Bishop Hill The division of spoils
May 22, 2015 Climate: Parliament Guido has helpfully listed the division of select committee chairmanships between the parties for the new Parliament. The individuals concerned will have to be elected, but it's fair to say it doesn't look good so far.
Energy and Climate Change has been handed to the SNP. This should at least make for good entertainment, given that party's suicidal policies on wind power. I'm not entirely convinced that it bodes well for the future of electricity supplies in the UK.
Science and Technology is to pass to the Conservatives, having been a Labour fiefdom for a while. This could be interesting if they get someone who likes asking awkward questions, but I'm not holding my breath.
Environmental Audit stays with the Labour Party, but let's face it nobody ever listens to anything they say anyway because they only ever take evidence from greens.
I wonder if the SNP will give the chairmanship of the ECC committee to the foul-mouthed twelve-year-old they had elected this time round?
Bishop Hill
There is some speculation on Twitter that the SNP might pick Angus MP Mike Weir, a proponent of offshore wind power, and therefore a man who presumably thinks that there is a magic money tree out there somewhere.
Reader Comments (87)
There is a thread on Amber Rudd, Cameron's new Energy Minister currently on the ConservativeHome website. There are 68 comments so far and at least 90% of them are strongly sceptic.
http://www.conservativehome.com/profiles/2015/05/profile-amber-rudd-a-true-believer-in-climate-change.html#idc-cover
Forget Global warming - this is what's happening to Scotland:
"Michelle Mone quits Scotland and takes a swipe at 'SNP muppets' on Twitter
That's why we need people like Scotland's Right to stand up for the Scottish economy and against SNP global warming non-science.
esmiff:
I live in Paisley. The idea of having as 20 year old ned from Glasgow as an MP is an outrage. It was the SNP having a laugh at Douglas Alexander.
I can see your point . . . In fairness, I don't suppose it ever crossed the mind of the rabidest Nat that she'd win the seat. To stand a more worthwhile candidate against Alexander would have been a waste of the SNP's (very) limited resources. (Count how many of the SNP's new intake joined AFTER IndyRef - most of those who can read without moving their lips are already MPs or MSPs.)
As a former old-school MP, now sadly dead, explained to me after Blair's first victory, those who win seats unexpectedly, esp after a landslide, can be dangerous because they (a) have no long-term political ambitions and don't realise how much hard work the job involves and (b) though often bombastic, do everything their leadership tells them to.
(Note BTW Natty conduct at the swearing-in ceremony. For sheer childishness, it replicated that of Sheridan's SSP when it won seven Holyrood seats. Hopefully, the Nats will disappear into as much obscurity as quickly as that lot did.)
How did the SNP win all these seats when they were completely trounced in the referendum ? I really don't know. Ask Rupert Murdoch.
Some commentators were baffled at Murdoch supporting the Tories in England and Wales and the SNP in Scotland. As I saw it, his main aim was to "Get" Labour come what may not just because he supports the Tories but in revenge for Labour's (and Miliband's) role in the build-up to Leveson, the NoTW closure and so on.
Resentment against Labour up here runs, as you know, high. It has alienated the poor, treated the unions with disdain and lost the middle-class over Iraq. It has also been shamelessly snouting the trough these fifty years past. It couldn't go on for ever.
As a measure of the Labour Westminster bubble's contempt for its "grass roots", recall how Miliband, without reviewing the evidence, called the police on a leading member of a Falkirk CLP (and of the Unite union) after a drunken thug - MP Ed Joyce, who'd already quit Labour following his assault conviction - alleged CLP vote rigging. The charge was soon shown to be groundless but the damage was done. Undeterred, Miliband edged then Scottish leader Johann Lamont out of post and shoe-horned in über-Blairite (and numptie) Jim Murphy. Scottish Labour had no chance.
And, frankly didn't deserve one. We OTOH didn't - and don't - deserve the Nats. Not even the Braveheart Babe.
In the 1980s, when English cities went up in flames against Thatcher, there wasn't one single riot in Scotland.
True - but there was an effective movement against the Poll Tax that, unlike the inner-city riots, achieved political aims. Many (inluding, notoriously, former colleagues) saw it, if not as the cause of her downfall, then at least as "the beginning of the end".
So the SNP has a secret plan to be anti-green whilst talking Greener than Thou, pull the other one. They are just a bunch of opportunists who cannot run the bits they are responsible for.
JamesG, I am generally anti-Green, despite having strong environmental concerns. The way that the Green Blob have hijacked, distorted and perverted everything 'envirnmental', has made me very cautious about anything with a 'green' or 'environment' tag attached. I instinctively assume the likes of Greenpeace are lying, and they keep proving me right.
