The U.K. needs to go further than adopting a more realistic rhetoric about getting to net zero. It needs to keep recent policy changes and add additional ones
1 Policies to keep
It needs to extract more U.K. oil and gas in place of more LNG and oil imports
It needs to keep the delay to the ban on sales of new diesel and petrol cars
It needs to keep the delay on penalising new gas boilers for home heating
These could all be changed back if we have a change of government.
2. It needs to ditch the following policies
The tax on car manufacturers selling too many petrol and diesel cars
The grants to farmers to stop growing food
The high extra taxes on Domestic oil and gas production which makes us more import dependent
Further investment in electricity inter-connectors to an energy short Europe
3. Things it needs to do to keep the lights on
Commission more gas fired power stations as back up for unreliable renewables
Speed up order process for new smaller sized nuclear power stations
Control migration more successfully to limit demand growth
June 4, 2024
Good morning.
All the things that could have been done with an 80 seat majority but were not, and never will.
It is too late Sir John. Most people have pretty much made their minds up on how they are going to vote, if they vote at all. And it is that last bit that really matters, can people be really bothered ?
Some people are of the mindset to let things sink so low that people will eventually take to the streets, as it seems that is the only language that gets any attention.
June 4, 2024
The squandering of that 80 seat majority is unforgiveable. It makes me seethe every time I think of it.
June 4, 2024
voters must vote, even if only to spoil the paper. Apathy is too easy to dismiss
June 4, 2024
NO. A low turnout is damning and it is NOT apathy, itās people refusing to give their sovereignty to any politician at all.
Spoiled ballots are never totted up or announced in total.
June 5, 2024
They are. See researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk : for Wokingham in Decā19, there were 83,953 potential voters, 61,997 actually turned up, and there were 219 blank/spoiled invalid votes.
See also votingcounts.org.uk āWhat is spoiling your ballot and how do you do it?ā
June 6, 2024
So how many were deliberately spoiled and how many were done by mistake/incompetent people?
How many spoiled ballots were there across the nation?
Anyway – which is more impressive? The 21,956 who refused to vote or the 219 āspoiled ballots?
June 4, 2024
Well if your only choice of people who can win for most English constituencies is Labour or Conservative is you vote really worthwhile? We know they never do as promised anyway just read the old manifestos.
The only real democracy is direct democracy which is easy to organise now with digital technology. Being able to chose some 650 drivers of the ship once every 5 years in a rigged FPTP system, and who will not steer the ship in the direction promised anyway is not, even remotely, real democracy. Most peopleās vote is almost totally worthless. The Catch 22 is that these 650 drivers will never relinquish their power to give more direct democracy and they are the only ones who can do this. If the vote counts people will vote. Over 72% turnout in the Brexit Referendum for example. If I voted my vote would be in Hampstead the last place I was registered. Labour will win so why bother voting?
June 4, 2024
So some newly qualified lawyers in London (four years training) start on Ā£180K but our Health Sec. (another lawyer & with no medical qualifications) does not think our junior doctors (five or six years training, far more student debt and usually rather brighter) who start on Ā£29-34K are under paid? Are they suppose to take an evening bar job in order to be about to afford to eat – or just expected to live in a tent or a van?
June 4, 2024
What should one put?
āSpoiled Voteā?
āI Do Not Consentā? ( right across the sheet)
Or both?
Do they really have to count them?
This election is going to be like the chaotic final march of the Chartists in Newport.
Except of course that being naive they didnāt understand the utter duplicity of rulers.
They thought that the vote would solve all ills.
And it has just led us here. And into several devastating wars.
Into a world where my newly chipped cat would say to me, could he speakā¦.
ā Youāre next!āš
June 4, 2024
They count and announce them in each constituency. Nobody knows how many are deliberately spoilt. They are NEVER tallied across the nation, or announced.
If you want to join the illiterate who canāt fill in a ballot and make the case for a qualified vote, OK. But you will NEVER change the result.
June 4, 2024
N S
That is why we need a “none of the above” box on the ballot paper, because then it would be counted and recorded in the official figures.
At the moment any comment is simply listed as a spoilt paper, and is invalid.
June 4, 2024
Low turnout for police and crime commissioners and for European Elections has not made a blind bit of difference.
Spoiling the paper and voting for single issue parties is the next attempt.
June 6, 2024
Oh I think it has. In the EU elections it indicated that people did NOT want to be represented in that body. So people like JR knew it was worth fighting for the Brexit vote and when the Brexit vote came ā¦
June 4, 2024
The party that could well carryout these policies is now coming online- If Sir J. would only reach out to Nigel and offer his services, if only for a period, we might get the upset that WILL change our Nation for the better. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Get behind Reform Sir J., be part of the solution.
PS, what about Small Modular nuclear Reactors?
June 4, 2024
World Nuclear News,28/5/24:”Russia set to build SMR power plant in Uzbekistan”.
“A six unit npp is to be built in the Jizzakh region of Uzbekistan with construction due to begin as early as this summer.The plan is for six 55 MW reactors.Rosatom will be the general contractor with local contractors involved in the construction process.According to forecasts ,demand for energy resources in Uzbekistan will almost double by 2050.
Rosatom Director General,Alexei Likhachev said:”Rosatom has confirmed its undisputed global leadership in nuclear energy by signing the first ever export contract for the construction of a small nuclear power plant.The Uzbek project based on the RITM-200N water-cooled reactor which is adapted from the nuclear powered icebreaker technology,with thermal power of 190MW or 55MWe and has an intended service life of 60 years.The first land based version is currently being built in Ust-Kuyga,Yakutia,in Russia,with launch of the first unit expected in 2027.”
From New Civil Engineer,29/5/24:”According to the IAEA,there are about 50 small modular reactor projects and concepts worldwide at various stages of development.However,only Russia has practical experience in constructing small npps.”
Uzbekistan,situated between Russia and China,is considered to have superior prospects as the new Eurasia-focused world order continues to take shape.
June 4, 2024
The Biden administrationās decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons (but NOT ATACMS) to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea. They together with NATO AWACS aircraft, provide constant reconnaissance for the guidance of NATO missiles targeted at Crimea and the Zaporozhye region by NATO forces in the name of Ukraine.
This presents the possibility of a direct Russian/American military confrontation.
It could mean that the U.K. never has a Starmer Government, or indeed any government.
June 4, 2024
Agreed. Itās too late.
Millions of Conservatives voters have posted millions of times on social media that implementing the WEF agenda would mean nobody would vote for them.
The whole Party is totally cloth-eared because nobody in the party stood up and told the captain they were about to hit an iceberg despite every passenger screaming it at the crew.
All we can say now is. Goodbye.
June 4, 2024
+1
June 4, 2024
+1
June 4, 2024
Excellent analogy. Farage is now driving the agenda which will destroy the Tory Party in its current “One Nation Liberals” ideology. You just can’t keep fooling the people ALL of the time. Current MP’s either support Reform or remain part of the problem, not solution. Time to put up or shut up.
June 4, 2024
Agree Mark. Farage spelt it out yesterday – Starmer will be the next PM. Unfortunately he has been indoctrinated into the net zero cult so Sir John’s sensible strategy is a non-starter.
June 4, 2024
@PeterB; Yes Farage spelt it out, and is still not happy to just send the Tories into opposition, he appears to want a total rout, just what is his end-game – a bit pointless taking over or replacing the Conservatives if in the process you have killed right wing politics for a generation or two!
If Farage actually cared about the country, in the circumstances, he would not have stepped-up yesterday but told Reform to stepped-down, imploring its supporters to (hold then noses) and vote Conservative on July 4th, thus maximizing right wing opposition in the new parliament; all Reform is doing is maximizing the election of either LibDem or Labour candidates.
With a near projected 200 seat majority Starmer will be able to do anything, and with control of the message, even excuse reversing campaign pledges – in the light of circumstances upon taking office.
June 4, 2024
Jerry,
You seem to be in a contrarian mode in your recent posts, I hope all is well.
Many want the obliteration of the present Conservative party. It would not be ‘ killing right wing politics’. More like cleaning the Augean stables. Right wing politics would move forward after the pretenders are removed.
However, I do fear political violence will feature more in the very near future. Our soft plod will be unable to cope. The armed forces may be reluctant to support/replace them.
