What caught my eye this week.
Remember last summer when I pondered whether an army of everyday investors – led by a legion of cash-rich city boys – had gobbled up so much of the low-coupon Treasury 2061 gilt that it was distorting the yield curve?
Readers steeped in the UK government bond market opined in the comments. I’d say the conclusion was “hmm, maybe a little bit.”
Well this week The Bank of England published data showing that at the other end of the spectrum – the ultra-short end, where gilt issues will mature in a year or two – retail investors are definitely driving the bus. At least when it comes to the low-coupon issues.
Gilt-edged investing
Reminder: capital gains on gilts are free of capital gains tax. You only pay tax on the income component of your total return.
As The Accumulator explained to members, this means that holding short duration low-coupon gilts can deliver higher after-tax returns than cash for investors with a lots of spare change outside of tax shelters.
A graphic from the Bank of England illustrates the difference:
Source: Bank Underground
For an investor who has filled up their ISAs (and perhaps maxed out on premium bonds) this tax treatment makes short duration low-coupon gilts much more attractive than cash savings, where only a small tax-free savings allowance shields your interest income from HMRC. Especially at the higher income tax rates.
It’s not surprising then that the Bank of England’s data shows ‘retail’ investors (individuals like you and me) own huge swathes of ultra-short low-coupon gilts:
Source: Bank Underground
Roughly 80% of the free float 1 of that low-coupon Treasury 2026 gilt is held by retail investors.
Compare that to the intermediate and long duration gilts. Here retail participation is far lower.
By comparison the shortest end of the gilt market is now an ordinary investors’ playground.
Millions of people or millions of pounds…
Of course ‘ordinary’ doesn’t necessarily mean your mum owns some.
There could be a relatively small number of cashed-up oligarchs whose wealth advisers moved their millions into ultra-short duration gilts, as opposed to it being the latest hot thing for Joe Public.
I first wrote about the tax advantages of low-coupon gilts back in January 2024. I wouldn’t say the response was rabid.
My co-blogger’s typically in-depth explanation did garner a bit more interest. But I suspect that after 2022, some readers just hear the word ‘bond’ and shudder.
Well if you have a lot of unsheltered cash sitting around getting taxed then consider this your wake-up call.
Finally, the Bank’s holding data does shed more light on Treasury 2061, revealing that retail investor involvement here is actually very small.
That doesn’t mean the particular attractions of Treasury 2061 aren’t distorting the yield curve. But it does suggest that it’s institutions (hedge funds and the like) who are driving that train.
Have a great weekend!
From Monevator
Asset allocation quilt: winners and losers over the last 10 years – Monevator
Funding childcare: how to navigate a complex system – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Ten ways to be a terrible investor – Monevator
News
Returns on uninvested cash in shares ISAs could be charged 22% – This Is Money
UK economy grew 0.3% in November, beating forecasts – BBC
It’s a buyers market, as homes for sale reach an eight-year high – This Is Money
Scotland is introducing a mansion tax for £1m homes – Property Industry Eye
The UK is losing the [chemicals] industry that makes everything [Video] – Sky
Silver and gold continue ‘flabbergasting’ rally – This Is Money
HMRC reports a 65% rise in self-assessment payments via its app – GOV.UK
A weight loss drug habit ‘could affect size of your mortgage’ – Guardian
Some seven million Britons browse Rightmove every week for fun – This Is Money
Global equities are booming – Topdown Charts
Products and services
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Marcus pays 4.55% on its new best buy one-year fixed savings – This Is Money
Which type of mortgage should you choose in 2026? – Which
Get up to £3,000 cashback when you open or switch to an Interactive Investor SIPP. Terms and fees apply, affiliate link – Interactive Investor
Building society launches new 100% mortgage – This Is Money
TSB switch offer: up to £150+£50+£30 – Be Clever With Your Cash
Get up to £1,500 cashback when you transfer your cash and/or investments to Charles Stanley Direct through this affiliate link. Terms apply – Charles Stanley
Why do petrol prices vary so much from one station to the next? – Guardian
Most travel insurance policies don’t cover winter sports – Which
Homes for dog lovers for sale, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Trapped in the hell of social comparison – Noahpinion
Killing the goose that lays the golden egg – Behavioural Investment
Why portfolio diversification is about more than just correlations – Morningstar
This is why leasehold reform should be a priority – News on the Block
Cullen Roche discusses Your Perfect Portfolio [Podcast] – Odd Lots
Why are some BTL landlords thriving while others sell up? – Landlord Zone
Gold isn’t special – Humble Dollar
Cheap direct debits for bank switching and rewards – Be Clever With Your Cash
Vanguard talks inertia and behavioural finance [Podcast/transcript] – Morningstar
Tesla is a value stock? The wacky world of factor ETFs [US but relevant] – WSJ
Market expectations mini-special
Expensive is only half the story – Excess Returns
What equity earnings explain and what they don’t [Research] – CFA Institute
A simple metric to predict future stock market returns – Morningstar
When a 40x P/E ratio is a bargain – Flyover Stocks
Naughty corner: Active antics
The reemergence of non-US markets – Enterprising Investor
Consistent fund performance is overrated – Morningstar
Is Japan ‘normal’ again? – The Overshoot
FOMO and the optimal portfolio size – Klement on Investing
Rules matter more than insight – The Financial Pen
Kindle book bargains
How to Own the World by Andrew Craig – £0.99 on Kindle
Zero to One: Notes on Startups by Peter Thiel – £0.99 on Kindle
The Four-hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss – £0.99 on Kindle
How to Break Up With Fast Fashion by Lauren Bravo – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Climate stripes updated to show 2025 as third-hottest year ever – BBC
Flying foxes die in their thousands in extreme Australian heatwave – Guardian
This Brighton-based ecologist wants to see 6,000 species in a year – BBC
Solar grazing: a win for sheep farmers or just a PR exercise? – Guardian
Does adding “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT prompts waste energy? – The Conversation
Robot overlord roundup
Claude Code: move over ChatGPT – The Atlantic [h/t Abnormal Returns]
Apple is partnering with Google to upgrade Siri – Spyglass
No, entry-level jobs aren’t being lost to AI (yet) – Agglomerations
Google removes ‘dangerous and alarming’ AI summaries from search results – Guardian
McKinsey CEO says firm has 60,000 employees, of which 25,000 are AI agents – B.I.
The rise of AI is throttling website traffic – Press Gazette
Not at the dinner table
Statement on the Federal Reserve – Bernanke, Yellen, Geithner, Greenspan, and more
Stewart Lee: Naked imperialistic wars aren’t what they used to be – The Nerve
EU wants ‘Farage clause’ in Brexit reset talks with UK – Guardian
Enforcement regime – Phenomenal World
The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age – The Register
Proposed new Ukip logo compared to iron cross used by Nazi regime – Guardian
(Apparently) ending extreme global poverty would cost 0.3% of GDP [Research] – SSRN
Off our beat
Divorce is awesome – Never Enough
Iran’s ultimate banned book – The Dial
What’s behind the phenomenon of ‘gamer brain’? – Guardian
How big tech killed literary culture – UnHerd
The surprisingly long life of the vacuum tube – Construction Physics
Oil: Venezuela’s excrement – Uncharted Territories
The “Are you dead?” app is having a moment in China – BBC
Ten years on, still remembering Alan Rickman – Guardian one, two, and three
And finally…
“A technique that works repeatedly is to wait until the prevailing opinion about a certain industry is that things have gone from bad to worse, and then buy shares in the strongest companies in the group.”
