AEP Throws His Toys Out Of The Pram Again!
By Paul Homewood
AEP has totally lost the plot now!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/08/goves-cumbrian-coal-mine-economic-diplomatic-idiocy/
I would not bother reading the article, as it’s the same old, predictable drivel.
He argues that the mine will not be economic, because our steel industry will have given up blast furnaces at some unidentifiable date in the future. But whether the mine is viable or not is a matter for its owners, West Cumbria Mining. Not AEP, or Greenpeace or the BBC.
As for diplomacy, surely even AEP must have enough grey cells to work out being the first lemming over the cliff has not encouraged the other lemmings to follow suit. Indeed, most of the them are galloping the other way in search of the good life.
BP Energy Review
But let’s get down
to the nitty gritty.
AEP thinks that the traditional way of making iron and steel, using coke in blast furnaces, will soon be a thing of the past, as everybody will be using low carbon processes, such as direct reduction and electric arc furnaces. But such a transformation, if it ever happens, will be decades away, and therefore of little relevance to a new mine in Cumbria now. Blast furnaces, along with the rest of the steelmaking process, are designed to last for decades, and it would simply be uneconomic to just replace them on a whim.
In the UK, none of our steel companies have the money to do so, even if they wanted to. If carbon taxes and the like force them to, they are likely to simply shut up shop instead.
A few simple charts tell the story:
https://www.makeuk.org/insights/publications/uk-steel-key-statistics-guide-2021
The Blast Furnace/BOS process, which is the most economic and productive way to make steel, produces 84% of UK steel. Most of that EAF output is for specialist stainless and alloy steels, which need the quality control an arc furnace can give.
British steel accounts for less than 1% of global steel production, so whatever we do will not make the slightest difference. Globally we also find that the BOS route also predominates:
https://www.makeuk.org/insights/publications/uk-steel-key-statistics-guide-2021+
But more significantly it is the BOS process which has been increasing in leaps and bounds recently. The EAF route has barely grown in the last decade, and for a very good reason – it is more expensive and is dependent on an abundant supply of scarp steel, which is limited.
There is simply no way this trend is going to be reversed for decades to come, regardless of what AEP and his fellow travellers think.
In the meantime the UK imported 2.1 million tonnes of coking coal last year, including 827,000 tonnes from Russia, 739,000 tonnes from the US and 511,000 tonnes from Australia. Does AEP really think it makes sense to import coal from Russia, when it could be mined here? If carbon emissions were so crucial, which he seems to think,it would be a no-brainer.
Indeed, according to British Steel, for every 1000 tonnes of steel produced in the UK, 150 tonnes of CO2 are saved compared to importing from the EU.
One final chart:
https://www.makeuk.org/insights/publications/uk-steel-key-statistics-guide-2021
Not only do we import more steel than we make ourselves, but steel contained in imported goods is as much as production and imported steel combined. Most of that steel that we don’t make ourselves has a much higher carbon footprint, which AEP does not seem to give a toss about, preferring to virtue signal instead.
If he really wants to cut emissions, he should welcome the Cumbria mine, which will provide a reliable, cheap and low carbon supply of coking coal for British steel manufacturers.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
And will provide work and experience for miners.
After all, if the AEF buffoon is serious about wanting electric cars, solar panels, giant whirligigs, electric this and electric that, who is going to produce the enormous quantity of minerals?
Does he thing Congolese little boys can do it all?
AEF belongs in a nice, padded cell.
…with his toys, if he’s got any left after all his empty climate tantrums.
Wot do you expect from someone named Ambrose or Prichard?
Blast furnaces do not make steel, they make iron. While iron is then used to make steel this is done in a Bessemer converter to remove the carbon from the iron. (While we talk of ‘high carbon steel’ it has significantly less carbon than iron)
Iron is a material in it’s own right cast into a variaety of things from manhole covers to steam turbine casings. One characteristic of iron is that it has a lot of carbon in it which gives it it’s properties and that carbon comes from the fuel to melt the ore.
While I’m sure that there is very much more steel made, the market for cast iron products is quite significant.
iariar, I seem to recall that there is a certain product, from ore, that can only be made with coking coal providing the heat. Is that correct?
Up2snuff,
I don’t know, but if iron was made by an alternative heating process then carbon would need o be added in some way?
Bessemer converters haven’t been used for 48yrs.
