PLEASE send your letters (as short as you like) to info@conservativewoman.co.uk and mark them ‘Letter to the Editor’. We need your name and a county address, e.g. Yorkshire or London. Letters may be shortened. There is no guarantee of publication.
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Letter of the week: Olly Robbins’s performance has achieved nothing
Dear Editor
The week started with Sir Olly Robbins’ Select Committee hearing. The week ended with what exactly? Weren’t the home truths we heard meant to skewer the beleaguered Starmer?
Of course, nothing has happened. The PM’s just carried on giving an ‘I can win the next election’ interview to The Sunday Times, to make his point. These archaic hearings achieve absolutely nothing meaningful, it’s all due process and theatre. Why do we bother? If anything it felt like Robbins was performing to impress future employers.
Bill Kenwright
London
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Foreigners should not get student loans
Dear Editor
Foreign students are securing student loans of up to £13,000 a year from UK taxpayers with no intention of completing their studies or repaying the money. There is clear evidence that this is a gigantic multi-million-pound fraud. We are talking big numbers here since 262,000 foreign students are receiving loans, with 83,789 of them coming from Romania. When this data was released in Parliament, MP Rupert Lowe said: ‘Why on earth are we allowing foreigners to claim student loans?’ Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, must quickly change the rules so that no UK taxpayers’ money is given to foreign students.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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The hopeless sums of Net Zero
Dear Editor
To re-build a resilient energy system, the UK needs to learn from its mistakes.
Unlike other countries, the UK emasculated its coal fired economy prematurely, before affordable alternatives were in place, leaving it over-exposed to the price of gas. With green levies rising to >30 per cent of the wholesale cost we now have the highest electricity cost in the developed world.
If solar and wind energy were cheap then it would not have needed well over £200billion in taxpayer subsidies. Wind turbine Capacity Factor (CFs) projections were downgraded last year, despite a rise in wind turbine capacity to around 50MW. There is clearly little to gain now by throwing more good subsidies after bad. (CF is the average power output to rated capacity.)
If the cost of backup maintenance and replacement is added to that of wind and solar, it is not cheap and the projected output from the planned 195GW of solar & wind – with revised CFs – averages only around 56GW of output power. Indeed, the present-day capital cost of the planned 195GW of solar and wind plus around 20GW of nuclear and gas fired power plant is around £480billion. With circa two hours of battery capacity it will not meet a Maximum Demand (MD) of well over 70GW when wind and solar power is negligible for >2 weeks a year, and we cannot rely on 20GW of EU interconnectors to fill the gap.
But 50GW of CCGTs (Combined Cycle Gas Turbines) with CCS (CO2 Capture and Storage) and 30GW of SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) would cost no more and would meet an MD of >70GW. That would not require billions in green levies, with >£15billion in grid upgrades, not to mention transmission power losses.
Neither would it require the addition of the many synchronous condensers – which NESO (National Energy System Operator) is planning to use to bolster the reactive power and inertia needs of the grid – and would create UK jobs and export opportunities.
Also worth noting is that not only is the life expectancy of nuclear and gas plant longer than that of wind and solar but the LCOE (Levelised Cost of Electricity) is no higher than for offshore wind. On that basis, the offshore wind subsidies should be stopped now and the money diverted to replace aging grid assets, including CCGTs, while we exploit our own oil and gas resources.
With that solution, SMRs would carry baseload while CCGTs would not operate so much of the time inefficiently in peak lopping mode and we would see more stabilising inertia on the grid and less risk of power loss, as we saw in Iberia. The Iberian grid could not accommodate excessive solar energy and we have ask where might the 195GW output of solar and wind power go over five hours (1,000GWh) on a windy summer’s day, if battery storage capacity is to be
Roger J Arthur
West Sussex
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The rape of Dungeness
Dear Editor
The article by Kim Rye about what I refer to as the ‘Rape of Dungeness’ angers me greatly. I am Kentish born and bred and have always had a love for and visited this totally unique area many times. I am horrified that ‘Mad Ed’ and his ‘Nut Zero’ fanatics are, it seems, being encouraged to cover huge swathes of it in solar panels and battery housing etc.
I am not an expert but I know that the whole area is irrigated by a huge range of dykes, some created naturally, others by farming needs over the centuries. Many of these will be destroyed or damaged by this crazy scheme so if, God help us, it does go ahead then be prepared for flooding in the area. Surely even somebody with half a brain cell can see that small modular reactors are the superior option for this wonderful place and that much of the infrastructure required already exists on or around the existing power stations?
I have heard it called ‘the UK’s only desert’ – a complete misnomer, it is an ‘oasis’ in a world where such places are being destroyed by ignorance, greed and downright stupidity.
Alan King
Kent
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Migrant deal is a £660million gift to the French
Dear Editor
Last week the Express asked its readers whether they thought Shabana Mahmood’s migrant deal would work. The paper reported that Britain will cough up £660million to deport illegal arrivals despite widespread warnings that the deal will not work. Their poll asked: ‘Will paying France to deport migrants solve the Channel crisis?’
The results were unanimous: £660,000,000 straight down the drain with 100 per cent certainty, according to Express readers.
That is £17 per head for UK income taxpayers. I am sure the British people just love making little charitable donations like this to their historic friends the French, and will expect nothing in return.
Paul Davies
