Conservative voters want the right kind of green policy

The voters of Chesham and Amersham sent a message to the Conservative party. It is a message they have been trying sending in other ways for a long time, and one that is shared with many other constituencies in Conservative England. They want a green Conservative policy that is relevant to their lives, landscape and locality. As Conservatives we all wish to conserve and  look after the best of our local natural world. We  understand our relationship with fields, farms and forests and the need to treat them well. The voters  do not welcome  excessive new housing development taking away their  countryside. In Chesham and Amersham they have long fought against the way HS2 will cut swathes through their open spaces and woods and leave many of them living close to a very noisy fast train line.

 

            The battle of greenery will be the defining one of our age. The Conservatives will not be able to outbid the Greens and Liberal Democrats, parties in opposition, when it comes to tougher action to cut carbon and match ever more difficult targets. A carbon target is easy for those not in office, and very difficult for those in power who need to persuade or force  millions of people to change their behaviours to deliver. The way Conservatives can reassure most that we are the party of good green is to set out a new and positive green agenda.

 

            First the government must show how we will limit excessive migration and too many demands to build more homes. We believe in  treating people well that we welcome into our country, including helping them with good housing. There has to be a limit on how many we can accommodate, given the shortage of good housing and the need to  cater for the wishes of the many already legally settled here for  better provision for them and their families. The current pace of housebuilding in the most popular areas is unsustainable whilst the need is very great. If hundreds of thousands of  new people come every year to join us that is a lot of extra housing.

 

            We need to demonstrate an intuition about what people will do for the green cause. We can make common progress with the many by encouraging, incentivising and promoting better home insulation. Lower fuel bills is a winning proposition.  If the aim is to substitute dearer power for cheaper power, and more interruptible power for reliable power, it will be a difficult sell. The government still hasn’t even removed  the EU’s VAT levy on insulation materials, boiler controls, draught excluder and the rest. Surely that would help promote the virtues of keeping warm whilst burning less energy. The public reluctance to take up smart meters should worry the government, as these are offered free. People see little advantage for them for the work that has to  be done in their home. They already know how much power they are consuming, and what makes the most difference to their bills. Social media is full of chat that may be misinformed fearing that a smart meter will lead to differential pricing by time of day and even temporary removals of power as the authorities seek to balance a system with more interruptible wind and solar power, and with more heavy demands from car battery recharging and electric heating.

 

         The emerging government agenda to be kinder to animals is a positive. We are a nation of animal lovers. There needs to be some commonsense about how far to go on rewilding with the introduction of dangerous species to areas people may wish to use for recreation or food production. There is considerable support for the government passion to plant many more trees. Many a Conservative would rather have a wood nearby than another housing estate. As the trees grow we should also encourage sustainable forestry. It is  a disgrace that we import so much of our timber needs, often from colder countries where the growing times are longer. The government could be greener by offering to cut the wood miles. The economy would be stronger for producing more of our own material for  roof trusses and floors, fuel for biomass electricity plants and timber for furniture.

 

           At the heart of the new agriculture policies being set out following our exit from the Common Agricultural Policy the emphasis is all on nature. I am  in favour of encouraging areas of wildflowers, good hedgerows and attractive woods and coppices. I am also very keen on cutting the food miles. For too long we have been dragged into dependence on continental food at the expense of our domestic agriculture. Our dairy industry was kept small by shortage of quota, our fruit industry was offered grants to grub up our orchards to replace Cox with the  Golden delicious. Our market gardening industry for flowers and vegetables was undercut  by the Dutch and others, with arguments over subsidies and the price of gas to heat glasshouses. Defra should as a matter or urgency bring forward support systems to encourage a big expansion of our domestic capacity to grow fruit, flowers and vegetables, and to expand our meat and dairy activities to reduce imports. Our competitors use a range of trade barriers and subsidies to benefit them. Our market share has fallen a lot in the last fifty years. Today there is strong demand for more UK produced food which super markets are struggling to meet. Note how anything home produced sports the Union flag to reassure, and note how anything from the continent has its origin  in small letters with  no national or EU flag to entice  us, presumably for fear of deterring those who want domestic produce. More fields honestly tilled and more orchards full of fruit would add to the beauty of our landscape.

 

           I have no problem with an electric revolution, but it can only proceed with popular consent. That means working with the private sector on the better and cheaper ways of travelling and heating that electricity might afford us. It also means proceeding at a pace which ensures we have enough electric power to meet the needs of the buyers of the new electric products. The UK has been pushed into dependence on importing electricity from the continent. We should be self sufficient and building extra capacity to allow for growth. Staying short of power and dependent on unreliable imports points to higher prices and disruptions ahead. We need more hydro and pump storage to smooth out interruptible power and more biomass for  baseload based on UK wood pellets.

 

            In Australia and in Canada in their 2019 General elections the left of centre parties went too far with their decarbonisation proposals. People dependent on fossil fuels felt threatened, and voted instead for the Conservatives who took a more moderate line. We need to learn from that. Transitions have losers as well as winners and they have votes and rights. An opposition party can demand the closure of all traditional vehicle factories and the end of North Sea oil and gas. Government has to decide what happens to replace them and what happens to all the people who would lose their jobs by being on the wrong side of change.

 

         

330 Comments

  1. Peter
    June 20, 2021

    Green and kinder to animals sounds nice but I am not sure we are heading in that direction.

    Councils on the fringes of the green belt (of all political parties) are eager to proceed with the Croydonisation of their area. There are plans for massive tower blocks and new retail space which put money in developers pockets but add little to the quality of life of local residents. In Croydon itself skyscraper offices have been converted to apartments in recognition of changes in the workplace. More needs to be done to utilise brownfield sites but not by replacing civic buildings, old post offices etc with more shops and high rise flats.

    1. Everhopeful
      June 20, 2021

      Herd us all into high rises in towns.
      Countryside verboten.
      That’s the plan!

    2. Timaction
      June 20, 2021

      No. There is a need for urgent action to stop all or reduce considerably the mass migration started under labour in 1997 and continued for the last eleven, yes, eleven years by the former conservative Tory Party at 650, 000 per annum. Don’t bother listening to what they say, just watch their inaction or real policy on mass migration, banning of our cars and gas boilers, but having no regard to the consequences to our quality of lives, industry, jobs or our competitors in the East who continue to use ever increasing amounts of CO2. They obviously live in a different world or atmosphere! The present woke warriors from the politically correct, look after minorities, legacy parties are out of touch and lets be honest in need of replacement with a real right of centre political party. As a former lifetime Conservative voter I know what’s real out here in the shires away from the Londoncentric fools.

      1. NickC
        June 20, 2021

        Exactly so, Timeaction.

    3. X-Tory
      June 20, 2021

      Conservatives do care about animals, and so being “kinder to animals” would, indeed, be both in tune with Conservative beliefs and electorally popular. So why doesn’t the government ban the slaughter of animals that have not been stunned, together with the sale of any meat thus produced (thus preventing this practice simply being exported)?

      Etc ed

  2. Lifelogic
    June 20, 2021

    Much truth in what you say we all want a pleasant environment and I too I have no problem with an electric revolution when the technology works, is economic and makes economic sense. Currently is largely does not.

    The net zero carbon agenda is job, industry (and CO2) exporting and economic lunacy, giving us very expensive intermittent energy. It will cost several ÂŁtrillion to do net harm.

    The solutions proposed wind, solar PV, EVs, heat pumps, “green” hydrogen when fully considered do not really even save CO2 let alone help the climate. Anyway real world cooperation just will not happen.

    The good news is the danger of CO2 has been hugely exaggerated. It is largely harmless plant food that increases tree, plant, sea weed and crop growth and is vital for nearly all life. On balance a clear net positive.

    1. Lifelogic
      June 20, 2021

      “The green economy will be a bigger jewel in our crown than financial services are today” said Andrea Leadsom (former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and a politics graduate) on Any Questions. No dear it will be a destroyer and exporter of jobs, will damage living standards hugely, do nothing positive for the climate and the over expensive intermittent energy will freeze some pensioners to death.

      True almost every business now claims to be “green” and uses lots of largely meaningless green wash in their adverts. Even the “fashion” industry claims it for goodness sake!

      1. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        Think how much death has been achieved already with policies “to protect us”.
        The possibilities in “green” are endless.
        Shall we freeze or starve or get eaten by a reintroduced black bear?

      2. DavidJ
        June 20, 2021

        +1

      3. X-Tory
        June 20, 2021

        I have said on these pages before that the government CAN implement the ‘green economy’ successfully IF they do so in a pragmatic way, and don’t try to force the pace (which they are in danger of doing).

        For instance, take solar energy. While, obviously, solar panels do not generate electricity at night, there is also less demand then. And solar panels do not need bright sunshine, just daylight – that’s why there are increasing numbers of fields covered in solar panels. But clearly this is extremely undesirable, as they are not just ugly but diminish the amount of farmland available for crop production. But take heart – British scientists have come up with a perfect solution (once again!).

        A British company – Power Roll – has developed a new type of solar panel, produced on a roll as thin as wallpaper, weighing just 2% what current PV panels do and also 40% cheaper. It is ideal for any south-facing surface (either roof or even wall). See here: https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/power-roll-bringing-cheap-solar-power-to-africa-and-india

        The government now needs to legislate to encourage the mass-adoption of this in the UK. They would thus create a massively successful British company, with huge export potential. At the same time they would please the green lobby, increase UK-produced electricity, be able to remove all the solar panels from our fields and reduce electricity prices. What’s not to like?! It just requires a bit of government gumption, and a few active MPs backing this. Ah … I may have just spotted the flaw in this plan …

        Just to avoid doubt and misinterpretation, I am not suggesting that this alone is the solution – of course not. But it would make an excellent addition to the energy-production mix. The baseload, as I have repeatedly argued, should come from a mass order of Small Modular Reactors from Rolls Royce – again supporting a British company with leading-edge science and producing clean energy. You’d have thought that with COP26 coming up the government would jump at the chance to burnish their green credentials by pushing these technologies, but clearly they are, once again, asleep at the wheel.

    2. MFD
      June 20, 2021

      Yes Lifelogic, a lot of what you say is correct. The green brigade are using a few situations like city pollution to push a CONTROLLING agenda. CO2 is not an enemy, it is life giving.
      When the sun moves back into a cooling phase, the fraud will be revealed but Im afraid that our beautiful country will have been destroyed by fools who accept the scam by then.
      Like nutnut, green on the outside and red to the core!

      1. MFD
        June 20, 2021

        I do get angry when activists talk about CARBON reduction- carbon is the basic component of our world , body and life. It must and will always be present!

        1. Lifelogic
          June 20, 2021

          They also say “Carbon Pollution” this as it is black and dirty rather than CO2 which is clean, odourless plant, tree and crop food.

          Douglas Murray today:- ‘Why would any true conservative vote for this soft-Left bunch of eco-extremist, Tory statists?’ why indeed.

          The only reason is that the alternative is far worse.

          1. John Hatfield
            June 20, 2021

            There are parties other than Lib LabCon LL, most of them properly conservative. Their problem lack of media support. And defeatism from potential voters who say they will never get into power so why vote for them.
            Remain and Reform need to unite using the well-known Laurence Fox as their leader that might help promotion.

          2. NickC
            June 20, 2021

            Try the Heritage party, Lifelogic. A spin off from UKIP, it opposes the catastrophic global warming (CAGW) hoax, and indeed all cultural marxism.

        2. Lester
          June 20, 2021

          MFD

          It seems to be knowledge which is unfortunately lacking in the upper echelons of government, the constant drive to eliminate carbon, which if pursued to its logical conclusions will result in the end of life as we know it.

          The pictures taken from the returning Apollo space craft, showing planet Earth in all its glory, only made possible by its atmosphere, including Co2.

          An explosion of life 500 million years ago when Co2 levels were many, many times higher
          Please wake up and smell the coffee

          1. lifelogic
            June 20, 2021

            +1

        3. Timaction
          June 20, 2021

          ………….CO2 is just 0.04% of our atmosphere. The big clue on climate is that big yellow sphere that we orbit but the fools don’t want to consider that as an influencer. Milankovitch cycles, tectonic plates, our oceans and volcanoes all have significant influence on climate. The current projections have all proven false and too complicated to accurately predict at this time. Water vapour and the jet stream has more impact on our weather/climate but they won’t let any sensible debate take place and the msm are useless. The destruction of the rainforests around the globe has a big influence on local climate, water distribution, and huge impact on flora and fauna. Why aren’t our foreign aid fools insisting on action abroad on the big issues or at least searching for the truth?? Lets see what GB News brings to the table as the rest are truly awful.

          1. lifelogic
            June 20, 2021

            A big yellow sphere whose sunspot activity alone cannot even be accurately predicted.

      2. Mark
        June 20, 2021

        The reality is they are conveying a very false impression of city pollution. I took a look at the levels of pollution for the Birmingham conurbation which has just started its new scheme to tax motorists. What I found was that pollution levels are low most of the year. A few days, they rise to a moderate level, for which the advice is that most people can carry on as normal, but those who have lung and heart problems who feel symptoms may want to consider (note: not shall) reducing strenuous activity. Get off your bike, and take the car or bus. We’re now down to about 2 days a year when pollution levels rise to higher levels, where the advice is for people to avoid strenuous activity. Poor air quality is weather driven, although I did note that the day after fireworks could rate as bad air if the winds were still.

        Taxing cars will achieve next to nothing to help the air quality. They are not the main cause. Road traffic contributes just 12% of particulates emissions, and much of that comes from tyre, road and brake wear, which is certainly not avoided by ULEZ compliant vehicles – and heavy EVs produce more tyre and road wear. For NOx, annual emissions from road transport have fallen by 51 percent between 2005 and 2019, and now account for 33 per cent of emissions. Road transport accounted for just 3.7 per cent of VOC emissions in 2019. They don’t even bother giving estimates of sulphur dioxide produced by cars any more – it’s been virtually eliminated by ultra low sulphur fuels.

    3. Ed M
      June 20, 2021

      @Lifelogic,
      If people had opposed the Wright brothers pursuits into aviation on the grounds that their planes could only fly 50 feet on a beach or whatever we’d be never have supersonic jets today or be able to fly man to the moon.
      Give the greeny techies a break! Give them a few years and they might have developed tech that allows us to have a strong economy with damaging the environment. In fact, we in the UK want to be the leaders in this tech, leading to a tonne of money, high productivity + high quality exports.
      Lastly, this is what the market is demanding more and more, so to oppose that is just political – ideology. Why? Except that it might lead to the Tories getting booted out of government.

      1. Ed M
        June 20, 2021

        ‘with damaging the environment’ – without damaging the economy I meant.

      2. lifelogic
        June 20, 2021

        I am not against sensible R&D just the mad taxpayer subsidised roll out of clearly duff technology. Especially when driven and selected by government experts and politicians with PPE degrees, who clearly seem not to have a clue and are clearly picking the wrong directions. When the tech works and is economic it will sell without any subsidy fear not.

