UPDATE: A cartoon from Josh drawn about a year ago has been added. See below.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The United Kingdom Independence Party, the only climate-skeptical party in Britain, has scored a crushing victory in Sunday’s elections to the Duma of the European Union.
Britain’s most true-believing party, the Greens, won one or two new seats, but the second most true-believing party and junior partner in the Children’s Coalition that currently governs at Westminster, the “Liberal” “Democrats” (who are neither), were all but wiped off the map.
The European Duma, like that of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia, has no real power. It cannot even bring forward a Bill, for that vital probouleutic function is the sole right of the unelected Kommissars – the official German name for the tiny, secretive clique of cuisses-de-cuir who wield all real power in the EU behind closed doors.
The Kommissars also – bizarrely – have the power to set aside votes of the elected Duma, which doesn’t even get to vote in the first place without their permission. Democratic it isn’t.
The outgoing Hauptkommissar, Manuel Barroso, is a Maoist – and, like nearly all of the Kommissars, a naïve true-believer in the hard-Left climate-extremist Party Line that is turning Europe into a bankrupt, unconsidered economic backwater.
In the Duma recently (where the Kommissars, though unelected, may sit and speak but not vote), Barroso said there was a “99% consensus” among scientists about the climate. Actually 0.5%, Manuel, baby: read Legates et al., 2013.
Because the Duma is a parliament of eunuchs, UKIP’s couple of dozen members of the European Parliament won’t be able to make very much difference to anything except their bank balances – they all become instant multi-millionaires.
However, after opposition to the EU’s militantly anti-democratic structure and to the mass immigration that has been forced upon Britain as a direct result, UKIP’s third most popular policy with the voters is its opposition to the official EU global-warming story-line.
It was I, as deputy leader of the party in 2009/10, who had the honor of introducing UKIP’s climate policy to the Press. Their reports, as usual, were sneeringly contemptuous. Now the sneers are beginning to falter.
The leadership thought long and hard before adopting the policy. I said we could not lose by adopting a policy that had the twin merits of being true and being otherwise unrepresented in British politics. Private polling confirmed this, so the policy was adopted.
For interest, here – in full – is UKIP’s climate policy as I promulgated it in 2010:
“Global warming: is it just a scam?
“The IPCC’s 1990 First Assessment Report made wildly-exaggerated projections of how global temperature would rise. Yet for the past 15 years [now nigh on 18 years] there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” at all, as a leading IPCC scientist has now admitted. For nine years there has been a rapid cooling trend. None of the IPCC’s computer models predicted that.
“The 1995 Second Assessment Report, in the scientists’ final draft, said five times there was no discernible human influence on climate. Yet one man rewrote the report, replacing all five statements with a single statement saying precisely the opposite. He later said IPCC processes permitted this single-handed rewrite, which has been the official policy ever since.
“The 2001 Third Assessment Report contained a graph contradicting the First Report by falsely abolishing the medieval warm period, which, like the Roman, Minoan, and Holocene optima, and 7500 of the past 11,400 years, and each of the four previous interglacial warm periods, and most of the past 600 million years, was warmer than today. Some 800 scientists from more than 460 institutions in 42 countries over 25 years have written peer-reviewed, learned papers providing evidence that the Middle Ages were warmer than today.
“The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report’s key conclusion that, with 90% confidence, most of the warming since 1950 was manmade is disproven by measurements. A natural decline in global cloud cover from 1983-2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) caused most of that warming.
“The IPCC’s false “90% confidence” estimate was not reached by scientists: it was decided by a show of hands among political representatives who had few scientific qualifications.
“A lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report admits that, “to influence governments”, he knowingly inserted a falsehood to the effect that the Himalayas will be ice-free in 25 years.
“Many other false conclusions of the IPCC were authored not by scientists but by campaigning journalists, members of environmental propaganda groups or IPCC bureaucrats.
“The first table of figures in the IPCC’s 2007 Report did not add up. Bureaucrats had inserted it, overstating tenfold 40 years’ contributions of Greenland and Antarctic ice to sea-level rise.
