Saltire

Ok, I've set myself up for that, I just hope the boy does well for us. Can anyone suggest a good movie I can watch on Wednesday evening as there's nothing decent on the telly????

Look, I reacted badly to something and then reacted in a worse way to the responses. I'm sure Ayr fans now just want to talk about the transfer window not my issues with the OF. I apologise to Ayr fans for the distraction on an exciting day at the end of the window.

Look, I've clearly reacted in an extreme way to this and my views on the problems caused by the OF are pretty rigid. I said it might make me do something rash like walk away. I've followed Ayr United for decades, I'm just really disappointed in this, but no-one else seems to be as exercised as me. I've made my point and been shot down by everyone. So focus on the transfer news.

I've never watched an OF match in my life anywhere. I though our club was a safe haven.

For as long as they show that, yes.

Absolutely, it's an aberration.

It's not a football match, it's a vile festival of bigotry and we should have nothing to do with it. For all his faults, Lachlan would never have allowed that.

Sorry but they are a curse on Scottish football. It will finish me.

What the hell is going on with Cameron's Bar showing the OF match live on Wednesday. Absolutely disgraceful, that could finish me with Ayr Utd for as long as they do that.

Yes, that's what I said above, I had hoped for a top tip to get it to work.

SPFL - Portal

I got to the SPFL page but the live videos don't seem to be available.

How do you get access?

I completely agree that overall energy demand is a huge issue and I am passionate about the energy question having worked in the sector for decades. Your quote is slightly out of context as the peak electrical demand figure I used was to emphasise the scale of Scotwind, in that context, and the funding/ borrowing required to deliver it. Believe me, I'm intimately involved in the sector and understand the scale of electrification of heat and transport and what that means for electrical infrastructure. You can see the forecast capacity expansion for EVs and heat pumps proposed by each DNO in their ED2 submissions for 2023-28 which still leaves a long way to go to decarbonise. This topic is worthy of its own thread rather than being lost in various others.

The video on B&W Tv (and twitter) is great. Well done to the four of them for getting into the spirit of Scottish culture and to the club for wishing us all a happy Burns Night. Hopefully it will be followed by a happy Saturday.

We certainly have not. We now have the potential to tap into the cheapest source of energy available to us which can bring down the cost of energy to our homes and businesses, it opens up the possibility of locating massive data centres and other major technology employers here. Manufacturing looks for cheap (and increasingly) clean energy and guess what we'll have in abundance? Storage technologies are advancing as well so we will be able to smooth out the peaks and troughs and perhaps export tertiary fuels. In order to get our surplus power to the overseas market, we need investment in large scale HVDC links costing £billions to construct and operate. The scale of investment cost is almost as mind boggling as the scale of the resource. How would we deliver this purely in the public sector either from a standing start or over what period? I have worked in the energy sector for decades and the scale of this is remarkable. It took a long time and a lot of money to establish the publicly owned energy sector in the 20th century in a very different landscape. I'm not saying it can't be done but how would it be done and who would do it? I'm not a disciple of Adam Smith or trickle down economics but although we won't have the bulk of manufacturing jobs, the construction activity and ongoing operation and maintenance of the assets will generate large amounts of economic activity in Scotland for decades to come.

That's not how it works, the projects are developed based on generating a return over the life of the assets. On the scale that we're looking at here, there will be a huge amount of debt used to fund the schemes, simple payback is never used to justify them or they wouldn't fly. There will a required rate of return based one each participants' hurdle rate and in theory as long as the net present value of the project is positive for the asset's life you are making your return servicing your debt and making a profit from it. These rates will be quite low in today's debt market and will be paying our pensions in the future as well as keeping the lights on. There is no reason why a state owned company couldn't be a share holder and boost the public purse. There will be a sell off of shares in a number of these schemes as they progress through development.

I think there is a legitimate case for public ownership to be made and I'm sure it will be by those who support it, or a variation of it. I'm not sure what elements of the economic model has failed in your analysis so it would be good to hear a bit more of your view but I do think fuel poverty is unacceptable and is about to get worse. Since my younger days I've come round to accepting that we will live in a mixed economy and the balance of private to publicly owned assets will be driven by the government of the day. Even if we end up publicly owning the assets, we'll need to borrow from banks and pay private businesses for the equipment and labour to install the assets. It also makes sense to me to leave the decommissioning liabilities with them. A fair taxation system on profits from generation, transmission and distribution will give us national income and leave the challenges of operating the assets to others. To be frank we can't set up a publicly owned industry on the scale required overnight even if we wanted to. In the case of the Scotwind auction, the projects won't all come on line at once, it will take a couple of decades.