– Peter Lynch, Beating the Street
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- i.e. After backing out what the Bank owns due to quantitative easing.[↩]
The Treasury really does seem to be filled with morons under this Government.
If, as they claimed, the purpose of reducing the Cash ISA allowance is to encourage more people to invest in Stocks and Shares ISAs, how is that going to be achieved by making the latter less attractive (eg by restricting investments) and subject to tax charges? These proposals seem to have been dreamed up by people who have never held a significant sum in a S&S ISA. As the CEO of AJ Bell has said, Reeves ISA meddling is ‘doomed to fail’.
My GIA consists entirely of those top 2 retail gilts.
I’m not sure what I’ll do once the January 2026 one matures, I’ll probably hold a Money Market OEIC for a few months and see where we are in April
T26 and TN28 owner here. The article has made me realise that when T26 matures in two weeks there will be a lot of retail money chasing the next low-coupon gilt.
I’m now contemplating raising some money from elsewhere to reinvest ahead of then. If this was to be in more TN28, though, I’m not sure if any price advantage would be worth the tax on the accrued interest I’d just bought when it pays out a few days later. Basically, I’m thinking out loud – any thoughts out there?
@DavidV. you don’t pay income tax on the accrued interest part of the first coupon payment, it is return of your capital. You can subtract it when calculating income tax due.
Low-coupon-gilt-in-GIA lemming here
I am amazed by the 80% figure. What’s the total value issued?
Is it really worth cashing in a week early to reinvest in (I guess) the 2028 maturity?
@Vanguardfan — I know, right? According to the YieldGimp website the total issue is a smidgeon over £41bn. However the Bank of England owns 48% of that so the free float would be about £21.5bn.
@Baron (4)
Thanks for that. I did actually know that, and adjusted my declared interest accordingly on my first tax return after buying both T26 and TN28. Somehow, though, in the course of my thinking aloud just now I had confused myself on the rules.
Watched that ed Conway video last night. I feel it could of been done better in an article, was a lot of fluff. Basically I took from it our energy costs are the highest in developed world, 4x higher than US. Although we already knew this. It seems to me everything comes down to energy. We are doomed with this net zero nonsense.
@Jim — Yes, it wasn’t the greatest video but it was getting a lot of buzz so I thought I’d include for people to make up their own minds.
As for Net Zero, the only nonsense is that not all countries are taking it so seriously. See the temperature graph in the Environmental Links. I’d agree there is stuff we could do with pricing mechanisms and phasing, perhaps.
@all — This graph showing how younger people got more economically optimistic after Labour was elected while over-50s lag — after a continual slide until 2023 post the EU Referendum result — is pretty revealing:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c150leql9pgo
Interesting articles as always but can I just say, “Of course ‘ordinary’ doesn’t necessarily mean your mum owns some.” presumably ‘your mum’ is shorthand here for unsophisticated person who doesn’t invest. If I may, there are plenty of mums (and dads) who do enjoy investing and I’m one myself. I think it’s pretty old fashioned to assume otherwise.
Re: Net Zero. There’s a lot of noise/misinformation around this topic. UK electricity prices are set by marginal generation, i.e. the most expensive source at the time, which is usually gas. This makes it expensive, but it does strongly incentivise generation when it’s most needed. We rarely get large-scale blackouts, whereas the US has around three times the number of blackout minutes on average [1]. So that is one tradeoff to consider.
Electricity price increases since 2022 have been driven almost entirely by wholesale cost increases, not green levies or grid upgrades [2]. In fact, electricity prices would’ve been around 30% *higher* in 2024 without wind power [3].
In the current media climate, “net zero” could really do with a rebrand as “sovereign energy independence” or similar. Even if you don’t “believe” in climate change (and you should), reducing our dependence on foreign imports of oil and gas would be a win for our national security and resilience. OBR forecasts show that *not* pursuing net zero would cost us more in the long run, by exposing us to volatile fossil fuel prices for longer [4]. As an example, the latest offshore wind auction was priced 40% lower than building an equivalent gas plant [5].
Yes, there are times when the wind doesn’t blow and sun doesn’t shine, so we’ll probably need some gas generation (around 5-10% of needs) for a good while until storage technologies get cheaper. What won’t help bills is more fossil fuel extraction in the UK – the oil and gas would be sold on international markets, and the marginal increase in global supply would be tiny and therefore have a neglible impact on prices [6]. Therefore, “net zero” remains the best approach – both from a climate change perspective and to reduce bills in the long run.
[1] https://www.tdworld.com/grid-innovations/article/20966117/us-power-reliability-are-we-kidding-ourselves
[2] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/electricity-pricing
[3] https://electricityinfo.org/news/energy-costs-851
[4] https://obr.uk/frs/fiscal-risks-and-sustainability-september-2024/
[5] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-breaking-auction-for-offshore-wind-secured-to-take-back-control-of-britains-energy
[6] https://www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk/about-fuel-poverty/the-link-between-energy-bills-and-fossil-fuels/
Re: Taxfix.
I know TI didn’t write this, but what on earth is a ‘tax journey’? Are we going down the yellow brick road to Taxfix to pay our taxes? If journey is the sales word going to be used, tax filing journey would be a better phrase and accurate.
This new marketing phrase journey really doesn’t work with a service involving paying money to file mandatory legal requirements and paying tax. /rant
@Vcw — If it’s any consolation I did think of writing “your dad” for that reason — as there’d be no pushback — but I thought “hey it’s 2026, if I can take one tiny scrap of comfort from the lamentable rise of the right into office and the resultant backlash it’s that the sensitivity dial has been dialled down enough for me not to police every tiny word this way”.
So bit of a backfire I guess! 😉
No offence meant and we have thousands of Monevator readers who are women and many who are likely mums.
Of course far fewer of their kids reading. I’m confident that’s a very tiny percentage of the readership…
@Dave — Cheers for that data!
@The Hare — One person’s easy-to-fill in tax return is another’s nightmare slog I guess, but yes it’s Taxfix copy so I can’t really speak for them.
the best way to encourage investing in UK equities is to have a stable investable business environment and a growing economy.
Not penalising investors and savers managing their money.
If after April 2027 HMRC tax interest on cash held in S&S ISAs, as highlighted in the This is Money article, I suspect the platforms will simply stop paying interest. It is only in the last few years that HL have paid any interest on cash in either their ISA or SIPP. This may be because interest rates increased, but I seem to remember they were also ‘encouraged’ by the regulator.
My bigger concern is if they tax, or even forbid, ‘cash-like’ holdings in S&S ISAs. As highlighted by Faustus (1), how can anyone with a substantial S&S ISA de-risk their holdings if they can’t even hold a short-duration bond fund.
The new rules are supposed to apply only to under-65s. Does anyone imagine the platforms accommodating this by paying interest only to over-65s or allowing them different holdings?
