To think we cannot afford to support Ukraine anymore

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This may be an unpopular opinion but it is annoying me to no end and NC

We have a littany of issues crying out for funding domestically - NHS broken. Economy going down the drain. Pound down 20% in one year. Public services collapsing, Education system requiring re-investment, high taxes driving talent out. We can keep blaming our politicians but someone needs to prioritise where money goes - and no one is willing to talk about this

Yet we are spending hundreds of billions in supporting Ukraine in a war which has nothing to do with us. Yes we are morally supporting them but is there no amount which will be too much? We are paying both directly (through weapons and aid) and indirectly (through huge energy subsidies - last totalling north of £200bn) - we need to stop this spending, reduce energy prices, stop this craziness

How is this war something we can afford on the basis on principles and why aren't we more aggressively pushing for a negotiated settlement?

We cannot afford this. It sucks for Ukrainians but this is not UK's bill to foot.

AIBU?

let me not argue. say you're right and its £40 BILLION - at your very low ball estimate

thats ok? thats 25% of NHS annual budget

with another price rise it could be 50% of NHS budget. when the government announced it they estimated 100% of NHS budget

this is all going money round and round and round - as another poster put it so cogently so we should just chill 😎

Ok so say we stop supplying Ukraine with military support? How will that reduce energy prices?

They have gone up because of an increase in demand post covid and because Russia reduced supplies to Europe to punish Europeans for supporting Ukraine.

So Russia have now shown themselves to be a totally unreliable supplier and willing to use energy as blackmail. We need to pivot to renewables and perhaps nuclear too to reduce costs and give the UK energy security.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-have-energy-bills-in-the-uk-been-rising-net-zero/

it takes years to pivot energy sources. yes we should pivot but this is a long term project not 1-2 years. in the interim it will cost a bomb.

yes we should have considered the economic cost of russia cutting supplies and prices going up as a result

let me not argue. say you're right and its £40 BILLION - at your very low ball estimate

Why are you saying it's my estimate? It's the estimate of industry experts. I made that clear and shared the source. What's in it for you in trying to discredit it?

We'd be paying the energy prices we're paying now whether we were militarily supporting Ukraine or not. What difference do you think it would make to gas and electricity bills in the UK tomorrow, or next year, if we stopped providing Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance from tomorrow?

(And yes, I do think that £40bn (or more) is a very low cost relative to what further Russian expansionism could cost us. I've said that repeatedly.)

more countries need to push all parties towards a negotiated settlement so the war can stop and energy/food markets can normalize.

just stopping supplies does nothing. using our/eu/us influence to find middle ground will.

Would this negotiated settlement require Ukraine to hand over annexed sovereign lands so that Putin can save face and go home with a 'win"? Or do you also support a referendum in said annexed lands where half the people have been displaced or killed?

it takes years to pivot energy sources. yes we should pivot but this is a long term project not 1-2 years. in the interim it will cost a bomb.

You haven't seen Germans building LNG terminals. They're fucking EPIC.

Guardian link

In the UK we're lucky in that we have a huge amount of non-gas electricity already in the pipeline. The pivot away from gas was already part of plans; accelerating those plans doesn't take nearly as much time and effort as starting from scratch. And the reforms through REMA should decouple our gas electricity production from cheaper sources when it comes to the cost to the consumer, which is a hugely important step in bringing down bills. The architects of the current system totally failed to foresee a situation where variable-cost electricity (fossil fuel) would be the highest marginal cost in settlement. REMA will deal with the nuclear and renewable windfall issue we're currently experiencing.

The forward gas prices speak for themselves. The weather is obviously pro-Ukraine and is also helping significantly with the transition, particularly in Central Europe.

(At some point you may wish to accept that on energy, I really do know what I'm on about. I don't work for Cornwall but this is a sector I know particularly well.)

i dont care about your humblebrag. i dont want to get into a career competition here. shows your immaturity. you have no clue who i am or my experience/expertise in life.

