1. Why do you insist on stopping new oil and gas from U.K. fields? It means more imports which raises world CO2 especially with LNG, slashes tax revenues and loses us well paid .jobs
2Why do you insist on high fines for each additional petrol and diesel car sold by U.K. companies when you can import a nearly new vehicle from abroad to get round the tax? Why do you want to force the closure of so many U.K. factories making petrol and diesel cars whilst overseas competitors will carry on making them?
3. Why do you want people to buy battery cars? If I did buy a new one lots of CO 2 would be released making the raw materials and vehicles. I would plug it into a grid unable to supply more wind power so you will need to burn more gas in a gas power station to recharge it. Silly self defeating idea.
4.Why do you tell us renewable power will be cheaper? You have to subsidise renewable investments and give them priority over gas fired electricity. You need to account for the costs of a big expense on more grid capacity and on stand by power.
5.Why do you tell people and businesses to switch from gas fired heating, when electricity is four times the cost per unit of energy? Low income households will be unable to afford decent temperatures and factories will be uncompetitive and close
6. What is your estimate of the total cost of getting to net zero CO 2 from electricity generation by 2030. Will we pay through higher bills, higher taxes or both?
7. How will you stop CO 2 from jet planes taking you and others on holiday or to international conferences and work meetings?
8. When will all government owned, financed or subsidised vehicles be battery ones?
9. Why go ahead with carbon capture and storage? It raises industrial costs, driving more out of business. It is opposed by many Greens.
10. Do you want us to import most things like petro chems, steel, glass ceramics that need lots of energy to make? That adds to world CO 2 whilst losing us many jobs.
December 27, 2024
and what is going to be the impact on inflation for UK citizens if these Government policies are fully implemented in the near, medium and long term?
December 27, 2024
Indeed food production is very energy intensive with fertilisers, tractors, dryers, processors especially meat.
All good point but 8.
8. When will all government owned, financed or subsidised vehicles be battery ones? Moving to this is mad and vastly expensive especially for fire engines, buses, ambulances, refuse trucks…
11. Why are you doing 1-10 when these save at best trivial amounts of C02 and when a bit more CO2 is on balance a net good anyway?
12. Why take about clean energy when CO2 is not dirty and renewable when there is no such thing as renewable energy. It comes from radiated fusion on the sun (wind, wave, solar, bio), the earths rotation (tidal), or nuclear in the core of the earth geo thermal.
December 27, 2024
Also what is the cost of a grid distribution capacity increase of X10 and a generating capacity of X 20 wind solar etc. X10 plus gas back up of the same. This will be needed just for the few coldest days in Winter if we all are forced on to heat pumps and EV vehicles. The grid will even then not be net zero. Even wind and solar need fossil fuels to build and maintain and you still have the gas back up.
The only answers are Miliband is a totally deluded fool or want to destroy the economy.
December 27, 2024
The people implementing the SCAM are not fools. They are zealots; they are avaricious; they are evil …. but they’re not stupid.
December 27, 2024
Some are evil & some are useful group think idiots and zealots. All but a tiny handful voted for Miliband’s Climate Act and they waived through May’s Net Zero lunacy without even a vote. I do not think they are all evil and on the make. Many certainly are very stupid as is obvious if you listen to what they say on other topics too.
December 27, 2024
Their aim is destruction of the UK economy and way of life. That is the consequence of their policies. What is a green and pleasant land will become an ugly wasteland. The only question is how much irreversible damage will be done before this government is ejected from power. Based on past evidence it will be considerable.
December 27, 2024
The UK still has a great future. Damage can be undone. But we need a big cultural mindset change. And strong leaders.
December 27, 2024
So today on a quiet Friday gas and nuclear are providing 66% of electricity demand. We are Importing at £126 per mwh and we wonder why electricity prices are high.
Why aren’t the windfarm operators fined for failing to provide power. Today 35gw giving 1.5gw
December 27, 2024
+1
December 27, 2024
About 6% from burning “biomass” (or wood/young coal) imported on diesel ships from America – total insanity.
