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« UKIP Scotland's climate spokesman | Main | Quote of the day »
Friday
May032013

DECC in chaos

A week ago DECC's director of energy strategy and futures resigned, a story reported in the Guardian:

Brearley did not turn up to a renewable energy conference in Scotland, where he was meant to be speaking on the EMR on Monday.

Delegates to the event, organised by the Infrastructure Journal, were told the civil servant was not coming because he had left the department.

But a spokesman for DECC said Brearley was not formally leaving until the summer, having completed the main policy work on the EMR.

Today, one of his colleagues Ravi Gurumurthy, director of strategy, has gone too - he's off to work with David Miliband in New York.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the ship is sinking and that all manner of livestock is heading for safer ground.

Thanks for everything you have done for us, gentlemen.

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Reader Comments (78)

Geckko,

"You don't need to spend hundreds of words trying to convince them that climate alarmism is bunk and energy policy is flawed. You only need to convince them they might lose their seat."

Yes, that's my thinking. Tory MPs up and down the country will be absolutely cr*pping themselves at the moment. These are professional politicians, and the public might give them the sack in a couple of years. Even Tories in "safe seats" will be worried. If UKIP is perceived as being a genuine more-Tory-than-the-Tories option then there could be a serious haemorrhaging of votes.

We just need to let them know that we're worried about energy policy. (As opposed to gay married EU immigrants, which you may or may not also be worried about.)

May 4, 2013 at 9:45 AM | Unregistered CommenterJames Evans

Geronimo

I'm sure you know this, but others might not. The Royal Academy of Engineering were, of course, not involved in writing the CCA2008, but produced a paper in 2010 responding to it.

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Generating_the_future_report.pdf

With the Bish's indulgence I have banged on about this report several times before (see for example comments in:- http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/16/tightening-scientific-belts.html)

Re-reading the report (and indeed the even more preposterous "ZeroCarbonBritain 2030" report - not by engineers but with enthusiastic support from the MET Office and UEA and other usual suspects) still makes me scratch my head.

We are marching boldly on towards the cataclysm and no-one can say they haven't been warned. And for the avoidance of doubt, the cataclysm doesn't comprise of barely detectable warming and a bit more plant food. It comprises of the wholesale destruction of our Society.

May 4, 2013 at 9:45 AM | Unregistered Commentermartin brumby

Alas, Stephen, the British have been brainwashed like so many others: “I’ve always voted Con/Lib/Lab, and I’m not going to change now,” or – perhaps even worse – “Me Dad voted Labour, me Grandad voted Labour, so I’m gonna vote Labour,” (Labour being the most common for that response). The general population are little more than stupid sheep, who cannot question – perhaps they cannot even see – the lorry-loads of meat leaving the abattoir that is labelled “Utopia” that they are being led to.

I would not be surprised if voting suddenly becomes more surprising as UKIP rises: the LibLabCon candidate will win overwhelmingly, yet you will not be able to find anyone who admits to voting for them. If that ever happens, one response might be to leave a piano outside the council/MP’s offices, with just a few strings missing, and label a few lamp-posts, “This one.” If nothing else, it may make them reflect upon the disaffection that is growing in the country.

May 4, 2013 at 9:46 AM | Unregistered CommenterRadical Rodent

What readers must understand is that the UK is 2/3rds the way into its century of post Imperial relative decay. At such times, the old Imperial caste set up post Imperial fascism. So it is that the climate scam, a derivative of property, has been set up and DC and his mates occupy No 10. He wasn't the first choice, just the one who made it from the area that Oswald Mosley used to live.

So we have the in-laws troughing windmills and now he hasn't declared his wife's interest in a large housing estate development. What will get them is the sheer inefficiency, that there were no independent professional engineers designing the power system. It is designed not to work, so the Eugenicists can achieve their declared aim of slashing the population.

This is a reprise of the 1930s. Don't let them do it.

May 4, 2013 at 10:00 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlecm

At the risk of boring people with links to my blog, last year I summarised a set of replies from MPs and ministers to their constituents' questions on climate change and energy policy (arising from a column by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph).

The MPs' and ministers' letters show many of the characteristics described in this thread, with very few MPs prepared to say anything remotely critical of government policy. And much cutting and pasting of replies from a common text.

http://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/how-will-we-meet-emissions-targets/

May 4, 2013 at 10:03 AM | Registered CommenterRuth Dixon

I have just sent an email to damian@ukip.org congratulating Nigel Farage and the rest of the UKIP team on their achievements in the recent local elections. I have also suggested that UKIP need to start to push their energy policy. Diane James was on Newsnight last night where it was suggested that the economy was the biggest concern of the electorate. Diane definitely missed the chance to point out that there can be no meaningful economic recovery whilst it is hobbled by current energy policy. UKIP are the only party that have a realistic energy policy.

