Latest news with #Mousetrap
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The glory days of net zero are thankfully over
Does anyone remember the children's game Mousetrap? The centrepiece was the careful construction of a clever but complex and rickety piece of machinery. When it was ready, you turned a crank, which pushed a lever, which pushed a stop sign into a boot, which kicked a bucket with a ball bearing in it, which ran down some stairs and bumped into a rod with a hand on it, which triggered a diver launching himself into a barrel, which knocked loose a suspended cage, which, finally – if it all worked – would fall on your opponent's mouse and take it out of the game. One has to wonder whether the inventor of Mousetrap had any later-life influence on electricity grid design. Today's complex chain of grid management for renewables, the turning on and off of power as the wind blows, or doesn't, or the sun shines, or doesn't; the backup power stations standing ready, or not, to fill the gap; the crazy systems of payment and cross-subsidy, and the fine margins on which all this works – it's all uncomfortably reminiscent of this childhood game. And, as in the game, the Mousetrap grid doesn't always work – as the unlucky citizens of Spain and Portugal discovered this week. Somewhere in all the complexity something went wrong, their power supply switched off, and the country discovered the hard way that modern countries can't manage for long without electricity. We are supposed to believe no one knows why. Well maybe. There's no explanation yet from the government, but the Spanish media tell us some sort of shock to renewables supply disrupted the frequency and voltage parameters of the grid. The grid manager didn't have enough reliable non-renewables on the system to balance the grid quickly – and so it tripped off. If so, it is easy to see why the proponents of net zero might be reluctant to admit it. After all, critics of renewable energy have been highlighting exactly this risk for some time. We've learnt not to expect honesty and frankness from net zero advocates, and I fully expect the same thing this time around. But things are thankfully changing. Despite the obfuscation, the message is beginning to get through to voters. Net zero means the highest energy costs in the developed world and the flight of productive industry; the destruction of the British steel industry; the vast fields of plastic enshrouding our countryside to capture our feeble sunlight; the marching armies of pylons needed to move energy from windfarm to grid; the continued high cost of electric cars – unless the Chinese dump them – and the risks they bring, seemingly leading the authorities to suspend EV charging in Parliament's underground car park; the prospect of paying more for your electricity for having the temerity to live in southern England. And, of course, the memory-holing of Labour's promised commitment to a £300 cut in energy bills. Ed Miliband and the green Blob mouth their mantras about cheap and reliable renewables, but we can all now see that the reality is quite the opposite. They keep blaming gas prices, but in fact the gas price is now back down to its pre-Ukraine war norms. Our energy is expensive because renewables are inherently expensive and must be subsidised, and because they must be paid not just to switch on but also to switch off. But Labour simply won't admit it. Starmer and Miliband may close their eyes and ears to the facts, but a much more successful and subtle Labour politician, Sir Tony Blair, can see the way things are going. His punchy foreword to his own institute's report this week described the current net zero programme as 'irrational' and argued that the closing down of debate meant that 'the campaign stays in the hands of those who end up alienating the very opinion on which consent for action depends'. I wonder who he could possibly have had in mind? The truth is that the great days of net zero are over. Its proponents just don't realise it yet. The policy is moving away from them. The British public don't trust what they are told. They aren't willing to pay any more. They think the Norwegian energy minister has a point in wondering why this country won't invest in the North Sea as they do. They have also realised that the rest of the world is laughing at us Europeans for wrecking our own economies while they invest in coal. And they can see that European governments are behaving like cartoon characters who have run off the cliff but haven't looked down yet. That can't last. The tectonic plates are swiftly shifting. The Tories are joining Reform in distancing themselves from the craziness of this agenda. One day, and it will be soon, the whole net zero climate mentality is going to disappear in a puff of smoke, just as the Covid madness did. And not a moment too soon. The Climate Change Committee will be thrown on to the junk heap of history and we will never speak of it again. Will Labour leave this to the next government? Or can it see which way the renewables wind is blowing, and sail with it?