December 27, 2024
It’s sad you didn’t print my post john
There is a lot of pent up anger out there. Farage today makes the point that 150,000 have crossed the channel over the past 7 years, mainly on your watch. A day of reckoning is surely due.
Reply I did not have a watch in the last Parliament. I was anti the lockdown, net zero and economic policies pursued.
December 27, 2024
The also make the gas plants run less efficiently and more expensively at the have to ramp up and down.
December 27, 2024
Spot-On
December 27, 2024
Good morning.
Much of what is being done is due to EU Rules and Global Agreements / Treaties. One government has built on the insane nonsense of another and so on. But unlike all those career politicians before him who just followed orders, RedEd is special. For it is he that has been one of the main drivers of this. A man whom wants people to go over to BEV but would not own one himself. A true socialist.
I am afraid we have to endure the folly of others. Others who will, with a straight face, tell us that it was a mistake and they will learn from it. “Move along please, nothing to see here !”
December 27, 2024
Perhaps it’s simply revenge for not voting for Labour when he led the party.
December 27, 2024
Answer to all questions: because Miliband and others captured by the green religion have lost all powers of logic and common sense, and are fired up with an irrational delusion that they can change the climate and save mankind. They should be sectioned.
December 27, 2024
It’s all part of the global, authoritarian political system called Stakeholder Capitalism, which is part of Agenda 2030. It has nothing to do with saving the planet; it’s only about total control, which is why none of the initiatives make any sense.
People need to wake up and stop this before it’s too late. Does anyone really want to live in a Net Zero world? No holidays, cars, cold homes, highly processed unnatural food, few jobs, social credits, digital IDs, digital currency – all coming to us if this isn’t stopped. Meanwhile, the rich and powerful will continue to travel the world in luxury preaching their doctrines.
December 27, 2024
The system is not global – although it was intended to be. Really it’s exclusively British. All other countries are reversing out of the dead end.
December 27, 2024
Quite right Lynne. Other countries have had the globalists purged or so we think.
Look at Rutte, tries to destroy Holland then lands a job at NATO after being thrown out of office.
We’re always the last to act but act we will.
December 27, 2024
They should be arrested and put on trial for treason.
December 27, 2024
Both the environment and the economy can be salvaged but by tech / high tech industry and cool heads!
December 27, 2024
Good questions that should be used by our opposition politicians and the media in exposing the deficiencies in his thinking, and the green scam.
My hope is that Trump will demonstrate that a large, western, english-speaking country can say no to the green nonsense and thrive. Also that it is a colossul scam.
Already there is a tangible push-back by many ordinary people, fed up with net zero, that’s leading to an ever-widening gulf between our deluded elites and the rest of us. At some point the green house of cards will collapse. I’m optimistic.
December 27, 2024
The myth of ‘global warming/climate change’ has been peddled for years. If I remember correctly, Tony Blair started ramping up the fear when he was Prime Minister and successive governments – and the rest of the establishment – have carried on since then.
You are fully justified in having a go at Miliband but please don’t forget the roles played by other British governments and Prime Ministers, especially Boris Johnson who suddenly became a climate-change fanatic once he became Prime Minister and started taking orders from his wife and fools like Greta Thunberg.
Did you, Sir John, ever stand up in the Commons and challenge the narrative?
Reply I did not vote for the Climate Change legislation and made clear my opposition to these net zero policies
December 27, 2024
Oh The King was peddling this rubbish long before Tony Blair.
December 27, 2024
Even Thatcher fell for it at one point. She absurdly fell for the idea of John Major as Chancellor too!
December 27, 2024
Doubtless Charlie was informed by his duff A levels grades in French and History and his Arch. and Anth. at Trinity Cambridge. Must have been very good at interviews I suppose to get it with those grades.
96 months (eight years) to save the world he said back in 2009.
December 27, 2024
He needs to be demonised and portrayed as a threat not legitimised as a serious politician by asking him serious questions.
By treating him as a serious politician Miliband’s opponents (many Tory MPs agree with him) afford the ideology he endorses with credibility.
December 27, 2024
But most politcians agree with climate change
December 27, 2024
I do not imagine Ed Miliband will red your list of questions Sir John. Even if he did, he would not be prepared to answer them honestly because he is not the decision maker driving the deindustrialisation of the West. Yu will have to look deeper into the internationalisation of policy decisions now destroying the UK and the West in general.