About 75% ? ish of voters will always vote the same way. The 'swingers' will generally vote with which ever lot appear to offer them, the best chance of a better future in the next few years. Not in the next decade.
The SNP took the entire swing vote, and more, by wiping out the rest. If that had been an independence vote, they would have won, and then continued to blame everything on the English. I live within 70 miles of Westminster, nobody in Westminster cares about me. I am used to it, and hence criticise all politicians. The SNP are going to blame the first past the post system on their lack of achievements. The UKIP have better grounds for complaint.
The rights and wrongs of North Sea Oil are irrelevant, if there is no means of turning fuel into power.
I have never heard of Fergus Ewing
DaveB
Murdoch doesn't just own New Labour, he helped instigate it through the BAP (Mandelson, Douglas Alexander etc.) . That's why they committed electoral suicide in Scotland.
John Pilger
The "values we share" are celebrated by a shadowy organisation that has just held its annual conference. This is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), set up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long history of supporting right-wing causes.
Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge this origin, the source of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan in 1983 for "successor generations" on both sides of the Atlantic to "work together in the future on defence and security matters". He made numerous references to "shared values". Attending this ceremony in the White House Situation Room were the ideologues Rupert Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/how-the-anglo-american-elite-shares-its-values-
see also
Friends in high places
You won't have heard of the British-American Project, but its members include some of the most powerful men and women in the UK. Officially it exists to promote the 'special relationship', but it has been described as a Trojan horse for US foreign policy. Even its supporters joke that it's funded by the CIA. Should we be worried? Andy Beckett reports
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/06/usa.politics1
There is a global warming connection. It was the infamously mega green Pew Trust who funded the BAP for American intelligence.
Climate change is an issue that you can't win. While Cameron is part of the toff greenies, he doesn't really understand it. However by now he must have an inkling that it's a money pit with no bottom and almost no chance of climbing out. Energy on the other hand is quite simple to solve, but not if you're trying to appease the CO2 gods. So the two items are now an explosive parcel to be passed on to the unwary. That way the key players never have their name linked to either issue. While the Conservatives were in union with the Lib Dems they could happily place it in their hands and step back. If it went off they could look innocent and say 'we thought we could trust them with SOMETHING.' Now, the issues are even more acute but the Conservatives are holding the parcel on their own. The only thing they can do is hope to pass responsibility onto the Energy and Climate Change Committee and say they were badly advised. Of course if things turn out ok, then they claim the firm hand on the steering wheel was their own.
golf charlie
Minor correction to your last post.
Surely you are anti-Green because of having strong environmental concerns. At least that has been my position for as long as I can remember.
My experience is that the modern environmentalist is the environment's worst enemy.
TinyCO2
You're on the wrong track. The Select Committee for Energy and Climate Change does not advise the Department of Energy and Climate Change. You are thinking of the Committee on Climate Change, chaired by the wunderkind Lord Deben aka Selwyn Gummer, which was set up under the Climate Change Act (the committee that is, not Gummer who has regrettably been around a lot longer).
The Select Committees act as "overseers" of the goverment departments, hopefully (but don't hold your breath) holding them to account for their actions.
Unfortunately this misunderstanding of the rôle and function of the two committees continues to be widespread on this blog but the UK government web site can explain everything.
Via Guido Fawkes
http://order-order.com/2015/05/22/daves-rainbow-warrior/
David Cameron’s new policy chief Camilla Cavendish is a former Greenpeace member who believes “mankind’s desperation to chase fossil fuel reserves has led us to the edge of technology and the edge of reason“. Writing in the Sunday Times back in 2013, Cavendish lavishly praised Greenpeace’s efforts to stop deep sea oil drilling and lambasted the government for not taking action:
“The less that politicians, journalists and friends talk about these issues, the more we assume they cannot really matter — since otherwise someone would do something. Experiments have shown that the inaction of other people can make us underestimate threats. We have retreated into a comfortable conspiracy of silence, which is dangerous.“
She goes on to warn how Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about 500,000 sq km a decade since 1979 and it could disappear completely by 2023. Last year Arctic ice increased significantly for the second year in a row…
Mike Jackson, yes, thank you! I even did voluntary work for the World Wildlife Fund over 30 years ago. It was to help the giant panda. Therefore I must take credit for saving the giant panda. The fact that communist China realised that breeding pandas was a goldmine, is irrelevant!
we should make sure the Scots judiciously decide amongst themselves whether they "invest" in windmill junk or other infrastructure.
