Bishop Hill Labour demand higher energy prices
Dec 2, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: grid 
Readers may remember that I mentioned the launch of Labour's green paper on energy last week. At the time, I made a cursory and ultimately fruitless attempt to find the document in question, and at least one BH reader reckons it is in fact illusory.
Having dug a bit further, I have come across mention of a "ten-point plan", for example this analysis at the Carbon Brief. So I wonder if the green paper is in fact simply ten soundbites jotted down on a napkin by Ed Miliband and Captain Flint. If so, then it's a pretty damning indictment the level of thought involved in Labour's thinking, although perhaps not overly surprising as one looks at the body count that has resulted from the party's last time in office.
And as you look at point 9 on the plan, you see that the party is quite determined that prices will go higher still:
Set a 2030 power sector decarbonisation target to boost investor confidence.
Winter deaths? What winter deaths?
Reader Comments (53)
All’s fair in politics, but is it really good tactics for a site that struggles to inject some rational thought into the insanity of current energy and environment policy to constantly use terms like “body count”?
People die in winter a bit more than in summer because of cold weather. You can attribute that to the fact that they’re too poor or that energy is too expensive, or that they’re too stupid to insulate their houses or wear sensible socks. (In the right sort of political climate I could probably get a grant to investigate the relation between IQ and winter deaths. Maybe I’ll wait till Boris takes over before I put in my grant application though).
Deliberately making energy expensive is insane for all sorts of reasons. Leave the dead pensioners out of it.
OK. Now I’ve read Carbon Brief’s translation of Labour’s Cunning Plan from the original Aramaic, and I understand your anger. There’s one perfectly insane comment at CarbonBrief. The best thing we can all do is get over there and tell them what we think.
Everyone knows that Ed (boy) Miliband is a blind believer in CAGW and will happily follow any daft path to "green" energy no matter the cost - we are saving the planet, you can hear it scream!
It would be terrifying if he ever became Prime Minister!
Geoff,
You continue to miss the point. Over THIRTY THOUSAND people die every year between November and March due to the cold yet there is not a peep about this from our MPs! In spite of these deaths we are careering down the path to a COLD decarbonised future regardless of the fact that not one single person will ever die in this country because of Mann Made Global Warming (tm)!
I dare say that a significant number of those deaths can be attributed to the cost of energy, ie it's too god-damned expensive to heat homes for those most at risk (the elderly, the poor, the young!). Can you imagine the lengths politicians would be going to if there was political capital to be made from these deaths to bring the cost if energy down??
Labour and the Greens have the cold blue blood of the dead on their hands and the conservatives and the lib dems are just as guilty as they have the power to repeal Labours climate change act!
Mailman
Bish, check your mail, I have sent you a more suitable cemetery photo
The mere fact that there is a "winter payment" to begin with demonstrates an understanding of the risk..
I would like to hear our Lords and Masters argue the numbers "saved" (deaths prevented?).
I think their robbers dog mentality would see that for the minefield it is.
There will be an accounting of sorts one day. I'm just not hopeful it will deal with the usual suspects.
The green agenda is primarily about control, the Socialists know full well that you cannot control the weather but you CAN control the people.
Rationing and controlling energy from generation source to domestic consumer equals control. Miliband is an old school Marxist ideologue and that is the worst kept secret in the UK, he is a union lackey and will enable the civil service brothers to do as they please, Miliband also desires a command economy - price freezes and all. Thus, as it was in Russia, the elites will have heating and lighting, the peasants can please themselves - sometimes the lights will switch on - if they are good and then the other - no light, no heat and in the dark when most of the time, they do not conform.
Control is power.
The important word in point nine is " investor", which is rather a give away as to how red Ed really is. Any lame thoughts that some of us had that the biggest mistake was to denationalise power generation in the 1980s, essentially creating the big six from the same body. Labour in essence are promised a privatised cartel for renewables ( however mad that may sound) whereas France has kept EDF whatever the political complexion of the government -sacre bleu, ou est le bateau.
