Friday
Oct122012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tentacles everywhere
Oct 12, 2012 Greens Is there anything the Environment Agency doesn't influence?
Oct 12, 2012 Greens 
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Reader Comments (26)
hmm..I wonder who the 'climate change partners' are and how much do I pay them ?
There needs to be a climate science version of USADA to catch climate cheats. Compile all the evidence against them then humiliate them in public, like how serial cheater lance Armstrong is getting humiliated now. Will make them think twice before swinging their hockey sticks around.
Michael Mann = Lance Armstrong of climate science.
Mann just using a hockey stick instead of a bicycle. Unfortunately, the amount of taxpayer money involved is exponentially larger in Mann's case.
Does Mann think he is an "untouchable" like Lance Armstrong thought he was? Can't wait for Mann to sue Mark Steyn.
Yep, an endlessly increasing part of the UK economy consists of bureaucrats sitting in offices talking to other bureaucrats.
And we aren't getting any economic growth.
It's almost as if there may be some correlation between those 2 facts.
cheatsout- [from Today's Moderator]
Lance Armstrong is O/T .This post is intended to be about the Environment Agency
"Environment" is the perfect power political concept, nobody's ever lost their position because they showed too much care for "it". Better than motherhood and apple pies, even.
Empire buillding....
The Environment Agency seems like a Quango worth putting on the bonfire, you remember the Bonfire of the Quangos and how it turned out to be nothing more than one of those small bins full of burning leaves.
Its interesting (as in an example of bias) that they list The Carbon Trust who want us to build windmills everywhere, but don't list any of the major players in the Energy market, let alone those involved in possible Fracking.
A bit like Donwning Street only meeting those opposed to Fracking to discuss it.
OT I know - I wonder if the price rises to be anounced will start more pressure for Fracking to start, and how many twists and turns the BBC and Graun will go through not to mention the F word.
Disservice industry.
O/T slightly, why the Enviroment Agency and all other Goverment departments need to be taken out the back and shot: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-11/we-are-road-serfdom and as the article implys the Enviroment Agency will never get smaller but will grow and grow infecting more and more of yours and my life.
I only have one question for our failing social society where do I sign to opt-out?
Read it and weep.
And while we are on the subject, what please is the Better Regulation Executive?
I am afraid Shevva has it in one: government departments never get smaller.
If you read the above, you will realise all you need to know about the EA - your taxes, British taxes paid directly to fund a 'tentacle' which directly interferes with all our lives but owes its allegiance, policies and ethos entirely to the Brussels European commission.
Even if HMG UK wanted to interfere with the EA - they couldn't.
Europe lives and dictates in Britain - all of its quangos can and do so - this is called "elective dictatorship".
When someone suggests river dredging and proper streambed maintenance to prevent inundation in peak streamflow - they cock a deaf un and give you some old chat about habitat conservation or flora and fauna = more important than people's lives and livelihoods.
And ain't that what the EU is all about - dogma [in this case hidebound environmental protection] always transcends common sense and the little people.
The EA [EU], it marches to a different cadence and bandmaster.
Owen Paterson must have a full in-tray but maybe he will get round to reviewing this quango headed by former Labour minister Chris Smith.
Has it got its balance between people and wild life quite right?
Looking at page 33 of its corporate plan http://cdn.environment-agency.gov.uk/geho0211btkv-e-e.pdf about half of its £1bn-ish budget goes on erosion and flood matters.
How efficient is it at its core role? And do we need all the add-ons?
They also seemed ridiculously interested when they found out we have a sceptic tank at our property but then again they may have thought we said skeptic tank !
We don't have two Met Offices do we?
Maybe having the MO as a partner is deemed to be so important that it warrants a double billing?
Whenever the Environment Agency (or its subsidiaries such as natural England or English Heritage or any of the other bodies it swept up when this monolith was created by Labour) produce a comment on anything it always starts with something like "climate change is the most pressing problem we face in this country today". Hmmm what about the economy going down the pan because of the Government's zeal to "tackle" climate change?
Additionally it sees itself as a campaigning organisation.
It turns out that a couple of years ago, an email was sent out to all employees asking them to 'promote' AGW in their spare time; to friends and family in 'social' settings. To be fair I haven't seen it, but I know it exists.
FOI perhaps?
Thus the problem with laws passed without limits and definitions and sunsetting provisions. Authority ill defined is authority to define. To slightly modify one of John Locke's principles, "unused authority is waste and an offence against nature's bureaucrats" and creates "interference competition" in any segment of the economy where money and power is to be found. A corollary to the main prinicple is it feeds itself through application of constant fear.
Sorry Morph you can't burn leaves now the Environment Agency don't like it.
