Bishop Hill IPPR admits renewables hit the poor hardest
Jun 17, 2015 Energy: wind Greens The Institute for Public Policy Research has published a series of policy proposals to try to deal with the adverse impact of renewable energy on the poor - the very policies they have been advocating for years. Yes, without even so much as a murmur of an apology, they have admitted that the renewables are indeed hitting the poorest hardest, although without the gumption to also admit the beneficiaries are the wealthy.
Their proposals include ideas like doing more onshore wind rather than offshore and trying to reduce the cost of nuclear by getting the public sector to own the new capacity, a suggestion that does rather seem to fly in the face of bitter experience.
As you can see, these ideas could best be categorised as "transferring a bit less money from rich to poor" and thus miss the point that forced transfers of wealth from poor to rich are not exactly ethical.
But it's a start I suppose.
Reader Comments (27)
"transferring a bit less money from rich to poor"
From poor to rich I think is what you intend.
But it's a start I suppose
It's a start but heading backwards
Wow! Next, they will be revealing that they found where bears go to poo.
RR: They couldn't find it: they can't see the woods for the trees...
Even back as far as 2003 when I worked in the wind business I was shocked by the way the policy seemed to me to be a "welfare to the rich" scheme. Frankly it was because I hated the way the wind policy adversely impacted the poor and so benefited the rich and because not a single Scottish politician cared a damn about the harm it did to the poor - that I became so disillusioned with what I later learnt was the scam.
I don't know whether politicians - particularly on the left - are just blind, heartless or whether they are all on the take, but I just cannot explain why they have so enthusiastically pushed a policy that has been so detrimental to the poor and elderly.
There have been one million extra winter deaths in the UK alone since this scam started
... but our greedy or heartless or gullible or corrupt ... or whatever the reason they don't care ... politicians have done nothing except attack those like us who try to highlight this scam.
Totally sickening - I'm sick to death of "left wing politicians" - who only seem to be in politics for themselves and do nothing for the poor and working classes except use them as voting fodder.
Radical Rodent:
They reveal that they have finally noticed what we have been saying about expensive renewable energy. Their concern is not with the poor, but with a backlash against the Government throwing money away, thus reducing the subsidies. Without subsidies wind (and solar) farms will crumble into dust.
Re: Harry Passfield
> RR: They couldn't find it: they can't see the woods for the trees...
They couldn't find the woods because they have chopped them down and burnt them in the power stations.
@ TerryS: Ah, but not our woods, we get the Shermans to cut great swathes of their own woods down, mulch it, then transport it thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Eurpoe, where we then burn in in biomass power stations, emitting oodles of CO2 into the atmosphere, you know it makes sense! ;-)
TerryS: that immediately raised a picture in my mind of a hapless bear sitting on the pan (an old-fashioned one, with the chain dangling from the cistern),
Lewloo roll inhandpaw, a stunned look on its face as it is exposed by the last tree falling. I wish I could draw as well as Josh, it would be a good picture to share.Alan the Brit: Eurpoe? Is that a typo? Or did you mean Eurpoo?
Cameron should reopen all those great big lovely Welsh coal mines, this putting a large chunk of Labour voters back o work.
Once done the Tories should be shameless about how it was Labours energy policies that ensured the Welsh would never work again and how it was the Tories energy policies that put them back to work!
Mailman
The IPRR is a left wing think tank, which is a bit of an oxymoron.
They say the obvious, which even George Monbiot was stating in March 2010 ahead of the Feed-in-Tariff being introduced on 1st April 2010 by Miliband. He was condemning the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace for supporting this Labour 'reverse Robin Hood' tax on the poor. It was one of the very few occasions when I agreed with the moonbat.
I heartily endorse the MikeHaseler view on this and I cannot understand the green stance. I can only assume it's middle class self hatred for having a comfortable life, whilst the rest of the world starved. Students in the 1970's and 80's were exposed to the images of starving people and made to feel responsible by the likes of geldorf, and his Holiness 'sting'.
'although without the gumption to also admit the beneficiaries are the wealthy.'
Indeed like the PM's father in law who pockets over 300,000 a year in 'subsidies' , in fact when you consider who actual owns most of the upland areas which used to build the wind subsides milking mechanisms you find a list of the type of of wealthy and 'ennobled' that aee usual hated by the greens and the left . Despite the fact many leaders of the greens and the left could will fit on that list, but such hypocrisy has never been a problem.
Gummer and friends jumped on the 'renewable ' bandwagon has it was a good way to make easy cash.
While it is an industry that like any other is out to maximise its profits, the great con job has been to sell itself has somehow a bit 'hippy and green ' becasue it is involved in 'renewable' .
When in pratice it behaves like any other commercial organisation,for example has no issues at all with using its wealth to legally bully local opposition in a manner normal condemn by Greenpace , etc when others do it .
@ Radical Rodent: Yes a typo it was, & I did mean Eurpoo!, Alan Hannaford.
Harry Passfield:
They can't see the woods because they've all been chopped down for woodburners. If they'd studied history they would know that the first energy crisis in our islands was caused by a shortage of firewood - which was why we developed coal.
confused - what annoys me most is that I'm not the right person to speak up for the working class. But the injustice is so obvious and the heartless attitude of left wing politicians is so galling that whilst I wait hoping someone better will speak out - I often find I just cannot contain myself at this clear injustice.