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The glory days of net zero are thankfully over
Does anyone remember the children's game Mousetrap? The centrepiece was the careful construction of a clever but complex and rickety piece of machinery. When it was ready, you turned a crank, which pushed a lever, which pushed a stop sign into a boot, which kicked a bucket with a ball bearing in it, which ran down some stairs and bumped into a rod with a hand on it, which triggered a diver launching himself into a barrel, which knocked loose a suspended cage, which, finally – if it all worked – would fall on your opponent's mouse and take it out of the game. One has to wonder whether the inventor of Mousetrap had any later-life influence on electricity grid design. Today's complex chain of grid management for renewables, the turning on and off of power as the wind blows, or doesn't, or the sun shines, or doesn't; the backup power stations standing ready, or not, to fill the gap; the crazy systems of payment and cross-subsidy, and the fine margins on which all this works – it's all uncomfortably reminiscent of this childhood game. And, as in the game, the Mousetrap grid doesn't always work – as the unlucky citizens of Spain and Portugal discovered this week. Somewhere in all the complexity something went wrong, their power supply switched off, and the country discovered the hard way that modern countries can't manage for long without electricity. We are supposed to believe no one knows why. Well maybe. There's no explanation yet from the government, but the Spanish media tell us some sort of shock to renewables supply disrupted the frequency and voltage parameters of the grid. The grid manager didn't have enough reliable non-renewables on the system to balance the grid quickly – and so it tripped off. If so, it is easy to see why the proponents of net zero might be reluctant to admit it. After all, critics of renewable energy have been highlighting exactly this risk for some time. We've learnt not to expect honesty and frankness from net zero advocates, and I fully expect the same thing this time around. But things are thankfully changing. Despite the obfuscation, the message is beginning to get through to voters. Net zero means the highest energy costs in the developed world and the flight of productive industry; the destruction of the British steel industry; the vast fields of plastic enshrouding our countryside to capture our feeble sunlight; the marching armies of pylons needed to move energy from windfarm to grid; the continued high cost of electric cars – unless the Chinese dump them – and the risks they bring, seemingly leading the authorities to suspend EV charging in Parliament's underground car park; the prospect of paying more for your electricity for having the temerity to live in southern England. And, of course, the memory-holing of Labour's promised commitment to a £300 cut in energy bills. Ed Miliband and the green Blob mouth their mantras about cheap and reliable renewables, but we can all now see that the reality is quite the opposite. They keep blaming gas prices, but in fact the gas price is now back down to its pre-Ukraine war norms. Our energy is expensive because renewables are inherently expensive and must be subsidised, and because they must be paid not just to switch on but also to switch off. But Labour simply won't admit it. Starmer and Miliband may close their eyes and ears to the facts, but a much more successful and subtle Labour politician, Sir Tony Blair, can see the way things are going. His punchy foreword to his own institute's report this week described the current net zero programme as 'irrational' and argued that the closing down of debate meant that 'the campaign stays in the hands of those who end up alienating the very opinion on which consent for action depends'. I wonder who he could possibly have had in mind? The truth is that the great days of net zero are over. Its proponents just don't realise it yet. The policy is moving away from them. The British public don't trust what they are told. They aren't willing to pay any more. They think the Norwegian energy minister has a point in wondering why this country won't invest in the North Sea as they do. They have also realised that the rest of the world is laughing at us Europeans for wrecking our own economies while they invest in coal. And they can see that European governments are behaving like cartoon characters who have run off the cliff but haven't looked down yet. That can't last. The tectonic plates are swiftly shifting. The Tories are joining Reform in distancing themselves from the craziness of this agenda. One day, and it will be soon, the whole net zero climate mentality is going to disappear in a puff of smoke, just as the Covid madness did. And not a moment too soon. The Climate Change Committee will be thrown on to the junk heap of history and we will never speak of it again. Will Labour leave this to the next government? Or can it see which way the renewables wind is blowing, and sail with it? Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Irish Examiner
