Blowing with the Wind
Is our energy minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, deliberately misleading us, or simply relaying the party line when she says “although it was too early to say how much the transition to hydrogen would cost individual households, it was likely to be ‘very small’”? Where are the quantification of comparative costs and a rational analysis of practicalities? One would expect Mrs Trevelyan, as a Chartered Accountant, to have models for how much electricity will be needed in 2050, by what sector (homes, road traffic etc), safety, suitability (batteries are fine for cars but a bit heavy for aircraft) and what the alternatives would cost us. If she has, we have not seen them. During the pandemic, we have been battered by models of Covid infections, hospital admissions, deaths and R numbers. SAGE was publishing the models and the government, we were assured, was being guided by the science. When it comes to climate change however, the science is focused on the proximity of the end of the world as we know it, not the evaluation of alternative palliatives. Government tells us not to worry, a zero carbon 2050 will provide electricity from wind farms, hydrogen will replace North Sea gas, the economy will be stimulated thereby and the impact on consumers’ pockets, whilst they have no idea of what it will be, will be very little. One could regard that as blowing with the wind.
Meanwhile, the electorate is being softened up by an immediate increase of at least £139 a year for millions of households in electricity prices. The outlook is complicated by a new era of inflation which the Bank of England does not appear to recognise. The Bank predicts 3 percent inflation which would mean that, in 2050, it would take £236 to buy what costs £100 today. Others forecast an immediate increase to over 4 percent and remaining at that level. In that event, it would need £312 in 2050 to buy what costs £100 today. Clearly the man in the street will have difficulty in distinguishing increased energy costs due to government zero carbon policies from general inflation.
The reluctance of the Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, to come clean about the arithmetic manifested itself in last December’s Energy White Paper. Pages 60 – 63, of this 170 page document, are devoted to modelling. Only one actual model is presented (Figure 4.1) which depicted all sources of electricity production having decreasing carbon emissions, reaching zero by 2050 – except whilst the total does indeed reach zero MtCO2e/year, the subtotals seem to add up to about 100 MtCO2e/year. The rest is motherhood about the government’s commitment to modelling, which will all be open and published (except when they will not be). No specifics are provided on the variables, their hypothesised relationships nor when the models will be published.
Although energy can be produced in other ways, the story is really all about electricity. Hydrogen is not a source of energy; it is a storage intermediary because whether it is produced from natural gas (and water) with carbon capture and sequestration (blue) or from the electrolysis of water by renewable electricity (green), it takes more energy to make than it delivers as energy carried by the hydrogen. These losses are inevitable; the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics applies. Its value for policy lies in its ability to decarbonise otherwise intractable sectors, such as heavier transport and industrial process heat. Its value as storing energy excesses from renewables such as wind power is overstated because the economics are concerning; very expensive electricity results in extremely expensive hydrogen.
Electricity can be produced in only two ways, renewables (mostly wind and sun) which are better termed “uncontrollables”, and controllables (nuclear, biogenic waste and other power stations). Models need to show the likely available output from controllables and uncontrollables in the run up to 2050. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) must have such models but they do not seem to have been published and subjected to independent audit. Given the lead time needed for the large conventional nuclear power stations envisaged today and the fossil fuel power stations which are unlikely fully to have been decommissioned by then, these data should be readily available. One should add the potential output of electricity from small modular nuclear reactors, molten salt reactors and from biogenic waste. Several of the small-scale alternatives to large scale nuclear should be producing electricity in Canada and the USA well before Sizewell C. The White Paper has 15 references to small modular, e.g. that proposed by Rolls Royce, and molten salt reactors. The White Paper has 15 references to the modular ones but only about research and innovation, none to their predicted output or costs. There is no reference to molten salt reactors despite the many presentations made to BEIS, nor to biogenic waste. A former president of the World Biogas Association (no, that is not the United Nations) reports that “capturing half of this waste would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent and generate energy equivalent to 32 percent of the natural gas used worldwide.”
One has to suspect that the government’s infatuation with hydrogen owes more to lobbying by the big gas companies, who want to produce it from natural gas, than it does to independent analysis. Unfortunately for them, the kind of hydrogen they would like to produce (from their natural gas resources) not only uses more energy than it replaces but, according to research reported this month in Fortune, could also produce 20 percent more carbon emissions than conventional natural gas power stations. Yet “according to the [UK] government’s projections, the British domestic hydrogen industry could...power 35% of the UK’s energy consumption by 2050.” We might be not only better off burning the natural gas but cleaner too.
