| Disagree on being subsumed into the stagnating EU (far better to align with dynamic English-speaking economies with strong growth, like the US). The EU customs union prevented the UK striking bilateral global free trade deals, and the legacy of EU over-regulation continues to curtail our innovation. The UK has a solid history of global trade and innovation, and it can acheive more if unshackled from the EU. Austerity is absolutely necessary. If we keep giving the NHS above-inflation pay rises inline with what their staff demand, it would consume the entire annual excess wealth from the productive half of the economy in a matter of decades. What we need are sensible and pragmatic policies like Reform's scaling back of net zero, for example. The cost of Ed Miliband's net zero measures are an estimated £4.5 trillion over the next 25 years, and a gross cost in excess of £7.6 trillion. https://iea.org.uk/media/net-zero-could-cost-britain-billion... That's more than our entire GDP. Just one example is the 20 year wind farm contracts that Miliband has set up, with a guaranteed energy cost that's nearly double the market rate for gas power (and then on top of that we need to pay for wind curtailment, grid upgrades and expensive backup power plants to cover low wind days). https://x.com/ClaireCoutinho/status/2011335138987168173 We were promised that renewables would reduce energy bills. That was a total fiction, and the politicians are to blame. Green energy could be a massive success story, and it could make our bills cheaper, but inept politicians from the Tories and Labour have focussed instead on vanity metrics. |
On the NHS, of course, gut the only thing that's keeping the country sane. I can literally not keep count anymore of the number of skilled doctors and talent who have left the UK after years of practice because the pay was becoming untenable with current living needs. Remove the NHS and you might as well call yourself a client state of the US.
On renewables and net-zero, yes, what we need is more reliance on conventional fuels so that we can be ever more reliant on Russia and the Middle East and the US right? Meanwhile economies like China, India and even your brethren in Australia are racing to put in more renewables capacity because it is just so much more cheaper and efficient now. Those guys are forging real paths to energy independence, unlike you lot.
Renewables haven't been reducing your energy bills because you guys haven't been putting up anything of note. Wake me up when Hinckley Point C comes online.