“The IPCC’s conclusion that CO2 has a major warming effect is false. In the pre-Cambrian era 750 million years ago the Earth was an ice-planet, with glaciers at sea level at the Equator: yet atmospheric CO2 concentration was 300,000 ppmv – 700 times today’s 388 ppmv. If CO2 had the large warming effect the IPCC imagines, the glaciers could not have been there.
“In the Cambrian era 550 million years ago, CO2 concentration was 7000 ppmv (IPCC, 2001): yet that was when the first calcite corals achieved algal symbiosis. In the Jurassic era 175 million years ago, CO2 concentration was 6000 ppmv (IPCC, 2001): yet that was when the first aragonite corals came into existence. While the oceans continue to run over rocks, they must remain pronouncedly alkaline. Ocean “acidification” is a chemical impossibility.
“Many peer-reviewed papers (e.g. Douglass et al., 2004, 2008, 2009; Schwartz, 2007; Monckton, 2008; Lindzen & Choi, 2009) show that the IPCC has exaggerated the warming effect of greenhouse gases up to 7-fold. Without that exaggeration, there is no climate crisis.
“The economics of global warming
“Millions have died of starvation, or are menaced by it, because the world’s governments have unwisely trusted the UN’s climate panel (the IPCC) and the self-serving national scientific institutions that have profiteered by parroting its now-discredited findings.
“The World Bank has reported that three-quarters of the doubling of world food prices that occurred two years ago is directly attributable to the global dash for biofuels.
“Herr Ziegler, the UN’s Right-to-Food Rapporteur, has said that while millions are starving the diversion of farmland from food to biofuels is “a crime against humanity”.
“Lord Stern’s discredited report on climate economics unrealistically adopted a near-zero discount rate for appraisal of “investment” in carbon-dioxide mitigation and doubled the IPCC’s already-exaggerated high-end estimate of the warming to be expected from CO2. Without these grave economic and scientific errors, no case for spending any taxpayers’ money on mitigation of CO2 emissions can be made.
“A carbon-trading scheme that sets a low price for the right to emit a ton of carbon dioxide is merely a tax and does not affect the climate, while a high price drives our jobs and industries overseas to countries which emit more CO2 than us, raising mankind’s global CO2 footprint. The chief profiteers from carbon trading are banks.
“A steelworks at Redcar is closing with the loss of 1700 jobs, because the European carbon-trading scheme has made it uneconomic. Precisely the same steelworks will be re-erected in India. Net effect on the climate: nil. Net effect on British workers’ jobs: catastrophic.
“If we were to shut down the entire global carbon economy altogether, and go back to the Stone Age but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in our caves, it would take 41 years to forestall just 1 C° of “global warming”. The cost is disproportionate.
“Even if the IPCC were right in imagining that a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause as much as 3.26 ± 0.69 C° of “global warming”, adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective than attempting to limit CO2 emissions.
“Global warming gurus humbled
“Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs IPCC’s climate science panel, is a railroad engineer. The Charity Commission is investigating TERI-Europe, a charity of which Pachauri and his predecessor as IPCC science chairman were trustees. The charity filed false accounts three years running, under-declaring its income by many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“Dr. “Phil” Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, on which the IPCC has relied for its global temperature record, has stepped down after a whistleblower published emails between him and other leading IPCC scientists revealing manipulation, concealment and intended destruction of scientific results.
“Dr. Jones has admitted that his Unit has lost much of the data on which the IPCC relies. The “Climategate” files show his Unit received millions in increased taxpayer funding so that it could investigate “global warming”.
“Al Gore has made hundreds of millions from “global warming”, and may become the first climate-change billionaire. In 2007 a High Court judge found nine errors in his film serious enough to require 77 pages of corrective guidance to be sent to every school in England.
“On Gore’s notion that sea level would imminently rise by 20 feet (6.1 m), the judge ruled: “The Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view.” IPCC (2007) projects sea-level rise of 1-2 ft by 2100: Mörner (2004, 2010) projects just 4 ± 4 in.
“Gore said a scientific study had found polar bears dying as they swam to find ice. In fact, Monnett & Gleason (2006) had reported just four bears killed in a bad storm. For 30 years there has been no decline in sea-ice in the Beaufort Sea, where the bears died. There are many times more polar bears today than in 1940.