        1. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          @Lifelogic,

          I half agree with you, HOWEVER:

          1) German government has subsidised German auto industry over the years – an industry that exports some really high quality brands: BMW, Mercedes, Golf, Audi etc ..

          2) US government played an important role in the rise of Silicon Valley in many different ways.

          3) Israeli government helped to create Tel Aviv as a leading High Tech hub by setting up funds to help entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses.

          1. Ed M
            June 20, 2021

            Also, there certainly does seem to be a connection between modern capitalism and decline in quality of environment. Where I disagree with the greenies is that their arguments are not nearly accurate enough. The fact is we don’t really know exactly what the connection between modern capitalism and decline in quality of environment is. Nor do we really know how to resolve the problem exactly. Secondly, the greenies don’t appreciate the need for a healthy economy either. They appear to think money grows on trees.
            If we put more faith in science + tenacity etc, we can resolve BOTH the problem of the environment WITHOUT destroying our economy (might have to be tweaked somewhat). But we can only do that if government plays a role (there isn’t enough money to made in short term for private companies to get involved) and a role that involves science in some shape or form.
            So I half agree with you Lifelogic, but sorry, I think it’s overly simplistic, and I think you’re just digging your head in the sand that there is some kind of real problem with the environment and that it is man-made. The problem IS solvable, without destroying our economy.

      3. NickC
        June 20, 2021

        Ed M, The “green techies” need a break from pushing falsehoods – then they might come up with something that actually works and doesn’t need subsidy.

        1. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          @Nick
          I agree with you to a degree. But I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as you make out (like in all things in life, including business, many important insights and decisions don’t come from black-and-white thinking).

    4. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      I’ll say it again, look out of your window nothing has changed – its a mony making and political grabbing scam

      1. Timaction
        June 20, 2021

        Indeed. My heating consumption hasn’t changed in the last 40 years, but the price to fund the green religion has!

      2. Ottto
        June 20, 2021

        Look out of windows in Crimea, Bangladesh, California and in other US states and then you will see changes.

        I think you could have said in 1940, what damage?, looking out my window I don’t see any.

        1. NickC
          June 20, 2021

          Rubbish, Otto, the weather can vary in temperature by 20degC in one day in many habitable parts of the world, so what does half a degree C matter over 80 years?

      3. DavidJ
        June 20, 2021

        +1

  3. Peter
    June 20, 2021

    ‘First the government must show how we will limit excessive migration’

    Good luck with that. There has been lots of talk but no action. Government has no credibility on the subject now, as regular posts to this site will testify.

    1. Everhopeful
      June 20, 2021

      Is JR the shepherd who keeps us calm with promises of green fields.
      There is no slaughterhouse



      1. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        Everhopeful

        My thoughts precisely

        + 100s

        1. Everhopeful
          June 20, 2021

          + 100s

    2. Ian Wragg
      June 20, 2021

      The government supports mass immigration and until we get a proper Conservative government it will continue.

      1. Ian Wragg
        June 20, 2021

        The border farce vessels are operating with their positional transponders switched off and co.mumwith the French using secure mobile phones.
        Someone wants their collar feeling.

      2. Lifelogic
        June 20, 2021

        Seems so.

      3. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        Ian Wragg

        Plenty of tough talk but never any action seems to be government policy

      4. Dennis
        June 20, 2021

        Limit immigration??? It’s drastic but stop it completely for some years and let the emigration reduce the population to a sane level.

        1. Dennis
          June 20, 2021

          With 60+ million people why do we need more – Oh ‘cos the indigenous are too unskilled to work – who’s fault?- the governments of the past who were too stupid which there’s no indication that that stupidity won’t end any time soon. Look at HS2 etc., etc.

          1. glen cullen
            June 20, 2021

            UK official unemployment figure – 1.4 million

    3. Iain Moore
      June 20, 2021

      In reality there has been the wrong sort of action, every announcement Johnson has made on immigration has been to add to the problem, Hong Kong and the India trade deal are two, I haven’t seen any policy that tries to restrict the flood of migrants, and as we see they are particularly inept at stopping the invasion on our Southern coast. Of course while they are shoving people into the country by the 100s of thousands they are preaching to us about Johnson’s greenery. Well good luck with that , for I am not buying it, and certainly not buying it while they run two wholly contradictory policies.

      1. Will in Hampshire
        June 20, 2021

        Agreed, a trade deal with India seems certain to open the floodgates to massive immigration from South Asia, with give-away visas being the price paid for some tariff reductions on their part.

    4. Timaction
      June 20, 2021

      Indeed. How’s Priti Useless getting on with stopping the boat people and repatriating those who are ungratefully here costing English taxpayers a fortune?! Thought so.

  4. Denis Cooper
    June 20, 2021

    Off topic, here is a letter I have just sent to the editor of our local newspaper, the Maidenhead Advertiser.

    If he is as tired of receiving my letters as I am of sending him letters then he will just chuck it in the bin.

    “Five years since we voted to leave the EU, and the process is still not complete.

    Not so much because for now we have retained most of the laws imposed by the EU – that will be sorted out over time – but because it has been agreed that part of our country, Northern Ireland, will remain subject to swathes of EU laws forever.

    And apparently those staunch Brexiteers, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brexit minister Lord Frost, believe they have some kind of “duty” to accede to that constitutional outrage, with the latter telling MPs
    on the Northern Ireland committee:

    “… we accepted … the duty to control movements of some goods within the country to help protect the Single Market … ”

    Surely their “duty” to protect the integrity of our country should come a very long way before any “duty” to protect the integrity of the EU Single Market, and in any case where do they suppose any such competing “duty” has originated?

    We heard this before, only in terms of “responsibility” rather than “duty”, and to repeat a sentence from a letter published three years ago:

    “There is nothing in the treaties to say that a withdrawing member state is responsible for sorting out problems caused for other states, but our Prime Minister gratuitously accepted responsibility.”

    (Viewpoint July 26 2018 “Alternative solution to single market ideology”)

    I do not know what was going through Boris Johnson’s mind when he agreed to this, probably at his Thornton Manor “private meeting” with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in October 2019, but I do not see how it can be allowed to stand.”

    I appended the reference for Lord Frost making that extraordinary statement:

    https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/0f2762db-c000-4443-bb78-65da4688884f?in=11:07:24&out=11:08:07

    “… we accepted … the duty to control movements of some goods within the country to help protect the single market … “

    1. majorfrustration
      June 20, 2021

      Agree – usual political smoke and mirrors.Words and no action

    2. Grey Friar
      June 20, 2021

      I expect his reply will be that everyone involved agreed there could be no border on the island of Ireland for fear it would undermine peace, that therefore everyone agreed there would be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and that it time for the UK government to do what it agreed to do, which all its MPs voted for.

      1. Denis Cooper
        June 20, 2021

        Don’t be ridiculous.

        There is still a border on the island of Ireland, and it is still where it has been for the past century, and it is not only a land border where the units for speed limits change as shown in the road signs for everyone to see, it is also still in fact the customs border, and a tax border as well.

        And although it is still just as open as it has been for the past 28 years the sausages and other contentious “chilled meats” imported from the rest of the UK into Northern Ireland are no longer allowed to cross it, and so the EU’s sacred Single Market is not being contaminated by British bangers, and what more could the EU reasonably expect?

        https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0618/1229037-tony-connelly-brexit/

        “The UK issued a Unilateral Declaration on 17 December, stating that such meats would continue to flow into Northern Ireland until 1 July, subject to the conditions insisted on by the Commission.

        These were that they would enter a designated Border Control Post in Larne or Belfast, be subject to a “channelling” procedure between the port and destination supermarkets.

        They would also be sold “exclusively to end consumers in supermarkets located in Northern Ireland, and [not to] other operators of the food chain”.

        The meats would have to be accompanied by UK export health certificates and labels would ensure that “these products from the United Kingdom may not be sold outside Northern Ireland”.”

        So what is the EU’s problem with that kind of solution, applying just to goods destined to cross the border?

      2. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        There already is a border in Ireland GF
        Different currency
        Different company taxation
        Different VAT taxation
        Different car taxation
        Vehicles are stopped on both sides of the border by Customs and Excise officers.

      3. Dennis
        June 20, 2021

        ‘therefore everyone agreed there would be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain’.

        A pity no one said that that border would undermine peace in the UK. But then who in the UK would do anything but perhaps write some letters.

        1. Denis Cooper
          June 20, 2021

          It has already got worse than that and potentially it could get a lot worse:

          https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/gallery/loyalists-march-newtownards-against-northern-20855378

          One wonders if at some point Boris Johnson will think what he is doing.

    3. DavidJ
      June 20, 2021

      +1

  5. Everhopeful
    June 20, 2021

    Or as Douglas Murray puts it in The Telegraph
.
    “Why would any true conservative vote for this soft-Left bunch of eco-extremist, Tory statists?”
    A good question and the tories richly deserve a bloody nose 
but does the country deserve the LibDems? Apparently their forte is latching on to hot local issues, promising the earth
    at by elections and (obviously) not delivering!

    Trouble is..who do we vote for?

    1. Lifelogic
      June 20, 2021

      Exactly socialists, eco-loons, tax borrow and waste fools and lock down (do as I say not as I do) hypocrites it seems. And Boris was sound until recently.

      1. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        +1

      2. Peter Wood
        June 20, 2021

        LL, Boris has NEVER been sound, he just read the way the wind was blowing and anyone is better than Mrs May.
        The Tory Party is, lets face it, the least worst option. Change from within is needed, first stop this candidate ‘selection’ process by CCO; you just get ‘company yes men’ and no change. (The PCP voted to keep the awful May in office, if you recall, totally insane!) That way lies civil unrest eventually.
        Bunter Boris must be removed soon, he’s a joke. I wonder what Sunak’s view on the EU and NI and NATO and China is…?

        1. Jim Whitehead
          June 20, 2021

          Agreed, Boris has never been convincing to me.
          Boris and Sunak, both cardboard cut outs devoid of discernible depth and substance and altogether worthless as far as the future of this country is concerned. The continuing presence of this pair, an inept and near invisible cabinet along with the malign BBC ensures that there can be no way out of the nightmare.

        2. lifelogic
          June 20, 2021

          Given that most Tory MPs are lefty Libdims at best who do you think might replace him? Surely they would be even worse?

      3. glen cullen
        June 20, 2021

        +1

    2. Ed M
      June 20, 2021

      Mr Murray is talking like a navel-gazing Don Quixote.

    3. a-tracy
      June 20, 2021

      Everhopeful, The days of independent thinking MPs that lean to the left or right but keep their own ideas and vote on their principals of what was set out in their manifesto at election time is coming to a close soon when John’s generation retires.

      The LibDems and Daley’s flip flopping on HS2 is a curious one, I thought HS2 was a European project so that their train rolling stock could use the train lines in the UK to reach right up to Scotland and a bridge eventually to take the train into Ireland to cut down road transport. The LibDems purport to be totally into the EU and their rules so how do they square that and why weren’t the Tory ground troops in the recent election able to get that over? The long term European plan is to get more people out of the air into Europe by train and more freight on the rail bypassing Countries transport networks and road tolls isn’t it? The Lib Dems can be anything to everyone – its a con. About the worse thing that could happen to them is they actually got into power and had to follow through because they can’t do what they promise as each MP offers something different in every constituency.

      1. turboterrier
        June 20, 2021

        a-tracy
        Brilliant first paragraph. So very true.
        All we have got with the new breed of parliamentarian is a load of kippers.
        Two faced and gutless all of them, talk a lot and cannot make a real decision even if their lives depended on it.

      2. hefner
        June 20, 2021

        a-tracy, Could you please provide references showing that the UK high speed train lines are a EU project. I ask because even HS1 linking the ChannelTunnel to London St Pancras does not appear to have received EU funds at anytime, and is now under the ownership of Canadian and South Korean pension funds. I am afraid that only the names Euro-tunnel and Euro-star might be enough for you to ‘cry bloody murder’ but some hard references would be so good.

        And then international comparisons (made in the last ten years for a possible Australian project Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane) of the cost per km of building a high speed line show that HS1 went at A$134m/km, the Italian Bologna-Florence link at A$94m/km and the recent French Bordeaux-Toulouse link at A$30m/km.

        Can anybody explain why the UK costs were 40% more expensive than the Italian ones and four times the French ones. Do not tell me it is because of ‘public serpents’ as I am sure they also have those in Italy and France.

        1. a-tracy
          June 20, 2021

          Hefner I will attempt to find some links for you, I can’t remember the name of the EU policy on rail off the top of my head but leave it with me. I’m sure there is no funding from the EU for the UK – it is more a policy direction and we Brits loved to gold plate every policy.

          Perhaps it is land cost that puts up the cost of rail, we have less land, more people need to be moved and compensated read about John Bishop (he’s shut up now they paid him off large).

          1. hefner
            June 21, 2021

            a-tracy, Thanks a lot. Indeed one of the main objectives is inter-operability, which at least on paper could have meant continental trains running through the UK or British ones going as far as Malaga, Napoli or Stockholm.

        2. a-tracy
          June 20, 2021

          Google :Developing a Trans-European ‘high-speed’ rail network is a stated goal of the EU (TEN-R) . (TEN-T) EU council decision 2002/735/EC defines the technical standards for ‘interoperability of the system’.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-European_high-speed_rail_network

          Lots of info on Wiki with more links. The Aim to achieve interoperability of the Eu high speed train network at the various stages of design, construction and operations, the network definition is an set of infrastructures, fixed installations, logistics equipment and rolling stock. Corridor 2 incl London –
          [I’d guess corridor 15 includes Scotland and corridor 20 includes Ireland]

          Like most things EU – it is probably a way that their rolling stock can thunder through the UK cutting out UK train operators as they did with UK haulage, UK market gardening, UK dairy, UK pig farms, and many UK manufacturers that they wanted to re-site in Eastern Europe. To get a feel for what they want to keep read the list of all the things we’re now banned from exporting to Northern Ireland and the EU and that tells you the bits they want to keep for themselves whilst enjoying exporting to us and Boris and Frost are just accepting this.

      3. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        +1

      4. glen cullen
        June 20, 2021

        +1

    4. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Everhopeful

      The main problem is that we didn’t vote for what the present incumbents are doing, a Trojan horse in our midst, perhaps the Amersham by-election will give true Conservatives (Capital C) the backbone to stage a Coup and seize back control from leftist takeover otherwise Johnson will have succeeded in destroying the party?

      Sir John?

      1. Bryan Harris
        June 20, 2021

        Now that is a real right of centre challenge

      2. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        +1
        Yay!!

    5. Timaction
      June 20, 2021

      Indeed. In BANES where I live we have a Liberal Democrat controlled Council who have declared a climate change emergency. I must be blind as I go about my business, nothing, I repeat nothing has changed with our weather for…….the last 62 years!! Absolute fools, including the Tory’s!