Thanks for your posts about energy Jessy, I've found them really enlightening

Not a humble brag. Just pointing out that this is something about which you clearly know very little, and I'm quite comfortable saying that I know a fair amount about it and how it works in practice. You can insult me all you like; it doesn't alter the fact that every single one of your confident statements about energy have been so far off base as to be almost comic.

Or are you one of those who has had enough of experts and prefers their own facts?

Thank you! It has been a particularly interesting year to work in energy... a lot of things that were previously incredibly niche and only a very small number of people would have any depth of expertise in them are suddenly important and mainstream. I've learned an enormous amount.

no i am one of those who pay more than their share of taxes and hence care deeply about what the money is used for

Regardless of what the UK might do or think it would be madness for Europe to go back to relying on the Russians for gas and they know it.

The Germans ignored warnings about over reliance on Russian gas from the Americans and others for years. They have been shocked that the Russians didn't honour their commercial agreements. The Russians blew up their new pipeline as well. They are just weaning themselves of Russian energy dependency now and they will not go back. Not while Putin is in power anyway.

Best bet for gas prices is for Ukraine to win with our help and Putin's regime to fall. However I am not holding my breath on the latter. The uk needs an urgent pivot to renewables, for the environment as well.

I would rather see money spent on solar panels and heat pumps and wind farms rather than energy subsidies. I also would like us to be able to produce solar panels ourselves rather than have to rely on Chima.

However the energy subsidies are not money spent by the UK on helping Ukraine and its disingenuous to suggest they are.

I think we all do.

You mentioned the NHS upthread. My own view is that the annual enduring loss in GDP and therefore tax revenues due to Brexit (estimated at £40bn in the year ending June 2022) would have been much better spent on the NHS or education. It's not really relevant, though, is it as government spending is made up of a wild array of things and subject to political whim.

It feels odd that you're targeting short-term military and humanitarian costs as 'unaffordable' (we've established that our energy bills would be more or less the same whether or not the UK is actively supporting Ukraine) but not other more enduring costs that could be reprioritised to the same ends.

Why is Ukraine unaffordable, but Brexit isn't?

@JassyRadlett glad to hear the UK is making some progress with pivoting away from gas.

It's quite something. I think the entire renewables and storage pipeline is now greater than the whole of the current electricity generation installed capacity. That's not including the (neglected) nuclear pipeline which will also be important.

Obviously we need that and more as we replace fossil fuels, some older nuclear comes offline and we drastically increase demand as we electrify transport and heat. But the change in cost and technology over the last decade is amazing.

The guardian article was interesting @JassyRadlett

In the short term I think the Russians might try to sabotage the gas pipeline from Norway to put more pressure on Germany. Luckily it sounds like they have a lot of storage.

But I don't think that would make the Germans stop supporting Ukraine or go back to using Russian gas now. They have made up their minds about Russia.

Impressed with Jassy's expertise and patient contributions to countering Russian misinformation on this disingenuous thread.

Make voluntary additional contributions do you? Or do you just resent paying more than 20p in the pound?

Aye, that would be a bastard (as would sabotaging our own pipelines) but their LNG capacity increase has been impressive.

There's no way back for Germany now - with both Nord Streams gone, and the humiliation of Merkel's legacy going down the drain with such speed, their energy policy can only go in one direction now.

The Germans ignored warnings about over reliance on Russian gas from the Americans and others for years.

Frankly Gerhard Schröder should face a corruption trial for the way that he went straight from Chancellor to Gazprom shill.

It's all just politicking anyway.

Zelensky has got plenty of cash. Trot on down to the Cayman Islands lad and sell a yacht or two. Wanker.

And toddling off to visit Putin in the summer and even in August pushing for Nordstream 2 to be opened and blaming Siemens for the Russian shutdowns of NS1...

Poor Gerhard. Being Chairman of Nord Stream AG probably isn't such a lucrative berth any more...

(The Rest Is History did a great bit on him as part of their German chancellors episodes.)

when you pay nearly half your income in tax you care a lot about where it goes

what's so hard to understand? maybe when/if you do the same you will care