The last Bessemer Steel made in Britain was in 1974 by the British Steel Corporation in Workington
That Bessemer Converter now stands at Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield
& was the last working example in the UK when decommissioned.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bessemer-converter-at-kelham-island-industrial-museum
The two main methods for making primary steel from Iron are …
Basic Oxygen Steel making (BOS)
Electric Ark Furnaces (EAF)
1saveenergy,
what is the difference between a Bessemer converter and the BOS process, both involve injecting oxygen to reduce the carbon in the iron?
Electric arc furnaces are good for purifying metals or melting scrap steel but can steel be made from iron by that process?
The high cost of electricity must make steel (or any other metal) production by arc furnace prohibitive in the U.K.. They use huge amounts of electricity?
It isn’t just the carbon that is removed from the blast furnace produced iron by blowing oxygen through it, many other impurities such as sulphur and phosphorus are removed too.
Then a specific amount of carbon is added to the pure iron along with various other elements such as nickel, chromium and molybdenum to added to produce the correct grade of steel with the desired properties.
It’s not about reducing emissions, either nationally, or certainly globally. It’s about reducing Britain to the status of a de-industrialised backwater totally dependent upon other nations for its continued economic existence and to maintain the barest quality of life for its hapless residents. This is what they want for Britain. These people are vengeful and hateful; they think that Britain, uniquely, must pay for the sins of its glorious industrial past, for ‘infecting’ the rest of the globe with prosperity and technological progress via the Industrial Revolution. That is the ideology which overwhelmingly drives these fanatics. When they don’t get their way, they become utterly hysterical and they will fight tooth and nail to try to get this mine closed down. Because it sets a precedent: local economic prosperity and northern working class jobs taking priority over the unscientific, irrational and empty ‘climate crisis’ virtue signalling by London and SE-dwelling, middle class, urban elitist neo-Marxists.
The time is coming when these ideologues will have to watch their backs….bring that on.
They’re sending idiot activists north to protest at the site of the mine . . . . . bring that on. If they think their nonsense is poorly received down south, just wait until they start their silly, childish antics on the mean streets of economically depressed Whitehaven, whose residents have just been thrown a lifeline by this sensible decision.
Quite; you have to hope that Plod Cumbria do not take the same line that Plod London have done with various protests …. how ironic that the cradle of the Miners Strike might see a 180 deg reversal of local outrage; time for those retired miners still able to get out and show what “Gisajob” means to Cumbrians….
“The time is coming when these ideologues will have to watch their backs…”
It’s beginning to happen:
“Police called in over abusive reaction to council’s ‘climate lockdown’ traffic scheme”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/10/police-called-abusive-reaction-oxford-councils-climate-lockdown/
People will need to realise that the police are not your friends and are not on your side. Their Gestapo attitude during the covid lockdowns should have taught people that, along with their headlong retreat from having a presence in the community.
As said by others ,it is nothing to do with emissions .
UK total emissions are 0.00001% of the atmosphere , and there are hundreds of scientific papers which prove that can have no measureable effect on the climate .
But the Telegraph did have an article showing that carbon taxes are destroying the steel industry .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/26/britains-steel-industry-hammered-climate-change-taxes/
So the whole thing is about destroying the economies of Western countries to bring about their one world socialist government .
Yep. You will own nothing and be happy, or else!
Not only are UK total emissions 0.00001% of the atmosphere but as these emissions are only 50% effective (half of the GH effect escapes to space) then our emissions are even less of a worry.
The UN/WEF CC plan (AGENDA 30) is nothing to do with ‘savimg the planet’:
The paragraph below, from the February 10, 2015 Investor’s Business Daily article “U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare” seems to state the goal clearly.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
At the recent G20 meeting Klaus Schwab lectured on
“The World Will Look Differently After We Have Gone Through This Transition”
WEF’s Klaus Schwab on the Great Reset to World Leaders at G20 Summit Nov 22
The truth in a nutshell.
Thankfully more people are learning to substitute the word ‘Climate’ for ‘Control’ Emergency.
Bristol’s new Clean Air Zone could soon be scrapped completely if pollution falls below certain levels according to the mayor.
https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/rees-new-clean-air-zone-could-be-scrapped-if-pollution-falls/
It’s called “managed decline” and has been the object of the more Globalist Left wing parties for decades now.
