The Social Democratic Party and a Cunning Plan.

This is only likely to be of interest to members of the SDP.

This is directly the product of this post. But you don't need to read that (or the earlier two posts here and here either) to understand this.

The SDP is a pressure group/think tank as much as a political party. That is  one of its strengths. This strength often equals and possibly exceeds that of larger parties. SDP members (as a group of focused individuals) can comment on (say) public consultations in a way that members of other parties (like Labour) cannot. 

This cunning plan intends to increase the visibility and authority of the SDP and do some good at the same time. The crucial aspect to this plan is that volunteer SDP members need to spend no more than (say) 20 minutes actioning it at any one time. From then on they can do it again. Or not as they like. The commitment is minimal, is well defined, and has closure.

The best way to explain this is with an example.

This is based on a real and highly contentious plan to build a wind-farm in about the worst possible location you could imagine. If passed is likely to cause untold environmental and social damage. I have obfuscated the actual plan as I think this may well be a prime first candidate if we get this going. 

So from the top.

We find contentious planning/infrastructure projects that are open to public consultation. We review these and isolate  those which are the most damaging/unpopular or alternatively need support (I think here of Nuclear Power Plants).We get a group of volunteer SDP members to send in written objections/support for the scheme. But all of the heavy lifting is done. Each member need only devote about 20 minutes to each target application.

For the moment let us deal with this single abortion of a plan to desecrate a lovely part of the world. It was found by me this morning using Gemini AI with several other equally bad schemes in less than 2 minutes. 

One person (me in this case) uses AI to find the most important areas of objection to this project. Crucially the objections will be (or at least tend to be) focused on impacts to national assets and the environment. That is because it is likely that most or all of the volunteer SDP members will not live locally.

Notice this focuses on national asset impacts

        ◦ National Heritage & Cultural Value: 

        ◦ National Net-Zero / Carbon Policy (NPS EN-1): 

        ◦ Ecology & Migration: 

Each of these items are actually identified, detailed and populated by AI. Now we need to get this into a form for use by volunteer SDP members. The optimum number of members per target is 35 -50. But any number from 1 – 50 is better than nothing. We get AI to generate prototype letters. This is the optimum mix for this particular scheme according to Gemini.

Focus Angle	Target # of Letters	Primary Content Focus
National Heritage & Tourism	5 – 10 letters	Cultural value non-local tourism economy.
Peatland & Carbon Accounting	5 – 10 letters	Blanket bog destruction, failure of carbon payback math under NPS EN-1.
National Biodiversity & Ecology	5 – 10 letters	SPA/SSSI bird corridors, curlew/golden plover habitat loss.
Hydrology & Flood Precaution	5 – 10 letters	Catchment run-off risks to downstream infrastructure.
SDP Policy & Land Use Balance	5 – 10 letters	Strategic national energy policy, protecting finite landscape assets over speculative DCO schemes.

So where does the SDP angle come in? Well this has to be done carefully but then AI comes to the rescue again.

The Planning Inspectorate strictly ignores purely political, party-ideological, or non-land-use objections. Therefore, referencing the SDP must not sound like a party-political broadcast. Instead, we need to phrase it as a policy framework—for example:

 "As a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I am writing to express serious concern over this development. The SDP supports a balanced, national approach to energy security and environmental conservation that protects our countryside, natural peatland carbon sinks, and national heritage assets from inappropriate industrialization…" Or similar

Or even just sign (aka after name) Like this:

Joe Bloggs (Member of the Social Democratic Party)

For each of the (in this case 5) areas above we get AI to generate  2 – 3 (maybe 5) different letters of objection. We ask members to review the contentious proposed development, then ask them to issue an objection. We let them select one of the 5 areas above. We ensure no more than the stated maximum number of members target that area. 

We provide the member with the prototype AI generated text for the letter. They will be asked to enter one/two sentences to personalise it.

“I regard this application with horror. It is an affront to both common sense and the area. I would like to particularly point out the following flaws with this application….. etc” 

Or they can if they so wish rewrite it based on the contents of the prototype they have received.

We tell them exactly who to send it to and when. They must be submitted over the time frame (in this case one month) not all together.

The result of this is that at the end of the consultation this abortion get 25 - 50 focused, coherent and damning objections launched against it. All from individuals rather than a group. But each objection will also be stamped SDP. No member need spend more than 20 minutes on it. When its submitted it’s done. Then they can do another one or not as they choose.

Of course there will be objections from others. Some will be focused and on target. But most will not. However heart-felt they may be, they will be ignored. 

Also there will be many pro-forma letters sent in but these will be filtered down (as they will in effect all be identical) to possibly only one objection. That’s why we need a variety of objections both across subject and format. The multiple objections from SDP members will have a visible impact on the count of valid objections.

Even so you may well ask, other than some obvious branding how does this increase the visibility of the SDP?

Because it doesn’t stop there. 

We have submitted (say) 25 - 50 objections to this one scheme. Now we tell everyone!

Particularly we tell any action groups opposing the scheme. We write letters to the local papers and Facebook groups as the SDP. We tell the locals that SDP members from across the country have rallied to support them. And our website address is….

This secondary effort will possibly take longer. But will in all likelihood only involve one or two people and is likely to be only a few hours per application.

Finally we can target the local council. Particularly independent councillors. We email them with what we done as a group and invite them to have a look at us. Try and get a dialogue going with them. Maybe entice them to cross the floor.

Particularly powerful would be to address any such contentious plans in areas where we have councillors already. Our councillors could promote the fact that their party is acting as one from right across the country to defend and protect their area.

That is just one contentious application. 

You know, I know, everyone knows, there are literally hundreds of similar dodgy planning applications. Like the never ending destruction of the green belt, wind-farms and solar farms destroying farm land, large numbers of illegal immigrants being placed in small villages, ruthless developers destroying neighbourhoods. The list is never ending.

This particular example above is a large contentious planning issue but there is no reason why this could not be used for/against other smaller applications. Things like a badly sited supermarket or even lack of places for kids in a local school. This is a target rich environment. 

All are examples of where people have been ignored/let down. People who are in effect disenfranchised are the most likely to reach out to a party that comes (or at least tries to come) to their rescue. 

We can work up a continuous stream of targets for objection/support right across the country and particularly in areas where the SDP has known support and activists.

The end result is the SDP gets seen across the country more and more. It’s visibility and authority increases. With any luck people will start asking for our support and crucially, joining us. 

