Bishop Hill The great eco-cesspit
Dec 15, 2013 Bureaucrats Ethics Greens The big climate and energy story this morning is David Rose's splash on the eco-policy cesspit - the mob of greedy politicians, greedy lobbyists, greedy civil servants and greedy greens who are all enriching themselves at public expense.
Four of nine-person Climate Change Committee, official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions.
A new breed of lucrative green investment funds, which were set up to expand windfarm energy, are in practice a means of taking green levies paid by hard-pressed consumers and handing them to City investors and financiers.
£3.8 billion of taxpayers’ money funds the new Green Investment Bank, set up by the Department of Business and Skills. One of its biggest deals involved energy giant SSE selling windfarms to one of the new green funds, Greencoat Wind. The Green Investment Bank’s chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, is also chairman of SSE. The bank says it ‘provided expertise’ to enable BIS to take a £50 million stake in Greencoat, which helped fund the SSE sale.
The same bank’s chief executive, Shaun Kingsbury, is one of the UK’s highest-paid public sector employees. His £325,000 salary is more than twice the Prime Minister’s.
Firms lobbying for renewables can virtually guarantee access to key Government policy-makers, because they are staffed by former very senior officials – a striking example of Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’.
Standards in public life. Don't make me laugh.
Reader Comments (91)
Academia doesn't come out of this too well either, especially my old uni, Imperial Collage. Very sad when a top academic institution acts like a high class prostitute!
KBO.
Oh indeed Black dog, seasonally tinged best regards to you too.
The trolls are very quiet...
Very sad when a top academic institution acts like a high class prostitute!
Dec 15, 2013 at 6:07 PM | Unregistered CommenterTim Crome
What's a "high class prostitute"? One with an above average price?
[Personally, I have nothing against hookers. I remember seeing an interview of some members of the profession on American TV and one said that the reason she had become a hooker was that she had been a (US) police office but had wanted to do work that did not involve dishonesty. Another said that she enjoyed her work because it involved meeting people and making them happy.]
Athelstan
If only our dear Bishop could lay on a good open fire, some wine, beer, spirits and an older busty lady to admire, this would be a great place to spend Christmas. Yes I have started a little glass or three
As they say, "I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food!"
Quite so;~)
"The trolls are very quiet..."
Busy squirming on another thread trying to save face in front of his acolytes.
The Eco-Cesspit could be the answer to all our prayers. You can generate methane from sewage by a process known as anaerobic digestion. The way our politicians are going the cess-pit will be big enough to supply all our gas needs without fracking. that way the greens will be satisfied as well as normal people. It will be a win-win situation.
15 hours since the last comment was approved. I bet this has ruffled so many feathers.
It was 57 comments this morning.
Still is now...at 7pm!
Plus it's so well hidden on the DM website it's almost impossible to find without the GWPF link.
Clearly, 100% some sort of Mail / Tory party put-up job.
As ever, the only sane response individual voters can offer to this is to vote Ukip.
Cheshirered,
It has a good spread [p 16-17 I think] in the MoS printed edition, though hardly front page it must be said. I wonder if, the other organs of the Fourth Estate will pick up on the story tomorrow? I certainly do hope so.
as a failed concept in much the same way we view the former Soviet Union. Of course there will be a few remaining zealots in Brighton or somewhere but they will be about as relevant as the British Communist Party.
A couple of points there. The brit communist party is alive and kicking in the form of the Labour-Liberal-tory party and in our top government - the eu commission. The EU commission is the USSR reincarnate with a Moaist at it's head and a false, unelected president with big ears and a missing brain.
The mess will endure long after we are all dead and buried.
I have given up on my MP – I very quickly get the “We shall agree to disagree” response, which is a sad get-out for a politician. I suspect that any enquiries now would be met with silence.
Dec 15, 2013 at 4:33 PM | Unregistered CommenterRadical Rodent
And your response was "and at the next election my disagreement with you will be far more telling than your disagreement with me".
Would be that could be so, Stephen R – where I live, the LibLabCon is so heavily entrenched as to be immovable – “Me dad voted …., me granddad voted…, so I will vote …” This is what the this “democracy” has long depended on – voters who are incapable of independent thought. To raise (probably paraphrase) a quote by the Tim Piggott-Smith character in “The Hour”: “Do we live in a democracy… or what appears to be a democracy?”
Athelstan: It takes all of pages 16-18 in fact, apart from one ad, with a glut of fatcat pictures. (Someone just left their MoS on the table in the pub as I was watching my poor football team being roundly thrashed.) Having had a look I continue to think it's a big deal, even if it's hard to find on the Web from the front page. (I haven't tried that.)
Stephen R. Yes I know, I know, I cannot argue with that. Despite being totally proved wrong by decades of hunger, murder and a fallen wall they now infect everything in our Great little country . In many ways they have won because their type of morality and world view are now so acceptable e.g. BBC, Guardian, call me Dave and so on. Not trying to have an arguement just cross.
