Sunday
Sep042011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Cameron worried
Sep 4, 2011 Climate: Parliament Conservatives Energy: costs And so he should be.
The Telegraph is apparently going to report tomorrow that fuel bills are going to go up by another £300 and that Cameron is worried.
Let's face it, it's probably too late for the PM already. It's probably too late for the Conservatives as a party.
Who could possibly forgive them for what they are doing to the country?
Reader Comments (70)
I left out the most important point - the title of the petition should be (something like):
"Limit Green Taxes To 5%"
Shevva said on Sep 5, 2011 at 12:45 PM:
"Wait for the £400- £600 Quarterly bills for a family of 4.
That'll wake a few people up."
I've been fully awake for some years now, but my quarterly bill is £400 - and I'm the sole occupant.
Only a hard landing of our economy will wake people up: MPs and party activists, that is, as well as the watermelons.
Like me, lots of people have been awake for some time, but we know full well that the governing classes won't do anything before it is too late.
First step is to get out of the EU and ditch all their 'Directives', the 'green' ones at first.
@ Roger Longstaff -
Why have 'green' taxes at all?
They don't do anything for 'greening' this country - they are just another way to increase the tax take by the Treasury.
All taxes should be reduced!
Viv, I think that Richard and I agree with you, but my petition has not gained traction. I think Richard's idea could do better by putting an UPPER LIMIT on "green taxes". Look at the 2 petitions that have gained over 100,000 signatures - they have been based on immediate, immotive issues.
I came to the UK almost a decade ago to explore what is literally 'the land of my fathers'. I leave soon, to return to New Zealand, despairing of the intellectual qualitities of the majority of UK politicians who appear to have decided the probable fate of many people similar to me; retired professionals who took what we thought to be sensible steps to cater for our retirement, but who are now haunted by the prospect of being picked off by idiotic energy and other policies that will induce eventual hypothermia.
Sadly, my country does NOT have brilliant politicians and statesmen, witness the ridiculous ETS that I suspect will not survive much longer, but Kiwi politicians still seem to be a considerable step up in intelligence (with notable exceptions) from the over-fed and intolerably smug Tweedle Dums and Tweedle dumbers, the former public school-boys who dominate every party in the UK. .
Conservatives, Labour & LibDems are all madly in favour of AGW & heavy taxes on the public in order to fund their schemes (sp.? should be "scams"). There are groups speaking out against this nonsense: UKIP & the Taxpayers Alliance are two off the top of my head. I am a member of neither and am not promoting them, but they look awfully good on this issue compared to the top three.
All the main political parties are in this together, as the saying goes. Miliband E piloted the Climate Change Act through the HoC, while his then master, one Gordon Brown, condemned all the skeptics as "flat earthers". That Act was passed by 463 votes Aye to 3 votes No.
I cross checked that vote, member by member, with the new HoC. 300 MPs who voyed Aye were returned to Parliament after the last general election. Unless their minds have changed, that is still enough votes to carry the agenda forward as indeed it is in the form of the Carbon Plan, signed off by Cameron, Clegg and Huhne.
As things stand there are probably not enough votes to repeal this Act. The best that can be achieved is to slow down the implementation of the Carbon Plan by outcries such as that spurred on by the Daily Telegraph. To that should be added complaints to your MP about the iniquity of it all.
The timing of this leak is interesting because it precedes the party conferences by a couple of weeks. What will be revealing is the extent to which rank and file party members get up in arms about it. The more that do so the better. MPs need a dose of reality.
Roger, I confess that I used a more boring title: The impact of green policies on household energy bills. But I put this out there for improvement. I applaud your initiative - we need to fine tune this because we know for sure from polls that way over 100k people would wish to sign something.
The key element I think would be to get the 'big guns' to mobilise behind this when it goes live:
The Bish
Delingpole
GWPF
Guido
Conservative Home
Taxpayer's Alliance
I've emailed the first three already. Any others?
Richard, my best advice is to do this as soon as possible - before somebody puts in a spoiler. I know nothing about PR, but I think that it must be something that it simple, to the point and something that taxpayers can immediately relate to.
Good luck!
Roger
Don't worry.
By 2015 the electoral landscape will be 50 mps' smaller. Loads of jollies for the boundaries commissiom will mean that at least 40 of them will be lab/lib-dem.
Even a complete lame duck governme t can hang-on until then. And if the parties go for gov funding, we wlll be stuck with 3 parties for ever.
Richard Drake
How about Tim Worstall as another interested blogger, plus Capitalists@work and of course WUWT? Maybe Climate etc should also runa piece on it.
Why not limit green taxes to the estimated level of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere?
The advantage of this to the government is that the taxes start at a low base and are automatically ratcheted up year on year...
Matthu,
You almost made me vomit when I read this line from your comment above:
"No support from Australian PM Julia Gillard - she's in it up to her armpits already."
