Unravelled Green - by Richard... Thursday, October 20, 2011

Unravelled Green - by Richard... Thursday, October 20, 2011

We said it was a stupid idea at the time, and that the maths did not stand up. Subsequently, on 23 April 2009, as the dying Labour administration embraced the technology and the Tories cried out for more, we observed that this was nothing more that a "cynical and meaningless" ploy to keep the Greenies on board.

So it has come to pass that Longannet, the flagship scheme for carbon capture in the UK, has been junked, despite the availability of £1 billion funding from this moronic administration. And since it is the only remaining project in the running for CCS funding, that makes it about thirty months from inception to total collapse of this absurd policy. God only knows how much money has been wasted on it.

With this though, and many other issues, we begin to see the Green agenda unravelling with increasing speed. Despite the continuing flood of scare stories, they no longer have any heat or political traction. The scare is dying on its feet.

The really interesting thing here are the political implications – at national and EU level. As the agenda slides towards oblivion, The Boy's credibility can only be damaged, even more than it is already. Far from being the husky-hugging greenest government ever, it may well go down as the administration that finally junked the Greens.

At an EU level, though, this is even more interesting. Very early on, the EU commission latched on to Eurobarometer findings that pointed up "environment" as the issue on which approval ratings were highest. The Green agenda, therefore, has been harnessed in the service of European political integration.

It is unlikely, however, that the commission will be sufficiently astute to realise that the bottom has fallen out of the market, and the institutions are not in any case flexible enough to accommodate rapid change. Thus, the impetus for scaling down the agenda is going to come from member states, further weakening the integrationalist pressure.

We have, therefore, a situation where the EU has wrapped itself in a beneficial crisis that is, for its purposes, no longer beneficial – without the means rapidly to extract itself from it. Carbon capture was one of its dreams. It, with the UK government, are looking foolish for promoting the nonsense.

And from here, the only way is down. What should have been an asset is now becoming a liability.

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Plumbing new depths - by Richard...

I had intended to do a piece on carbon capture, but that will have to wait until later today. What diverts the attention is a report that the EU referendum debate is to be brought forward to Monday.

The official reason being given is that Hague and The Boy are going to be at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia. Hague, we are told, wants to "spearhead the Government fight", so the date has been moved to accommodate him.

Speculation abounds, though, that the move is a bid to prevent the calls for a vote building up a head of steam, a pre-emptive move to prevent head off a Tory backbench rebellion.

However, when you see the tosh being written by Graham Brady - encapsulating the very essence of europlasticism, it is clear that The Boy has got very little to worry about.

I believe, says Brady, that a vote would "give the government an overwhelming mandate to seek the return of vital powers to British control. Equally important, it would send a clear message to the people that when it comes to deciding on our relationship with Europe".

With that, one even begins to suspect that this whole debate is a put-up job – nothing having changed since Thatcher's euro-enthusiast days.

Devil's Kitchen, on the other hand, sees the vote on the motion deciding the intrinsic value – or the lack of it - of our entire system of "representative" democracy.

He is not wrong there. For a long time I have felt that Westminster has written itself out of the script. As it plumbs new depths, this would seem to prove that contention.

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Worth less and less - by Richard... Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The self-important Jon Worth is giving us the "benefit" of his views on the EU referendum debate, over on Labour List, unwittingly displaying his own ignorance of the organism that he loves so much.

He too falls for the misconception that we somehow have a "relationship" with the EU, failing to understand that the UK is part of the European Union. As we pointed out earlier, we can no more have a relationship with the EU than can Tim Montgomerie have a relationship with his left foot – orvice-versa.

But where Worth especially falls apart is in pontificating about trade with the rest of the EU member states, opining that: "the cars we would export, the services we would sell would still have to abide by EU standards. So the notion that the UK would somehow immediately be set free of EU shackles is fanciful".

What he fails to appreciate – as do many europlastics – is that standards set for motor cars and many other things do not originate from the EU, but from diverse international organisations.

In respect of motor cars, the body of record is UNECE, where the standards are agreed through this intergovernmental body and then processed by the EU using the "dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism". In effect, the EU acts as the middle-man, its bureaucracy translating the international technical agreements (which it cannot change) into detailed, actionable legislation.

To that extent, membership of the EU is an irrelevance. We could, like Norway, buy in the legislative services of the EU, to produce our technical trade legislation, or go it alone and produce our own. The outcome would be largely the same, with the singular and important difference that we would not necessarily have to apply all standards to domestic industries (slaughterhouses come to mind).

In displaying his ignorance, though, Worth points up a difficulty which afflicts both europlastics and euroslime. Neither group really understands how the EU works, or its depth of penetration into the UK body politic. Thus, when it comes to the relative advantages of membership, or quitting, and the mechanics of leaving, both sides are flying blind.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems we have to resolve is the way policy-making over a wide range of issues has been outsourced to Brussels, leaving our civil servants and politicians unused to producing complex legislation. Re-acquiring those skills is going to take time.