“Gore said Mount Kilimanjaro’s glacier had lost much of its ice because of “global warming”. In fact, the cause was desiccation of the atmosphere caused by regional cooling (Molg et al., 2003). Mean summit temperature has averaged –7 °C for 30 years and, in that time, summit temperature has never risen above –1.6 °C. The Fürtwängler glacier at the summit began receding in the 1880s, long before mankind could have had any influence over the climate. Half the glacier had gone before Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936.
“What is to be done
“Royal Commission on global warming science and economics
“UKIP would appoint a Royal Commission on global warming science and economics, under a High Court Judge, with advocates on either side of the case, to examine and cross-examine the science and economics of global warming with all the evidential rigour of a court of law.
“The remit of the Royal Commission would be to decide –
Ø “Whether and to what degree the IPCC has exaggerated climate sensitivity to CO2 or other greenhouse gases;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions, if any, the IPCC’s imagined consequences of the present rate of atmospheric CO2 enrichment will be beneficial or harmful;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions, if any, mitigation of global warming by reducing carbon emissions will be cheaper and more cost-effective than adaptation as, and if, necessary;
Ø “Whether and under what conditions any emissions-trading scheme can make any appreciable difference to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and whether and to what degree, if any, any such difference would affect global surface temperature.
“Other climate-change measures
“Pending the report of the Royal Commission, UKIP would immediately –
Ø “Repeal the Climate Change Act, and close the Climate Change Department;
Ø “Halt all UK contributions to the IPCC and to the UN Framework Convention;
Ø “Halt all UK contributions to any EU climate-change policy, including carbon trading;
Ø “Freeze all grant aid for scientific research into “global warming”.
“In any event, UKIP would immediately –
Ø “Commission enough fossil-fuelled and nuclear power stations to meet demand;
Ø “Cease to subsidize wind-farms, on environmental and economic grounds;
Ø “Cease to subsidize any environmental or “global-warming” pressure-groups;
Ø “Forbid public authorities to make any “global-warming”-related expenditure;
Ø “Relate Met Office funding to the accuracy of its forecasts;
Ø “Ban global warming propaganda, such as Gore’s movie, in schools;
Ø “Divert a proportion of the billions now wasted on the non-problem of global warming towards solving the world’s real environmental problems.
“UKIP has been calling for a rational, balanced approach to the climate debate since 2008, when extensive manipulation of scientific data first became clear. There must be an immediate halt to needless expenditure on the basis of a now-disproven hypothesis.
“Given our unprecedented national debt crisis, not a penny must be wasted, not a single job lost to satisfy vociferous but misguided campaigners, often led by ill-informed media celebrities, profiteering big businesses, insurance interests and banks. The correct policy approach to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing.”
If you know of any political party, anywhere, that has a climate policy more vigorously and healthily skeptical than UKIP, let me know in comments.
===============================================================
Damn.
I am from Spain, Could I have voted to UKIP? I haven’t paid much attention to politics lately, the bias in the Spanish media makes me sick. Had I have the opportunity to vote parties from other members of the union, I would have voted UKIP.
“UKIP’s climate policy as I promulgated it in 2010”
Woefully outdated then. Why was it exactly you were booted out of the party?
Many of the points made have become UKIP party line. Well done.
I hope the people will accept the fact that they have been lied to by politicians encouraged by the babble of pseudo-scientists in search of new sinecure grounds.
Anyway, it’s still a long way and I hope that some of the new powers in the newly elected so-called european so-called parliament will manage to lay enough mines around the cohortes of Kommisars that they cant move but just backwards – or rather forward- to a reasonable policy where energy becomes affordable again and lies fabricated by lobbyists about CAGW will cease. Mild hopes? I hope not.
Thank you, Lord Christopher. 🙂
A breath of fresh air – at last! Well said Christopher, more power to your elbow.
Great Stuff Lord M!
Our congrats.
Now I hope we can deal a similar blow to that nefarious UN Agenda 21
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Unfotunately climate scepticism is no longer UKIP policy. They have explicitly stated that NONE of the policies they stood for in 2010 are currently UKIP policy, and that they will announce new policies some time before the 2105 election.
This means that they have no policies on education, health, the economy, climate change, defence – and that apart from opposition immigration and the EU they are a policy free zone. This makes UKIP the perfect protest vote. People can vote for them without having to take a position on any of this messy political stuff.