      1. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        +1

      2. glen cullen
        June 20, 2021

        Exactly right

      3. Dennis
        June 24, 2021

        Nothing has changed near you perhaps but remember your council is trying to combat the changes in Africa, Asia, Antarctica etc., etc so it wants to be known as Mr Nice Guy but will be known as something else.

    6. John Hatfield
      June 20, 2021

      Vote Remain.

  6. Mark B
    June 20, 2021

    Good morning.

    I a recent article here I stated that Conservative policy will not change until the polls do. Some replied that the polls should not be trusted which I agree with. But a by-election is another matter and, not only have the Tories lost a safe seat they have lost by a considerable mile – 8000 I believe. As others pointed out, this means many once safe Tory seats, including our kind hosts, may not be as safe as they once thought. This is good news. A PM with an 80 seat majority may feel secure but, with so many now under threat, perhaps both he and his Cabinet can be pressured to start listening to them less they themselves are removed.

    HS2 is the EU coming back to bite the Tories. A part of the TENS Network our side was not mandatory but, both Labour and the Tories have supported it despite there being no need and the ever rising costs of its construction. People, especially in Conservative seats affected by it have quite rightly had enough just as those in once Labour held seats have had enough. The policies of the last 25 years are coming back to bite both parties and I for one am glad. The sooner every seat in the land is a marginal the sooner we will have democracies.

    As for Green issues ? They are important but, you cannot be seen to be Green when you are concreting all over this once Green and Pleasant Land, we are not stupid.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      June 20, 2021

      By now it should not be lost on voters everywhere that – while HS2 knocks 20 minutes off a journey time for a select few – their rail links have increased by 20 minutes because of ‘temporary’ speed restrictions owing to lack of funding to repair worn out track.

      It may be the case that the railways are permanently damaged by lockdown and working from home is the only option for many.

      One presumes that the much mooted three-day-week will be Tues-Wed-Thurs as pen pushers will want a long weekend. So they’ll be expecting a full capacity service at high speed on the same days as each other.

      This isn’t going to be possible, I’m afraid. Mass redundancies and cuts are already proposed by the government over the wider rail network. HS2 at this point is an even more lunatic decision than ever. At least house building is being held up by the amount of materials (especially cement and wood) it is taking from the wider construction industry.

      HS2 was known about during previous election and did not stop the Tories winning.

      Boris bottled Freedom Day and is using language which suggests that we’ll be in masks forever.

      This was the unexpected game changer, not HS2, nor house building that cost the Tories the by-election.

      The worst PM in our history, as more and more people are starting to realise.

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 20, 2021

        Soon there will be no alternative to working from home, the way the railways are being run down right now.

        Those lucky enough to be able to work from the kitchen table will have to be taxed to fund mass unemployment and many (all but the most talented and qualified) will lose their jobs to outsourcing.

    2. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      Conservative Manifesto 2019

      ‘’HS2 is a great ambition, but will now cost at least £81 billion and will not reach Leeds or Manchester until as late as 2040. We will consider the findings of the Oakervee review into costs and timings and work with leaders of the Midlands and the North to decide the optimal outcome’’

      ‘’We will consult on the earliest date by which we can phase out the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars’’

      
..and that’s all she wrote

      1. glen cullen
        June 20, 2021

        …so where are all these new green policies since 2019 coming from – not the manifesto
.could that be the reason traditional voters are a bit peeved

        1. John Hatfield
          June 20, 2021

          Boris Johnson’s manifesto :
          “We will get Brexit done in January and unleash the potential of our whole country.
          Also,
          ‍I guarantee:
          “Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

          So presumably that is where these so-called ‘green’ policies are coming from.

    3. Andy
      June 20, 2021

      Or we could just have PR. I have no problem with the 42% of you who voted Tory being represented by 42% of the MPs. But I don’t see why your minority group – and you are a minority group – should have well over 60% of MPs and do whatever the hell you like, regardless of what most people in the country think.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        Conservatives would still be in government today even under PR

        1. hefner
          June 23, 2021

          P2, Indeed they would, but they might possibly have had to listen to opinions outside their comfort zone? That might also have dampened somewhat the zeal of the most extremists among them. Oops, I had forgotten, Conservative politicians do not do extremism 


    4. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Mark B

      + one

    5. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      The voting seems to have been mainly former Labour supporters registering protest and tactical votes. Many previous Tory voters appear to have abstained.

      I am with Gus O’Donnell on HS2. Our politicians and Civil Servants indulge in collective stupidity, despite knowing that the economics are a complete disaster. The same applies to Net Zero and green boondoggles.

    6. Dennis
      June 24, 2021

      Any overpopulated country cannot be ‘green’ so that counts the UK out.

  7. Lifelogic
    June 20, 2021

    Judges may be freed from European human rights rulings
    Proposal that British judges should take European rulings ‘into account’ but ‘shall not be bound’ by decisions in Strasbourg reported by A Heath today.

    Good but is this true?

    1. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      So which of your fourteen codified rights would you like the State to ignore? (For that is the entity against which they are protected – no other)

      Come on?

      1. Philip P.
        June 20, 2021

        The problem is not the Court itself, nor its principles, but the problem that human rights law has been hijacked by a number of special interest groups, who twist the law to suit their agenda. Also, the fact that the Human Rights Act does not oblige UK courts to be bound by ECHR rulings but only to ‘take them into account’. But UK judges don’t seem to see a distinction. The Telegraph article was basically saying UK judges should go back to doing what they were anyway supposed to do, which I think is quite right.

      2. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        That isn’t what is being proposed MiC
        You say ignore.
        The proposal is that our courts would not be bound by the decisions of this outside court but would make their own judgement.

    2. Grey Friar
      June 20, 2021

      That is exactly what the law is today. A Heath seems even more confused than usual

      1. MiC
        June 20, 2021

        Yes, and ECHR has already ruled – in Russia’s favour incidentally – that a country may deport criminals and that a right to a family life does not trump that.

        So what, exactly, is the law or rule that troubles these commenters so?

        I suspect that there actually isn’t one but, they are unwitting agents of those to whom they are in thrall, in the push by the Right to deprive ALL of us of ALL of our guaranteed rights by scrapping the Act and by ignoring ECHR.

        1. Peter2
          June 20, 2021

          Wrong as usual MiC
          It is just normal for independent nations to have their own courts.
          Bit of a shock for you I suppose.

    3. Andy
      June 20, 2021

      Why would you want to be free of the rulings of a court which upholds the values of Churchill?

      A court established by British lawyers after WW2 – which enshrines in law the values of the Conservatives greatest ever leader.

      The court’s values haven’t changed – so where did you go wrong?

      1. MiC
        June 20, 2021

        It’s interesting too that Aus, NZ and Canada have their own HR Acts, which parallel exactly our own, and they seem to have no problem at all with them.

        1. Peter2
          June 20, 2021

          MiC
          Because they are judged by their own national judges.
          Which is what we want to happen.
          Independent democratic nations.

          1. MiC
            June 21, 2021

            That is exactly what happens here.

      2. Peter2
        June 21, 2021

        Nonsense MiC
        Judges in the UK are bound by the decisions of this outside court.
        Australia has no outside court that has that power.

  8. agricola
    June 20, 2021

    This morning you offer a back to reality manifesto template following the kick in the backside of Chesham and Amersham, and not before time. A vote of thanks to the electorate of Chesham and Amersham (C&A) for voicing their opinion on our behalf. I doubt they or we are enamoured af things Lib Dem, a duplicitous rabble who would promise anything to anyone for the smell of power. They only provide a means of protest however worthy their candidate. At C&A the protest was undoubtedly the imposition of HS2. Living proof that governments , once in power, will push through anything against the wishes of those who put them there. I would have thought that there had been sufficient in this diary over the years to ring bells in the minds of government, but no, they plough on regardless. Well now you have your answer.

    As to the very questionable ways of achieving a cleaner more sympathetic approach to our environment, this government drive on like an addict in search of their next fix. Oblivious to the effect their addiction will have on the electorate as a whole and for a very questionable end result. Normally their demise in a shop doorway covered in their worldly wealth. No doubt others will repeat the detail.

    I think that those of sane mind in your party should gather together as a lever group to impose logic and practicality on government in opposition to wives on a mission and lobby groups only in it for their own agenda. There is a long haul to the next GE, how many more C&As do you need for the electorate to build sufficient momentum to end the conserative dream. There are two dreams in fact, that of the Conservative electorate and that of those who have hijacked the conservative party. I do not see it as an opportunity for any Lib Dem revival, rather one for an awake Reform Party who only need to look at yesterdays and todays submission to create their own manifesto. The gate is wide open and the electorate have seen it.

    1. agricola
      June 20, 2021

      I read in the MOS that the C&A result is attributal to the continued lockdown restrictions. It possibly added a bit of weight to the voting outcome, but I am reluctant to put it in first place against the imposition of HS2 from which C&A will get all the downside and none of the benefits, a few minutes less to London or Birmingham.

      1. Hat man
        June 20, 2021

        Agricola, you’re still mentioning the housing bill, which will allow yet more countryside to be concreted over against the wishes of local people and councils, and threatens the green belt. That doesn’t play well in the Chilterns.

        1. agricola
          June 20, 2021

          Hatman,
          I think you mean I am NOT mentioning the housing bill. That is possibly because I did not consider it pivotal, just a negative add on. From a personal selfish point of view I would prefer the creation of small towns like Harlow rather than the blighting of every desirable village in the country.

          To solve the problem of inaccessible housing for average members of the Cornish population competing with second home and incoming grockles, I would create two parallel markets as in Guernsey. One for locals, one for incomers.

        2. Hat man
          June 20, 2021

          Sorry, Agricola – still *not* mentioning…

  9. David Peddy
    June 20, 2021

    Sensible proposals

  10. Old Albion
    June 20, 2021

    The destruction of industry. The destruction of the countryside. Imposing impossible costs on ordinary people, all to possibly save 1% of global Co2 emissions and satisfy a silly schoolgirl…………………….

    1. agricola
      June 20, 2021

      1% is 0.0004% of existing 0.04% of existing CO2. Once the silly schoolgirl realises it she will want something she considers better. You put it in perspective. It won’t change until Boris realises he is naked.

    2. Dennis
      June 24, 2021

      The 1% extra CO2 may not be a problem in itself but it does warm up the oceans somewhat which increases the water vapour a fair bit which is the much greater GHG which warms up the oceans more which increases the …. I feel a loop coming on.

  11. Everhopeful
    June 20, 2021

    Did I ask for an electric car that spies on me?
    Did I want to get rid of coal fires and gas?
    Did I ask for an experimental jab?
    Did I willingly give my country away for housing. Put it up for grabs? Was I even consulted?
    Did I demand any of this appalling mess?
    “No. No. No.” As Mrs T said of another power grab.
    And she may just as well have never been. Her party has trashed her!

    1. Lifelogic
      June 20, 2021

      Even Mrs/Lady Thatcher made very many huge errors (though she was the best PM in my lifetime by some distance). She closed many excellent Grammar Schools – both as education Sec. and PM, appointed maths & logic illiterate John Major as chancellor and even allowed him to join the ERM. She fell the climate alarmism exaggerations, failed to change the state monopoly NHS, failed to cut taxes, the size of the state sector and red tape sufficiently and buried the UK further into the dire EU and without any referendums.

      Reply Income tax cut from 83% to 40 %. Large cuts in Corporate tax rate. She was against the ERM, forced into it by threat of resignation of Chancellor and Foreign Sec. She did wrongly destroy grammar schools under Heath. She reduced size of state trading sector by a major series of privatisations.

      1. Dennis
        June 24, 2021

        If reducing the size of the state is a good thing than why not let Google, Twitter and Facebook run everything? No need for pointless elections just let the CEOs tell us that there are no problems, all is sorted.

    2. Ed M
      June 20, 2021

      Mrs Thatcher was brilliant at defeating socialism. But people exaggerate her brilliance. She had no real business experience. She’d never set up her own company. And didn’t seem to understand the need to help support Britain’s High Tech / Digital industry which would have made us a far wealthier nation now, stronger more stable and diverse economy, higher skills, higher productivity, higher quality brand exports that people would really rally around in a patriotic way.
      Also she over-emphasised the role of politics in Conservatism and transforming a nation. The bulk of that really happens in Education, the Media, the Arts and so on.
      She had a great warrior spirit against socialism, but lacked the subtle and creative mind and understanding of business overall, including High Tech / Digital to make her that great comprehensive leader some claim she was. Which is dangerous as people fall into a rut of seeing the world through the eyes of 1980s politics.
      Let’s commend her for what she got brilliantly right but not put her on a pedestal please to the detriment of modern politics and the crisis our country and world face today.

      reply What nonsense. Privatising BT and introducing competitors was an essential policy to get us into the digital age and solve the Lack of capacity and out of date technology created by dependence on a state monopoly.

      1. Ed M
        June 20, 2021

        ‘Privatising BT and introducing competitors’ – I agree (but this is a given, all Tories agree on this). This was a great thing (where on earth in my comment did I suggest otherwise! I said Mrs Thatcher did a great thing in defeating socialism).

        ‘was an essential policy to get us into the digital age’ – No! Privatising BT was essential to the British economy in general. This is a given. Planning for the Digital Age requires FAR MORE than this.

        With respect, your comment is complet

      2. Ed M
        June 20, 2021

        @Sir John,

        Most Tories support privatisation. I certainly do – certainly for things such as BT which you mention. But privatisation can become a bit of a red-herring too. For example, should the post office be privatised? On balance, yes I think (but case studies of post offices around the world show there isn’t a huge advantage to privatising the post office) but not if people get so focused on this topic of privatisation, that they / we forget to focus on things such as developing our High Tech / Digital Sector worth billions and billions, high skills, high productivity, diversifying our economy, and high brand exports that creates sense of patriotism, and so on.
        Also, useful as privatisation is, it isn’t go to solve the problem why so many people still rely on the state instead of themselves and their families and all the other dysfunctional behaviour in individuals, families, and neighbourhoods that cost our economy billions and billions in costs / expenses / wasted money etc .. In other words, Conservatism is much bigger than politics and economic policy. And economic policy now should be really focused on building up our High Tech / Digital Sector.
        Best

      3. Jim Whitehead
        June 20, 2021

        Sir John, I am pleased to fully endorse both of your replies to LL and Ed M.
        In fact I’m somewhat surprised that they seem to have been unaware of the monumental changes which occurred in the eighties. The resistance was unbelievably powerful at that time and the courage, invention and tenacity of Margaret Thatcher and her many able team members (not least, your good self) is a history which deserves far better recognition than has been recorded so far.
        I lived through those times, driving home on the M6 to the euphoric news of Nigel Lawson’s tax cuts, vowing to myself that I would donate more generously to charities now that I was in charge of my earned income. Gordon Brown’s grab on pensions and income reversed my thinking and actions on that point.
        The telecommunications revolution after BT privatisation has been amazing. It had been a sluggish world, an analogue technology, and the exponential expansion of the networks and the capabilities were unimaginable back then. How much more could have been achieved had the good lady not been hobbled and then deposed by those of another vision.