Thanks for the links as ever, TI. A few thoughts as I read through:-
I am interested in Net Zero both as a human and an investor. One of the places I am hiding from the inevitable is in the yield-hoses of renewable infrastructure investments which will give me dry powder when the eviting is done. I am therefore keen on wind power being a sound investment. So the post 11 from the prickly one is very interesting, not least as I read comments on The Telegraph laying into the industry subsidies on a weekly basis, and even the left attacking the basis for CfDs. Interesting to dig into the ECIU report then in detail. It is not quite as glowing as reported above — it summarises that wind makes the clearing price lower by about 23 PpMWh by mothballing less efficient CCGT but it notes that subsidies on wind are around 27 PpMWh. Although pretty close to being a wash and presumably moving in a direction where it improves over time as more capacity rolls off ROs and storage improves. I suspect not well understood by voters or the man who understands them best, so not immune from being killed off by Farage. Ho hum that’s why the yields are high.
Also liking this slew of articles on BTL kicked off by the Time Money profile of one BTL chap. Not least because have been having a disaster with my BTL (it sits empty if anyone wants a zone 1 two-bed) and also because I happen to know and have worked with the chap profiled who is a lovely bloke and really likely is as nice a landlord as he claims to be. I don’t know what the answer is, but I rarely think the landlords vs renters rhetoric which seems to bubble under the surface is the solution here. I am skeptical about the nature of the UK housing crisis and happy to have it explained to me but seems less about shelter and more about asset pricing.
Meanwhile Bob saying that McK is nearly a third AI agents — what does that mean exactly? Is my customer GPT prompt now an “AI agent”, or does it need to be autonomously working in a dark basement of The Post Building and only allowed out at weekends to be a true AI agent. As ever I look to this as more hype…
No mention of poor Stuart Kirk’s predicament in the FT? Sold out and holding 100% cash he has nowhere left to go and a requirement to file copy. His editor must be hoping that the crash comes sooner than his ideas run out…
@Dave Hedgehog (#11)
Oh, where to start?
“…reducing our dependence on foreign imports of oil and gas would be a win for our national security and resilience”
Agreed. So what does our government do? Not exploit “our own” North Sea reserves. However, we still need O&G, so we … buy large amounts from Norway (just opened a massive new field immediately adjacent to our areas of the North Sea) and Qatar. That totally makes sense. Add far greater transport emissions to bring from Qatar. In Norway’s case, wouldn’t rely on them much longer. They’ve already got real political discussions going on about closing off interconnectors to UK and Germany because of the second order cost effects these are bringing to Norwegian voters (large electricity cost increases due to having to bail out UK and Germany from their daft energy choices because electricity exports via the interconnectors are prioritised over domestic supply).
“Yes, there are times when the wind doesn’t blow and sun doesn’t shine, so we’ll probably need some gas generation (around 5-10% of needs) for a good while until storage technologies get cheaper.”
Hmm. Heard of this thing called Dunkleflaute? Where there’s no wind or sun at all across all of Europe (including the UK) for weeks at a time? What are you going to do to maintain civil order and stop cold related deaths once your “5 – 10%” contingency is used up in the first day or two? Or maybe you’re proposing the system South Africa has – an app to tell you when your turn for rolling 4 hour blackouts is coming up?
Maybe you’re also a big nuclear advocate and that’s the solution?
Interested to know what realistic, grid scale storage you’re banking on coming along in the next 10 years? Can’t be batteries – they will never be able to power hundreds of thousands of homes for days at a time.
Maybe you’re thinking of hydro schemes like Dinorwig? In theory, great idea. Again, given that no new resevoirs have been built in England alone since 1992 (33 years!!!) (although maybe 2 more are coming soon), what makes you think the nimby brigade will allow tens or hundreds of Dinorwigs to be built in a crash build programme in the next 10 years say?
Energy Sovereignty via renewables? Tell me, where are the bulk of all these solar panels and turbines made? Oh yes, China.
I do find it so funny that a country whose people are renowned for moaning about the weather and it’s unpredictability are trying to base a 21C High Tech advanced country on … energy generation systems which rely on the weather.
If you want to live in an advanced 21C High Tech society, with the wide open borders so many people seem to want, and you don’t want to “burn fossil fuels” to produce energy, you’ve basically got one realistic option, and that’s nuclear. To misquote an old battery advert “Nothing else powers like it, or lasts like it” 🙂
Even Ed Miliband has (belatedly, and grudingly) woken up to that fact…
“a massive new field immediately adjacent to our areas of the North Sea”
If Harold Wilson hadn’t signed it away the UK share of the North Sea bed would be bigger and Norway’s smaller. So there must be a chance that that new field is on formerly British soil – or perhaps I should say British mud.
UK must reopen North Sea gas fields, refurbish our existing Gas generation and build new Gas generation to tide us over until all the new Nuclear plants can come online. No government even has a vague idea on how to start this enormous and critical programme.
It’s a complete sh*tshow and the green activist lobby of the public are not helping at all. Energy rationing is coming, and many of the lefty loons will even welcome it.
@Mathmo – I couldn’t help the feelings of schadenfreude reading Mr Kirk’s latest copy. Market timing must be comparable to medieval torture at times. Another case study for passive investing. Or as Nick Maggiulli would say: “just keep buying”.
How does the argument of
Our oil and gas would be sold on global market not translate in to our electric could be sold on the global market. Gas is used to spin turbines to generate kwh, same as windmills spin to generate kwh.
Am I being a bit thick here or what. Basically we are saying the profits of oil are going to capitalists but somehow all the windmills are a socialist endeavour and 100% of the leccy stays with us?!
All these experts do my head in. Experts don’t know what they don’t know. Especially for effects outside of their field of relevance. I’m reminded of the politicians laughing at Trump when he advised Germany not to get rid of their nuclear. You think them politicians had experts advising them?
I feel sometimes you just can’t beat common sense. You want as many different type of energy sources as possible. Forget any silly ideologies. All these coal plants that have shut, don’t demolish just mothball.
Is the retail ‘duration aversion’ on Gov bonds just a flash back, adverse reaction to 2022; or is it something more (and worse), perhaps anticipating a ‘phase transition’ to new secular reflationary regime, where long duration, fixed income gets absolutely clobbered longer term? (With an example of this ‘thesis’ from just this very evening below):
https://open.substack.com/pub/tscsw/p/your-portfolio-lost-71-since-1999
@Delta Hedge I don’t think it’s a general retail aversion to longer duration gilts, more a specific issue that short dated, low coupon gilts are a very attractive cash-like instrument, especially for higher/additional rate taxpayers. Institutions don’t have the same tax incentives. I assume that retail investors still own “normal” amounts (whatever that means) of longer dated gilts as investments.
Speaking as someone who has c. £50k worth of TN28 to meet an upcoming tax liability – that’s completely separate from my investment portfolio. I want to reserve my ISA allowance for investments, premium bonds are mediocre these days, and everything else will get decimated by tax.
That TSCS article is bonkers … there are some very salient points in there, mixed with some absolute claptrap. But an interesting read nonetheless, so thanks for linking it!