The British political and financial classes made corruption easy and legal simply by saying it is legal for them and their relations all to have interests or consultancies or Directorships in say wind farms or CCS companies etc just so long as they declared their interests up front. Indeed it is the accepted way of life and of conducting the publics business. The British public by and large still have the serf mentality of deferring to their ruling classes and betters and appear not to be concerned by these gross conflicts of interest. I guess they take the view that if it is legal it is therefore moral.
‘A supernatural punisher may be part of the solution.’ (Quoted in David Rose's article.)
Lord May should be more careful what he wishes for.
There exists a consensus of greed - that much has been known by the loyal opposition. Thanks to David Rose for doing the right thing by exposing the problem to the loyal disengaged masses. Time for the less than honest brokers to step forward and finish doing the right thing.
Great effort from David Rose yet again. Sunday after Sunday he is batting a valiant stand with Booker at the other end notching up fours and sixes. However, as is the way with the world, only once in a while a well aimed shot really hits the magazine and explodes with a reverberation that rocks the Establishment. In the green context, Climategate hit as powerfully as Blair's dodgy dossier and the Telegraph's MP's expenses.
It took the green zealots a full two years to regroup. Are we on the cusp of another? The impact of green subsidies on energy bills and industry has now become a mainstream politics policy battleground. We have another winter of energy bill inflation to go. UKIP for sure will keep their ace in this game to play at the appropriate moment in the next 18 months.
Of the six major energy companies, SSE is the only one mentioned in this article.
Since 2009 all these six companies have been required by OFGEM to produce annual "consolidated segmental statements" for generation and for four categories of supply. They can be accessed from on OFGEM pdf here. SSE stands as the odd-man-out amongst the six for its generation profit and loss accounts. The revenue per MWh is about two-thirds of the wholesales price, and there are no direct fuel costs, despite operating coal and gas-fired power stations. This is because it has a quite separate (and quite legitimate) wholesale trading arm. It seems a bit odd that a manufacturing company (the product is electricity)should not show its raw material costs in its P&L.
I am currently trying to make sense of these segmental statements. Most telling is that over 4 years, costs of gas and electricity to the consumer have risen by 25%, and the profit margins percentage for supply and generation are about the same (at about 10% of a household bill), and the wholesale price over the last three years (which does not include subsidies) has remained pretty much the same.
Margaret/Louise/Chandra has weighed in.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/14/exposed-david-rose-rips-uk-climate-change-committee-for-being-on-the-take/#comment-1502628
aka
The Palace of Westminster
Sorry OT much as I hate Agentina The Falklands Maradona hand of god
In the Sunday Times Business Section Agentina has found Shale Formation 3 times bigger than the entire US shale deposit . Seems the Argies have hit the big time after going skinti again a few years back. Wonder if there is Shale on the Malvinas.
Back on topic same paper Eggborough Coal powered station supplies 4 percent of UK Elecricity is due to close by 2015 they can't get subsidy to convert to Biomass has to close..seems Wind Power has taken all the available funding.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Athelstan Dec 15 7.14pm
Nothing in the Telegraph at time of writing. No surprise. And as all the papers affiliate to one or another political ideology and therefore party, and there is no choice where the ideology concerns the climate, I doubt that any part of the press will take this up. The powers that be seem to have been nimble hobbling comments in the Mail, and they will, no doubt, already have threatened the more malleable editors. I wonder what they said to the editor of the Mail.
However, there is Murdock. He has, he said at the Leveson enquiry, great respect for the public. Of course, if they stop buying his products, he will be the worse off (and if they buy more, he will prosper). Properly explained anti CAGW would go down well with them and maybe increase his prestige and sales. Then, in all the tittle tattle at the time of the enquiry, I think I recall it being said that Murdock assesses, possibly in some detail, which political party will be best for the country, for the Murdock interests or whatever, and then supports that party.
So could the Murdock press be persuaded to take up the CAGW scam, both in respect of the impoverishment of the British people, and the shenanigans bought to public attention by the Rose article? The whole campaign would be admirably suited to his style, and he is much feared by the political establishment, so his intervention might have successes where others would fail.
So, Bishop, what about a letter to Murdock, not forgetting to stress your authority as owner of this blog and its track record in exposing the scam that CAGW is?
Bob Ward tells all about David Rose's past sins at the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bob-ward/hypocrites-of-northcliffe-house_b_4440043.html
Only 57 comments, but all practically identical (snouts.. scumbags .. vote UKIP) and the visible first dozen picking up 1000+ recommends.
Whatever their faults, Tory MPs can read the message in the tea leaves. The Tory Party will be fully sceptical come the next election, which means that Labour (who will probably win) will be even more scum-coloured. “Be careful what you wish for” works both ways.
Congratulations to the Mail’s picture editor. The accompanying photos are a joy to behold.