Hydrogen enthusiasts believe that the answer lies in producing green hydrogen from renewable electricity and the electrolysis of water. This too requires more electricity than it replaces but it generates only low levels of CO2 emissions. Commercial green hydrogen plants have been announced rather than realised. 2030 is regarded as a start date and becoming a substantial part of the market by 2050 might seem a bit ambitious.
Even if the emissions problem is cracked, the inefficiency of hydrogen relative to electricity, not to mention safety issues, remain. Road traffic has been using batteries for over a century; their technology and production are racing ahead. Fuel cells are charged by hydrogen (usually) and have pluses and minuses when compared with batteries, mostly lighter weight and longer use, but can be regarded as subsidiary to the main hydrogen issues.
The only point in converting homes from gas to hydrogen when electricity is already wired in and could be cheaper, is to cope with spikes in home usage, e.g. in cold weather. And one has to worry about sending the much more flammable hydrogen down 100 or more year old pipes, many designed for coal gas. A high pressure hydrogen network would be much more demanding – and expensive. There have been quite enough gas explosions already. There has been only one major problem (in Norway in 2019) with hydrogen and petrol sharing the same forecourts to date but it is an alarming combination.
There will surely be a place for green hydrogen in the zero carbon economy, perhaps for aircraft, but it will certainly not be the saviour BEIS is touting it to be. Electricity will be used directly where it can be and stored in a variety of ways when immediate usage is not feasible, hydrogen merely being one.
What is of greater importance is that BEIS should publish their models of our electricity needs, by sector, which will be far greater than now, given a rapidly increasing population and reduction of other forms of temperature control and energy provision. We need to see the arithmetic of how those needs will be met, the alternatives and comparative costs. Those models need independent challenge to the point where there is consensus on the realities. We need a reduction in the government’s blowing with the wind of fashionable ideas. As Mr Gradgrind would have put it, “Now, what I want is, Facts.”
An interesting exposure of the cost of trade barriers
Of course, the writers here manage to get the benefits of trade the wrong way around but still, a useful estimation of those phytosanitary trade barriers can still be derived:
Exports from Ireland to Great Britain soared in the first six months after Brexit as imports sent in the opposite direction declined, according to Irish government figures.
In a sign of post-Brexit imbalances in trade, the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) said goods exports to Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) rose by 20% to €6.7bn (£5.7bn) in the first six months of 2021, an increase of more than €1.1bn compared with the same period in 2020.
However, imports from Great Britain fell by more than €2.5bn, or 32%, to stand at €5.3bn in the same period.
Imports are the benefit from trade, they are the thing that we do trade in order to gain. So, Ireland - the Irish consumer - is losing out here as a result of the increased barriers to trade while the British consumer is benefiting from the not increase in barriers to trade.
British exporters have been hit harder by Brexit because they faced border checks from 1 January on shipments to the EU, while Irish and EU exporters to Britain have benefited from a phased in approach the UK government opted for over a 12-month transition period.
It means while all food and plant exports to the EU have been subject to sanitary and phytosanitary checks since January, countries including Ireland selling into the UK are not being subject to the complete panoply of red tape until January 2022.
This may go some way to explain why exports of food and live animals from Ireland to Great Britain rose from €315m in June 2020 to €322m in June 2021, while imports to Ireland almost halved from €243m to €119m.
When the Irish - or the EU - put barriers in the way of trade then they benefit less from trade. This is not exactly a startling finding given the underlying logic here.
Just another proof that unilateral free trade is the only logically or morally useful stance to have on that subject of trade.
Facebook and antitrust
As all too many keep telling us, Facebook really is just the monopolist of our online time. Something must be done. That something being more political power over Facebook of course - the cry through the ages of those who would exercise political power.
If it all reminds you of the rise of another app more than a decade ago, that’s for good reason. With its 732 million monthly active users, TikTok is the app of the moment, and likely the app of the future. It’s the new Facebook.
So now we have that new Facebook. Which is pretty good evidence that the old one doesn’t have any form of monopoly. Or, to be more precise, that it’s an entirely contestable monopoly and therefore one that we don’t have to worry about.