How many labour politicians are there in the country? What on earth are they being paid for? Surely even one of them has the gumption to see the way this scam hits the poorest people in society and benefits the rich?
What is it about the left that makes them so gullible on this?
Radical Rodent, Alan the Brit
Typoo?
"The costs of the government’s low-carbon programme are falling disproportionately on low-income groups. People within the lowest income decile – that is, the poorest 10 per cent of households – are spending 1.7 per cent of their income on energy policies. This is six times greater than those in the highest income decile, who contribute just 0.3 per cent of their income."
For how long have Bish and Ridley been making this point? Maybe somebody can dig out the early blog posts.
Here's a related one from 2011: Britain's neo-medieval green policy robs the poor to pay the rich.
I have an aquaintance on FB who is radically left-wing, but he can afford to be, & with equal enthusiasm for the Green Blob. When I ask him, after his frequent posts on all things Green, WWF, Redwar, FoE, EU Greenalism et al, how he feels about rich folks like Daddy-in-law Cam earning what to all intents & purposes, in what I call the reverese Robin Hood effect, apparently I now see £300,000 (thought it was £200,000/annum) per annum in taxpayers dosh, robbing from the poor & giving to the rich, he goes all coy & rather relunctant to respond, only to post yet another Big Green message from said pushers! Ah I rather like that, call the greeny promoters "pushers", a bit analagous with drug pushers, no perhaps not, I wouldn't want to stoop to their level of name-calling!
The first sentence of the full report claims that
"To date there has been insufficient debate about the dramatic rise in charges on
energy bills that is set to take place over the next decade to fund progress on low-
carbon and social policies."
That illustrates what a blinkered, insular echo chamber these people inhabit.
But, but, but... According to an article in the DT yesterday (or day before?) solar is now so cheap, and getting ever cheaper, that it can more than pay for itself without any subsidy. So we are saved! I think it was coincidence that the article was written by a representative of the solar industry...
Have IPPR actually admitted their mistake and what they are going to do about it?
They could have an inquest to identify the sequence of mistakes and personalities that led to this tragedy, so that they, and society can learn, and prevent it from happening again.
Jun 17, 2015 at 1:14 PM | Registered CommenterPaul Matthews
They obviously missed this example then.
"What should be done? My own Labour Party is rightly attached to environmental values and should continue so, but in a balanced way and not with excessive green faith and global warming ideology. It should remember our historic concern for jobs and
14 May 2013 : Column 319
not damage the competitiveness of the economy, and it should show concern for poor people freezing in winter with rocketing energy bills. Labour should be wary of elitist green policies which pay rich Scottish and Welsh landowners and big corporations billions, derived from green taxes on ordinary people in tower blocks in Glasgow, to rent out their estates for wind farms. This could involve the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since the 18th century enclosures. It is not clear to me that it should be a central Labour policy.
As for the Government, the Prime Minister should remove Liberal Democrat Ministers of extreme faith from the energy department. Right now, he should ensure that the Energy Bill meets Britain's critical energy needs and stop littering our countryside with a blight of windmills.
Finally, for the wider issues of climate change, the importance of which I do not deny but the causes of which are not scientifically clear, we should monitor climate developments in a measured and non-ideological way. We should react on proven evidence, not on hysterical alarmism and not by assuming that Britain, with barely 2% of the world's carbon emissions, should lead some imperial moral mission to save the planet, and certainly not by damaging our economy and the living standards of our people. That is not the responsibility of any sensible and mature Government."
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhansrd/text/130514-0002.htm
The IPPR were also I believe involved with the Tyndall Centre producing a brainwashing guide called "warm words".
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wp58.pdf
Mike Haseler,
What woke me up a few years ago was a footpath -- the law as it then stood meant that only the flimsiest evidence was required to open a footpath. the landowner then had to prove the negative, a notoriously difficult task. We won but it cost us a total of £25,000 in legal fees. Thoroughly awake, I kept researching footpath law and found that while even Wedgie Benn got had by a path on the edge of his estate, his was closed immediately because, well, you can't have one of the red barons inconvenienced by the great unwashed. I then tried to reopen Watling St where it runs through the Palace of Westminster to such effect that the Deregulation Act 2015 section 7 now changes the burden of proof.
We are ruled by a class that has loyalty only to itself, left or right makes no difference, they close ranks and defend each other when there is any chance that someone's snout might be forcibly moved from the trough.
I've now been a UKIP county councillor for two years. We fought a wind turbine above Haverhill and beat it -- at least until it was appealed, we're waiting for that result. Only UKIP fights for the little people, only we have any idea how badly the poor and old and sick are being exploited by the green blob.
On the hustings for the GE I met a farmer who was incensed by my opposition to wind farms. Apparently the money flows from the poor to him, then it trickles down into the local economy. Yeah, right. He's an upright, independent citizen, self-reliant and proud, how dare i suggest otherwise and, while we're here, why can't he get bigger subsidies?
Or, to sum up. don't blame me, I stood for UKIP.*
JF
*Came second with over 20% of the vote.
@ MikeHaseler
> What is it about the left that makes them so gullible on this?
As I've commented before, the key to understanding leftoid ideology is "Noble Cause Corruption"
If one believes oneself to be on the Side of the Angels, anything becomes both permissable and moral
At the bottom, it's just monstrous vanity, of course
Ian18888. - Agree totally. But they ensure everyone knows about their moral superiority otherwise, to them, what's the point?
Best description I saw was "Ostentatious Piety".