Thursday, September 25, 2008

More Nuclear Foolishness

I'd forgotten we'd already sold Westinghouse, BNFL's subsidiary which designs and builds nuclear plants. If someone with a master plan to destroy the UK without actually using explosives was in charge, they could hardly do better.

The sale surprised many industry experts who questioned the wisdom of BNFL selling one of the world's largest producers of nuclear reactors shortly before the market for nuclear power is expected to grow substantially; China, the United States and the United Kingdom are all expected to invest heavily in nuclear power.


It's Gordon Brown's Midas touch all over again.

The Westinghouse sale will provide a windfall for the UK Treasury. But industry experts have expressed concern that such an asset is being sold off when the demand for new nuclear power stations is set to surge.


The Westinghouse money's probably already disappeared into Brown's Black Hole. I wonder how long his share of the British Energy dosh will last. He probably got rid of it in his last conference speech.

11 comments:

Edwin Greenwood said...

Time was when NuLabour's antics merely depressed me. Now, they terrify me. Will there be any of the family silver left on which to build a reconstruction of the British economy? We are already seeing the impact of foreign ownership in the rumours that EDF and others are boosting UK tariffs to fund manoeuvres in their home markets.

For the life of me I can't put a name or time to it, but I recall sleepily hearing a reference on Farming Today to a pronouncement by one of the Blair Babe Ministrettes, that "we needn't worry about the survival of UK agriculture; we're a rich country that can always buy our food from abroad".

Presumably paying for it on our Bank of China credit cards.

Anonymous said...

Gordon Brown has already spent the money three times and will announce how he will spend it FU BRRRITAIN another three times at least.

Anonymous said...

I had long assumed that the Heath-Wilson years would be recorded as our worst spell of government, but Blair-Brown will be seen as much worse.

Anonymous said...

To quote 'The Economist' (according to wikipedia)
"if Westinghouse won the bid for any new nuclear stations in the UK competition questions may be raised"

and ofcourse no such questions are raised by the French state monopoly owning the whole industry?

This word 'competition' has been used as a stick to beat us with while other countries just ignore it.
It all comes from those libertarian jerks who think importing is better for wealth creation than exporting.

My uncle told me exactly how a Labour government would turn out right back in 1997 and he was right. God damn all those people who voted Labour.

Anonymous said...

I have never voted Labour. I have always had an instinctive dislike of them. I despair at what has been happening in Britain these past ten years. Selling off Westinghouse strikes me as yet another sell out to the EU. If we were independant we could produce our own energy, but the EU overlords don't want that. So sell off Westinghouse and allow the French to take over a vital sector of our energy supply. Madness but the more of this I see the more i am convinced there is method in the madness.

Anonymous said...

LT, you should add this bloke to your links:

http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com

His view is that the UK is trading off past wealth and the perception of that wealth. Flogging off the family silver keeps the show on the road for a bit longer but in the end...

Anonymous said...

My wife made a new friend this year, the wife of a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge, a Chinese. After a few weeks here she had a good question. "I don't understand how this country is so rich", said she, "where are all your factories?"

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

NO MORE LABOUR EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN

Laban said...

Unless Frank Field becomes leader, Hugh.