Wu Wei

Update on small claims

A sudden vast  increase in traffic to my blog (no, not another war in Georgia) has been caused by someone spotting the post (here) about how we successfully sued Easyjet in the Small Claims County Court, but did it online which was very easy. Thank you lightbluetouchpaper.

It only works for suing British firms or firms with offices in England and Wales. 

However, a friend has also found there is a European version for crossborder claims.  You can find out about it here.  To get the form, you need to download the Regulation, (the form's an appendix) but it seems to explain what you have to do.

It only applies to claims up to 2000 Euros, which is not a lot,  but enough to be helpful with budget airline problems.

RIP Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant

It seems I got so excited about the view of the fireworks on New Year's Eve that I never posted this.

Tonight at midnight, Ignalina NNP finally closes. 

From January 1998 to March 2003 (long before I started blogging), my work in Lithuania was mainly about persuading Lithuania to lose its self-appointed title as the country with most nuclear power and manage the energy sector without it.

Ignalina NPP has two Chernobyl type reactors, which Lithuania agreed to shut down at a later date, in exchange with financial help for safety improvements intended to be temporary.  During the period of my work, the government continually wriggled out of the deadlines.  Finally it made a bargain where the EU could pay for most of the decommissioning, and Lithuania would commit to definite dates for closure of each unit (2005  and 2009). 

Without this bargain, Lithuania would not have been able to join the EU.
The story of the negotiations is one which will have to wait for another day.

2005 came and the first unit went.  Nobody missed this unit much, as it was not needed, since electrical demand had shrunk after independence and Belarus had stopped paying for its imports of electricity. Nevertheless, still there were suggestions that the second unit should not be closed until it had been replaced by a new safe nuclear power plant.

Now Ignalina NPP is really going to close and there are few that will mourn it, even less people will panic about the lights going out, and nobody will be surprised that the price of electricity will go up, even if it won't double, like all the scare stories.

But has the government taken the intervening time to prepare for closure?  Not really.  They have not succeeded to get either funding or an agreement with neighbouring countries to share the cost of a new plant.  Consequently, electricity will come from a rehabilitated old gas fired power station, until someone does make a sensible decision.

The power sector experts in Lithuania do  not generally favour this solution, but since nuclear stations cost a lot, and take a lot of time to build, there's not much choice.

Traditionally the experts have worried about whether Russia will cut the gas off, if gas-fired electricity generation is chosen.  They should now not be worrying IF the gas will be cut off, but WHEN it will not be exported from Russia.  Russia's gas production is falling, and little new production is anticipated, so it simply doesn't have enough gas production to meet all its future domestic consumption and its contracted exports to Europe especially when all the new pipelines it wants are added.  Hence why it is making offers that the 'stans' can't refuse to take the gas off their hands and to control the routes by which it reaches Europe.

So Lithuania, look sharp before the lights go out next time.

However, it's not long since the Economist led with the same head line for Britain: "how long till the lights go out.

With very similar reasons.

Is it raining everywhere?

My week in Cyprus has been spoilt by the lousy weather: deluges every lunchtime, and grey skies most of the rest. The hail stones like tennis balls missed Nicosia.   It seems the weather forecast is not much different in Tbilisi.

Turkish Cypriots are getting qualified to join the EU.  They are already skeptical and able to point out the inconsistencies and stupidities of some of the legislation.  On the other hand they are not able to recognise the difference this makes.  Some of them seem to prefer poverty and isolation "in" Turkey (and no changes) to economic development and a higher standard of living with the EU.  Changes are difficult. 

The public sector earns more than the private sector in Turkish Cyprus, so why should anyone change?

Why Khabarovsk?

RFE gives one answer here

With little going on at the EU-Russia summit, the "FT's" Charles Clover has a nice piece looking at why the summit was held in a city nine time zones from Brussels.

Not, you might think, a shrewd effort to befuddle the EU bureaucrats in advance of the gas negotiations, but apparently because Klaus hadn't been there:

The Kremlin, apparently, had not wanted to choose the location for fear of offending powerful regional governors who were gunning for the honour of hosting it, “so they said ‘let the Europeans choose’”, according to an east European diplomat.

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, and Václav Klaus, Czech president - the Czechs hold the revolving EU presidency - had a look at the list of prospective sites before Mr Klaus picked Khabarovsk, because “he hadn’t been there before and wanted to see it”, according to a diplomat, who asked not to be named.

The city, like virtually every Siberian frontier town, boasts pleasant tree-lined central streets named after Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, numerous parks, statues of Alexander Pushkin and a lapdance establishment that delegates have been advised to steer clear of.

Well I can feel smug then, because I went in 1975 on my Transiberian train trip.  Because I wasn't going to Japan or Australia, unlike most foreign travellers in those days, I couldn't go off to Nakhodka, (the port for boats to Japan) or to Vladivostok (a close city in those days).  So I stayed at the last place to which I was allowed to travel which was Khabarovsk, for a few days before flying to Tashkent. 

I remember it as a rather pleasant typical small Soviet town (as described above, but I don't think lapdancing had been invented in those days). Fish was regularly on the menu in the hotel.  Even the hotel staff were friendly which was not usually the case when they found they had to deal with a lone traveller (more money to be made out of groups) who wasn't going to spend vast amounts on vodka.

It was so unspecial that I seem not to have taken any photos at all.  Later I recognised the places I had been to appearing briefly in the Russo-Japanese film Dersu Uzala made by Kurosawa.  Dersu is a local hunter befriended by a Russian army explorer, who he rescues from a storm.  When the hunter is growing old and can no longer hunt, the Russian invites him to stay in his home in Khabarovsk, but he is unable to settle in the town.  The film has stunning photography of the landscape and wild life.