David Brown

@ChrisO_wiki Probably what's driving global gold price increases

1/ Russians are increasingly worried that they face a repeat of one of the greatest traumas of their recent history: the loss of their savings, as last happened in the economic crisis of the 1990s. Russian commentators are aghast at the prospect. ⬇️

@SeddSezz This is policy driving productivity.

🚨Two UK pub chains axed along with 3,500 jobs amid rising taxes Whitbread, which owns both Beefeater and Brewers Fayre, plans to close all 197 of its restaurant sites. CEO Dominic Paul said the decision followed “significant cost increases”, which includes higher employer National Insurance contributions and business rates. Reeves' relentless pursuit of businesses' money is ruining our economy! Rachel Reeves is decimating business and jobs.

We are investing in new rail, roads, and nuclear reactors.
 New scanners for our hospitals and free breakfast clubs for our children. We’re not going to let the Conservatives - or their friends in Reform - tear that down.

@DoctorLemma I live opposite the toll road exit. Road was closed for a long time due to repairs due to land slippage - not a landslide (just cracks in the road). Repairs took longer and I suspect the toll road was profitable but you could only pay in cash so it just failed to cover costs....

Apparently when the government refused to fix a closed road, one guy just built his own and charged drivers £2 ($3) to use it. This happened 12 years ago in England, when a landslide took out a main road in the countryside. The local council said they weren’t going to build a temporary route. Drivers were now stuck with a 22-kilometre detour every trip. Businesses in the nearby village started bleeding money. A 62-year-old man called Mike Watts decided he’d had enough. He rented a field next to the closed road from a local farmer. Put his house up as collateral. Hired three guys. They built a 400-metre gravel road across the field in ten days. It cost him £150,000 (around $250,000). He charged £2 per car (about $3). Locals and motorbikes paid half. Emergency vehicles went through free. The council was livid. He’d skipped planning permission. But he hadn’t actually broken any laws, so all they could do was ask him to apply for it after the fact. Over the next few months, more than 100,000 cars used his road. People flew in from other countries just to drive on it for fun. He nearly made his money back. Neighbours started sending him cakes and whisky. When the road finally closed, his wife went out and collected stones from it. She painted little eyes on each one and sold them as souvenirs. Would you have just sat in traffic, or are you the type who’d build the road?

@Soubriquet_ @paulmasonnews My point is the amount of land that will be used by solar when the UK has fully built out its requirements, is tiny (~0.5%) and hence the arguments around food security are specious, used by people who don't want solar nearby.

@D_Browner @paulmasonnews That is not a good argument for converting more farmland to solar. Golf courses are historic. Land values for solar are about 4 times agricultural prices. All dictated by planning.

Something big happened this week: a judge for the first time used Labour's reforms to Judicial Review to halt time-wasting NIMBY objections to a big solar farm. Process slashed from 24 months to 4. First of many. #BuildBabyBuild

@Soubriquet_ @paulmasonnews Less land for solar than golf courses or land used to graze ponies. There is not a shortage of land in the UK for growing food. The land owners are making economic decisions to put up solar as it pays better than farming.

@paulmasonnews Starve baby starve. We already import 40% of our food. The madness of this solar shit is mind blowing. They have 10% capacity in the UK.

@JeremyClarkson Your range rover is 2.7 tonnes, tesla model Y 1.9 tonnes

I wonder perhaps if maybe they could also look into the enormous weight of electric cars.

@I_D_A_U_ @LewisStanding1 That's the price for the gas, not electricity generated with the gas. That price has the capital cost of the generation equipment, grid connection etc etc. Plus, of course, the inefficiencies of gas - 1kWh of input gas does not equal 1kWh of electrical generation.

@LewisStanding1 Bullshit. Today's gas price is 4.226p/kWh The evening peak price is not being set by gas.

dailygalaxy.com/2026/04/hornse… Hornsea 3s grid connection is live Expected to produce power in 2027, it will consist of 231 14MW Siemens gamesa turbines The blades are made in Hull and the installation is all based from Grimsby Strike price of £53/MWh or 5.3p/KWh

@A1an_M It's general taxation - see my first point. Other was a comment on the position 70 years ago

@D_Browner Yes, but adjusting for that still delivers a better outcome than the State pension. x.com/i/status/20402…

I asked grok this question: "If a UK employee started work in an average paying job 46 years ago, and retired today, still in an average paying job, and they and their employer paid NI all of the time, how much would that NI money have grown to by age 67, and what weekly pension could it buy, if it had been invested in a UK stockmarket tracker during those 46 years?" Grok's answer: Approximately £930,000 lump sum, which could buy a single-life level annuity paying roughly £1,400 per week (or around £900–£1,100 per week if inflation-linked/RPI-linked). Bear in mind that the full state pension for someone retiring today is about £230 per week. Just shows you what might be possible if employees' NI was actually invested in a pot for the future, rather than squandered by the government of the day, and if governments didn't operate on the basis of futile hopes that there will be enough NI payers 40 years from now to cover all the pensions when they are due. The right time to start a scheme like this to gradually phase out the existing Ponzi-based state pension scheme and stop being a hostage to our future demographics was decades ago, but the next best time is right now.