June 5, 2024
@Peter; “You seem to be in a contrarian mode”
Not “contrarian”, just angry.
“Many want the obliteration of the present Conservative party.”
Yes, but they are not Conservatives, nor Tory, nor Whigs, most are left-wing whilst few rag-tags who call themselves “Tory” are actually to the right Toryism.
To many commentators to this site appear to be in ‘Schadenfreude’ mode, or perhaps just aligned with whatever comes after the fourth row…
June 4, 2024
Not so sure Jerry. Agree Reform will cause the Tories to lose more seats, however without Reform I reckon Labour would still have a sizeable majority: 50 seats or 200 seats makes no odds for Starmer – he will consider he has a mandate to do whatever he likes.
June 4, 2024
You can only replace a rotten party with a new one once the old one is dead. Labour grew out of the corpse of the Liberal Party (the Whigs).
Thatās why if you love conservatism you must not vote for this fake āConservativeā party.
June 5, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson; Nonsense.
What is being offered as the alternative right-wing option is not conservatism, and thus those who take your view are doing nothing but consigning conservatism to history – in the same way as the Militant Tenancy sent Socialism in the UK to the history books, utterly discredited. It wasn’t the ‘Tenancy’ who flourished in the 1980s, it was the center, the Liberal-Democrats and then a rebuilt Labour Party called “New Labour”, that had far more in common with the old Liberals than the original Labour Party, hence their “Clause Four” moment in 1994.
People such as you Lynn appear to have become (metaphysically) drunk on the 2019 general election result, but that was never an argument about left, right or centre, it became purely about Brexit – of which Socialist [1] were the original Brexiteers remember, no surprise then the Red Wall let down their drawbridge. The general election of 2017 might well prove the more important result…
[1] which many traditional agri (and fishing) areas had in bucket loads, even if not allowed at the ballot box, and from which the Trade Union movement was formed
June 4, 2024
jerry
That does sound rather silly. Even 10 Reform MP’s would have more influence in parliament than 100 fake Tories. Bit I believe it will be well more than 10!
June 5, 2024
@BOF; That does sound extremely silly … there were 48 or so SNP MPs in the last Westminster Parliament, what did they manage to do to prevent Brexit for example, or secure another Ind-ref, and they were only up against a 80 seat (not a projected near 200) govt. majority, they would have had to secure the full support of the opposition *and* have 30 to 40 Conservative MPs sit on their hands to defeat the govt. Dream-land politics!
What the SNP did manage to do was create a lot of noise, a lot of ‘theater’ at PMQs or Departmental Qs etc; yet all they succeeded in doing, in reality, was came over as extremely annoying, with far to much faux victim-hood – to put it politely – even though they have many a legitimate grievance, unlike Reform.
June 4, 2024
The current Conservatives are not right wing.
June 5, 2024
@MiB; That comment tells us more about YOUR politics than it does anything about the Conservative Party, go ask the average Labour, LibDem or SNP, PC, Green supporter, never mind an average Conservative supporter…
June 5, 2024
A clichƩ response from you Jerry.
Would you say the Conservatives are now closer to the hallowed centre ground than say under Lady Thatcher?
Therefore far less right of centre than they were?
June 6, 2024
@MiB; Followed by a clichƩ response from you Martin, perhaps I should mention Macmillan!
The Conservatives were far closer to the hallowed centre ground under Thatcher (or Macmillan š ). The current Conservative party has drifted very much further to the right of that hallowed centre, and the ground has drifted to the right since the 1980s and taken the centre with it
Lady Thacher only went as fast as she though the electorate would accept, she did not take any of her three election victories for granted, even if she wished to go further, faster – although, of course, in the end she did allow herself to misjudge the mood of the electorate, such as on the “Poll Tax”, and Europe, even though her thoughts (and those of her advisors) may well have been the correct ones.
June 4, 2024
The current Conservative Party isn’t right wing Jerry.
June 4, 2024
Defeatist argument Jerry, just perpetuating the decline.
June 4, 2024
Did any of the tory voters, vote for ‘net-zero’ at the last election, the last election was all about Boris & Brexit and net-zero was a one-liner towards the rear of the manifesto …..the tory voters where scammed
June 4, 2024
Indeed but replace ākeep the delayā with āabandon the mad government knows best policies completelyā. Stop smiling moronic ministers blowing up coal fired power stations. Stop pretending that burning wood (young coal) at Drax saves CO2. Indeed stop pretending that saving some of the 1% manmade CO2 the UK produces makes any sense at all.
Also admit that Wind, Solar, Heat Pumps, Public transport, walking, cycling, public transport, EV cars save little or no significant CO2 anyway. If anything they just export it.
June 4, 2024
Large Nuclear should be far preferable, cheaper, easier to protect, cheaper to connect up and rather more efficient than small modular nuclear IF it is organised properly. But this is Government so āorganised properlyā is unlikely.
Get fracking, drilling, mining and plenty of R&D into fusion and better nuclear. Ditch carbon capture grants, ditch all carbon taxes. Ditch all the energy market price rigging. Why have standing charges (poll taxes) for zero supply of energy gone up so much?
June 4, 2024
And more R&D into battery technology and synthetic fuels. R&D is sensible, but roll out of premature and duff tech. using tax pay subsidies just gives us very high tax bills and loads of duff tech littering the country all to be later scrapped once the subsidies stop.
June 4, 2024
If private enterprise thought there was a future for batteries etc, it would undertake the R&D.
June 4, 2024
Indeed & there certainly are places where batteries are vital and the private sector do fund R&D here. But R&D first and roll out only if and when it works and is cost effective. Do not push duff premature tech. with mad subsidies and market rigging as they have done.
June 4, 2024
LL :
Whilst we do need much more power and large nuclear will play a part, at least at the beginning, the way forward will be SMRs and micro reactors.
They will be far cheaper and quicker to build in a controlled factory environment and of better quality (particularly for welding) when not exposed to the elements and far cheaper for the same mass production reasons that Fords are cheaper than RRs.
Clusters of SMRs can replace existing large nuclear to make use of the personnel, security and infrastructure of existing sites. If load following is required, which can be done with loss of efficiency and increased maintenance, then just one or two SMR modules can be used instead of the whole power plant.
SMRs will be far more flexible and useful as they can power communities and small towns which do not need an oversized, expensive 1.6 GW power plant and are too far for grid connection. SMRs can be used to power shipping, large factories and no doubt will be used very shortly to power AI data centres.
SMRs are less vulnerable to hostile attack than large nuclear because of they will consist of many multiple units and be smaller size. In fact they could even be built underground. Wind turbines and solar panels spread out over enormous areas are totally exposed to hostile attack.
June 4, 2024
Not convinced on this. The main problem with large ones are more political than real engineering issues.
Rarely in engineering is one large power station going to cost more than 20 X small 1/20 the size ones. Other than for bridge spans! Plus more to protect, more to connect, more to coordinate outputs, more safety issue, more staff needed, more deliveriesā¦
Then again with government running who knows! They spend Ā£100 billion not building HS2 and Ā£50m plus so far on the sick joke of a duff Covid inquiry!
June 4, 2024
Gets my vote ….if only they were tory policies …..get fracking
June 4, 2024
@ Lifelogic “Why have standing charges (poll taxes) for zero supply of energy gone up so much?” – to fund rescues/resolution of insolvent energy companies, Bulb, Avro, Green Network and well over twenty others.
Another failure of regulation but remember, Starmer could do an even worse job.
June 4, 2024
Starmer surely cannot be much worse can he. Anyway we will find out all too soon.
June 4, 2024
Agreed. It would take some effort to do worse.
June 4, 2024
If the government (quite wrongly) want to reduce CO2 emissions they should encourage people to keep their smaller, older but well maintained cars for longer rather than have paid scrap-age scheme to encourage them to replace them with EV (more emissions but elsewhere) cars as this increases CO2 overall rather significantly.
Government web sites used to lie that ācycling and walking produce no CO2 per mile direct or indirectā. This was clearly complete drivel as human food powered transport is not very CO2 efficient. Large amounts of CO2 are needed to produce and process, dry, chill, freeze, butcher, cook human food. But when I Google this now it does not show up? Have they actually ditched this lie?
June 4, 2024
Unfortunately I donāt think so.
I just found 26% of all global emissions.
Well..if they invent something that they say they can quantifyā¦then they will quantify it to suit their agenda.