Not AND AND with their tentacles in other peoples pockets, BUT here is an amount of money, make good stewardship of it on your own, in its entirety..
OWN IT, scumbags.
Barry Woods, it is reassuring to know that Cameron has another gullible greentwit. Maybe he could send her to the Arctic to verify those ice loss figures, for 2-3 years, just to make sure she understands seasonal gains and losses, and longer terms trends. Hopefully, she won't damage anything, so far away from Downing Street.
Mike Jackson, I stand corrected, but it illustrates my point about it being a money pit.
Mike Jackson, further to your useful reminder about Select Committees, being 'Overseers'. When it all goes wrong, the 'Overseers' are reknowned for having missed out things. This is not an error, but with the benefit of 20/20 vision, an 'Oversight'.
In politics, vision is everything, when you can turn a blind eye, to what you didn't see.
12:34 PM JamesG
was I being "anti-Scottish" ? pointing out deluded idiocy (and worse) - I suppose you might have a point in that criticizing a political party and its activists who won an election is a proxy for criticizing the majority of those who voted...
I have had to deal with street crowds of Saltire faced bevvied up goons on a couple of occasions in Scotland and have listened to and read about SNP policies - my takeaway from that is that if the SNP are allowed free reign there'll be hell to pay.
I think it less a pro SNP vote and more an anti status quo / Westminster shift without looking too closely at the candidates and their policies. Had there been *any* effective alternative south of the border who'd had the benefit of a recent very public "near miss" then the political landscape would've been equally transformed.
Cameron & Co are pretty much back to business as usual in London. More solar panels and offshore wind no doubt funded from your taxes and as for Amber Rudd - it seems unlikely that she'll wander far from what's already in her cv - more BS metro greenie dinner party rubbish coming down the policy chute - no doubt.
esmiff - Pew Trust stirring it - who'da thought eh?
During the Jacobite rebellion in 1745, the Scots got as far as Derby, and turned round.
In the light of recent immigration figures, could the UK Border Control Agency have a policy, of only recruiting from Derby?
To paraphrase Wilkins Micawber
Peak output twenty megawatts, peak demand nineteen point five megawatts, result happiness. Peak output twenty megawatts, peak demand twenty point five megawatts, result misery.”
tomo
From the horse's mouth.
In 1983, says Robert Smith (who is still a member of the BAP Advisory Board), the BAP proposal was "quite unusual" for Pew, because in those days almost all the trusts' work was domestic rather than international.
http://britishamericanproject.org/ourhistorypart7.asp
esmiff
WellLavishly funded American (esp. dead) philanthropic charitable trusts attract spooks & kooks in near equal measure it would seemJamesG:
A wealth fund could only be funded by borrowing more to pay for it. There is nothing to save unless you have a budget surplus, which Norway has had for a number of years. Moreover, the way that PRT was designed was essentially to hold a large decommissioning reserve in government coffers rather than on company balance sheets: that is why you now see PRT repayments in most months.
This is excellent news for all those people planning "solar farms" in the Shetlands!
Their goal is prosperity rather than austerity ...
Whose isn't?
Goals are not the issue. Everyone wants the cat belled.
Which makes your presumed point valueless. One criticises the SNP because it is neither clear that they want what they claim they want, and certainly not clear that their policies based on fantasy, have any chance of delivering it.
I suspect the political tide has changed from Blair, when appearing to have your heart in the right place while your hand was in someone else's pocket, was the height of acclaim.
esmiff:
Many thanks for those links - I'll follow them up very shortly.
ISIS claim to have access to Pakistani Nuclear Weapons.but President Obama claims Climate Change is the bigger threat to The Security of the United States.
So after Paris does the leader of the free world intend to restrict the access of Fossil Fuel to the U S Navy,. Army and Airforce and it's allies.
Cud someone answer Geckko's question from 11 44 hrs pls!
Who is "the foul mouthed 12 year old"?
May 22, 2015 at 11:44 AM | Unregistered CommenterGeckko
Fundamentally windfall petrodollars to Paki's madrassahs, blow up storms for our grandchildren.
=========
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mhairi_Black
golf charlie; May 22, 2015 at 7:57 PM:
As my pathology tutor regularly reminded us; the retrospectoscope is a wonderful device, but f*** all use to the patient.
Michael Hart...many thanks
Peter Walsh
JamesG on May 22, 2015 at 2:08 PM
"... if the UK had kept a reserve fund from oil revenues as Norway did, then the UK would not have felt the financial crisis so badly - which is undeniable."