        1. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          @Jim,
          Your comment is irrelevant to anything I said.
          I praised Mrs T for what she got brilliantly right. But what bothers me is when people put her on a pedestal ignoring where she fell short and mistakes we don’t want to make.
          Again, she had no direct experience of business which led her to fail to understand properly the importance of the potential of the High Tech / Digital Sector. Also she exaggerated the power of politics and economic policy in fundamentally changing a country. Politics can do a lot but is still fairly limited.
          But overall, I’d still give her 5 out of 5 for tackling the unions and introducing privatisation.

        2. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          Also women hate it when you put them on a pedestal. Most strong women like to be challenged (even if in moment might not seem like that), as long as they are also appreciated for the good / great things they’ve done (which I did).

      4. agricola
        June 20, 2021

        Adendum to reply,
        She was also a chemistry graduate so she must have had an insight to High Tech.

        1. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          ‘She was also a chemistry graduate so she must have had an insight to High Tech’

          – Academic knowledge is quite different from EXPERIENCE, understanding and insight of Planning, Strategy, Tactics & Leadership in Business – whether in High Tech or any other sector.
          Anyway, the point, there is little evidence Mrs Thatcher did anything significant in really helping to really ignite / transform the High Tech / Digital Sector.

        2. Ed M
          June 20, 2021

          I’ve now come to the conclusion there seems to be hardly any knowledge in Tory government about the High Tech / Digital Sector and how crucial to our economy – and going back years (I might be wrong but can’t find any evidence to support otherwise). I find that quite extraordinary but there you go. Better a Tory government in power than Labour or Lib Dems (or Scottish Nationalists).

    3. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Everhopeful

      Plus thousands!

      1. Everhopeful
        June 20, 2021

        Thanks!
        We are in agreement.

    4. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      Agree

  12. Thames Trader
    June 20, 2021

    Very serious problems in the future surround proposals for home heating and insulation. I stress these are proposals and not legislation. Banning gas heating boilers and replacing with heat pumps not only brings a huge cost but with current technology the temperature of the system is reduced. Voters will not be prepared to stomach this.

    Then there is the proposal that a house cannot be sold unless it meets a certain standard of energy efficiency rendering many properties unsaleable. There is the side issue that the energy assessments themselves are a pathetic tick box exercise which in some cases don’t even need to check a particular parameter – they just assume.

    These proposals need to be urgently reassessed and the result communicated to the public.

    1. Lifelogic
      June 20, 2021

      Indeed total insanity, heat pumps will cost a fortune to install and maintain, are less practical and do not even save significant or even any co2, nor do they save on heating bills as electricity is so much more expensive than gas per KWH and the capital cost is so high. Much heat being wasted in generating the electricity at the power station. Installation in old houses is very expensive, impractical and disruptive. Banning people from selling older houses is surely just a form of theft of private assets.

      We do not even have any no carbon sources of electricity. Solar PV and wind (which both use substantial amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and maintain) and are still less than 2% of world energy usage.

    2. Alan Jutson
      June 20, 2021

      TT

      Agree absolutely, If such products and systems were any good, people would purchase them when their old systems needed replacement.
      The fact is these systems only work and are only efficient with a huge government (taxpayer) subsidy, and with a property which already has a reasonable level of insulation. For hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of properties, heat pumps either air or ground sourced are simply not the answer.

    3. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      Quite right. Some insulation (e.g. draft proofing, first 6 inches of loft insulation) can make good sense and deliver an economic return in energy saving. But more demanding insulation standards probably never get to pay for themselves. I calculated that the Grenfell Tower project would take over 200 years to payback assuming no financing cost, based on the data from the planning application – which was doubtless optimistic. And that was if it had been fire safe and not need replacing – but it was always likely that the building would be torn down long before another 200 years. Insulating to Net Zero standards is a ÂŁ2 trillion cost that would never pay off.

  13. MiC
    June 20, 2021

    All voters want the right green policy, along with all the rest.

    So it isn’t just about policy, but also about standards.

    The people have seen that this government don’t appear to have any.

    1. steve
      June 20, 2021

      MiC

      “All voters want the right green policy”

      Are you sure MiC ? The last I heard nobody wanted green policies at all, except a virtue signalling minority who would’nt know a road wheel from a windscreen wiper.

    2. Peter2
      June 20, 2021

      Your generalised slurs continue MiC
      This government is pusuing radical policies on green standards and the net zero carbon ambition.

      1. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        Peter2

        Yes!

  14. Shirley M
    June 20, 2021

    The majority have been against HS2 from the start. Nobody was listening.

    As a northener, I would prefer the money to be spent on upgrading the existing northern rail system as this would benefit far more people than HS2, and that’s without all the environmental damage caused by HS2.

    Unless immigration is reduced, and drastically reduced, then we will lose more and more of our farmland and natural areas. People are tired of battling for school places, doctors and hospital appointments, etc. We already rely on power and food from abroad, and this is exacerbated by immigration increasing the demand. We need to be more self sufficient, not less!

    We cannot cope with such high levels of immigration, but is anyone listening?

    1. Everhopeful
      June 20, 2021

      Can this be true? Is this why the maniacs want HS2 so desperately?
      The govt. is hoping to make huge carbon offsets from the “green” construction of HS2.
      On paper only, obviously.
      Get 1 million lorries (delivering quarried stuff to HS2) off the road by using trains
and other such scams to produce a “carbon reduction”.
      The govt. is oh so under a big thumb somewhere!

      1. Alan Jutson
        June 20, 2021

        HS2 is hardly Green during the construction process, with the thousands and thousands of Lorry movements a day, and the blighting of thousands of acres of surrounding land and destroyed roads.
        Even if on paper when it’s all finished I would guess the THEORETICAL green advantages of planting thousands of trees will take Centuries of payback.
        I would suggest the harm done to the environment during the decade of construction IF CALCULATED PROPERLY is so far off the Scale, it will never have environmental payback.

        1. Everhopeful
          June 20, 2021

          I got it from this article
          https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/news/hs2-rail-freight-deliveries-set-to-take-1-5-million-lorries-off-britains-roads

          All the govt wants to do is destroy everything!

          1. Alan Jutson
            June 20, 2021

            Indeed that is taking clean aggregate to the construction sites (lorry to the railhead) lorries are taking spoil away from the construction sites to dump elsewhere, every minute of every day, that is not going by rail.

            Roads near to construction sites are breaking up under the sheer weight and use of so many lorry movements..

    2. majorfrustration
      June 20, 2021

      Listening but not doing

    3. beresford
      June 20, 2021

      Last night I watched a British Transport film from the 1950s on Youtube, showing York station and its surrounding area. At some point such films will have to be banned as racist and colonialist, since they show a Britain before the mass immigration encouraged by all parties for the last seventy years, with a largely homogenous population.

    4. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Shirley

      “The majority have been against HS2 from the start. Nobody was listening. ”

      Oh they do listen, it’s just that Boris Johnson seems to think he does’nt have to do as we say.

    5. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      I’ve just re-read the 2019 conservative manifesto, it’s a completely different party now than what was illustrated then – we’ve been had

      1. MiC
        June 20, 2021

        Yes, you have, yet again, but not at all in the way that you think that you have been.

        1. glen cullen
          June 20, 2021

          Please enlighten

      2. steve
        June 20, 2021

        glen

        “we’ve been had ”

        Big time.

  15. Everhopeful
    June 20, 2021

    A new source of return across all asset classes
.
    Is that what “green” is?
    The risks and returns on “green” are higher and investors will/are diving in with alacrity.
    Or are they saying that “climate change” is the big risk? So expect not to get a profit when the alleged flood comes.
    I can’t work out who really WANTS green whilst doing all possible to screw the planet so it must be about money
obviously.
    But what is the mechanism?

    (Why do landlords agree long leases with charities?)

  16. Planner
    June 20, 2021

    I and many others I am sure would agree with every part of today’s diary entry, the question is does the current Conservative Party. Based on current policies and approach, I think not.
    I have a question for you Sir John, do you think you can change government thinking or is it time for you and others with your mindset, to set up a new party which upholds these ideals?

    .

  17. oldtimer
    June 20, 2021

    If you want the changes you set out you first need to persuade your parliamentary colleagues you need a different PM. One who is financially literate, not obsessed with green issues or believes “the science is settled” (it rarely is) and and has a better grasp of how to run the complex organisation that is the government.

    1. turboterrier
      June 20, 2021

      oldtimer

      +1

    2. Bill B.
      June 20, 2021

      ‘A better grasp of how to run a complex organisation’, Oldtimer? That sounds like a shoo-in for John Bercow. Oh, too late, he’s gone over to Labour.

      1. Mark
        June 20, 2021

        I suspect Tim Wetherspoon is rather better at organising parties in breweries…

  18. EcoJim
    June 20, 2021

    So your environmental policy is to whip up more hatred of migrants. The nasty party will never change

    1. steve
      June 20, 2021

      EcoJim

      “So your [environmental] policy is to whip up more hatred of migrants.”

      That is a serious allegation, and wholly unfounded.

      Sir Redwood is not in the business of stirring up hatred towards anyone. He’s a distinguished and highly qualified person who’s mission has always been to do the best for the country and it’s people.

    2. a-tracy
      June 20, 2021

      So how do you sum up what is your environmental policy EcoJim in relation to people and migration? What would you do that is different to the government right now? Would you just give everyone that asks for residency permission and a home, even at the expense of Brits waiting on housing registers for over five years?

    3. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Ecojim

      And precisely where have you sprung from?

      I think that we should be told!

    4. Dave Andrews
      June 20, 2021

      Most people don’t want immigration controls because they want to be nasty; that’s just a lie put about by the left wing.
      In a country where we don’t produce enough food to feed the population, now is not the time to be increasing.

  19. Kenneth
    June 20, 2021

    So many towns and villages have been disfigured and had their culture and character ripped away by excessive housing.

    Once we have a government in power that we can trust we need a proper inquiry into why we allowed so much immigration into the country over the past few decades.

    Where was the clamour for immigration? Where were the marches? Where was the demand?

    If anything, there was, and still is, opposition to large-scale immigration. Why have these voices not been heard?

    The attempts to silence GB News may give us a clue.

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Kenneth

      I had my doubts about GB news but having watched Andrew Neil destroy Risky Sunak my fears are allayed!

      1. glen cullen
        June 20, 2021

        +1

    2. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      No one has tried to silence Heebie-GB News.

      Everyone with eyes is crying tears of laughters at it.

      Stop being so silly.

      1. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        MiC

        You’ve rapidly assumed the status of resident clown đŸ€ĄđŸ€ĄđŸ€Ą

        I wonder if Sir John will consider that a cruel comment?

      2. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        Yes they have MiC
        There is, as you must know, a campaign of bullying companies to withdraw their advertising from GBNews.

        1. MiC
          June 20, 2021

          Aw, there there.

          So you must think that private companies should be compelled to give their custom to an amateurish, flagrantly-biased, propaganda outfit just because it promotes your minority, eccentric views then.

          Fine, but ditch the criticism of anyone else on that level then.

          1. agricola
            June 20, 2021

            Mic
            Your degree of venom suggests to me that GB News has you rattled.
            At the moment it is still on it’s learning curve. Sound needs balance. Some segments are a bit like Loose Women, but mostly the professionals have opened the door that has never been ajar until their arrival. Nigel Farage is a natural communicator and could be on the cusp of a new career. It has only been going a week and has time to improve.

          2. Peter2
            June 20, 2021

            They should be free to decide how they want to advertise to attract custom MiC without a tiny but very vocal group campaigning to stop them just because they don’t like the media outlet they use.
            I’m not a fan of the Guardian but I would never seek to stop those companies who wish to advertise in their newspaper doing so.
            Such is the difference between Conservatives and some on the left who won’t allow the difference of opinions that a democracy requires.

          3. MiC
            June 21, 2021

            Nah, it’s just the endless victimhood-whining over nothing which is so noticeable.

          4. Peter2
            June 21, 2021

            Campaigning by a tiny group to shut down a TV channel just because they dont like it isnt “nothing” it is a serious assault on freedom.
            It must defeated.
            A classic example of the extreme lefts cancel culture.

  20. Nig l
    June 20, 2021

    All of what you say and fiscal rectitude. Certainly not the high tax soft left of Centre rubbish now being extruded.

  21. Maylor
    June 20, 2021

    I have to wonder how many people have simply lost faith in the PM and in many of his ministers, possibly due to misleading statements, mistruths and over reliance on so called scientific experts.

    If the govt is prepared to mislead the voters on one subject, they will do so on another.

    The govt is lucky that there is no creditable alternative.

    1. SM
      June 20, 2021

      +1

  22. Hat man
    June 20, 2021

    I agree with Sir John, that we need to “understand our relationship with fields, farms and forests,” as he says. But what I wonder is his “relationship” with the fast-disappearing fields and farms in his Wokingham constituency? A distant one, I get the impression.

    Sourcing food locally is a very good idea, but it gets that bit harder, every time fields are concreted over. The way things are going, MPs such as Sir John will soon be standing for unbroken suburbanized constituencies stretching from Reading to Guildford to South London. With maybe some food factories offering low-paid jobs packaging laboratory meat and insect-burgers. Of couse, it would be locally sourced food.

    And why the need to build so many homes in the South East anyway, if WFH is set to stay?

  23. Nig l
    June 20, 2021

    And in other news it seems Hancock deliberately held back good figures to ensure we went into another (unnecessary?) lockdown. How much longer do we have to put with him?

    1. Lifelogic
      June 20, 2021

      No to mention very many the extra death caused by the irrational vaccination priority (and gender discrimination) order of JCVI/Gov. Plus so many UK Covid victims (well over half) died without receiving any NHS intensive care treatment and yet he still claims people “received the treatment they needed” from the NHS. Can he really think this or is he just lying?

      Many, many thousands most certainly did not.

      1. MFD
        June 20, 2021

        and many of us do not want the experimental treatment offered

    2. No Longer Anonymous
      June 20, 2021

      So the by-election rout had nothing to do with Boris’ bottling Freedom Day.

      30% of the population are sick do death of lockdown. That will rise to 60% when furlough stops and to 100% when inflation, interest rates and tax rises and cuts hit.

      Peter Hitchens says today that he’s surprised at the numbers who “Want to be scared. Want to wear masks. Want to be confined to home and want to be controlled by the government.”

      If you recognise any of these traits within yourself then you are not well, you are not healthy, you are not safe and you will not be happy.

      1. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        NLA

        Well said!

    3. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Nig1

      Johnson’s the problem.

    4. J Bush
      June 20, 2021

      Of course he did, just like all the previous times this control freak and the SAGE mob bleat their scare propaganda.
      “How much longer do we have to put with him?” Only as long as we, the masses, pay attention to him. So start ignoring him from tomorrow.