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
See the home of vintage treasure hunter Katrina Carroll
By the time Katrina Carroll had gut-renovated a three-bed semi-detached house in Walkinstown in Dublin, there were limited funds for decoration. Lucky then, the Instagram content creator was a bona fide treasure hunter and had been since finding a second-hand Mousetrap game at her first jumble sale in 1991. Nothing in Katrina's house is 'just stuff' — and everything has a story. Whether those stories are true or not is still to be determined… Walking up to this 1962 house, the eye is immediately drawn to the original stained-glass windows in the door. In the hallway hangs an early 20th-century telephone she picked up from Buenos Aires that may or may not have belonged to the kingpin of a drugs empire; he who shall not be named. Or the 1950s cigar box from a 'gentleman's club' in Amsterdam. The hallway, left, and top right, the antique telephone, and below, the 1950s cigar box. Oh, the stories they could tell. 'Can you only imagine what that box has seen?' says Katrina. It's one of many times my imagination runs wild in this weird and wonderful abode. When Katrina and her husband moved into their home, there was a lot of work that needed to be done. 'We had to gut the whole place. "It hadn't been lived in for a few years. We were lucky upstairs. We were able to keep the original floorboards,' says Katrina. Bar the floors in these two rooms, the couple essentially had to start from scratch. 'The rest of the house had to be replastered, rewired. The sitting room. "We put in new windows and new doors, and by the time you do that, the guts of 40 or 50 grand is gone,' she says. Proprietor of a vintage clothing shop (Preloved by Shay & Jo), Katrina pours her personality into her home decor and she's perfected a formula for flair. Adding some Gatsby-esque luxe is a beautifully worn bronze bar cart, its marble top populated with a cornucopia of coloured glasses and captivating decanters, including a grape-shaped azure blue jug. 'Do you remember Dublin Flea? I miss that something terrible. "We don't drink that much, but when I saw this drinks trolley, I had to have it. It was only €25 and all my glasses are from charity shops or vintage shops on eBay,' says Katrina. Every interior design aficionado worth her salt appreciates the value of mid-century design. The sleek, streamlined design of a 1950s tallboy meshes beautifully with the arresting design of the room: 'My next-door neighbour contacted me and said her great aunt was getting rid of this tallboy from the 50s and would I like it? I just think it has so much character.' Kat's hallway and top, a cigar box, and below, Kat's vintage cameras. Switches in Katrina's hallway. If you don't follow @vintageirishkat on Instagram, are you even an interior design fan? A flair for the dramatic is evident in Katrina's reels, taking her followers on MTV Cribs-style tours of the space, doing DIY tutorials and calling out her haters. Tap dancing into the kitchen, she reads or posts comments from trolls and then frolics around the room to Lily Allen's 'F*ck You'. Sometimes her dad gets involved, too. Detail in Katrina's kitchen. Katrina's effervescent nature is underpinned by a curiosity for the world around her. She lives her life through a lens, documenting her renovating and decorating hacks on social media so it was no surprise to see cameras and phones popping up as a motif through the house tour, some dating as far back as the early 1900s. Forget spending hundreds on mass-produced prints, a simple hack to create an eye-catching gallery wall is to frame vinyl covers. 'I find all of these in charity shops,' says Katrina. 'I don't think people realise they make great art for the walls. They make a great statement wall on a budget, you know. I guess the frames are €8 in Flying Tiger.' Katrina's bedroom. Leaning into the golden era of the 80s, Katrina is not averse to a two-piece power skirt suit, taffeta prom dress or retro overalls paired with a jaunty Peter Pan collar. I lock eyes with some true icons of the 80s. My hips feel looser; I'm in Footloose, Flashdance, I'm Mick Jagger for a minute. This is the Vintage Irish Kat effect. A cheeky Rod Stewart raises a toast with a champagne saucer. Tesla Girls, Diana Ross, Blondie, and Nancy Sinatra album covers are framed, too. Is it a sitting room? Is it a dancehall? Is it a club? No, it's super room. A cabinet/TV stand in the sitting room. As wallflowers recoil in horror from wallpaper, vintage aficionados like Katrina run towards it — in sparkly Mary Janes, of course. Her living room has palm tree wallpaper to complement the dark forest-green paint from Nordic brand Tikkurila which she bought in Carlow Paint Hub. Katrina's antique Singer sewing machine. The downstairs bathroom's pink patterned paper is offset by an overhead disco ball. C'est chic, le freak. 