The EA is long past its sell by date.
It's sad, isn't it? What we are seeing is the march of bureaucracy. Local authorities are being encouraged to appoint a climate change officer to their staff. A Taxpayers' Alliance report estimates that 350 climate change officers have been appointed at a cost of £10m and a further 350 people as diversity officers (whatever that means!) at a cost of £20m.
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2010/10/councils-accused-of-wasting-money-on-climate-change-officers/
As soon as these new appointees get their legs under their desks, they likely send emails to their boss saying that their investigations indicate that the network of organisations dealing with climate change is now so vast that they require at least two assistants to help cope with the sheer volume of work keeping abreast of it all and attending seminars and conferences to find out what is going on.
@ AlecM - I hope you mean "Eco Friendly" Empire building.... You know - smart meters, biomass boilers, mercury containing CFL's, etc...
<I>"Local authorities are being encouraged to appoint a climate change officer to their staff"</I>
And these new appointees don't like any of their ratepayers asking difficult questions...
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/guest-post-a-vist-to-broadland-district-council/#comments
"There are also many other organisations we work with and through to achieve our aims within specific areas of our business."
Part of the problem of vainglorious and purposeless civil service empires is that they suffer from the delusion that they are "businesses" and that they have "customers".
Oh, come now. It's an agency, a.k.a. quango, a.k.a the bureaucratic equivalent of God. It's meant to be omnipresent and omniscient ... and intent on wreaking "vengeance" on us "transgressors".
Unlike the real thing, though, you don't get the option of not believing in it.
"CREATING A BETTER PLACE"? OK, times up. You have had your seven days.
Find out more about the department of Environments activities from their media services outlets:
BBC Audience services, PO Box 1922, Darlington DL3 0UR
The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
Martin A:
Yes, yes and yes again.
What is also so striking is that they could be put out of 'business' overnight. You simply stop paying them.
Government turns off the money tap. They cease to exist. A lot of noisy wailing and gnashing of teeth of course. But a day later they are gone, scarcely even a ripple on the water, remembered by no one.
Except of course this will never happen.
Too many vested interests, too many politicians, too much public money, too many hangers-on, too many hoping they will be the next recipients of this preposterous largesse.
It is very hard to imagine a more grotesque squandering of public money in the interests of nothing more than a clamorous collection of self-serving parasites.
It goes without saying that this astounding waste of your and my money will have precisely no effect on the world's climate.
In the present fevered atmosphere of "accountability" (hollow laugh) we are seeing DJs, 'slebs, Chief Constables etc being lined up for ceremonial execution. And by and large - it seems - many clearly deserve a comeuppance.
The problem as I see it - is that this - is a handy smokescreen. A circus perhaps...
After 30 years plus of unbridled bureaucratic Balkanisation funded from borrowings on our tax contributions - our UK public services have degenerated into a process obsessed near zero delivery morass of fiefdoms complete with batteries of little warlords where words like "accountability", "statutory obligation", "key competence", "fairness" , "partners" etc, etc... are just interchangeable jargon dronespeak uttered by aggressively under-performing dullards who have been effectively made invulnerable to the consequences of their deeply damaging actions supposedly taken for our benefit.
The EA insist that they are not civil servants - even though they are clearly part of the state apparatus...
The EA only obey court rulings when it suits them
The EA patently have no problem with dishonesty and lies (to MPs and "customers")
The EA abuse statutory process when it suits them
The EA refuse to discipline serially delinquent officials
The EA clearly have no conscience about causing significant and unjust financial harm to "customers"
The EA actively seek to evade scrutiny
The EA withhold legally pivotal evidence when it suits their purpose...
The EA believe they can set policy - when that is a function of government (which they aren't part of?)
The EA keeps growing and dividing - it even publishes it's own fishing magazine.
The EA seem to revel in making up "rules" and then trying to bully "customers" into compliance.
Looking back to the EA's formation in 1995 there is little positive since that has actually been achieved beyond what the original components provided (NRA etc.)
Take a look at their recently completed grandiose and palatial, eye wateringly expensive HQ "Green Palace" in central Bristol - one has to assume they are hiding it since it hasn't actually been showing up much at all on their main web site.
We applied for a £150 water abstraction licence - they've spent far in excess of £500,000 making an utter shambles of that application and delayed the process by nearly 3 years. That equates to £90,000 processing a fishing rod licence ???
In most folks everyday lives - millions of us have to deal with this and more - every day - from these almost completely dysfunctional and incompetent "Agencies".
What's not to like?
Sacrifice a few pervy 'slebs, senior plods and dead DJs on the pyre by all means but out here, outside the meejah bubble - I think it all looks a bit different - and there has to be a step change in the way it all works.
/rant