Articles by
Alan Simpson
A Feast of Fools: What happens when politics gets lost?
By
Alan Simpson
Sunak’s next distraction will be ‘pylon wars’. Thousands of miles on high voltage cabling are needed to ship electricity from off-shore wind farms to towns and cities. This requires hundreds of thousands of new pylons. Everything that was off-shore and out-of-sight suddenly becomes an environmental battleground. Communities are already mobilising to challenge the process.
Britain: The Corbynomics of energy policy
By
Alan Simpson
While Republican wannabes in the USA seek to live in denial of climate change, and Blairites in Britain wish to live in denial of leadership change, Corbyn prefers to focus on the realities of profound change.
Britain: The election everyone lost
By
Alan Simpson
Former parliamentarian Alan Simpson bemoans the paucity of serious debates of public paucity in the recent British election concluded today. Beginning in Churchillian tones, he laments "What infuriated me most about this general election was that never has so much been missed by so many."
After Ozymandias: Will Britain’s Labour Party Miss the Energy Revolution?
By
Alan Simpson
Alan Simpson has posted another insightful and witty skewering of British political elites--this time in the Labour Party. As a former Labour MP himself, his essay is as much a cri de coeur from one of their own as a warning to the party's leadership that they might well fall into the trap set for them by the Tories and become locked into a policy straight jacket.
Blinded by the lights? Or Just Blinded–British Energy Policy
By
Alan Simpson
Alan Simpson blasts Britain's ruling party and government bureaucrats for an ideologically driven rush to a "capacity market" in response to a "manufactured," that is, imaginary, crisis.
Renewables International: Energy politics ‘after the Milk Round’ or Nuclear in Great Britain
By
Alan Simpson
With £37bn of financial promises and loan guarantees still pledged to Hinkley Point C, the Coalition is still betting heavily on Milk Rounds. And with unlimited endorsements of 'Fracking' and further oil exploration, Britain also looks set to remain a nation of exhaust-fumes inhalers for a long time to come. . . Will Labour ride in to the rescue? Not as things stand. Almost as a replica of how the SPD found itself left behind by the German Energiewende transformation, Labour still finds itself surrounded by Old Energy interests that will not make it round the racecourse.
The Draft Energy Bill: Britain’s Energy Future lost
By
Alan Simpson
Alan Simpson, former MP for Nottingham South and leader of the parliamentary campaign for British feed-in tariffs, deconstructs the coalition government's proposal to create "contracts for differences" in the government's not-so-veiled attempt to build new nuclear power plants. . .
Transforming the energy market has far more to do with power – democratic power – than with electricity: Allies in Energiewende
By
Alan Simpson
The new book by Labour Party leaders is about power and power relations. About the choices people have to power their homes and businesses. About influencing the cost of energy. And about local government and community organisations as low carbon energy providers. . .
British MPs in Commons Laud German Feed Law
By
Alan Simpson
Alan Simpson MP (Labour) in the Commons 21 March 2007 My thanks to Dave Eliott of the Open University ... Read more
