Of subsea cables and motorbikes

+The Sunday Times rich list has been published again, and yet again I haven’t made it. It doesn’t extend to 53,456, 890 people apparently (still, in global terms I imagine I would still be in the top 10% Anybody in the West with a decentish income shouldn’t complain.) The list shows that some billionaires have lost a bit lately, but there’s plenty of newcomers itching to take their place in the rankings. I looked up one who was flagged as being one of Yorkshire’s quids-in wonders, Halifax-born Greg Jackson who is the CEO of Octopus Energy. This firm recently swept up Shell Energy’s retail customers and its growth has made it a major market player. It promotes its green credentials and top rated service. All well and good, so perhaps I can on this occasion relax my usual cynical attitude and say ‘good show.’ I am impressed too by Jackson’s vision (according to Wikipedia) ‘He is also an angel investor in companies including  Xlinks, which is building the world's largest subsea cable to bring renewable energy from Morocco to the UK ,[6] ...’ I campaigned long ago for precisely this kind of cable, then (c.2008) working with the Italian embassy to try to garner interest in investing in cables bringing solar energy from the Sahara across to Italy and up into Europe. Part of the problem of course was the unstable political conditions in North Africa. If only Gaddafi had been a bit more intelligent he could have developed a new and permanent income stream for his regime—and possibly saved it. He didn’t. What a dickhead. So, now we have new possibilities maybe coming to fruition, and I applaud anyone seeking to make it happen. Donkey’s years ago I think it was Al Gore who said that a 300 sq. mile patch of solar panels in the Sahara could provide all of our global electricity demand. Wikipedia tells us that ‘Octopus’s credentials as a disrupter have helped win the backing of investors including  Generation Investment Management, chaired by former US vice-president Al Gore.’ Could this be a case of wealth putting its money where its mouth is? On the flip side of course is the fact that some of the regimes which bask under a lot of sunshine are not to our taste. But let’s face it, sunshine is healthier than fossil fuels, and we were always happy to deal with tyrants to get our hands on the black stuff. I expect to hear a lot more about this subject from Ed Miliband in the not too distant future.
 
+Writing in the New Statesman Wolfgang Münchau writes of the death of print media, lamenting perhaps that people like him who write for print are effectively no longer relevant. Young people have long since given up on print media. Who can blame them when a newspaper costs so much and has to be bought, carried around and disposed of (oh, and read)? But it’s not a new phenomenon. When I was involved in the radical alternative Hull paper, The Post, (a radically unimaginative title) I was invited to speak to a class of students in a North Hull comprehensive about ‘news’. I think what I had to say was as intelligible to them as if I had spoken in Mandarin. When I naively asked what they looked for in a newspaper I elicited one response: ‘motorbike adverts.’ This was before the internet. What’s pitifully left of the regional press would barely satisfy even that appetite.