'I only watched 'Mad Men' last year, and it really inspired me,' says Katrina. 'I started changing my house because the interiors [in the show] were to die for. I wanted a 70s cabin feel for the living room. I get all my wallpaper from Wallpaper from the 70s. They do amazing replicas of retro patterns.' The hallway in Katrina's home. That being said, Katrina doesn't want her home to feel like a relic of times past but more of a love letter to her favourite decades: 'I want people to come in and go: 'Well, she loves vintage' — but it's a vibe, you know? 'The window shutters are one of my favourite modern pieces. I've sash windows on the front, and then the shutters are on the inside.' Another item Katrina adores is a TV unit she bought second-hand in the UK. 'This had so many makeovers, this little TV unit but I bought this when I lived in London on eBay,' she says. 'My husband and his friend went to collect it from this really rich lady in Chelsea. She was living in this little apartment place, and she was downsizing. "She had bought it in a flea market in San Francisco and had to shift it over to London. And then she was like: 'Actually, I have no space for this.'' Katrina's five favourite haunts 1. Pete's Antiques 2. Jamestown Market, Inchicore 3. Wild Vintage 4. Bohemian Flea 5. Mother Jones Flea Market Katrina loved the story but she wanted to make it her own. 'I got it wrapped by a new Irish company called Cover Story. They wrap furniture for you,' she says. Coated with gold adhesive film, the wrappings are suitable for different surfaces including walls, doors, and furniture. Her favourite item in the living room is the tall 1970s vintage ashtray which she picked up from Wilde Vintage in Fairview. It's home to box upon box of colourful matches. 'I won a lot of vintage matches on eBay,' she says. 'This person had travelled all around the States with work, and he collected all these matches from every hotel and motel that he stayed in. I'd love to know more about the guy who got them because it seems like you had a really interesting life.' While it's commonplace in North America to fish through other people's skips, it's less of a thing here but Katrina never misses the opportunity to find vintage gems. 'I found my chairs in a skip. I'd wanted them for so long,' says Katrina. The downstairs bathroom. A couple of years back, the kitchen was a sage green colour but a commercial partnership saw Katrina change it up to baby pink. Everyone always asks about what her husband's opinion of it is. 'Does he not mind having a pink kitchen? I got a lot of hate for that but he loved it,' she says. As with any three-bed semi with a family of four, space isn't abundant so Katrina and Adam opted for built-in wardrobes in the master bedroom. Katrina Carroll's daughter's bedroom. The accents of pink continue in the bedroom with a soft blush bed frame and scalloped headboard from Bed World and accessories from Dear Trudy. 'I always start with a mood board on Pinterest. I keep it to a theme 70s or Mad Men or something like that,' says Katrina. Eiffel Tower scissors, hallway detail, centre, and antique telephone. A non-negotiable for Katrina in her main bathroom upstairs was a high cistern for the toilet and a freestanding roll-down bath. The sophistication is offset by brightly coloured accessories and accents: 'One way to create a colourful bathroom is to add a brightly coloured tub and pair it with a similarly bold shower curtain. This one is from Ikea but I change them all the time.' Creating a softer effect, the master bedroom is probably the most muted of all the rooms in the house with a softer colour palette and art deco fan-style sconces. A cabinet/TV stand Katrina's sitting room. The backyard cabin is Katrina's equivalent of a man cave. It's where she can drink her milky tea without anyone telling her it's too weak and it's also the storage place for the clothes she sells on her e-commerce vintage clothing store. 'Eighty per cent of my home is second-hand,' says Katrina. The only new things are the couch from Harvey Norman and my tiles from Laura Ashley,' says Katrina. 'The thing I'm most proud of in my home is that it represents all of us as a family, you can see all the different personalities in my home through my decor and treasures that I have found over the years. Buying second-hand gives a home character and helps you to express yourself and I hope I inspire people to do this to their own homes.' Katrina's three top tips for sourcing vintage homeware Take your time — very often these flea markets are overwhelming so don't rush, and check in every corner for gems. Follow the traders on social media — very often they share what they are bringing at the weekend flea. You can request an item and collect it when you attend. Make sure you eat beforehand — sometimes it can take hours to rummage and if you are feeling hungry and tired you won't be on top form to find treasures.
