so web designer. Strangely though, apart from thinking the web designer must be a bit crap at, well, web design to allow such a misalignment, the name, CCS Coleshill rang a few bells in the old noggin.

So I decided to have a little look at who they are by dropping by their website which apart from being even crapper than Karen’s site suddenly brought it back to me why I’d remembered the name.

CCS Coleshill AKA Coleshill Campaigning Services which is on their contact section cropped up last year. That would be the ones hooked up with the Midlands Industrial Council that the Electoral Commission were investigating. Nice to know they’re still about and doing admittedly not so good website work for Tory PPC’s. Those in need of a refresher can look here, here, here, and here. Anyone want to tell Karen something?

Quickie for tonight. A link into an excellent bit of research by Hopi Sen who’s caught the Tories photo-fiddling.

Now will we see the synchronised jumping up and down extolling outrage with equally demanding calls for resignations that we say a couple of months back? Nah, I didn’t think so either.

I have a sneaky liking for the Times newspaper. Not exactly sure why and it’s something that has grown on me over the past few years. It’s got pedigree and amongst the gradually lowering standards of British journalism I’d always thought it seemed to hold itself up. That was until today.

I just happened to be in New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton this morning and while waiting around caught the front pages. I had a little look to see if it was in their online edition but couldn’t find it but the article was fairly simple. A cross comparison between David Cameron’s wind turbine and Gordon Brown’s solar panels on their respective home residencies.

Upshot was a cost comparison of payback time between the two systems and hey ho Davy boys windmill turned out to be better paying back in 60 years compared to 100 years for Brown’s solar panels.

This got me thinking because about 6 months ago I did all the sums to try and weigh up what would I do should I ever be in the lucky position of having enough spare cash lying around to consider domestic generation.

From memory the Times article (and please correct me if I’m wrong) said Davy Boy’s windmill cost him £3,000 and Gordon’s solar panels cost £15,000. Now I didn’t see any cross comparisons for the actual output of the systems and if they were buried in the article then they would be interesting but I was rather distracted at the time.

So Gordon’s panels come in at 5 times the price of Davy Boy’s windmill. I assume they’ve done a few simple sums regarding the price of leckie and the relative outputs of the systems and come up with a nice little headline but it is just a little bit more complicated than that because using these calculations they’ve only considered a one-off installation cost and given the timespans involved, that is misrepresenting the facts.

We’re going to have to make a few assumptions here but as far as domestic wind turbines are concerned you’re not likely to get more than a 1kWh system and 0.7kWh is far more reasonably and that’s running at optimum strength. Solar panels are dependent on on surface area and the quality of the silicon but when I did my investigations 6 months ago £15,000 would buy you the equivalent of a 4kWh system, again running at optimum output.

Let’s be kind and say Davy Boy’s got a 1kWh system and it always runs at maximum output. Let’s also assume that Gordon’s got a 4kWh system and also runs at optimum. So installation cost wise we’re talking about £3,000 a kWh for Dave’s turbine and £3,750 a kWh so yes, on that basis Gordon has picked the pricier option.

However, and it’s a big however. What’s the life-cycle of the relative systems. Well you would be very hard pressed to buy any solar panels that don’t come with at least a 20 year guarantee. There is a simple reason for this. Solar power is the only source of electricity generation that requires no moving parts. No moving parts equals no wear and tear on the system meaning that some of the first solar panels produced are still going strong after 30 years with no maintenance.

Now try getting a 20 year guarantee on a domestic wind turbine. 10 years yes, 20 years, forget it. At best a domestic wind turbine might last 25 years before needing replacing with a new unit. On top of that add in maintenance costs and replacement parts (primarily the bearings as they wear out) and the Times article starts to look a bit shoddy.

Whereas Gordon’s solar panels could last in theory easily over a hundred years, Davy boy will have gone through at least 4 turbines in that time and assuming relative prices that’s £12,000 to produce a quarter of the electricity of Gordon’s £15,000 solar panels.

Plain simple long term economics. Solar works out better in the long-run compared to wind turbines.

Now there’s an important factor to consider. I had a little look around and Gordon apparently installed his panels in 2005. I’m not sure what the market price then was but whereas the relative cost/efficiency of wind turbines has not improved dramatically, solar panels have in recent years so bear that in mind.

Final point. I did all the sums 6 months ago and the answer was simple. Given the choice and available funds, I wouldn’t touch a wind turbine with a barge pole. Solar is simply a far better option and as the market develops and costs are driven down further, solar is a far better bet for domestic electricity generation than a turbine. Doesn’t make any noise either to miff the neighbours off, which is nice.

The Linux Tux Penguin droid of course. It does everything you could possibly imagine and comes completely compatible with every operating system available (as long as it’s Linux). It begs the question; why did I spend all that money on sensible things like new windows when I could have had one of these?

Two amendments to the blogroll. The addition of the very entertaining Westmonster which I’ve been meaning to add for ages and alteration of URL for Ministry of Truth from ‘org.uk’ to ‘me.uk’ as Unity appears to be staying there after his problems.

I’ve had in the back of my mind now for a few weeks a desire to overhaul the blog section of this site. If all goes well most readers will notice next to no difference. It is work primarily concerning a desire for cleaner coding, better structural integration, fixing one CSS layout issue that affects people using certain Gecko based web browsers on some operating systems and with hope, better rendering times.

This does however require rather a bit of work to achieve, not without risks of completely destroying or rendering every bit of information including posts, comments and URL structuring completely buggered and unusable. May have a bash at it tonight if I’m in the mood but it really does need doing so be warned, site may go down or not work properly for a bit.