A Titanic Problem

Software used by British submariners was subcontracted to developers in Belarus.

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Pope Francis has branded Donald Trump's plans to impose mass deportation of immigrants as 'a disgrace' and urged the incoming president to lead a society with 'no room for hatred'.

Francis, who nearly a decade ago called Trump 'not Christian' for wanting to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, was asked about Trump's deportation pledges during a Sunday appearance on the popular Italian talk show, Che Tempo Che Fa.

'If true, this will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill' for the problem, the Pope said. 'This won't do! This is not the way to solve things. That's not how things are resolved.'

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A Titanic Problem

Britain now has the highest industrial energy prices in the world, has fallen out of the world’s top ten manufacturers, faces power rationing, and is spending over £3bn a year to import electricity.

Last month, the country’s last big coal-fired power station closed and nuclear generation remains in consistent decline. The bill for these imports runs at £250m a month and regularly represents 20 percent of the total electricity supply. Forecasts show imports could soon supply up to a third of British needs by 2030 and beyond.

Ministers boast of Britain’s falling emissions from the energy sector; they won’t tell you about the overseas emissions connected with the electricity we now import but don’t appear on UK statistics; they claim they cannot measure it, so they ignore it. Britain is offshoring its emissions, hiding them, and hoping people won’t notice.

The consequences are stark, ranging from the loss of British competitiveness, rising fuel poverty, chronic economic underperformance, and becoming dangerously vulnerable to future energy crises.

Between 2004 and 2020, before the war in Ukraine, the industrial price of energy in Britain tripled in nominal terms (153%) or doubled relative to consumer prices. Electricity prices have doubled since 2019. This has led to a huge slice of Britain’s manufacturing base already choosing to relocate overseas in search of lower costs. Since 2010 over 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost; as a share of GDP, manufacturing has been cut in half since the 1990s.

Per capita electricity generation in the UK is now just two-thirds of what it is in France and barely over a third of the US. Britain now mirrors developing countries like South Africa (which endures rolling blackouts) more than key competitors like Germany. British businesses pay almost four times as much as American firms for each unit of power and households pay three times as much.

Sixty years ago Britain had 21 nuclear reactors, compared to 19 combined in the rest of the world. France picked up global leadership in this sector, which now generates 70 percent of its power from its nuclear stations and decarbonizes while retaining competitive power prices. France built no less than 40 nuclear plants between 1965 and 1985 and is now refurbishing and replacing older ones. Today, British firms pay on average sixty percent more for electricity than French ones.

All this is a microcosm of decline.