Your post has reminded me of a film called āFreshā the premise of which would suit the present narrative.
A death cult based on monetary reward, isolation and the insouciant infliction of pain.
Oh yesā¦and the final cutā¦.literally.
If our very existence impacts the planet in terms of what is termed pollution ( who said so?) then they need to get farming along trad lines ditto production. āTHEYā caused all this after all!
June 4, 2024
They can’t stop smiling moronic Ministers from blowing up perfectly viable coal-fired power stations. They’ve already got rid of all of them.
And made us dependent for energy on foreign powers ….. most of them hostile (including Biden’s USA and France).
June 4, 2024
Drax could very sensibly go back to coal!
June 4, 2024
Yes Donna, an act of willful harm blowing up perfectly good coalfired power stations. For that alone I want to see the Con party decimated.
On a regular basis we now have circa 20% of our energy from foreign countries. Energy insecurity and economic lunacy.
June 4, 2024
āCovid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths
Experts call for more research into side effects and possible links to mortality ratesā Say the Telegraph Scence Editor.
āMayā means 99.99% + they did. The statistics are overwhelming in the UK and overseas and in the timings.
The most damning evidence is that the government(s) including the UK are hiding the raw statistics of deaths by age, type, cause, date and vaccination status. Why might they do this? They will clearly have looked at it themselves and will certainly know what it shows.
See the recent Cyprus study and the Dr John Campbell videos on excess deaths.
June 4, 2024
I canāt argue with any of the above. I could even add to the list.
The problem is that itās all rather academic at this stage of a parliamentary term. If they were promised few would believe them now.
Nigel Farage has now made the election more interesting.
I still cannot recall all Reformās promises yet and I take more interest than many voters. I have to go their webpage to see the list. Reform are never discussed in detail in the media other than as a protest vote. When I looked yesterday I could not see their number one promise. Their list seemed to start at 2.
So the claim they will become the new opposition needs to be taken with a pinch of salt at the moment. What they achieve long term remains to be seen.
June 4, 2024
Farage is standing for Parliament because of Trumpās conviction. His āfuture in the USAā no longer so certain.
June 4, 2024
Not convinced on this it seems he is more likely to win now not less.
June 4, 2024
The betting markets seem to indicate little change in Trump’s chances: he remains favourite. There was a small boost ahead of the verdict, a drop after, and recovery to where things were before.
June 4, 2024
@Peter; “Nigel Farage has now made the election more interesting.”
Quite the opposite, unless of masochistic tenancies, all he is doing is ensuring a defeat turns into a rout. š”
June 4, 2024
Jerry
Sorry, Sunak has committed political suicide with stupid policies, his Mp’s by and large went along with the madness because they put him in power, not the Conservative Members or the electorate !!
Just look at the last Budget for goodness sake, what a pre election farce that was.
Now we are arguing about Gender for goodness sake !
Yes Labour may be worse, and the Country may well be broke again, but if that means we eventually get a proper Conservative Party back again, then it will perhaps be worth it.
June 4, 2024
Thatās quite useful. But primarily he is getting a job and the spotlight.
June 5, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson; “a job and the spotlight”
He already had both, or did things not turn out well with that “important job to do in the USA”, as for the spotlight, Mr Farage only needs to cough for the UK Tabloids & GBNews, to headline it as Breaking News…
June 4, 2024
It seems to me that many Labour policies are likely to hurt many Labour voters. Anyone who can point that out successfully stands to pick up votes. It’s Sunak’s best chance of clawing back votes. His problem is that his policies are too similar to be able to make the points. That leaves an open target for Reform if they put their minds to it, and the result would be less of a landslide. For Sunak to do better he has to rewrite his manifesto before it gets published. But he still suffers a credibility gap even if he does that. He fell well short of what he indicated when Andrew Neil interviewed him in the leadership battle.
June 5, 2024
@Mark; “It seems to me that many Labour policies are likely to hurt many Labour voters.”
In which case, if the Conservatives are destroyed by Reform UK, come the 2028-29 general election, we will have either a LibDem or Green govt! I suspect the current SDP have more chance of coming through on the rails than Reform UK does up the middle, in such circumstances…
It took Labour FOUR election cycles to become electorally credible again, after being destroyed by Militant, whilst the breakaway Social Democrats only became credible after selling-out and merging with the Liberals.
June 4, 2024
The Conservatives have lost so much credibility with NetZero, Woke, Hate Speech, Globalism and Mass Migration they are now going to be replaced by Reform.
Did it honestly never occur to MPs that implementing the WEF agenda would be an extinction level event?
June 4, 2024
Sunak is also not helping much with his Moderna Big Pharma links and his absurd āCovid Vaccines are unequivocally safeā statement to the house. The statistics actually show the vaccines did very considerable harms. Neither safe nor effective not even needed for most people it seems.
June 4, 2024
Yet some people are still rolling up their sleeves for the vaccines. Only last week I witnessed someone in my local pharmacy say they were attending for their Covid vaccination appointment.
June 4, 2024
Still being pushed at NHS staff at Addenbrookesās just a few month back when I visited someone.
June 4, 2024
Yes, whatever you think of the ‘vaccines’ it is bizarre that people are still rolling up to receive an injection targeted at extinct strains of the covid virus. “And I only felt ill for a few days afterwards”.
June 4, 2024
Indeed: they are reported to be ineffective against current strains.
June 4, 2024
Javelin
I do wonder how many MPs have had to work out what was going on as we, the public, have had to do. Whatever, we might criticise these globalist idealists for, they are really good at selling nonsense as viable!
June 4, 2024
+1 Javelin.
June 4, 2024
for WEF agenda read China agenda
June 4, 2024
Why would you think they did not?
Really only handing over the baton to the same uniparty.
An historic 80 seat majority. Will be similar if Labour , it will the end of Labour. But Labour may preside over the end of the UK .
This is perhaps the real Brexit payback.
Oh to have a democratic party that does not work against the sovereign people in favour of other interests.
Uniparty delenda est
June 4, 2024
Reform promises are called a contract on their webpage and even now have āDRAFTā written across them. They claim this is how business operates. I am not convinced. I never came across any businesses like that.
They list 23 items though there is no number 1. You can drill down and see more information and suggested costings for the whole exercise.
That said, Nigel Farage is a very good talker and he may overcome the problematic campaign material.
June 4, 2024
Their āContractā seems rather sensible.
I rather like (under Energy):-
Net zero means reducing man made CO2 emissions to stop climate change. It canāt. Climate change has happened for millions of years, before man made CO2 emissions, and will always change. We are better to adapt to warming, rather than pretend we can stop it. Up to 10 times more people die of cold than warmth. In Roman Britain some 2,000 years ago, it was 2 degrees warmer than now. Grapes for wine were grown in Yorkshire.
CO2 is essential for photosynthesis to enable plant growth. CO2 only represents 0.04% of the atmosphere; the average garden greenhouse has 3 times more! The UK produces only 1% of global CO2 emissions, yet China produces 27%. China & India are building hundreds of coal fired power stations. Even the IPCC admits Net Zero would make no difference to sea level rise for 200-1,000 years; in other words they do not have a clue.
Instead, Net Zero sends our money abroad and damages critical industries like steel production. The government has turned Britain from being an exporter of oil and gas into a net importer. They have bet our future on unreliable wind and solar power and destroyed our energy security. Itās time for a common sense energy strategy.
June 4, 2024
I would add that the World has been through several ice ages with CO2 levels well over 15 times the current level of 425 PPM or circa 0.04%
June 4, 2024
Ah – good old āU.K. Plcā. The Hestletine mantra. Where the State uses the assets of the people obtained cheaply, makes the rules and ācompetesā in the marketplace.
The polar opposite of democracy and capitalism which is our and the worldās salvation.
June 4, 2024
Just listened to Mishal Husain interview Nigel Farage on Radio 4.
Very predictable, but she was not very good. Nick Robinson might have made a better fist of it.
I donāt usually listen to Radio 4 these days.
June 4, 2024
I also listened to ‘Thought for the Day’ slot on Radio4. The Beeb types hate talking about religion,but cannot bring themselves to end the feature. So you mostly get claptrap – C of E ‘social workers’, comedy rabbis etc. The head of religious content has been Muslim for some time – in a Christian country. The speaker was from Theos ‘a ‘religious think tank’
The content was like something out of the old Peter Simple column. A talk on the ‘patriarchy’ and gender roles. I looked up the speaker – a black woman with a book called ‘ God is not a white man and other revelations’ .