      If we all act together, can the State police really contain, or attempt to fine millions against this unfair regulation? I can’t wear a mask, but from tomorrow I will not be wearing my exemption ‘label’ either.

      Send the message and encourage others to stand against this oppression.

    5. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      He also seems to be ignoring the even better figures from Prof Tim Spector, whose group estimate the current risk of infection for the unvaccinated is 1 chance in 2,093, while for those doubly vaccinated it is just 1 in 16,101, or 87% less. Furthermore, with the risk of hospitalisation of those who are unfortunate enough to test positive for the virus down by 90% or more among the fully vaccinated we are looking at something like a 98+% reduction in hospitalisation risk for them.

  24. BJC
    June 20, 2021

    No vision, no leadership, no voter support. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour are worthy our consideration and we’re just biding our time for the moment we can express our dissatisfaction. We’re being deceived and taken for granted and our revenge will be swift, cold and calculated as demonstrated in Chesham and Amersham.

    Your clear vision would represent true, unthreatening conservatism in action that enables us to grasp the nettle and improve our lives, Sir John. Sadly, what we have is a group of amateurs in thrall of twitter and polls, with focus groups, behaviourists and ideologists anointed with extraordinary powers to interfere in our lives.

    It’s time for massive change at the top to stop the rot with priority for strict, uncompromising UK-wide control of immigration, including integration, wholly as a long-term security measure, because it underpins every policy decision and without it, our country is lost.

    1. steve
      June 20, 2021

      BJC

      “We’re being deceived and taken for granted and our revenge will be swift, cold…”

      Yep. But not so much taken for granted, more the mindset that once elected you can do as the hell you like i.e taken for fools.

      It has to change. What we need is a mechanism whereby any PM who fails to defend our way of life and our sovereignty, or bows to foreign powers, or does’nt do as we say can be removed immediately – potentially imprisoned for treason.

      I also believe future PM’s should be vetted to ensure they are not European, and that they hold firm with the state religion. Failure in this respect is what has brought us soft as muck approach to dealing with the French – led EU, Biden worship, surrender of NI…..etc, etc.

    2. turboterrier
      June 20, 2021

      BJC
      Just about sums up the state of play.

      But who in the party is actually got a real grip on the situation? You can count them on the fingers of one hand.

      1. J Bush
        June 20, 2021

        True. My constituent MP has voted for May’s withdrawal agreement! and Johnson’s withdrawal agreement and all his covid restrictions and has subsequently been ‘rewarded’ and sod the people who I am supposed to represent.

    3. steve
      June 20, 2021

      BJC

      “Your clear vision would represent true, unthreatening conservatism in action that enables us to grasp the nettle and improve our lives, Sir John ”

      Oh indeed. +1

      Personally I’m biding my time waiting for the big kick off in this country. I’m looking forward to a fight and the satisfaction of revenge.

      HOWEVER…..no one can deny Sir Redwood is distinguished gentleman and has never failed to speak up for people. Totally incorrupt and a man of reason who sincerely wishes to do the best for his country. He was my MP for many years and I can say that unlike any other I can think of he has never been untruthful and I don’t know of a more dignified person in politics.

      I hope you will allow me to say this Mr Redwood; but I seriously think if you were to break away from this incumbent shower you’d fly. I urge you not to go down with this lot.

  25. beresford
    June 20, 2021

    Can you explain why HS2 will be ‘noisy’, or is this just hyperbole? Presumably on the basis of your previous support for road-building you would prefer a nice quiet six-lane motorway.

    1. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      Residents and councillors along the Paris-Rennes TGV route are petitioning against noise from the high-speed train, which is said to reach up to 85 decibels (dB). This level is comparable to standing directly under a flight path as a 737 aeroplane takes off.

      1. hefner
        June 23, 2021

        According to Ouest-France (11/04/2021), the French state has proposed to buy the 55 houses in Etrelles and Coulans-sur-Gee located the closest to the track. The residents appear to have refused the proposal. Moreover the noise level is actually disputed, 85 dB according to the residents, 60 dB according to SNCF.
        And a 737 or DC9 at take off is in excess of 95 dB. Finally, a motorcycle at 25 ft is also 90 dB, a food blender is 88 dB, a carwash at 20 ft is 89 dB.
        What about the properties in the flight path to and from LHR?
        What about you putting your comments into perspective. You usually are quite good at that. What happened to you today?

    2. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Beresford

      “Can you explain why HS2 will be ‘noisy’, or is this just hyperbole? ”

      No it is not hyperbole. HS2 will be noisy because the trains are electric. Living 100 yds from an electified line I can testify to this. It’s a horrible loud continuous whine, it seems as if each carriage has it’s own motors so you get the noise for a lot longer, not just until the front motive unit has passed.

      Imagine this but with the trains giving gunning it down a high speed line. Not nice.

      The trains nowadays are just a glorified 1:1 scale Hornby as far as I’m concerned. A bit like Johnson’s EV’s….nothing more than an expensive big Scalextric.

  26. Bryan Harris
    June 20, 2021

    Sensible comments, but as this governments has demonstrated, having a large majority, that they do what they think best. They do not seem interested in what the public want, how badly decisions will affect us all or even if they are right in what they are doing – They just steamroll ahead.
    The government has become dictatorial in its attitude, while it doesn’t even follow its own rules.

    The lesson from Chesham and Amersham is not just about Tory extreme GREENISM, for we have seen the same attitudes applied to other issues, including the pandemic, where alternative ideas are squashed, and debate is limited to the government’s viewpoint.

    Indeed, the mass media gives us nothing but the ‘accepted line’, whether it is lies about polar bears dying out or statistics we have trouble believing — There simply is no debate on other solutions. Those that stand up are attacked for daring to have a different view – This is not what a free society is about, and the public have recognized the dangers of the way this government behaves.
    (I should say some public because far too many of the mass media indoctrinated have total faith in government policies – They will come to realise at some point the truth of the situation.)

    The Tory government has lost support, and will continue to hemorrhage support while they treat the public like serfs, making us do what they consider best for us, especially as the government has failed utterly to think their policies through.

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      BH

      Well said,

      + 1.000

    2. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Bryan Harris

      Well said.

  27. Chris S
    June 20, 2021

    Worryingly, the fashionable green agenda is supported by all parties in parliament. The problem is that anyone who has gone to the trouble of taking more than a superficial look at it knows that it is both unaffordable and unachievable.

    Until we get a political party prepared to challenge and adopt a more realistic plan, we are going to continue to be taken down a very expensive path that cannot be achieved. The outcome will be outrage from voters who are facing enormous increases in the cost of living and unacceptable restrictions on our lifestyle.

    1. turboterrier
      June 20, 2021

      Chris S
      Well said, very true.

    2. Fedupsoutherner
      June 20, 2021

      +100

  28. BW
    June 20, 2021

    Sir John, have you not seen what is happening in your own constituency. House building on a monumental scale mainly on what was once green fields. It has turned our market town into a sprawling mess.

    1. Will in Hampshire
      June 20, 2021

      Or alternatively pop down to Hampshire North East where you can enjoy the delights (/sarc) of places like Elvetham Heath.

      1. Fedupsoutherner
        June 20, 2021

        Will. Or alternatively, pop into Worthing and find yourself in a town now linked up with every town around it from Lancing to Littlehampton. Roads are grid locked and all the pockets of green belt are being built on. House prices have soared. I was born there but wouldn’t go back to live there now.

  29. steve
    June 20, 2021

    Hmm…

    Surrendering NI
    Fishing
    Immigration
    Bowing to the EU
    Bowing to Biden
    Bowing to Southern Ireland
    Deliberately letting Covid in, then telling us we have to live with it.
    Stupid face masks
    Keeping lockdown
    Broken promises
    Not cancelling HS2
    Attacking instead of defending our way of life
    Humiliating the country before the rest of the world, making us look piss weak
    Not scrapping Bus Lanes
    Not decriminalising the TV licence fee

    And of course we have this green shit – something else we didn’t vote for.

    And you think we’re going to re- elect the condservatives ? Johnson should never have been allowed the leadership. The man’s a national embarrassment.

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Steve

      The present situation in a nutshell

      Thanks

    2. Jim Whitehead
      June 20, 2021

      Steve, +1, Well put!

    3. Fedupsoutherner
      June 20, 2021

      Great post Steve summing it up nicely. This government is truly disastrous.

    4. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      Bus lanes?

      I mean, bus lanes???!!!

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 20, 2021

        Well. Where the cancel road lanes to make bus lanes but worse…. letting busses stop in the middle of the road so that driver only can do the ticketing. It really is a piss take. It might be cheaper for the bus company to get rid of the ticket collector but it buggers up the general flow of commerce.

  30. MPC
    June 20, 2021

    You have no problem with an ‘electric revolution’ with coercion such that the only new cars we will likely be able to buy in less than 9 short years are (old tech) electricity powered ones that nobody wants. Goodbye Conservatism.

    reply I do not support that coercion!

  31. nota#
    June 20, 2021

    All this is upside down and it is lead by a Government that has total belief in the value of ‘virtue signalling’ above the people they serve.

    The UK some 67 million people has to sacrifice their future to save the 7 Billion people on this planet. It just cant be done. The rest of the world not unreasonably feels the need for the same commodities and luxuries the UK has enjoyed over the years and will continue to head in that direction without consideration to the UK Government’s Green Agenda.

    The UK cannot compensate for the World. The UK Government rather than the ‘virtue signalling’ of the UK being Green, should be do real things. Science says the World will heat by 2 degrees, the UK is not in a position to stop that. It would be better that the UK Government addressed how we would cope with an extra 2 degrees and adjust accordingly.

    1. J Bush
      June 20, 2021

      +1
      My opinion of self serving Johnson is unprintable

  32. Will in Hampshire
    June 20, 2021

    Patel has been Home Secretary for two years now and has achieved zero – absolutely nothing – on reducing immigration. She is a hopeless inadequate.

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      WiH

      I think that she’s achieved her aim and never had any intention of stopping immigration illegal or otherwise

    2. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      I suspect when we finally get some numbers it will turn out that immigration has fallen quite sharply. But that will be due to travel restrictions and other reactions to the pandemic.

  33. Alan Jutson
    June 20, 2021

    Interesting visit to South West London yesterday, an area I used to know well.
    The Upper Richmond Road (South Circular) and many other routes around and from it, are now 20MPH limit.
    All areas within the North and South Circular are to become Ultra low Emission Zones on 25th October 2021 ÂŁ12.50 per day charge.
    To drive at 20MPH you are usually in either 2nd or just about 3rd gear, and constantly looking at the speedo.
    Thus you are revving the engine at 2,000 rpm in second gear an spitting out twice the emissions per mile than you would be at a 30mph in a higher gear at lower revs.
    I get that 20mph may be safer in some areas some of the time, but is it safer to increase the emissions you are trying to reduce ?
    The law of unintended consequences strikes again, but it is logical to anyone who actually thinks about it, its hardly rocket science is it !

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      June 20, 2021

      We had to put up with this 20mph crap in Scotland sometimes driving through a desolate town with no pedestrians around and no other traffic. Madness.

  34. nota#
    June 20, 2021

    The UK’s Government ‘virtue signalling’ of a Green Agenda is at the expense of among other things of sustainability. All their dreams require more and more production, then delivery from some of the World’s greatest polluters.

    The first part of all the Government programs so far has meant businesses will have to relocate out side the UK to stay in business. World CO2 production therefore increases – that just dumb. Just replacing very good functioning equipment to show a ‘virtue signal’ is dumb, it was the original production and delivery to market that was the greatest polluter- in practice a product once in use is by comparison less.

    Sustainability is important, there is nothing that is in use that cant in some way have its life extended or be recycled. Sustainability is when we produce locally what we consume, be it energy, food and products. Every action from this Government is the opposite to what their ‘virtue signal’ proclaims, is that just dumb or taking us for fools.

  35. Christine
    June 20, 2021

    If only the rest of Conservative MPs thought on the same lines you do. Unfortunately, they don’t. Boris is blindly going ahead with the delivery of his Net Zero manifesto promise. He seems to think because people voted for his party they agree with his entire manifesto commitments. I wanted to get Brexit done but I certainly don’t support Net Zero with the technology we have today. Here lies the problem with manifestoes. This will come back to bite your party big style in the next few years if you don’t change course. It will be Boris’s Poll Tax.

    Did you listen to Rishi Sunak on GB News when Andrew Neil asked who would pay for our replacement gas boilers?

    The Chancellor explained: “Well as we’ve talked about, we all collectively pay one way or another, there is no one else who pays so that’s how this works.”

    So low-income families get it for free and the better off have to pay for their own plus the free ones.

    Very few families have £10-£16 grand lying about to fund a boiler that won’t even heat their homes. It’s OK for the multi-millionaire Rishi Sunak to tell the rest of us we will have to pay for their idiotic green policies.

    This Government truly has lost the plot. The sooner voters wake up to the fact that all the main political parties intend to bankrupt us all, the sooner we can find a new party to put the British people first.

  36. glen cullen
    June 20, 2021

    ”I have no problem with an electric revolution, but it can only proceed with popular consent”

    You mean carries’ consent

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Glen Cullen

      Agreed 😂

  37. nota#
    June 20, 2021

    Sir John – ‘The voters of Chesham and Amersham’ I am not sure you have read the message their correctly. As we know the LibDems have a different agenda, manifesto etc dependant on their audience.

    Chesham and Amersham does not suffer the same over population and building mania without infrastructure as Wokingham. It does have HS2 an old and redundant technology being forced through their countryside, that doesn’t make sense to any one other than the profits of the developers – that means Japanese manufactures and the hordes of foreign workers. It maybe UK taxpayer money, but it doesn’t benefit the UK’s prosperity. All these billions being spent to take people from just outside West London to somewhere just outside North East Birmingham 10 minuets quicker than before, but factor in the extra travel either end to get to the centres it will take longer.

    Chesham and Amersham is now heavy on the ground with LibDem foot soldiers and councillors as they are in Wokingham meaning can perpetuate dissention with Government in tune with the SNP. They can drip away until the message of the Left is heard everywhere and the in-action of this Government to do anything that has real bearing on peoples lives, while they themselves stick to ‘virtue signalling’ and the agenda of the Metro Left.

    Where has the Conservative Party gone?

    1. turboterrier
      June 20, 2021

      nota#
      Where have they gone?

      Over the hills and far, far away and been there for decades.

    2. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      Lib Dems? Left???

      What is the matter with you?

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 20, 2021

        Tories ? Right ??? What is the matter with you ?

  38. hefner
    June 20, 2021

    Somehow related to green issues, I see that TfL (Transport for London) is increasing the number of electric buses, which I think is a good move for decreasing pollution in the capital. Where I was surprised is that these new buses (25% of the fleet by 2022) are coming thanks to RATP-Dev, an international group whose origin lies with the ‘RĂ©gie Autonome des Transports Parisiens’ the authority in charge of mass transportation in Paris (Metro, RER, buses).
    Does it mean that the UK is now unable to provide an electric version of its legendary red buses?