So that is the idea. 

Will it work? I don’t know but it feels like it might. Not massive amount of effort either, and it potentially energises and directs the membership to action. 

All thoughts welcome.

The SDP, Visibility and Popularity.

 As Baldwrick used to say: I have a Cunning Plan.

But Let’s start at the beginning. I’ll ramble through my history with the SDP so you can see where I’m coming from. This post is unlikely to be of interest to anyone not in the SDP or not affiliated to their world view. Sorry this is a bit long. You can skim/skip down to the last third if you like. Just make sure to look at the underlined statements on the way – they are crucial though repetitive.

I have now been a member of the SDP three times. 

The first time I joined was in 2018 when the whole of the establishment was hell bent on overturning Brexit. 

I, along with most of the country was outraged. I needed a political vehicle that not only honoured the result of the greatest democratic decision ever made in the UK, but also a party that held dear many of the  beliefs and goals for this country that I held (and hold) dear too.

So I joined. But I didn’t know what to do.

Sure, I shouted into the void on Twitter and published blog posts favourable to the SDP. That sort of thing. But that was it.

Standing as a candidate either locally or nationally was really not an option for me. I think you have to be a special sort of person to put yourself out there like that. That type of person (and I suspect most other members of the SDP) is not me.

Then I watched one of heroes (the sadly departed Patrick O’Flynn) stand and lose  the Peterborough by-election and gain just 135 votes. That’s THE Patrick O’Flynn.

Intellectually, practically and capability-wise Patrick stood head and shoulders over the rest of the candidates. They were political pygmies in the presence of a giant. It should have been a shoe-in.

I was shocked and horrified. If he couldn’t make a difference, what hope was there for me?

There came a point where I lost focus and hope of making any useful change. 

All because I did not know what to do. In despair I left.

I abandoned Twitter for well over a year and and my blogspot (once quite popular locally and occasionally nationally) fell into disuse.

But something rankled. The country staggered on. Nothing was getting better and when looking at the legacy parties it was pretty obvious nothing ever would.

Reform exploded onto the scene and I was sorely tempted to join. But I am not a Thatcherite. I find Farage difficult. Though to be fair I admire and respect what he has achieved, especially with Brexit. But Reform was not for me.

So I rejoined the SDP.

But, I still did not know what to do.

In despair of finding a way of making a difference I left a second time in early 2025 shortly before the death of Patrick O’Flynn.

I gave up most activity. But continued now and then, on X. 

As a country we staggered on. Starmer came and went. And good riddance. 

Burnham arrived with a lot of razzamatazz but nothing else. 

The current Labour Cabinet remains a mix of the incompetent, assorted wide boys (and girls) and convicted fraudsters. 

God Help Us All.

Then William Clouston, the leader of the SDP stood in the Clacton (aka Farage) by-election in August 2026. There were also (besides Farage) 32 other candidates. Yet nobody stood from the Legacy parties. 

They knew they’d lose (and badly) so they refused to put up candidates. 

A shocking insult to the people of Clacton maybe. But worse, these cowards then backed a wrecking candidate – a former comedy script writer from the BBC (surprise, surprise) dressed as bin. 

The MSM made absolutely certain only the sneering metropolitan elitist snob dressed as a bin got any publicity.

Farage won hands down. In fact he increased his vote count. A feat no other sitting MP has ever done before on mainland UK when having to face a by-election.

William got 256 votes.

Again, it was just like with Patrick O’Flynn in Peterborough. The guy who was far, far, above any of the other contenders (Farage excepted) got buried in the noise.

I was no longer a member of the SDP. I had no wish to join any other political party. 

I still didn’t know what to do.

But this time I thought about it for a while.

OK. I did not want to stand for election or campaign in the traditional sense. I am (or at least think I would be) hopeless at that. 

I realised that this would probably be true for 90% of the membership of the SDP. (Or any other political party for that matter)

So if I found a way forward for me, maybe it would be a way ahead not just for me but for many others too. Something that <might> increase the visibility and elect-ability of the SDP. Especially at local council level. 

I’ve poked it about, worked on it, beaten it about, despaired over it, and agonised over it.  Now I think I have possibly found a practical and worthwhile way ahead for me and maybe for the other 90% passive members too. 

It is also something that will fit only with a small dynamic party like the SDP. Larger parties would find this far too difficult to manage.

Is it worthwhile? Will it work? I hope so. But only time will tell.

It initially involves quite heavy use of AI (in a totally legitimate way) but that is just done once. The output is what is used by the members and will suit all those other people like me who feel uncomfortable about standing for election or face to face campaigning. So it (should) have a ready and under-utilised work-force.

I am sure most party members (just like me) would still be happy to spend an hour or two every now and then doing something constructive and helpful for communities across the country. 

Something that can be targeted, done and ended with no continual commitment.

I’ve rejoined the SDP (for a third time). The SDP is at this moment in a state of flux as William has resigned and a new leader is to be elected. 

But I’ll pitch my idea here. Show what it entails and show how it works. I would deeply appreciate any/all comments on this or the next posts from those within the SDP. 

If nobody is interested or they laugh at my idea or find a serious flaw with it, well, fair enough. 

I am realistic enough to know that it may be just my over-enthusiasm. 

So what is it this low commitment high political value activity?

Watch this space. (In fact I just published it HERE)

Then maybe, if it’s viable and appreciated, and you are not a member  -join the SDP! and watch it develop (and work on it) there.

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 2)

 Prices Law (see last post) is a nightmare for large political parties.

But it doesn’t necessarily apply as-is to smaller parties. So being a smaller party is not all bad. Also being small can give you some tactical advantages over the well resourced, well financed, larger legacy party opposition.

So what’s the difference? Why doesn’t Price’s Law apply to small political set-ups like it does to large parties?

One of the main reasons is a member of a smaller party like (say) the SDP has more skin in the game than a member of (say) the Labour Party.

Being a member a small party requires far more personal commitment than to a large party. You are “out on a limb”. What you are doing is unusual. Instead of following the crowd you are breaking away from the pack. You have stepped away from the comfort of a crowd. Consequently to do this you are far more likely to have embarked on this course specifically to action some form of change.

Whereas a Labour party member is in a huge cosy club where they don’t have to do anything and nobody bothers them. In fact the bureaucracy and tiered elitism actively discourages it.

They can remain anonymous in their comfort zone yet gain all the personal kudos of “doing something”. Whereas in fact they’re just drinking cheap beer down the Labour club.

