But how many of them have their own gas supplies?

But only in the US.



It's not been any sort of "fix" in recent years when the companies have all put their prices up at the same time, and by approximately the same amount, fortunately.

And it's no sort of a "fix" to make the tariffs so complex that it makes it difficult for people to find the 'best' deal. After all, simple tariffs would not be possible, so they've not been deliberately made opaque.

I don't know where you got the 75% downtime from, the figures I've read suggest the opposite, i.e. the turbine being active for approx 75% of the time, often more.
Regarding the wind being too strong ... as the wind speed increases, the pitch of the blades on a modern turbine automatically offer gradually less resistance until, in a very (!) high wind, the blades don't rotate at all. But that very high wind is very rare indeed, on most commercial turbines the wind has to be well over 120mph before the wind is too strong.
At the opposite end of the scale, it is true that on a very calm day, a wind farm can be at a standstill due to lack of wind.
It's rare for this to be the case over the entire country at the same time but it is still true that wind turbines are not the [usole[/u answer to our energy requirements ... no-one says they are, but they can be and are a useful part of the mix.
And, a 7mW turbine, producing enough electricity for 2,000 homes isn't really piddling, is it?

Many people would argue that nuclear fission is not a "green" generator.

Don't be misled by Bernard Ingham's ill-informed bluster.

Mmm, I seem to remember prices being regulated under Thatcher and Major, so how is it different now?

Energy companies want grandfathered pricing for 40 years when developing power stations to make them worthwhile, why can't they make the same arrangements for 20 months on the otherside?

The one notable absence of doom mongers is EDF, a French company who make money in their own country where they have price regulation.

Mandelson's now joined the band of Miliband critics. That should be reason enough for Ed to continue. So far all the moaners and frothers are waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy eclipsed by those in favour and last time I looked, energy companies do not get a ballot paper in a general election

Aye, The Prince of Darkness won't like a shift to the left.
It's as clear a signal of separation from Blairism and New Labour as we are going to see, I reckon.

This price freeze may last for about a year by the time they've got through a potential judicial review and then through parliament. Something like this will need an act of legislation, probably in the form of a change to the Energy Act. That will take time to do.

Given that the quoted average household energy bill is ~£1300 and price rises are on average 9% per year recently, then it will "save" the average household £117 for the year.

The problem is, what happens after that ? Where is the safeguard to stop energy companies waiting until the price freeze ends and then hiking up prices massively to recoup their "loss" ? We might well find that saving £10 a month for a year leads to paying an extra £20 a month the year after, which will hit the poorest even harder.

I guess that's the time for the replacement for OfGen to flex its muscles.

You are making a lot of assumptions there but the policy would be rather pointless if the time in which prices were frozen wasn't used to sort out this countries energy policy because at the moment those 9% price rises are just not sustainable. Leaving the provision of energy to market forces is not working.

I agree but who needs enemies when you have friends like him? It also won't do Miliband's standing with people who can vote much good because despite the idea being popular its just another stick to beat Miliband up with over his overall competency. If Mandelson is still a member of the party the chairman needs to drag him into his office and tell him to keep his trap shut.

As the energy companies have said, the lights will go off, not because they need to but because the energy companies will try to manipulate the situation. At this point the government should invoke emergency measures and take them over as we welcome electricity generation and the national grid (the clues in the name) back into the state ownership that it should never have been allowed to leave.

Then its time to start on water, gas, coal, public transport, NHS and prisons.

I suspect with things swinging his way a little this week thanks to Dacre's inability to be a responsible editor, it will be some time before Labour feel the need to get rid of Ed.

Another spectacular misjudgement by the D**** M***, which they'll take time to recover from (and hopefully never will)

I wouldn't be so sure, they managed to survive after supporting Fascism.
Never underestimate the selfishness of a Daily Mail reader.

It's quite something to make chunks of the populace who have never liked or trusted Alastair Campbell cheer for him, but that [iNewsnight[/i segment managed it.

Jon Steafel was totally out of his depth, having sent there by the coward that is Dacre.

Incredible to hear Steafel suggesting that mentioning Rothermere's support of the Nazis was irrelevant, when the [iMail[/i had used a diary entry by a 17-year-old, written over 70 years ago, as its 'evidence' for the entire smear.

The problem isn't even Dacre, though: it's the readers who do take the [iMail[/i as gospel or are at least influenced by it.

They are playing into Ed M's hands as well. The Mail is dead set against the Levison recommendations such as they are, Milliband is for them and can now point to this episode.

In addition at the culmination of the Tory party conference it's Ed M who is getting the headlines. Talk about one own goal after the other.

He failed to answer direct questions, wouldn't even say whether he himself thought Miliband Snr "hated Britain" and just repeated his script over and over, which was just about all he could do to defend the indefensible.

The notion that someone who detests the church or dislikes the monarchy or is against bicameral legislature etc "hates Britain" is totally risible.
By those measures, most of the British population hates Britain.

Daily Mail? Bunch of s.

