From The GWPF, newsbytes on the subject of UK Businesses Threaten To Flee Abroad To Escape Green Energy Levies
British industry’s ability to compete with companies overseas is under threat from punitive green energy costs, the new president of the CBI has told The Sunday Telegraph. Sir Roger Carr warns in an interview that the Coalition must give “some sort of support” over rising energy costs to UK manufacturers or else risk seeing businesses relocate abroad with the consequential loss of jobs. His comments – ahead of a CBI energy conference on Tuesday – come amid growing concern over the cost of renewable energy subsidies and so-called ‘green stealth taxes’. —The Sunday Telegraph, 12 June 2011
The CBI and Britain’s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed UK “carbon floor” tax (unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU’s various “anti-carbon” policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs. Sooner or later, politicians must emerge with the sense and the courage to question this madness – as many other people are now beginning to do. But there is little sign of their emergence yet. —Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 June 2011
The Coalition’s obsession with climate change is damaging Britain’s recovery from recession, former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson warns today. Writing in the Daily Mail, Lord Lawson delivers a scathing assessment of David Cameron’s so-called ‘green agenda’ and says it is ‘time this Government grew up’. Lord Lawson, one of the most respected Tory figures of recent decades, accuses the Prime Minister of risking Britain’s economy to make a ‘symbolic’ point. In a devastating verdict he writes: ‘The Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on. It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”. —Nigel Lawson, Daily Mail, 11 June 2011
It is time for Britain to walk away from its ridiculously stringent renewable energy plan.
This whole story is an instructive and depressing example of what happens when consensus rules. “The science is settled” was the line, and our politicians, few of them any more scientific than you or I, fell in with it. It was once famously said that, for evil to prosper, it is necessary only for good people to do nothing. But the peculiar hypocrisy of modern culture is such that it is when our leaders rush around trying most self-consciously to do good that the real damage is done. —Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 11 June 2011
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“It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”.
As an added bonus it makes Cameron’s father-in-law and wind-subsidy reaper a lot of money.
Wouldn’t any thinking person question why this is a suprise?
another titanic sinking and of there own making and the sad think is they will never recover
The destruction of UK industry is the main objective of the carbon tax.
Corrupt communitarian crooks.
To be honest this is little to do with green taxes. This is an old chestnut where banks and businesses threaten to flee abroad every time they hear something they don’t like. Usually it’s because of a tax on their obscene bonuses after losing our investments, or being asked to help sort out the mess they made in some other way. In the event very very few of them go, It seems they feel places like China may not treat them so kindly if they mess up when based in such authoritarian regimes. Some of the very few that did, slink back after a year or two with their tails between their legs.
The UK parliament, the “most brightly lit talking shop in Europe” is still convinced that the entire UK economy can be supported by money juggling. It’s about time the MP’s woke up to the fact that the developing world, where the wealth is being increasingly generated, will not be using the cream skimmers of the Wall St and London Stock Exchanges in the future. They will set up and use their own market trading apparatus, probably on linux systems.
As a trained engineer, I despair at the destruction wreaked by Margaret Thatcher (Aided and abetted by Nigel Lawson) on the UK industrial base, and the continuation of her mad economic policies by a series of watered down self-servative administrations since. A lot of my american friends hold Margaret Thatcher in high esteem. They didn’t live here and watch the way she wrecked our country.
Nigel Lawson realised late in the day the madness of Thatcher’s Global Warming spin used to destroy the unionised mining community (who had the best safety record in the world), and now speaks out against the policy he himself helped create as Thatcher’s chancellor in a belated act of contrition. I give him props for that, but haven’t forgotten the damage he helped do to my country.
The political arm of the Unions, the Labour party were no better, and take their share of the blame for the failure of British manufacturing business. Mismanagement and corruption are bringing Britain to its knees, and the population is too successfully distracted watching TV and buying cheap alcohol to notice.
/rant
“It was once famously said that, for evil to prosper, it is necessary only for good people to do nothing.”
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That’s a fine quote, however, I think it would be more appropriate to use this one…….”Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”………. Voltaire
They are committing atrocities on a daily basis in pursuit of this absurdity.
We have the same insanity under Governor Moonbeam (Brown – Calif). Althought, honestly, the Governator started it.
Who is John Galt?
The best quote from Lord Lawson’s article:
“My dictionary defines green as ‘unripe, immature, undeveloped’”
“tallbloke says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am”
Well said that man. I too watched Thatcher wreak havock on industry in the UK. One element of her vision was to move from traditional industry to a services economy. Too few eggs in too few baskets, we all know how that turned out in 2008. And back in the 1980’s it was mighty difficult finding any work or any kind, but I did get lucky.
When business men can’t make a profit, they won’t bother making a business.
When people can get enough by not working, they won’t.
Maybe if we cut politicians pay by 50% we wouldn’t have these problems..
These guys say the same thing about tax every year but nobody leaves. Empty posturing.
““Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics.”
I don’t think there is any doubt that AGW doctrine has well and truly reached religion status.
Interesting post Tallbloke. You can’t blame right wing people from other countries idolising Thatcher, as you say they never experienced first hand the damage she did to the UK industrial base. In fact she did more for a reduction in Carbon emissions than any other PM before or since. The left do the same, they idolise Mao, Lenin and Castro etc because they don’t have to live under their regimes. A prophet is never recognised in his own country, usually for the most sound of reasons.
tallbloke says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am
With the increasing number of Muslims from foreign origins now living in Britain, along with the stealthy Muslimization of Britain, I can’t imagine many of your chaps drinking cheap alcohol.