    1. Narrow Shoulders
      June 20, 2021

      @hef it may be a sign of our Mayor’s obsession with Europe.

      1. hefner
        June 20, 2021

        NS, with further digging I have now realised it might be somewhat worse?better?
        RATP-Dev will be the owners of the buses but these should be built by BYD/ADL.
        ADL is Alexander Dennis Ltd., a British company based in Guildford (part of the Winnipeg, Ma, NFI Group) and BYD is a subsidiary based in the NL of the BYD Group, a New Energy Solutions company headquartered in 
 Shenzhen, PRC.
        The world is so small.

    2. X-Tory
      June 20, 2021

      Fear not. RATP is merely the operator, not the bus manufacturer. London’s electric buses – which I welcome for their reduced noise and air pollution – are manufactured in the UK by ADL ltd. Unfortunately, the batteries come from China, made by BYD. BYD also provide batteries to JLR. BYD have said that they are considering making batteries in the UK, or in the EU. The British government needs to offer them a bit of financial support to get the plant built here. But of course, as usual, they are sitting on their hands …

      The UK government has said that they have a pot of up to ÂŁ500m to offer battery manufacturers to open plants here. That might sound a lot but in today’s world unfortunately it is peanuts. The EU has committed to offering companies over 5 TIMES as much to set up over there. We need to compete. Independent analysts have said we need at least 6-7 battery plants here. ÂŁ500m might be just about enough incentive for two, but more likely just one. And, of course, not a single penny has actually been offered so far. The government is asleep at the wheel. Why don’t MPs hold the government to account and start agitating over this?

  39. David Cooper
    June 20, 2021

    As the Telegraph put it long ago, if there is any problem arising from purported AGW that needs to be solved rather than left for adaptation, let it be solved via human ingenuity, not by taxation, bans and regulation.

    As I will continue to put it when venturing onto discussion threads covering Net Zero aka the Great Leap Backward, I cannot bring myself to believe that the Conservative Party seriously intends to go into the next GE with a pledge to make the electorate cold, poor, hungry, dirty and immobile. If its answer to this is that it would still govern us better against a background of main party consensus upon the issue, it had better watch its back for a non-main party offering something different.

    1. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      That is exactly what has happened by the invention of the lithium-ion battery, more efficient and cheap photovoltaic cells, and so on.

      1. Lester
        June 20, 2021

        MiC

        Mined by children in the Congo?

        1. hefner
          June 20, 2021

          L, I wonder why you do not put pressure on companies like the Australian Perth-headquartered company, AVZ Minerals, one of the main mining companies in the Congo? Is it because repeating the usual half-truths about the LCT extraction is the easiest way to shut up people, and so much easier than trying to do something to help improve the situation.

          What about moving your ass and doing positive instead, OK?

          1. Peter2
            June 20, 2021

            So you agree it happens hef.
            Mined by children in the Congo.
            But you want to shift the blame.
            How does that make it any different?

          2. Lester
            June 20, 2021

            Hefty

            Do they have anymore stupid suggestions, I was merely reporting a fact so how does that make me responsible for rectifying the problem?

        2. Fedupsoutherner
          June 20, 2021

          MIC couldn’t care less just like the government.

          1. MiC
            June 20, 2021

            How pious.

          2. hefner
            June 20, 2021

            So P2, what do YOU do about these Congolese children? As active as Lester?

          3. hefner
            June 20, 2021

            P2, The first report on children working in Congo’s Cobalt mines was published by Amnesty In January 2016. I do not doubt for a minute that since then you have been at the forefront of actions on this awful trade, haven’t you.

          4. Peter2
            June 20, 2021

            What do you do hefty?

          5. Peter2
            June 20, 2021

            So since 2016 what have you actually done h?

          6. hefner
            June 21, 2021

            P2, whatever I do is my business. The point I was (implicitly) trying to make is that the concern about children working in cobalt mines moved to the top of concerns only when the Sun, Mail, Guardian, Times and Telegraph started to report on it mid-2020 linked to the Government’s plan for electric cars. Before that, I do not remember anybody on this blog mentioning the mining children.
            What does that say about ‘confectioned concern’ and how keyboard warriors can easily be made to jump. They’ll just ask: How high?

          7. Peter2
            June 21, 2021

            Yet again heffy you spin the argument away from the original point.
            You e been reading too many of Jerry’s posts.

            We are told how wonderful electric cars are, yet the rapidly increasing extraction of the materials for the batteries is a dreadful process both for the slave labour involved and the damage done to the environment.

            When we point this out you get indignant and demand to know exactly what we have done to stop this trade as if it is our fault.

            What have you done, is the entirely predictable response.
            I will not drive an electric car that’s my response among other things.

            We still dont know yours, apparently it’s your business
            Despite demanding we tell you.

        3. Mitchel
          June 21, 2021

          And by Russia in the Arctic.Germany’s BASF and UK’s Johnson Matthey(for the latter’s Polish and Finnish EV plants)have recently signed supply contracts with the Russian mining giant,Norilsk.

  40. Martyn G
    June 20, 2021

    “The UK has been pushed into dependence on importing electricity from the continent”. I am not sure that ‘pushed’ it quite the right description. I would suggest that ‘led into’ would better describe the situation, because Governments have long allowed the sale of essential energy and other key resources to other nationalities, thereby putting them out of our control. As a result of that and Brexit, we now see France threatening to curtail UK access to the interconnectors unless allowed to fish our waters and the Dungeness power station is about to be shut down by its foreign owners. On reflection, perhaps ‘misled’ better describes what has happened.

    1. acorn
      June 20, 2021

      The UK-EU TCA, basically leaves the UK embedded in the EU North Sea Region Interconnector Grid. The UK has higher prices for electric than the mainland; hence, everybody wants to interconnect with it. The NSL 1400 MW link to Norway is commissioning now. Interesting that the UK will mostly be importing cheap Norwegian hydro electric, but it could export some wind power back to Norway at times.

      Norway expects to do some arbitrage. Importing electric from its southern neighbours and exporting those MWs to the UK for a profit. These interconnectors are vital to keep prices down in the UK, otherwise the oligopoly that owns the UK electric system will just hike prices with no competition.

      1. Mark
        June 20, 2021

        Don’t count on interconnectors to keep prices down. Since Norway started up its direct connector with Germany, it has seen its power prices converge on much higher German levels, as this chart shows:

        https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/VyrHt/3/

        With connections to Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands as well as needing to meet its own demand there won’t be anything to spare in a winter Dunkelflaute with no significant wind or solar across the whole of Europe. Indeed, the rush to close nuclear (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands all have plans to close at least some nuclear capacity and “replace” it with unreliable renewables, just like the UK) and the need to close coal to comply with climate obligations will leave the EU and the UK chronically short of power. Large levels of interconnection imply that large amounts will be exported to the top bidder, while the poorer country gets a blackout, even if it is compensated by fancy prices on some exports. It’s a bit frightening to think of importing 20GW at ÂŁ4m per GWh in a cold spell – almost ÂŁ2bn a day on electricity imports! Or we will get cut off, and freeze.

        1. acorn
          June 21, 2021

          How much per GWh !?!? The UK did spike to ÂŁ1,000 per MWh in an half-hour period, not a a whole 24 hour day. By the time we have all the Battery and Hydrogen storage that is scheduled the spikes will get flattened. The UK isn’t short of MWs, see https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=foregeneration/capacityaggregated about 107 GWs

          The market is kept tight of offered to the system capacity deliberately by the players. It is one big Poker Game with electricity as a by-product.

          1. Mark
            June 21, 2021

            Top prices paid over the winter were ÂŁ4,000/MWh for top up interconnector volumes and some generators, including Drax and West Burton coal keeping the lights on. That’s ÂŁ4m/GWh.

    2. forthurst
      June 20, 2021

      The tories did flog off our electricity generating industry to foreigners; they also forced the closure of coal powered stations and have deprecated the use of CCGT, an extremely clean and efficient way of producing energy. Drax, built to burn local coal is now burning a mixture of fuels including ‘biomass’ to save the Planet; it could extend its fuel options to burning charcoal, perhaps. We could become world leaders in charcoal production for fuel and metallurgy. The days when economics affected production are clearly over in the brave new world of pathological toryism.

      1. Mark
        June 20, 2021

        It is surely well known that burning wood pellets puts more CO2 into the atmosphere even than burning coal, and it takes at least 60 years before we get back to breakeven through sequestration in new tree growth. For those who believe that CO2 really might cause unacceptable warming soon, it has to be about the worst way of generating electricity.

        1. acorn
          June 21, 2021

          Burning biomass wood to generate electricity was illegal in the US but it wasn’t in the UK and EU. The US pelletised wood fibre industry scaled up big time and started exporting the stuff to the UK and EU.

          Along came Trump who’s EPA Chief declared wood pellets carbon neutral. Strangely, the engineers at the EPA never got round to making the regulations to implement the Trump policy. Biden froze all EPA pending regulations when he took office and his new EPA Chief has always been against wood pellet biomass. The EU is having second thoughts about the whole Biomass CO2 loophole in the Paris Climate Agreement.

          BTW, North Carolina’s forest biomass industry alone requires 60,000 acres of woodland annually to make the 2.5 million tons of wood pellets it exports, according to the Dogwood Alliance. The UK, at 7 million tonnes per year is the largest importer – near 100% of US/Canada wood pellet exports.

  41. Alan Jutson
    June 20, 2021

    Comments spot on today John, but why does the Government not get it ?

    Why, why, why, is the Government so far removed from many of the simple facts, knock on problems, complications, and extreme costs that us plebs out here in the real World can see.

    Forget the pandemic, that is/was a totally different problem, but all of these extreme rushed out so called Green Policies, Proposals and Plans are an absolute farce, which defy not only normal logic but simple uncomplicated common-sense.

    If you drive a car at 20MPH in second gear, then its spits out more emissions and uses more fuel than going at 30mph or more (when safe) in a higher gear, YES ?

    A heat source Ground or air Pump is certainly not value for money (even with a taxpayer) Government grant, unless you modify the whole heating system and spend money upgrading the whole house, Yes?

    I live in a house of 3,500 sq ft maintained at a constant temperature of 20 degrees in all living rooms, 24 hours a day, with a 7 year old gas boiler powering our central heating and hot water, we also cook by gas hob, my actual gas usage for the whole of last year June- June was ÂŁ850.
    Yet your Government wants me to rip it out and replace it with a ÂŁ12,000 heat pump in 2025 REALLY !!!!

    For christ sake get someone to advise the Government on the realities and practicalities and costs of real life !!

    1. SM
      June 20, 2021

      Total agreement, Alan.

      If I were still a Conservative Party member and activist, living in the UK, I would now be really wrestling with my conscience regarding Party loyalty. From Sir John’s post today, I get a slight impression he might be feeling the same.

    2. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Alan Jutson

      Speed limits varying from 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, within the space of a few hundred yards, I predict the return of the man with the red flag, at least it will help with the massive unemployment disaster which is approaching

    3. Fedupsoutherner
      June 20, 2021

      Well done Alan. I despair at the stupidity of our government. Did any of them attend school?

    4. MFD
      June 20, 2021

      Yes Alan, mines the same, all it needed was a room stats fitted as most builders only fit very basic heating systems. I do not even need to switch off in summer as it happens automatically , possibly earlier than I would think of turning off.

  42. Andy
    June 20, 2021

    As a voter in Chesham and Amersham I am amused at all the interpretations I read from Conservative MPs about the message they got from voters in Chesham and Amersham. You all have it very wrong.

    Whisper it quietly. Andy, Mrs Andy and their friends should all vote Conservative! Yes, me. The one many of you regularly accuse of being a Marxist. How can this be? How, how, how? Because we’re the sort of people who would have been Conservatives 20, 30, 40 years ago. Big house, big earnings, business owners, high taxes, kids at private school – doesn’t scream out raging lefty, does it? Yet none of us vote Tory and most of us never will. Many voted tactically against the Conservatives this time – and would have voted either Labour or Green were they in a position to win.

    I can walk to one of the main HS2 construction sites from my house. I sit in HS2 roadworks several times a week. I did not reject the Tories because of HS2. Like most big infrastructure projects we’ll wonder what all the fuss is about when it’s done.

    I did not reject the Tories because of planning. We need more homes in this area and yes, some need to go on the green belt. When one elderly resident in my neighbourhood – who lives alone in a big house – asked me to sign a petition against plans to build homes on an adjacent field I asked her what she thought of house prices and where she wanted younger people to live. I rejected her nimbyism.

    Those working on the campaigns here have told me the Tory vote actually held up pretty well among the over 70s – but it collapsed among those younger than that. One report suggests almost nobody under the age of 50 in Chesham & Amersham voted Conservative. I’m under 50 – I live in Chesham & Amersham, I should vote Conservative but I didn’t and I never will.

    All of my friends say the same thing. We hate this prime minister. He is a corrupt, incompetent, moron. We loathe this law breaking government. We reject the manufactured culture wars, are disgusted by the cut in international aid, find the rampant xenophobia in the Conservative party repellent and are appalled at both the failed response to Covid and your Brexit mess. Brexit being a permanent deal breaker for many of us.

    Chesham & Amersham is a glimpse into the Conservatives future. I was not at all surprised that you lost. I am surprised that the Conservatives were surprised. The elderly voters who largely tolerate this extreme right nonsense are dying out and unless the Tory party quickly ditches the extremism you’ll soon have no voters to replace them. On this path you’ll be all but gone in four electoral cycles. That is the message you got from Chesham & Amersham.

    Reply You didn’t vote Conservative in 2019 so you are not representative of the majority voters in C and A

    1. X-Tory
      June 20, 2021

      You’re right Sir John, Andy is not a Conservative, never will be, and has nothing of value to contribute here. He snobbishly believes that being a Conservative is a matter of money, rather than decent, patriotic, traditional values. He is a marxist. His nasty comments pollute this site, just as the trolls who slag you off on your Twitter site do. Frankly, I don’t know why you tolerate them, as they make visiting your pages a chore rather the pleasure that it should be.

      Of course people can legitimately criticise the government and their comments can be interesting. I myself am not happy with many of the government’s current policies, but I have voted Conservative in the past (including in 2019) and was even a member of the Party (I have allowed my membership to lapse). I try to be critical in a constructive way, proposing ideas which are in tune with most Conservative supporters and conservative philosophy in general. Brexit, for instance, has not been implemented in the way I would prefer (in areas like NI, fishing, government procurement, etc) but I support it in general, believe that it WILL benefit the UK in the medium-to-long-term, and is in line with the democratic will of the people.

      If you were PM I would once again vote Conservative like a shot. The same cannot be said of Andy and his ilk. What are these trolls even doing here? Oh yes, I know – just trying to be nasty and damage the quality of this site.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        I agree X Tory
        Very well said

      2. MiC
        June 20, 2021

        You just can’t resist the victimhood whingeing, can you?