For a small party this personal commitment gives the leadership the opportunity of engaging with the membership on a much more dynamic level.

Most people in political parties both large and small, join to try and make a difference. But very few (especially in the large legacy parties) are given any significant opportunity to do so.

But in all parties whatever their size have a problem. While members join and want to affect change they literally have no idea what to do to affect that change. Or help it along it’s way.

In essence they mean well. But they don’t know what to do to affect that change. Consequently most end up being paper members. This is inevitable in a large bureaucratic party like the Labour Party but can be ameliorated in a small party.

A smaller party has much greater opportunity to involve it’s membership in policy making and actioning of party goals and aims. Consequently it obeys what is known as The 90-9-1 Law.

With 90-9-1 Law, in a party of 3500 members, approximately 35 are the real heavy lifters, another 315 contribute to varying degrees and the final 3150 are passive.

BUT this law can be tweaked.

There is far, far less bureaucracy and a “who you know” mentality in a small party. If it structures some activities to accommodate occasional participation, it can allow members to dip in and out without demanding long term commitment to any one target/activity.

Everybody hates open ended commitments. So if a small party avoids these where possible, people will be more willing to contribute. The 90-9-1 spread of participation can become more like 80-16-4 but only if contribution is made easier and more worthwhile.

A large party has many more tiers. The average novice member is far more isolated and remote from those guiding the party. They are anonymous. The structure and hierarchy is complex, bureaucratic, confusing and intimidating. There is far, far less potential to get novice members to engage than in a small party. There is little to no leeway in modifying the depressing stricture of Prices law.

A small party is therefore already at an advantage. But in engaging party members in small clearly defined activities a small party can break out from the 90-9-1 Law and so multiply it’s effectiveness. All by simply involving it’s membership in clearly defined, straight forward tasks that have a clear beginning and end.

It just needs to figure out what these tasks need to be.

As you’ve probably guessed there’ll be more on exactly what these tasks are in another post coming in the next week or so.

Bye for now

Love & Kisses

Billo.

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 1)

Back in the 1960’s Derek J de Solla Price theorised that if you added up all the scientific papers published, you would find that half of the papers published were published by the square root of of the number of authors.

Since then it has been refined and found to be actually (in many cases) even more stark.

Prices law (and it’s derivatives) has been applied to many different fields. Especially in regard to aspects of Human endeavour.

It doesn't apply in scheduled environments. Obvious examples are bus drivers, A&E doctors, train drivers. These are scheduled and constrained and other laws apply here. But for a dynamic organisation say a software company or (dare I say it) a political organisation Prices law and/or it's derivatives described the situation well.

In such large human organisations, Prices law dictates that the square root of the number of members (or employees) do half the activity/work. Think on that.

So an organisation with 9 members, 3 do half the work and the other 6 do the other half.

If it’s a hundred employees then 10 do half the work and the other half is done by the other 90.

If it’s a 1000 then 32 do half the work and the other half gets done by the other 968.

So lets apply Prices Law to a small political party like the SDP* and compare it to (say) the Labour Party.

*[this is actually too pessimistic for the SDP. I’ll explain why in part 2]

The SDP has, I believe, about 3500 members.

So applying Prices Law to the SDP, 60 do half the work and the other 3440 do the other half.

Shocked? Don’t be. Because it is far, far worse for the legacy parties.

Let us look at (say) the Labour Party. Labour has a membership of around 250,000.*

*[In this case Prices Law applies, and I’d suggest is pretty damn accurate]

Barely more than 500 members of the Labour Party do half the work. Remember though, by having 250,000 members there is one hell of a lot of extra administration, overheads and policy discussion.

The “work” of running the party will be considerably higher than that of the SDP, even if Prices Law applied directly (it doesn’t) to the SDP. Many of those 500 active Labour Party members will be soaked up doing admin.

The Labour Party and the other legacy parties as well as organisations like the Civil Service and the NHS have reached a size where arguably any increase in size will lead to less efficiency and less productive output. (Note: Prices Law will only apply to certain aspects of the NHS)

Getting anything done in the Labour Party, like new policies, projects, reviews or even simple governance must be like walking through a quagmire with little knowledge of where you are heading or why. Trying to change course on a failing policy must be a nightmare.

It does actually explain a lot about the lack-lustre nature of the top echelon of the Labour Party. To get to where they are, the top echelon have had to be party careerists and committee people.

Few (if any?) have actually done anything outside politics. Their skills (as they are) revolve around agenda’s, points of order and resolutions. Whatever spark they once had to get things other than party procedure done died long ago.

They are dull procedure driven people who only expertise is spouting word-salad speeches about things they often have literally no direct knowledge. Meanwhile they ambush and back-stab their way to the top through interminable committees and focus groups.

When anyone does come up with a spark they face an agonising quagmire of careerists and bureaucracy to get it pushed forward.

But it’s not just the Labour Party. Prices Law applies to all large parties.

The Greens and Reform are currently somewhat lucky in that they have an enthusiastic (though inexperienced) new membership. But that will settle. People will lose their enthusiasm and will be less willing to do “something for nothing” or be put upon to aid the tediously ambitious. They’ll start sitting back and Prices Law will assert itself.

The Conservatives are in a slightly strange position. How many of their movers & shakers left to join Reform? Their membership has shrunk. But has the pool of talent shrunk even more?

Who knows.

Finally there’s the Liberal Democrats. Personally I regard the Lib Dems as a possible challenge to Prices Law. They seem to be completely devoid of talent at the highest level. Though they do have quite a few enthusiastic and committed members. Maybe at ~60,000 paid up members they are broaching into Prices Law from 90-9-1 Law.

So what the Hell is the 90-9-1 Law you may say.

Rather than Prices Law, the 90-9-1 law I believe governs membership activity in small dynamic parties like the SDP (and other dynamic small paid-up parties for that matter too)

And the next post?

You guessed it

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 2)

Bye for now.

Love & Kisses

Billo

Why Blogger Beats SubStack

Old Blogspots Beat New SubStacks Every Time

Blogger may be unfashionable. But for many people who have years of posts on Blogger, continuing on it should be regarded as a no-brainer. It beats setting up a new SubStack blog hands down.

Setting up a SubStack blog means that you will in effect be starting from scratch with SEO. Google (et al) will slowly index your posts. Even then you will have zero domain authority, zero back links and consequently will get zero search traffic. It is likely to be months before you even get noticed by major search engines. 