I would say, let all of the unhappy British companies come here, but we have just as much of a dufus government as you do. So it really wouldn’t be better here. Canada, maybe?
Don’t worry England, ’cause PM Gillard of Austraya is running right alongside you, taking us down the crapper too!!!
Re: Gareth Phillips
There is a huge difference between adding a cost after profit (tax on profits/bonuses) and adding a cost before profits. In the former case the business has actually made a profit to be taxed so it is a viable business. In the later case the added production cost gets compounded throughout the production process and may well mean that your product can no longer compete in the market place. In other words you go bust or move.
Sir roger Carr, new chairman of the CBI, is also CEO of Certrica. This company’s former name was British Gas a major energy company. Do I see a conflict of interest?
Centrica is into renewables. Conflict of interest confirmed.
Gareth Phillips says: June 13, 2011 at 12:30 am
To be honest this is little to do with green taxes. This is an old chestnut where banks and businesses threaten to flee abroad every time they hear something they don’t like.
NO IT IS NOT Banks and the businesses you refer to are usually head office companies, with nothing much more invested in the UK than a rented building a few key staff (who are paid so well they’d move anywhere to keep the salary.
In contrast, the heavy intensive industry to which the CBI refer, are capital intensive, they have huge plant and machinery in the UK … BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT USES THE ENERGY … and they are run by pragmatic people who have got on with the job of running their business despite the harsh anti-industry environment spread by the like of Thatcher, Nu-labour and worst of all “all industry destroys our beloved world and should be anihilated from the UK” BBC.
These are companies that have sat quietly by as the rest of the UK talked them down, and got on with the job of making money, making exports. But now not only is the social environment in the UK anti-industry, but now the economic environment is so anti-industry that they have no choice by to contemplate the massively expensive exercise of moving their entire heavy industry manufacturing plant abroad … or perhaps more likely just winding down in the UK and steadily (continuing) to build up abroad, where politicians, the broadcasters and the public have the common sense to appreciate those who create a country’s wealth, rather than gambling on the stock markets.
Sir Roger Carr warns in an interview that the Coalition must give “some sort of support” over rising energy costs to UK manufacturers
tallbloke says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am
The UK parliament, the “most brightly lit talking shop in Europe” is still convinced that the entire UK economy can be supported by money juggling.
So the “money juggling” will just mean that the “support” to UK manufacturers will be borne by the PBI’s; the Poor Bl***y Infantry: the ordinary wage earner/taxpayer, those in the dwindling number of jobs left to us, those already in fuel poverty, the “lions led by donkeys.”
Th British elite have, with few exceptions, always had utter contempt for anything useful – like the practical business of creating wealth.
They imagine, not that the rest of us owe them a living, but that we should keep them in opulence.
Well said tallbloke. Only to add that it’s high time we took back control of money from the bwankers and their coterie who create it out of debt.
tallbloke June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am
Your “rant” is spot on. Well said.
According to the chairman of Centrica, Ofgem are forecasting average UK energy bills to increase by £500 over the next decade to cover the costs of decarbonisation. This is of course in addition to the estimated £200 already paid.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8570043/CBI-president-Sir-Roger-Carrs-vision-for-a-competitive-UK-economy.html
The UK social democrat regime seems utterly determined to destroy whats left of British wealth creating industry, there can be no other explanation for the current madness. The regime is engaged in a reckless spending and borrowing policy throwing hundreds of billions of pounds away as fast as it possibly can and most if not all on things that have no social or material benefit to the taxpayers who have to fund this insanity. Criminal activities and social disorder are tolerated and the criminal classes if caught at all face such laughably short sentences and soft treatment the criminal class now thrives as never before. Never before has an elected government worked so assiduously to smash and destroy its own nation in such a short time.
Taxpayers money is not being invested it is simply being thrown away as fast as possible and most is going overseas to our direct and future competitors even as the regime borrows more money than it can ever hope to pay back. The only possible explanation is that the regime is determined to spend all the money and break the UK, lead it to fiscal and economic destruction and ruin. The question has to be asked, just who would benefit from the economic and fiscal collapse and consequent social upheaval? The political class have run wild, they will not listen to reason and they will not stop their destructive policies. The climate change act alone is capable of smashing our economy all on its own, its staggering costs bring no actual benefits to the UK at all. We are told that this madness will give us some kind of moral lead or moral superiority and that once we have shown the way other nations will surely follow, No they bloody wont! They will stand aside and laugh at us and then proceed to sift through the wreckage for salvage.
No reasonable or indeed sane government would gleefully and happily strangle and asset strip the wealth creating sector to finance the creation of an unsustainable wealth consuming sector, the imbalance is fast becoming untenable and unsustainable even in the short term. Entire areas of the UK now resemble wastelands, market towns once prosperous now seem like ghost towns, high streets are increasingly deserted and boarded up. More and more people now need the regimes charity just to make ends meet and those who cannot bring themselves to beg for aid are living close if not beyond the definition of poverty. One or two really cold winters is going to finish off an awful lot of the poor elderly. Leave your house to go the shops and you might come home to squatters who now have more rights to steal houses than the owners have rights to live in them.
I’d like to wave this under Julia Gillard’s nose in Australia and go “see – this is what lies ahead if you carry on with this stupid charade”
all this green jobs bollocks – we have plenty of empirical evidence now from the EU that it’s total nonsense – jobs flow to India and China and other places that don’t have such polices. Fact.