Read the just-released 'UK Renewable Energy Roadmap Update 2013' to see how mad the UK energy policy (supported by all three 'main' parties) really is. It is a truly depressing read (I couldn't stomach reading more than a few choice bits of it) and shows you just how many lunatic civil servants there are in DECC who are running the UK electricity supply asylum. The politicians clearly don't understand what the civil servants are doing, when they sign on to this green madness.
It can be downloaded here
Geoff, Mailman
Understand also that 30,000 deaths is the increase, not the total.
Thank you, Athelstan. It does put a new slant on the old Socialist mantra: “Power to the people!”
Dec 2, 2013 at 9:58 AM | geoffchambers
Whereas body counts offend you, perhaps head counts are more to your liking?
Recent head counts reveal the UKIP nationally polls 19% and that a local poll in Thanet, where the incumbent Tory is to stand down at the next GE, reveals a 30% UKIP head count.
Miliband Cameron et al are being found out in their big lies at an increasing pace. The upcoming EU elections look even more interesting today as a result.
And all this despite the obvious yet unspoken muzzling of Nigel Farage by the MSM.
Perhaps democracy is breaking through before the barricades are reached. We must hope it is so.
You continue to miss the point. Over THIRTY THOUSAND people due every year between November and March due to the cold yet there is not a peep about this from our MPs!
No, he doesn't miss any point even if concern for the well-being of the poor from a milieu not usually noted for expressing it is very welcome. (Bed-room tax, anyone?)
"Excess winter deaths" simply notes that, in the UK at least, more people die in winter than in summer. That wasn't always the case but, thanks to Victorian civil engineering, the sewers no longer pose an epidemic risk. In cities, summer weather is safer than it used to be.
No hypothesis as to cause is offered as to why winter is currently the preferred time to go. Absent data, none can be offered though I recall that the last time the topic was aired here influenza epidemics were cited as one reason for unusually high figures.
Please don't take this as endorsement of any Labour, Tory or Lib-Dim posturing on energy costs. None of the parties has the slightest intention of doing anything about them, in part because to tackle the issue would be to address the role of the EU in our current mess.
Bishop,
I understand that point completely and its a talking point Ive been making repeatedly here and everywhere else that these are excess deaths which occur during the coldest months of the year (November to March) YET the Government, thanks to Labours Climate Change Act, is doing everything in its power to continue to make energy more expensive year on year while they chase unicorns!
Can you imagine how quickly MPs would leap on these excess deaths if they believed it could further their Mann Made Global Warming (tm) agenda!
Roger,
Im not sure the country would survive another 5 year Labour rule because I really cant see UKIP making any headway in the next election...mostly thanks to the BBC's propoganda which will start to ramp up in 2015 over every gaff a UKIP candidate makes! Make no mistake about it, everyone sees UKIP as a threat to their control.
Pity the poor politicians!
Agreed, they seem to have done little to avoid their fate, but they seem to have been trapped into this one.
Politicians don't think for themselves. They take direction from the Civil Service staff experts and advisers. What has happened is that activists have taken over the adviser positions. If you were a politician at the moment, complaining about the possible costs and deaths associated with wind power on the grid to your Perm Sec, you would get a soothing set of excuses back and a whole set of apparent reasons why there was no option but to go for wind power.
It's as if all our doctors had suddenly decided that we needed to have our legs amputated to cure us of the 'flu. As patients, we might think that this was wrong, but if all the doctors kept saying it an awful lot of people would go along with it. Who else could we turn to with comparable medical knowledge?
Until someone ejects the propaganda merchants from their unassailable positions we will remain in this mess. How can politicians go completely against their technical advisers?
30k extra deaths, this needs an investigation into why such a dramatic increase.
I am not a UKIP Member (although Roger Helmer is one of a vanishingly small number of politicians who commands respect). I also think Farage (or should that be Farrago?) is a major liability.
