Anyone who doesn't want power cuts should welcome Chinese investment in British infrastructure

Anyone who knows the first thing about the energy industry in this country knows that power cuts due to shortage of generating capacity within the next ten years are a probability rather than a possibility.

And that's even if urgent action is taken to replace the power stations which have recently come to the end of their useful life or will do so by the end of this decade.

It's quite simple, either we get a move on in attracting investment to build new energy infrastructure, or power cuts will become a certainty.

So George Osborne was absolutely right to make it clear that large scale Chinese investment in new power plants in Britain, including new nuclear build, will be welcome.

If we're not willing to welcome foreign investment, we must expect power cuts.

I have been unimpressed with the BBC's poor, inaccurate, and biased reporting of the nuclear issue over the past few years, and each time I think they've hit a new low, they manage to do something worse.

During the difficult debate over Managing Radioactive Waste Safely the BBC practically acted as PR officers for the anti-nuclear lobby, with such ridiculous stunts as filming reporters at Windermere and suggesting that there might be a nuclear repository in that area.

This was never a possibility: only two districts in Cumbria, Copeland (which already has much of the country's nuclear waste), and Allerdale, were exploring the possibility of hosting a respository. The idea of putting the waste in Carlisle, Eden, South Lakeland which includes Windermere, or Barrow was not, is not, and never has been under consideration.

In 2011 when Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami which is estimated to have killed about 19,000 people, the BBC devoted more airtime to the consequent problems the earthquake caused at the Fukushima nuclear power plant than to any other aspect of the problems - despite the fact that radiation caused by the meltdown is not known to have caused a single death. (The largest category of deaths caused by the earthquake and tsunami were through drowning, which I have seen estimated at 92% of fatalities, including both the deaths at the Fukushima nuclear plant.)

Today the BBC were scaremongering about the possibility that if China owned a majority stake in parts of the UK's energy infrastructure they could use this ownership to threaten disruption of our energy generation if we found ourselves in a political dispute with China.

Oh please. There are many other countries beside ourselves which welcome foreign investors in our fixed infrastructure, but there is no country in the world which would allow those investors to use their ownership to threaten to shut down that infrastructure . The infrastructure is physically present in the country it serves, cannot be taken "home" by the investor like a kid taking his ball away, and is subject to the courts and regulatory regime of the country where it sits. Consequently legal safeguards to ensure that the infrastructure cannot be switched off at the whim of investors in another country, such as those which would be included in any deal for Chinese investment in our power industry, would be effective.

 What anti-nuclear fairy story is the BBC going to be running next week?