Power Surge

This is one hell of an impressive sight.  It may not be the most beautiful of structures (what power station is?), but its sheer size is something to behold.  I am, for those who don't know, talking about the largest power station in Europe and one of the top ten biggest power stations on the planet - Drax Power Station near Selby in North Yorkshire.  It has twelve 500ft cooling towers and the tallest chimney in the UK.  At 850ft it is almost 100ft higher than the Canary Wharf tower in London's docklands.  And yes, for film anoraks, it was the inspiration for the James Bond enemy number 1 in the film Moonraker.

7% of the entire electricity output in the UK comes from this one station, as well as 4% of the country's CO2 emissions.  Without the operation of Drax, large swathes of the UK - from the Midlands to the Scottish Borders - could be affected by power cuts.  Unless we are prepared to go nuclear, this country will continue to rely on the indispensable service Drax provides.  Although the two other power stations in the area, Ferrybridge and Selby Fork, are unaffected by the action of environmental lunatics, their output combined does not equal that of Drax.  In short, if Drax is forced to suspend operations, my lights will go out.

Who do these people think they are to go around disrupting everybody else's life?  Millions across the country rely on a continuous source of electricity, yet they think they have the right to plunge everybody into a pit of darkened misery in order to satiate the 'green is good' warped mentality of their so-called minds!!  The government has rated Drax the cleanest coal-fired station in the UK.  What are we supposed to use for our electricity supply?  A swarm of ugly wind turbines desecrating the countryside?  Or would they preferred it if we cooked by candlelight?

600 morons have amassed at Drax for today's plan of action.  Many have said they will break the law in order to shut down supply.  It is incumbent on the North Yorkshire Police, who have enlisted support from constabularies as far away as Hampshire, to make sure these idiots do not succeed in their aims.

Comments

[Mardy Bum]

I'd say your lights went out a good while ago.

[Andrew McCann]

Yours really is an apt nom de plume - so full of shit.

Now, care to contribute something worthwhile?

[Mardy Bum]

You write something worthwhile, forsaking the armchair punditry of the terminally grumpy with something informed and informative, and I'll respond in kind.

[jaun]

good luck to the yorkshire police - slap the baps off them.

[daytripper]

if successful, how do they intend to brew of a cup of celebratory green tea?

all these people do is provide the anti-environmentalists with ammunition to discredit genuine environmentalism.

[Mike Cunningham]

We will no doubt be seeing shortly in this 'comments' section a further claim that we are all being poisoned by Zionists/World Government/George Bush by means of the adulteration of the vapour from the cooling towers!

We're all doomed, I tell you!

[Cllr Graham Smith]

Whilst I am not tempted in the least to join them, for as long as the vast majority of the protestors engage in a peaceful picketing operation, I really cannot see what is wrong with allowing them to protest.

They have sensibly chosen a time of year when electricity usage should have passed the summer air conditioning peak and there is still little requirement for heating.

As such, their right to peacefully protest should be upheld, even if we don't necessarily agree with their particular stance.

However, might I ask what the long-term effect on our country will be if this particular power station is switched off for a week or two? I suspect very little indeed. Surely it would do us all good to remember just how dependent we have become on fossil fuels?

If each of us learns to value the earth's limited resources a bit more as a result of this well-intentioned protest, then surely mankind as a whole will benefit? After all, we are simply stewards of this planet's resources and, to be truthful, our stewardship has some room for improvement.

--
Graham Smith

[daytripper]

However, might I ask what the long-term effect on our country will be if this particular power station is switched off for a week or two? I suspect very little indeed. Surely it would do us all good to remember just how dependent we have become on fossil fuels?

political doublespeak for; powershortages are likely to become a regular feature in the coming years/decades. and you better get used to it.

the only ways to offset our dependance on external energy sources is to re-open british coalmines and build more nuclear power stations. both of which are coincidently being considered.

[Peter Turner]

What we are really talking about is not fossil fuels but energy supplies. To continue our technological civilisation we need energy. Without it our civilisation will slide into oblivion. Returning to some idyllic past way of life is not an option - and how can we be sure it was idyllic?

There is also a belief that renewable sources of energy such as wind, wave and solar energy will be able to provide all the energy requirements we really need. Well they won't. World energy requirements will only increase. India and China, for example will continue their industrial development. However, what future technologies will bring we know not - so we are left with what is possible today.

If we continue to depend upon the earth's dwindling fossil supplies (coal and oil) we will reach a point where they are exhausted. We have, therefore, no choice but to go nuclear. What must be remembered is that more people die each year from digging coal than have ever died as a result of a nuclear accident. Nuclear power production is safe by any comparison with fossil fuel extraction and it is clean. What remains a problem is waste disposal.

France, which supplies some 70% of its energy requirements from nuclear sources, has taken the attitude that technology will, sometime, produce the answer to the waste disposal problem and is prepared to wait for that answer to arrive. Other countries are trying desperately to find the answer now e.g. different forms of underground storage and so on. Will that answer be found? Well, as the 1900's appeared on the horizon people were desperately worried about the problem of ever increasing levels of horse manure on the streets of our cities. By the early 1900's this was no longer a problem. There is, therefore, some merit in the French approach.