It’s beyond parody now. At least I don’t pay a licence fee for this stuff.
June 4, 2024
Peter, you’ll find a clear summary of Reform’s ‘contract’ in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph:
āZero toleranceā policing and tackling āwoke madnessā: Reform UKās pledges at a glance, by Dominic Penna.
June 4, 2024
@Peter; Reform UK are like the Green Party, they can promise anything, ‘every household will be given a Ā£x,000 Taxation cashback to spend as they wish; Public transport will be plentiful and free’ sort of uncosted nonsense, knowing they will never need to break their promises – the closer one gets to actually having (or sharing) such power the more realistic ones promises need to become, the LDs learnt that lesson the hard way between 2010 and 2015, as did Labour in the 1980s.
June 4, 2024
J,
Reform do actual supply costings which you can discuss, argue against.
Lib Dems and Cleggs ‘I’m Sorry’ statement were memorable/pathetic.
Governments also promise the earth and don’t deliver. So I am not sure I worry too much about Reform failing.
June 5, 2024
@Peter; Not sure what your point was. All the ‘professional’ political Parties are producing policy costings, drilling down into those costings is how uncontested policy is discovered, they do not announce them!
June 4, 2024
They have nobody of stature and accomplishment, Farage promises āto be a nuisanceā. Is that enough?
June 5, 2024
@LA; No it is not ‘enough’, politicos need to be effective, not just make a noise on the floor of which ever Parliament.
What has Mr Farage actually achieved? Certainly not Brexit, without the effective ERG Conservative backbench Mr Farage would still be sitting in the EP as an MEP, no doubt!
June 5, 2024
I suspect it may mean that some of it will get a rewrite. It needs it. If they are to make a real impact the policies must interlock and gel together, rather than being propaganda soundbites that might have difficult consequences if implemented as a package.
For instance, at this site we have frequently discussed the sorts of tax cuts that pay for themselves by generating more economic activity that can reduce the need for spending and even increase tax revenues through Laffer curve effects. These cuts are not the ones people tend to think of for their own situation, or because they think someone else shouldn’t pay less tax. Spending Ā£50bn p.a. on an increase in the starting point for tax is just an attempt at an electoral bribe, and ditto for the tax free bribe to NHS frontline workers (whoever they are).
Their energy policy plans to waste huge sums nationalising 50% of the industry. What would they cut to afford that? And so on.
June 4, 2024
The Conservative party in government should have paid more attention to your sensible proposals while it was in a position to enact them. It did not do so and the moment has passed. It looks as though the meaning of net zero in this election will switch from CO2 to immigration as Nigel Farage seeks to shift the focus of the debate. It is the stick he will use to attack both past Conservative and Labour governments.
June 4, 2024
Indeed far less (and high skilled only) immigration please and a total U turn on the net zero insanity and energy market rigging. I would also like to see an honest inquiry into the Covid vaccine harms and why on earth these were pushed even into the young and people who had already had Covid as promised by Reform. Also into the funding and vested interests of for example the MHRA and their members.
June 5, 2024
I saw an image of Clacton seafront with the apparently stationary Gunfleet Sands windfarm offshore in the press. The perfect backdrop to discuss Net Zero folly.
June 4, 2024
Net Zero is destroying what remains of our traditional “heavy” manufacturing base, including vital industries like steel production.
It’s based on a fallacy – that CO2 produced by industrialised western nations (but strangely enough, not Chinese or Indian ones) is responsible for climate change and therefore western manufacturing bases and economies must be destroyed and manufacturing must be be outsourced to Asia.
The policy is impoverishing the British people and needs to be scrapped entirely, not tinkered with.
June 4, 2024
+1
June 4, 2024
Donna: Impoverishing the British people – Would also say impoverishing our land, our farming & therefore our food supply and environment, ministers criticised from some quarters as enacting well-intentioned but inconsistent policy on farming that is damaging food security. Proposed 6000 more pylons’ overhead cables through the English countryside alone. To cost around Ā£ 31 billion to cover our ‘transition’ – an ‘investment’ by billpayers, though little pro rata admittedly. Solar parks, farms whatever you want to call them and the claptrap and dishonesty with facts surrounding that including land classification, rewilding etc., All the while we have all those in their power struggles to own our smart meters with Ā£Ā£Ā£ signs aplenty as they contemplate their lucrative long lasting income streams. Schemes and money everywhere it seems.
June 4, 2024
+1 Donna
And the Climate Change Act MUST be repealed.
June 4, 2024
In reply to this depressing pro-fossil fuel and anti-net zero post:-
1) We cannot afford the huge subsidies paid to the extraction companies to make the remaining oil and gas fields economic
2) The delay the the ban on sales of new ICE cars was not wanted by the SMMT, has resulted in the transfer of EV production to the EU, the closure of factories in the UK and the loss of jobs
3) Many people who have installed heat pumps report significant savings in electricity costs and warmer homes
4) The taxes on ICE cars should be masively increased to compnsate for the loss of road tax and VAT on fuel as EVs come to dominate the market
5) The loss of EU grants for farmers – which have not been replaced by the government – has resulted in less food security and more food imports by not encouraging them to grow food sustainably
6) 14 years of increases to the national debt have bankrupted the Treasury. The taxes in extraction of hydrocarbons should be doubled and those on renewables should be eliminated
7) The wind failed to blow on only 5 days last winter, we do not need additional CCGT plant to compensate, just more N Sea windfarms, onshore solar and the EU interconnectors
The government has had 14 years to control migration and build RR’s modular nuclear reactors. Why did they not do so?
Reply Producing and using oil and gas is already massively taxed. EU grants were rolled over into grants to encourage wilding.
June 4, 2024
Every single one of those points is wrong. For example (3). Heat pumps don’t reduce electricity costs at all – they increase electricity costs by the amount needed to run them. Unless you are currently heating your home entirely by electricity, which virtually no-one is, what they do is reduce GAS costs. Also the heat pumps on sale for domestic installation have a maximum water output temperature of 45-55 C which is much lower than a gas boiler can achieve (mine is set at 65 C) so you end up with a colder house, not warmer. Also of course your claim “many people” have repeated this false information is untrue too.
June 4, 2024
Indeed you might get 3 times the electrical input out as heat from a heat pump but then electricity cost three times as much as gas and a gas boiler is more convenient and far cheaper to fit and maintain. Also when you need most of the heat is when it is coldest and also when the heat pumps are least efficiency (Carnot efficiency). They are efficient for heating swimming pools in summer though, even in Yorkshire Sunak.
June 4, 2024
I have only encountered a couple of UK heat pump users myself, but their enthusiasm for the technology seems to have dimmed with experience. A friend who lived in Norway for some time explained that for a heat pump to be efficient the building needs to have been designed for that system from the outset. He said that in Norway the UK approach to heat pumps is regarded as a joke.
But, as with the covid madness, where there are government subsidies sloshing around there are opportunities for some to make fortunes, so expect the propaganda to continue unabated.
June 4, 2024
RG : “Also the heat pumps on sale for domestic installation have a maximum water output temperature of 45-55 C which is much lower than a gas boiler can achieve (mine is set at 65 C) so you end up with a colder house, not warmer.”
Correct. The lower temperature also means you need to run every day an immersion heater (heat pump systems cannot run without immersion heaters which is another problem for many houses in the UK) to avoid Legionnarie’s disease.
Electric resistive heating is needed at below zero temperatures to keep the outside piping from freezing and I wonder how the heat pump supporters expect elderly, infirm or disabled people to wipe the snow off their outside fans/units as instructed when it snows.
June 4, 2024
Wind and solar produces about 1/4 of energy of electricity generation over a year. Electricity accounts for about 1/5 of total energy consumption – so fossil fuels account for 75-80% of U.K. primary energy. Itās the same or higher elsewhere (as weāve gone āgreenerā). Itās true c. 2/3 of fossil fuel energy is lost as thermal heat but with these numbers how do you think we are going to get to net zero?
June 4, 2024
Worldwide wind and solar are only about 2% of total human energy use.
June 4, 2024
SG
Afraid you are simply deluded.