Any attempt to resist will be stubbornly resisted by the Davos brigade, look what happened to Liz Truss when she attempted to reduce taxes and increase growth.
Look what happened to Donald Trump too, the first US president since WWII not to start a war – much to the disgust of the Military-Industrial Complex, got the Jews and Arabs talking to each other – a feat that should have won him a Nobel Peace Prize, and made the USA self-sufficient in energy for the first time since the 1950s.
Look also at what happened to Tony Abbott and to Salvini.
You have to assume the Telegraph pays AEP as bait for the keyboard warriors, which I am happy to be considered one of.
The man’s a fool, a very deluded one at that.
Ironically, about 15 years ago, Tata Steel UK proposed to exploit coal reserves beneath their Port Talbot site, a project that could potentially have offered huge economic and environmental benefits. However, as no-one realistically expected the steelworks to continue in operation long enough for the benefits to be realised, the project went nowhere.
On the same basis, it’s hard to see the proposed Cumbrian mine as being a potential saviour of steelmaking in the UK. As someone who spent the past 20 years working closely with the old BSC, then Corus, and Tata, the main driver for the various changes in ownership was for the transfer of the UK’s steel technology and markets to lower cost producers in the East.
Indeed, the manner in which the “rescue” of the Redcar steelworks by the Thai company SSI went belly-up tells its own story about the economics of steel manufacture in the UK. Redcar, with its single large blast furnace and integrated BOS plant, was unable to break-even producing Billet Steel, the basic, commodity grade of steel sold for onward processing elsewhere.
Sadly, the owners of the UK’s two remaining integrated steelworks at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe currently seem to be marking time, waiting until the deteriorating condition of the plants allows them to present an unanswerable case for their closure.
This is the same complete irrationality that bans fracking, not because we don’t use coal or gas but because people hate them so we cannot produce them. AEP knows we will still use coal but he simply cannot stand having a new coal mine here, so invents nonsense – climate diplomacy- as a justification. These climate idiots are governed by emotion, not reason, by fear and hate, not logic. But when enough people share in the fear and hate, they prevail.
Phoenix44, I think it is for these people an alternative god, get rid of the God of the Bible, get rid of Christianity and replace it with the worship of Gaia, the earth and nature. Jesus did warn his disciples that deceptions would arise in the end times – see the Olivet Discourse in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
As the great G K Chesterton remarked:
“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”
As an economics correspondent, AEP can do sums so he can’t be so stupid as to actually believe the drivel he writes. His newspaper is being paid to write it. According to the Daily Sceptic, The Telegraph collected £3.45m, but that doesn’t include a recent $2.43m grant for “global policy and advocacy”, see https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/11/billionaire-funded-green-churnalism/.
He is doing a very good job of showing us he is an ignorant idiot.
I’ve read AEP’s maunderings for many years now, you can be pretty sure that if AEP advocates something and you do the opposite you can’t go far wrong!
A couple of things AEP should also learn is:
A. In order to make more steel using scrap steel you have to have made the steel in the first place.
B. In the ’70s we kept tab on our many field engineers using pagers. That’s where we went wrong: we should have waited for the ’80s to give us mobile phones. Duh!
As Paul explained in his final chart, much of the scrap steel available in the UK came to us in the form of manufactured products imported from overseas.
You took my ‘you have to have made the steel in the first place’ too literally. Wherever it comes from it’s used the process to create it.
“British steel accounts for less than 1% of global steel production, so whatever we do will not make the slightest difference.”
We hear this a lot, especially in relation to our CO2 emissions generally, compared to China’s: we are insignificant, so whatever we do will not make the slightest difference.
But that is still playing in your own goal mouth. It is irrelevant and it still tacitly allows that there is a problem and allows the virtue signallers to say we should do it anyway.
Paul is, as always, correct, and does an immense and marvellous job in refuting a whole range of rubbish.
But let’s not play their game. The correct response is: THERE IS NO PROBLEM to address so let’s not beggar ourselves and diminish our life quality for a figment, a myth, a false narrative, in short – a lie?
AEP has ben talking climate drivel for ages. It is something I cannot understand. Why does the editor of the Telegraph still employ him. There are plenty other much better financial journalists. It makes you wonder.
See my comment above
Yes I was aware of some pressure but is shows him in such a weak light.
In addition to what Douglas Brodie is saying, there is also considerable pressure on newspapers to publish politically correct material coming from their advertisers.