Who will benefit from the impoverishment of our once dominating cultures and nations that brought modern technology and civilisation to the world?
December 27, 2024
Why? Because he is delivering for the UN and WEF …. and he expects to be protected from the consequences and to be enriched by the transfer of wealth from “the peasants” to the Elite.
Along with all the other participants in the SCAM.
December 27, 2024
Simple answer !
Because he can, and the idiot to whom he reports to, agrees with this nonsense.
Not a Practical, Commercial, or real and sensible Scientific brain in the Cabinet I am afraid !.
December 27, 2024
Nor in the Shadow Cabinet it seems & very few in Parliament at all. They kicked Andrew Bridgen MP out for the crime of telling the truth.
December 27, 2024
Because Greta, she say so.
December 27, 2024
Greta school drop out to whom Michael Gove and many other MPs were disciples!
December 27, 2024
11 Why do you keep on telling us we need to reduce our carbon footprint, whilst you take a holiday flight with your family to Ibiza? If you care about the plant, why didn’t you cycle instead?
December 27, 2024
Cycling to Ibiza is not easy especially if the sea is rough but anyway cycling is fuelled by human food which is rather energy inefficient and expensive. Unless you live of Porridge perhaps.
December 27, 2024
COP1 was in 1995.
Has anybody done an interim audit on the justifications for Climate Change?
What were the forecasts used 30 years ago to justify making us deindustrialise?
Have actual outcomes validated the doom laden premonitions?
December 27, 2024
Of course not. Not at all! The modelling does not eve get the past right let alone the future!
December 27, 2024
Has ANY of the policies to date made any difference (apart from making China richer and the UK poorer)
December 27, 2024
Great questions – but will he ever see them?
I doubt he could be bothered to read this diary.
These questions illustrate a lack of understanding of the impact created by irrational netzero rules, and yet these are just tools to force drastic changes on us for no good reason.
If it wasn’t for the fact that other western nations are doing similar things you could imagine these ideas came off the back o0f a fag packet, they are that complete and well thought through.This is an attack on all western nations.
We are not going to make much headway by presenting facts to Miliband and co – they simply ignore anything they don’t like, which is why they are unable to explain themselves, seek our agreement or even present a realistic case for our destruction.
Appealing to the better nature of dictators is also pointless. It is clear they do not have a better side.
December 27, 2024
How utterly pointless to imagine putting these questions to the puppet, and not to the puppetmasters.
December 27, 2024
Greta can’t answer them either.
December 27, 2024
Right, Lynn. Or her activist parents. Or those that finance them. But that would be the point.
December 27, 2024
11. Do you have any interests to declare from promulgating and implementing your zealous net zero policies?
12. Do you or any of your family and associates receive any financial or other rewards from your zealous advocacy and implementation of these net zero policies?
December 27, 2024
What a shame the media don’t ask these questions. I am going to pose them to my Lib Dem MP – for a laugh.
December 27, 2024
It might have been better to have asked the first question to Shell, Equinor or Ithaca Energy.
Why do these companies (which were given the right to pump oil/gas from the Jackdaw field on 01/06/2022 and the Rosebank field on 27/09/2023) stop or did not start their extraction activities?
Because there was a Judicial Review in June 2024 condemning these extraction authorisations and because the new Government decided to follow the conclusions of this Judicial Review.
(info taken from Private Eyed’s Old Sparky who more often than not appears to know quite a bit on these topics … and to follow the various developments in a somewhat less political, ie unbiased, fashion than Sir John.)
December 27, 2024
They gave up hefner.
They knew the Government was against the extraction of these fields.
The Government didn’t even bother to defend the review.
Which they could have done and probably won.
PS
You don’t need Private Eye for this information it was in most of the media at the time.
December 27, 2024
hener:
It is because the blue section of the Uniparty has followed Net Zero that they’re no longer the government. The same will happen to the red section.
