No room for St Jeremy - Josh 379

Another completely off topic Corbyn cartoon - he is a bit of a gift really and I couldn't resist. 

H/t to Marcus Leroux and The BBC

Cartoons by Josh

Playing the Lead - Josh 378

Please note, no actual Labour Leaders were harmed during the making of this cartoon.

Cartoons by Josh

Anti-everything Joss the boss

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:

Lucas to DECC?

Guido has just tweeted a rumour that Corbyn is to appoint Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to the DECC portfolio. If true, that should go down like a lead balloon with ambitious Labour party backbenchers.

I assume it's not true though.

Update on Sep 14, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Indeed, it was a bit unlikely wasn't it? The dear leader has filled the DECC shadow role with Lisa Nandy, an MP with little or no previous interest in the subjects of energy or climate.

Red, but not green?

The somewhat bizarre decision of the Labour party to elevate Jeremy Corbyn to the position of supreme leader (or is it "beloved" leader?) has prompted me to take a look at his positions on climate and energy. It's fair to say although he's a keen cyclist and doesn't own a car, green issues seem not to be at the forefront of his thinking. Indeed his major policy position in this area - the renationalisation of the power companies - seems unrelated to any concerns about the environment.

You get a similar impression by looking at his website, where there is not exactly a plethora of climate-related material, and there is not even a category for energy.

Still, he's a politician, so his own views on issues may not actually be a good guide to what he decides to put on the Labour party menu for the next election - that of course will be dictated by what he thinks will go down well with target groups of voters.

Update on Sep 14, 2015 by Bishop Hill

The ECIU has this quote.

"We can overcome the challenge of climate change and build a sustainable future – but not if we leave power in the hands of corporations only interested in short-term profit. We need democratic government acting in the long-term interests of people, not husky-hugging photo opportunities."

I'm not sure this changes my impression very much.

Greenpeace and the Labour party

David Rose has an explosive story about David Mills, the husband of Labour party bigwig Tessa Jowell. It is damning for Mills, who seems to be linked to a major money launderer and to "a criminal network dumping toxic and radioactive waste in the oceans". 

What caught my eye about the story was that this was all uncovered by a team at Greenpeace. Rose takes up the story:

The report into the dumping of illegal toxic waste, seen by this newspaper, was the work of a three-year probe by a team from Greenpeace International. It said Mills – whom it described as ‘a figure of substance in the London legal profession’ – set up UK companies owned by Swiss financiers who funded this illegal trade.

Click to read more ...

Does Labour hate the North?

I missed this news a couple of days back, but it's quite an interesting as a demonstration of the results of the Climate Change Act and the duplicity of the political classes:

Yorkshire’s coal mine to close

More than 400 people are expected to lose their jobs due to the closure of the Hatfield Colliery in South Yorkshire.

It is closing 14 months earlier than scheduled.

According to trade union Prospect, 420 “high-skilled” jobs and further jobs in the supply chain will be lost.

Click to read more ...

Andy Microband Burnham

The news that unconventional gas has become an issue in the Labour party leadership campaign is interesting. Andy Burnham is generally seen as something of a moderniser - he has proposed abolishing inheritance tax and tough law and order policies among other things. However, he has also been associated with the Brownite left from time to time and might therefore be best seen as being a man of flexible principles.

It's hard therefore to know what to make of his decision to come out against unconventional gas, apart from observing that his comments on the subject - saying we need stronger evidence of its safety, and that licences are handed out "like confetti" - suggest that he is quite remarkably ill-informed.

Click to read more ...

Rebecca Roache's potty time

Readers may remember a paper I wrote about a few years back which considered whether the human race shouldn't biomedically modify itself to have a smaller impact on Gaia. This tinkering with a kind of eco-eugenics was the stuff of 15-minute headlines, and was quickly forgotten, but one of the paper's author's came to my attention again over the weekend when Maurizio tweeted about her ramblings in the wake of the election result. Here's her considered view of Cameron's victory, published at the Practical Ethics blog of the University of Oxford:

One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them. (Thankfully, none of my friends ‘like’ the UKIP page.) Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views, even if it’s just online...

I don’t want to be friends with racists, sexists, or homophobes. And I don’t want to be friends with Conservatives either.