In fact I was a Labour Party activist and Unitary Authority Councillor for many years until I resigned in disgust after the Climate Change Act 2008 was pushed through by Brown & Miliband.
But readers here might be interested in UKIP's latest Energy Press Release:-
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/energy-press-release/
There is little doubt that UKIP will get my support at the ballot box.
Mailman, roger
We’re all agreed that all (parliamentary) parties are equally to blame, so why not drop it? All parties are equally to blame for the death of every malnourished child on the planet, for every problem they’ve failed to solve.
Bish
They’re not extra deaths, they’re deaths brought forward from next year or the year after. I don’t want to censor anyone from using valid statistics. I’m just suggesting that it’s a tactic that should be used sparingly. I despise environmentalists who quote the WHO’s 150,000 p.a. climate deaths ad nauseam. Why copy them?
I try to look at it from the point of view of the average uninformed punter who hears incomprehensible statistics bandied about and judges by the expression on the faces of the disputants. They’d believe Montford over Ward any day because of his air of reasonableness. it’s a precious asset. (Or it would be if the media would let you use it).
DaveB,
The point I'm making is we already have a national tragedy, a REAL national tragedy, that has been completely and utterly ignored by the ruling elite as they persue windmill, mirror and ground unicorn horn power generation which has resulted in absolutely ZERO impact on world temps BUT contributes to the general misery of this country for no descernable gain for your average Joe on the street!
No you can argue as much as you want about what is causing it BUT the fact is the deaths are happening and nothing is being done about it by our so called elected representatives, apart from making energy even more expensive!
Mailman
Hehe! Just been browsing that Carbon Brief that you linked to – very funny! Much like the Dandy, but without the pictures.
They do not hold back in revealing startling truths (www.carbonbrief.org/blog/?issue=1356 – linking does not work), such as: “Energy companies make some profit from the energy they supply to households [….] they also make money by generating the power supplied to the UK's homes and businesses.”
Who would have thunk it, eh? A company wanting to make a profit out of its business – when will this madness ever end?
31,000 excess winter deaths in England, 19,000 in Scotland, and rising.
And the BBC accept that half of them are the direct responsibility of the politicians.
"The company spokesman telling us that 50% of deaths were due to high fuel bills.
The BBC didn’t challenge that"
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2013/11/28/kerrcchiiiinngg/
Cameron and the Tories know that the Climate Change Act (CCA) is at the bottom of, at least, part of the expensive energy problem. Miliband and Labour also know: as do the LibDems. But to these parties CAGW is totemic. Many Tories are pragmatic, and would love to see the dreadful Act repealed. But, as we all know, only five MPs, all Tories, voted against it. So repealing the CCA will be an uphill struggle.
The only hope is that a significant number of Tory MPs start to study the scientifically based scepticism: and shout about it. They must challenge the warmists on the poor quality of the models, and press them on why the 'pause' was not forecast. Then point out that the response of the IPCC has been arm waving, and more guesswork. They need to convince the public, and the MSM. Not an easy task. The sceptics have to be as dedicated as the greenies.
Matin Brumby
All political parties need a major liability. How are they going to get media coverage otherwise?I’ve been over to Carbon Brief and commented. It would be nice if some more energy-savvy readers could impart their knowledge there. It’s one of those awful Disqus threads where the most recommended comment comes out on top, so it’s very much first come, first served.
Geoff, I sort of see your point, but 'bringing forward deaths by a year or two'- or even a few days in any other context gets you a charge of at least manslaughter, and if you took the action knowing you were likely to kill somebody, murder. At some decision-makers need to know they're in Harold Shipman territory, surely?
Hehe! Just been browsing that Carbon Brief that you linked to – very funny! Much like the Dandy, but without the pictures.
They do not hold back in revealing startling truths (www.carbonbrief.org/blog/?issue=1356 – linking does not work), such as: “Energy companies make some profit from the energy they supply to households [….] they also make money by generating the power supplied to the UK's homes and businesses.”
Who would have thunk it, eh? A company wanting to make a profit out of its business – when will this madness ever end?