June 4, 2024
In short our so called government should have been doing the exact opposite of what they have been doing. How on earth did they ever get themselves into a position of paying farmers not to grow food? Was there ever a government that so deserved to be obliterated?
June 4, 2024
Good morning SG. I was going to prove that everyone of your points is wrong, and why, but out of kindness decided not to because I do not think that you live in the same World as most on this site.
Some years ago on this blog, a gentleman believed that the UK’s economic ills could be solved by getting rid of all the old folk. He posted ad nauseum about this belief until finally, out of kindness I suggest from our host, he disappeared.
He clearly lived in his own World too.
June 4, 2024
SG :
There are no subsidies for the oil and gas industry. The current subsidies on renewables is Ā£12bn/year and does not include all the new expenditure such as quadrupling fixed offshore wind turbines, spending Ā£220 bn upgrading the National Grid etc. etc.
Electrification will mean very few evs or heat pumps as 80% of our local grids cannot supply more than 1 -2 KW per household in continuous use. Higher demands are feasible of course as we have 80 amp fuses (so 18.4 KW at 230v) but only when supplying random amounts at random times. So 5KW heat pumps running 24/7 in winter and 7KW ev chargers running overnight continuously are not feasible without rationing or even rolling blackouts.
For the first 28 days of May this year the average power from the 28 GW of installed wind was just 3.8 GW.
The total tax burden on North Sea oil and gas production is 75%. How can you double it?
PS : If the gas supply is cut off as intended I will not be buying an expensive to install and maintain heat pump but simply cheap, portable far infrared heaters.
June 4, 2024
+1. And Iām NEVER buying an EV, I would not accept one free of charge.
A friendās house burned down last week. Guess what was in the garage?
June 4, 2024
@SG; Yawn, yours is just more pro blank Cheque subsides bias, for investors in unreliable or unproven technology…
Have you never asked why Windy Miller, of Camberwick Green, swapped his windmill sails, first for a water wheel and then an electric motor. Or why the invention of the wax candle, then oil lamp and then the gas or electric light, was so popular?!
As for “The loss of EU grants for farmers”, wasn’t Set-aside an EU policy, to take otherwise productive farmland out of production, that reduce food sustainably, yes post Brexit the UK govt has been supporting farmers but it was made claer that was only temporary until a new post Brexit agri policy. Yes I know what that EU policy was intended to do, but MEPs and Eurocrats forgot the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’, consequently excessive food-miles became the norm, causing excessive atmospheric release of NO-x and CO2 etc.
I’m sure the Govt, other than the extreme left, will facilitate investment in production modular nuclear reactors, once the technology is proven scalable, unless you believe Govts should be an extension of every R&D department, wasn’t that sort of direct intervention put aside in May 1979?
June 4, 2024
So Rishiās idiotic, six months early, election plan is not going too well is it?
Good to see Farage is now standing, he sounds like a normal person and answers questions properly totally unlike Starmer and Sunak. He also, like Trump, understands that we need to ditch the net zero Con Trick and get on demand energy costs down to US levels – about 1/3 of those in the UK to compete.
I suppose Sunak will just have to console himself with his no so āunequivocally safeā but I assume extremely large Moderna profits?
June 4, 2024
Farage in a Leaders’ Debate will expose the others’ inadequacies to the white heat of daylight. False claims will be destroyed.
June 4, 2024
Hope so.
But he needs to be careful especially if he were ( miraculously) to get into parliament.
They will try to do a Trump on him.
Preparation, insurance of some sort needed?
June 4, 2024
If he’s allowed to speak without the constant interruption by both the host and other debaters. Also, we need unbiased fact-checkers to call out the false statements that people make about the so-called climate emergency and the need for Net Zero. I agree though that Nigel is an excellent debater. Much better than any other party leader.
June 4, 2024
And boy there are so many false claims from Sunak (on the vaccine safely, tax levels, growth, the economy, migration, the NHS, Crime…) and Starmer (the same list as Sunak plus the idiotic claims that VAT on private schools and the abolition of Non Dom will raise net taxes when they will cost far more than they raise and do huge harm to education). They even lie that people using private schools are getting a tax break! They are paying four times over you lying twits!
June 4, 2024
If he ever gets a chance, odds on he will not !
June 4, 2024
Why haven’t the men in grey suits stopped him ….or have the men in grey suits gone woke
June 4, 2024
Oh dear. The appalling Nigel Farage, fresh from an audience with Donald Trump, has started to use words such as “patriots” and phrases such as “Lets make Britain great again”
Never one to miss the main chance, Farage has seized control of the deluded Reform anti-net zero landlords party and has decided to foist himself on the good burghers of Claction as their election candidate
Farage has stood for election as an MP on no less than seven previous occasions. He has failed each time; this time will be no different. The Reform party will achieve zero seats in the 4th July election and many of it’s candidates will lose their deposits.
What Reform will do, by making more tactical voting possible, is to let Labour win in dozens of previously Conservative seats and ensure that the Lib Dems form the official opposition after the election.
June 4, 2024
In EU elections where people can vote as they wish (without wasting their vote as is the case with FPTP) Farageās two parties both came first, ahead of Labour and way ahead of the Conservative.
What on earth is appalling about Nigel Farage do tell? He and Reform are quite right on energy, on net zero, on immigration levels, on the vast levels of government waste, on tax levels, on the huge levels of Covid vaccine harms, on the woke lunacy,
Is going early the biggest mistake by Sunak so far? Quite stiff competition here!
June 4, 2024
How many Green candidates have serially stood for the same constituency and lost? It seems likely to me that several must have stood four, five or six times 2010, 2015, 21017, 2019, 2024 would make five.
June 4, 2024
Your prediction claims knowledge of what millions of individuals will decide for themselves weeks before they are due to do so, without their even knowing themselves how they will vote or what issues in the meantime will influence them in any way.
June 4, 2024
Cobblers as usual.
June 4, 2024
Not sure if you vote in the Wokingham constituency, SG, but if you want a globalist banker not just as PM but as your very own MP, you’ll be pleased to know you can now vote for one. Lucy Demery is the Conservative candidate for the constituency. She studied in the US and then worked for two US banks for a fair number of years. Three years ago she joined Barclays Bank – not your local branch, though (that’s gone), but the European arm, where her FB page says she worked for overseas clients. She lives in Oxfordshire.
Repeat losing candidate Clive Jones might even have a chance now.
June 4, 2024
SG : āWhat Reform will do, by making more tactical voting possible, is to let Labour win in dozens of previously Conservative seats and ensure that the Lib Dems form the official opposition after the election.ā
Since you believe in a speedy transition to Net Zero I expect you will be voting for Labour, Lib Dem or even the Green Party? Or even for Reform to ensure that as few Conservative MPs as possible in the next Parliament who may possibly oppose Net Zero (although admittedly unlikely)?
June 4, 2024
You think patriotism is bad? You donāt want Britain to maintain her influence in the world?
June 4, 2024
What is needed Sir John is the re[eal of the 2008 Climate Change Act introduced by Ed Miliband. That would also remove the Net Zero amendment that Theresa May appended to it thus avoiding any debate on the Net Zero policies it forced into play.
If the Tory Party said it would do that there may be some people prepared to vote for them again.
As far as limiting migration is concerned. A more honest explanation about why both the Tory Party and Labour have decided to flood the country with migrants when it is having such devastating impacts on public services and the benefits system.
I am told the Romanian government are thrilled with our willingness to ship Ā£billions of our tax payers money to their domestic residents just for filling in a claim form for income support here…..
Maybe it was part of the Rishi ‘giving it all away’ policy, we were not told about. ‘Hand out to help out’
June 4, 2024
It’s a disgrace that we pay non-contributory benefits to anyone who doesn’t live in the UK. I don’t know of any other country that does this.
June 4, 2024
We give millions to China every year! Aid š¤«
June 6, 2024
Not aid, Ā£8m to the British Council and āChevening scholarshipsā (commonslibrary.parliament.uk, 26/10/2023)
June 4, 2024
Only the woke tories
June 4, 2024
This article is very depressing. How someone like our esteemed host who has always supported a move towards a small state with less power could condone NZ is beyond my limited comprehension. I suppose even intelligent politicians are prone to pandering to an ideology whose foundations are Marxist in nature
NZ does not concern itself with environmental protection. Its concern is political and in time people will suffer punitive state impositions in the name of environmental protection.
