Me again. Lol

[bladerunnerpv]

It's world wide, but Brexit has added 5% to our inflation. And it's not just fuel, this year's droughts will have affected crops across Europe, so food will rise in price. I'm planning on growing a few things next year, simple stuff like tomatoes, which taste better than the underipe supermarket offerings.

Hi binky, sorry you sparked my interest and I started to type... ;-)

Yes, we've had a pandemic, an oil price shock, drought and war too in the last few years, so nothing to cause any problems for everyone (tongue in cheek) I'm surprised things aren't worse than they are tbh.

It may sound strange, given that the only news reported is the bad news, but we are actually better off than a lot of places, lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7 and a floating currency give us some flexibility at least, I'm glad I'm not living in a southern europe eurozone country where they really need a currency devaluation and all they're getting is more demands to wear hairshirt from northern europe countries, no great surprise greece and italy are becoming less enthused about the euro/eu.

I was reading some stuff on monetarist economics, which is all about the money supply and saw some analysis made about 18m ago indicating inflation would rise sharply due to too much money being pumped in to the economy and recession to come. The BoE and mainstream finance is all Keynesian economics so this view is generally ignored (groupthink) despite being mainstream in the 70's. It looks to me now like the monetarists were right, at least on the surface of it.

Eurozone is just lagging the events, starts in US policy, then hits UK then EU over about a year iirc. The US will see the effect of the fed rising rates and quantitative tightening on their economy in pretty short order now, strangling the money supply, causing a recession. Sadly we're seeing/going to see that too here, brexit is a minor factor compared to that.

Ever fancy an interesting and amusing, if somewhat polemic at times, read on finance/economics then try ambrose evans pritchard in the telegraph, filter out the more provocative views and he often quotes Simon Ward who takes a monetarist view.

Prices have been artificially low for 10-20yrs due to much manufacturing being off-shored to far-east and now it's starting to unravel.

The UK needs to take a more strategic view and do some actual energy infrastructure implementation with a balanced mix of sources and a mix of market and nationalised approaches.

Problem is that govt can't afford the capital needed to invest on that scale and so incentivises industry to do it but then doesn't appear to get a cut back from industry from doing so, nor seems to insist that all the design and manufacture is done in the uk by british companies to generate jobs and hence taxes. Or at least for govt sovereign wealth fund to have shares in those companies to support pensions for the future. Seems to lack a strategic approach to me, perhaps I'm missing something clever?

What really irks me is how the market price for wind generated energy is apparently linked to the wholesale price of gas. So all our elec is priced according the the most expensive source? We could bring our bills down markedly if that anomaly was put right (windfall tax on wind energy producers anyone ;-) )

If we can get much closer to energy self-sufficiency we shall be in a much stronger position - more homes with solar pls

Anyone heard how the severn tidal project is going ?

Still we should count our blessings, our tomatoes definitely tasted better than from the shops, did pretty well on strawberries too this year!

PS sorry for the OT venting!

 

[Mrjmegson]

Thanks John, that's much better, and I appreciate that.

And, as I don't understand it, I will know try to understand it, so go away and research it.

I'll try to explain myself.

I have seen many people test solar panel open circuit this way, and none have had an issue, so I assumed this would be ok for me to do too.

I also knew the rated power of my panels and the rating of my meter, which is considerably higher, so again, I assumed I'd be ok.

But again, thanks for trying to explain it to me, I will indeed try educate myself, and from what you said, count myself lucky on this occasion.

 

[binky]

Hi binky, sorry you sparked my interest and I started to type... ;-)

Yes, we've had a pandemic, an oil price shock, drought and war too in the last few years, so nothing to cause any problems for everyone (tongue in cheek) I'm surprised things aren't worse than they are tbh.

the fact these things have hit us hard is, in my opinion, a lot to do with failing to invest in the basic infrastructure of the UK / economy in general.

It may sound strange, given that the only news reported is the bad news, but we are actually better off than a lot of places, lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7 and a floating currency give us some flexibility at least, I'm glad I'm not living in a southern europe eurozone country where they really need a currency devaluation and all they're getting is more demands to wear hairshirt from northern europe countries, no great surprise greece and italy are becoming less enthused about the euro/eu.

Not being tied to the Euro certainly gives us a large amount of economic freedom. The G7 countires are interesting in their own right, but for my money Germany and France are the only countires to really compare ourselves with. Countries like Greece would almost certainly be better off without the Euro, not sure about Italy / Spain / Portugal. Biggest mistake the EU made was expanding rapidly into eatern europe wothout making those countries meet the financial measures they should have to gain entry.