Viscount Rothermere (Mail owner) loves his country so much he doesn't pay tax here

And it seems that Dacre's own father's 'service' to his country in the war in which Miliband Snr signed up for the Navy was as, err, a showbiz hack for the [iExpress[/i.

But to pick up what Dave O said: the timing is extraordinary, as it's distracted from the Conservative Party conference, and it does suggest that Miliband has got right under the skins of Dacre and Rothermere – presumably with some of the recent policy announcements.

There has been speculation that Dacre would retire in November when he hits 65, but he's just signed a new contract.

The [iMail[/i is making big profits (the website is hugely successful – must be all that sexualising underage girls), but on this basis it's actually not doing the Tory Party any favours. One wonders if Rothermere and Dacre care or whether they're simply interested in the money.

It's the same tactic as the government employs. Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it is the idea. The trouble is for this tactic to work the lie has to at least seem plausible or hit on someones prejudice and require people to make some effort to question it (which most people seem to lazy to do) in order for it to be disproved.

In this case it is such patent nonsense what the DM has written it doesn't take anyone any effort to think - what a load of rubbish!

Compare:

Why should the Post Man pay the students tuition fees? D Willets favourite justification for increasing the fees. Look into it and you find the amount of tax a Post Man man paid that went towards the old University teaching grant was miniscule so no, they were not paying the student's fees.

with this:

R Milliband volunteered to join the Royal Navy in WWII, served on destroyers and battleships as a radio operator but was a marxist and wrote a comment in a diary aged 17 so that must mean he hates Britain.

While many were in fact ready to accept the first argument from Willets as they had no idea how the funding worked and couldn't be bothered to find out the second is clearly a contradiction. The DM can't tell the difference.



There are several current Tory MP's who fathers were socialists. I am surprised the DM hasn't organised a witch hunt to get them out of the party.

Saw this post which I thought was excellent....

"The stench of hypocrisy...

Campbell, Miliband, the Independent etc are all choosing to attack the headline of the Daily Mail article, rather than what was actually written in it. Interesting.

I read the article and it's key point was both that Ralph Miliband was an unrepentant Marxist AND that he was the defining influence on the politics of Ed Miliband, who is set to become the next prime minister of Britain.

His influence on Ed has been confirmed by Miliband himself in numerous speeches, and by the insider McBride, who wrote that his father's memory and sustaining his politics was the main reason Ed Miliband opted to fight his brother David for the Labour leadership. (David rejected his father's views).

Ralph Miliband's own mentor was his former lecturer Harold Laski, an influential leftwing militant who declared: "If Labour did not obtain what it needed by general consent, we shall have to use violence even if
it means revolution".

I argued yesterday that the Daily Mail has a legitimate point to explore and highlight such political lineage in a potential future British prime minister. That it also finds this lineage "deeply disturbing" is a legitimate opinion, not a 'smear'.

If David Cameron's key political influence had been a father who was a fascist, who in turn was mentored by a violent uniformed fascist who believed in the revolutionary overthrow of democracy, would we expect the Independent/Guardian/BBC, to bring this to our attention, or to ignore it?

I'm pleased to see this morning that the Guardian's independently minded media blogger Roy Greenslade backs me up in this reasoning with an article headlined: "It is legitimate to explore Ralph Miliband's political views".

The Daily Mail is on less firm ground with its headline that Ralph Miliband 'hated Britain', but again, that is little more than a legitimate opinion. Some people read Ralph Miliband and concluded he hated Britain in its present guise, others didn't.

But what is noticeable about the hysteria and Labour spin that followed this article is its utter hypocrisy. The Guardian has been at the forefront of this, but the Guardian staffers themselves are masters of the art of digging dirt, taking quotes out of context, distributing insults and generally attempting to destroy Labour's political opponents.

And as for this stuff about not damning someone based on what they said when they were 17. I'm delighted to see that the Guardian, Independent, and Labour's forum supporters have finally all woken up to this. Now will they all perhaps stop criticizing David Cameron for the school he attended when he was 12-17? Hope so."

All of which would be fine and dandy if you subscribe to the thought that political opinions are passed from generation to generation like male pattern baldness, big noses or a fondness for holidaying in Cleethorpes every year.

But they are not.

You don't inherit opinions, your early life might be guided by your parents opinions but you have the ability, everyone, to form your own opinions quite soon after climbing into your first pair of long pants.

Not according to the Daily Mail though.

But it won't be the first time they've made sweeping assumptions and generalisations and it only a problem if you swallow everything they print as gospel truth without using your brain to question why they print.

Ed Milliband has however said that he is brining back socialism and that he is influenced by his father.

Which is presumably why they had to take a picture of his grave and make a pun about it.

Strange how they have also forgotten their sermonising about respect for the dead that they frothed out earlier in the year.

He has also stated, on numerous occasions, that some of his policies would have his father spinning in his grave.

BTW, who actually penned that pile of factually inaccurate bollox you quoted earlier?

You'll be telling us next that Tony Blair was a Socialist and that the next Labour government will be Marxist...

Keep believing everything you read young man, you're keeping a handful of journalists and Paul "C***" Dacre in a job (his favourite turn of phrase...)