@Dragon Oil and gas aren’t going to go away completely anytime soon, and I acknowledged in my original post that gas will be part of the UK energy mix for quite some time (as in, longer than 10 years).
There are two issues here that are sometimes at odds – energy security and consumer energy prices.
In terms of developing new oil and gas fields, it’s a mixed picture. There’s little direct economic benefit to the UK bill payer, because it’s sold by private companies on international markets (although it might boost UK economy a little through tax receipts and exports). For energy security, it might help in the case of a serious crisis where the government seizes the supply (or otherwise coerces the owners to sell to the UK for below market rates). But even then, UK offshore wouldn’t cover all our needs, and given that we’ll be reliant on gas for heating for a good while, the less we have to use for generating electricity, the better. So, it might (possibly) have some positive impacts for UK security and the economy more broadly, together with lowering GHG emissions from LNG transport. IMO these other benefits make it worth considering, if new supply can be tapped economically – even if it doesn’t reduce bills. Net zero is an important goal and we should stay on that trajectory, but we also need to acknowledge technical limitations and geopolitical realities (whilst striving to improve and overcome both). However, nuance doesn’t work in politics, so we end up with no compromise positions.
@Dragon “Tell me, where are the bulk of all these solar panels and turbines made? Oh yes, China.”
Solar panels, yes, largely China. But they last for decades, so even in the event of supply disruption, the UK would have plenty of time to source another option before end of panel life – unlike fossil fuel imports which are continuous. And panels are very cheap now. So they’re a good part of the mix, both from cost and security perspectives.
Wind turbines – many of the blades are actually made in the UK (Vestas on Isle of Wight, Siemens Gamesa in Hull). Many of the other major components are indeed imported (mostly EU & US made), but that is true of gas/nuclear plants as well.
There’s also the security benefit of geographically distributed generation versus a few large plants which could be more easily targeted by adversaries.
@Dragon ” … energy generation systems which rely on the weather”
Intermittency is a well known problem that engineers account for with various solutions. Interconnectors are part of the answer. We sell to neighbouring countries in times of surplus, which can offset later imports via interconnectors or gas purchases. Interconnectors also enable overprovisioning – since solar and onshore wind are cheap, just build more than we need and export the surplus in good times. Having a solid baseload (nuclear/gas) will help too. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) have dropped in price by 40% year-on-year and continue to fall (https://www.energy-storage.news/behind-the-numbers-bnef-finds-40-year-on-year-drop-in-bess-costs/). BESS will increasingly be part of the solution for short term fluctuations.
On occasions when renewable output is low for an extended period of time (such as Dunkelflautes), we’ll still need gas and imports via interconnectors for the foreseeable future, as I’ve already said, but the other solutions I’ve outlined will reduce this need over time.
@Dragon “You’ve basically got one realistic option, and that’s nuclear”
Nuclear, although expensive over its whole lifecycle, is a reasonable solution for baseload. But it’s difficult to ramp up/down quickly in response to demand. Renewables+BESS and gas can help there, together with demand management (variable pricing to encourage load shifting, e.g. Octopus Agile tariff, and EVs with smart charging schedules) and grid upgrades to shift power around nationally more efficiently. So I disagree that nuclear is a singular solution or panacea – but it’s part of the mix.
@Jim “Basically we are saying the profits of oil are going to capitalists but somehow all the windmills are a socialist endeavour and 100% of the leccy stays with us?!”
Oil and gas are portable commodities, shipped by tanker. Wind turbines are connected via cables to the UK grid. The UK grid does have interconnects (HVDC cables) to neighbouring countries, so sometimes power does get exported when supply exceeds UK demand. No socialism required, all handled through markets. But the nature of renewables being directly connected to the UK grid means that the UK will buy most of it, whereas O&G can easily be shipped to the highest global bidder.
@Jim “All these experts do my head in.”
What’s the alternative to gathering evidence and expert input – decision by vibes?
@jim “…Germany not to get rid of their nuclear.”
That was largely a political decision, started when an alliance including the German Greens announced a phase out in 2000. An attempt to delay in 2010 was met with widespread protests and then Fukushima was the final straw. Politicians have to balance expert input with public opinion, and more often than not the former is right, even if it might be inevitable in a democracy to go with the latter (see Brexit).
@Jim “Experts don’t know what they don’t know. Especially for effects outside of their field of relevance.”
In my experience, experts (scientists and engineers, at least) will readily admit areas of uncertainty and when they’re speculating or operating outside their areas of expertise.
@Jim “You want as many different type of energy sources as possible”
Agreed, this is sensible to a point – but there’s also a cost and safety concerns to mothballing or maintaining aging infrastructure too.
How much nuclear we need, and whether to allow further domestic oil and gas exploration, are reasonable debates IMO, with benefits and tradeoffs. But Reform’s policy of refusing to support new renewables, the cheapest sources, because wind turbines are woke or whatever, is complete bollocks. It’s even crap as a populist policy – 76% of the UK public support more renewables (https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2025-04/Ipsos%20Energy%20polling%20charts%20PUBLIC.pdf).
@Jim “Forget any silly ideologies.”
Couldn’t agree more. More (scientific, engineering) experts please, fewer decisions purely on (political/populist) vibes.
It has always surprised me how little we know about who owns the stock of UK government gilts and index linked gilts in particular in relation to retail investors.
The most interesting thing about the Bank of England article is the attempt to identify the retail ownership through midfid data. Not knowing much about midfid data I wonder how accurate their figures are or are they just wild informed guesses? And does it not just relate to transaction data of who is buying and selling gilts not who owns them?
If we look to understand retail investor individual gilt ownership then there are the Bank of England Quarterly reviews, this being the latest one
https://www.dmo.gov.uk/media/oykbuhke/jul-sep25.pdf
That says households (and non-profit institutions serving households) in 2025 own about 0.1% of all gilts. Back in March 2003 it was 10.5% of all gilts. The purchase of gilts through the Post Office stopped in 1998 and the subsequent generally available postal application route that remained open ended around 2004. So this 0.1% is fairly meaningless as it presumably relates to a very limited direct holding of individual gilts for example from these earlier available direct ownership routes. A lot of the retail individual ownership of gilts will be within the 9.5% monetary financial institutions and 21.3% insurance companies and pension funds figures (?)
Nowadays individuals typically own gilts through nominee accounts with brokers or pension funds. In terms of individual gilts purchased these might for example be through SIPPs or other pensions, investment ISAs or trading accounts. We don’t have the numbers on this. Then there is the ownership of gilts through funds or multi asset funds although in this case the fund manager decides which gilts to buy and the investor only chooses a broad category of gilts. Perhaps that’s another reason not to hold gilt funds because the fund isn’t optimising the tax position for each individual investor?
I’ll exclude the significant ownership of gilts by defined benefit pension schemes because in that case the individual doesn’t choose which gilts are purchased and isn’t directly subject to the returns on those gilts, as they hopefully just receive their promised pension. As an aside there is some data on ownership here, for example through the ONS (Funded Occupational Pension Schemes in the UK publication) and the OBR (Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report – July 2025). As I understand it roughly 80% of the over 25 year index linked gilts out there are owned by defined benefit pension schemes. These constitute about two thirds of their index linked gilt holdings (the other third being of course under 25 year term). The conventional/index linked gilt ownership split of defined benefit pension schemes is very roughly about 40%/60% which compares to the roughly 75%/25% split of gilts in issue.