Which leaves us just with those political calls for more political power over Facebook. There’s no antitrust justification - as there never is in contestable markets - so therefore it’s just that usual power grab from those who desire more political power.
All of which tells us what to do about those calls for more regulation. The Anglo Saxon Wave seems a useful reaction and for those who wish to remain strictly polite a simple rejection would be sufficient.
Competitive markets don’t require regulation because the competition within the market is the regulation required.
So, let's not do it that way then
Lord Sainsbury’s little think tank tells us that it’ll cost lots and lots of money to level up the UK if we follow the same plan and method as Germany did with the Eastern Lander after 1989. The useful conclusion from which is let’s not do it that way, let’s not try to level up the way Germany did with the Eastern Lander after 1989.
‘Levelling up’ cost will be close to £2tn price of German reunification, says think tank
Centre for Cities says schemes proposed by the Government for Boris Johnson’s flagship plan so far are a ‘drop in the ocean’
£2 trillion is around and about UK GDP. That is, everything produced and or consumed by everyone in the country in a year.
Centre for Cities said the schemes outlined so far by the government were a “drop in the ocean” and that closing the north-south divide would cost hundreds of billions of pounds over decades if done properly.
In a stark analysis shared with the Guardian, the non-partisan research group said England’s biggest cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, have the lowest productivity and life expectancy in western Europe.
The first and most obvious question is whether the people of Britain are interested enough in this problem to willingly give up an entire years’ worth of their economic life in order to solve this problem. We’d venture that the answer is probably no.
“So, Sir, or Madam as the case may be, would you like to live on nothing for a year to help Birmingham?”
“No” would only be the shortest of likely answers to that question even if the meaning wouldn’t change much, only the emphasis.
It might even be true that we should all do something to aid Birmingham all the same. Clearly though it’s not this. Not simply unloading those sheds of cash - as Germany did - in the hope that something nice will happen.
Our own view is that the necessary changes are already underway. This combination of working from home and the internet is making economic geography disconnect from physical geography anyway. Being on the network matters - and will only grow in importance - far more than precisely where one is. At which point economic activity will spread out across that physical geography entirely naturally.
We can see this happening already in prices. London rents and house prices are falling, those in the regional cities are rising. As is so often true we’re getting the political demand to spend fortunes just as the market unadorned solves the problem anyway.
We're about to see the Sunk Cost Fallacy in glorious action again
There are Nudge Units and pronouncements upon human economic fallibility all around us. Us folks don;t, in fact, approach the universe in the supremely calculating manner than certain economic models insist we do.
Except of course the models don’t insist, they just explore what would happen if we did. All of interesting economics is in explaining what happens when behaviour deviates from the model which is why we use such models. So that we can explore the deviations from them.
However, despite all this attention paid to such fallibilities we’re about to see the most monstrous display of the Sunk Cost Fallacy:
Conservative MPs are lining up to denounce HS2 in the Commons after more than 100,000 members of the public secured a debate on scrapping the high-speed rail line.
Senior Tories are preparing to urge ministers to put the project "out of its misery" as they point to spiralling costs and a shift to working from home as evidence that it should be cancelled and the £98 billion budget distributed elsewhere.
We know what’s going to happen next. There will be an outburst of shouting. But, we’ve already spent £1, £1 billion, £10 billion. If we don’t go on then all that will be wasted!
Sunk costs are sunk costs. This is money, those are resources, that have already been applied to this scheme, whatever it is. Whether we proceed with the scheme or not we will never get those resources, that money back. So, that we’ve already spent the cash is an irrelevance to the decision about whether we should proceed.
Our decision should be based upon whether the benefits from proceeding - from our current starting point - are greater than the costs of doing so. The past is indeed past and our decisions are about our path into the future that is.
We really are going to have multitudes shouting that we must not waste what is already spent. The problem with that shout being that what is already spent is already wasted. No decision can bring it back.
Now, whether HS2 should be cancelled or not is another matter. We have, often enough, pointed out that it should never have been started and recent changes just make that more true. But the welcome cancellation isn’t the point here. Rather, that the decision must be taken using the right metrics.
Sunk costs are sunk costs. What has already been spent is irrelevant. The decision must rest upon what is to be gained from spending how much given our current starting point?
