Have the Conservatives fixed our country?

[unbeliever 10]

Thanks for this

 

Thanks for hearing me with an open mind.

[El Cid 212]

The people also want to see the maintenance of and/or increase in UK manufacturing. That objective is incompatible with the pursuit of a renewables dominated energy supply.

 

 

Its a struggle to blame the cost of renewables on the decline of the British steel industry(Chinese steel workers get a quarter of what UK steel workers are paid); please dont blame renewables for the decline in the entire manufacturing sector.

[Tomjames 10]

Reducing the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP. How else would you define it?

 

A success or failure?

 

Even the right wing press admit it's an abject failure on the structural deficit. He's even wide of the mark, month to month:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/21/deficit-figures-an-embarrassment-for-george-osborne-as-he-misses/

 

---------- Post added 14-06-2016 at 22:20 ----------

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_national_debt

 

According to wikipedia source, the debt has risen sharply as a % of GDP and:

As of Q1 2015 UK government debt amounted to £1.56 trillion, or 81.58% of total GDP, at which time the annual cost of servicing (paying the interest) the public debt amounted to around £43bn (which is roughly 3% of GDP or 8% of UK government tax income).

 

And the national debt:

Due to the Government's significant budget deficit, the national debt is increasing by approximately £73.5 billion per annum, or around £1.4 billion each week.As a result of its efforts to balance the budget, the Government forecast in 2014 that the structural deficit will be eliminated in the financial year 2017/18.However it changed the year to 2018/19 in March 2015 and to 2019/20 in July 2015.

 

In conclusion, have the conservatives fixed our country?

 

---------- Post added 14-06-2016 at 22:28 ----------

 

This is just the economy. more areas:

 

Migration figures (failure)

Social well being (?)

equality (success?)

Happiness of citizens (it was rated as "high" by a poll and average by offical index)

Prosperity (partial success)

Human development (?)

Business & global competitiveness (success?)

 

You be the judge.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Tomjames
kjk

[unbeliever 10]

Its a struggle to blame the cost of renewables on the decline of the British steel industry(Chinese steel workers get a quarter of what UK steel workers are paid); please dont blame renewables for the decline in the entire manufacturing sector.

 

It's not the only factor.

But surely you can see that high energy costs make it harder to make a go of manufacturing.

 

---------- Post added 15-06-2016 at 06:48 ----------

 

A success or failure?

 

Even the right wing press admit it's an abject failure on the structural deficit. He's even wide of the mark, month to month:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/21/deficit-figures-an-embarrassment-for-george-osborne-as-he-misses/

 

---------- Post added 14-06-2016 at 22:20 ----------

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_national_debt

 

According to wikipedia source, the debt has risen sharply as a % of GDP and:

As of Q1 2015 UK government debt amounted to £1.56 trillion, or 81.58% of total GDP, at which time the annual cost of servicing (paying the interest) the public debt amounted to around £43bn (which is roughly 3% of GDP or 8% of UK government tax income).

 

And the national debt:

Due to the Government's significant budget deficit, the national debt is increasing by approximately £73.5 billion per annum, or around £1.4 billion each week.As a result of its efforts to balance the budget, the Government forecast in 2014 that the structural deficit will be eliminated in the financial year 2017/18.However it changed the year to 2018/19 in March 2015 and to 2019/20 in July 2015.

 

In conclusion, have the conservatives fixed our country?

 

---------- Post added 14-06-2016 at 22:28 ----------

 

This is just the economy. more areas:

 

Migration figures (failure)

Social well being (?)

equality (success?)

Happiness of citizens (it was rated as "high" by a poll and average by offical index)

Prosperity (partial success)

Human development (?)

Business & global competitiveness (success?)

 

You be the judge.

 

 

As long as there is a deficit the debt will continue to rise in cash terms.

Despite that, we're getting close to the debt stabilising as a % of GDP.

[El Cid 212]

It's not the only factor.

But surely you can see that high energy costs make it harder to make a go of manufacturing.

 

Energy costs for steel making is 6/8%, and the climate change element of that is around 10% of that, which would be less than 1% of the total manufacturing cost of steel, lower in other industries.

That is just off the top of my head, is that right, what would your estimate be?

 

Some of the climate change measures just go back into the UK economy, just not if foreign made/owned.

[unbeliever 10]

Energy costs for steel making is 6/8%, and the climate change element of that is around 10% of that, which would be less than 1% of the total manufacturing cost of steel, lower in other industries.

That is just off the top of my head, is that right, what would your estimate be?

 

Some of the climate change measures just go back into the UK economy, just not if foreign made/owned.

 

http://www2.eef.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/C6B276E6-6FAE-4625-AFFE-BB55BD1A8786/24588/UKSteelBriefing_EnergyCostsandtheSteelSector_April.pdf

 

Energy is 20-40% of the cost in Steel production.

At an integrated site about one third of that is electricity and an an electric arc site about 75%.