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Worry Isn't The Stock Market On Monday, It's The Economy Afterward
Last week, the start of Trump's tariffs sent many politicians, economists, and businesspeople into worry. Many markets took a beating. But that is the least of concerns. Even after the worst of tumbles, markets tend to spring back within a year or two. Even now, at noon on Monday, April 7, 2025, the major indexes, although still down compared to Friday's closing figures, are up from the greater depths at which they opened. (That is probably because market professionals typically buy at dips when less disciplined investors sell shares in a panic and then they hold for later accumulated profit.) The larger worry now is what will happen with underlying economies in the U.S. and around the world. Every country has an economy. So does the world through the interconnection of all these separate companies, international investments, currency exchanges, and global trade, to mention a few aspects. It all comes together like a giant machine by Rube Goldberg, whose fanciful comic inventions inspired the old children's board game Mousetrap. It may seem clunky and could be improved, but at least it has worked and could have been a lot worse. Tariffs are designed for a combination of reasons, including protecting domestic markets; inviting foreign investment; and becoming more effective using capabilities, inclinations, and talents in other parts of the world. Trying to shut out competitors in certain markets isn't unusual. One example is the high U.S. tariffs on sugar, driving consumer prices here about double what the commodity costs in the rest of the world. That's a remnant of a still ongoing cold war with Cuba. It's also likely a reason many products like sodas here are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which drives down comparative costs. However, the current administration has tried to equate equal tariffs to equal balance in trade, which is an inherently silly concept. Companies use vendors all the time, whether they are in the same country or a different one. Gather together importers and exporters, treat them as the national equivalent of what the home country buys and sells, and you effectively have a giant enterprise. It buys from some places and not from others. If you went to a store to buy something like lightbulbs, would you expect the store to buy things from you? Not unless you had something they needed at a price that was competitive. But that is essentially what Trump's view has been, that the U.S. either must have an equivalence of trade or, one might guess, the superior position. Markets will eventually come back. However, economies are slower to change. Tariffs are taxes on imports and are intended to reduce the practice. Countries collect tariffs from the importers, not from other countries. Companies handle the additional expenses in one of four ways: absorbing the extra costs themselves, splitting the costs with the foreign vendors, passing them onto customers, or some combination. But there is usually going to be a price the customers pay. There is also an indirect fifth effect: companies that manufacture domestically might now have enough advantage over foreign competition to raise their prices. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond has estimated that the average effective tariff rate in 2024 was 2.2%. After the layers of new tariffs, they estimate the AETR could rise to 17%. Call it a roughly 15% national sales tax that someone has to pay. Prices rise, people pay more and given the broad range and heights of the tariffs the administration has imposed, not including Trump's threat of an additional 50% charge on imports from China, the costs of doing business and living go up. That means inflation at the least, and most people have a recent grasp on what that means to their cost of living. If it continues at a high enough level, consumers, who are responsible for 69% of gross domestic product, a common measurement of the economy, slow their spending. This can result in a pronounced retreat of the economy, called a recession. J.P. Morgan Research has been raising its projection of whether a recession this year is likely from 30% at the beginning of 2025 to 40% in March. Now they're at 60%. Bloomberg reports that 'Donald Trump's global trade war is already priming financial markets for the next wave of corporate defaults.' If that happens, it's further economic disruption and a loss of jobs. Amanda Goodall, CEO at workforce intelligence consultancy EdgePulse, posted a few days ago that hiring freezes are spreading in tech and consulting. February saw the highest number of layoffs since 2009, during the Great Recession. There is strong potential for some very tough economic times going forward, regardless of what the stock market does.
