All power to the Chinese

I am all against nuclear missiles and the expensive submarines that carry them about, but all for nuclear power. Regular readers may remember the post on this subject at reference 1.

But along with Simon Jenkins (of the 'Guardian' on this occasion), I am a bit puzzled about this nuclear power deal with the Chinese - the Hinkley Point deal which no-one else wanted to touch. One can vaguely understand the Tory obsession with privatisation, even if the main result is to feather the nests of their pals, even if one does not agree with it and even, as in this case, one never really privatises such a large chunk of the critical national infrastructure. Governments will always, and always should, meddle. But do we really have to pay the Chinese so much for them to provide some finance and carry some of the risk? Risks which are always alive and well with massive projects of this sort. Jenkins thinks that we are committed to paying the equivalent of a 10% interest rate for a very long time, at a time when the rest of us are getting 0% for our money.

It also looks rather expensive at £25 billion or so - well over half of what the much fancier fusion project noticed at reference 2 is said to be costing.

And then there is the question of national security. The Chinese are getting to have rather a large finger in our critical national infrastructure pie, and what is going to happen if push ever came to shove in the Pacific? Do they see us as a soft target compared with the US, which takes a rather more robust line in these matters? Or are we craftily hedging our bets, as the Chinese are hardly going to want to take down a country containing so much of their investment and generating such a splendid income stream for them. For a parallel case, see the first part of reference 3.

Or is it just another case of continuing to live beyond our means, getting even deeper into hock with the big players of the loan shark world? The Tories might be trying to haul in the deficit boat, but even they dare not haul it in too fast. In the meantime, I dare say that all the pals mentioned above will be able to fiddle away while Rome burns, as it were.

PS: and talking of pals, what about the ridiculous sailing yacht that some Russian gangster/oligarch has had built in Kiel? I hope we are not paying for it through our utility bills or whatever.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/magic-bullet.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/big-doughnuts.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=huawei.