This post is probably missing all sorts of things, but it is an attempt to illustrate how difficult it is to quantify private individual ownership of gilts even to the extent of their overall ownership percentage of all gilts in issue, let alone the individual gilts themselves. So as mentioned it is the attempt to identify the individual retail investor ownership that is interesting.
@Dave Hedgehog – Very aligned with most of your points, but wanted to point out a common misconception. Nuclear absolutely can do load following, if designed and operated to do so. France is a good example, where they have such a high proportion of nuclear they would be in trouble if they didn’t load follow. As a more extreme example (where I have hands-on experience), naval nuclear needs to load follow based on the aggressive manoeuvring of warships – nobody wants to be limited by the reactor when you need speed NOW because there’s a torpedo after you!
Low coupon gilts have always been attractive to tax conscious investors – in the early 1980s gilts were issued with 3% coupons even though the prevailing yields were greater than 10% since the prices would be higher and the yields lower.
Energy:
The generating industry (who are the ones actually doing the engineering and, presumably, are fairly expert at doing so!) seems to be gearing up for a diversified energy generating mix including renewables, nuclear, and gas with the latter significantly reduced from the current 30% or so. Investment in reducing energy usage (e.g., UK housing stock is some of the worst insulated in Europe) will also improve energy security.
Two other points:
1) Provable gas reserves in the north sea are enough to supply about 3-6 years worth of current consumption.
2) The cost of extraction would be about 2-3 times higher than prices available from the middle east.
In other words, expanding North Sea production is not only a short-term solution, but also a very expensive one.
Off topic so feel free to delete, but important
In your piece on IL gilt ladders in Dec 2023 (no link to avoid spam trap) you noted with approval that 4.1% RPI linked annuities were then available to a 65 year old man. It’s now 5.1% per the money helper website. This may not last (either the rate or the linking).
Inflation protection is the Big Yellow Taxi of personal finance: you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. There were RPI + 2% linked national savings certificates, now there are no new ones and rolled-over legacy certs are CPI plus next to nothing. Index linked annuities are apparently dead in the US. Private final salary pensions over here (if you can get them at all) apparently now cap RPI uplift. But for now you can still get proper RPI annuities.
This is my real world situation:
Financial assets £1m of which 330k sipp
I want £48k a year which minus £12k state pension is 36k. 3.6% withdrawal rate if drawdown.
At 64 with no dread disease I have got a 14.5k RPI linked annuity from £247.5k (5.8%) so once I get state pension I need 21k from 750k, which is 2.8%. A much safer looking rate than keeping the whole 1m and looking for 3.6% and if I fail (completely run out of money) it doesn’t matter: I still have 27k RPI linked which is entirely liveable on, with less and cheaper wine and turning down the heating, rather than just state pension, which is not.
Obviously the annuity dies with me but then I die with me too, which sort of cancels out. I have children, but the smaller pot being drawn down at 2.7% is more likely to survive to pass to them than the whole lot being drawn down at 3.6%. Furthermore, and crucially, I have a house. If I end up relying solely on the state pension after a drawdown fail I am going to release all the equity I can out of it, whereas with the annuity I will never have to touch it. So the annuity is a moat around the house, and protection for my heirs as well as me.
All this and the ability to sleep peacefully through a 1929 market crash and Weimar Germany inflation, happening simultaneously. The expression “no brainer” is annoying and overused but in this case…
@Dave Hedgehog #24
“Net zero is an important goal and we should stay on that trajectory”
At what cost? Who will bear that cost? Is it a cost worth paying?
It’s because debate has been stifled on these questions that you see increasing frustration and resistance (compare the Tories now vs Cameron’s ‘hug a husky’ moment). And that’s not just in popular discourse but also academic research (try getting funding for a research question that does not conform with IPCC consensus).
Climate change has become a strange form of fundamentalist ideology for some. If you really think the ‘why’ is to stop extinction then you can justify any ‘how’.
“More (scientific, engineering) experts please, fewer decisions purely on (political/populist) vibes.”
Science can only gather facts. It tells you nothing about what to do with those facts. Those decisions will always be ‘purely’ political.
@TI:
Thanks, some nice links.
Re: “A graphic from the Bank of England illustrates the difference: …”
Might be worth noting this rider from that blog:
“Bank Underground is a blog for Bank of England staff to share views that challenge – or support – prevailing policy orthodoxies. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or its policy committees.”
IMO, Bank Underground is an interesting site which from time to time offers up posts that shed some light on hitherto (for me at least) black boxes, such as this one from 2023 on inflation swaps: https://bankunderground.co.uk/2023/09/06/decoding-the-market-for-inflation-risk/
@Platformer 28
““Net zero is an important goal and we should stay on that trajectory”
At what cost? Who will bear that cost? Is it a cost worth paying?”
I suggest that you put it in the context of how much it will cost if we don’t try and aim for net zero. Yes, I agree that in isolation it doesn’t make sense to aim for net zero. But we don’t live in isolation. Doing nothing (e.g. canning net zero) will end up incurring change, and that change will be expensive change to cope with.
A quick conversation with an AI of my choice garnered the following answer: “Something in between (roughly ~1.5–1.7 °C) is consistently found to be the cheapest overall option once you add mitigation costs + climate damage costs together.” Pick your questions, pick your evidence and pick your choices… at the end of the day there seems to be broad agreement that doing nothing is substantially more expensive, as is going back to the stone age as some extremists would advocate. But we clearly should do something…
Re: “The Register” link above: this from the DT today on the economic impacts of a Taiwan blockade (5% global output fall) and a Sino-Taipei war/Taiwan-Formosa invasion (10.2% fall, in contrast Covid and GFC each a 5.9% fall, 1991 Gulf War 1%, 9/11 0.6% and Oct 23 Israel-Hamas 0.3%):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/18/china-america-taiwan-clash-global-economies-not-priced-in/
It is telling that (generally, not singling out any specific commenters here without full information) the same people who are driving the “drill baby drill” backlash are those who supported and championed Brexit.
Common sense-ish soundbites that play to the peanut gallery and people’s financial concerns and political prejudices, not rational logic or evidence.
The same people who to their eternal ridicule promised economic benefits from having their cake and eating it versus the proven benefits of free trade blocs now tell me net zero is a conspiracy. Riiiggght.
The UK is down at least £100bn a year on the trade. And the planet is relentlessly warming, as documented every week in these links.
There’s little serious debate about climate science because the science was settled decades ago. Broadly what was predicted is happening, give or take a chaotic system and an “n of 1” run through warming up the planet with fossil fuels and seeing what happens.
Some of the most serious climate scientists have admitted they’ve put off having kids as a result.
Whereas Barry Blimp thinks he’s the second coming of James Watt because he’s noticed burning petrol is a good way to generate energy.
Yes we get it. Everyone gets it. Burning oil isn’t the problem (although eventually it would have been, see Peak Oil fears etc) — it’s the consequences.