Others here may wish to encourage UKIP to promote that policy more widely.

May 4, 2013 at 10:23 AM | Unregistered CommenternTropywins

Presumably your political parties have a head office or suchlike responsible for admin, finances, candidate selection etc. If your local MP is a deaf and blind mute, why not write to their head office? En masse. These people have a more "global" view of sentiment in all electorates.

A few years ago the Australian conservative leader was looking like signing up to the Labor government's ETS. A concerted letter, phone and email campaign to head offices and politicians saw that leader deposed and replaced by another who will scrap the carbon tax if elected this September. I was one of the letter writers along with many tens of thousand others.

It was the only political letter I have ever written. I claim a 100% success rate.

May 4, 2013 at 10:45 AM | Registered CommenterGrantB

Oddnojob we contact our MPs via the ballot box

Well done UKIP nutters

So how did Naterlie Bennett and the Greens do

May 4, 2013 at 10:55 AM | Unregistered Commenterjamspid

nTropywins

The Chairman of UKIP lives locally to me and we collaborate on many issues (Slay the Array, Lost Horizons) and we share the platform at various events. He was on Any Questions yesterday. I have duly informed him that the future of the UK's energy supply should be a priority issue for UKIP to be pushing because the man in the street is not aware of what lies in store for him and the country when fuel costs double and the lights start to go out.

May 4, 2013 at 11:00 AM | Registered CommenterPhillip Bratby

I might have usefully added to my comment at 09:45 that the RAE report suggests preposterous solutions, but ones which could conceivably work if unlimited funds were available.

The ZeroCarbonBritain2030 report is just preposterous. Period.
I confess that I haven't even managed to read all of that one. Too ludicrous and too full of bold assertions and recommendations which seem to owe more to the occult than any feasible engineering.

I've carried out no textual analysis. But guess which report seems closer to the spirit of the Government's Energy Bill?

Hmmmm. A tough one.

May 4, 2013 at 11:12 AM | Unregistered Commentermartin brumby

Martin,
Having scanned through the RAE report, it is all about ideas to reduce carbon. It is not very about a secure energy supply.

Their 'broad brush' approach takes no account of the fact that the electricity network itself has no storage, yet their block diagrams show bulk energy coming in and going out as if timing doesn't matter. There is no thought to dynamic stability of frequency and voltage. Renewable generators that come and go do not support system stability. The good old generators, synchronous machines, have governor controls that sense a frequency disturbance and help to keep the network stable. Wind and sun cannot do this, in fact they make it worse.

Some of the sections seem very inconsistent. While explaining in some detail through the body how hard it is to achieve the required outcome, the last sentence says all will be okay. It makes me wonder if the final edit was signed off by all of the team. Hmm.

May 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM | Unregistered CommenterRobin Pittwood

Like so many others I have written many times to my MP (in my case Eric Pickles) and have received no even remotely satisfactory reply. Eric even has a standard pro forma letter that he sends us telling us about all the jobs our energy subsidies are creating and without any apparent recognition that there is a problem.

Like almost all MP's, Eric has no scientific qualification or understanding whatsoever.

Ukip is the only party to recognise this problem and to be highly sceptical that reducing CO2 should be given priority. Voting for Ukip is probably the only effective means we have of changing either minds or policy.

May 4, 2013 at 12:30 PM | Unregistered Commenterdave

Phillip Bratby

good work. I see energy as the ace in the pack for UKIP in the run up to the next general election as the extent of the Green stupidity gradually becomes known to the wider electorate. The link between energy and economic activity needs to be hammered home. And of course this is one area where UKIP can pretty much guarantee that citizens will be better off financially simply by stopping subsidies to renewables. AND as soon as UKIP start to push this policy it will add to the political risk for our investor friends meaning current bozos are between a rock and a hard place.

May 4, 2013 at 12:34 PM | Unregistered CommenternTropywins

Robin Pittwood; the problem is that few nowadays have the basic knowledge to understand how a synchronous grid works. Thus how many understand that the transformer cores have in them inserts of Si-Fe with different magnetic permeability to tailor the extremes of the B-H curves thereby stabilising the system? The people who devised this are long dead.

Also, few engineers and even fewer scientists realise that the windmills are, because they are asynchronous, parasitic so the grid fails.This is what Germany is now fighting, especially since Poland and the Czech Republic installed phase switches on the cross border UHV lines so the Germans cannot use foreign grids to transport energy from the Northern windmills to the South where the nukes were closed down.

Our grid doesn't have that foreign connection from the windy North, so it will fail much earlier. At least we do have the German experience to rely on which is why the National Grid company has warned of the rolling power cuts.

