Water: the enemy within
Tuesday 6 November 2012
 The document, we are told, is produced by "16 leading environmental organisations" and says it took the wettest ever summer to avert serious drought". It then warns "that another series of dry winters would put Britain back on drought alert". All very harmless, you might say, as you pass on to more interesting stuff, although experience warns that nothing Harrabin ever does is ever without an agenda. That is the case here. Coming up in the near future is a Water Bill, the epitome of greenery, put in place by a network of environmental and water industry lobby groups that are determined to impose on us its vision of water hell – a world where water is kept deliberately in short supply, over-priced, metered and tightly rationed. One tool for applying pressure, to ensure that this agenda goes though, is the Blueprint for Water, which is the very report which Mr Harrabin is so kindly publicising, affording it a level of prestige that only the BBC can offer. However, when you start looking behind the fluffy green image of this document, which preaches the mantra of "sustainable water", things start to get interesting. The originator is an outfit called the Wildlife and Countryside Link and very quickly it emerges that it is a green front organisation, claiming 38 members who collectively "employ over 11,000 full-time staff, have the help of 174,000 volunteers and the support of over 8 million people in the UK". Therein is a hint of the size of the green lobbying machine - "over 11,000 full-time staff" – and, as you might expect, all the usual suspects are there. We see Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, as well as the National Trust, the RSPCA, the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and even the Badger Trust - the director of which, Dr Elaine King, now heads the Link. Not all members are equal, though. The Link gets significant funding from the WWF, contributing to its relatively modest sub-£200k budget, used almost entirely to fund and support its four staff members. Chairman of the trustees, however, is Paul de Zylva, a full-time official of Friends of the Earth. He leads the FoE campaign team "in its work on biodiversity, climate, planning and localism". That tells you exactly where the influence lies. Then, what is just as interesting as its members are its "partners", and one in in particular,Waterwise, which is assiduous in promoting the "Blueprint for Water" agenda, alongside the WWF. When you then look at the Board of Waterwise – which shares an address with Wildlife and Countryside Link – it gets even more interesting. Its directors include Alan Alexander, former Chair of Scottish Water and former President of the Institute of Water, and Ian Barker, Head of Water, a government official employed by the Environment Agency. Well, well, well … allied to the green lobby groups pushing their line on water policy, we have a water industry interest and the head man in the Government's own water standards enforcement agency. What a happy collection of interests, especially when they are all in favour of one special initiative – forcing us to have water meters. Some little time ago, I wrote about how water consumers were "unrepresented and abused", and when you see, from the annual report of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, how far its tentacles spread into government and Parliament, you begin to see why. Basically, on the back of EU policy direction, the Greens have taken over water policy and, in cahoots with the industry and the regulators, are defining their own agendas, which have nothing to do with the interests of the consumer. Creating vast networks of influence was the way the Communist Party used to work, from which model the Greens have learned their trade well. And, on the top of the heap, is the BBC's Roger Harrabin, an "agent of influence", always ready to give them aid and sustenance. They are the enemy within, taking over the reins of government from under our very noses. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/11/2012 |
Climate change: a choice of emissions or extortion
Tuesday 6 November 2012
 Last year, almost to the day, after EU action to curtail this $6 billion scam, Chinese officials were threatening to vent these "powerful greenhouse gasses" direct to atmosphere.
Having had $1.3bn in tax revenues out of the scam, they were fearful about the loss of revenue. Historically, plants have been paid 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases, and the local governments have thus benefited hugely by being able to tax the generous profits.
However, this year the situation has gone the other way. The emissions offset market is oversupplied by 13 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, more than 1,000 times greater than the anticipated demand of 11.5 million tons. As a result, the price for UN emission credits is set to drop almost to zero. Already, investors are dumping the greenhouse-gas credits, known as Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), after the price, up to last December, had dropped 85 percent, year-on-year. This means that not only could the Chinese vent their CFCs, the Indians may join in as well, with a steep rise in emissions expected. Each ton of the waste gas HFC-23 is equivalent to 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide. In India, specifically, there is no domestic legislation that would force companies cut HFC-23 emissions, and there are no plans to impose such laws nor to include these projects in a national carbon plan. The three plants producing the gas destroy the equivalent of around 10 million tons a year of CO2, making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process - in some cases over 50 percent of the plant revenues. Now each plant is faced with costs estimated at around $200,000-350,000 a year for destruction of the gasses. In China, there are eleven HFC-23 projects getting UN funding, and while observers hope the government will act to force chemical companies to destroy their waste gasses, with no income stream from carbon offsets, it is anyone's guess as to what will actually happen. Last year, Samuel LaBudde, senior atmospheric campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency, was saying that, "China is not the victim here, and a world order responsive to climate change cannot be predicated on unrepentant greed". LaBudde added that: "attempting to force countries into squandering billions on fake offsets that actually increase production of greenhouse gases is extortion". Thus, in the bizarre world of carbon trading, we are faced with the choice of emissions or extortion. If we are really lucky, I suppose, we could have both. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/11/2012 |
Media: Euromyths - what is the point?
