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European Union to investigate Nuclear Subsidy to Hinkley Point - same considerations will apply to Sizewell

18 December 2013 The European Commission today opened its investigation into the plans of the British government to encourage the construction and operation of a new nuclear power plant by EDF Energy at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. Brussels wants to check that British plans to ensure predictable revenues for EDF over 35 years, despite the volatility of the electricity market, are not illegal under European Union's (EU) state aid rules. "We must look whether state aid is really needed and if so whether the level of state aid is appropriate," EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia told journalists. The state aid given to EDF "may reach up to £17 billion ($27.8 billion) depending on future electricity prices and the operator's actual capital costs," according to Brussels, which will investigate if the power plant could have been built by market forces alone. Under EU law, public support given to companies is accept...
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Mitigating the storms of our grandchildren

Congratulations to the planners and the emergency services for what seems to have been an exemplary operation to contain the huge storm surge all around our coast on 5 & 6 December. Now that we in East Anglia have survived this threat, it is time to start planning for the next time, and the time after that. . . With this surge following so hard on the heels of the terrible biggest-ever storm (with hurricane-force winds) in Scotland, it is clearer than ever that we are living in an age of extreme-weather events. We all know -- we all see, every month and every year now -- that our weather-patterns are not the same as they were; this is part of the effect of human-induced dangerous climate change. And our world-leading climate scientists here in East Anglia tell us that this climate chaos will be joined, over time, with an even more disturbing and systematic change: the gradual rise of sea-levels, as the polar ice-caps wilt und...
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I'm bringing Richard Falk to Norwich:

Tuesday December 3rd, 6pm   UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR, DR RICHARD FALK, AT UEA, event hosted by UEA Greens. Richard Falk - Palestine: the perspective of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. 3 December at 18:00, for a prompt 18.15 start. Lecture Theatre 3, UEA. Chaired by Rupert Read, lead Green Party MEP-candidate in the European Elections, 2014. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."   Very excited about this... Falk is a great man...  
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