All of this, though, adds to the irrelevance of any debate in parliament. We have the blind leading the blind – the ill-informed conversing with the uninformed, the ignorant and the prejudiced. And to add to the unreality, The Boy is going to whip the debate, and all the good little Tories will roll up to obey.

Basically, though, the EU is a lower-order problem which can best be resolved by dealing with the more fundamental problems in our societal structures. Here, I am no more keen on being ruled by Whitehall than I am Brussels but then, living in a "local" authority area of 500,000 souls, I am not keen on being ruled by the corrupt city state down the road either.

Knowing where to start, and where to apply the leverage, is half the battle – and it is unlikely that the answers will be found in Westminster which, increasingly, is worth less and less. As my erstwhile co-editor concludes, we would be better off if the Tories voted down the motion anyway.

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Time running out - by Richard...

There is an element here of Mervyn King covering his back, but nonetheless his warning is clear. Britain is at risk from a fundamental crisis, he says, and governments have not yet addressed the underlying problem of overspending that is at its root.

I don't know how many more times that is going to have to be pointed out, or how many more times we have to say that, despite the BBC and other "leftie" rhetoric on "cuts", public expenditure (and the national debt) is increasing.

Yet every day one sees examples of wild government spending while at local government level, reduced grants from central government are not triggering restraint but merely more inventive ways of raising money.

Says King, the only answer to debt problems is for countries to "adopt compatible policies so that they can credibly service their internal and external debts". This is not exactly rocket science, yet it is something which seems to be beyond our current leadership. There is no serious attempt at reining back expenditure.

Thus are we condemned to watching the slow-motion train wreck. We can all see it, except those in the bubble, who seem oblivious to OUR impending fate. One wonders if they have the first idea of what is going on.

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The Fox is shot - by Richard...

The scale of Fox's defiance of Whitehall rules was laid bare yesterday evening when it emerged that he had blocked civil servants attending key meetings alongside Adam Werritty, failed to tell his permanent secretary that he had solicited funds to bankroll his close friend, and ignored private office requests to distance himself from the relationship.

In a damning report criticising Fox's lack of judgement and failure to meet the standards expected of a minister, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, also reveals that Fox was repeatedly warned that his relationship with Mr Werritty carried risks. But he chose to ignore the warnings.

This so much chimes with our own experience. With Fox at the helm, the Tory defence team was like a black hole. You could send information into it, but nothing ever escaped. Communication was strictly one way and, no matter what you told them, it was invariably ignored.

The O'Donnell report, however, stands on its own. And even on its own, it sketches out a man unfit for high office. We trust we will now see the gushing eulogies fade away, and with it any talk of a return. The man never was fit for office, he is not now and never will be.

However, the matter should not be left there. The very obvious inadequacies of Fox reflect badly on the man who appointed him, David Cameron – the faceless wonder (click pic to reveal). A good judge of character would have detected in Fox the very flaws that brought him down, and he would never have been appointed.

Perhaps the reason why Cameron did not see the flaws, though, is because he shares them. And that is worrying.

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That referendum debate - by Richard... Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The supremely irrelevant House of Commons is now planning to conduct a debate on whether there should be an EU referendum, supposedly on 27 October. I have made my views abundantly clear on this, but my erstwhile co-editor makes the points needed on this episode.

To summarise my view, I see our continued membership of the EU as a symptom of a bigger, more pervasive problem. Leaving the EU, therefore, would not actually solve anything. On the other hand, fix the inherent defects in our system of government and leaving the EU would become a necessary consequence of such reforms. Thus, one might say, it is better to turn off the tap before mopping up the water from the overflowing bath.

It seems to me that the campaign for an EU referendum – and the europlasticism that passes for Tory euroscepticism – has become a vast displacement activity, an intellectual cul-de-sac which gives the appearance of activity but which actually keeps attention off the more important issues. And surely, no one can seriously be expecting a bunch of MPs in a Commons debate to offer anything useful or sensible about the EU?

England Expects dismal predictability, and he is right. Witterings from Witney gives us the draft motion. The third option (option C) offers to "re-negotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation". That's what the europlastics will go for – never-never land. It will be hailed as a great victory, but we will be no further forward than when we started.

Hence, as Helen points out … this is not something to get excited about.

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The guilty ones - by Richard...

This is the voting list for the Climate Change Bill – 28 October 2008. The vote is 463 for, three against. Some 200 went AWOL, but not – as it turns out – Cameron or the current chancellor, George Osborne. It is even worse than Witterings from Witney records. Both Cameron and Osborne voted for "Labour's Climate Change Act".

The three who voted against were: Christopher Chope, Peter Lilley and Andrew Tyrie. Tellers for the Noes were Ann Widdecombe and Philip Davies.

Particularly notable for his intervention in the very short debate was Steve Webb, Lib-dim member for a Bristol constituency.

"The Bill is welcome and important", he said. "Many people asked", he added, "whether the target of 80 percent was too tough and whether it was achievable. I believe that history will judge that it errs on the low side—new evidence and information suggests further, faster, deeper. I fear that we may have to revisit the targets to strengthen them to avoid the dangerous climate change that we are united in fearing".

Well, how times change. No longer, it seems, are we quite so united in fearing.