I was reading some stuff on monetarist economics, which is all about the money supply and saw some analysis made about 18m ago indicating inflation would rise sharply due to too much money being pumped in to the economy and recession to come. The BoE and mainstream finance is all Keynesian economics so this view is generally ignored (groupthink) despite being mainstream in the 70's. It looks to me now like the monetarists were right, at least on the surface of it.

I still don't understand why the BoE is tackling rising living costs as inflationary pressures, except a TV interview expert let slip that it was actually about charging us all more money on mortgagaes and loans to cover the losses they expect from defaulters. There's a few economic models we could follow, Adam Smith being one, and of course Karl Marks for oppossing ends of the spectrum. However, Thatcher started the more full on 'free market' economy we have followed for 40 years including under Blair, and it doesn't seem to be working well. To my mind the current state of the economy was predictable, the current economic pressures having successfully highlighted the papered-over cracks.

Eurozone is just lagging the events, starts in US policy, then hits UK then EU over about a year iirc. The US will see the effect of the fed rising rates and quantitative tightening on their economy in pretty short order now, strangling the money supply, causing a recession. Sadly we're seeing/going to see that too here, brexit is a minor factor compared to that.

Not sure, they don't have the energy problems we do, but, like the rest of the Ist world have lost a lot of their manufacturing jobs to China / other third world countries.

Ever fancy an interesting and amusing, if somewhat polemic at times, read on finance/economics then try ambrose evans pritchard in the telegraph, filter out the more provocative views and he often quotes Simon Ward who takes a monetarist view.

I refuse to read the Telegraph, it's far too biased. I do however like a read of the FT occasionally - businesses likes facts, without political dogma.

Prices have been artificially low for 10-20yrs due to much manufacturing being off-shored to far-east and now it's starting to unravel.

A ploy to hide the dreadful state of the economy in my opinion, whilst 'trickle down' money form the mega rich barely keeps us alive. I'm also convinced property prices have been artificially prompoted to make us home owners feel richer and keep voting Tory...

The UK needs to take a more strategic view and do some actual energy infrastructure implementation with a balanced mix of sources and a mix of market and nationalised approaches.

Problem is that govt can't afford the capital needed to invest on that scale and so incentivises industry to do it but then doesn't appear to get a cut back from industry from doing so, nor seems to insist that all the design and manufacture is done in the uk by british companies to generate jobs and hence taxes. Or at least for govt sovereign wealth fund to have shares in those companies to support pensions for the future. Seems to lack a strategic approach to me, perhaps I'm missing something clever?

Well we have just seen how many £billions spent on Covid, so suddenly they can borrow money of they want to. Now, had they done that 20-30 years ago then our energy infrastruture could probably be nearly all green / nuclear by now. This is one of my main pet hates about farming off such stuff to private companies. They have little interest in really investing to keep the lights on, as a scarce product is more profitable. Ultimatley, most of these companies do not have piles of cash lying around, so they borrow money to 'invest' then charge us the interest on that money and add a profit margin as large as they can - ultimately this costs us more than borrowing the money to invest ourselves, albeit it is fair to say government project management hasn't got a great track record. I will also say I'm not against private companies, most of our offshore wind turbines are being built by a Danish company that used to be into oil. They ditched that and jumped on green tech - private companies have far more flexibility to make that sort of change.

What really irks me is how the market price for wind generated energy is apparently linked to the wholesale price of gas. So all our elec is priced according the the most expensive source? We could bring our bills down markedly if that anomaly was put right (windfall tax on wind energy producers anyone ;-) )

monstrous isn't it, the EU are doing something about it, not heard anything from our own government. It's also a part of my argument for public ownership, we could just be being charged generation costs, pay off any loans, plus a bit for reinvestment.

If we can get much closer to energy self-sufficiency we shall be in a much stronger position - more homes with solar pls

And far cheaper than nuclear or other major projects.

Anyone heard how the severn tidal project is going ?

Shelved years ago due to massive costs. The environmental lobby was also dead against it as it would have had a major affect on wildlife, which is true, but sometimes you have to wonder what they want

Still we should count our blessings, our tomatoes definitely tasted better than from the shops, did pretty well on strawberries too this year!

PS sorry for the OT venting!