Someone wrote something above about how science only gets you so far, it’s about the how.
True but the how is about politics, and telling people everything is fine and burn baby burn is an easier sell to the intellectually credulous of the world then difficult science and tough choices.
“I like my petrol car and coal fired power stations!”
How radical.
These iconoclasts are like people complaining about the navy moving from sail to coal because we’ve been doing sail for centuries and it’ll cost a fortune to dig up all that coal.
Trump and Farage haven’t unearthed new facts to discredit climate science. Zero new facts.
They have just opened the Overton window by telling people what they want to hear. As across the waterfront with their antics, the results are mostly negative and destabilising.
The smart people who understand the science and whose intellectual great grandfathers figured out the refining process are the ones who now support the energy transition. Even big energy company bosses were pretty on board with it until it became politically toxic, with the anti scientific pushback in the US etc.
As someone cheerfully accused of me the other day on the childcare thread, I don’t have kids so as they said: what stake do I have in the future?
Well it’s true so far as it goes. I happen to like (rapidly dissolving) coral reefs and European summers without heatwaves and deserts and a billion people migrating north as the equatorial zones become unliveable, but hey we all have our creature comforts.
But shame on anyone with children and grandchildren who denounces climate change and the energy transition as a loony left conspiracy and ignores the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence.
You are – at best – being played.
None of which isn’t to say there isn’t a nuanced and evolving discussion to be had about pace, method, nuclear versus gas as a baseload, or the importance of building a global consensus so individual countries trying to do the right thing by moving appropriately quickly aren’t unfairly punished.
But if you think Trump signing executive orders to halt offshore wind farms, defunding science, and pulling out of those multilateral treaties is a constructive science-based response to the challenges of global warming and shifting our energy load, then you have no business calling anyone a loon.
The problem is how do ‘we’ (the PMC, or the ‘Metropolitan elites’ in the eyes of the Barry Blimps of the World) ‘save’ the economy, the environment and the future from both the collective stupidity and the short sighted perceived self interests of the typical voter?
The experts really do know best and the public doesn’t.
That’s anti democratic, I know, but I just don’t care. The facts are what they are. The evidence is what it is. How you feel about them being such makes no difference to their actuality.
As is incorrectly (mis)attributed to Churchill: “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter”. Given the chance, most people mostly make the wrong choices.
The best hope is renewables (PV/Solar Thermal) just keep getting cheaper, radiation phobia abates (and nuclear generation has a lower cost renaissance), climate mitigation measures are put in place (flood protection; GM crops which thrive with less, more saline, water; massive tree planting to contain desertification) and people eventually adapt to world that’s nearly 3 degrees centrigrade warmer on average in 2100 than over 1950-2000, and possibly 4 or 5 degrees warmer by 2300-2500.
Otherwise, I see little cause for optimism.
The advent of the printing press saw minimal sales of the Copernican tracts on heliocentrism but, over the course of the following couple of centuries, many hundreds of thousands of pamphlets sold on the evils of witchcraft, resulting in untold thousands of completely innocent women (including those with mental health issues) being burnt alive. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve progressed all that far epistemically since then.
@Delta Hedge #34
At the risk of becoming Barry Blimp
> GM crops which thrive with less
FFS no a thousand times no. We are not clever enough to know the results of the stuff of life. Younger people are getting cancers that used to be characteristic only in the elderly. Sure, UPFs may be part of the problem but the solution to the hole we are in is not more and more overlaying complexity and industrial manufactured food of which ultraprocessing is a proximate problem but GM is an extension.
As an experimental verification, eat carrots grown in real soil without chemical fertilisers by real people and compare that against the bland crap from your supermarket. For technical justification look up McCance and Widdowson composition of foods which shows the trace mineral content of veg has been declining since the Green revolution in the 1950s, and keep your damn GM revolution back at least until I am gone thank you very much. And at the very least label this potentially toxic GM crap in a label covering at least 10% of the packet if it has any trace of your GM goodness so I can avoid it.
We do not understand properly the effects of industrial food but some of the results are in. It’s not good for us, and GM is doubleplussgood not gonna be good for us, because of the perverse financial incentives, it’s UPFs on steroids.
More generally we could do with knocking off on the effective accelerationalism all round. AI will not save the world and nuclear will not make power too cheap to meter. More is not always better.
> and the short sighted perceived self interests of the typical voter?
Telling people they are fuckwits doesn’t work in a democracy. Your solution implies a benign dictatorship of technocrats. Seize power first, only then can you tell the losers from the technocracy that they can either shut it or be shot.
@platformer (#29)
“And that’s not just in popular discourse but also academic research (try getting funding for a research question that does not conform with IPCC consensus).”
Can any serious scientist with a serious research question that questions the IPCC consensus who tried to get funding from public (i.e., government) funding bodies actually document this? In any case, a sensible scientist would not couch their proposal in those terms!
My own experience (an entire career in science and engineering) of applying for research funding from the UK government (sometimes successfully, often not) is that success requires not only an excellent proposal (because there may be 15-20 excellent proposals at the panel decision meeting only 5 of which will be funded), but some ‘luck’ with the 3 or 4 peers who referee the proposal (there is an opportunity for rebuttal) and the person assigned to ‘talk to the proposal’ (i.e., advocacy) at the panel doing a good job where the decisions are tight (i.e., where your proposal is ranked close to the funding line).
Interesting debate…even the carrots!
I have no particular expertise in whether nuclear, O&G or renewables are the right routes to pursue albeit I would suspect the best approach is to invest heavily in all three.
The geopolitical events over the weekend are giving a clearer view that we are moving to a world where might is right and the UK (and the rest of Europe) doesn’t have much might.
Europe can deal with Russia, if we’re willing to – the economy is roughly the size of Spain. We are very subservient to the US from AWS being intrinsic throughout our way of economic life to our nuclear defence. The UK is possibly the most vulnerable of all European countries given our cultural alignment. Look back through history – I can’t see a comparable time of such structural vulnerability unless you head back a very long time.
From that perspective, it has been obvious that energy self sufficiency must be near the top of the priority list. The country has to get a grip quickly, bite the bullet of serious public sector spending cuts and start saving and investing quickly. Things could get very dicey over the next couple of decades.
@The Investor (33)
“But shame on anyone with children and grandchildren who denounces climate change and the energy transition as a loony left conspiracy and ignores the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence.”
The “Global Warming” narrative was being pushed heavily from around the very late 80’s and early 90’s.
Since then China joined the WTO, many “third world” countries have “modernised”, building out massive amounts of infrastructure and use of Oil, Gas and Coal have *increased* 50% (1989-2024 approx 100,000TWh to 150,000TWh) renewables becoming just a slightly thicker icing on top of the fossil fuel cake:-
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?time=1989..latest
Most of the planet want to live like the “West”, and why not?
Modern countries and “big government” use a massive amount of fossil fuels just to stand still (maintenance).
So called “renewables” are, in reality, supplementing fossil fuel use not replacing it. They are and addition to not a transition to, as the data shows.
UK could go back to horse and plough and it would not change a thing.