It is difficult to understand just what these demonstrators want. No matter what they may say, governments, all governments, know the real situation and will safeguard energy supplies no matter what. Electricity cuts, subsequent job losses, travel restrictions and so on are not condusive to a government's re-election. It could be that the demonstrators have been completely convinced by the perceived threat to the world's eco-system of rising CO2 levels but climate behaviour is dependant upon far, far more that one factor. I cannot accept that these demonstrations are anything other thsn futile.

[RottyPup]

Agreed. It is a lovely sight. And, hell, they even got the name right, didn't they? Drax. Damn, but if that doesn't sound like a huge, wildlife-wrecking ball of loveliness, what does?

And now what have we got? Tory councillors twittering on about mother earth and benefiting mankind. Myself, I'm with Chairman Ann on this one:

"I take the Biblical idea. God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees God says, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"

And if you can get cops to beat-up a few protesting hippies, well, all the better.

[Colm]

Well done to the protesters. Their refusal to be docile sheep and willingness to challenge authority is in the fine tradition of dissent in our country's history a tradition that is part of what has kept Britain from dictatorship . They are true Brits.

[RottyPup]

Why is it that the only people who ever use words like 'fine tradition of dissent' are treacherous lefties? Hmm?
And, since we're on the subject, the rabble outside Drax are the same charmers who were smashing residential windows and tearing down satellite dishes at last year's G7. But, as you say, it's all in a 'fine tradition'. Very British. Well, so long as it's not your window or satellite dish, eh, Colm?

[Colm]

Rotty

I know you would prefer a docile "all hail to the glorious leader" North Korean style population but that is of course your perogative.

[RottyPup]

Yep. You sure caught me out, Colm. There was I thinking that the sort of smelly, dreadlocked yob who gets his jollies throwing bricks through pensioners' windows deserved to get a kicking from a cop ... But, no. In reality, I'm hankering to live in the kind of oppressive police state where they shoot you for leaving and throw newborn babies out with the trash. Thanks for straightening me out.

Now, where's the Call Me Dave councillor I originally picked this fight with? Hmm? Really, it seems that whoever I argue with over here, I always seem to end up getting bogged down in Colmworld ... Or maybe it's that people feel it would be impolite to jump into an ongoing argument between the two of us? Honestly, don't you lefties know that whenever a real conservative isn't engaged in battle with at least three socialist drones at once he's punching below his weight?

[SBK]

I'm an environmentalist and I hence believe in global warming. But what exactly do these muppets hope to achieve? No form of electricity generation will please these clowns. They have every right to protest, and I'd defend their right even if I disagree with their view, but the instant violence (or the threat of it) is used their argument become nul and void.

I'll wager I know a damn sight more about power generation than any of them. Unless of course they have chemical engineers protesting with them, which I doubt. Nuclear is the way to go, and anyone who invokes the old Chernobyl argument should realise that it wouldn't have met the regulatory standards we had in the 60's!

[Colm]

Rotty

Gotcha ! I'm only biting at your little spinning tail - I don't really care about these protesters cause to be honest but I do stand by my point that it's better to have a society with a vibrant 'crusty lefty reclaim the streets' brigade than one where they would be too scared to shout out whatever the merits of their cause.

[Godwinson]

It would be instructive to do a sociological research project of these protesters. How in hell do 600 people have time to spend days pleasuring their egos and displaying their higher virtue, and intelligence quotients, to the rabble bound to their daily tasks. They can't all be from Sussex Uni, can they? My instinct tells me that apart from the feminist twitterers, the other big contingent is from the army of benefits recipients, well it beats working if only for the febrile psychotic surges. Now why can't the police get them down to the Job Centre where they could do some job seeking?
This huge power station devours coal like there is no tomorrow. So where do these twerps think the coal comes from. I can reveal that it is not from Noddyland, but from deep mines where miners work for it and support their families on the proceeds. It also saves importing oil from the Middle East. Meanwhile the science of removing more greenhouse gases from coal fired power generation proceeds apace.

[[email protected]]

Which lefty rabble-rouser wrote this?

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

I'm sure that Colm or daytripper would be able to answer.

[Colm]

Was it David Cameron ? ;)

[Peter]

I don't remember Andrew and some other posters here being so keen on law and order when it was the pro-hunting mob going berserk at the Palace of Westminster last year. The attitude then "was good on ya"! So as usual, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

As for the Ann Coulter quote, more priceless claptrap from this so-far right wing moonbat.

[daytripper]

tbh allan i havent a clue, but id wager a guess at marx or lenin. ive never read one line of socialist text in my life. i know what i want out of life and if that puts me in the left spectrum then so be it.

[Tom Tyler]

It sounds like a quote from almost anyone in the current New Labour party except for Tony Blair.

[Ernest Young]

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler

(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)

There you are guys - you have the finest of research facilties at your finger tips, yet you are too indolent to use it...

You really should try one or two of the search engines available...

And this may lay the old argument as to whether Hitler was a sociaist or not , to rest...

[Ernest Young]

And yes! - it does sound pretty much like Nu Labour doesn't it?...

[Colm]

Wow , none of us would ever have known how to find out if ernest hadn't done so for us.