The state of the UK

[pErvinalia]

It has been rethought. Steel is already being made with hydrogen.

[JimC]

Won't work, a lot of steelmaking technology turns around controling the carburisation of the iron... if you heat it with a carbonless fuel, you'll have to rethink steel making from square one.

The carbon is used in what is known as a reduction reaction to grab oxygen atoms from iron oxide, thus leaving elemental iron but obviously producing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Under the right conditions, hydrogen can also act as a reducing agent. When it grabs oxygen atoms, all that is produced is steam...

It's true that a small amount of carbon is also required for steel alloys, but adding this would not be difficult...

[Brian Peacock]

Aye, just chuck a bag of petrol station barbie coal in and she'll be golden right enough.

[JimC]

The funny thing is that when iron is smelted, it's left with too high a % of dissolved carbon, which makes it brittle. Steel making involves lowering this % (but not to zero), usually by blowing oxygen into the molten iron to remove some of the carbon, again producing carbon dioxide...

[rainbow]

The funny thing is that when iron is smelted, it's left with too high a % of dissolved carbon, which makes it brittle. Steel making involves lowering this % (but not to zero), usually by blowing oxygen into the molten iron to remove some of the carbon, again producing carbon dioxide...

Yes, pig iron could be added to the smelt of H2 reduced iron to make a low carbon steel.

[Scot Dutchy]

Dictator Johnson:

The Conservatives are shrinking the state – to make room for money and privilege

Boris Johnson’s talk of restoring sovereignty is a lie. He is handing democratic power to economic elites, not the people

The question that divides left from right should no longer be “how big is the state?”, but “to whom should its powers be devolved?”. In his conference speech last week, Boris Johnson recited the standard Tory mantra: “The state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it.” But what he will never do is stand back and let the people get on with it.

The Conservative promise to shrink the state was always a con. But it has seldom been as big a lie as it is today. Johnson grabs powers back from parliament with both fists, invoking Henry VIII clauses to prevent MPs from voting on crucial legislation, stitching up trade deals without parliamentary scrutiny, shutting down remote participation, so that MPs who are shielding at home can neither speak nor vote, and shutting down parliament altogether, when it suits him.

He seeks to seize powers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the internal market bill appears to enable Westminster to take back control of devolved policies. He imposes the will of central government on local authorities, refusing to listen to mayors and councils while dropping new coronavirus measures on their cities. He claws back powers from the people, curtailing our ability to shape planning decisions; shutting down legal challenges to government policy; using the Coronavirus Act and the covert human intelligence sources bill to grant the police inordinate power over our lives.

His promises to restore sovereignty are lies. While using the language of liberation, he denies power to both people and parliament. He promised to curtail the state, but under his government, the state is bursting back into our lives, breaking down our doors, expanding its powers while reducing ours.

Instead, he gives power away to a thing he calls “the market”, which is a euphemism for the power of private money. This power is concentrated in a small number of hands. When Johnson talks of standing back and letting the private sector get on with it, he means that democratic power is being surrendered to oligarchs.

[JimC]

Instead, he gives power away to a thing he calls “the market”, which is a euphemism for the power of private money. This power is concentrated in a small number of hands. When Johnson talks of standing back and letting the private sector get on with it, he means that democratic power is being surrendered to oligarchs.

I think that is well put. But that power operates in all western societies, even before such aggressive moves by the Tories. In many places, that corporate power, while still powerful, is mitigated by many small checks and balances. Corporate power frets at any such limitations, however minor, and given suitable political shills, will push back hard...

[Scot Dutchy]

Covid is the horn of plenty for consultancy companies (read Boris's friends):

Government spending on Covid consultancy contracts rises to £175m

Chair of parliamentary committee expresses ‘shock’ and announces investigation

The bill for private consultants hired by the government to help combat the coronavirus pandemic has climbed to £175m, as the chair of an influential parliamentary committee revealed that MPs would investigate the multimillion pound use of management consultancies.

The government has bought consulting services from almost 90 different companies as it scrambled to fill gaps in the civil service’s pandemic response.

Disclosed spending on consultants has risen by £65m since the end of August, a 35% increase, according to contracts collated by the data company Tussell.