We have children brought up in a time of plenty in Government who have got hold of the train set and the real life SIM game, and because they won't accept professional advice have set out to wreck it whilst they learn. Unfortunately it is not a computer game and they will kill millions whilst they learn the lesson: none of them have earned the right to play with such things.

May 4, 2013 at 12:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlecm

My MP is Peter Lilley, so I would be preaching to the converted, although he may feel that the more letters he gets, the more OD a mandate he has to carry on his lonely stand against all the lunacy. Sadly the msm, Wikipedia etc make a big deal of his oil industry background while remaining silent about Yeo and Bummer, sorry Deben's overt conflicts or big oil's funding of the CRU etc.

May 4, 2013 at 1:04 PM | Unregistered CommenterDavid S

Oddnojob, Bit unkind of you to suggest that the rest of us were not pulling our weight. I have kept up a steady stream of messages (even paid for a book for him) to my MP. He is a hardworking chap who always replies sometimes with answers from DECC but he unfortunately is a true believer so it is hard going.

May 4, 2013 at 2:31 PM | Unregistered CommenterAnthony Hanwell

Rats running hawsers
Riddled with nits and bug sick.
Kudos and buboes.
==============

May 4, 2013 at 2:33 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

An interesting factoid. Only three rat skeletons were found on the Mary Rose. Rats are good swimmers.

May 4, 2013 at 3:21 PM | Unregistered CommenterMike Post

Trapped in Davey DECC's locker.

May 4, 2013 at 7:16 PM | Registered CommenterPharos

Oddnojob
I can only say that I had the same experience as Don Keiller, Latimer Alder, dave38, geronimo and all the others. Perhaps the only way they'll change is by being introduced to ropes and lampposts; perhaps there is hope that a bit of a UKIP kicking will have a similar result, one can but hope. But as Climate "Scientists" and the member for Derby South say it may already be too late.

Perhaps the contributors here are not as supine as you thought?

May 4, 2013 at 7:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterSandyS

Mike Haseler and other UKIP members

Prepare, the energy debate in the UK will come to the forefront but don't let it distract from the European elections next year.

Produce a pamphet in preparation, split it into three sections. The first section show the current state of where we are in the UK. Include quotes from the commons and the Lords from the three main parties and highlight how close they are in their policies for our needs. The second section lay down the European position include the IPCC recommendations provide quotes from the EU hardcore, highlight statements that tally with what has been stated in section one.

Section three tell the truth. Give the UKIP policy, don't embelish, don't blame, provide an alternative, be magnanimous the public are fed up with false projections, the weather will be your embelishment you can't ask for more than that. End with a challenge make it along the lines of changing the 2008 climate change act based upon scientific evidence following the 2015 elections.

Throw the gauntlet down those that understand will respond, those that don't will be intrigued. You will scare the living daylights out of the mandarins.

Be strong, be truthfull, be courageous this is your 15 minutes.... use it to the advantage of the country or follow the Green party.

May 4, 2013 at 7:48 PM | Unregistered CommenterLord Beaverbrook

Sorry to have offended anyone with the slur of inaction, but… No – you have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend! I am NOT sorry! I am glad that I have turfed some of you out into admitting that you are doing more to alert others, change or stop this government’s debacle on the myth of approaching catastrophe.

Well done you!

However, we must try harder – brow-beat your family and friends to vote UKIP whenever they can (failing that, ANY other party but LibLabCon). Better still, join UKIP, and trudge the streets, collaring the disaffected, and enlighten them.

May 4, 2013 at 8:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterOddnojob

I have it on good authority that UKIP will be - no, I cannot say any more.

May 4, 2013 at 10:27 PM | Registered CommenterPhillip Bratby

I emailed UKIP to point out the opportunity presented by the insane energy policies of the other parties. I never got a reply.

The MSM probably has the greatest chance of publicly ridiculing climate/energy policies. Booker does a great job but I have not been able to discover whether he has much impact beyond his followers (of which I am one)

David Rose did seem to create some impact with his piece in the Mail. Sadly, the other papers are either dedicated warmists or unwilling to rock the boat.

May 4, 2013 at 10:31 PM | Unregistered CommenterSchrodinger's Cat

Great news Phillip :)

May 5, 2013 at 5:39 PM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

isn't it ironic that some may be getting "cold feet" :-)

May 5, 2013 at 10:52 PM | Unregistered Commenterdougieh

Schrodinger's Cat
My UKIP Euro Parliament member sent me lots of material including a DVD on various campaigns against windfarms, this was a couple of years ago.

May 5, 2013 at 10:58 PM | Unregistered CommenterSandyS

I'm reminded of an e-mail I got from a minion at the DECC in response to a letter from me about the lunacy of wind farms. I quote: 'The wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK..'
This, my friends, is supposed to be the ENERGY policy of Her Majesty's government...

May 6, 2013 at 1:05 PM | Unregistered Commentersherlock1

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