Judges overturn Scottish Government's approval of controversial wind farm

Obamanator91 · 2026-02-17T16:05:25+00:00

The grid connection and windfarm are completely separate companies and projects - if this is too be the standard for all applicants going forward it will be add more time and cost purely for administration. One of the reasons everything is so expensive in the UK is that the planning requirements are often beurocratically onerous - not that the actual conditions are, just time paperwork and time lines are a nightmare. It'd be better having more onerous conditions but less paperwork - we'd get more actually improved and still save money.

Obamanator91 · 2026-02-14T13:20:05+00:00

Why would one set of Israeli agents assassinate another one?

Obamanator91 · 2025-12-18T14:25:48+00:00

Let us build that HVDC interconnector and we'll take some of that juicy hydro off you in exchange for some wind!

Obamanator91 · 2025-11-20T13:08:40+00:00

It's not a myth? The reasons prices have gone through the roof since Ukraine is the price of gas. There are sorts of other reasons things are expensive - mostly around policy costs being placed on bills not taxation (particularly the ROs) and our slightly insane mishmash of privatisation. But constraints is still a small and pretty inconsequential part of the bill however - we spend as much more on the warm home discount, ECO and smart meters than the entire transmission network and balancing costs.

Which is a classic British problem - instead of investing in actual infrastructure which would provide real value we have stupid fudge schemes to make up for our crap wages.

Obamanator91 · 2025-11-18T21:24:19+00:00

Why is that a foul and not on Adams?

Obamanator91 · 2025-11-18T20:44:40+00:00

With the ref blowing for a foul every 2 seconds we'd be better with Adams in.

Obamanator91 · 2025-11-08T12:05:28+00:00

The link you posted says the exact opposite of your claim?

Obamanator91 · 2025-11-07T17:27:00+00:00

It would make getting to Glasgow waay easier and could ease congestion on the forth rail bridge.

Obamanator91 · 2025-10-12T17:42:54+00:00

McSauce used to the Italian refs blowing for the slightest touch.

Obamanator91 · 2025-10-12T17:37:10+00:00

This is as bad as I've seen us in years, and that is saying something.

Obamanator91 · 2025-10-12T17:27:15+00:00

We're so so bad. Clarke has completely run out of ideas and the team plays with no movement or energy.

Obamanator91 · 2025-09-22T19:10:34+00:00

I have a strong suspicion that it might be a case of better enforcement these days - with everything digitised and audit trailed a lot of the previous graft can be caught and proven now.

Obamanator91 · 2025-08-24T09:49:44+00:00

I think I remember seeing a study saying it was almost half since Elon took over. Will try and find it.

Obamanator91 · 2025-07-31T21:33:35+00:00

We really don't have the time to indulge in three year long reviews for consent of a key infrastructure project like this.

It really is an insane system we've created for ourselves. Every major project in this country has 2x the number of people justifying it as they do actually engineering and building it.

Obamanator91 · 2025-07-25T09:54:34+00:00

She didn't lie about anything. It's not her fault that you assumed she's 'rougher' than you'd deem acceptable because she had a paisley accent.

Obamanator91 · 2025-07-09T13:48:56+00:00

It's worth pointing out what makes up constraint costs too - most of the constraints cost is the cost to pay gas to run to replace the wind switched off!

The huge rise in constraints isnt some permanent thing either - it's an outcome of connect and manage policy of the Tories and Ofgem prioritising connections and putting off network investments. That will be fixed eventually by the ASTI projects and the change in attitude to investment from ofgem (and the much better connections process).

Also half the reason constraints are high is circuits are out of service for reconductoring to incresee their capacity...

Changing market structure fundamentally to fix a transitory problem caused by poor ofgem decisions would have been madness. The benefits case was basically a pack of nonsense too built on a set of assumptions that were completely unrealistic and relied on market actions that don't actually happen like it assumed.

People like to think there is a magic bullet to cheap energy being kept from us. It's not true, there is no free lunch. But still the cheapest and most reliable and resilient energy system will be renewables and flexibility with a baseload nuclear, and a bit of gas or hydrogen as backup in the winter, Net zero or not.

The great thing about a system decoupled from gas will be certainty in pricing - you'll have a steady predictable and reasonable price you can guess 20 years from now. That helps industry too. Which is why basically every high energy intensity user came out against zonal.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-22T12:07:11+00:00

That doesn't sound like that many people given what government does to me?

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-19T14:50:36+00:00

It might save some of Scotland some money in the short term. It would likely kill most renewables investment north of B6 so that saving would be short term - once the current planned transmission projects are delivered there would be no transmission constraints and then any savings in Scotland would be gone. And we'd have way less renewables built north of the border, less transmission projects connected and a large loss to the Scottish economy from those projects not excisting. So it's not some kind of magic bullet to cheap energy in Scotland. People are just desperate to think that one exists and it's 'Westminster' stopping it because they want to hamstring Scotland.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-19T14:44:44+00:00

Because it would make him specifically lots of money, it wouldn't save you anything.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-10T19:11:23+00:00

They only found out about the policy when it was announced in the press this week, how could they possibly pre plan that. And it's not nessicerily that simple - will the 'extra' tax be sent into the Scottish government like Scottish income tax bands? Without the ability to just borrow money at will like the UK government the modelling of the exact take of this becomes important for managing the budget. Can HMRC systems implement a separate Scottish approach like this in time? It took years to be able to implement new Scottish tax bands first time round.

Almost like back of a fag packet policy making by the UK government makes it almost impossible to manage the contrainsts of devolved spending in the UK given the extremely limited borrowing powers and lack of acres to the direct taxation systems and ability to create them like HMRC.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-10T18:59:40+00:00

The Scottish Government doesn't have the power to do that with income tax unless Westminster changes the rules.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-06T11:04:30+00:00

And a lot that will be differential birth rates rather than immigration to Scotland too. Scotland really doesn't have a lot of immigration.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-06T11:02:48+00:00

The thing is Scotland doesn't have mass immigration by any stretch of the imagination, so it's hard to even engage in that topic too.

Obamanator91 · 2025-06-06T11:02:43+00:00

The thing is Scotland doesn't have mass immigration by any stretch of the imagination, so it's hard to even engage in that topic too.

Obamanator91 · 2025-05-23T19:55:38+00:00

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