Even though ‘Old Sparky’ follows Private Eye’s editorial policy that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 has caused a climate catastrophe/crisis/emergency/breakdown and hence never writing on the subject for fear of being proved wrong he has dared to say that anyone who thinks that wind and solar energy is cheaper than hydrocarbon fuels is deluded.
December 27, 2024
Item 2 is such a good point. It is very easy to import a car from the continent (I have done it before) and driving a car with a left sided steering wheel on UK roads is easy. It even becomes perfectly normal after one or two drives.
I agree nearly new, petrol and diesal continental cars indeed will be a threat to the UK car industry if new British cars are heavily fined by this leaden footed government.
December 27, 2024
You can import a Right Hand Drive car from Japan, Thailand, Australia and several other countries.
I recently bought an immaculate 1984 Mercedes S Klasse in Thailand for half what it would fetch here. After paying the taxes and shipping, it will still be cheaper than buying the same car here. It will certainly outlast me !
That will be a growing Industry after 2030. It’s cheapest to import a car that is already ten years old because it only has to pas a normal MOT – unless Labour or the Conservatives are the lead party in power and ban the practice.
Given the rapid growth of Reform’s membership numbers, I suspect they won’t be.
December 27, 2024
Indeed I have purchased two brand new vehicles from abroad over the years as personal imports, one from Belgium, one from New Zealand, both with right hand drive, both with considerable savings on UK prices after taxes were paid.
Rest assured many organisations will set up to provide this service again if it proves viable, most manufacturers guarantees are worldwide now, not a problem either with servicing and spares if a parallel import if from outside Europe.
December 27, 2024
Pay more tax and it’ll be fixed
December 27, 2024
You are being disingenuous. You know perfectly well why and indeed, although not necessarily agreeing, were part of a parliamentary majority for 13 years that started this and indeed signed up to net zero, taxed the North Sea, refused or made licences difficult, denied fracking, introduced penalties for not selling enough EVs, Heat Pumps etc.
Only when politically in trouble, did you allegedly see the light and ease some of your targets. All we get with blogs like this is ill tempered epithets about Milliband and nonsense like he wants to trash the economy or he is stupid. Clever enough, I suggest, to get into the position of influence he has, rather than those that merely rage from their armchairs. He also has vast scientific resources to inform his decisions.
Lets us have some thoughts from (not politicians) people from our neighbouring countries. Brief scientific plus points to inform a currently mainly uninformed debate. History is littered with visionaries labelled as heretics subsequently proved correct but some not, so who knows?
On balance I prefer pain today rather than even a slight possibility that without it, our planet becomes irrecoverably damaged in future decades.
Large corporations are working extensively to get to Net Zero and fund managers, lenders etc are making it a requirement.
Like/agree or not it is happening and the King Canutes will be washed away.
Reply Try answering the questions. My case is these policies add to world CO 2 whilst crippling the U.K. economy
December 27, 2024
To reply. You know the answers. Since you have stopped being an MP you have mysteriously forgotten the politics, push/pulls etc plus the contribution your party made to this journey.
To help you out the political emphasis is unstoppable, careers, reputations, alliances needed, vast investments being made, massive outcrys etc not to mention polarised scientific communities.
You and your cohorts should have marshalled the nays, shouted out louder against it decades ago. Boris etc revelling in virtue signalling at C.O.P conferences, there is part of the answer if you were prepared to recognise it.
Reply I never forgot the politics. I pioneered many of the anti net zero policy arguments based on CO 2 output to win over some believers, as most people claim to be believers.
December 27, 2024
But King Canute was NOT washed away. (Nor have the Maldives been.)
December 27, 2024
Nigel :
The “King Canutes” are those who are so deluded that they believe that the planet’s current phase of warming is from anthropogenic emissions of CO2. Viz that humans control the climate and completely ignore the fact that we have had warmer periods than today since the Earth warmed itself out of the most recent ice age only 11,000 years ago. Any worried king Canutes should just look at climate history and data and for an explanation as to why the greenhouse gases – mainly water vapour and tiny amounts of CO2, methane etc – cause no greenhouse warming effect at the Earth’s surface should watch the Tom Nelson Shula “Missing Link” YT video.