This is politics so it won’t be but then bully for politics as a method of spending money then.
This seems entirely sensible, even desirable, to us
A complaint that the Treasury is not greeting each and every green - or climate change related - demand for spending with an open chequebook:
The Treasury is blocking green policies essential to put the UK on track to net zero emissions, imperilling the UK’s own targets and the success of vital UN climate talks, experts have told the Guardian.
A string of policies, from home insulation to new infrastructure spending, have been scrapped, watered down or delayed. Rows about short term costs have dominated over longer term warnings that putting off green spending now will lead to much higher costs in future.
This seems entirely sensible, even desirable, to us. Someone, somewhere, does need to be asking whether any particular piece of expenditure is worth it. Yes, even about climate change. Even if we accept that something must be done it’s still necessary to examine each thing for value:
Boris Johnson is planning to launch a £400 million boiler scrappage scheme offering people £7,000 grants to encourage homeowners to buy low carbon alternatives.
Well, is that worth it?
Energy Catapult Analysis shows that in 2017, the average household generated 2,745 kg of CO2 emissions from heating,
OK, 3 tonnes at the Stern Review’s $80 per tonne is $240 per year. A 2.8% return (note the £7k is sterling) before we even think about the full cost, this is just for the subsidy? No, that might well not be worth it.
Our point though being that someone, somewhere, has to be asking this question. For it is not true that agreement on there being a problem which requires a solution means fiscal incontinence. Quite the opposite - resources are scarce in this universe therefore the larger the problem the more efficient we have to be with our use of said scarce resources.
Even with agreement that climate change must be dealt with it is still true that each bit of dealing with it needs to pass the cost benefit test. If it’s not going to be the Treasury which does this then all wallets are at risk, no?
If only Oxfam would think for a little bit
This is alarmingly ill-thought out:
Oxfam’s version is particularly ill-thought out: “a one-off 99pc levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic”.
As is normal - as a result of the creation of a political statistic - these days the measurement of gains is done from March 18 2020. Which was the lowest point for the S&P 500 following a 29% fall as the arrival of the pandemic became obvious. That’s being more than usually aggressive in loading the number by careful choice.
But think a little larger. Taxing - as we do with capital gains taxes - when people crystallize a gain seems reasonable enough. At which point we also allow, as we must, people to count their losses as well. The demand here is to tax uncrystallized gains. At which point we’ve also got to untax uncrystallized losses.
Which produces an interesting example. Bill Hwang just lost $20 billion as Archegos imploded. What’s his tax refund under this new idea then?
That is, it’s entirely true that some billionaires made money over the past 15 months or so. Some other billionaires lost money over that same past 15 months. Just the basic idea of the rule of law insists that profits and losses on the same issue get treated equally.
It’s not actually obvious that taxing changes in wealth over the course of the pandemic would raise any money at all. Which is a pretty bad advertisement for a new tax really, isn’t it?
Not to particularly defend Tyson Chicken here
But there’s an important word missing from The Guardian’s report here:
Tyson and the other three top firms control about 87% of poultry production in the state. Economists and food justice advocates largely agree that consumers, farmers, workers, small companies and the planet lose out if the top four firms control 40% or more of any market.
We’re pretty sure “the planet” is mentioned there just because it’s stylish to do so at present. The missing word though is “some” before “economists”.
For this is actually what the argument about antitrust is. The pencil sketch is that some - note some - are shouting that market concentration is in itself the bad thing. Boo! Hiss! More government power! Others, the more rational, are arguing that only market concentration and thus economic power that is exercised to the detriment of consumers matters and only at that point should government do something.
You might guess which side of the argument we’re on from the language used there.
As an example, Google certainly has a significant portion of the search engine market yet they’ve not deployed that power to try to charge for access. Consumer harm therefore doesn’t seem to exist. Chicken has been getting cheaper for generations - what consumer harm is there here?
That is, by that omission of the word “some” in front of economists there The Guardian has entirely plumped for the one side of the argument. Which is their right, of course, no one in Britain at least expects the press to be impartial, we’re not that silly. But it is worth pointing the bias out.
The heart of the current antitrust disagreements is whether potential economic power needs to be regulated or whether it is only exercised economic power, economic power exercised to the detriment of consumers, which does.
