Wednesday
Oct142015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Anti-everything Joss the boss
Oct 14, 2015 Energy: gas Greens Labour Utility week is reporting that Joss Garman is going to move from the woolly-left IPPR to become head of policy for Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate minister. Garman has come a long way since he organised mass-trespass and criminal damage at airports.
His stance on energy should provide everyone with plenty of entertainment. He is anti-nuclear, anti-coal and anti-gas, for example, leading one to wonder if Labour's policy on energy security is going to involve a great deal of finger-crossing.
He also has an eyebrow raising attitude to factual accuracy. Take for example this piece, about alleged risks of "explosions" under houses located near unconventional gas wells:
;)
Reader Comments (31)
It would appear that Ms Nandy's definition of "polluting energy" is somewhat limited, with visual landscape defiling excluded!
"Lisa Nandy": my wife and I find that we've moved from knowing people in our youth who went on to become politicians, to knowing people in our youth whose children have gone on to be politicians. Oh woe. In this case we are not impressed by our friend's spawn. Oh woe, woe, and thrice woe.
I would have thought that even Corbyn would have preferred someone who had an inkling of what he was talking about?
To paraphrase the Sun's headline about Kinnock, 'the last person to leave Britain' won't have to turn out the lights.
So Joss Garman will be head of policy for Lisa Nandy, shadow Energy and Climate Minister. And "Garman has come a long way since he organised mass-trespass and criminal damage at airports." Actually no he hasn't. He joins a team headed by her boss Jeremy Corbyn, the terrorist sympathising 1970s neo-marxist. Perhaps Corbyn will ask his friends the IRA how to blow up a few power stations to rub our noses in diversity of power supply?
Much of the "fierce opposition" is coming from people living nowhere near proposed drilling sites.
For those that do live near, their first intimation that something is happening will be when they're caught up in an anti-drilling campaign on social media or in person.
"Exploding" rock under homes doesn't happen in gas/oil wells. It happens all the time when building railway tunnels so I look forward to your man's campaign against railways.
You have to laugh at activists who oppose all fossil-fuels trying to sound authoritative when talking about the business side of E&P companies.
"The nosedive in the price of oil" that he cites has happened precisely because of fracking. Let's hear him explain that as a bad thing.
Do politicians not worry about the lights going out, until they actually do?
"Britain's power generation capacity is dangerously low and the country risks blackouts for the first time in a generation, with experts warning the problem is a consequence of the drive to a low carbon economy."
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3267711/Winter-blackout-fear-reserves-run-Osborne-s-green-taxes-blamed-power-supplies-falling-danger-level.html
Under Corbyn, New Revised Old Labour are making the Conservative's wish-list for a happy Christmas, come true.
Lisa Nandy has boosted her chance of being seen as a worthy successor to Corbyn, before the next election, and making Cameron's successor a happy person too.
Don B
Maybe after some blackouts this winter, some reality may set in? No I do not think so either.
Golf charlie, I can only assume that you never lived through the 1970s as an adult. The ruthless infiltration behaviour of the extreme left (various shades of marxism) nearly captured Labour, and effectively dictated much of the country's policies via the unions. Only a few brave trades unionists like Frank Chapple managed to resist.
Jeremy Corbyn is straight out of that era, and has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Corbyn is currently flushing out moderates from the PLP to consolidate his power base. Unfortunately Labour voters are so tribal they would vote for a donkey with a red rosette - old joke I know, but it means it won't take much to fool them, and Corbyn is devious enough to do just that.
And meanwhile smug idle modern Tories think the joke is on Labour: they have no idea how much effort it took to stop the country becoming the People's Democratic Republic of Britain, and all that would have followed, in the 1970s. People like Garman, with his background, fits smoothly into what Corbyn is re-creating now. People on the left, who know what Corbyn is, need help not ridicule.
Eco-scares are great for headlines, and it is scarcely surprising that so many journalists are surfing on the waves they produce. But I wish they wouldn't take themselves as seriously as they seem to do. They are become as crusaders in their own eyes, and that is just a bit tiresome when so little of drama-worthy substance has been found in one eco-scare after another.
Does torching the shops in a high street count as keeping the lights on (a bit)? You know, as they do!