But an old Blogger blog (like this one) will have all the indexing and back links already done. A blogspot like this one (dating back some 15 years with many posts) will carry a great deal of domain authority. It will be already indexed and will (even though it has been unused for years) still be regularly trawled by the search engines. A new post here has many visibility advantages over SubStack.

If I had done this post on a new Substack blog it would carry zero domain authority and so would be unlikely appear in any search results. Or more importantly, get used by an AI search precis. For this well established Blogspot the reverse is true.

I only just realised that myself! (with the help of Gemini AI). I had set up a SubStack Blog with the intention of restarting blogging. Then I found the painful truth. A blog with zero authority and zero back-links gets zero traffic.

I really do not want to go for months putting stuff out there just to garner one or two views and slowly build authority. I'd rather leverage what I have - even if it is a bit clunky and unfashionable. So I am going to migrate the  few posts I have done on a new SubStack blog to here. In essence I am abandoning SubStack to continue with Blogger.

Gemini informs me that in the unlikely event that Google does "sunset" (aka close) Blogger then the contents can be imported into a Wordpress blog and still maintain the post and domain authority. So there is a way ahead.

While you can also import posts into SubStack from Blogger you will lose comments and more importantly you will also lose domain authority. You lose. Big time.

So here we are again! Back after (at least) two years.

Love & Kisses

Billo

(p.s. as this blog hasn't been touched in 2 years and barely used in 6, some of the external links may not currently work anymore - that's a TBD in the next week or so)

We Need to Talk About Trains

 

UK Rail is a money pit destroying prosperity and enforcing London's dominance to the detriment of the rest of the country. 

This I suspect is going to be a very unpopular post because everyone loves trains. But…

Here’s a chart from wheredoesitallgo.org. It’s a detailed breakdown of the UK Transport Budget for 2025/6.

According to the chart 63% of the entire budget gets spent on rail. Most of it as a continual annual liability to support the current rail infrastructure and attempt to make tickets somewhat less than prohibitively expensive.

Actually the amount spent on rail is £3 Billion more than shown here. The missing £3 billion is hidden in budgets to “Local Councils” and “Devolved Governments”

A significant amount of the budget is being spent on the development of HS2. That is the building and commissioning of a new rail line from London to Birmingham.

In fact the annual amount being spent on HS2 alone is just short of the entire budget used to maintain and upgrade Britain’s Motorways and major roads (The Strategic Road Network or SRN)

The total amount spent on Rail is just less than four times that spent on the Strategic Road Network (see National Highways ALB in the chart). So it would be reasonable for you to expect that the number of passengers travelling by rail would far exceed the number travelling on the Strategic Road Network.

But if you did think that was the case or even if you thought they would be somewhat similar, you would be wrong. And by wrong, I mean wrong in Spades.

Just 8% of passengers travel by rail. Meanwhile 34% travel on the Strategic Road Network. About 50% of all passengers travel on roads maintained by local councils

In total ten times as many passengers travel by road (of all types) than by rail.

Four times as many passengers travel on the SRN than travel by rail. Yet the SRN gets just one quarter of the money from the transport budget to that lavished on Rail.

The net result of this is that each passenger on the railway on average gets around 16 times the amount spent on them from the Transport Budget than does a passenger on (say) a motorway travelling in either a car or an National Express coach..

So Where it all Get Spent?

Even though each railway passenger gets about 16 times the spend than a road passenger gets, surely with all the talk of levelling up, it means that a great deal of that money is spent up North?

Sadly: No.

Most of that money is spent in and around London. 70% of all rail journeys are focused on London. Of that 70%, almost all (88%) is commuter traffic. The net result is that 60% of all rail journeys in the UK are accounted for by London commuters. Just 10% of all UK rail journeys are inter-city.

At the end of the day, non London rail passenger traffic accounts for barely 3% of the total passenger traffic on road and rail in the UK.

That’s how things stand. Nothing is getting better.

Governments of all colours have been obsessed with rail. While the Strategic Road network languishes we have shovelled money into one gold plated scheme after another. The latest debacle is HS2.

Most of the Transport Budget in in reality little more a hidden subsidy scheme for London firms and their employees. They get the Lions share of the budget. While the rest of the country gets the table scrapings.

This can’t (or rather shouldn’t) go on.

In another post (or two - TBD aka in the "future") I’ll deal with HS2 (and rail freight traffic) and how it will make little difference to the North but will in essence act as yet another London transport subsidy for London businesses and their commuters. I’ll also detail how much the subsidy comes to per commuter and how this destroys prosperity, development and job opportunities in the North and regions.

This post was originally published on SubStack but has been moved here. Heres why

Who are the Labour Voters in May 2026?

An occasional series on main political Parties & their demographic support.

First of all I suppose I should possibly title this “Who were the Labour Voters in 2026” because with the rise of the Green Party all bets are off at the moment. As well as that we have the local elections coming up which by the sound of things are going to go badly for Labour. But Local Elections are not like General Elections. They have a much lower turnout and can often be seen as a safe place to make a protest vote.

Consequently I’m using the last two General Elections as the database. I’ve built a table of the demographics for every constituency in the country. This is so I can examine the demographics for every winning Labour seat and potentially see which are vulnerable and which are not.

Labour’s National Vote Base

But first of all lets look at what could be called Labours national core vote. Here’s the total number of people who have voted in every general elect back to 1987:

So the Labour vote in 2024 that gave them a landslide victory was actually the third lowest vote they have had in the last forty years. Notably it was considerably lower than that achieved by Jeremy Corbyn when he lost in 2017.

Only in the 1997 General Election was the overall National voter turn-out high for a Labour victory. In 2001, 2005 and now in 2024 the national turn-out was low and in two cases actually below 60%.

But it looks like there is (or maybe was) an irreducible core Labour vote of around 9.5 million.

Labour Support by Age Group

So what age group(s) support Labour? Of course all age groups support and vote Labour. But there is a heavy bias towards younger voters.

Even though Labour has a very large lead in young supporters this does not necessarily lead to more votes. Turn-out (aka those who actually vote) for the 18 -24 age group is dismal.

Turn-out by Age Group 2024 General Election

Here’s the estimated turn-out by age group for 2024:

The reason the Ipsos figure is lower is that it includes ALL people within that age group. Many people are not even registered to vote and they do not even show up as non-voters in statistics based on registered voters.