@ermine — I think treating GM as the original sin is probably a bit harsh. The problem seems less the tool than the way it’s deployed. I think GM as a tool is fine; GM as a system (modify crops to tolerate pesticides, then carpet-bomb entire fields) is obviously irresponsible. We’ve been selecting, exaggerating and deleting traits in crops and animals for millennia, but the real rot set in when yield, scale and hygiene-by-chemistry became the dominant incentives. GM enables that model, but it doesn’t logically require it. Soil-exhaustion economics did most of the damage long before anyone could spell “transgene”.
Taste and micronutrients correlate with soil organic matter, mycorrhizal networks, slow growth and diversity of varieties None of these are incompatible with GM, but are incompatible with Tesco’s logistics.
For what it’s worth, I’ve just spent the last month covered in shit and Surrey chalk trying to brute-force my own tiny experiment: circa 9 cubic metres of imported Welsh soil, 2 cubic metres of biochar, plus some worm compost, obscene quantities of horse manure, and a light sprinkling of rather questionable snake oil in the form of leonardite-derived humic acid… let’s not dwell on the project’s carbon footprint. It’s basically my version of terra preta sans the human excrement (there are limits, however sketchy those might be 😉 ).
That said, if this “self-buffering system” decides to drift terminally outside what I consider an acceptable pH range, I’m still sitting on some 16–17kg of iron sulphate and about 20kg of sulphur pellets (legacy stock from earlier failures … don’t ask), ready to lose patience and intervene brutally. Not proud. Just realistic.
More broadly though, I’m sympathetic to the anti-accelerationalist instinct. “More tech, faster” isn’t much of a plan — it’s more of a reflex — but banning tools because the incentives around them are perverse feels a bit like blaming the spanner for the building site. Fixing incentives and restoring buffers is slow and deeply unsexy, but it works.
As an aside, with reference to the comment you’re replying to: whenever I hear that “the experts know best and the public are idiots”, I do tend to twitch a bit. Technocracy doesn’t necessarily eliminate stupidity; it concentrates it behind credentials. The witch trials weren’t a failure of mass democracy. They were enabled by clerical, legal and academic elites with strong views and excellent pamphleteering skills. Authority doesn’t always suppress nonsense. Which is why we keep telling people to deploy “critical thinking” (instead of parroting the latest infomercial of the week)… admittedly with limited success.
@Stephens — I’m not sure what your point is? All ultra-serious scientists know all this, as did for instance Sir Nicholas Stern when he did his big review in 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
Everyone knows the world runs on fossil fuels. That statement of the obvious is why it’s a problem, given that they are warming the planet (not to mention they would eventually run out, for anyone who is old enough to remember that concern…)
That’s the whole point of trying to create multinational agreements to transition from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear.
A couple of years ago the UK passed the 50% mark for generating electricity from renewables.
Again agreed this is not the end of the story, it (should be) the start of the story. But these are not toy technologies anymore.
@hosimpson > I think treating GM as the original sin is probably a bit harsh. The problem seems less the tool than the way it’s deployed.
Well yes, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but the results in the US homicide stats relative to milquetoast Yurpeens in respect of the legality of packing heat show that the theory and practice have issues.
GM weaponises the hubristic assumption that we understand all the important variables when it comes to nutrition, and that the so called scientific consensus in this (which if you look at the history of the recommended food pyramid US/plate UK shows massive temporal variance) is not influenced by the sponsors of the research. He who pays the piper tends to call the tune. It’s a bit like Coca Cola telling us you can outrun the 140 calories in a can with more exercise. Apparently walking a mile will do it, best stop at just one can then, eh? In practice the evidence on the street is it doesn’t happen. Then they witter on about hydration, well you can skip the 140 cal with water.
In a theoretical and intellectual way I agree with you that
> GM enables that model, but it doesn’t logically require it.
but I don’t want to take the risk, though I am not young so perhaps it wouldn’t catch up with me. It’s bad enough seeing what ultraprocessed food is doing to our young folk.
Congrats on the soil/food experiment, though I’d argue you are trying to control far too much. I would say the general problem in the west is the fond belief that you can separate all the variables and grab hold of them and optimise the buggers in isolation, together with the original sin of the profit motive which buries the harm you can’t see for the moreish likeability you can see. See the tobacco industry for a worked example, and alcopops in the drinks industry for another, and ultraprocessed food in the chow industry for another worked example. There will be one GM Golden Rice praised to the rooftops and a thousand examples of harm kept hush-hush on the QT.
All the industry pushback on labelling if a product has touched GM shows they know something’s up, else if it’s so damn fantastic and cheaper and better then this would be listed as a feature, not a bug.
The carrot experiment is clear enough but it can be replicated for a lot of other vegetables, and the historical trajectory of McCance and Widdowson’s measurements of mineral content show the direction of travel has been wrong pretty much since the 1960s. The doi for a relevant paper is doi.org/10.1080/09637486.2021.1981831
Mayer, A. M. B., Trenchard, L., & Rayns, F. (2022). Historical changes in the mineral content of fruit and vegetables in the UK from 1940 to 2019: a concern for human nutrition and agriculture. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 73(3), 315–326.
If we are so damn clever how has this degradation happened on our watch in something as basic as food?
The reason young folk are so miserable is precisely because they can’t enjoy a nice Woodbine or Marlboro washed down with Lemon Hooch after eating their Cheeseburger. And the ones who do are made to feel so guilty it turns into mental health issues.
Comparing hair shirts to see whose is most scratchy is a joyless activity for both the participants and the spectators.
@The Investor “That’s the whole point of trying to create multinational agreements to transition from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear.”
My point is (as the data linked shows) we are *not* transitioning away from fossil fuels but have increased use by 50%, “renewables” are just supplementing fossil fuel use.
And thats before we even start on the considerable needs for AI.
Any thoughts of “net zero” seem delusional.
@ermine — Carrots are a good example, tomatoes or strawberries are probably an even better one, but this applies pretty much universally — right down to limes (forget Fever Tree; if you want a proper G&T, grow a lime in a pot and resign yourself to never enjoying supermarket ones again).
Part of the picture is the loss of varietal diversity. The supermarket mutants are bread for carbohydrate yield per acre and resistance to bruising in transit, not for anything that could be called proper nutritional value, but even in home growing we’ve narrowed the field massively. We’ve gone from saving seed and informal selection to whatever the Dutch decide is commercially viable … maybe 15–20 strawberry varieties at most (the UK garden centres and online sellers don’t deserve a mention, and are mostly a subset of what the Dutch offer anyway). My mother used to grow three potato varieties in the garden; I’ve never seen any of them for sale. She used to cross-pollinate tomatoes to see what hybrids resulted from what she thought was her best stock. Totally amateur, messy, and very yummy.
On micronutrients, we depleted the soil by dismantling the microbial and fungal ecosystems that make them available to plants in the first place. Plants can only absorb what the soil microbes break down for them (soil science is one of my many rather fringe hobbies. and it’s both gutting and slightly absurd that I’m not yet retired and free to indulge my full cooky-weirdo tendencies at will). But yes: intensive ploughing and chemical spraying destroy the organic matrix soil that organisms inhabit. We sterilise the soil, then act surprised when food has to be propped up with inputs and still tastes like cardboard.
