Hi
I think the article in the Express is cynically misleading.
I voted leave, I still would.
My reason was I did not want further integration, it was not the fantasy of saving money.
Recent events in the EU have only reinforced my view that leaving was right.
That article says, ‘rise to’. We already knew there would be a divorce bill and knew it would rise. It’s like anything that is quoted. How much was the original quote for HS2, How much was the original quote for Big Ben. So that’s nothing surprising.
Did you actually read the article as it goes much further than the little snippet that I posted.
@wendeey , Yeah, thats right, We are paying for things like
the future pensions of EU Commission workers etc , some of
whom are british citizens BTW!
However, the original demands from the EU were for £80 Billion !
which covered any projects we had allready signed for but which
had not even been started yet and were not expected to ever
be started either ??
After weeks of wrangling this was reduced to what we see now !!
This illustrates the attitude of the EU commission towards the
UK IMO !
Donkeyman! 
This article could go on three different threads, but I’ve chosen this snippet, worth reading the full article:
Sadly, it is also par for the course. The political elites in Berlin, Paris and Brussels have always seemed much more outraged by Britain’s efforts to resolve the crisis over the Northern Ireland protocol than Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine.
Brexit gets their juices going more than Russian cruise missiles slamming into Ukrainian apartment blocks.
The Kremlin gets credit for freeing up some grain supplies this week from southern Ukraine. But Britain must get credit for nothing. In Europe’s hour of energy need, the UK is helping by sending electricity to the EU through the undersea transmission lines which connect Britain to the Continent.
We’ve been transmitting three gigawatts of electricity during the past three months, especially to help France, half of whose nuclear reactors are out of action due to breakdowns or for maintenance.
Clearly this could not have come at a worse time. But so far British help hasn’t even been recognised much less thanked.
Thanks for posting this Wendeey. I almost had an apoplectic shock when I read this this morning. Why hasn’t this been made public before now, especially since just a few months ago, France was about to turn off the lecky to Jersey because of the fishing licence debacle?
In addition to Neil’s Op-Ed piece in the Daily Fail, there’s another in today’s Daily Express about our National Grid pumping gas over the The Netherlands and wanting permission from the Government to increase the amount it pumps across the North Sea.
Here we are, AGAIN, helping out “our friends” in the EU while, all the time, all they can do in return is beat us over the head with anything they can lay their sticky little mits on.
Hi
We import more electricity from the EU, France and the Netherlands,than we export to them.
We are exporting a bit more to France at the moment because they have closed down some of their reactors for maintenance.
This is just commonsense, we need to import electricity from France this winter, as usual, as we don’t have the capacity to generate it ourselves and that would mean power cuts.
We are looking after ourselves, not France.
We need these reactors working.
France, unlike the UK, didn’t sell off it’s nuclear power industry.
A mistake by us which will take decades to resolve even if we started now.
I think that’s beside the point Swimmy. We should be shouting this out loud and using these exports to help us win the various fights we’re having with the EU regarding Brexit, the NIP, illegals, etc. The problem is we’re NOT. In any case, you’re argument, as far as I can tell, is a little out of date. The Government has just green lighted Sizewell C to be built. IMHO, the only fly in this particular ointment is the developer will be EdF again.
Hi
We will just have to disagree on this one.
Sizewell C does not come online until 2032 and we could not cope with annual winter power cuts until then.
Threatening France with cutting our summer exports of electricity, which are s fraction of what they send us in winter would just be met with a Gallic Shrug and fine, do without in winter.
Sounds like a bit of unwarranted triumphalism. Reports here are that the whole of Europe is in crisis with the energy shortage including the UK.
It also points out the dangers of relying on one source for anything (income or goods), something Australia is very guilty of.
### Is the government confident that gas supply will not be disrupted?
Yes. The current situation facing the UK is not a question of security of gas supply, but of high gas prices set by international markets.
Unlike other countries in Europe, the UK is in no way dependent on Russian gas supply. Our single largest source of gas is from the UK Continental Shelf and the vast majority of imports come from reliable suppliers such as Norway.
There are no gas pipelines directly linking the UK with Russia and imports from Russia made up less than 4% of total UK gas supply in 2021.
Great Britain’s highly diverse supply sources include pipelines from the UK and Norway continental shelf, interconnectors with the continent, and 3 liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals, providing Britain with one of the largest LNG import infrastructures in Europe. Germany, for example, has no LNG import terminals.
Gas is just one form of energy are you thinking of going back to gas lamps? It’s the cost and supply of energy overall that is the problem as I read it.
At the moment gas is used to produce electricity.
The high energy costs should only apply to fossil fuels surely ??
Hi
Not the way we have organised our Energy Market.
Yet another thing we have got wrong.
We are not very good at organising things.
@swimfeeders , l dont think we organise the energy market swimmy ??
Surely its a world energy market aint it ??
Hi
It’s the internal market here in the UK we organise, or rather don,t organise
We closed our huge gas reserves, which allowed us to store gas and went down the completely deregulated route.
The suppliers now pay spot prices and past the costs on to us straight away.
Other countries insist their suppliers buy a percentage in advance at a fixed price, which makes sense
@swimfeeders , But what happened to our vast storage facilities you
speak of swimmy ??
We didnt cut them up for scrap did we ??
Hi
The huge one is offshore and was closed some years ago to save money.
The Government has got Centrica to reopen it, but it will cost and Government were proposing to pay for it by a levy o gas prices.
It is due to reopen this Autumn
You do realise that gas is a fossil fuel don’t you?