@JamesMelville @sidcot This looks like rubbish - our company buys around £750k of electricity a year - we pay around 20p / kWh - this chart shows domestic pricing not industrial

The UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe. We are being fleeced.

@afneil Combined around 40% of UK electricity. Probably more if you included what was generated in Europe and shared with us.

How much wind and sunshine did you get in January/February.

@banks_chef Maths is wrong.... 40 (hours/week) * 12.71 (£ / hour) * 52 (weeks / year) = £26,436.8 NI payments on this are £3,215 I think you're £6k better off than you think

With the new national minimum wage kicking in our entry point staff such as commis chef, Kitchen Porter, FOH helper will now be paid £31,724 for full time. £4009 on top to hire this person in NI contributions. Plus £1,274 pension. Total is £37,007.

@dandroid20XX @DonaldPond6 People forget that, disregarding clouds, everywhere on the earth gets roughly the same amount of sun averaged across a year In the UK we get lots of sun in summer (long days) and less wind. Winter less sun, more wind Interconnects, pumped hydro and batteries sort the averaging

@DonaldPond6 Why? Solar already provides 6% of UK power annually and 30% in the Summer and that's with relatively low installation compared to central Europe which is just about as cloudy as the UK

Energy in the UK is so simple. Solar is a waste of time as we are the dullest large country in the world. Wind is great as we are windy. But when it is windy we already get more energy than the grid can manage, so we don't need more. Hydro and geothermal are great, but

Additionally the only difference between Ed Milliband's policies and the previous 10+ years of Tory government is the opening up of cheaper onshore wind power and the more full commitment to nuclear generation, Rolls Royce SMRs in particular.

Graham I can't reply to you because the original poster blocks me (for free speech?). Drilling gas or oil in the UK makes no difference to us on what we pay because it's a global market for gas and oil Electricity however is a local market so solar, wind etc makes us pay less

@RickHolder12 Over this period coal has been eliminated as a power source in the UK, displaced by mainly by wind and solar. Those sources have also displaced some imports. There has also been a small increase in consumption over the last few years.

@D_Browner David, Electricity is indeed a local commodity but the prices we are forced to pay are based on global gas prices! I’m all for renewables but not using Ed’s ideology. Please explain why wind generation has increased but the use of gas has only dropped slightly?

@justinallen1976 @Tesco @Keir_Starmer Mate cod is between £8/kg and £30/kg in UK supermarkets. This is a purely Tesco issue - nothing to do with the Government

£9 almost for a small bit of cod from @Tesco - absolutely bonkers. Almost £32 for a kilo in a country surrounded by sea!!! You couldn’t make this up! Yet @Keir_Starmer says prices are coming down!

@landatthebottom @RichardBertinet @bathnes Agreed - our factory in Hayes last had a rent review in 2021 - gone up by ~100%, private landlord reflects market conditions. I suspect this is a 5 or 10 year review

@RichardBertinet @bathnes How long you have been there is somewhat immaterial. How long since the last review?

So….. just got my rent review from @bathnes .. 20 years here ! #smallbusines … rent up by 46.6%!!! I don’t mind paying more But if you want all little independent to die! Ffs The school bring ppl from all over the worldthat stays in local hotel or accommodation &eat! Think!

@RickHolder12 @DrSimEvans In simple terms the cost of something reflects the amount of embedded carbon. That's an easy way to assess the time taken to recover the carbon debt - how quickly does the output value cover the capital cost. In this case it's around a year of the ~30 year life.

@DrSimEvans Utter madness in the cost to consumers and businesses. The embedded carbon in building all this will never be recovered in the lifetime of these projects! You have to balance the grid to keep it stable and that’s not possible using renewables on their own.

NEW: UK's "AR7" renewable auction was the biggest ever – more than 50% larger than 2024's record AR7 = enough electricity to offset 3/4 of UK LNG imports Labour's AR6+AR7, combined, contracted more GW than all other rounds put together More: carbonbrief.org/qa-new-uk-onsh…

@sidcot @bathnes Good job BANES - great to see progress on this. A tweet / x-post is hardly a huge expense. Let's celebrate some good news!!

@bathnes More propaganda at our expense. We all know the poor state our roads are in…

We repaired 1,201 potholes across Bath & North East Somerset in January, that's 38 a day! You can report an issue with a highway directly to us through our website: bathnes.gov.uk/report-it 🔗