Proportion of Party Vote by Age Group 2024

If you take an average of all the winning seats per party in 2024 you get this:

NOTE: The above figures relate to the electorate size for that age group NOT the number of that age group who voted for the respective party.

Notice how (Nationally) Labour winning seats have a lower overall turn-out and a higher percentage of young voters. Meanwhile the demographics of winning seats for the Conservative, Reform and Lib-Dems are very similar to each other. They have more support from older voters and less from the young than Labour or the Greens.

You may think that a few percent on these averages will make few differences. If they average were the same across all seats that possibly would be true. But the average hides massive differences within parties and particularly within the Labour party.

So Why the 2024 Landslide?

It also helps explain the last Labour victory. The fall in turn-out between 2019 and 2024 of 7.4% meant 3 million voters stayed at home. Older people are the predominant voting group. Statistically their vote per capita is worth twice that of young electorate members. Predominantly the 65+ age group voted for the Conservatives. But in 2024, disillusioned, many stayed at home. More voted Reform.

While Labour lost votes from 2019 to 2024, they lost far fewer votes than the Conservatives. Consequentially they actually won some seats from the Conservatives when they achieved a lower vote count in that particular seat than they did in 2019!

Labour and the Next General Election

This was written before Labour’s calamitous local election results in early May 2026 which were significantly worse than even I was expecting. So I’ll let the dust settle a bit before making any predictions. But I’ll leave what I wrote as a reminder I need to still do this!

But it is not rosy for Labour. They have many seats that depend on both a loyal Labour young vote and a low turnout. If either of those items change (and both may well do) they are likely to get hammered.

In a future post I’ll list the seats I think will either fall to the Greens or get them a close run. At the other end I’ll look for Labour seats that could fall to Reform though I think these are far fewer.

Looking at it the other way round I think it fair to say that the list of seats Labour could win off other parties would be more-or-less empty.

This post was originally published on SubStack but has been moved here. Heres why

You Get More Right Wing As You Get Older. Really?

 

Why this right wing drift is (perhaps) an illusion

It is a common mantra that as you get older you politically move to the right. There is even a graph which shows a cross over age where those below it are more likely to be left wing while those above it are more likely to be right wing. Here’s a version of it from YouGov. (it’s a bit old - 2017 but shows this perfectly).

Of course, it’s no longer just mainly Labour versus the Conservatives. But basically if you were to draw this today making it Left wing vs Right wing instead, it would look much the same.

This graph is from a reputable polling company using reliable data. So it is perfectly reasonable to assume the graph is correct. And (in its way) it is!

BUT (and it is a big but) it doesn’t tell the full story. It can lead to a belief that a typical radical 20 year old will, by the time they reach (say) 40 be voting Conservative or even Reform.

Of course that can happen and probably sometimes does. But it is very far from a given and I would suspect very few young, ardent Left Wing voters will actually make that journey.

So where does this graph fall down? Again I repeat - the graph (in as far as it goes) is without a doubt - correct!

Lets illustrate this with the likely political journey of a young left wing voter. Lets call her Jayne.
Jayne is 20 years old and once avidly supported Jeremy Corbyn. She now bats for the Greens or maybe just the wilder realms of the extreme left of the Labour party. She is passionate and committed to her political beliefs.

Is Jayne (in 20 years time) going to start eulogising Margaret Thatcher?

Hardly likely is it? But that does not matter. Why? Try this as an explanation.

Sure. Jayne and her fellow young voters overwhelmingly support left wing parties. But they are unusual within their age band.

They are unusual because they actually vote. But even more so they are unusual because they are interested enough in politics to ensure they are properly registered to vote. Somewhere around 20% of 18-24 years olds are simply not even registered. They are not on the electoral register and so cannot vote. (Some estimates put this as high as 30%)

In 2024 the turnout for the General Election was the lowest since 2001 and the second lowest since 1918. It stood at a dismal 59.7%. But that is across the board. Turnout for the 65+ age group nationally was estimated to be the high 70’s to 80%. For the 18-24 group it was estimated to be 46%. But that is 46% of registered voters. If you include the missing 20% who are not even registered that reduces to 34% (Ipsos put it at 37% so I’ll use that from now on).

So while Jayne and her friends drive a 70% left wing vote in their age group, at the end of the day, of people in the 18-24 age group only 25% voted for the left wing candidates.

Sure: Even less voted for right wing parties. But however you cut it, a significant majority of the 18-24 group simply did not vote. Over 3 million of the 18-24 group stayed at home on election day 2024.

But as people get older they tend to drift towards voting. Turnout by age band increases. More and more people in an age group vote and fewer and fewer go unregistered.

So while Jayne may still stay true to her left wing values as she gets older, the new voters that join her at the ballot box may well hold entirely different views.

This makes it appear that the original younger voters are moving rapidly to the right but in fact the dilution of the left wing bias is due to an increasing number of individuals engaging with the electoral process as they get older.

Here’s an estimate of the turnout for each age group at the 2024 General Election:

And here’s how each age group voted. Remember this was the General Election where the Conservative vote collapsed. Even so, with a 73% turnout those elderly 75+ Conservative voters produced more than double the votes that the 18-24 group did for Labour.

Also notice that the 75+ group produced as many votes for Labour as did the 18-24 group! In other words when comparing these two similarly sized groups both had roughly the same number of Labour supporters. The young Labour vote in 1980 was now the old Labour vote in 2026. Maybe?

So I’d suggest that while a drift to the right is quite possible as a person ages, the amount of drift that will happen (for these young voters in particular) is generally overstated. Those who vote young may well keep their fundamental political affiliations as they get older. What changes is that those initially less engaged with politics come along and start voting too.

And they are far less likely to vote for Left wing candidates.

Originally published on SubStack before being moved here. Read more in this post.

Why Vote for a Small Political Party?

There is a General Election in July (2024) in the UK, so I thought I'd put forward a few ideas why you should ditch the main parties and seriously consider voting for a smaller party. In my humble opinion the best of the bunch is (by far) the Social Democratic Party (SDP). I urge you to give them your vote if you get the chance. They won't win. But even so, here's why you should give them your vote.

General Election 2024 - So What's On Offer

It looks like the current broken and dysfunctional UK government run by the Conservative Party will be replaced by an equally broken and dysfunctional (though marginally different) government run by the Labour Party. 