I just cannot imagine Julie Liar's armpits and I don't even want to think of them!
Please, please, no more repulsive thoughts of this kind.
Julian Flood’s idea (Sep 5, 2011 at 4:05 AM) is the probably the best. Write to your MP explaining the advantages of being the first to see the light. Don’t try and explain. Refer them to Lawson or Stringer according to their party. They’ll probably take you for a flat earther and won’t reply. Write to the local paper and the local branch of the other party complaining your MP doesn’t reply. They hate that. Go to their surgery. Greens did this before the passing of the Climate Change Act, giving the impression of a mass movement.
Sorry to disagree with Richard Drake, but “repeal the act” is the kind of slogan people understand. “Please don’t screw us for more than 5%” just doesn’t have the same ring.
Alex Cull:
Diverting windfarms from offshore to onshore would have the advantage of ruining even more countryside to the benefit of even more rich landowners, and angering us even more. A Trotskyist would see this as a good thing, (“worse means better”) but I can’t see any good coming from an angry popular rising. Taking out a windmill with an airgun might be easier than stopping a coal train, and more popular. But the first time it happened, we’d all be infiltrated and spied on by Plod, and where would that get us?
80% of voters are anti-Europe, and 80% say they’d never vote UKIP. That’s voters for you. If the whole system falls apart, Climate Change goes with it, but as long as there’s a Miliband or a Huhne on the political scene, we’re doomed.
Sorry.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate, with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Oldtimer is right, use the Climate Change Act’s provisions to nullify it, after all it was written to be changed. Someone was not as daft as they seemed eager to appear when it was passed. It really is a total waste of legal draftsmen’s time and paper
It starts off all sorts of targets. However, it then allows the SecState to change anything he wants. It is true he has to take what the Climate Change Committee recommends into account, but …if he doesn’t, he just has to tell.
(Parliament then has to approve all the changes he makes.)
Both he and the Committee have to consider …. scientific knowledge, technology, economic and fiscal circumstances, social circumstances, energy policy, regional differences, European and International law and aeroplane emissions.
And then he can change or increase the membership of the Committee.
The powers seem suffucient and theconsiderations wide enough. So far, so good.
However, at the moment the Committee membership looks dodgy:
The Chairman appears a go-getter, committed to getting along and things done, not necessarily a committed greenie. The Chief Executive (a committee member) and 6 others appear to be career greenies. And the last one is a zoologist who may not be green (but might be a covert amateur)
Grounds for eviction are bankruptcy or being, in the authorities’ opinion, unfit or unable to carry on.
Looks like they’ll have to go or a lot of new members recruited, or the SecState will have some explaining to do, like the Act says.
Either way, to this old bureaucrat, it looks like a piece of cake.
And so much the better if Greenpeace and the rest waste their money on court cases against the government– it’s better spent on lawyers fighting hopeless cases than on advancing the cause of impoverishing us all.
As for immediate action, I would have thought that playing on the top man's reported fears would be the more likely to succeed. I don't see letters to MPs or petitions working, I am afraid. Better try to stir up the consumer, maybe through the CBI, the Consumers Association and the like. And I do not like these half way tax limit ploys and the like. Numbers changed now can be ratcheted back later. Play it as an all or nothing case. After all, it is all nonsense! Encourage his nibs to use the act to emasculate the policy, if need be, on the quiet.
Double all politician's salaries (bear with me a sec - watch that blood pressure!)
Maximum term in any elected office - 5 years.
Maximum number of terms - 2
No pensions , expenses or any other taxpayer obligation to them.
Therefore - possibly a few short term opportunists, but no long term party lobby fodder and the huge bonus that all of them have to earn their living in the real world for most of their working lives.
The retired bureaucratic clerical brother of someones mother or father is right.
There are, as always, sufficient emergency escape route weaseling provisions to disarm the Climate Change Act, should the circumstances demand- binding legal commitment my ****.
Thanks all. I thoroughly agree with writing to one's MP, whatever. Delingpole has kindly said he'll give this the oxygen of publicity assuming western civilisation is still going! But let's wait till we know that the petition has been accepted. No point alerting people until the link is there to click.
OK folks, it's ready to go. 100,000 signatures of your friends please - by the Tory Party Conference would do nicely!
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/16078 is its full name.
Remember, 'no more than 5%' includes 0%. And capping increases in household bills doesn't preclude doing the same for businesses. Of course we'd prefer no green taxes at all by 2020. But how are we going to get there? Surely a vast majority of UK citizens would sign this if it was put under their nose in the next few months?
Who would wish to be a MP having to debate this (if we get more than 100,000 signatures in the next year) and arguing for more than 5%? That's where we want to get this. It could turn the tide.
"David Laws seems a very sensible Lib Dem."
The man is a crook.