        1. Peter2
          June 20, 2021

          Says MiC who whinges moans and rants 20 times a day on here.
          Wouldn’t you be happier on the Independent or Guardian sites?

    2. Richard II
      June 20, 2021

      Andy, it seems there was no public opinion polling in Chesham and Amersham leading up the by-election, unusually. So your claim about demographics is personal speculation based on yourself and your friends, an anecdote, and an unreferenced report you say you saw somewhere.

      But I do agree we need more affordable houses built, and definitely not big ones such as the house where you live. There are already enough of those, lying empty, within a five-mile radius or so of where I live.

    3. Peter2
      June 20, 2021

      It will reverse to Conservatives at the next election.
      It nearly always does.
      Check by election victories and general election reversals.
      Same when Labour were on power mid term

      1. Andy
        June 20, 2021

        Chesham & Amersham may revert Conservative at the next general election – but the long term trend is set. This extreme right Conservative Party is ultimately doomed in place like Chesham & Amersham – and across swathes of the south east. Demographics make it inevitable.

        Your party changes to appeal to my generation – or it dies whilst staying stuck appealing to the Boomers. I don’t care which. I ain’t ever gonna vote Tory anyway.

        1. Peter2
          June 20, 2021

          Extreme right…!
          They are being criticised for being too left wing.
          We don’t need to court your vote andy.
          You will never vote Conservative.
          Stick with the useless Lib Dems or the Green

    4. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Andy

      I’m surprised you didn’t vote conservative, after all you’ve got your man in No10.

    5. beresford
      June 20, 2021

      But Andy, you are free to give as much of your own largesse to foreign countries as you wish. What we shouldn’t be doing is borrow money which future generations will have to repay, in order to give it to countries who spend their own funds on space programmes and weapons.

      1. MFD
        June 20, 2021

        Agreed 100%

    6. Andy
      June 20, 2021

      I am representative of the majority of voters in Chesham and Amersham – because 56% of us voted Lib Dem last Thursday.

      You guys took quite a thwacking. You lost a seat which is all but impossible for the Tories to lose.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        Wait until the next general election.
        Most Conservatives didn’t vote
        Just a mid term protest vote.
        Normality will return soon.

    7. No Longer Anonymous
      June 20, 2021

      Boris an extremist ??? He’s towing the Woke line totally !!!

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 20, 2021

        Boris got rejected out of the blue because he cancelled Freedom Day out of the blue !

        He was voted in with an 80 seat majority when HS2, Brexit and house building were already on the agenda.

        reply Some May have been annoyed about Freedom day, but HS2 did anger people because the construction works are now underway and are very disruptive

  43. Newmania
    June 20, 2021

    Chesham and Amersham, is, or was, a remain majority, Liberal facing seat. (Conservative 30850 Lib Dem 14627 ), I think we can all think of another such seat ….
    Sir John believes the first response to this earthquakes is to
 “limit excessive migration and too many demands to build more homes”. I have an entirely different take on this electoral earthquake ( and the housing shortage ), but I calculate the chances of my views being publish as close to zero.

    Funny

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      June 20, 2021

      He bottled Freedom Day.

      It’s the only thing that was out of the blue… like the election defeat was out of the blue.

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 20, 2021

        Amersham /Chesham was a Tory stronghold which voted Boris into power under a Brexit manifesto.

        The only thing that could have brought this about was his bottling of Freedom Day. HS2 was old news too.

  44. nota#
    June 20, 2021

    So John Bercow admits he was never a ‘Tory’ – there’s a surprise. How many other MP’s use their political membership to distort their positions for personal gain to the detriment of their electorate

    1. Bryan Harris
      June 20, 2021

      Indeed – it used to be a badge of honour to be a Tory MP. Labour have never had that same attribute.

      But I fear for the Tories, with so many deserting the real right of centre Tory position, and leaning too heavily left

    2. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      Spot On

    3. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      No he doesn’t.

      He said that he was a “rabid right-winger” when he first joined.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        And now he is your man.
        How delightful.

  45. Iago
    June 20, 2021

    If hundreds of thousands of new people come every year to join us…
    How I wish that I lived in your world, JR! Join us. What you allude to is the surrender of our country.

    1. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      Iago

      Very succinctly put

  46. paul
    June 20, 2021

    They will say and do anything to turn a shilling for themselves and stuff anybody else. The people do not have the wherewithall to do anything about them and can only sit at home and hope for the best.

    1. steve
      June 20, 2021

      Paul

      Very true, they’d sell your granny if you let them. However we are not sitting at home hoping for the best, we’re sitting at home waiting for the next general election…..and we’ll be going for the throat. Actually a growing number of Tory MP’s know what’s coming, but it won’t make any difference, the trust really has gone.

      For example people like myself who’ve voted conservative all their lives, and those Labour voters who ‘lent’ their votes to Johnson, will vote Labour next time if only for the sole purpose of revenge. The country might be finished but we’ll make damn sure those who wrecked it won’t be in power ever again.

  47. Robert E
    June 20, 2021

    As long as population continues to grow then we can and must increase the availability of housing. Supply needs to match demand so that there is a fair equilibrium and that people on average incomes can afford to buy and own a modest home of their own.
    If the Liberal Democrats want to take the stand of ‘not in my back yard’ then Generation Rent need to be reminded as to just who their friends are.
    With young adult sons of our own, I support the Prime Minister 100% in easing the building and planning process. The alternative is for the younger generation to stay living with parents until middle age. Either that or waste money on rent for ever more with no hope of getting on the property ladder.
    On the subject of the Lib Dems, didn’t they also pledge not to increase tuition fees? So not only are they no friend of young people starting out in life, but also now doing their best to restrict new housing supply (not on our green and pleasant land).
    Please, give young people a hand up, make home ownership easier to attain and support any political party or Prime Minister who advocates just that.

  48. a-tracy
    June 20, 2021

    Everyone sees something different in this Lib Dem win. I just see a complacent Tory party taking their voters for granted in what they thought was a safe seat with ‘a new not well known proposed Tory candidate’ who had lived out of the Country for nearly two decades, with a local challenger who was billed in Lib Dem circles as a ‘communications expert’ she showed that she was that, I read she regularly shared digs at the Conservative Party by Theresa May in her sales literature and got a lot of traction. There was 25% less turnout, they obviously didn’t think it would make that much difference but this woman will get a lot of air time from the BBC I’m sure and hopefully will deliver a swift kick up the backside to every MP that thinks they are safe and sound.

    Most of our homes were built on fields at one time or another. The smallest footprint on the ground are high-rises, Brits don’t want to live in them. Having to lease and continually pay building rates instead of just council tax forever is a real problem. When you own the land your house is on you control the amount you spend on it. Apartments aren’t given the average equivalence of field around their high rise, they’re crowded in against each other. We could knock down some useless, ugly and empty shops and build a higher rise six levels high and put 50 two bed homes, with ground floor smart shops on the same footprint would you all prefer that?

    1. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      Leasehold law needs urgent reform – it still retains serious feudal aspects.

      However, the Tories defend vehemently the interests of the rentier class and so that is probably unlikely under them.

      Commonhold is an excellent solution and it needs promulgating properly.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        If individuals are stripped of freehold rights of ownership you are removing one of the best powers of individual freedoms and powers against the power of the State
        Or the robber Barons as it was long ago

        1. hefner
          June 20, 2021

          P2, I am surprised, were the robber barons not American and around just a bit more than a century ago?

          As for commonhold it was introduced in English law in 2002, following what had been around for years in Australia and the USA.

          P2, could you please tell us the details of your objections. I buy a flat in a tower of apartments, I pay the full price for the indefinite freehold tenure of the part of the propriety corresponding to this flat. I also pay regularly the charges pertaining to the maintenance of the common spaces and possible grounds around the tower.
          Could you tell me exactly what rights of ownership I am stripping?

          1. Peter2
            June 20, 2021

            I believe freehold rights for individuals are an important feature of free democracies.

            I can only presume you don’t heffy.
            However I’m not surprised.

            Your pedantic ramblings alter nothing.

          2. MiC
            June 21, 2021

            Commonhold rights are no threat whatsoever to those of freeholders.

            Developers can offer these and see whether buyers prefer them to leases. They generally do.

          3. a-tracy
            June 21, 2021

            hefner, freeholder rights problems are often on the costs of maintenance services for communal spaces and the fact this is out of their hands, several people I know in London have had their service costs doubled in a year they now how to fight it in court to overturn a group of charges for services they don’t get. There are no grounds, car parks, the window cleaners don’t come for months.

            Mind you I guess freeholder rights problems exist in houses too when we have to contract to the local council without choice for 15 year bin collection services who cancel part of the service and then introduce extra charges for them. When local grass cutting (where the service agent is supposed to clean up the mess) leaves grass cuttings everywhere that then grows in all the curbs, roads, cracks in pavements, affecting people’s hayfever, leaving the grass to overgrown pavements reducing the width of the pavement so people can’t safely pass. Leaving hedges overgrown so women walk in the road because they’re too frightened of walking down the path alone. Leaving pot-holes in pavements for people to twist their ankles in.

        2. hefner
          June 21, 2021

          P2, you have just shown two things: one, you do not know what a commonhold is, and two, when you lose an argument and have nothing to add you can only say I am pedantic 
 as obviously you never are 🙈.

          1. Peter2
            June 21, 2021

            You are now spinning he argument onto commonholds
            My original comment was to MiC who being a true socialist despises the ownership of land by anyone other than the State.

      2. a-tracy
        June 20, 2021

        The Tories defend vehemently the interests of the rentier class 😂 not if you listen to Lifelogic, Lynn, Stred and others they don’t. I don’t rent anything personally to explain why their interests haven’t been defended but I did read that the Tories protected renters from being evicted throughout covid causing landlords multiple problems, including commercial renters.

        Commonhold – like housing associations or like leaseholders in common? Now if you want me to start a list of all those problems I’m very willing it is a current interest of mine. Like how the council should deal with someone who doesn’t upkeep their garden and leaves it with shoulder-height grass, I see these people in their night wear mid-afternoon curtains still shut, rubbish everywhere including furniture and overflowing 4-5 bins in the front garden, ruining the local area for everyone living nearby and attracting pests. Or all the housing association properties I walk past where the little patch of garden is a right mess and young people living in them with no excuse ( personally I’d move them into flats with no gardens) and the railings are all rusted and not looked after because they used cheap short life building materials, And like the people who grow conifers higher than their house next to a tiny semi And the council and housing association just ignore it, and those that put caravans right next to their neighbours front window and pile up cars all over the street on pavements because they can no longer get on their drive. You’d think people in these ‘commonhold’ type situations when they’re at home on furlough or benefits would want to give something back to their own area but they just walk past all the rubbish and ignore it. Yet they have a disproportionate number of play areas, grassed areas, big parking areas, nice big paths.

        Or the problems with a group of retirees who share a leasehold and some pension incomes hold because they have state defined benefit pensions and they want more (but don’t want to pay more than their share) and others have fallen dramatically and they can’t afford the same level of costs so want repair and redecoration slowing.

  49. John Miller
    June 20, 2021

    The LibDems do very well in local elections because they find out what people want them to say, then say it often.
    They exposed their true colours in the only recent gemeral election where they had some success. They promised to end tuition fees. When they achieved coalition, they bumped up to reality and immediately announced “Er, actually we won’t” and henceforth never recovered.
    In Amersham, they said to affluent homeowners “We won’t allow anyone else to live here!” and appealed to their natural NIMBY nature and won.
    In typical LibDem fashion, this is inconsistent with their philosophy of rejoining the EU and welcoming more immigrants.
    Tories do not need to panic as this local election has no impact nationally.
    The Green Agenda will be suicide for any party that promotes it until a cheap, viable solution is found.

    1. Narrow Shoulders
      June 20, 2021

      Well put sir

      1. John Miller
        June 20, 2021

        Thank you, sir

    2. Lester
      June 20, 2021

      John Miller

      Surely the Tories should be in full panic mode now?

      1. John Miller
        June 20, 2021

        Dear Lester
        Polticians don’t panic until the runaway bus is a foot away…

    3. Philip P.
      June 20, 2021

      John Miller, that is a ridiculous parody of the Lib Dem message on the Tory housing bill, which you can find online. It says the bill would hand power to developers and remove the right of local residents to have their say and oppose inappropriate developments. These planning changes pose a particular risk, after the Conservative-run Council failed to agree a Local Development Plan, which even under current arrangements would make it very difficult to stand up to the developers. I quote: ‘We need the right homes in the right places to meet local housing needs, but local people must have a say.’ Perhaps you don’t think residents have the right to a say over the character of the place they live in, but a lot of people do, and won’t vote any more for a party that would rob them of that right.

    4. steve
      June 20, 2021

      John Miller

      “The Green Agenda will be suicide for any party that promotes it until a cheap, viable solution is found.”

      That’s the Tories finished then.

  50. nota#
    June 20, 2021

    Missing from the taxpayer funded UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) is the desire to feed and create UK industry, therefore UK wealth.

    It could be a self sustaining project, if the wealth it funds is UK based not just the headline project leader but also the ‘bits & bobs’ that will be required to fulfil projects. Using taxpayer money to fund foreign tax coffers is simply the UK just redistributing its wealth in an unsustainable way, the short cut road to poverty.

    To often UK taxpayer money is not used to create and sustain a pot for future generations. Which is why unlike other Countries we do not have the resources and the facilities going forward – its a case when Governments feel the need, lets steel more from those that we can tax.

    Current UK projects, fund the coffers of the Chinese State, the Japanese exchequer and the French Government more than they do the UK Chancellors Pot. Even counting down the line benefits most other nations profit more than the UK taxpayer from UK taxpayer money – that’s bizarre

    The Green and sustainable revolution should not be about CO2 as a single entity, but the cycle of money, wealth to fund our future. You cant have a future if you give everything away without the means to replenish the system.

  51. Narrow Shoulders
    June 20, 2021

    Very good entry today Sir John

    Highlighting local needs and practical solutions needs to be a much bigger part of conservation and greening. Global initiatives are soundbites which cam not be enacted at a local level.

    Less pollution does not need to cost a lot of money. Less pollution is a greater need than zero carbon

  52. a-tracy
    June 20, 2021

    By the way John, you can get a test in a pharmacy in France that allows you to travel to the UK with an antigen certificate for 30 euros, so why is your government allowing people to charge over ÂŁ100 for the same test, get a grip before mid-July and get this sorted out with pharmacies, motorway service stations, major train stations and airports and cut this rip-off down to size.

    1. hefner
      June 20, 2021

      a-tracy, very good question. Specially because French pharmacies are usually not known to be particularly cheap.

      1. a-tracy
        June 21, 2021

        These French pharmacies give you a certificate within 30 minutes too.

  53. kb
    June 20, 2021

    It’s very telling that the only concrete plans for energy we have in place are Smart meters and installing more interconnectors to EU countries.
    That tells us everything we need to know about the attitude of those in charge.