Maybe there’s a chance there’ll be a (equally dysfunctional) Lib/Lab coalition or whatever.

There seems little chance that the Conservatives will win another term. Frankly, after their record, they really do not deserve consideration. They deserve to lose, and badly.

But what about the Labour Party? 

I am sure I don’t have to relate the horror stories about the extremist, anti-Semitic and generally poisonous nature of a large section of the Labour party. 

A party that clearly puts the working class (aka the people who usually elect it) at the very back of the queue. They are (and will be) placed behind every minority, fad, cult and other extremist who demands the attention of the inner Labour Party Clique. The decent people of this country will be lucky to get the table scraps.

We are in for a (very) hard five years. Whatever the outcome of the election. 

But still, why vote for anyone else? Especially a small party. You’ll surely be voting for a loser. 

So why vote at all?

In a democracy you have the privilege of voting. But that privilege entails you making a choice.

But what if there is NO choice? Or maybe a choice like between drinking Hemlock or swallowing Arsenic? 

What do you do? 

You look for an alternative to the poison on offer. If there isn’t one,  you do nothing.

So Boycott Maybe?

I was brought up to treasure democracy. But one option is to do nothing. Not vote. Boycott it. 

Though I don't consider this the best option, it is not as nugatory as some believe. Staying at home and not voting pushes down the turnout. The winner’s legitimacy is compromised. If only ever so slightly. So if there is no-one worth voting for  then boycotting the vote is at least a away of showing your disgust. 

A Better Option

But a better way of showing your disgust is to vote for one of the other candidates. 

They may have no chance of winning but at the end of the day your vote will show. It will show your disillusionment with the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony. 

But won’t a small Party vote be ignored?

Well, if it's for Lord Bucket-Head - maybe. 

But if it's for a political party that has already put the Labour Party's nose seriously out of joint in Leeds like the SDP has  (well done Councillors Dixon, Pogson-Golden  and Chesterfield) it will focus minds wonderfully. Just like in these examples below.

Here’s a few examples.

1. George Galloway.

Hardly a person I support or agree with. But a very, very clever political operator. Look at the influence and control he has over the Labour Party with his pro-Islamic stance. See how in every seat contended by Galloway's party the Labour Party buckle and shift towards Galloway's agenda. The Labour Party (to it’s disgrace) has been falling over itself to “accommodate” people with views concurrent with with those of Galloway. It that is not political influence, what is?

2. Reform.

Reform is unlikely to get any MPs in July. But the Conservative party is bending over backwards to try and placate and accommodate those liable to leave it for Reform. A bit late in the day maybe. But after the election, does anyone believe that the Conservative will not try and win back their supporters lost to Reform? How will they do that? By adopting Reform policies.

3.(The original) UKIP.

Do you think that the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony would have ever approved an EU referendum (by 91% of MP’s by the way) unless the then UKIP hadn’t been breathing down their collective necks? Remember UKIP simply didn’t exist 25 years before the referendum. For most of that time it was regarded as a figure of fun by the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony. But they weren't laughing in 2016.

Influence

So by voting for small apparently insignificant parties you can at least influence the eventual policy outcome. All parties start as pressure groups. Then they build. Influence turns to power.

Building Visibility and Support

As disillusionment grows (and it will) so will support for decent parties like the SDP. A hundred votes this year gets you noticed. People see your policies and attitude. Word spreads. Next election it’s a thousand, then ten thousand.

That’s how the Labour Party came to power back in the 20th century. That's before it got poisoned by the elitist snobs who run it today.

That’s how the SDP will do it. Bit by bit. Election by election. Council seat by council seat. Then MP by MP.

We have to start somewhere. Turning our country round is going to be monumentally difficult. Things will almost certainly get worse before they get better. 

So lets all start the fight back by putting an X in the box marked SDP on the 4th July.

The Obscene Profitability of Wind Power

Due to the pandemic and the virtual shutdown of the national economy the day-ahead wholesale price of electricity has plummeted. In May it averaged  £22.17 MWh. There have been occasions where the price has gone negative for several hours at a time. Normally the average monthly price per MWh is around £45.

As you can imagine this is really bad news for any generator that is dependant on the market price of electricity to support its operation.

But one group of producers has no worries.  

The subsidy payments received by generators classed as "renewable" dwarf these market prices. 

Here I’ll just deal with the most outrageous and costly i.e. windfarms. But biomass, Solar PV and others are all excruciatingly expensive too. Its just there's less of them.

The effect of the subsidy payments to wind-farms is such that until the price goes significantly negative it is not in their interest to shut down. They have privileged access to the grid so can demand access when the wind blows whatever the current grid status. But they suffer no penalty when they (often) fail to produce when needed. 

So in times of low demand and high wind they continue to produce. They only stop when they get bought off by the National Grid with what is known as a constraint payment. In 2019 wind turbine constraint payments came to over £139 million. Money for nothing – except to stop risking overloading the grid.

Today almost all wind-farms are subsidised by the now defunct Renewable Obligation scheme (RO). This was replaced in 2017 with Contracts for Difference(CfD) which is arguably even more costly and inflexible than its predecessor. 

ROC stands for "Renewable Obligation Certificate". Today one ROC is worth £50.05. Every time a wind turbine produces one MWh of electricity it gets the market payment for that MWh topped up an amount dictated by the RO scheme

A land based wind turbine gets 0.9 ROCs (£45.05) + Market Price for each MWh.

A offshore wind turbine gets 1.8 ROCs (£90.10) + Market Price for each MWh.

So back in May on average a land based wind turbine was in total being paid about three times the market price while an off-shore turbine was paid fives times the market price. In normal times they still (on average) get paid double and triple the market price per MWh respectively.

Even at times of oversupply, when prices fell to zero (or below) they were still guaranteed that subsidy – or an even larger constraint payment.

This RO subsidy scheme for wind turbines alone is currently costing UK customers £2.7 Billion a year and will continue to do so for the next 20 or so years. Here's the figures on the REF website

The companies running these wind-farms are over-joyed at their profitability. Truly when comes to acting as money making machines all other unsubsidised generation capacity pales by comparison. Look at this chart (HERE) from OfGem and weep.

So while renewable generation undermines the integrity of the grid it is obscenely profitable. 

Why is it so profitable? 

Because of a massively over-generous ROC subsidy. A subsidy which, at the end of the day gets paid by the consumer.

Years ago when the RO scheme was dreamed up, the idea was that the payments (i.e. number of certificates issued per MWh) would be changed as the technology/costs/profitability evolved. 