Using USD: UK electricity costs 22c and in China it costs between a third and half of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_electricity_price_comparison

 

Therefore the impact on the cost of making steel in the UK compared to China from electricity prices is to increase age cost by between 7% and 45% depending on the type of Steel plant and the local variation in electricity cost.

 

So the effect of energy price on steel production costs is far higher than you indicate and the total effect of climate change policy on the cost of electricity is far higher than you indicate.

Edited June 15, 2016 by unbeliever

[El Cid 212]

http://www2.eef.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/C6B276E6-6FAE-4625-AFFE-BB55BD1A8786/24588/UKSteelBriefing_EnergyCostsandtheSteelSector_April.pdf

 

Energy is 20-40% of the cost in Steel production.

At an integrated site about one third of that is electricity and an an electric arc site about 75%.

Using USD: UK electricity costs 22c and in China it costs between a third and half of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_electricity_price_comparison

 

Therefore the impact on the cost of making steel in the UK compared to China from electricity prices is to increase age cost by between 7% and 45% depending on the type of Steel plant and the local variation in electricity cost.

 

Using your figures, if we say 30%, of which 50% of from electricity, which takes it down to 15%, and then 10% is the climate change element, which is 1.5% ???

[unbeliever 10]

Using your figures, if we say 30%, of which 50% of from electricity, which takes it down to 15%, and then 10% is the climate change element, which is 1.5% ???

 

There's always a lot of spin in these things. The 10% figure for the effect of climate change law on electricity pricing is clearly absolute nonsense and I don't know the source, but it will be heavily manipulated to exclude many of the ways in which these laws impact the cost of energy.

 

As I say, the cost of electricity in the UK is typically 22c/kWh. In the USA it's typically about 11c (ranges between 8c and 17c).

In Canada, it's between 7.5c and 11c /kWh. In India, 7c. China 7.5c-10.7c.

In France, it's 19c/kWh even though that's almost all Nuclear (some of which they send to us as we don't have enough).

 

Where do you suppose the extra cost of UK electricity is coming from?

Whoever told you that 10% of your electricity bill is down to climate change law is a liar. I expect it was the government.

 

List of climate change measures which affect electricity prices:

Carbon floor price

Fees paid to renewables generators to switch off when demand is low and renewables are active

Feed in tariffs

Fossil fuel backup power stations which built solely to provide electricity when the renewables are inactive, but have to run continuously

 

This last item is a big one. The need to accommodate intermittent renewables into the supply system creates very large hidden costs in the parts of the bill many would like to account for as part of the cost of fossil fuels.

Edited June 15, 2016 by unbeliever

[Tomjames 10]

It's not the only factor.

But surely you can see that high energy costs make it harder to make a go of manufacturing.

 

---------- Post added 15-06-2016 at 06:48 ----------

 

 

 

As long as there is a deficit the debt will continue to rise in cash terms.

Despite that, we're getting close to the debt stabilising as a % of GDP.

 

The bar graph on wikipedia says debt as a % of GDP is increasing?

[unbeliever 10]

The bar graph on wikipedia says debt as a % of GDP is increasing?

 

At it will continue to increase until the deficit is largely eliminated.

That is the way with debts and deficits.

You have to get rid of the latter almost entirely before the former starts moving in the right direction.

[the_bloke 17]

The funny thing about things like this is that we don't actually know what would have happened if Labour won the election in 2010. We can make educated guesses, like the Tories did at the time about the austerity plan, but nothing ever runs to plan on such large scales. At least the Tories were clean about how much of a mess we were in.

 

This is Government after all, every project spirals out of control and costs more money, so the fact that it's taking longer for the country to get into the black should hardly be a shock.

 

One of the 'what if' scenarios though, would have been for Labour to have won in 2010 and borrowed even more money to 'spend our way out of recession' which is what they were proposing at the time. If that had gone wrong, we'd have been like Greece come the 2015 elections and the Conservatives would have won anyway. The austerity measures of today would be nothing compared to the sort of plan that would have had to be put in place if that had happened.

[chem1st 10]

Inclusion of how much home-owners would pay if they actually rented boosted UK GDP in 2014 by £158bn – a 8.9% share

Rent and “imputed rent” has almost doubled as a share of UK GDP since 1985 to 12.3% in 2014, overtaking manufacturing.

 

12.3% of the economy (GDP) is rent and imputed rents.

 

8.9% of GDP is imputed rents and totally fictitious.

 

3.4% of economy is actual rent paid, and much of that is paid for by housing benefit and LHA.

 

Housing benefit sets minimum rents, which in turn set imputed rents. These imputed rents make a massive contribution to GDP, even though they are fictitious.

 

Most of the growth we have seen has been in rents and imputed rents, and it is due to increased housing benefit spending and the subsequent increase in fictitious imputed rents.

 

The economic recovery is merely a manipulation of GDP via manipulation of imputed rent.

 

Pretending an empty room in a house generates more GDP than it did previously is not a real economic recovery.

 

We could remove 9% of GDP in the stroke of a pen and nothing would change. We could remove a further 1%, by significantly reducing rents, and vastly improve the living standards of millions of tenants in the UK and make the economy much more competitive in the process.