There was a strong piece some time ago at GWPF - sorry can't find it.
The author posited that the government has a choice between providing supplying reliable, cheap and abundant energy for its people - a basic requirement of any government, or to decarbonise the economy and hang the cost.
Our current political class have absurdly chosen to 'decarbonise' as a priority over ensuring the supply of cheap energy, and we're all paying the price. Many will pay the ultimate price.
If a motorist causes a fatal accident they're likely to end up in the dock having to account for their actions. All 3 party leaders plus the respective 'Energy & CC ministers' (since the CCA) should be in the dock answering to 12 of their peers for their criminally reckless behaviour.
Hehe! Just been browsing that Carbon Brief that you linked to – very funny! Much like the Dandy, but without the pictures.
They do not hold back in revealing startling truths (look for it yourselves – including the link appears to make this a spam), such as: “Energy companies make some profit from the energy they supply to households [….] they also make money by generating the power supplied to the UK's homes and businesses.”
Who would have thunk it, eh? A company wanting to make a profit out of its business – when will this madness ever end?
'Ere - are you trying to make me look silly (not too difficult, granted) - that previous post of mine wasn't there when I put the last one in!
geoffchambers
Where do you draw a line for acceptability? Presumably you may feel that one or two years is OK, how about 5 or 10 would that be acceptable? We can't go back and save these people so we'll never know how long they would have lived had there been a mild winter. I my opinion knowing that people die alone and cold before their time isn't something that should rest easy on a nation's conscience.
So Labour created the exceptionally harsh winter did it? Did it create the lousy UK housing stock? Other European countries with higher prices and colder winters fare less badly on your preferred measure of excess deaths. Go figure!
geoffc @ 11:12 a.m.
"We’re all agreed that all (parliamentary) parties are equally to blame, so why not drop it? All parties are equally to blame for the death of every malnourished child on the planet"
What nonsense. The UK parliament is responsible for everything that happens everywhere?
If fuel cost nothing, would there still be an increase in winter deaths?
My belief is that Labour prepared a document, sent it out to the press contacts, and forgot to upload it. The oversight is probably due to spending so much time creating an appealing message to the public that the forget all about the substance behind the press release.
We already have a national tragedy, a REAL national tragedy, that has been completely and utterly ignored by the ruling elite
I'm well aware of the extent of the tragedy, not least because I've sat in the cold while watching the near total destruction of our local habitat by some 500 wind turbines within a 20-mile radius of our home. I'm also aware that the tragedy has barely begun to unfold. Absent major political crises, it will continue to do so.
Though I appreciate that Bishop Hill made his deserved reputation documenting the mis-use of statisttical techniques by the likes of Michael Mann and the IPCC, I remain unconvinced that shenanigans of our own with NAO data is the way forward. The notion that "excess Winter deaths" are exclusively caused by high energy costs is nonsense.
OTOH, that high energy costs impact disproportionately on the poor cannot reasonably be disputed. Proposals to preserve "green" subsidies but fund them in part from taxation rather than customer levies will serve only to remove the issue from public scrutiny.
A couple of points: The 2008 Climate Change Act was passed on Miliband's watch but with the support of all three parties and only five MPs voting against. (The Conservatives even wanted to empower the Committee on Climate Change to set targets as well as advise; Gumboil's role, if any, in that move is unclear.)
The act was part of a process already well under way by the time of the IPCC's 1995 2AR and continued with publication of the EU Council of Ministers' "Community Strategy on Climate Change" in 1996. That in turn led to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's report "Energy - The Changing Environment" of 2001. Though it certainly didn't help, the notion that the act can be put down to "Red Ed's" zealotry is wide of the mark.
Could this be the document? It's a PDF linked to on this page:
http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/agenda-2015/policy-review/policy-review/energy-green-paper
It's basically a 32-page PDF entitled "Powering Britain: One Nation Labour’s plans to reset the energy market". I haven't read it yet, just got in from the shops and need a cup of tea first!