There is some interesting discussion in the comments as to whether her astonishing bigotry makes it impossible for anyone of right-wing political views to attend Ms Roache's course. Last week, someone helpfully pointed out to me that something like 90% of UK academics have left-wing views of one kind or another. That being the case, and in the light of the kind of behaviour described above, what future is there for the universities?

Labour's energy solution

Nick Butler in the FT reports that Labour's big brains (allegedly) Ed Balls has come up with an innovative solution for the impending energy crisis: a new layer of bureaucracy in the shape of an energy security board.

Details are, according to the FT, "sketchy" and I'm certainly somewhat uncertain whether a group of environmentalists and Labour party stooges are going to achieve anything beyond the inflation of their own bank balances. Nevertheless, Butler seems to think it's a step in the right direction:

The complexity of the challenge is why a security board is potentially a good idea as part of a much needed renewal of energy policy.

You would have thought that the FT would have understood that when you are in a complex situation, the last thing you need are freeloading bureaucrats.

Labour's energy wheeze

The election is approaching and politicians across the land are trying to outbid one another their attempts to come up with the most eye-catching (for which you should read "foolish") wheezes for the future of the country. Ed Miliband is something of an expert when it comes to foolish and he and his sidekick Caroline Flint - the Dastardly and Muttley of the energy debate - have decided that the way forward is to have prices in the energy market set by a bureaucrat.

A Labour government would give the energy regulator new powers to force firms to cut electricity and gas, Ed Miliband will say.

It follows Mr Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices for two years if he is elected.

The Labour leader will use a speech to say that if he wins the election he will pass a new law giving Ofgem a “legal duty to ensure fair prices this winter”.

It's stupidity piled on foolishness piled on insanity. It's bonkers, all the way down.

Another line for Gordon's political epitaph

Having used his time in office to slap a supertax on the oil industry, Gordon Brown is now demanding massive state intervention to fend off the collapse of the North Sea drilling industry:

He is suggesting a number of measures that he said could help the industry, including;

• A North Sea reserve to maintain and upgrade essential infrastructure and to provide "last-resort" debt finance for companies who want to keep fields open.
• UK government co-investment through public-private partnerships.
• Government loans.
• And advance purchase agreements.

Mr Brown said: "In the most extreme cases, to avoid the field being mothballed in its entirety, the government could go into partnership for a take-over of the field.

"If it is temporarily abandoned, the government should act to ensure that sometime in the future it is possible to come back and exploit the oil.

To be fair, the situation has not been helped by low oil prices, but I think it's fair to say that the political establishment had pretty much done for the North Sea already. That, I suppose, needs to be added to the list of misdemeanours on several political epitaphs, including the particularly lengthy list of Mr Brown's.

Money talks

Two related stories caught my eye over the last couple of days, which seem to put our choices at election time in a fairly stark light.

At Guido's we learn that David Cameron has received a donation from one of the partners in his father-in-law's windfarm venture.

Meanwhile, the Times (£) reports that Labour have secretly told windfarm businesses that subsidies will flow unabated should they win the election. Indeed there seems to be a suggestion that the flood of money will turn into a tsunami.

A vote for either seems to be a vote to have your wallet emptied.

Climate change and the left

This comment on why the left has fallen head over heels in love with global warming ideology was left on the discussion board by Lord Donoughue. I thought it worth of promotion to a full post.

The issue of why the political left is overwhelmingly supportive of the climate change alarmist ideology/faith, and hence there are relatively few left wing sceptics, is quite complex and would take more space and time than I intend to impose on you here. But may I, as a lifelong Labour supporter, offer a couple of broad observations. They are by no means comprehensive and omit many nuances. But they are major general factors which I have observed in the party for 61 years, and in Parliament for almost 30 years.

Click to read more ...

Joel Barnett

It's sometimes said that climate change scepticism is a right-wing thing and that everyone who opposes the global warming movement prays to Margaret Thatcher each night.

Joel Barnett, who passed away recently, was one man who gave the lie to that absurd conspiracy theory. Better known as the author of the "Barnett formula" by which public spending is apportioned between the different parts of the UK, he was a lifelong Labour supporter and latterly a trustee of the GWPF.

Lord Donoughue, a colleague in the Labour Party and at GWPF, has written an obituary here.