I don’t think the aim was ever really to improve food quality though. I think it was to feed an ever-growing population cheaply and reliably. Apparently, human reproduction, in service of perpetual economic growth (the economy, as it turns out, must grow forever. Like cancer), is a public good, as I learned this week from the comments section of a different Monevator article.
Quality is optional, quantity is non-negotiable.
In a way this works: we’re not at risk of famine. We’re just at risk of eating tasteless crap until the day we die. It explains why we’ve ended up with food that looks good, ships well, and tastes of nothing. But worry not, you can buy vitamins at Holland & Barrett 😉
…All that said, I confess I’d still quite like access to a CRISPR kit to mess about and GM the crap out of my boxwood. It would be nice to engineer a box plant with such obnoxious levels of alkaloids and cyanogenic glycosides that the box moth caterpillars keel over on first bite. (And before anyone winds up: it’s an invasive species, and nothing else eats box anyway.) C’mon, GM on a small scale and with malicious intent directed at a single invasive (and let’s be honest — fugly) moth, can’t be all that evil, huh? 😉
@hosimpson (#44):
Re: “It would be nice to engineer a box plant with such obnoxious levels of alkaloids and cyanogenic glycosides that the box moth caterpillars keel over on first bite.”
You have my sympathy if you have suffered with these buggers – we have lost all of our [many hundreds of] box that we spent nearly 30 years tending and, to put it mildly, it is very depressing!
Al Cam — for the past 5 years I’ve been waging biological warfare:
https://www.agrigem.co.uk/product/dipel-df-500g/?&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17336281197&gbraid=0AAAAADuriRye3CnSJ7Puu1Z_ePAD5pzVz
BTk bacteria naturally occurs in soil and kills caterpillars, but only if they ingest it. It doesn’t kill anything else (bees, birds, fish, mammals, and even adult butterflies and moths are fine). Any birds that might eat the dead caterpillar are also fine (they generally don’t anyway as the buggers are toxic and taste bad, apparently).
If your box plants are still in the ground, they’ll recover. You just have to spray 3–4 times a year, timed to the moth’s breeding cycle.
Re: “If your box plants are still in the ground, they’ll recover. You just have to spray 3–4 times a year, timed to the moth’s breeding cycle.”
Interesting input. Have your box recovered, or did you stave off the caterpillar in time? If the former, how long did recovery take? Most of our box are still in the ground* – albeit very unsightly, and we have started a yew replacement project**; albeit the yews are just currently cuttings/saplings – and as far away from the box as practicable. To date they are doing well, but it is very early days. The cost of replacement with more mature specimens is far from trivial (and who knows what you are buying anyway?) – esp. if they were then also to fail!
FYI, in some European countries you are supposed to: dig up the infected box , bag them, seal the bag, and then take them to be incinerated.
I understand the pest originates from imported Chinese box – great! Although native birds currently do not feed on them, evolution may in [somewhat slower] time help out – as they are, to put it mildly, a plentiful source of food – as you note they reproduce three or four times a year!
FWIW, our box started to fail initially slowly a few years back – and we thought spraying (cannot recall what with) had helped arrest this – then last summer the speed of decline was such that by the end of summer they were all gone.
*although we did cut back hard (ie to just above the roots) some of them, really as an experiment to see if/how they regrow – it is still early days (well in terms of the speed that box grows: a year or two is very little)
**taken from our own pretty mature and healthy Yews
My box recovered within a growing season, but I started spraying fairly promptly, before the plants were completely exhausted and the little buggers had a chance to strip the bark from the younger branches. Generally in lighter infestations the caterpillars strip leaves, not wood, so as long as the plant doesn’t starve in the interim the branches will reshoot in spring. You can check what’s alive and what’s dead by snapping a twig.
Depending on how bad last year’s infestation was (and how many larvae overwintered on your land), the first year may need an earlier start and a more frequent spraying (eg start late March / early April and spray monthly). Once you’ve broken the cycle, 3–4 sprays a year should be enough. I only did three last year and the plants look great, despite a neighbour about 30m away who keeps a small hedge that gets stripped bare every year and functions as a sort of a village moth incubator. They refuse to remove it or treat it, so here we are.
NB: BTk are live bacteria that normally live in the dark, not a systemic poison, so it isn’t rain-fast and UV kills it.
On birds: I wouldn’t hold my breath. Box produces cyanide naturally, and the caterpillars have evolved to (a) tolerate it and (b) weaponise it. That’s probably why they’re doing so well here — no predators.
And yes, the economics of replacement are insane. I bought 2 box plants and was given one, then propagated the other 200 or so that I now have from cuttings. I’ve seen enormous box plants in small-tree form in the Cotswolds that must be very old (and very expensive). I’m told the moth is now about 20 miles away from there … so, five years at most.
Check out these guys, they have members that manage historic gardens across the UK and Europe, and they don’t seem to be too pessimistic about the whole thing….
https://ebts.org/box-moth-and-caterpillar/
Re my comment #3 I did the deed this morning and invested in more TN28 in advance of my T26 maturing.
If global warning is a real and present danger, we need population control in the developing world. If the West cut fossil fuel use by 95% it would make ZERO difference with ~5 billion people in China, India and Africa burning coal and other fossil fuels. Instead we are encouraging these countries to have bigger populations and grow their economies which is destroying the planet.
@James — The US is the second largest consumer of fossil fuels, so simple maths tells us that cutting its fossil fuel consumption by 95% would be make much more than ‘zero’ difference.
The population of China is decreasing. India is forecast to start going down in the middle of the century. Africa is set to keep increasing though. The real issue is that they want our standard of living, understandably, and as you say to grow their economies.
In my opinion we need to find ways to make the important things we enjoy in the West — travel, warm well-lit homes, gadgets — more sustainable / lower carbon, to provide a template and to avoid accusations of hypocrisy. Which is basically what was happening, slowly, until the ‘all a hoax’ brigade blustered their way back into the political conversation.
An interesting twist on gilt purchases. Although my contract note for my TN28 shows Accrued Interest as expected, it was a very small amount and subtracted – not added – from the purchase price. Some searching took me to the DMO website and revealed that because the settlement date is after the ex-dividend date I will not receive the coupon (as with share dividends). However, the seller has effectively paid me the coupon for the period they did not own the gilt, hence the discount on my price. The DMO website explains this is sometimes called Rebate Interest. Although I haven’t yet seen it explicitly stated I expect I shall have to add this to my next coupon when declaring it on my tax return.
@DavidV That is very interesting. I bought a fair few gilts now, both in primary auction and on secondary market, but I had not come across this. A reminder that every day is a school day. 🙂
Just to say, thank you @TI for that superb and robust defence of net zero aspiration and climate change science. You and your Accumulator colleague are really excellent writers.
@James Dean – Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it when the ‘West’ accounts for approx 60% of GDP. Moreover, are you aware that China is annually installing more renewable energy infrastructure than the rest of the world combined?
@James Dean – Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it when the ‘West’ accounts for approx 60% of global GDP. Moreover, are you aware that China is annually installing more renewable energy infrastructure than the rest of the world combined?
@Paraquat – thank you.