We’re on the side arguing that concentration itself, the potential for economic power, is an interesting marker of when the important thing, the consumer detriment, might be possible. But it is not the thing itself which is to be worried about - nor regulated. For government to leap in requires that the power is being exercised and thereby harming consumers.
Government might not be a sensible way to build infrastructure
We have the news that the American infrastructure bill has passed, passed the Senate at least:
The package will direct $550 billion in new spending towards infrastructure projects including $110 billion for roads and bridges; $66 billion for rail projects; $25 billion for airports and $65 billion to expand high-speed internet access.
We’ve never quite believed those estimates of how many trillions need to be spent on the infrastructure. For the number comes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the very people who would have lovely jobs spending all the money allocated to infrastructure. That sounds much too much like asking your barber if you need a haircut to us.
It’s possible to note that only about half of the infrastructure bill is actually being spent upon infrastructure. Which does seem more than a little wasteful.
We’d also point out that if there really is a $4 trillion backlog in maintenance then clearly politics isn’t the right way to be managing the maintenance of infrastructure.
We’d add two more little critiques. That money being sent to Amtrack for rail projects:
In remote wilderness expanses along the Canadian border like northern Montana, Amtrak is the only way for non-drivers to get to somewhere else. Southern Montana wants restoration of the route that used to connect its major cities, Billings, Bozeman, Helena, and Missoula, please and thank you. No private rail operator would ever serve the tiny towns of Libby (population 2703) or Browning (population about 1,000), the tribal headquarters of the Blackfeet Nation. Amtrak does.
Running trains between places with 1k and 2k populations simply isn’t sensible whoever is paying for it. What portion of either population wishes to be in the other place 120 miles away on any particular day? Given that this one bill alone is offering $2,000 per annual passenger movement to Amtrack it’s almost certainly cheaper to hire the occasional taxi. Even, just to buy a car and leave it on the edge of town - one or the other - with the keys in.
Allocating this much money to such rail routes simply isn’t sensible - but then that’s politics as an allocation mechanism.
$65 billion to expand internet access also appears ludicrous. That’s $200 per head of population - man woman and child - and the vast majority already have that access. We really are sure that a single contract with just the one LEO supplier - just as an example you understand - could be had at a fraction of that price. Especially since having just the one billing point would remove much of the operating cost of such a system.
Our point is not that no government should ever be involved in any building of infrastructure. Nor that all infrastructure can or should always be built by private economic actors. Rather, we do all need to face up to the truth that government is a really lousy way of building infrastructure. Thus it should only be used to do so when it’s really, really, essential that it be so.
Let’s Get a Life While We Still Can
39 Victoria Street
SW1
“Humphrey.”
“Yes, Minister?”
“This Freedom Day thingy on July 19th has worked out very well.”
“If you say so, Minister.”
“Well, the doom-mongers were saying it would lead to another lockdown but cases are running at over 25,000 a day and nobody gives a damn. Freedom from fear, that’s what it is.”
“We certainly have less to worry about. The NHS is under less pressure, those of us who matter have all been double-jabbed and the young people catching it are out of work anyway.”
“Well really it’s turned out to be freedom from work, for our staff anyway. That’s what I need to discuss with you, Humphrey. As part of my keep-fit regime, I use the stairs instead of the ministers-only private lift and the thing is….the place is empty. There’s no one here.”
“It is indeed the case that work post-pandemic will not resemble the drudgery of the past. I thought the General Secretary of my own union, the First Division Association, put it very well when he said ‘These new working arrangements will bring employees greater flexibility and work-life balance and reduce costs for employers.’ We civil servants are ever the vanguard of change and I am proud that our people are leading the way. I am only here today, in all truth, because I heard you were making one of your periodic visits to the office.”
“Humphrey, it is August, the Queen is at Balmoral and there’s not much point in being in Whitehall if there is no one to talk, I mean work, with. But you guys have already had multiple holidays and you should be slaving away at your desks doing whatever it is you do. I cannot understand how you can supervise your people, if you cannot see them.”
“Our people, as you put it, lead the world in moral rectitude. If they tell me they are working at home, then I can be sure they are both working and at home.”