However this was only done once. When the ROC payments per MWh for on-shore and off-shore turbines were slightly reduced from 1.0 and 2.0 to 0.9 and 1.8 respectively it caused such a mountain of complaint from the renewable industry that it has never been attempted again. So today these vastly extravagant payments remain untouched. 

I suppose though we should be grateful that they are not on the new CfD scheme. This guarantees an index-linked fixed price. 

Current offshore windfarms using the CfD scheme are: 

• Beatrice (g’teed £162/MWh) 
• Burbo Bank Extension (g’teed £173/MWh) 
• Dudgeon (g’teed £173/MWh) 
• Walney Extension (g’teed £173/MWh). 

All of these make the RO scheme look cheap! These prices are index linked and so will only increase as time goes on. 

Of course today we have the wind industry crowing about “falling” CfD’s for future (i.e. jam tomorrow) wind farms. Much is being made of the proposed future Dogger Bank offshore scheme where the CfD auction was won at £48/MWh. 

But will they ever be built at that price? Besides that we are still lumbered with the excruciatingly over-priced one we have today!

A few years back there was similar huge publicity for Solar PV when CfD auctions were also won at around £50 MWh. It was headline news on the BBC and  all over the papers. Then after the razzamatazz, it all went quiet.

None were built. Just more unsubstantiated hype. More jam tomorrow. You have to give it to them though. It was wonderful propaganda.

Today the UK consumer (and industry) are literally being robbed by the big energy companies and their renewables scam. Large companies stack up huge profits from wind farms. Not because their wind turbines are wonderfully efficient (far from it) but because they are hugely subsidised

There is no excuse for this. The RO scheme was designed to be flexible and take into account the varying profitability of renewable generators. But today  it has ossified to the benefit of financial parasites.

If the UK govt had any balls it would cut the ROC (at least) in half and phase it to zero within 5 years.

But you know and I know that won't happen. Wind turbines are simply too fashionable. Nobody dares question their economics, or who actually ends up paying for this extortion racket.

So just get used to being robbed for the next twenty years. You (and I) have no other choice.

But perhaps we don't have to stay quiet while our pockets are being fleeced.

The Trouble with Heat Pumps Part 4

This is the last in a series of four posts where I have tried to challenge some of the over-selling and hype surrounding heat pumps. The start of this four post series is HERE.

In this post I want to look at the concept some people promote of a mass national replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps.

The purpose of this mass adoption would be to replace the current usage of natural gas for domestic heating. This would be done solely to cut Carbon Dioxide emissions. It would serve no other purpose. 

Currently 85% of UK homes are heated by natural gas. So this replacement concept is not for the faint hearted.

Last year domestic gas use was 310 TWh.  (Cooking accounts for under 3%) (DUKES spreadsheet HERE)

Meanwhile the entire national usage of electricity was 324 TWh (DUKES pdf Here)

In other words, gas usage for domestic heating (mostly over a short 4 month period) more-or-less matched the entire electrical generation of the UK for all types of use over the full year.

So if we assume that domestic heat pumps can deliver 3:1 energy output when compared to gas, then nationally we will need an extra 100TWh/year of electrical generation to drive their compressors. (The 3:1 is a big assumption – See last post Here)

An extra 100TWh is roughly equivalent to an increase on current generation of 30%. This though does not account for the fact that most of that 100TWh will be required over a four month period and the generation capacity will be surplus to requirements in the summer. But never mind.

So how can this be powered? Of course the "green" solution would be to use solar and wind. In my opinion neither solar or wind could remotely address the demands placed on them for this. But never-the-less, lets look at them and skim over their lack of capability where possible.

Solar. Sadly the incapability of solar in winter is so marked it is impossible to skim over it's failings. In winter there is little sun. So there's little electricity generated. It's probably best for me to let the Centre Alternative Energy explain it to those who disbelieve me. (HERE - see Q&A at end)

Wind. Currently the existing Wind turbine fleet intermittently generates about 20% of current UK demand. There are, in total around 11,000 wind turbines both onshore and offshore in the UK. If we forget about intermittency, grid connectivity, site availability, storage, sea bed damage and impact on those living nearby we would need another 16,500 turbines, just to cover domestic heat pump use in homes.

 The current wind fleet has cost well in excess of £50 Billion to build and only functions due to massive on-going government subsidies. An additional 16,500 turbines would add another £75 billion.  But it doesn’t stop there. Increasing the carrying capacity of the Grid  as well as connectivity, backup supply and cabling would add at least another 25 – 50 billion.  Say a £100 billion all-in – and that, I would suggest, would be wildly optimistic.

But really that is small beer compared to the cost of installing the heat pumps themselves.  Half of the cost is installation and groundwork and so is fixed. Even if we assume the price of the hardware halves we are still looking at £12,000 per installation averaged across GSHPs and ASHPs.

Lets assume the target installation is in 19 million homes.  (As suggested on record by  Committee on Climate Change and also stated HERE ) So the cost of installing heat pumps in these 19 million homes comes out at a whopping £228 Billion.

So all in, to convert 19 million homes to heat pumps would cost well in excess of £325 billion.

In essence we would be spending over £325 Billion to  replace a perfectly serviceable (and more capable) gas supplied heating system. We would be doing this in order to cut Carbon Dioxide emissions from the cleanest fossil fuel available while plenty of dirtier targets remain.

Even if you substitute in more realistic and capable methods of generation (like nuclear - or even gas!) the figures are still ruinously huge. 

Reduce the adoption rate the figures remain ruinous, just less so. It is only when you get to very low rates of adoption (like today) that the pain reduces and heat pumps can run off existing electrical supply without the need for more infrastructure. 

Mass adoption of Heat pumps to replace gas boilers is a non-option. They are less capable and cost far more to install and run than the condensing gas boilers they are supposed to replace. Even so, there are lunatic plans in place to ban new gas boiler installations in new build properties by 2025. (See Here) 

On the plus side heat pumps do make great talking points down the golf club or in a Green Peace meeting and are marvellously fashionable and very, very politically correct. Sadly though when it comes to heating the average home they are not in the same league as condensing gas boilers.

Without the governments bribe Renewable Heat Incentive, uptake would peter-out to nothing. The zealots and the rich would baulk at the cost. Even with the current bribe the take up rate is so pitiful that it would take 700 years to replace all 19 million gas boilers

So how can we reduce Carbon Dioxide? More to the point how can we reduce Carbon Dioxide at significantly less than £500-£600 a tonne? These are difficult questions. 