Baroness Bryony [Greenpi$$] Worthington, wrote the 2008 climate change act for Red ED, I doubt very much if Joss bless his green cotton socks can better that.
This is worth a watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzFqjfgbKBg
By his edict, if you want to attend Paris 2015 you'll have to travel by train or boat.
Obviously very earnest and excitable, but not the brightest shilling in the box
@ 'a great deal of finger-crossing'/'maybe some blackouts this winter', see todays Private Eye.
" Papers seen by Private Eye indicate that the Cabinet Office and Treasury combined are planning for a scenario in which there is a five-day nationwide blackout with only small standby generators working. The detailed consequences they envisage include:
> No landline telephones available to businesses or homes
> Mobile phones with voice-only service (not data)
> No street lights, traffic lights or public transport
> Two-thirds of petrol stations closed
> Shops open only sporadically and unreliably
> ATMs unavailable, with cash fast running out
This would most probably happen in winter. It goes without saying that such a situation would also bring about ghastly accidents and loss of life, with the emergency services much constrained in their ability to cope. The implications for industry, commerce and public order are grim, too." Etc etc.
Budgie, I was born in the early 60s, so as a child/teenager I remember the destruction of the centre/left by the extreme left, and how it paved the way for Thatcher. I remember how Kinnock took on Derek Hatton, and ultimately paved the way for Blair.
I am on balance, to the right of centre, but would prefer to see some credible form of opposition. Even the BBC has started to realise that Corbyn is killing Labour's chances.
I do respect trades unions and their members, however the Trades Union Barons chose Corbyn, for self betterment, not the betterment of their members. Those MP's that have now chosen to join Corbyn's shady cabinet deserve the fury of other Labour MP's, and it is already bubbling away.
When I was a mine surveyor we were literally exploding coal under people's homes. We were also drilling ahead and extracting methane gas to sell to the local gas board. We survived.
@Capell: As you rightly point out, he isn't the brightest shilling in the box!
Pah! Who needs gas? Or Coal?. Or nuclear? Nasty smelly polluting old fashioned sources of power.
Plenty of other cheap and plentiful energy sources for an energy hungry modern economy with 60 million people such as Britain. Plenty. Lots and lots. Too many to enumerate.
Joss Garman is bound to have a clever plan. Just ask him about the vast range of other sources of power.
tonyb
Garman is the ultimate trust fund enviro wurzel. His employer, the IPPR is a very dirty, right wing, New Labour cesspit that orchestrated a cavalcade of lies about global warming back in the days when people actually cared.
The Institute for Public Policy Research
The IPPR, a New Labour think tank has over 400 publications on global warming
http://www.ippr.org.uk/search/?title=climate&Submit=search
Here is some professional prepared material designed to destroy climate debate.
Figure 2 is a representation of the possible evolution of the climate change discourse. If it is right, it suggests that there is value in helping to ‘quieten’ the discourse, taking it out of argumentative mode. AsFuterra has suggested, we need to ‘forget the climate change detractors’ (Futerra Sustainability Communications Ltd 2005: 6) and work to establish a new form of common sense. In this new popular consensus, the taken-for-granted nature of climate change is treated as being beyond argument. In other words, there is no need to discuss it – we can just get on and do what is required.
http://www.ippr.org.uk/ecomm/files/warm_words.pdf
This one consists of instructions to counteract specific arguments.
http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=2240
This is on another subject but reveals a lot about the IPPR
"Commission on National Security in the 21st Century from the Institute for Public Policy Research
Supporting the Commission
ippr would like to thank the following organisations, who are supporters of all the Commission's activities:
EDS
Raytheon
We would also like to thank the following for their support of specific research streams feeding into the Commission’s deliberations:
UK Department for International Development – conflict prevention and peacebuilding
Swedish Foreign Ministry - conflict prevention and peacebuilding
Booz Allen Hamilton – energy security and protection of critical national infrastructure
De La Rue – borders and identity management
http://www.ippr.org.uk/security/index.asp?id=3109
Joss Garman has decided his future is better with Nandy under Corbyn, than IPPR, and Corbyn is impressed with what Garman has done for IPPR.
This will be filed under Good News, by many people, though not necessarily in the Labour Party.
RE Private Eye
If there is a five day blackout NOTHING will work as we are all so reliant on computers these days.
