Tuesday
Jun182013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Energy Bill second reading
Jun 18, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: other The second reading of the Energy Bill takes place in the House of Lords today at 3pm. From the Parliament website we learn that:
If the bill is read a second time, Baroness Verma to move that the bill be committed to a Grand Committee.
The video should be available here.
Reader Comments (16)
"to move that the bill be committed to a Grand Committee"
Is that good or bad..?
Will it be a packed chamber? Nice day in London. Bet its nearly empty.
Wind generation around 1% of demand right now.
Excerpt from 'March of the Zealots' - John Brignell March 2008 -one of the essays on the Numberwatch site.
'Every age has its dominant caste. This is the age of the zealot. Twenty years ago they were dismissed as cranks and fanatics, but now they are licensed to interfere in the every day lives of ordinary people to an unprecedented degree. When Bernard Levin first identified the new phenomenon of the SIFs (Single Issue Fanatics) many of us thought it was a bit of a joke or at most an annoyance. Now the joke is on us. In that short time they have progressed from being an ignorable nuisance to what is effectively a branch of government. They initiate legislation and prescribe taxation. They form a large and amorphous collection of groups of overlapping membership, united and defined by the objects of their hatred (industry, tobacco, alcohol, adiposity, carbon, meat, salt, chemicals in general, radio waves, field sports etc.) Their success in such a short time has been one of the most remarkable phenomena in the whole of human history...
The global warming hypothesis was a godsend to the New Left. It provided a means of attacking industry and capitalism through the one great essential to modern life, energy. Anyone who questioned the dogma was subject to insults and threats, including the appalling crudity and tastelessness of being likened to the holocaust deniers. All realistic proposals to develop workable sources of energy are bitterly opposed by the green network, while patently stupid ones, such as wind turbines, are sustained by regulation and subsidy, with the added bonus of bringing down the free market. There are related areas of activity, such as biofuels, which not only threaten the world with greenflation but also starvation.'
Jamesp asks:
That's an interesting question. Often a bill is considered by a 'Committee of the Whole House' when it reaches the Lords committee stage, but in this case they have chosen a Grand Committee. I don't know how often that happens or whether it's significant.
These are the stages of the Energy Bill:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/energy.html
This is what the parliament website says about Grand Committees:
Grand Committees: House of Lords
Jun 18, 2013 at 11:52 AM | Pharos
An excellent quote, I will copy your comment to another site if you don't mind.
Regards,
SJ
Thank you, Ruth. Surprised at Baroness V going for unanimity, but then I suppose that depends who's on the Grand Committee.. :-)
Thank you, Ruth. Surprised at Baroness V going for unanimity, but then I suppose that depends who's on the Grand Committee.. :-)
Pharos
"greenflation"
Good word.
Pharos
I am sure you are correct and a couple of factors strike me as significant in the rise of the influence of the SIF.
Once upon a time most people accepted, (or at least didn't strongly disbelieve) that their future would be best handled by one of the broad based political parties and/or one of the Trade Unions. The parties, Labour, Tory, Liberal, whatever had fairly clear and fairly active policies You pretty much picked a party and let them get on with it. People with a particular interest might press for that within a party but if it was too unpopular they wouldn't get anywhere.
As parties have become less and less relevant to most people and (especially having given up much of their real power to the EU and other pan-national bodies) aren't trusted to look after the public's best interests, or achieve much at all, people instead seek out active organizations with at least the will to do something.
Special interest groups with a will to succeed show up to meetings and present a coordinated, thought out, message. That's half the battle when most other politicians or group members don't have a strong vision themselves beyond their pay and expenses.
Secondly the internet has made it possible for people with more minority interests to organize whereas before a person may previously not have known that anyone else in the world shared their interest or even that a cause existed that they might then join.
Of course this can be good or bad. Before the internet many of us on this site might not have known that anyone at all was questioning the CAGW theory - I would certainly have had to look very hard to find mention of it in the print media or TV I mainly got my news from.
Its just too painful to watch.
Pharos
just read March of the Zealots. Sums up very well what I have been trying to articulate. It's always nice to see you are not alone.
Thanks, all those who picked up on the John Brignell quote. I formerly thought his Numberwatch site was mainly confined to just lighthearted parady and only accidentally discovered his literary prowess and his talent for detecting a broad spectrum of politico-scientific mischief. He's actually been latched on to these mischiefs for a very long time, warning us about abuse of agenda-based statistics and so on. He's a retired Prof and award winning pioneer in industrial instrumentation, got a wiki entry, written a couple of popular books and several essays. He's a fearless dodgy science whistleblower like Christopher Booker unafraid of stepping into the politically correct minefields with guns blazing.
What a corrupt academic and political era this is.
I watched about half an hour of this and found it excruciating. Worse than one of those nightmares when you wake up and know when reason kicks in that that could never happen in real life. Except it is happening, you are awake, the nightmare is for real.
I switched on towards the end and got just a couple of speeches besides the summers-up. Lord Greenway was interesting. I haven't bio'd him yet, but assume he has some nautical experience, as he was very scathing about offshore wind and wave energy (but seemed to think tidal's OK). I'm going to look up the written record when its out.
Apart from that, very depressing. Why do so many posters on this blog and the others I visit think it's just about all over? The powers-that-be don't seem to think so and the Lords debate reinforced the feeling that it's full steam ahead, all £110billions' worth.
There was lots of glory for Lords like Deben, Stern, Oxburgh and Prescott (Prescott?? - what??), whereas the contributions of Lords Ridley and Lawson were dismissed out of hand, as the Science is Settled, dontcha know?
Delingpole's summed it up nicely in a tweet.
'Unutterable bollox.'
Lord Ridley's speech is worth a read; he summarises the monumental folly of this bill very clearly and succinctly. It is posted over at GWPF.