Tuesday 6 November 2012
 At the time, Algirdas Šemeta, Commissioner for Taxation, Customs, Anti-fraud and Audit, said: "It is high time that we take a fresh look at reduced VAT rates. Member States need new revenue sources, while businesses need simpler tax systems with fewer compliance costs. Today we are asking whether certain reduced VAT rates are delivering what they seem to promise, or whether they pose more problems than they are worth". OK … seems reasonable enough. Even if you think VAT is the devil's spawn – and we do – there doesn't seem to much harm in this, at the moment. But that was before last Saturday, when theExpress had a go at it. "An EU plan to slap VAT on new homes will send prices soaring, experts warned yesterday", Sarah O'Grady breathlessly tells us. "Brussels has quietly issued a consultation document that proposes scrapping the current zero VAT rating". Then we are told: "The move to charge the full 20 percent is part of a plan to standardise tax rates across Europe. It would drive up the average price of a new home by £48,000 from £238,000 to £286,000 and have a catastrophic impact on the UK". But when we look at the explanatory memo that goes with the press release, something rather different emerges. In Q&A format, it asks: "Does the Commission plan to abolish some or all reduced VAT rates?" Then it provides the answer: This consultation is part of the assessment process, and does not pre-suppose the elimination of any particular reduced rate at this stage. The Commission will only make proposals on the possible abolition or introduction of certain reduced rates next year, once it has completed its thorough review and gathered extensive feedback. Moreover, it should be remembered that even if the Commission were to propose getting rid of one reduced VAT rate or another, this would have to be unanimously endorsed by Member States before it could happen. So the review of reduced rates will be a holistic and very inclusive one.That is what the Express translates into "an EU plan to slap VAT on new homes", a mystery that intensifies when you see the actual consultation document.
Actually, when you get to "housing", you find there is a story, but a different one altogether from the one the Express has to offer. It tells you that, in September 2011 the Commission presented a "Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe".
Housing, it says, is pointed out as one of the sectors with a substantial environmental impact. Better construction and use of buildings in the EU would influence 42 percent of final energy consumption, 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 50 percent of all extracted materials. Significant improvements in resource and energy use during the life-cycle – with improved sustainable materials, higher waste recycling and improved design - should contribute to the development of a resource efficient building stock, it then says, thus arguing that: Coherence with this EU policy would require that the scope of the reduced VAT rates that can be applied by the Member States to housing would be restricted to those supplies that take this resource efficiency aspect into consideration.On the other hand, says the Commission, "certain questions could be put forward as to the way to implement this VAT rate differentiation in practice and whether this will not result in adding a substantial level of complexity for taxable persons active in the housing sector". And so we get to the question: Q5 In your view, how can the reduced VAT rate for housing be best applied in order to take the resource efficiency element into account, and how should/can this be achieved with a minimum of increase in the administrative burden for businesses, in particular SME's, providing supplies of goods and services in the housing sector?In other words, the EU is not in any way suggesting that VAT is slapped on new houses, per se. In some senses, it is worse than that. It is suggesting reduced rates (which includes the UK zero rates) to be confined only to "green" materials, such as insulation, which go into construction. And why is this worse? Well, in Die Welt recently, we saw a report which found that insulation can drive up heating costs. The reason for this is intriguing. House walls, even in the winter, retain heat from the sun and in the late evening give it up to the interior spaces. In heavily insulated houses, because of the thick plastic mass on the outer walls, this is not possible. The interior thus never benefits from this free source of heat. That in itself is a story, and there is much more to it, with compulsory insulation adding significantly to the costs of new houses – and now, it appears, to the running cost. But as far as theExpress report goes, this is actually a non-story. Adding VAT to new houses is not a realistic political proposition, and since Mr Cameron has a veto, it isn't going to happen. You do wonder, therefore, what is the point of running these scare stories, especially when the real stories, which are far more important, go unrecorded. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/11/2012 |
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
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