I voted UKIP here in the UK, last Thursday, & I’ve marked my voting papers:”No votes for lying, thieving incompetents.”, for the last 10 years.
At the top of a voting paper about a yard ~(1 metre) long, was UK Independence Now, a party I’d never heard of. 2nd from bottom was UKIP. I wonder how many people were caught by that nasty little trick? “They’re all in it together” Dirty pool, I call it.
Still, I sense the tide has turned: the general public are neither scared nor interested in the CAGW/CC/WW scam, only our poxy politicians & bollixy Banksters, in their limitless thirst for money & power..
Andy L, you live in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I suggest that you do some proper research…
Please please reference the world bank report, on the doubling of world food prices . This is the most powerful evidence to shut down the ‘save the planet brigade’. If we can show direct harm to world stability because of these ‘peoples’ activity it would be a very powerful argument indeed.
the MSM has totally ignored any CAGW scepticism in ANY of the eurosceptic parties – if u don’t believe me, find examples & post them here.
however, Reuters KNOWS, & the financial press knows, but not a single MSM Reuters’ subscriber has yet posted a word from the following and, once CAGW sceptic sites began posting text from Reuters Point Carbon, Reuters stopped making the text available some time ago. it’s only for stakeholders, u know!
Q&A – What EU Parliament election means for bloc’s carbon market
LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) – Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) remains in dire straits and is likely to be dealt a further blow on Sunday when elections to the EU parliament end as polls predict a rise for political parties sceptical towards climate change.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.5277720
the MSM – across the fake left/right political spectrum – concentrated their attack on Ukip & other eurosceptic parties by playing the racist card, but no-one is buying that BS any more. those who scream racist should look in the mirror.
Nigel Farage, on BBC, following the local elections results being made public Friday, & just prior to the EU election on Sunday. as one person comments below the video: “the sneering tone of (david) dimbleby is contemptible”. as for those at the table with dimbleby, they look comatose:
23 May: Youtube: Farage: The old politics of left & right is over
UK voters awaken to Euro-skepticism…. will this have beneficial effects upon climate debates?
UKIP party thrashes LibDems, Labor, and Tories
Interesting, just like any Spanish party on the left side of the spectrum.
UKIP did well because they won the debates between Nick Clegg (Lib Dem leader) and Nigel Farage (UKIP leader). The debates were over the role that the EU should play in governing Britain.
Climate scepticism was not an issue.
All these result do is demonstrate that:
1 Climate scepticism is not political suicide.
2 Green policies will not pick up the collapse in the Lib Dem vote.
3 There is a definite split in attitudes between London and the rest of England and Wales (and also a different split with Scotland).
It is not a victory for climate scepticism but it does have the potential to persuade all main parties in the UK to get off the Climate Change bandwagon.
Friends:
As Lord Monckton says in his above article, the European Parliament is a Duma with no powers: indeed, it is so weak that it cannot force the European Commission to provide valid financial accounts. Simply, the recent elections to the EU Parliament are meaningless.
Local Government elections also occurred throughout England and Wales in the last week. UKIP also did very well in those elections (but Labour won most seats). The electorate often use local elections to express dis-satisfaction with a government, and the government coalition Parties (Tories &LibDems) each polled poorly with the LibDems almost being wiped out. However, national government has such tight control of local budgets that local councils only really decide HOW to implement national government policy in their localities.
Scotland is to have a referendum on potential Scottish independence later this year. And next year whatever the UK then is will have a General Election. The results of those polls will have importance and effects.
Please note the factual post by AndyL at May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am. It says
Consideration of reality should not be clouded by the enthusiasm of any UKIP supporter who is excited at the recent UKIP election results.
Richard
Political Earthquake!
BBC reporters moan, suffer, struggle to report UKIP victory
truly historic results:
well I’m only a distant observer in the USA, and not a close follower of UK or EU electoral politics, but I think that anything that so shakes the 3 old parties and the news media in the UK could have beneficial results….
of course it depends upon the “real” UK elections in the future, and upon how the parties, news media, et al. respond to this challenge…. but I don’t see how it can be less than a beneficial event that the 3 “main” parties, and especially the LibDems, received such a thrashing.
