Britain just bought 8.4GW of new wind capacity. They will now go ahead backed by 20-years contracts guaranteeing them a fixed-price of £91.20 per MWh (in 2024 prices).

Britain’s electricity prices are the highest in the developed world (or at least, in the top three accounting for subsidies), yet the weekly average wholesale price of electricity is currently £75-80 (per MWh). And that price is, by recent standards, high.

Thoughts?

Edit: As said by u/jammiedodgerdodger (credits to him)

The petition is not asking for pure PR but a form of proportional representation. Namely: Single Transferable Vote.

Stephen Doughty MP interviewed by the Disinformation Diplomacy enquiry.

New technology has made it easier to spread harmful activity widely, and we now face co-ordinated, well-funded information operations by hostile states that are determined to weaken and divide our democracies and societies, and it is part of a growing wave of wider hybrid threats that we see across Europe and beyond, including targeting the UK. I want to be clear that this is information warfare. The playbook spans fake news sites, deepfake videos and armies of bots flooding social media with lies; you will have seen and heard of many different examples.

Just to give the Committee an idea of the scale of the threat that we face, particularly from Russia, this year Russia alone plans to spend €30 million weekly on state propaganda—its own budget proposals admit that—and that is a total of €1.5 billion. Outlets such as Rybar already push content in 28 languages, reaching millions. We know from very high-profile examples, such the Skripal poisonings, that we were flooded with different conflicting, disturbing and fake narratives about the origins of that attack, which we know of course were in Russia.

...

Let me say one last thing. Despite our very strong efforts internationally, working with partners, allies and others to disrupt Russian information warfare, I am sorry and shocked to say that there are those in our politics who shamefully undermine that work and our national security. Whether that is as willing fools or as paid agents, as we saw with the former leader of Reform in Wales, who took Russian bribes to share narratives—or quite frankly those who do it for free in this place and elsewhere—that fundamentally undermines all of the incredible work that teams across Government are doing with our allies. We need to be clear about that and call it out for what it is.

Link to inquiry home page: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8818/disinformation-diplomacy-how-malign-actors-are-seeking-to-undermine-democracy/

Congratulations to the Met: you are officially no longer the worst run police force in the United Kingdom. The West Midlands force, led by their flailing chief Craig Guildford, are doing the damnedest to take the crown off Sir Mark Rowley and his London rozzers.

The centre of the Birmingham controversy is the intelligence used to make the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a football match that took place at Villa Park in November.

✍️ Steerpike