But clearly, heat pumps do not provide the answers. 

To pretend they do is criminally irresponsible.

The Trouble with Heat Pumps Part 3

The last couple of posts I have looked at Ground Source Heats Pumps (GSHP). (See HERE)

This post deals with Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP). Like their more expensive (and more capable) GSHP cousins, ASHPs are the subject of the most incredible wishful thinking, promotion and propaganda. This is what I hope to address here.

An ASHP (as the name suggests) takes its heat source from the air rather than the ground. Consequently instead of having a pipe system buried under the lawn there is a large out-door box with a fan that pumps air past a heat exchanger. It is significantly less expensive to install than a GSHP and requires minimal ground work. i.e. Maybe the laying of a concrete pad for the system to stand on.

There are in fact two types of ASHP. The most common is a wet system which I highlight in this post. This delivers the heat to water which is then used to transfer the heat to the house like a traditional central heating system does. 

The second type is a dry system that delivers the heat to the house as heated air. This system does not usually provide hot water. As I understand it, due to the additional problems a dry ASHP has when heating both home and hot water the government do not provide access to the  bribe Renewable Heat Incentive for a dry system. 

With an ASHP you still need a garden, or at the very least a suitable outside wall. As the things have an intermittently rotating fan (and so make noise) their location has to be in such a position it won’t annoy the neighbours. Or annoy the owner for that matter.

The installation costs are well below that of a GSHP.  This table from Tradesmencosts.co.uk HERE suggests the cost is about half that of a GSHP. 

To make the system effective you will also need to install underfloor heating or (at least) increase the size of your radiators. In essence, you would need to completely rebuild your central heating system. Then I'd suggest you would need to redecorate. Most sites also recommend you upgrade your household insulation. None of these extra costs are included in the figures in the table above.

The big issue with ASHPs is that their heat source (the air) is not always at a positive temperature. When ASHPs are required to work the hardest (cold weather) their efficiency is compromised. Even so, you will often find ASHP COP values, obtained during almost ideal conditions being used to promote their use year round. (like HERE)

With all heat pumps we really (really!) should NOT assume the COP value is a good indicator of their overall efficiency or capability. A far better figure is the SPF (Seasonal Performance Factor). 

Further-more we need to ensure we use an SPF that is calculated using the full system (H4) NOT simply for the heat pump itself (H2 or even H1) which ignores energy used by backup/boost heaters, immersion and the fan. Here is a diagram (from HERE) that itemises the difference between SPF vales for H1, H2, H3 and H4

I suspect that even if we use (as we should) SPF(H4) this still does not take into consideration the energy that is sometimes needed to de-ice ASHPs in sub-zero temperatures.

A realistic value for the SPF(H4) for a ASHP is 2.44. 

This is the median value obtained over a large 2017 DECC  sponsored analysis  (contractors RAPID-HPC) of many hundreds of of ASHP installations. The data was collected between 2013 and 2015. (Report HERE)

Notice that this is actually below the current minimum value Ofgem (SPF - 2.5) stipulate for claiming the bribe Renewable Heat Incentive! 

From the graph below it looks like the majority of ASHPs analysed by DECC are operating below and in some cases well below an SPF of 2.5. I'd put money on it though that they all successfully claim the RHI subsidy (or the then RHPP equivalent).

ASHPs are on the left and GSHPs on the right right. Notice the ASHP results are significantly weighted to the lower performance values. 

"cropped" means these graphs above have excluded very low and high values. 32 sites (25 ASHP 7 GSHP) were excluded. Of those, 29 had an SPF(H4) less than 1.5. Only 3 had an SPF above 4.5

Like GSHPs, ASHPs typically provide output hot water to the central heating system at less than 40 degrees C. (The Centre for Alternative Energy (HERE) suggests 35 degrees C is best.). 

For most installations domestic hot water needs supplementary heating. There are reasons beyond simple comfort for this.  (Note: gas hot water is usually 65+ degrees).  

Temperatures around 35 - 40 degrees C are the ideal temperature for growing Legionnaire bacteria. So additional water tank heating to 65 degrees C (using an immersion heater) to kill them off is an absolute necessity once a week even if you are happy with luke-warm hot water most of the time. (This applies to GSHPs too)

If you are changing your heating system to use a heat pump, changes have to be made to accommodate the low temperature output to the heating system. The user is recommended (HERE) to install underfloor heating. Or if they cannot afford that, then maybe they can install bigger radiators. DECC found the cheaper heat pump upgrade option (larger radiators) reduced the system efficiency by about 10%. compared to underfloor heating. 

Empirically (based on a sample size of nearly 400 units) the DECC study found costs associated with running a ASHP system were significantly more than that of a GSHP. They only draw on parr when the external temperature is around 10 degrees C or more. Which is, of course, at times when central heating is less likely to be needed. 

Both ASHPs and GSHPs are more expensive to run than a condensing gas boiler.

Incredibly, Greenmatch (HERE) even using a COP of 4.3 (!!) still found condensing gas boilers are cheaper to run! Imagine how the figures come out if you use DECC's most commonly achieved SPF(H4) value of 2.44.

Carbon Savings

ASHPs are less effective in cold weather than GSHPs. This inevitably will be reflected in their potential Carbon Dioxide savings against condensing gas boilers.  As a GSHP will save less than 2 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide per household per year compared to a condensing gas boiler it is difficult to see how an ASHP would save more than around 1.2 - 1.5 Tonnes.  

The average expenditure needed to prevent the emission of Carbon Dioxide (per tonne) gets compensated somewhat because ASHPs are cheaper to install than GSHPs. But I would suggest the gains and losses more-or-less average out and the cost will again be round £500 per tonne.

However there is the opportunity to  participate in the governments bribe Renewable Heat Incentive! So other people in essence will pay in part for your heating system. 

All of this for both GSHPs and ASHPs pre-supposes that the National electricity Grid will simply ramp up output to take over from gas if there is mass adoption of heat pumps.

Unfortunately most people do not realise how little energy the electrical grid provides to domestic consumers compared to that provided by the gas grid. Neither do they appreciate how a mass adoption of heat pumps (let alone EVs) will impact it. Or how much in total it will cost the country

That’s the subject of my last post in this series on Heat Pumps. (Here)