A nuclear error
BRITAIN faces a struggle to keep the lights on. But the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant still looks like the most crazily expensive and least efficient solution.
We have criticised successive governments for their paralysis over building major infrastructure.
Even so, it is hard to welcome a project whose astronomical cost to consumers is so worrying.
We will all pay for the £18billion-plus Somerset plant, producing just seven per cent of our needs, for decades in higher bills.
For 35 years we will be locked into bunging its French and Chinese owners a massive subsidy per unit of electricity — ever greater as the wholesale price falls.
That deal with EDF was done to avoid the UK funding the upfront cost.
But why shouldn’t Britain build and operate our own nuclear plant?
Or focus on smaller, cheaper gas-fired ones . . . and more of them?
Meanwhile, we still have a potential energy revolution beneath our feet in the form of shale gas.
That’s if we can ever defeat the irrational eco propaganda and get on with fracking.
Merkel disaster
ANGELA Merkel has lost her marbles — and is losing her people.
How can Germany’s Chancellor seriously promise to do “everything humanly possible” to keep them safe while continuing to let asylum seekers pour into the country?
Germans’ initial desire to be seen as liberal and welcoming has evaporated.
First came the mass sex attacks by migrants in Cologne last December.
Now two atrocities by men posing as refugees from Syria, part of a summer of terrorism by Muslim extremists.
To Merkel, Germany’s “openness and willingness to take in people in need” is paramount.
That might play well with the liberal-lefties of the EU or UN.
But her first duty is to her people.
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They have a right to live in a stable country, free from the fear of being slaughtered by Islamist terrorists ushered in among the genuine refugees.
While Germany took in one million last year, David Cameron received huge stick for refusing to let more than a handful into Britain.
He chose instead to pour resources into Syrian camps and rescue only those with an obvious and proven need.
He has been proved absolutely right.
Waist of time
YOU’D struggle to find a much fitter four-year-old than Gracie James-Coggins.
Yet the council hectored her parents with a ridiculous letter calling her obese.
We don’t mind schools giving mums and dads a nudge if a kid is piling on pounds.
Anyone can see Gracie isn’t.
Are officials no longer allowed to use simple common sense?