The myth of wind power... blown wide open

THE current mild weather may make us forget that British winters can still be ferociously cold. How will we cope with such cold, once the current plan to shut down coalfired power stations is complete?

I asked National Grid to tell me where our electric power came from in the mainly chilly week from November 28 to December 4. For most of that time, an average of just above 14 per cent came from coal, while less than six per cent came from wind.

In the Friday of that week, just two per cent of our power came from all those forests of windmills which cost us so much and make such a mess of the landscape.

A surprisingly large part of the rest was made up of nuclear (just over 25 per cent) and gas (just under 55 per cent) with a small amount sent across from France and the Netherlands by undersea cable.

With coal gone, as it soon will be, and as our worn-out nuclear stations close as well, what are we going to do? Solar power, in midwinter? We are not building any new gas generators, new nuclear plants are many years away, and the wind often doesn’t blow much in very cold weather. France’s nuclear systems are getting old and are breaking down more and more frequently.

Any company or householder looking at figures like these would worry, and act. Yet we do neither. It is because our elite’s minds are closed by Warmist dogma. Quite soon, sensible people will be buying their own private generators, as they do in Third World countries.

I’M NOT sure why the Government is so chipper about the big Commons vote for beginning the process of leaving the EU. One of the rules of politics is that really big majorities, like very long-standing ovations, are signs that people are concealing their real feelings. It is in the late-night sessions, the committees and the lobbies that the pro-EU MPs will try to frustrate the process.