Understand the dynamic of the Left. They seek to weaponise and politicise our very being to assert total control.
If good people like Mr Redwood are captured by this politics then it truly is game over for civil society
Reply I did not vote for the net zero legislation. I have not advocated it.
June 4, 2024
To reply:- alas nearly every MP bar a tiny handful (and in nearly all parties) did support the climate change act and net zero in an act of mass collective insanity of mainly 95%+ scientifically ignorant deluded virtue signalling Art Graduates. Cost Ā£Trillions, benefits hugely negative.
June 4, 2024
Sir John, you say you didn’t vote for it. That is because there was no vote in the HoC for Net Zero.
No one voted for it!
Reply There was a vote on the Labour Climate Change Act
June 4, 2024
Now that is being evasive Sir John. The 2008 Climate Act introduced by Ed Miliband was voted on at a time when Labour held a majority. Theresa May appended the Net Zero policies to it without requiring any further vote to legitimise those destructive policies. She did that purposely, thus avoiding any vote in the House at a time when the Tory Party held the majority…just.
June 4, 2024
@Rod Evens; Not sure what your point is, are you saying Statutory Instruments etc. can not be ‘objected’ to on the floor of the House when formally Laid before parliament, even if they are (usually) nodded through?
Also, your assumptions about why Theresa May did not offer a formal vote on the appended Net Zero policies don’t hold any water, the then small size of the govts majority would have helped not hindered such a vote to pass, against any objections from Conservative MPs, given most opposition Parties undoubtedly agreed with the Net Zero policy and would have supported it. Theresa May was hardly going to make it a Vote of Confidence… Save your brickbats!
June 4, 2024
Reply to reply:
More wordplay, dodging an accurate answer.
June 4, 2024
@DOM; Cough, a few home truths in your comment for once, except they were not about your unintended target(s), I wont embarrass you and trouble our host by citing them! š³
June 4, 2024
Iām surprised you havenāt advocated the abolition of legally mandated Carbon Budgets, a pre requisite of your recommendations. Ed Miliband canāt wait to be bound by them.
June 4, 2024
I have they should all be ditched.
June 4, 2024
You can speed up the order process for small nuclear as much as you like but you won’t get planning permission for any of them, they will be mired in decades of NIMBY challenges and public inquiries and delay. For example would you support one being built in your constituency ? Of course not, you’d oppose it every step of the way – and so would every other MP in the country except the handful with existing large nuclear sites there already.
June 4, 2024
Caveated by the fact that the sun causes changes in the weather not human activity
The UK needs to acknowledge that carbon offset accounting allows offshoring of carbon production and results in more carbon being produced. The effect of this is to prevent manufacturing, innovation and exploration for oil and gas in this country which impoverishes us and leaves the world worse off in terms of carbon production.
Carbon is either a problem or it is not and if it is then offset accounting should not be permkitted.
June 4, 2024
As soon as the UK/EU/UN agreed carbon trading, I knew climate-change/net-zero was just a money making scam
June 4, 2024
Now Nigel Farage has entered the election campaign, I think the electoral calculation has flipped. Previously you might have said a vote for Reform is a wasted vote. After ten days or so in which Sunak has failed to make any impact, it must be clear by now that a Tory vote is a wasted vote. If I vote Conservative rather than Reform, all I would be doing is to reduce the momentum Farage and Reform need to create by the number of votes cast for them. Whether they win seats doesn’t matter: Labour are going to be in power with a big majority anyway. With millions of votes behind him and his policies, Farage will provide a proper grass-roots opposition to the appalling pro-immigration, pro-NZ, pro-woke and pro-state control of personal health agendas that this country has been subjected to. We can help him or hinder him. The Tories are in any case going to be an irrelevance, not least because even in opposition they will not properly oppose. Why should they, when so many of them support the same overall agendas as Starmer?
June 4, 2024
@Clough – with the state of labour its bizarre take on the World, the Conservatives could win hands down if they ditch Sunak/Hunt and what is really BoJo’s cabinet. Finding a Conservative maybe the problem CCHQ has ensured they are in short supply
June 4, 2024
@ Clough – a very persuasive analysis, thank you.
June 4, 2024
To logical too late. Give or take the policy contract of the Reform Party, almost the only political Conservatives espousing Conservative policies left in the field. I can but admire the courage of their new leader prepared to give his all to keep Conservatism alive when so many who have posed as such for so many years are now jumping ship. I hope that all Conservatives in the electorate, red or blue wall, have that same damacene moment in the run up to placing their cross.
June 4, 2024
Hopefully the silent majority will vote for change so the UK can work towards a future where we are more self sufficient and take responsibility for ourselves.
June 4, 2024
No chance of any of these policies with a Labour govt. in all respects it will get worse.
Time is running out for some radical and popular policies. We will not win this election by talking about sir āfearā Starmer etc. we need some heading grabbing and popular policies. Abolish inheritance tax and (therefore) massively simplify probate. Hand the BBC to license payers. Tweak net zero so as to introduce a requirement that no net zero policy gets implemented if it has a materially negative effect on prosperity. Cut the civil service by 100k heads and halve the number of quangos (saving what Ā£20bn pa?). Increase defence spending to 3% of GDP (but radically re-organise procurement and donāt allow the MoD to spend it on civilian civil servants). Raise the VAT threshold to Ā£250k as suggested by Sir John to unleash small business.
Time is running out.
June 4, 2024
@Richard1 – no chance if the same clowns are returned.
June 4, 2024
Sir JR, your Conservative party has been in power for fourteen years. It has brought about the situation that you highlight. The blame lies with the Conservative party for listening to Woke, Green loonies a silly schoolgirl and ‘Sakara Gold’ all of whom seek to virtue signal to the world ‘we’ve saved 1% of global co2’ It’s too late now!
What’s worse I see little likelyhood of Starmer taking up your suggestions.
Have another look at ‘Lifelogics’ sixth !! post today. Where he quotes Reform policy on Co2. It’s absolute common sense. I will vote Reform. I don’t expect them to gain power but that doesn’t have to happen. Remember UKIP/Brexit party didn’t gain power. But they did force Cameron into granting the EU referendum.
June 4, 2024
Yes they forced Cameron – but as a pressure group threatening to take Tory seats – nothing has changed. They are NOT a viable replacement for the Tories and we need one.
June 5, 2024
Pray explain how that is going to happen?
June 4, 2024
Exactly, OA. And a referendum on net zero is what we need.
June 4, 2024
+1
June 4, 2024
Old Albion
Agreed, will be Reform for me now JR is not standing in my Constituency, agree they may not even get enough votes for one seat overall, but that is because of the system, and no doubt some tactical voting by other Party supporters.
What a crazy system we have when many vote for someone they do not really want, to prevent a candidate who you really do not want to succeed.
Sunak does not have a clue how to run anything, who else would call an election when you do not even have candidates ready and in place, a schoolboy error from someone who has never run anything before.
The LibDems for all their faults (and I will not be voting for them) had a leaflet through my door within 24 hours of an election announcement, with a second one to follow up a week later.
Nothing from the Conservative candidate (only put in place 24 hours ago) nothing from Labour either.
June 4, 2024
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail, and old saying that still holds true.
Perhaps Sunak has never heard of it !
June 4, 2024
Sunaks gone ….he’s probably already brought his ticket to the USA
June 4, 2024
Quite, registering an opinion while voting is much more important than voting for the winner.
Only one party has suggested we should not hurtle headlong into zealous pursuit of net zero. Unfortunately voting for Reform will be written off by the worthies as a racist vote but over time like UKIP the underlying message will be appreciated. Be part of a movement.
Reform also has the attraction of acknowledging the issues with mass immigration and understanding that what has become known as gender is personality and not sex.
I may not spoil my paper.
June 4, 2024
A shame Cameron did not stay neutral on Brexit, he failed (in an act of gross negligence) to plan for the quite likely leave vote, failed to deliver the notice the next day and stay on to deliver Brexit as he promised he would do. Even he would surely have been rather better than Theresa Net Zero & Brexit mean F/A May.
June 4, 2024
@ Old Albion “UKIP/Brexit party ….did force Cameron into granting the EU referendum” – was it not rather the ERG and other Conservative M.P.s who did that? Granted, the UKIP success doubtless had an influence upon shaping the views of Cameron and his colleagues.