Mr Montford,
Are you saying that Excess Winter Deaths were 50,000 last winter because the year before it was approximately 20,000?
DaveB,
Thats probably why Cameron and co have decidedly steered clear of blaming the elephant in the room (Labours climate change act)!
However, the climate change act IS Ed Millibands cross to bear, being the secretary of energy at the time and an act he pushed with all his heart.
If he dont like it then, as I was once told by one of my old Army instructors, my heart bleeds purple p1ss for him!
Regards
Mailman
Swiss Bob,
On average around 30,000 people die from cold related illnesses between November and March every year. Although until now the 30,000 extra deaths were generally attributed to deaths in England only??
Mailman
Mr Montford,
Prime Minister David Cameron was tonight urged to spend hundreds of millions of pounds insulating homes across the UK as official figures revealed 31,000 people died because of the freezing weather last winter.
Official figures revealed so-called "excess winter deaths" rose 29 per cent in 2012-2013 to their highest level for four years.
Campaigners said Ministers talking about cutting green levies should be "ashamed" at the figure, which is worse than Sweden and Finland.
More than 80 per cent of the 31,000 were pensioners aged over 75, who suffered from influenza as temperatures in March fell to levels not seen since 1962.
So the numbers increased from 24,000 to 31,000.
Ed Miliband has the deaths of another 7,000 on his hands.
Labour's "Powering Britain" document is also linked to on the Shadow DECC website, here:
http://www.shadowdecc.org.uk/
No intelligent, informed human being believes in AGW. This is why it is being pushed down our throats.
Could Cap and Trade Cause Another Market Meltdown?
You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.
Cap and trade would create what Commodity Futures Trading commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates as a $2 trillion market, "the biggest of any [commodities] derivatives product in the next five years."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/could-cap-and-trade-cause-another-market-meltdown?page=1
eSmiff
What's with all these 5-year-old links?
Do you not keep up with what's happening in the actual carbon derivatives markets?
SandyS (11.53AM)
I don’t draw a line of acceptability anywhere. I just wish everybody would stop rabbiting on about corpses and stringing people up and Harold Shipman. It makes us sound like a bunch of obsessives when we’re trying to make the point that perfectly sane but startlingly ill-informed politicians have all got it wrong and are all leading us to disaster.
See Peter Stroud’s remark at 11.25AM for a temperate and sobering description of the task facing us.
Our only hope of success is to get our message across in the mainstream media. Montford is our best bet as an acceptable spokesman. I guarantee you that the moment His Grace gets a bit of media exposure, the Monbiots and the Wards will be combing these threads for evidence that he is the leader of a band of weirdo extremists. And they’ll find it.
I’m quite happy to assume the role of weirdo extremist myself, but I don’t want it rubbing off on sensible people whose talents are needed for a hard task ahead.
Many thanks Alex for finding that. It’s an official Labour discussion paper that just went up yesterday. And we can make submissions that will be discussed, as well as comments. Labour is listening to us. Off we go everybody. It’s our chance to show them how sane, sensible and caring we are.
Or you can make a citizen’s arrest of their PDF on manslaughter charges. Whichever you think will be most effective.
@geoffchambers
... It makes us sound like a bunch of obsessives when we’re trying to make the point that perfectly sane but startlingly ill-informed politicians have all got it wrong and are all leading us to disaster....
The problem is that the politicians haven't got it wrong. They're following the advice of their 'experts'. As you imply...
Every time voters complain that something must be wrong, the politicians get told by their experts that everything is really all right, that the complaints are generated by an evil alliance of denier activists and big oil, and that the science is clear. That message comes from the entire Civil Service, all the establishment investigations and climate change committees, all international bodies and the UN, the Royal Society, the universities and the Met Office. The Civil Servants will show them polls showing that climate change is still a big concern for the man in the street...
What do you expect the politicians to do? Say that they know better? They are only as good as their informers. We should be attacking them, and not the politicians.
