And now it's Labour's Act - by Richard... Tuesday, October 18, 2011

And now it's Labour's Act - by Richard... Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Rather overshadowed by events at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week, I wrote, was a line in George Osborne's speech which could mark the start of a long overdue political transformation in Britain.

The Chancellor acknowledged that a decade of environmental laws had been piling unnecessary costs on households and companies, adding that Britain was not going to save the planet by putting ourselves out of business.

He was referring in particular to the Climate Change Act, famously passed by the House of Commons in October 2008 by 463 votes to three, even as the snow was falling outside. By the Government's own estimate, it would cost £404 billion to implement – £760 per household every year for four decades.

And now … in a magical feat of which Houdini would be proud, it is suddenly transformed intoLabour's Climate Change Act.

"The real need", says the ghastly Osbnorne, "is not to have these absurd commitments and then have to run around bribing vulnerable businesses at taxpayers' expense so as to prevent them from closing down or leaving the country – it is to amend the [emissions] targets".

"We must make it quite clear that we are not going there if the rest of the world isn't. Under Labour's Climate Change Act, the Government is legally bound to cut emissions 35 per cent by 2022 and 50 per cent by 2025".

There is something unutterably tacky about party politicians. Such is the grip of their low-grade tribalism that they cannot even admit to themselves that something they supported – almost unanimously – was a crock of horse manure.

We do, of course, welcome the Damascene conversion, but do they really think we are so stupid that we don't remember The Boy's commitment to being the greenest government ever?

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Anyone but Huhne - by Richard...

I suppose that, if you call a couple of minor tremors "earthquakes" and then let the Greenies loose, you can make a non-event sound quite serious.

Those with slightly longer memories, however, may remember the great earthquake of 2008, with an earth-shattering magnitude of 5.2. I remember it well, as the shelves rattled for a second or two. And that was it – although some houses further south were damaged, and one lad was injured.

By comparison, the magnitude 2.3 tremor which "shook" the North-West last April, and one the following May, with a magnitude of 1.5, were barely detectable to human senses, the strongest being a thousand times less powerful than the 2008 episode.

That Huhne should be making a big issue out of these minor tremors, therefore, is absolutely bizarre – one might almost think that he did not want Britain to benefit from an estimated 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas – preferring instead the more expensive and less reliable windmills.

And even if the process of fracking does cause some minor damage to buildings, why does this matter. Systems for remedying mining subsidence are well established, and the processes could easily be transferred across.

Fortunately, as Dellers observes, even the media and other clever-dicks are beginning to notice that there is something rather odd going on with the Cleggeron energy policy.

It was rather different three years ago, when they hadn't yet discovered the subject. But we should be thankful for small mercies. Now, rather than switching energy providers – as that idiot Huhne wants us to do – all we need is to switch energy ministers. Noddy or Kermit would do as an alternative. Anything would be better than Huhne.