June 4, 2024
I’d suggest adding:
– End the laughable Drax wood-pellet importation scheme.
– Abandon all carbon-capture schemes.
– Keep our last remaining coal-fired power-station in reserve, for the decade, with its coal-yards full.
June 4, 2024
With England mined coal.
June 4, 2024
“…a more realistic rhetoric about getting to net zero…”
Let us fast forward to 2050. What if the UK has not done so? Serving ministers will not be hauled off to Belmarsh. Former ministers will not be expelled from the Lords, or exhumed and reburied in paupers’ graves. HMG will not fine itself. Instead, there will be a declaration to that effect in the Commons, and an explanation: maybe “we didn’t get enough support from those wretched plebs who put us here”, or “we couldn’t rewrite the laws of physics”, or indeed “we realised that there was no net benefit to quality of life, so we silently backpedalled”.
Here and now, the second and third of those could be adopted now, to save the colossal waste of time and resources involved in pursuing a futile goal. It would, however, mean giving a Parliamentary majority to a party that would repeal Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act.
June 4, 2024
With Nigel Farage back in the fold, this should prove to be an interesting election.
I’m sorry, I won’t be voting Conservative.
Too many broken promises and wishy washy ‘conservatism’ has occurred over the last 14 years to make me want to vote Conservative this time around.
Pauline Jorgensen is going to have a hard time in Earley and Woodley with the large number of disgruntled Conservative voters – myself included.
A shame JR did stand for Reform. I have no doubt he would have won, and been part of a party that is more in align with his common sense and logical ideals.
As a result, I can see Wokingham falling to the useless Lib Dems.
June 4, 2024
Sir John like Bridgen disagrees with fundamental Reform policies.
So do I, thatās why I will not vote for it – although the lady who threw a milkshake over Farage caused me to wobble for a minute. I wonder whether he paid her – if so it was worth it.
June 5, 2024
such a daft allegation…policies that are too ….err….Conservative. Perhaps you don’t remember them?
June 4, 2024
The incentive for those in the Conservative party deciding policy is not to win a General Election, but to maintain the united front across mainstream politics of the international consensus.āNo country can be a Sweden; a control to show the consensus is wrong.
June 4, 2024
Yes – all good points. HMG also needs to stop using scare tactics concerning the alleged climate emergency.
The media is especially guilty of overhyping any affects we see in the weather as ‘man-made’, while we are still seeing so called ‘Nature programs’ that distort the situation, show very old film clips and suggest animals are dying in great numbers due to ‘warming’.
If we can’t have honesty on a scientific level then there is no hope for us. By now the message has become so strong that even if HMG rolled back on netzero the establishment and all the green converts, indoctrinated for far too long on the subject, will rise up and make things impossible.
It helps that sensible voices are being raised against the horrors of netzero but a lot more needs to be done to turn the tide.
June 4, 2024
“[stop] The grants to farmers to stop growing food”
Indeed, but those grants should instead be paid to increase and thus secure UK food production across the board, thus reducing imports. Additionally, if the FCO were allowed to sell at cost price – even give away – surplus production to developing or needy countries it could be an effective way of controlling the aid budget (day-facto increase in aid, without increasing the FCO aid budget per se) and perhaps the flow of illegal migrants towards Europe.
“Control migration more successfully to limit demand growth”
If the eco-nerds are to be believed one of the most damaging climate issues is the growth in modern consumerism, fast fashion, quickly out dated ‘must have’ technology etc. If that is correct, who are the more problematic migrants to the climate, one hundred illegals migrant who are happy to live in a farmers barn whilst working the land, or one wealthy legal migrant and family who buys the latest Southeast Asian made cloths each fashion season, always buys the latest Chinese made tech on release, has a new European or Far Eastern made car every year or two, but other than contributing to the Treasury VAT coffers makes little or no other economic contribution to the country they wish to call home?
June 4, 2024
Your 100 migrants aspire to have all the lovely things we enjoy Jerry.
They are young and ambitious.
To say they are happy “living in a barn working the land” is both wrong and patronising to these new arrivals.
June 5, 2024
@Sam; “migrants aspire to have all the lovely things”
So the argument is moot the…
To say they are happy āliving in a barn working the landā is both wrong and patronising to these new arrivals.
It was a figure of speech, they would not be allowed to live in such accommodation, nor would any farmer waste such useful space! Prefab housing would be supplied, or mobile-homes, why am I so sure, because many a (legal) Eastern EU migrant did live that way on farms up and down the country – before returning home either post referendum or due to the Covid pandemic.
Sam, have you ever set foot on a real Farm?!
June 5, 2024
What a strange reply from you Jerry.
I think you sort of agree with the idea that most immigrants are hard working and ambitious to better themselves.
Therefore they desire a similar lifestyle to us.
PS
I have set foot on a farm.
June 5, 2024
so why travel up to thousands of miles in poor circumstances, and endure the hassle of getting through EU borders, finally camping near Calais and then risky drowning crossing the Channel?
All that for being young and ambitious – but only on arrival in UK?
June 5, 2024
Because MT, in the UK their opportunities are far more likely to be fulfilled.
June 5, 2024
@MT; Come off it, ask yourself were those migrants are coming from, for many even taking my comment literally (see my reply to @Sam) their life will be ten times better. The only unanswered question, why the desire to reach the UK, why not another EU country – but of course those who attempt to reach the UK are actually a small number compared to the totals landing on the EU’s southern shores, most of whom remain in the EU27. Has the immigration debate here in the UK become to polarized, to parochial?
June 4, 2024
Sir John
Who other than the UK parliament has said Net-Zero is a thing. For every scientist that has made āclaimsā of human activity being the problem there is another scientist disagreeing. Neither faction offering evidence for āpeerā review. Our have we been presented with the need and desire for enforced euthanasia from our Political Class? Which ever way you look at their actions in some form or another require and enforce that as the āonlyā option.
The only real calls come from the Socialist Globalist Chub the WEF, the Worlds leaders and rulers in their own heads, something we now see our political class have all become members of. Their unelected unaccountable higher authority that they take direction from and not those they serve, that elected, empowered and pay them.
Sir John, in a ānutshellā it is not your list āper seā that will help in any scenario, it is the Country āGeneratingā the wealth so that we can stay safe, secure and resilient with what ever any outcome maybe or whatever is thrown at us. In other words, the direction needed is the complete opposite to the punishment ill thought-out regime this Government aided by Parliament has given us over the last 14 years. Add in the Blair/Brown years and we get 25 years of destruction and personal vanity that has held the UK down.
āItās the economy stupidā to quote the last human that seemed to understand, life, the Universe and everything. The UKās situation in all this would never have happened if we could find a āConservativeā to run the Country. We have now had more 25 years of Socialism forced down our throats, all pushing decline none of them pushing forward.
June 4, 2024
Michel Husain on the Today Programme ALMOST managed to hide her disgust at Farage standing and Reform’s plans for Net Zero immigration.
The BBC higher echelons must be having a nervous breakdown. As, I suspect, is CCHQ.
June 4, 2024
I doubt it they will be delighted – it makes a Labour victory more likely
June 4, 2024
First and above all you must disband the office and role of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) …..nothing will change until this happens
June 4, 2024
There is no reason for Net Zero :
Increasing CO2 is not an imminent and existential threat. In fact we need more CO2 in the atmosphere to promote plant growth. Doubling CO2 produces a negligible increase in GHG effect because the quantity of CO2 already in the atmosphere absorbs all the IR radiation available to it as defined by its IR band and the Earthās IR Planck distribution curve. The IPCC WG1 (P95) says doubling CO2 produces a 1.2 degree C temperature rise, Happer & Wijngaarden calculate 0.7 degrees C. All the additional warming is suggested to be water vapour feedback for which there is no evidence and why the IPCCās models are not matching the data. In fact, so poor are the IPCCās CO2 models that they cannot explain the past climate history let alone the future.
The recent very mild increase in average global temperature (1 degree C) coming out of the Little Ice Age is not causing more extreme weather as shown by the weather data and illogical as warming the poles/upper latitudes reduces the temperature difference between them and the equator and hence reduces the energy available for bad weather.