Dodgy Geezer
Apologies. When I called politicians “perfectly sane” I was overstepping the mark.
What do I expect the politicians to do? Debate. Listen to opposing points of view. That’s what you and I did, and that’s how we came to be here.
There’s nothing we can do to influence the salaried jobs-for-life green moles estblished in academia and the civil service. Politicians have to listen to us, or at least pretend to.Labour’s policy document inviting submissions gives us a series of questions to answer. The ones most of interest to us are:
Submissions get published and have to be responded to. If they get a hundred submissions, fifty from government-subsidised green policy NGOs, and fifty from well-informed sceptics, they’re going to have to reply politely. They can’t just say “Stuff the voters, we only listen to properly accredited NGOs”.
So all you knowledgeable energy wonks, give Milliband a hand.
geoffchambers makes a really good point.
It is undoubtedly the case that some fixed-income pensioners are confronted by 'eat or heat' dilemmas (and some die) and it is also the case that the whole ruinables energy policy is one of the most regressive stealth tax dodges that our beloved leaders have yet come up with.
Yes, there will be extra fatalities.
But I have to admit that I always take great exception to all the "New study suggests that XXXX (some 'bad thing') kills YYY thousand people a year" shroud-waving stories that the media love so much.
I have suggested before that if all the different YYY thousand corpses caused by the great overflowing cornucopia of various XXXX 'bad things' were added up, human beings would be far scarcer than Siberian Tigers.
I take Geoff's point that we can scarcely grouse about this pseudo-statistical nonsense on the one hand and then bandy doubtful figures (which happen to suit our argument) about ourselves.
But, on the other hand, most people can imagine a pensioner dying of hyperthermia. Unfortunately, few would recognise "regressive taxation", if it stood up in their soup.
Bishop
Following Alex Cull's comment of earlier, it appears that my claim that Labour did not publish their "energy green paper" on Friday last is not strictly true. I owe the Ed Miliband and the Labour Party an apology with reservations. They did publish an “energy green paper” on Friday. The reservations are
1. It was published at http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/agenda-2015/policy-review/policy-review/energy-green-paper. (Alexa, has no country data for the site)
2. My mistake was to use the key words “Labour Energy Green Paper” in my bing search. There is (7pm) no reference to this in the first 50 hits, but there are references to the Labour Party website. Even a Chelmsford Weekly News article (No Alexa, has no country data) makes 20.
3. The Labour Party Website (UK Alexa rank 9,080) still does not reference the document.
4. The website referred on the video (http://www.labour.org.uk/freezethatbill) is in accurate. It should read http://www.labour.org.uk/freeze-that-bill. Even here you will not find a link to the energy green paper.
My mistake, in accusing Ed Miliband of not publishing the paper when he had was due to a misconception. I assumed that Labour Party spin doctors would be super-efficient, and so the failure to publish would be due to simple, but embarrassing, clerical errors. Having now read the paper, it would seem to go a bit deeper than that.
Kevin Marshall - Manicbeancounter
Martin Brumby
As a fellow ex-Labour Party member, I think it’s important to continue this thread. Knowing that comment tends to die down once the post is displaced from first position, I‘ve put a post up on the discussion page
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2249488
Kevin Marshall
I don’t know how you interpret that. My conspiratorial interpretation is that they wanted it published, but not publicised, so that the usual suspects could get their comments and submissions in before the great unwashed got to know about it. Carbon Brief had it 24 hours ago. Guardian Environment and the New Statesman still haven’t spotted it. Alex Cull can claim a world scoop in his comment above.
"And as you look at point 9 on the plan, you see that the party is quite determined that prices will go higher still"
I think you underestimate the ability of progressives to simultaneously hold contradictory policies.
Fuel prices have to go up AND fuel poverty has to be ended. Since implementing the first will exacerbate the second they must subsequently redistribute to fix it. Since fixing it will undermine objective of the first they must increase fuel bills. In both cases they are doing good. As Private Eye would say, "Double Whiskeys all round"