“Well the PM thinks they should be back in their offices and we should dock their pay if they don’t show up. I agreed with him and I’m sorry he backtracked on the idea. It was only the London weighting he was talking about. Why should we pay the London weighting to people sitting at home in the countryside?”
“Minister, should I get our lawyer to explain that London weighting is to meet market salaries because our jobs are in London, not our people?”
“Spare me lawyers, Humphrey. I get quite enough from them in the House of Commons. The other idea was to withhold promotion from the stay-at-homers. I’m told that, in the Treasury, only 10% of the staff are showing up.”
“I fear that concept is little better, Minister. Promotion has nothing to do with merit or performance; it is what happens after you have had your job for four years and someone above you has also had his or her job for four years. You both move up.”
“What’s magic about four years?”
“About 20 years ago, ministers and the Civil Service Management Board decided civil servants could not be sacked for failing to achieve what no one knew they were supposed to achieve. In 2004 they decided effectiveness would suffer if individuals stayed too long in their post or turnover was too fast. The four-year posting norm was adopted. ”
“I can’t say that has made any difference. The jobsworths stay on and ministers are described as bullies if they get cross when things don’t get done. A friend told me he was recruited from a senior position in the private sector to bring modern methods to a civil service department. He resigned soon after because, whenever he told one of his managers that something needed doing promptly, the manager immediately took some more of his annual leave.”
“There are always a few bad apples, Minister, but I can say, hand on heart, that I’m proud of our team.”
“We have good people, certainly, but they do live in another world. It’s a social world, Humphrey, not a world of work in the way the private sector, or the NHS come to that, understands the word ‘work’. They spend so much time in meetings discussing what they will do, they have no time left actually to do it. They are just ingratiating themselves with the civil service social network, so they can get promotion, and clock up a big enough inflation-proofed pension pot. Then they can retire early and take private sector positions where they can exploit those social network connections. Did you know, Humphrey, that less than 20% of civil servants stay on to retirement age and many get full pensions at 50?”
“As a 49 year-old, that had not escaped my attention but before I leave, we should return to the issue of whether our staff now need all the office space we have available.”
“Your union friend said we should make savings from this stay home situation so we could sell these offices for a start.”
“We could but, would that be wise? The Treasury would cut our budget and we’d be no better off.”
“When they were all here, they raced from meeting to meeting. They did not really need desks of their own. There once was a time when they spent much time answering correspondence from MPs and the general public. But now we have got that digitised and the letters are all produced by AI.”
“Are you telling me that all those letters you make me sign every day have not been composed by our team at all?”
“Yes, Minister. You may have noticed that they are all mellifluously phrased but devoid of any substance. We expect MPs will stop bothering us with their own, or their constituents’, issues once they recognise that it is just a machine batting their balls back to them.”
“You are certainly strengthening my view that we have to see this organisation as a digitally supported society, not a workforce with defined outputs. Talking shops – that’s what we are. I believe we have more quangos than any other Whitehall department. No one would accuse Public Health England of having output of any kind.”
“Indeed, Minister, the pandemic has certainly accelerated the shift to online shopping and working at home but it is not the cause of it. The breakthrough for us was the launch of systems like Zoom and Teams. If the only reasons for commuting to the office were meetings and socialising, the discovery one could do those just as well whilst still wearing one’s pyjama bottoms, was revolutionary. We’ve been told not to use Zoom because the Chinese listen in on that.”
“They are not going to learn anything from that and no doubt they can listen in to Teams too. Of course, with a lot of Covid still about and poor ventilation in our meeting rooms, we need our people to be ultra-cautious, don’t we, Humphrey?”
“Your tongue, Minister, appears to be lodged firmly in your cheek but I have to concede. We face a national reluctance to work and our civil service may be at the forefront of this too. The word ‘work’ has had the r removed and an e added to the end. According to the latest statistics, for every two unemployed, there is nearly one unfilled vacancy and the figure is rising.”
“The young are certainly a worry. They refuse to have jabs but insist on attending mass gatherings. Taking tests or proving vaccinations denies their civil liberties. We conducted those specially authorised events in order to collect and publish the data. We needed the results to plan for ending restrictions. We may have collected the data but I’ve not seen anything published. So we are none the wiser?”
“We’ve had no one in the office to collate the findings, still less publish them.”
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. The scientists tell us the end of the world is at hand so we should all get a life whilst we still can.”