December 27, 2024
Nigl
When we eventually achieve Net Zero in the UK, by how much will it reduce global average temperatures?
You seem very enthusiastic for the policy so I expect you know the answer.
December 27, 2024
What was Conservative candidate loser Glen Bluff doing at the 2024 Election?
52% of Doncaster North’s turnout voted for Miliband, with 16,231 voters deciding he was the better choice.
Did Miliband mislead voters on energy and suddenly change for the worse after being elected?
If not, thousands of people in Doncaster want our country to worsen further, or just don’t care and vote Labour for other reasons: such as ridding the nation of many years of Conservative misrule.
Now Conservatives claim that Reform Party membership is overstated without providing evidence themselves. How could they know anyway?
They lost 7 million voters themselves in 2024 vs 2019. A large number of those have joined and fund Reform, including me.
December 27, 2024
All good questions, Sir John, and here is another which has struck me during recent walks around Maidenhead:
“If solar panels are so good that we should all retrofit them to our roofs, at considerable expense what with the costs of scaffolding before you even start, and with taxpayers’ money being spent on Solar Together Berkshire to smooth our path, why have I yet to see a single new house with solar panels built in as part of the original design?”
Or, to put it another way:
“Out of the 1449 new homes we must build here each year, how many will be built with solar panels on their roofs?”
December 27, 2024
Dennis, always seemed illogical to me to install any product on a roof which may require maintenance/cleaning to operate efficiently, then when you eventually remove them after they have expired or to replace with new, you have exposed fixing holes in the roof which need then to be sealed (guarantee new panels will have a different fixing point/pattern)
We have new build houses in Wokingham and Woodley with panels within the actual roof structure, same will apply as above if and when they fail, lifespan for panels suggested 20 years, (not long in construction terms)
December 27, 2024
Good point. I do not agree with Reform on this, I think it would be far better to put the solar panels in fields with lower installation and maintenance costs and preferably in combination with farming:
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/farming-and-solar-panels-can-work-together-heres-the-proof/
As one example:
“Here are some sheep sharing the field with a solar array in Devon. Sheep work so well alongside solar that farmers in America, who haven’t traditionally reared many sheep, are turning to them for the first time to go with their solar parks.”
And maybe stick some wind turbines there as well, and preferably link it all up to a synthetic liquid fuel plant.
December 27, 2024
Right on, John!
Serious Monetary and Fiscal errors, stupendously high Immigration, completely mis-guided Energy policy and vindictive (Jan 6th – I ask you!) alterations to young peoples’ education.
God help us!
December 27, 2024
The answer to all your question from Ed is, ” Don’t confuse me with the facts!”
December 27, 2024
Sir John – 100% correct.
A major flaw developed in government probably since Blair but more so since May and continued ever since the ability to think things through went AWOL.
It is possible to suggest there will be major situation this Country will have to face going forward, but effectively cancelling our future by sending our hard earned money abroad seems more than just naive. Its malicious punishment of the people and the country.
The other major question why is that all, that is all, our major competing nations have not joined this virtue signalling club? Why are all our competitor nations free from these punitive virtue signalling laws? Why are all our competing nations growing their economies and wealth, by taking wealth directly from the UK’s hard-working Taxpayer?
December 27, 2024
If anyone is in any doubt about the powerful effect upon Russia that Ukraine long range drones are having, the panic-stricken shooting down of yet another passenger plane (Azerbaijan flight J2-8243) should make it clear.
For years, the Biden and German administrations refused Zelenskiy permission to use their long range weaponry to directly attack legitimate targets inside Russia. Apparently, this would be “escalatory”. So Ukraine developed it’s own types, which have successfully attacked and destroyed numerous Russian S-400 air defence batteries, oil storage installations, Russian TU-35 bomber airfields, ammunition storage bunkers/warehouses, missile production facilities, command, control and communication centres, training barracks etc. Ukraine has sunk most of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The Russians have lost ~6500 armoured vehicles including 2700 tanks and over 100 warplanes – in addition to 140,000 killed and 450,000 wounded. Putin is in no position to make maximalist demands for a ceasefire!