This forum is absolutely about debate, but I'm not sure if you've fully appreciated the scale of this auction round. The figure awarded are for 25GW of offshore wind generation capacity, 5 or 6 times Scotland's peak demand. The capital cost for offshore wind is coming down quickly but recent capital costs are between £2m and £4m per MW installed. Extrapolating this: Total Capital costs £50bn - 100bn Scotland's GDP in 2020 was around £150bn Scotland's (understated in my opinion) tax revenue in 2019 was around £12bn I'm not sure where we would borrow the money required to invest on that scale on top of everything else that needs to be done in the energy transition and ongoing capital and revenue investment elsewhere. However, like our oil and gas, this resource is a bankable asset when it comes to borrowing in the bond markets It seems to me that a fair tax regime to take revenue from these resources (and address fuel poverty) is a lower risk than trying to do it all ourselves in the public sector. Doing that is a legitimate view, but perhaps a much more difficult funding model. The key here is surely to reap the rewards of a sustainable energy source that allows Scotland to export a colossal energy surplus for income and pioneer large scale energy storage of this immense resource. I have been involved in previous rounds of offshore auctions but not this one.

It was focused on retail with the option to move into generation should that be desired. Post privatization, the energy landscape is very complex. Only Scottish Power is vertically integrated now (generation, transmission, distribution and retail under a single owner) in the south of Scotland. Energy transmission and distribution assets and operational responsibilities are spread across a small number of license holders (three transmission and 14 distribution for electricity and a similar split for natural gas). Each has a use of system charge for transporting energy to our homes, businesses or consumers which are added to our energy bills, which is how those companies earn their incomes. There are many generators trading in the market but a severely contracting number of retail suppliers As is all too apparent from the recent spate of energy supplier failures, the ability to buy gas and power in advance and hedge prices is key to surviving. A publicly owned provider would need to function in the same way, a complex model for a state owned company and fraught with challenges on fairness in the market with the taxpayer potentially bailing it out if required. In the generation space, the ability to generate and sell into the market is also complex with various contracts in place including ROCs, CFDs, STOR, Balancing Mechanism etc as well as simply selling at spot price. Some generators have a business model built on a split of CFD and merchant trading. The industry is also full of joint ventures including state owned companies from other parts of the world being active here. None of this means that there can't be Scottish Government owned energy companies or shares in joint ventures, including energy networks, which opens up an interesting conversation on earning money for a sovereign wealth fund as well as tax revenue across the energy lifecycle. After all, prior to privatization, the UK government owned just about everything, but it would not be a rapid start-up. That is before you even begin to address the debate on nationalisation of the sector. I suspect this is a debate that will be expanded into the broader independence debate. I'm looking forward to that as I have a few opinions in this space.

The CalMac situation is a failure of project governance. As a project matures the scope, cost and schedule need to be firmed up and then frozen. Making changes once the detail design is complete and construction is under way is a recipe for disaster. There are many, many examples of this around the world on everything up to and including mega projects. It always makes me sigh when you see politicians of all parties ask why the cost of a project has increased significantly from the first cost estimate given. That is simply down to the level of definition at the "idea" stage. World class organizations recognize that the tolerance on an initial "idea" cost estimate can be in the -50% to +100% depending on the complexity and how much design work has been completed at that stage. There are recognised norms in cost estimation which give typical ratios of design work required to develop a cost estimate. You need to spend money to go to from an idea, to conceptual design (identify realistic potential concepts), then feasibility design (to select your preferred option), Front end engineering design or FEED and sometimes pre-FEED design to firm up the scope and cost estimates on your selected option, then your into the detail design which is the final build design which should give your final cost estimate. More sophisticated estimates will include deterministic and probalistic elements which should allow for better risk management with funds to drawdown when risk become issues. I have always been frustrated that many economists (and accountants) seem to thing the first valuation at the ideas stage is a reliable number. I'm not suggesting that is the case for Alf Baird and I seem to remember he had previously identified the potential benefits of Scottish independence to the maritime sector. The CalMac situation was a shambles. I'm an SNP voter. I'm positive that lessons will be learnt. I'm also keen to see from the reviews if the (civil service) Major Projects Authority was involved in the governance here. I have met some of the senior managers in that organization and those principles, if applied, should demand appropriate governance. I'm not sure if ClaMac is independent of that approach, it shouldn't be in my opinion. I'm certainly not a cultist, this one was a shambles. The costs will end up at over £200m (+100%) for two new ferries. They will be late and expensive, but will go into service. What value will come from the £156m spent by the party you support on useless PPE contracts?

This is great news, a young supporter living the dream we all had! He's a big strong lad for 17 with great potential. Hopefully we see him get more minutes over the rest of the season and he bangs in a few goals. Another Academy Graduate makes the grade, cause for celebration not disappointment.

I think stadiums are being reviewed next week, with tomorrow being a weekly update.

They're due to be reviewed next week, where are you seeing this?