June 4, 2024
PS :
Net Zero is also unaffordable :
Renewable energy is the most expensive, not even taking into account that it is totally unreliable and hence requires a completely parallel power system for backup. For the first 28 days of May this year the average power from the 28 GW of installed wind power was just 3.8 GW. Floating offshore wind (proposed by Sir Keir Starmer at his GB Energy launch) costs Ā£242/MWhr (2023 price), fixed offshore wind is Ā£100.27/MWhr (2023 price), large nuclear anywhere else in the world, including using the same technology as EDF EPR Hinkley Point C, is Ā£50/MWhr, RR SMRs are Ā£50-Ā£70/MWhr (2021 price) depending on funding (RAB or CfD), gas without carbon taxes is Ā£60/MWhr and coal without carbon taxes is Ā£30/MWhr.
Electrification is impossible without massive upgrades to both the national and local grids. The National grid want Ā£220 bn by 2035 (2030 for Labourās plans) for the decarbonisation of electricity. The local grid is only designed to take 1 ā 2 KW per household continuously. Higher demands are feasible for any household but only when it is random amounts at random times. So running continuously 5KW heat pumps in winter and 7 KW ev chargers overnight is impossible without Ā£ billions spent in upgrading the electrical supply to every single household in the country. We donāt even have the engineers to do this by 2050.
June 4, 2024
Correct …..our government (tory or labour) are about to spend Ā£3 trillion to be proved wrong
June 4, 2024
How badly run is this country that the Government has to U-turn on so many of its policies? Anyone with common sense would have known that they were doomed to failure which begs the question ā why propose them in the first place? We are being governed by fools.
June 4, 2024
My mind is in a quandary as far as the election is concerned ; I would never vote for Labour , the Lib Dems , or Greens . Inspiration and leadership qualities that can be relied upon are important ingredients – unfortunately Sunak does not come across well and Reform is a one person condition . My list of preferences are : taxation , population control , getting rid of illegals , the NHS , economic stimulation , enterprise reward and maintaining the present education system . So , who do I vote for ?.
June 4, 2024
I realise that it might be construed as wisdom after the event. As a real Conservative, you and around 50 of the remaining real Conservatives should have bitten the bullet and moved to Reform. It would seem that misplaced loyalty was the only motivation, a loyalty that was never returned in recent years. Bit like being Lord Chatterly whose wife has gone off with the gardener.
June 4, 2024
Sunak was appointed Tory leader without his party members being consulted. He’s now picked an election date without his MPs being consulted. I can well imagine our good host just ran out of patience with the man. I would.
I expect SJR and like-minded MPs were hoping to hold the Tory party to the Conservative cause by staying within it, ironically a similar strategy to Cameron’s, when he tried to ‘reform’ the EU from within. (Or said he did.) In both cases, though, the bad actors had much too strong a grip on power and control over policy.
June 5, 2024
At least the Lady enjoyed it, I don’t see much joy in those who abandoned the Party.
June 4, 2024
You are correct what you say but the momentum is now with Labour who will no doubt be even worse.
And by the way, we see the government admitting to Solar Radiation Management which was supposed to be a conspiracy theory pumping who knows how much sulphur and aluminium into the atmosphere to block the sun and poisoning us all..
June 4, 2024
Have they officially admitted to it? It’s still highly illegal. Only limited types of weather modification are allowed, e.g. cloud seeding.
Not of course that being ‘highly illegal’ has made much difference since 2020.
June 4, 2024
The missing link āSustainabilityā, off shoring anything (manufacture, energy, food production) and placing your structures in the hands of the political whims of others, is a government ensuring the Country is not secure, safe, resilient or sustainable. That is a Government, a Political Class 100% in derelict of duty. A Country and its People have had their future removed
That is without taking into consideration increasing the World out-pouring of the very things the Government pretends this situation is about, they are actually forcing them to increase. Then we have to factor in that the World is not dancing to this ridiculous endeavour, 95%+ of this Planets inhabitants do not have punitive, destructive laws, destructive taxes. They are not held back from advancing, from improving their economy.
So is Net-Zero a World thing or a UK Government punishing its people thing?
June 4, 2024
Conservative HQ is parachuting its own into safe seats. If you run an institution on the basis of something besides competence, you soon become institutionally incompetent and hence cannot see the nonsense that is CAGW and its āsolutionā Net Zero even when itās clearly a Communist driven suicide cult designed for the deluded and ignorant West.
Freedom is slavery, war is peace, diversity is strength (meritocracy), Net Zero is prosperity.
June 5, 2024
It remains to be seen what ‘safe’ turns out to be!’
June 4, 2024
‘Will Tanner, the Prime Ministerās deputy chief of staff, will contest Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket for the Conservatives’ – Sunak for President. Local Tories can take a hike, there is no place for local support in Presidential elections – only loyal yes men allowed as Conservatives on Ballot papers.
Any one thinking of electing a good local MP in the election, is mistaken. Our Politics have been dragged into the gutter
June 4, 2024
I feel a little less guilty today in making a fourth comment against tbe 24 to date by the prolific Lifelogic.
The politicians of yesterday are now running around offering gifts of policy, all of course paid for with our tax contributions, that they hope will get them re-elected. At least with hookers I believe you pay your money and know what to expect. With politicians the goods on offer are not fit for purpose.
To date I have not heard a coherent plan for the creation and retention of wealth to create yet more wealth. Nothing for big business, through SMEs, and down to the one man self employed. All we hear of are seed corn eaters.
Nor is there a plausable plan for energy in the UK. I have prompted our host on a number of occassions to explain in forensic detail why we pay three times what the citizens and businesses of the USA pay for energy. Lets have it, who is walking away with the 66.6% extra that we pay. Being now free from the restraint of the whips please tell us.
If this blog is to be if value in the future it must be fearless, hard hitting, and above all 100% honest .
June 4, 2024
This time you are wrong! Britain needs to throw out all the climate scam and the migrants who cheat ,swindle, murder and generally misbehave in our country
June 4, 2024
I do wish you would stand for Reform John.
You would be amazing.
June 4, 2024
The UK and western worlds policies of net-zero are derived from the UN IPCC reports to restrict increase in global temperature to 1.5 degree in order to stem the rise of oceans, otherwise weād all die ā¦.With UK net-zero to cost est. Ā£3 trillion plus, wouldnāt it be wise to spend just Ā£300k to install new sea-level monitoring and ascertain the true nature of the problem first. Then a referendum.
UK sea and tide monitoring is currently undertaken by the National Tidal and Sea Level Facility covering 50 port monitoring points ā¦.If climate change is real we should have a monitoring station every ten miles around our coast ā¦itās a mute discussion anyway as the sea-level around the UK hasnāt increased ! See historic charts at https://ntslf.org/products/sea-level-trends ….they don’t want you to know that ?
June 5, 2024
Well, I guess you must never have been good at reading graphs. All curves show an increase over the last 80 years ā¦
June 4, 2024
Sunak is not the man to stop net-zero
June 4, 2024
63 illegal aliens /boat people arrived yesterday from the safe country of France ā¦this when everyone is looking at the channel ref D-Day celebrations
June 4, 2024
Bang on, John.
But it will never happen if we vote Conservative or Labour.
June 4, 2024
Sunak appears to be a bit of a bully tonight …..not PM material
June 4, 2024
Why does Sunak keep interrupting
June 5, 2024
@glen cullen – its his Presidential election, it has nothing to do with democracy, just about ‘Him’ Even his own party, the Conservative Party would not and have not chosen him as their leader.
June 5, 2024
I thought leaving the EU would free our farmers and fishermen to start working for themselves without restrictions and giving away our hard earned produce for their inferior stuff sold on our shelves. What has the Tory Government been doing for the last nine years? You have the right ideas but those in power above you are not listening. We the people have had enough and want Farage to sort this mess out. He should not have been taken in by lies told to him in 2019 and done it then. Sorry but too late now. We have to suffer but hopefully will get what we want. It might take another 10 years of fighting which I did with UKIP but it will just see me out and I will have done something useful like my parents did by serving in the 2nd World War.
June 5, 2024
I think the ban on ICE vehicles should be cancelled altogether. The Japanese are showing that there is still a lot that can be achieved to improve mpg and thus lower global fuel consumption. Such vehicles clearly have lower cost of ownership and impose a much lower burden on mined resources and consequent pollution and energy use. Modern designs produce remarkably little pollution, doing better than EVs on particulates from tyres.
Proper competition then ensures that some future replacement will be a much better mousetrap.