Smart energy wanted.

I know, I know, I keep burbling on about energy but as the sun sets in the west, I hear the refrain, "It's the energy, stupid!" time and time again. Another one from Carbon Commentary that should knock your socks off if it wasn't summer and you weren't wearing sandals.  I particularly like the downbeat characterisation of the CEO; rings true though doesn't it?

Exytron is a plausible contender for a role as the central enabler of the energy transition. But, please note, the company itself doesn’t make this claim. CEO Karl-Hermann Busse, possibly the most pessimistic entrepreneur I have ever met, is far too aware of the obstacles the company faces. He mentions the inertia of many of the existing fossil fuel businesses as important barriers. He says that they will endlessly talk to him but then never commit to partnership. Perhaps a UK company would like an introduction to Dr Busse? No-one should be worried he is going to over-sell his invention.

(Do you not wear socks with your sandals then...Ed?)

Only if they are electrically heated with renewable energy, eejit!

Christine wants you and your sunbeams.

Nice little story from the ever stimulating Chris Goodall in the
CARBON COMMENTARY NEWSLETTER
 (23 July 2017 Subscribe at www.carboncommentary.com)

Solar in Africa. BBOXX said it had signed a deal in the small West African country of Togo to provide up to 300,000 off-grid kits. 10,000 will be installed in the next year giving light, phone charging, TV and radio to unelectrified rural households. 66% of Togo’s adults have mobile phones and can use BBOXX’s pay-as-you go system. The government said it was sponsoring the BBOXX project partly to increase the takeup of mobile money systems. Another indication of the close link between PV, the mobile phone and online payments in Africa.

Now if only that nice Mr Musk or even our Christine Le G. could  dig their hands into baggy pockets and provide a few (Ever)readies for storage we would all get along just fine!

(Could you bring that light over here, I can hardly see the hand behind my back it is so cloudy and dull...Ed)

Summertime and the lighting is easy!

I'll publish yours if ...

Occasionally BP encourages an open debate between editorial and creative members of the cooperative. The usual parenthetical delimiters  and the employment of ellipses is dispensed  with to encourage a full and frank discussion much like the old catechistic method of inculcating doctrinal certainties.

Has there been a bit of a ruck about the old BeeB and the payment of the workers?

There has, indeed. 

Have some of the troops been what can only be described as peeved?

Deeply, I suspect.

Emily, Jane and the women, have been up in arms about it, have they not?

Monstrously so, I fear. 

Could we suggest some names are quite notable by their absence?

A very taxing arrangement, I would judge.

I hope you are not implying, given the alacrity of m'learned friends to seek redress, any malfeasance.

I would not wish to evade the issue but, allegedly, it is wholly avoidable.

Amen

What's your poison?

I was reading a post in the blog by David Spiegelhalter, Understanding Uncertainty, titled
Medicine, poison poison, poison. 
It contained the paragraph:-

At one unit a day (half a standard glass of wine), they estimate a tiny overall benefit for men and a slightly larger, but still small, overall benefit for women. But the Department of Health appears very eager to avoid the message of “a small glass of something for medicinal purposes”.

 That phrase “a small glass of something for medicinal purposes” pinged my short term memory to the day before when I had seen the women behind me in the supermarket queue load 3 bottles of Sonatogen Tonic Wine on to the belt and cover them with a large bag of spinach. Of course it could be that she was in need of a tonic or was short in the iron department or even that it was her tipple of choice, god bless her. Who am I to point the finger of shame having drunk more than my lifetime's allocation of red wine and other electric soups but I do love that - medicinal purposes.

(I feel in the interest of balance I should point out other health promoting  beverages are available; didn't Harold Wilson enjoy the odd 7 pint party can of Hall's Tonic Wine and your own good parents treat the family to a bottle of Buckfast -Bucky- at Christmas time... Ed)

In vino veritas

ADUP

In line with the use of names to designate a quantity of money:- a pony, a monkey, a grand.
Let me suggest         A DUP =£1billion
On this auspicious day, of course, there may be those who would wish to suggest (an orange) dinosaur! Whatever, must pop out for my annual packet of Jaffa Cakes! It's only polite to offer them around

(Doesn't our own TM, peace be upon her,  have a degree in colouring in ... Ed.)

The future is orange or an austere grey, Maybe!

Everything in the Garden

Summertime and there is a certain uneasiness about the world (I do wish you would avoid the pull of the understatement... Ed.) However, as the sun shines and the butter flies, the bees polish their knees and life takes on a softer feel, for some, it is interesting to reflect on the boon of the land.
Patrick Barkham enumerates the benisons but not without reference to the political in a Grauniad article today.  To quote

A garden is more than a space to recharge, though. As George McKay points out in his book Radical Gardening, the collective endeavour that gardening can often be is evinced by everyone from Gerrard Winstanley’s 17th-century Levellers to today’s guerrilla gardeners. It isn’t always progressive – plenty of fascists revere gardening – but when enlightened gardening meets political power, it can rearrange the way we live. Ebenezer Howard’s reimagining of urban life in the 1890s led to garden cities such as Letchworth, and they continue to inform urban planning today.

McKay argues that allotments are “profoundly anti-capitalist” spaces. Modest council rents never reflect the true land value or what councils could earn from allotment land. Produce grown on allotments is consumed locally, and often swapped. Through allotments, we reject today’s dominant ideology of allocating resources via money and globalised markets.

I love that - plenty of fascists revere gardening - !

I would at this point show a picture of the family estate the pride and joy of us all including the head gardener, peace be upon her,  but I have a bad back, I am a lazy swine at the best and a wee bit of pain finishes me off! (You are excused, just the once, but man up there princess we only have one blog... Ed)

That's Oil Folks

You May believe that we have reached the end times because we have been DUPed. You may believe that we are all going to Hell in a Hand Cart because Washington has turned into a dystopian Trumpington, Mr Kim's ICBMs or whatever. I bet  if you  go to sleep worrying about oil, it is   burning too much of it, getting enough of it,  fighting for it,  stealing it or using it on that squeaky bottom bracket. However, the reason we should have night sweats and terrors is that Central Bankers are at a complete loss as to how to decouple the system and environment of financing (low interest rates, QE and its effects) and our addiction to the oily stuff for the economy and anti-squeakyness.
I am alerted to this by the exceedingly informative podcast - Talking Politics- of a Mr Runciman and in particular by a discussion ( the last 15 minutes of the podcast if you are pushed for time) of the book - Oil and the Western Economic  Crisis- by a Ms Helen Thompson. Both I believe hold professorial posts at a nearby university.  Others are available!
Sweet dreams.  

An Englishman in Madrid

Summer Reading facts no. 92 in a series.

Did you know that the above book by Eduardo Mendoza is 9 out of 10 in the top sellers at the LRB  Bookshop?

Remember you read it here first.

What I can't remember though is whatever happened to Gurb?