“Dr. Jones has admitted that his Unit has lost much of the data on which the IPCC relies.”
It amazed me that this admission did not trigger the resignation of Jones, or failing that being forthcoming, his dismissal. On every level, from UEA’s ‘world renowned’ reputation to agw being the ‘Greatest Threat To Mankind, Ever’ through to ‘that’s his f****** job! – if that doesn’t represent gross negligence then frankly, I don’t know what does.
The supreme irony:- UKIP with MEPs in Brussels can have far more influence on Britain and its political policies from there, because it has no MPs in Westminster!
Well said and well done Sir.
May I add that on halt/closure of the financing of this CC fiasco that all parties fed money by the likes of Ed Davey (DECC) are returned to the Treasury. Just so that we can chop a piece off the mountainous debt that the Labour Gov and related Banks have presented us.
Remember……UK Labour means poverty for all, always has and will repeat further.
If anybody would like to see facts on Wind Turbine costs. complexity and dumb thinking please browse the following pdf. Its published by the UK Crown Estates and no need to say who that belongs to:
http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/media/211144/guide_to_offshore_windfarm.pdf
Now for the by election in the next few days.
UKIP MEP Roger Helmer speaking in the European Parliament in November 2013.
“Just wait until the lights go out. Then you will find a real societal challenge.”
See him skewer the Green who blames hurricanes on CO2.
AndyL says:
Unfotunately climate scepticism is no longer UKIP policy. They have explicitly stated that NONE of the policies they stood for in 2010 are currently UKIP policy, and that they will announce new policies some time before the 2105 election.
This means that they have no policies on education, health, the economy, climate change, defence – and that apart from opposition immigration and the EU they are a policy free zone. This makes UKIP the perfect protest vote. People can vote for them without having to take a position on any of this messy political stuff.
============
The elections take place in 2015, luckily not in 2105…
You ought to listen to that what has been said as well. Farage declared that he “just doesn’t know” in several interviews on TV. He also made statements on other matters, e.g windfarms. The attitude towards coal and nuclear power is positive. Roger Helmer said something very similar. So the tendency is crystal clear: they do not favour CAGW. They are certainly not hardcore sceptics. Call them luke warm, but they are definitely willing to think it all over, unbiased and unimpressed by MSM. Britain is far better off with that sort of politics than with the likes of Camerons’ father in law who earns one thousand quid a day just with wind energy the poor have to pay dearly.
Sure, it’s true that they are AGW skeptics, but that is incidental to why they and other similar European parties won. They are advocating for the protection of western civilisation against rampant immigration. They are also standing up for the interests of whites which they feel have been ignored and, in fact, decried.
Urederra
No, you cant vote for Parties from other countries but here in the South West Of England is exposed the lunacy of the EU in as much Gibraltar is lumped in with Devon and Cornwall in one constituency.
I think that Monckton accurately portrayed the big issues here;
“However, after opposition to the EU’s militantly anti-democratic structure and to the mass immigration that has been forced upon Britain as a direct result, UKIP’s third most popular policy with the voters is its opposition to the official EU global-warming story-line.”
Although it must be said that giving existing politicians a good kicking AND complaining about mass migration were head and shoulders above climate change. However it is a very real issue here, as apart from any other consideration people realise we do not have a viable energy policy and erecting giant wind and solar farms on our limited countryside is no solution. Its cloudy and still here this morning and neither system would be working and people realise that.
tonyb
What Christopher Monckton has written is pure sophistry and I can only describe it as deceptive.
In the European election of 2014, UKIP made no mention of climate change or climate skepticism, so why is Christopher Monckton allowed to make such a claim? The only reference I can find in the 2014 local and European manifestos is a commitment to local, binding referenda on things like wind turbines and solar power and to building coal and nuclear power plants to reduce the cost of energy.
The leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, described the 2010 manifesto as “drivel”, so why is Monckton trumpeting the commitments made then as somehow relevant to the reasons why people voted UKIP in 2014 or even to the UKIP itself?
It seems to me that people voted UKIP largely as a protest vote against further EU integration (which is a common theme across the EU) and against continuing mass immigration (ditto).
I know that WUWT gives quite a bit of latitude to posters in the name of free speech, but this is a political tract for a policy position that even a right-wing party like UKIP does not promulgate any more.