It isn't! It doesn't make sense.
With Norway and the UK having about the same oil & gas resources, but vastly different populations (Norway: 5m, UK; 64m), Norway's oil wealth per head of population is well over TEN times the UK's. So, there's a lot less for each person.
Also, Norway, didn't have the depth of manufacturing to sustain such an injection of finance over such a short period, while the UK did, so a fund which invested abroad (not in Norway) was sensible.
And what would you have done with this 'reserve fund': leave it in a bank? :)
The fraction that the private sector was allowed to keep was used to pay for the expertise and finance needed to extract the oil. The government took the rest and two Prime Ministers, who happened to be Scottish, managed to spend it, and grabbed a chunk of the private sector pensions, so carefully saved and invested, and then spent money that no one had!
"The argument going forward is that some of the massive tax revenue should be set aside now."
It won't be massive, especially as oil prices have dropped (and only slightly recovered). In fact, there needs to be an 'adjustment' in tax rates order to encourage further North Sea oil development. There is infrastructure from the older fields, but the new discoveries are likely to be much smaller.
And how can we 'set aside revenue' when we still have a deficit, let alone debt! And we could only set aside profit, after tax! Revenue isn't profit. Maybe that is what hampers Scottish economics.
SandyS on May 22, 2015 at 11:09 PM
"To paraphrase Wilkins Micawber
Peak output twenty megawatts, peak demand nineteen point five megawatts, result happiness. Peak output twenty megawatts, peak demand twenty point five megawatts, result misery.”
That is assuming peak output and peak demand coincide, or we have improved battery technology available.
@JamesG said "The recent election only proved that Labour was now rejected in Scotland as well as Tories."
50% of voters , actually voted against the SNP
- The Tory's are really Labour-lite ..that's why we'll get green lunancy, like HS2 and the tidal barrage in Wales ..someone makes a lot of profit from all that concrete.
- I have realised something interesting about the fake narrative that we were fed "it's likely to be a Labour SNP coalition"
..while everyone was busy thinking that, it stopped the though of a Toty/UKIP coalition getting any momentum
If that alternative narrative had got momentum we might have ended up with a more rational gov
..or perhaps Labour would have gained government via the "stop UKIP" vote.
"...a man who presumably thinks that there is a magic money tree out there somewhere."
Just like the rest of the SNP, then.
God help us if these muppets get their hands on energy strategy for the entire country; but then, that's not what Select Committee chairmanships actually give them, is it? Are they not just talking shops?
So much heat...so little light.
If anyone thinks that any other party other than Ukip has a better energy policy and would be better on the said committee then there would be reason for some complaint. The SNP are the only party to have defended the oil industry, attacked dumb tory taxes that hindered oil exploration, criticised the completely obtuse and/or malevolent national grid and outright stated that we are heading for an energy crisis that needs sorted out pdq. These are the facts! All the other parties bar Ukip seem to be living in lahlah land - most especially the tories who still believe the city financiers - ie the architects of the financial meltdown - are somehow to be protected from too much regulation.
What is the SNP energy plan? Would it kill anyone to bother themselves downloading it rather than assume that Cameron and his lying ilk were actually to be believed? You would then find that they plan to rely very heavily on gas in the future - not on windmills - and they also talk about building more thermal powerplants to fill the coming energy shortfall. Of course they can't do that unless they get some control over energy policy. That they oppose nuclear power is mainly because it has been an expensive boondoggle thus far; ie it is about money - just like trident is about not wasting 100 billion on a system that will have failed should it ever be required in a time when the government ritually talk about required cuts elsewhere.
Why yes the SNP are opportunistic - no sh#t Sherlock! Again welcome to politics! Was any other party less opportunistic? And hey did it work?
But do they manage well what they control? Well the fact is that Scottish voters long feared the SNP would be fiscally irresponsible and changed their minds only gradually by witnessing the SNP in power doing a very good job. So voters finally ditched Scottish Labour puppets as well as the utterly inept tories. The notion that Scots are blindly voting for an anti-English party and ignoring fiscal concerns is entirely an anti-Scots delusion! In reality they want control over what has been blatantly mismanaged by Whitehall all this time.
And yes it is a failing of the first past the post system that they won so many seats: But who defended this system again....and who criticised it? Why funnily enough the SNP attacked it as utterly anti-democratic! Alas Tory/Labour don't really like democracy and the UK public seem too dumb to care if we judge by the turnout of the voting reform referendum.