Senior Panjandrum to PM Camoron...........
Panjandrum, "Britain, the authorities will not be able to contain the breakdown of public order after a five day blackout, the police service at best can barely control large protest gatherings......."
Dave, "Put the Army on the streets then"
Panjandrum, "excellent idea in theory prime minister"
Dave, "in theory?"
Panjandrum, "indeed prime minister the putting the British army on the streets is a good idea but........."
Dave, "but what?"
Smiles Panjandrum........"you cut our army to the bone prime minister, at best we have only a division and some few volunteers"
Dave, is red faced and grunts sheepishly..............
Panjandrum, "I'll get the staff to pack your bags - I'd go somewhere far away prime minister - for your own safety. Because, people will blame you and without law and order - Britain is a perfectly awful place. PDQ, I'm off to my villa in the Turks and Caicos - the family gold, pension, memsahib, servants, nannies and kids are already there - what!".
Dave, "jolly good show - eh Jeremy..................oops!"
So, IPPR is not woolly left. It's EDS, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, military, intelligence, hardcore New Labour.
esmiff, IPPR is desperate for someone, anyone, to like them. Outside the BBC and Guardian, nobody could give a flying hockey stick, for another quango with charitable status.
golf charlie
IPPR is obviously part of the British security state in some way. The overt propaganda and connection to the American security state are clear. It's a bizarre organisation. There's a host of pages like this.
"UK Secretary Of State For Defence John Hutton Address To IPPR
But, today we must also contend with threats from organisations who pose not a challenge to our borders but instead our way of life. Whether they are groups operating in the UK, or in the border areas of the FATA, we need to find ways of disrupting their ability to recruit and function.
The military have a role to play in this as do our security services, police forces, voluntary organisations, and community leaders. Tackling this requires us to work together across departments and across communities."
http://www.acronym.org.uk/proliferation-challenges/nuclear-weapons-possessors/united-kingdom/uk-secretary-state-defence-john-hutton-address-ippr?page=1
It's also where the global warming debate and tactics were framed back then.
Does he use Joss sticks to keep warm?
esmiff may, like Rip van Winkle, have spent the last twenty years fast asleep, or he may imagine that Rip van Winkle is a high-up functionary in the "American security state". This is obviously OT, so I'm not going to dwell on it here, but he seems to imagine that John Hutton was involved in some evil conspiracy. My guess is that, until esmiff Googles it, straight after reading this and dabbing the freetrade coffee from his Che t-shirt, he won't have a clue what FATA even stands for. John Hutton's writings on the First World War have been well-received. I suppose that makes him part of the "British security state". Since esmiff describes the obviously left-leaning IPPR as "right wing", that puts him, presumably, somewhere near Pol Pot.
Owen Morgan
Like a well balanced, centrist drummer, you seem to be dribbling out of both sides of your mouth.
I merely used the Hutton speech, one of a large number of such documents to show that there seems to be a strong focus on national security at IPPR.
I wrote
'So, IPPR is not woolly left. It's EDS, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, military, intelligence, hardcore New Labour.'
I stand by that. These are/were major American military related contractors who were described as partners of IPPR.
EDS - mega computer contractor - most of EDS's clients were very large companies and governments that need services from a company of EDS's scale
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. - Its core business is the provision of management, technology and security services, to civilian government agencies, as a security and defense contractor[5] to defense and intelligence agencies, and to civil and commercial entities
The Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007. Raytheon is the world's largest producer of guided missiles.
Why would some nice, harmless, little left wing talking shop be dealing within Raytheon ?
As someone nearly as old as Comrade 'daft old boy on a bike', Corbyn, I do regard New Labour as a Murdoch connected, right wing organisation, yes.
Yes, we have Google searchin Paisley, arrived last year. However, I did notice that a large, private road did not allow Google Street map in. We're not commies here.
Around 10 years ago I noticed that IPPR was the source of a huge amount of global warming material quoted in the Guardian. They published several reports and at least two books on the subject.
http://www.ippr.org/publications/a-brighter-future
They seemed to be leading the (Labour) government promotion of it. Naturally curious, I discovered a strong focus on national security. This was obviously a quasi official New Labour policy team. That's it.
On BH too.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/9/1/ippr-does-climate-and-energy.html