The newly disclosed spending included work on setting up and running the malfunctioning test-and-trace system, procuring medicines, buying personal protective equipment and supporting the government’s contact-tracing app.

The rapid increase in the consultancy bill in recent weeks to a new total of £175m was partly driven by belated publication of contracts. Tussell’s analysis showed that government bodies took 80 days on average to publish the contracts. The statutory maximum is 30 days.

The latest figures emerged in the same week it was revealed that executives at Boston Consulting Group, the fourth biggest recipient of coronavirus consulting contracts, were being paid as much as £6,250 a day to work on the struggling NHS test-and-trace system.

The government’s reliance on expensive management consultants has come under scrutiny during the pandemic. Lord Agnew, the Cabinet Office and Treasury minister, last month said the civil service had been infantilised by an unacceptable reliance on consultants.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the public accounts committee, said on Thursday she was shocked by the increase in consultancy costs, adding that her committee had launched an inquiry into the government’s use of consultants.

“What on earth are they doing? It is a very steep increase in a very short space of time. You cannot just tear up the rules and dish out taxpayers’ money in this way,” Hillier said.

What are friends for?

[Brian Peacock]

Funnily enough, Serco, who are providing the branded 'NHS Track & Track' service, asylum-seeker detention centres, and prison security and prisoner transport, among other things, has just released a very rose annual report and seen a healthy jump in its share price.

[Scot Dutchy]

I bet.

[Brian Peacock]

Government issues 5 contracts to a pest control firm with no assets and no experience in procurement to supply PPE, to the tune of £300m+ pounds.

More money awarded to a pest control company

You may remember Crisp Websites Limited, trading as PestFix, the company with last reported net assets of £18,047.

On the 10th June, we sent a judicial review pre-action protocol letter to the Government asking why it had agreed to pay 75% upfront for isolation suits worth £32m, to PestFix. PestFix had materially no assets, no experience in supplying PPE for use in a medical setting, and has since admitted supplying faulty facemasks. Along with EveryDoctor, we have issued judicial review proceedings and will have a hearing in late February.

Today we learned Government had awarded a further five PPE contracts to PestFix for £313.7m for facemasks, gloves, and gowns. Government was obliged to publish these details within 30 days of the award of the contracts but, although five of these six were awarded in April, it is only today, six months later, that it has finally complied with its legal obligations.

And we know, from this written answer to a Parliamentary Question, that there are (at least) five more contracts awarded to PestFix still to be published.

Government’s choice of counterparty for a third of a billion pounds of public money defies all rational explanation. How – and why – was this lucky beneficiary of huge state largess chosen? And why is the Government so persistently, and unlawfully, late in coming clean?

https://goodlawproject.org/news/more-mo ... al%20media

[Scot Dutchy]

The address of Pest Fix?

Unit 1d Littlehampton Marina, Ferry Road, Littlehampton, West Sussex, BN17 5DS

Dodgy? Must have a nice offshore account

When you look through Companies House it is quite amazing:

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... pointments

It just stinks.

[Scot Dutchy]

So judges want to control the UK in order to protect democracy. That whole idea is wrong. There is no democracy to protect and those doing the protecting are from the unelected ruling class who always have against democracy.

UK needs judges to limit government power, says Lord Kerr

Longest-serving supreme court justice says healthy democracy requires checks on ministers

The last thing the country needs is a government in which ministers exercise “unbridled power”, the UK’s longest serving supreme court justice has said.

In a forthright defence of the courts system, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, who stood down at the end of last month, said judicial checks on the government were part of a healthy democracy.

Kerr said he understood why governments became “irritated” by legal challenges but warned that attacking lawyers was “not profitable”.

His comments follow criticism from the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the home secretary, Priti Patel, of “activist” and “lefty human rights” lawyers whom they blame for obstructing immigration controls and “hamstringing” the criminal justice system.

The government has also created a panel of experts to examine how judicial review challenges are dealt with by the courts, saying it wants to balance the right of citizens to question government policy in court against the executive’s ability to govern effectively.

[Brian Peacock]

Ha. Because democracy could be better there's no point in trying to not make it any worse!

[Scot Dutchy]

How can you make it worse? Democracy is like being pregnant. You cant be half pregnant. You have democracy or you dont. I suppose you can have phantom pregnancy.