    1. Mark
      June 20, 2021

      Smart meters are of course only “free” at the point of installation. But the cost, now ÂŁ13bn and rising, is added to your electricity bills whether you take one or not as part of the standing charge. They are also a complete fiasco, with the first generation of meters usually only operating in remote fashion so long as the customer remains with the original supplier. Even the second generation meters lack many of the fancy capabilities that are now being contemplated in support of “demand side reduction” a.k.a. we may cut your power, volatile time of use tariffs etc. that OFGEM are considering making compulsory. So the whole lot will have to be junked and replaced. Incidentally, it may not be your supplier who tries to cut your power, but the local network operator, faced with too many people trying to charge EVs all at once for the capability of the network to deliver. The solution is a ÂŁ200bn re-cabling Britain project including bigger transformers etc.

  54. Barbara
    June 20, 2021

    Will government, commentators and politicans please get it into their heads that CO2 IS NOT CARBON.

    One (CO2) is a compound atmospheric gas (forming just 0.03% of the atmosphere, of which 97% is naturally-occurring), the other (carbon) is an element, a basic building block of life. ‘Zero carbon’ is a physical impossibility.

    Thank you.

    1. MFD
      June 20, 2021

      +1

    2. glen cullen
      June 20, 2021

      +1

  55. DavidJ
    June 20, 2021

    A true and practical green policy is to be welcomed. The present “green” policy of reducing CO2 is based on flawed “science” which has been comprehensively disproved by real scientists and climatologists. Clearly it suits government to follow the policies of their globalist chums at the UN and elsewhere whose aim is to destroy life as we know it and even reduce world population by a huge amount. Of course they will ensure that their comfortable lifestyles continue.

  56. paul
    June 20, 2021

    When I first heard the words education education education I thought right away that this country is on a slippery slope to nowhere, if you ever get the chance to vote for a uneducation person take that opportunity with both hands. They are simplicity people and like everything done in a simple way to which everybody can understand, they have loads of common sense and question everything until it makes sense to them and to you, where should they be employed, quangos are a good place for them and the civil service as well as parliament.

  57. Original Richard
    June 20, 2021

    The science on anthropological global warming is definitely not “settled” as evidenced by the fact that the Earth has been warming since the last ice age which was at its maximum 22,000 years ago and ended 15,000 years ago and well before the Industrial Revolution.

    That is not to say that it is not worthwhile pursuing non-fossil fuel burning technologies to produce our energy to reduce pollution and, most importantly, to give us energy independence.

    So we need to put money into research to first produce a workable and economic solution rather than be panicked into expensive and unworkable ideas which will only lead us to unilaterally destroy our economy and with the consequential social unrest, our democracy.

    1. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      That is exactly what is being done.

      Well said.

      1. Peter2
        June 20, 2021

        What is being done will lead the UK into power cuts.
        Wind, solar and wood burning is not the answer.
        Rising demand will soon meet reduced supply.

  58. William Long
    June 20, 2021

    But it seems to me, that this Government is going in precisely the opposite direction on every one of these things!

  59. X-Tory
    June 20, 2021

    No genuine Conservative (or indeed, conservative) could possibly disagree with a word you have written. Unfortunately the government is not doing any of this, which is why increasingly people are doubting that they are genuine Conservatives (or indeed, even conservative). Let’s start with immigration. This is out of control – especially the flood of bogus asylum seekers (ie. ALL asylum seekers, as NONE of them come here directly from countries where their lives are in danger). Until the government declares that NONE of these people will be granted asylum or allowed to remain for any reason, then this flood will continue. Priti Useless is clearly not up to the job. I pointed out the other day that she had backed down and allowed a foreign criminal to remain here (having previously decided – rightly – to deport him) simply because of a few rent-a-mob protesters. Meanwhile, our patrol boats in the Channel do not force people back to France (as they should be doing) but escort them all to the UK. They are not protecting our border but ENCOURAGING the illegal immigration to take place! Priti Useless lacks the guts to do the job.

    When I drive around the country it pains me to see our farmland concreted over to build yet more housing. This sould be banned. ALL new housing should ONLY be built on brownfield land. If this is in short supply then build flats, not houses. Many people – especially the young, just entering the housing market – would love to live in a good quality flat near the town centre. but the emphasis there should be on quality, which means large flats (not shoeboxes) and with superb sound insulation. This is where the government should step in. Instead of the usual laissez-faire approach they need to specify in the building regulations a very generous minimum size (per bedroom), and that all walls and floors be insulated with THIS new, British-invented material: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9700591/Meringue-like-material-reduce-jet-engine-roar-sound-HAIRDRYER.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

    By requiring this to be used the government would improve the attractiveness of flats (reducing demand for houses built on greenfields), improve the quality of life of flat-dwellers, and create a very successful British company. All it needs is ministerial support.

  60. Shirley M
    June 20, 2021

    Off topic. Apologies, but I hope you will allow this post. It appears in the news that the tax refund to UK forces stationed in Scotland will now be permanent, to offset the higher tax rate in Scotland.

    Why are UK troops posted to Scotland being taxed in Scotland? When they are posted to Germany (for instance) they do not pay tax in Germany. Does Scotland pay their wages?

  61. Mike Wilson
    June 20, 2021

    The voters do not welcome excessive new housing development taking away their countryside

    Yet another of those ‘how has he got the nerve to write that!’ moments.

    You have stood by while every bit of green space between Wokingham and the M4 and A329M has been covered with houses. Yet you have the effrontery to say ‘voters don’t want it!!!’

    You should have been laying down in front of the bulldozers and marching on Parliament with the local councillors to tell the government NO! to their insane imposition of thousands of new houses. I got out, couldn’t stand the madness any longer. It’s a lot nicer where I live now.

    Reply I have opposed development on appeal where the Council has turned it down and have made the case for lower housing growth numbers.

  62. Bryan Harris
    June 20, 2021

    The UK Government / MHRA have released their 20th update on adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccines just days after announcing new legislation is to be brought in that will make it mandatory for anyone working in a care home to have two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine unless they have a medical exemption.

    How can the UK Gov. make these mandatory?

    20th update on Adverse Reactions to the Covid Vaccines shows: 949,287 Adverse Reactions & 1,332 Deaths.
    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting

    The justifications no longer hold any water!

  63. paul
    June 20, 2021

    I take no notice of the fools who talk about zero carbon. China is now importing one million barrels aday just for storage from country who cannot sell their oil on the open market and buying it in at a cheaper price.
    Oil companies are no longer opening up new oil fields and are doing what the govs tell them.
    Soon oil will hit 150 dollars a barrel in the next couple of years, just like it did in 2007/8 and took the ecomony with it, not because it in short supply but lead by pure speculation, petrol 7.50 a gallon just to start with on it way to over 200 dollars a barrel and as you know when oil goes up everything goes up, the fools who talk about zero carbon at that point will be muted with uneducated and educated wanting heads on poles, they think they can get away with it, can they, will you let them or will you stand up for yourself because what I have seen so far, you plebs are gutless.

  64. L Jones
    June 20, 2021

    ”In Australia and in Canada in their 2019 General elections the left of centre parties went too far with their decarbonisation proposals.” Perhaps I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but I don’t recall any of this far-reaching, hugely expensive and damaging green tosh being included in the Conservative manifesto in 2019.

  65. X-Tory
    June 20, 2021

    Apologies for going off-topic, but I need to urgently warn people. The Telegraph is reporting – based obviously on deliberate government leaks – that “British judges would be told that they are no longer “bound” by European human rights rulings under major reforms being considered by a government review”. Warning: this is DECEITFUL spinning by the government to try to CON the public. Why do I say that? Because this will NOT change anything!! Look at the CURRENT rules:

    “The Human Rights Act also requires UK courts, including the Supreme Court, to “take account” of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (which sits in Strasbourg). UK courts are not required, however, always to follow the decisions of that Court. Indeed, they can decline to do so, particularly if they consider that the Strasbourg Court has not sufficiently appreciated or accommodated particular aspects of our domestic constitutional position.”

    Where does that come from? The official Supreme Court website (https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/the-supreme-court-and-europe.html). Do not be fooled by the government. They have zero intention of ‘Taking Back Control’ when it come to court rulings. We will still be subservient to foreign law . The ONLY solution is for us to scrap the HRA (Human Rights Act) resile from the ECHR (the Convention) and leave the ECtHR (the Court). Will Boris the Betrayer do this? No, of course not.

  66. formula57
    June 20, 2021

    What profit a party that it might win Batley and Spen but loses its soul in Chesham and Amersham?

    Meanwhile, in Switzerland, as you may well have seen, a climate protection law referendum saw rejection in three votes of measures on CO2, on pesticides, and on drinking water. It seems votes of 18-34 year olds were decisive, with 60-70 per cent. of them voting against. As some commentators point out in response, it is one thing to profess fashionable support for a green agenda, quite another to embrace personal sacrifice to see it enacted.

    Further, in Texas where electricity outages now occur not from cold weather as in February but from hot weather, I see reports that USD 66 billion has been spent on renewable electricity infrastructure (wind and solar) with taxpayer funded subsidies amounting to USD 22 billion of that. All those billions to yield an unreliable, insufficient supply! Texas took state taxes and royalties from its fossil fuel industries of USD 13.4 billion in 2019 and USD 0.25 billion from the wind and solar sector. It seems clear enough which sector Texas depends upon more.

  67. DOM
    June 20, 2021

    In today’s Telegraph we see Charles Moore and Douglas Murray exposing the Tories for what they truly are, a deceit incarnate and even worse than Labour. At least with Labour we can see their woke evil and their pernicious racial politicking but the Tories are simply taking the pee

    Mr Redwood who I respect must surely struggle at times with the fact that he represents a party that is now rancid to the core and simply embraces any form of racially and gender infused Marxist politics for an easy life. That is not what people voted for

    At some point this party must decide who it represents, itself or those who voted for it

    1. MiC
      June 20, 2021

      John, didn’t someone once say, that appeasement was feeding a crocodile, in the hope that it will eat you last?

    2. No Longer Anonymous
      June 20, 2021

      Taking the pee ? They’ll be taking the knee soon.

      Boris has said it’s not political. If I were a Lefty at my next meeting with a Tory I’d be saying “I’m taking the knee for minute. Will you join me ?”

      An offer that cannot be refused now.

  68. HGRJ
    June 20, 2021

    Immigration
    Good evening Mr Redwood. thank you for your continued support for the Democratic vote carried out during June 2016 by the British public, who placed their X on the ballot paper wishing to be independent from the control of Brussels. However, we still have a Government who seem to do all in their power to hoodwink us that we have independence but nothing seems to be happening, one of the reasons that we voted to leave the Brussels control was over immigration which you highlighted today within your diary
    The question I have is, are we committed to have a set amount of immigrants due to an agreement previously signed up to.
    If that is the case can that agreement be cancelled?

  69. Lindsay McDougall
    June 20, 2021

    On 23 September 2020 Stephen Glaister of Imperial College London and LSE presented a summary of the Oaktree Review of HS2 to the Transport Economists Group . Stephen is a veteran Transport Economist who has conducted many studies for central Government over the years. The Oaktree Review was an official review. Right up front at the start of his summary, Stephen presented some key facts:
    – HS2 is not a line to Scotland: Manchester is only halfway to Glasgow.
    – HS2 cannot rapidly rebalance the economy: it will not now open before 2030 to Birmingham and 2040 to Manchester.
    – You cannot “sell” the private sector a scheme which costs ÂŁ100 billion but generates only ÂŁ45 billion in revenue.

    In summary, HS2 is a financial Lemon with a capital L.

    So how did the review come up with a positive ‘economic’ return (benefit to cost ratio 1.2 for the London to Birmingham phase, the only phase with parliamentary powers) for a project with a clearly negative financial return? By including lots of distinctly dodgy ‘wider economic benefits’ – agglomeration, imperfect competition, increased labour force participation.

    Another feature is that some of the HS2 stations are some distance from the city centres that they are meant to serve. I would love to know whether the costs of elevated Maglev lines to access city centres have been included in the financial estimates; they should be.

    The public has a right to insist that the London to Birmingham phase is treated as one project with a large sunk cost, and that the other phases are separate projects, to be re-evaluated once outturn costs on Phase 1 are known.

  70. XY
    June 20, 2021

    Yes, all that seems obvious to many voters, yet too difficult to comprehend for the government.

    The recent by-election was a protest, but even then there isn’t even a good protest party to vote for! The Lib Dems are simply the least damaging of a bunch of very damaging alternatives. With all parties seemiunglyh on the ultra-green, pro-climate change bandwagon, who can we now vote for?

    The Tories seem to think that we’ll keep voting for them because of fear fo what a pro-rejoining party might do, but there are many candidates for next Tory leader who are just as dangerous on that front.

    Nuclear is probably the tech of the future. The problems in Japan and Chernobyl actually showed that even in the worst case, it’s not all that bad. And with safer technologies coming along (Thorium, liquid sodium coolants, fusion etc) there are often no harmful by-products.

    The Conservatives do seem rather complacent on this, perhaps that’s what an 80 seat majority does, along with opposition parties hell-bent on self destruction to the point of making themselves unelectable. The danger is from the right, not only new parties, but that the Tories have moved so far into the left/liberal space that the traditional leftist parties can outflank them on these issues while still remaining left-ish.

    The co-founder of the Greenpeace movement was a true environmentalist who has recently said that we actually now need MORE CO2, not less or plants are in danger of dying. It’s worth a look.

    1. a-tracy
      June 21, 2021

      XY – this choice of ‘shades of beige’ at election time; i.e. you can have Dorset Cream, or Cosmic Latte, Eggshell (beige with a hint of green) or Buff will cause problems at some point in future UK elections, especially when the public think nothing will change and they’re not listened to by any party – it is just all so drab and negative.

      In France, I read that ‘there is a projected 66% abstention’ BBC news, or 68% The Guardian. Surely there should be an expected level of turnout otherwise an effective minority group targeting key areas to get their vote out could completely change British politics for five years.

      What is the point of electing your local MP if the cabinet can totally ignore them? If the opposition MPs just don’t even debate lockdown extensions, surely every MP did get a feel from their local area what a fully representative view was about it and ensuring that those minority voting for lockdown extension is a representation of all workers including those already fully working. It is ironic which events have been chosen ‘to trial group meeting’ Ascot! Lloyd Webber was about to be granted a trial but quite cleverly spotted the elephant trap there. I’d guess Wimbledon got the trial too for bigger crowds.

  71. Mark
    June 20, 2021

    Hedgerows are well and good between fields: I enjoy observing the plants and wildlife they harbour when walking on nearby footpaths. But at roadsides in the country when they become overgrown, they obstruct road signs and vision around twisty lanes, narrowing them to the point where traffic in opposite directions has to find passing places, and greatly increase the risk of accidents, including collisions with animals that dash out from their hedgerow hiding places.

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