ENERGY WILL BE RATIONED

The EU has a plan to reduce energy consumption by 15% by next March.

It's a clever and detailed plan that breaks down your permitted consumption levels by EU state, first public sector must make economies, then commercial and finally individuals.

It's a proposal from the commission and needs to be approved. 

I just wonder how they will decide the split between states, industry and private individuals; and I wonder how they (the EU) will ensure compliance (by states with their plans). Do people get (digital) ration books? Is it done with the smart meters?

So I guess that's hundreds of new processes and hundreds of thousands of new staff to run all this for the EU bureaucracy. Love it.

What about the effect - on top of recent vertiginous price rises and caps- on GDP, on employment and share prices?

Will Germany shut down its automobile production lines? The principal Industries using up energy are automobile and chemicals, the biggest consumers of Russian gas. These industries will suffer the most and in particular ... the manufacture of fertiliser - oh rich irony! No food.

The Europeans can join the starving billions of the South.  And no doubt there will also be new covid-style handouts for industry and the public to keep them off the streets.... I mean there's the price caps on energy and petrol and the subsidies that they require; and now there'll be more subsidies to keep industry open even if the wheels aren't turning, and for people who lose their jobs. And surely this subsidies should be means-tested, or perhaps we have given up caring about the effects on future generations, to further plump up the state bureaucracy. Or we could organise auction sales of gas, at least for industry.

Just gets dumber and dumber with more and more hot air.

How will the public take price rises and now rationing? I guess in France the gilets jaunes are ok as they keep themselves warm on their roundabouts with braziers of foraged wood. But yes, how will we deal with heat waves and winter freeze-overs? We need an energy lockdown, obviously. And they are recommending that we turn offer our Wi-Fi at night, but what about turning off the data centres as there's so much duplicated and obsolete data?

What started as a western boycott, is now Russia turning off the taps. And just as we go into the final death spiral of debt along comes LNG at four times the price, I gather, of piped gas....More top ironies.

And we're told it was Putin who miscalculated!*

*PS Putin started cutting back delivery of gas over a year ago, it seems, to stop Germany from topping up its reserves. E'ez a clever bugger!!