Anyone going to enquire of the Mail the reason for banning (presumably) further comments on Rose's article?
or for taking the article down. The link is still there but it cannot be found on the site today.
No sh*t Sherlock?
link Bloomberg.
Climate change committee, set up by Ed Miliband a deconstructive communist, the potential dear leader and heaven forfend, next in line so to speak.
You know that's so funny, "climate change committee" - it is a joke, a howler, a rib tickler and only Miliband could keep a straight face - in launching and bestowing upon it - influence.
Hands in the till, trough till you drop - unsurprisingly: the climate change committee recommends Britain stays the course! Emissions targets will be adhered to, YES to - deconstruct industry, kill off manufacturing and force the people back to the land - it's so Mao Zedong, it's so Ed Miliband's communist style - state 'thugs' on the take and in power and ordering the people to take the medicine which keeps them in clover.
Wot's not to like comrades?
Mail also have a story on how onshore wind costs £95/MWh in UK but £27 in Brazil
shummm mistake shurely
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2524388/Wind-energy-costs-times-UK-Brazil-way-green-subsidies-handed-out.html
Theo G,
Bob Ward may have got into the pages of the HufPo but the most read article there is marked as;
"Snow hits Middle East"
The Gore effect by proxy perhaps.
"One of its [Green Investment Bank] biggest deals involved energy giant SSE selling windfarms to one of the new green funds, Greencoat Wind."
Greencoat have purchased only one farm from SSE which is Carcant. The BIS had absolutely nothing to do with SSE's sale of Carcant to Greencoat. The nameplate capacity of Carcant is 6,000MW. It is one of the smallest farms (2.72% of total nameplate capacity) that Greencoat own.
On a proportionate basis, Carcant may have been worth £11m. Rose ought to have mentioned that SSE purchased 10m shares (3.84% of the then total equity) in Greencoat at a cost of £10m.
Rose's article is a disgraceful distortion. The facts speak for themselves without over-egging it.
The subsequent actions by BIS and SSE in not purchasing their allocation of the Greencoat additional capital raising this month left 40% of the issue unsold. That's £50m of bank borrowing Greencoat have to fund. It would be difficult for BIS to explain if they proved to have suckered ordinary people to invest.
It is the intersection of political cover and capital with the corruption of the media that makes this perfect storm possible. And it has clearly happened on an international basis. This sot of expose, in less non-corrupt age, would lead to a media feeding frenzy. Now, it is likely to fizzle out with no accountability to the bad players.
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:18 AM | Unregistered Commenterssat
Thanks. Ward's article is a major embarrassment written at the level of grammar school gossip. It amounts to a knee-jerk reaction by Ward and HuffPo. It was interesting for me to learn that Ward is in HuffPo's stable and saddled for riding at a moment's notice.
The reporters approached Lord Mackenzie, a former president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, posing as strategic consultants for a bogus South Korean investor looking to market solar technology in the UK.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/peers-caught-in-sting-operation-face-suspension-9008200.html
Lord Mackenzie said: “I fully accept their decision. I have apologised for any unwitting breach of the rules.”
Incredible how these shysters are supposed to be bright enough to run the country but they can't get their heads around simple ethics. An even further leap is that this particular grade A shiz is an ex policeman:
//
Police career
He rose through the ranks of the police service, becoming a Superintendent upon secondment to the Home Office and later becoming Chief Superintendent in the Durham Constabulary.[2] A graduate of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, he was active in the Police Superintendents' Association and was its President for three years. He was a special adviser on policing issues to the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, from 1997 to 2001. He describes his proudest achievements as his instigation of the idea of a register of sex offenders; the abolition of the right to hide behind silence when interviewed regarding serious crime and the change in the law relating to Double Jeopardy.
He held the historical and honorary appointment of Billet Master of the City of Durham between 1989 and 2003. He was made an Honorary Member of the Rotary Club of Chester-le-Street in 2001.
Mackenzie was appointed OBE in the 1998 New Years Honours for services to the Police Service and the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales.
//
Not the sort you'd expect to make an "unwitting breach of the rules", shurely?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mackenzie,_Baron_Mackenzie_of_Framwellgate
Re Theo Goodwin - Bob Ward
Booker did a piece on Bob Ward in 2010, here: http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/climategate-amazongate-bob-ward-and.html
Well worth another look. Rose's piece is only the tip of the iceberg so to speak, but it does get out the fact that the climate change committee is run from the LSE and the Grantham Institute. This is also very international, as Booker's piece shows and people like Blair, Clinton and cohorts are very much involved. Stern only gave up his role at IdeaCarbon sometime this year and one of his former colleagues is Christina Figueres, exec sec at IPCCC. Fankhauser was also very much involved, as he is with GLOBE International, Deben, Prescott, Gardener etc.
The networks are endless and if you want to see a chunk of them, check out "United Socialist Nations"
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html.
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great
i like this...thanks