Some of you talk about a deficit that would not have existed if the Tories and New Labour (tory-lite) had not devastated industry and favoured the ponzi-scheme city financiers - growth based entirely on house price rises and toxic debt who'd have believed that one? Better still who spoke against that Labour/Tory crass stupidity? Why the SNP did of course!
Should we compare Norway with the UK. Maybe it's a stretch but comparing Scotland to Norway is not. Hey ho - perhaps this is why SNP does exactly that.
Incidentally...
Michelle Mone: "I'm not turning my back on Scotland, I'm leaving because my career's taken off beyond my wildest dreams. She has confirmed that Ultimo HQ will remain in Scotland."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/michelle-mone-im-moving-away-from-scotland.1432197928
"This should at least make for good entertainment, given that party's suicidal policies on wind power."
Dog whistle journalism and an opportunity lost to discuss the matter more seriously. Shoddy, cheap.
Energy is not a devolved matter. The role of any Scottish government, at present, is to approve, or not, planning permission applications for energy generation plants.
The UK government has handed control over security of supply to the private sector.
EN1 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/47854/1938-overarching-nps-for-energy-en1.pdf makes it clear that the Scottish government (any Scottish government) is expected to act in accord with UK policy. Sec 1.5.2 says: "However, energy policy is generally a matter reserved to UK Ministers and thus NPS may therefore be a relevant consideration in planning decisions in Scotland."
This means that it is unlikely to the point of impossibility for a Scottish government to refuse a planning application for the construction of a nuclear power plant on ideological grounds/policy grounds. Such a decision, if made, would be open to appeal on the grounds that EN1 had not been a relevant consideration in the decision.
Sec 2.2.19 of EN1 says: "While the Government [UK] may choose to influence developers in one way or another to propose to build particular types of infrastructure, it remains a matter for the market to decide where and how to build, as market mechanisms will deliver the required infrastructure most efficiently."
Under the heading, "Meeting energy security and carbon reduction objectives" Sec 3.3.5 says: "The UK is choosing to largely decarbonise its power sector by adopting low carbon sources quickly. There are likely to be advantages to the UK of maintaining a diverse range of energy sources so that we are not overly reliant on any one technology (avoiding dependency on a particular fuel or technology type). This is why Government would like industry to bring forward many new low carbon developments (renewables, nuclear and fossil fuel generation with CCS) within the next 10 to 15 years..."
If one looks at the public statements of Mr Ewing in the Scottish Parliament they sound remarkably like what is outlined in EN1. It is trite to say that any deviations from EN1 of significance would not pass unobserved and would only cause problems for the Scottish parliament. I am at a loss to understand what is meant by the "party's [SNP] suicidal wind policies."What would be the outcome if a Scottish government refused planning applications for wind turbines for ideological/policy reasons? The policies in Scotland regarding wind energy and all other sources of energy generation come from Westminster governments and are implemented in Scotland according to those policies.
There are tensions between the two governments. The UK government favours nuclear power while the SNP government does not. It is possible that the SNP judgement is the better one.
Osborne's National Infrastructure Plan includes the building of nuclear plants at Moorfield in Cumbria, Wylfa Newydd in wales and Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The original cost of Hinkley Point c was £10 billion. Now, westminster claims it will cost £16 billion while some suggest the price may be £25 billion. The deal involves customers paying twice the current price for electricity and being locked into the deal for 35 years. Money and trees indeed.
Given the Austrian challenge to UK levels of subsidy there is no guarantee that the project will go ahead. In addition to these concerns one can add the long delays to other nuclear installations which suggest the possibility of systemic problems. Then there are safety issues and huge de-commissioning costs. Waste management is a problem - at Sellafield waste management cost £68 billion.
The Select Committe ought to be looking with urgency at the oil and gas sector. Such is the level of incompetence at Westminster that DECC has had regulation of the industry removed from it as recommended in the Wood Review last year. Osborne and Alexander have tinkered with the taxation of the industry which is now back to 2011 levels. This won't do. OIl prices have halved so a far greater reduction in tax is merited.
Implementation of the Wood Report is going to take into 2016. That may be too late. The industry needs swift action and incentive to continue to invest in the UKCS.
The SNP received 50.3 % of the votes cast in the General Election. The people of Scotland have a right to have their voices heard. More than 60% of the Scottish population wants "devo max". We will not be offered it. We will take it -one day. And Scotland's greatest challenge is not the UK energy policy, however important that may be. The resolution of that challenge requires the devolution of full fiscal autonomy and welfare powers. If you want to talk about the Scottish government's policies in the context of its place in the UK you should be looking at more than the energy policy.