France, the Baltic states, Poland and ourselves have all mooted direct military support for Ukraine in the way of boots on the ground. Better we fight the Russians 2000 miles to the east, than here on the Kent and Sussex beaches. Starmer should demonstrate that he has what it takes to be a wartime leader – and go for it, now.
December 27, 2024
So the question is how do you hold Mr Miliband or any if the ministers to account how do you put them up to exact answers if you cannot do it in parliament – but If you can do it in parliament then why ask here?
Reply MPs can take up these questions, so can the media and all of you. The more who ask in the more ways the better to shame him into changing these damaging policies.
December 27, 2024
Also, why does he never mention nuclear power and why is he delaying rather than expediting SMR deployment ?
One for Rachel Reeves: This £20b for carbon capture. What’s the ROI on that ?
Reply CCS will make our industry even less competitive as it is an additional energy cost
December 27, 2024
One for Rachel Reeves: This £20b for carbon capture. What’s the ROI on that ?
Negative – it cost a fortune, wastes 20% or so of energy and a bit more CO2 is a net good anyway!
December 27, 2024
Miliband has no answers to any of these questions other than to say that the UK needs to be an example
Pour encourager les autres. This is plainly so ridiculous that nobody other than politicians of every political Party other than Reform take it remotely seriously. Other countries are just laughing at us. When will Starmer finally realise that Miliband and his supporters are going to bankrupt the country ?
Badenoch is so busy making a complete fool of herself over Nigel Farage’s membership ticker that she hasn’t even considered that abandoning Net Zero, or at least postponing it by a decade, would transform our finances and be a vote winner.
Reply Badenoch/Couthino are expressing scepticism and agree about the damage the deindustrialisation and accelerated net zero policies are doing
December 27, 2024
Oooh. Expressing scepticism. Marvellous. Have they expressed an intention to scrap the SCAM or are they just making noises, like they did over immigration?
December 27, 2024
To reply no Badenoch/Couthino are expressing scepticism and agree about the damage the deindustrialisation and accelerated net zero policies are doing. Well hardly they are still sitting on the fence Miliband but slightly more slowly! Just as Sunak did. Perhaps Badenock is not a very good engineer (no physics A level it seems) and Coutinho no so good at Maths despite her Oxon half maths degree? They both should know rather better.
December 27, 2024
Reply to Reply: two problems with what you are suggesting, Sir John :
1. The Parliamentary Party now overwhelmingly consists of Wets who support New Zero.
2. Badenoch never said anything against Net Zero when in power and she is still in favour of much of the Labour
plan, she would just do it a little more slowly. By contrast, very few people want an end to IC-engined cars by 2035
or to be forced to switch to Heat Pumps on any timescale. She was part of a government that supported both.
December 27, 2024
Reply to Reply: Badenoch, Coutinho and the CP are still believers in CAGW and Net Zero and anyway the pace of Net Zero by 2050 is driven by the CCC and the courts. PM May gave away elected Parliament’s authority in this matter.
December 27, 2024
Only a Reform-led government would want to remove the legislation from the statute book, but, like Brexit, there could be a cross-party concensus in the Commons to prevent Nigel Farage implementing the wishes of voters.
Politics could become paralysed in the same way as it was under Teresa May, and another general election could be required to force through the change.
Reply With 3 parties all around 25% it would be difficult to form a government let alone repeal major Statutes.
December 27, 2024
From the MsM (Telegraph)
“A new quango has been set up every week since Labour took office, it has emerged.
Analysis of the Government’s record by the Daily Mail has found 25 such arms-length bodies, task forces and advisory councils since the election.”
All such entities of this nature mean Government is being lazy, neglecting its duty and job – so shouldn’t they all be paid by ‘party’ funds and not the taxpayer.
December 27, 2024
5 of the new entities are for Ed Miliband’s empire all cost to the Taxpayer – more ‘black-hole’ ?
I would guess like his colleagues he has no common-sense and is looking to shuffle the deck chairs to justify being the one to destroy the UK and its People while all our competing nations move on and grow.
December 27, 2024
Exactly children let loose in the sweetshop nice jobs and pensions for fiends and relatives mainly doing net harm!