An example of the effect of Green advertisers on the content on the Daily Telegraph newspaper is given in a post on Bishop Hill’s blog in 2015:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/11/29/lean-times-for-the-green-blob.html
In the conversation, Bishop Hill remarked that it was very strange that the Telegraph had decided to give a job to the veteran environmental journalist Geoffrey Lean, as he couldn’t see this impressing the typical Daily Telegraph reader at all. The reply was “Ah, that’s simple”. “He’s not there for the benefit of the readers but because green advertisers want him”.
Also there is a general pressure on newspapers by left-wing activists to tone down the right-leaning content of a newspaper. The activists operate by putting pressure on advertisers to boycott right-leaning newspapers. So if you publish material that is sceptical of the Green cause in a newspaper, you may suffer some loss of advertising revenue. Kelvin Mackenzie, a former editor of the Sun newspaper, explains this issue in regard to the declining circulation of the Sun:
https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/kelvin-mackenzie-the-sun-lefty-activists-targeting-advertisers/
“With its choice of stories and general editorial view, The Sun has not helped itself to survive over the last few years as a print product. I do understand the problem the management faces as it affects every centre-right media. The Daily Mail and Mail Online is a victim too. Even Elon Musk has complained about the lefty activists putting the hard word on advertisers leading to a multi-million dollar loss in revenues.
This is how the activists work. They send emails to media buying groups acting on behalf of the retailers (and the CEO of the retailer itself) citing any story they don’t approve of, normally meaning race, trans, free speech, union excess etc. They urge the retailer not to place the ad again (even better pull the entire campaign) or threaten them with a public boycott.
Not unreasonably the retailer is puzzled. All they did was place an ad.
Media buyers, a lily-livered lot, fold immediately. Some of the dimmer ones even start giving their views on the editorial content of the paper. One Daily Mail sales guy was asked why a picture of Adele was on the front page. Give me strength.
The Sun had a choice. It could continue to publish ‘difficult’ stories and threaten its ad revenue or basically ask the editor to go easy on the accelerator. They chose the latter route. The circulation then fell away as the paper no longer reflected the interests of a white audience in its 50s.”
I wonder under what editorial conditions the DT would ever employ someone of Chris Booker’s mindset and clear-sightedness.
They did for long enough. Though by the end his were brief and not promoted.
The admirable website Gridwatch Templar gives the current state of the UK’s ability to run as an industrialised and civilised nation.
UK current measured electricity demand 37.5GW
This is being met by:
Wind 0.94GW
Solar 0.72GW
CCGT 21.7GW
Nuclear 5.6GW
Coal 1.3GW (plus dribs and drabs begged from around Europe)
UK current space heating demand, including my wood burner? No idea. Has this been quantified? It will be several times the electricity demand. The fools who are nominally in charge of keeping this country functioning – Grant Shapps, you are in the frame – have gone for broke on Sizewell C and another 50GW of offshore wind power. Offshore wind capacity factor is 35% in round figures, but during so-called wind droughts (look outside to see the UK’s wind generation hanging limp as a deflated blimp) that 50GW would today be providing about 4GW extra, hardly enough to keep the House of Commons warm. Their partial solution? Sizewell C, 3.2GW. If the man had the guts of an emasculated kangaroo he’s make sure that that contract has penalty clauses for cost over-runs and delays, but he hasn’t so he won’t. Judging by EDF’s feeble effort around the world with their EPRs we’ll get reliabnle power from their nukes sometime in 2060.
We are close to the Russian roulette energy crunch. A few more spins of the revolver’s cylinder and they’ll blow our head off. Sheesh.
JF
The only rationale behind Potato Ed Davey’s choice of Hinkley C was that it was the least likely to be successful, the most expensive and the most French and Chinese scheme on offer.
That was as plain as a pikestaff when Davey chose it, and no-one in the HoC or Lords opposed it.
In other words, if they had told Greenpiss to make the choice (“none of them”, NOT being an acceptable option), this is what they would have chosen, with the same entirely predictable results.
Move on to today and Grunt Schleps’s ‘genius’ choice of the same system.
Words fail me. I have seen no significant criticism of this ludicrous decision.
Actually at the time the decision was made, I believe the EPR was the only approved design via the Office for Nuclear Regulation Generic Design Assessment.
Look also at what happened to Tony Abbott and to Salvini.
