I read through most of the 197-page Nuclear White Paper when it was released by the government on Thursday and it made encouraging, if soporific, reading. The document is a major step on a route to energy independence for Britain; a move that will ensure future generations will not be bankrupted by the costs of importing foreign oil and gas. For those of you with some time to spare, you can download the document from the Government News Network by clicking the link above.

The positive news from the government managed to take the edge off my anger at Tony Blair, after the announcement of his wallet-busting part-time role with JP Morgan... but not by much…

The thing that really annoyed me about this appointment is not that Blair has a highly paid job in industry. I don’t mind that; it is the fact that he has joined JP Morgan that irks me. I’ll explain why in a moment…

Of course, Margaret Thatcher got a job hawking cigarettes with Phillip Morris after she left office, which isn’t exactly the most moral way to earn a living… and John Major took a position with private equity group Carlyle, which is infamous for signing up ex-politicians and using their contacts to make as much cash for itself as it can. However, Blair’s new position makes me sick to my soul… it is an immoral act just a few weeks after he converted to Catholicism in a sanctimonious wave of global publicity.

My problem with the JP Morgan appointment lies in the fact that this investment bank has been chosen to head up the consortium running the new Trade Bank of Iraq. This new body has raised billions of dollars in trade guarantees by selling future Iraqi oil production.

The consortium will surely make millions and millions of dollars – with JP Morgan trousering more than enough to pay Blair’s blood money. So, Blair sold UK interests out to America… took us into an unjustified and badly planned war… and is now profiteering from the reconstruction of a country he helped to destroy. I wonder how he will explain all this at his next confession…

Anyway, back to the point…

The Labour government has surprisingly done the right thing… for once. We can all breathe more easily now the environ-mentals have failed to scupper our energy strategy and future prosperity. Indeed, Greenpeace’s objections to the nuclear white paper are pretty easy to dismiss in my mind. Its full assessment of the proposals can be found by clicking the link above, but the thrust of their argument was about cost.

Greenpeace criticised the fact that future potential liabilities for the operating companies had been capped. They argued that investors in new nuclear plants will be able to limit the exposure to future costs should they escalate beyond predictions. It also said that the government had to do this; otherwise no company would sign up to the programme.

Erm, pardon me, but isn’t this all fairly normal business practice and pretty obvious. Of course any sensible chief executive would not sign up to a project where there was an unlimited liability in cost. It would gamble the future of their business. Industry is not about gambling.

Of course we have to sort out the waste issue, but I am a great believer in the inventiveness of the human race. We have been to the bottom of the deepest ocean… we have put a man on the moon… and we have engineered ways of obtaining energy from the heart of an atom… I am sure we can sort this one out…

So we end the week with some hope for a future energy security. Thank you Mr Brown. We also had a reminder why being self sufficient in energy is important as a hypocritical world leader profiteers from his Middle Eastern crusade with George W Bush. Blair can count his money, while the rest of the world counts the cost of paying sky-high energy costs which have been exacerbated due to the actions of a few morally dubious men and women such as Mr Blair. Ain’t the world a wonderful place… P.S. If you enjoyed this article then sign up for Smart Commodities UK. It’s dedicated to searching out the investment trends that could provide our biggest profit opportunities for the next decade…

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