In March 2021, writing about army cutbacks, I joked that far from being able to take back the Falklands now we would be unable to take back the Isle of Man. Turns out I was right. The ill-fated aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, en route to join the US fleet for exercises, broke down at another island, the Isle of Wight. When I first heard the news that the Prince of Wales was stranded at sea off the coast of the Isle of Wight, I nearly whipped the Bollinger out of the fridge, until I realised it was the boat and not His Royal Tree Hugness himself.
Mind you, had the HMS Prince of Wales made it to the scene of the exercises there may have been consternation among the US naval personnel, when the stealth fighters and the Merlin choppers appeared on deck, to see that the Royal Navy has only four female pilots and no black pilots. Did the Royal Navy not get the same memo as the Royal Air Force regarding the need to stop recruiting white personnel?
While I hate to denigrate my own country and to roll out the ‘Broken Britain’ cliché, it appears that what happened to HMS Prince of Wales may be symbolic of the state of our country. Frankly, we cannot seem to get much right these days and it is set to get a good deal worse. Under the heading ‘Life in Blackout Britain’ The Mail reports that ‘Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, ‘three-day-a-week’ school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated.’ I think I can live without swimming pools being heated and, given that everything worth going to seems to be closed, our old folks may be just as well staying put. It looks suspiciously to me like lockdown in all but name.
Barring the blitz and the marriage of the egomaniacs’ egomaniac, Meghan Markle to Prince Harry, we have just been through one of the worst experiences of modern Britain. The social and economic lockdown imposed on us for the best part of two years has ruined our economy and with it, lives, businesses and education. It also administered the coup de grâce to the already failing NHS. Some are claiming that it wasn’t them; a big boy must have done it and run away. Others, the rats who seem to be staying on the ship, just cannot get enough and would have us locked down again at the first sign of a sniffle.
Energy prices, along with inflation, are rising to levels that will impoverish families and close more businesses and all because, on the one hand, we are funding a war that someone else must win for us and, on the other hand, cutting our energy noses off to spite our faces in an effort to impoverish Russia and stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We live under the delusion that we are applying sanctions on Russia regarding energy while the truth is that Putin has put his foot on the hose and cut off gas to Germany. We are not directly dependent on Russian gas but prices are rising globally as a result, and we do, on occasion, need a bit of electrical oomph into the National Grid from Europe (i.e. Germany).
Meantime, in Russia, which has suffered a contraction of its economy, they are horizon scanning for new markets and new opportunities and people seem optimistic. Europe continues to buy oil from Russia and they sell lots to China and India which are second and sixth, respectively, of the biggest economies in the world.
We are energy poor as a nation because we are ignoring both the resources beneath our feet and around our shores, and refusing to invest in the greenest possible form of energy, nuclear power. Mention the nuclear option and the Greens and the associated vicars and middle class tarts of Extinction Rebellion raise the usual ‘what ifs’ such as the earthquake and tsunami that put paid to the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. The earthquakes we have in the UK barely rattle the cutlery drawer and the last time we had a tsunami was 8000 years ago. In one of the most earthquake-ridden countries in the world—Taiwan—they can build towering structures such as the Taipei 101 that withstand and have withstood massive earthquakes. Moreover, they have three functioning nuclear power stations.
We have a few flippy-flappy things offshore, and ruining vast swathes of our hillsides, so-called ‘wind farms’ which catch fire, shred birds and stop turning when the wind stops blowing. At the moment it is claimed that these unsightly noisy and dangerous structures provide 24% of our energy, less than a quarter. To have them produce more, of course we would need to build more. Solar energy provides 28% of our energy and, again, if the renewable energy resources fanatics have their way hardly a field will be left for crops to grow and cows to graze as we cover increasing amounts of arable land with unsightly solar panels. Just take the train from anywhere north into London and you can see the destruction that has been caused to our countryside by these structures.
People point to renewable energy ‘successes’ such as Pamplona in the north of Spain which generates 70% of its energy from combined wind and solar power. Before you lend your vote to the zero carbonites, I strongly advise you—as I have done often—to take the hopper flight from Madrid into Pamplona and scan the once beautiful hillsides. Over the years these have become festooned with windmills and barely a scrap of land outside the city is left untouched. It may also be worth remembering, regarding the contribution of solar power, that this is Spain where the sun doth shine.
We risk, during all this madness, losing not only our money, our properties and possibly our lives as we curl up in a corner to die of hypothermia this winter. We are losing our culture. Lockdown already dealt it a severe blow when the pubs were closed, and people were left at home to fester and fret over a virus that was most unlikely to kill them. Many pubs have never reopened and my quality of life was severely affected by no longer being able to ‘prepare myself mentally’ for the train journey from London King’s Cross to Hull with a gin and tonic at The Gilbert Scott which has closed permanently since lockdown. Any further restrictions to pub opening and escalating energy prices and we will be lucky if we have any pubs left by the end of the year. Simon Evans wrote this weekend in sp!ked about what a tragedy it would be if we allowed our pubs to die. I agree and will be applying all the resources at my disposal, and my children’s’ inheritance, if necessary, in doing what I can to maintain my local pub. At last, I have found a hill to die on.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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