(Bloody reply wotsit!!)
Actually, Ray, what you say about the Office for Nuclear Regulation and Paperclips is probably true.
Although it is also probably the case that Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change might possibly have had a teeny weeny influence on what was approved and not approved.
Interesting that the South Korean reactors of that period were much cheaper, were successful completed, apparently on budget (?) and have been happily generating electricity for years.
But must have been seen to be extremely dodgy, as we can see now (and then!) that the EPR concept was wonderful!
After all these years, only those in China yet working (and with worrying reports as to safety.)
Looks like the Nuclear Regulation boys and girls have done us proud!
I have to admit that, whilst I have heard of the Office for Nuclear Regulation and Paperclips, Ray, I don’t know much about them.
So I found their web site and spent a little time poking about. I note immediately that the names of all the genius “Expert Panel™” that drives “The Settled Science™” are redacted in their Minutes of Meetings. Surprise!
I note further that one of their key concerns in “Climate Change™”
No, silly, not the need for more nuclear to fend off the “Climate Emergency™”. Just the threats of high winds caused by “Climate Change™” and other idiocies. Surprise, Surprise!!
I haven’t found any specific reference to the ridiculous and long debunked “Linear no-threshold (LNT) model™”, but would be gobsmacked if it doesn’t feature in all their “thinking”. Probably printed in every corner of their sheets of bog-paper.
So, if it is really the case that the EPR design was the only one permitted, back when not even the Chinese had completed the first of theirs and both Finland and France were already in deep doo-doo with estimated out-turn costs and projected completion dates; whilst South Korea had several completed and running?
If that is indeed the case, then everyone working for the ONR at the time, down to the most insignificant typist, should be sacked, their building blown up and the land salted.
“UK current space heating demand? Has this been quantified? It will be several times the electricity demand”
Between 3 & 4 times:
Of course the “only 36 GW” electricity generation is probably using 50 GW gas as the CCGTs cannot be working at high efficiency against an unstable demand. I suspect that it could be cheaper to use diesel generators with present gas and oil prices.
South Korea is the place to go for a reliable and functioning nuclear plant unlike EDF’s failures at Flammanville and Finland.
Yep – the following article should be compulsory reading for all politicians.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/united-arab-emirates.aspx
20billion USD for 5.6GW of reliable capacity in 10 years from a standing start is pretty remarkable.
I suspect NK isn’t as susceptible to kicking back the size of brown envelopes as France and China.
That should be SK obviously!
Here is his short bio as featured in the telegraph. You would think with 30 years experience he would see through the eco loons hysterical arguments! There must be another agenda that he is promoting. WEF probably.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is World Economy Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels.
I believe that members of the HOC have to declare financial interests (stock holding or non -executive directorships ) to alert people to any potential bias in the parliamentary proceedings. However many journalists and editors in the BBC or news media have far greater influence on the public and decisions at Westminster than the average , and usually totally obscure, MP .
Should it not be obligatory for journalists in a serious (once , but still?) paper like the Telegraph to disclose any financial interest in the comments that they publish- apart of course from the shares invested as part of their pension schemes, which they presumably have limited control over.
Let me know when he starts attacking the cement manufacturing industry.
His contortions on trying to find a replacement process will make interesting reading.
Wattle and daub perhaps…oh hang on, cattle are to be banned so no cowpats to use.
“Wattle and daub perhaps”
Good luck mounting a 10GW wind turbine in Wattle and daub, instead of 1,000+ tons of reinforced concrete…
This might cheer him up. Feel very sorry for current students who have to spout zero carbon propaganda to get anywhere. Institution of Civil Engineers no better.
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-engineers-invent-world-s-first-zero-emissions-cement
Nigel, Shhh!
Coke is essential to make Iron with the right Carbon content. More precisely, Iron with all the qualities we normally associate with it. Best not to start tinkering with the formula.
It’s ‘the same old, predictable drivel’ from AE-P, who went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History: not Engineering or a relevant Science, just the BBC Agenda.
Yet he has the arrogance to think he can rearrange British Industry, without any relevant knowledge, or financial implications.
“No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
AEP can’t figure out why you people don’t just die, to make the world a better place. The coal mine won’t be around in the future, so there is no need to build it = you won’t be around in the future, so there is no need for ______.