December 27, 2024
If nuclear fusion became practical, do you think electricity would naturally evolve into our principle source of energy?
Would that accomplish net zero almost as a side effect?
December 27, 2024
If it became practical and cost effective we could easily use the energy to make hydro-carbon fuels using water and CO2 etc. + this energy. This are for things like aircraft, ships, trucks, most cars, hydrocarbons in cheap a plastic tank… are likely to be far better, cheaper and more practical than an expensive battery (tank) of chemical energy that can be converted to electricity.
December 27, 2024
Let us not forget that Drax ‘wood burning’ contract was agreed by the Tories and successive Ministers and their officials have turned a blind eye to some very questionable performance issues over many years from CO2 including transport to sustainability of the wood they use.
Sir JR highlights policies that increase CO2. Please tell us about Drax or that generated by precious metal mining for EV batteries and their overall production or why ‘you’ started the cutback on North Sea production.
I guess the answers are similar to the situation now. What’s the difference? Ah it’s Labour doing it. Silly me.
December 27, 2024
Nigl
We don’t need reminding that the Conservatives are just as devoted adherents to climate orthodoxy as Labour
Many have been complaining about it for years.
It is one reason they were voted out.
PS
Drax is a farce that costs hundreds of millions in subsidies every year.
December 27, 2024
+1
December 27, 2024
407 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday Boxing Day; from the safe country of France …Border Force will sort the issue when their staff return from the festive break
December 27, 2024
With the greatest respect SJR , don’t be daft, fanatics and religious zealots do not answer sensible questions. They keep going until they are consumed at the political stake. He will go when two tier realises Rasputin is an unaffordable luxury.
December 27, 2024
The Greenies on the left won’t listen to those on the hard-ish right cause everyone is honkering heads down in the sand instead of listening. There are zillions of pounds to be made out of Green energy. And Green energy is going to happen. Clean fuel goes with cool high tech and the uber cool people who consume it. You got to look at it as if this is a branding thing (no-one imagined gas-guzzling cars would diminish as quickly as they did – or smoking cigarettes) not just a strictly financial thing in the short term.
The trick is not to allow the Greenies to get out of control and bust our economy. Whilst moving into a Green economy where we 100% own our own energy!
December 27, 2024
So Green Energy actually goes with – or could go – being a pragmatic, entrepreneurial-minded capitalist and Tory. Depends how you approach it. Just don’t approach it ideologically with heads in the sand ..
Yes, there are huge dangers to Green Energy (people are 100% right about that) but also huge opportunities, too. Don’t be a Cyclops about it with no, no, no – never (Ian Paisley). But 2-eyed about it. One eye that is (rightly) cautious but the other eye that is open-minded, creative, pragmatic and entrepreneurial!
December 27, 2024
Ed M:
May I please suggest you widen your reading on energy from just the BBC and The Guardian. I would suggest David Turver Substack Eigen Values. Or Watt Logic.
Except that according to Mark Twain: “It is harder to convince people they have been conned than conning them in the first place.”
December 27, 2024
PS : As I write the 30 GW of installed wind power is providing just 2 GW.
December 27, 2024
Dear Sir John,
It is often said that the policy agenda around what we call “net zero” or “green” for shorthand is a secular religion. Not really secular. It appears to be based on somewhat contradictory Judeo-Christian ideas of 2,000 years ago.
1) The Messianic idea that the world is headed for apocalyptic destruction but can be saved by the leadership of a seemingly insignificant group/nation that provides such a perfect sacrificial example that everyone else will be bound to follow, and
2) The Pharisaic idea that virtue and redemption can only be obtained by setting and enforcing obedience to a set of highly detailed rules of personal behaviour that delve down into the minutiae of everyday life, rather than relying on the head and the heart.
These ideas are hard to counter with the sensible, pragmatic reasoning on which you rely. But if the world is indeed headed towards apocalypse, your approach is far more likely to avert it. Hope you have more success in 2025.
December 27, 2024
Where’s the people’s mandate …..and I don’t mean the general election
December 27, 2024
I never take Miliband seriously. He is a classic adolescent , an empty suit posing like Starmer on a stage where the scripts are followed written by others with zero common sense sadly.