Saturday, June 18, 2022

I am too tired to be frightened

The Crown Estate published its annual results a couple of days ago, might as well have put them on a bonfire in the garden for all they attention they attracted.

Capital value: The value of the Marine portfolio increased by 22% to £5.0 billion, driven largely by offshore wind, in particular leasing Round 4.

I wrote about this twice in February 2021 (by yer, and over by yer). The Queen owns, and can dispose of as she sees fit, all the rights to offshore power generation in UK territorial waters. Tony Blair's government ceded this to the Crown in 2004. And nobody except me seems to think it was outrageous! It is not as if all the North Sea oil was hers, it is a precedent set comparatively recently for all it sounds medieval. The value of this "gesture" to Her Majesty increased by a billion quid last year. (OK strictly 0.9 billion but you get the point.) Where are the headlines? 

Before I get back down off my soapbox, let's raise the small matter, once more, of the Government's insane half a billion pound investment in the OneWeb satellite constellation (74 employees at the time the money was spunked up). I have been banging on about this for two years now. They launched their satellites from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Oops, what with Russian sanctions, Russian retaliation 'n all. Chalk another one up to Dominic Cummings, strategic genius.

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