Yes, I too have been bemused by FOE, BBC, Greenpeace, AEP and the rest all saying the mine won’t be economic because of the move to hydrogen based steel making and electric arc furnaces recycling scrap steel. But what do they think the company wanting to build the mine has done before planning it? Of course it has surveyed the market for coking coal and concluded that this will exist for the planned duration of the mine. And if this wasn’t also the view of potential investors, then they wouldn’t lend the funds to build the mine.
They genuinely don’t understand that metallic steel contains carbon.
Maybe they are planning the scrap all existing steel structures?
There is clearly no end in sight to their insanity.
Hybrit in Sweden has produced 100 tonnes of steel using a hydrogen reduction process and is ramping up production to 1.3m tonnes pa. As shown in the graphs above worldwide steel production is over 1.8 billion tonnes pa. Others are going down the same route as Hybrit but it will take them a very long time to replace coking coal.
Hybrit’s product is 30% more expensive though this may decline in the future.
It is with their dissembling use of the term “carbon” when they mean carbon dioxide that the whole ludicrous nonsense at the core of the green agenda becomes fully exposed. It is literally impossible to manufacture carbon-free steel because elemental carbon is the critical component that turns metal iron into steel. The carbon in steel comes from the coke which is a form of elemental carbon derived from coal that is itself an organic carbon mineral. In all this chain of transformation the elemental mineral carbon that forms the steel never becomes carbon-dioxide gas. So, while the industrial process of steel formation can in principle be made carbon dioxide emission free, it can never be made carbon free, as without containing the elemental carbon there is no possible way that steel can be manufactured.
This is, of course, the standard response to any proposal of which they disapprove. Most obvious example: – Shale Gas (Fracking). Private company prepared to invest large amounts of their own money in the hope of not only their well deserved profits but acknowledging that they would have to pay huge amounts to the Treasury in Taxation, More Taxation, Even More (Windfall) Taxation. And in the face of continual disruption, covertly supported by HMG plus openly by BBC, Fiends of the Earth etc.
One might have assumed that HMG and its catspaws would be happy to see the promoters go bust, but they were scared silly that it would almost certainly have been a huge success!
Why is it almost impossible to ‘reply’ to a comment without it appearing way down the thread??
Here is a good overview of the EU (and German) dysfunctionality, of which the Climate/Energy policy confusion and the West’s deindustrialisation is a part:
https://theduran.locals.com/upost/3191164/german-coup-targets-political-opposition-merkels-disastrous-legacy
(It quite a good channel for geopolitics, in general.)
‘Overall, we rate The Duran as a Questionable source based on far-right-wing bias, promotion of Russian propaganda, right-wing conspiracies, a lack of transparency, use of poor sources, plagiarism, and failed fact checks.’
Handle with care I would say.
Sounds like it must be a good source then.
Here is their presentation on YouTube.
German coup targets political opposition. Merkel’s disastrous legacy
I prefer to make up my own mind and not to be told what to think.
Nigel, it is accepted that it is important to understand any conflict from the enemy’s point of view. It isn’t that they hold the Truth, it’s that to be successful, knowing what motivates them is the most important first step.
Merkel, that supposidly German wonder woman of the past, has recently said that she pushed for the Minsk Agreements in 2014/15, to buy time, so Ukraine could be rearmed by the West. This was following on from the Maiden Coup and military action against the Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass that has resulted in 14,000 deaths in the Donbass up to February 2022. Since then, a common number quoted is 100,000 killed.
The longer the war continues, the smaller Ukraine is becoming, yet that hasn’t stopped the West from ignoring that, or noticing that the West is on its own, without the vast resources from the Rest of the World, apart from Wind.
You probably need to add Jimmy Dore to your list of undesirables too.
Wimbledon Fined $1 Million For Banning Russian Tennis Players
Given mediabiasfactcheck.com is a far left propaganda site I’d steer clear of them and trust The Duran
Paul, thanks for drawing attention to this. Most people I know here in west Cumbria support the mine and are pleased by the decision (though there are inevitably a few, Green Party members and the like, often based in Tim Farron’s constituency, who oppose it).
FWIW, here’s my take on the mine and its opponents:
I posted this recently, for those who missed it here it is again:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants/2017/11/opp1179441
Meanwhile in India:
“According to a November 3 article in The Hindu Business Line, the government has offered “133 blocks for auction, of which 71 are new mines and 62 are rolling over from earlier tranches of commercial auctions.”