@richardscourtney says:
May 26, 2014 at 1:06 am
Ref: Please note the factual post by AndyL at May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am. It says (blah-blah)
We shall definitely see and I suggest AndyL thoroughly peruse Roger Helmers (UKIP Spokesman on Energy and Industry) site here: Try to avoid any side issues relating, which of course the MSM loves.
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/
Duh.
John A, if not deceptive, this line of thought from Christopher Monckton and various commenters here is certainly wishful thinking nearing delusional. BNP’s vote share dropped 5.1% to only 1.14%. They almost all shifted to UKIP as well as UKIP picking up voters from other parties. They weren’t all switching because of climate change.
Not to mention the similar changes in the other European nations. Is Christopher Monckton unaware of this? Does he think this is a great climate-change sweet election? That’s absurd.
John A says:
May 26, 2014 at 1:28 am
What Christopher Monckton has written is pure sophistry and I can only describe it as deceptive.
In the European election of 2014, UKIP made no mention of climate change or climate skepticism, so why is Christopher Monckton allowed to make such a claim? The only reference I can find in the 2014 local and European manifestos is a commitment to local, binding referenda on things like wind turbines and solar power and to building coal and nuclear power plants to reduce the cost of energy.
The leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, described the 2010 manifesto as “drivel”, so why is Monckton trumpeting the commitments made then as somehow relevant to the reasons why people voted UKIP in 2014 or even to the UKIP itself?
It seems to me that people voted UKIP largely as a protest vote against further EU integration (which is a common theme across the EU) and against continuing mass immigration (ditto).
I know that WUWT gives quite a bit of latitude to posters in the name of free speech, but this is a political tract for a policy position that even a right-wing party like UKIP does not promulgate any more.
=========================
What the good Lord wrote is neither sophistry nor deceptive. What UKIP wants, as well as Lord Monckton, is just some common sense applied. After having read the points Lord Monckton made here, I recognized having heard a good deal of them on various occasions from UKIP, be it during interviews or speeches I listened to on TV. That party HAS an attitude towards renewable energy, nuclear power, cheaper energy and definitely wants spendings on NGO reduced. Wind turbines, for example, do not make sense, thats a fact UKIP publicly stated. The shutdown of coal fired powerplants does not make sense, that’s a fact UKIP publicly stated as well. I do concede that these points are not on top of their agenda and that the manifesto is under revision(I hope they don’t have it spoiled by peer review), but they are willing to talk about it much more than the LibLabCon men ever would. So UKIP ist the most progressive anti-CAGW political movement of influence of our times in the UK.
Margaret Thatchers just wanted her money back, UKIP wants the whole country back. And the money.
I’m watching BBC coverage of voter after voter discuss the election, ranging from Labour to UKIP voters. They’re talking about immigration. Don’t be daft.
In response to Mr Courtney, UKIP is known to be vigorously opposed to the climate scam, and this fact may well have been of particular value in Scotland. It’s policy on this issue will not change substantially in the current review.
As for the aptly-named “Village Idiot”, a spiteful troll, no, I have not been booted out of UKIP. I am no longer leader in Scotland because I stood by senior Scottish party members bullied by London. The County Court upheld us when we mounted an indicative action against London on behalf of one of those members and UKIP was ordered to reinstate him and to pay £30,000 costs of both sides.
i finally found MSM reporting Ukip’s position on CAGW, or as Debra puts it, “climate change”. it’s in the so-called RIGHTWING Murdoch media & was in their newspapers around Australia today.
the article states Debra wrote it, with AFP contributing some part of it. fittingly, Debra’s own career – see below – proves once again that LEFT & RIGHT is a fiction to keep the plebs under control.
talk about a nasty piece of work, Debra!
26 May: News Ltd (Murdoch Press): UK Independence Party set to cause political ‘earthquake’ in European Parliament elections
by DEBRA KILLALEA AND AFP (Agence France Presse)
THEY oppose same sex marriage, want to reduce immigration and believe man-made climate change is a myth…
The Eurosceptic party believes Britain would be better off without the European Union controlling rules on issues including employment, finance, ENERGY and trade…
The Twittersphere is trying to make light of the situation with a hilarious look at the apathy of Britain’s voters and how the party has come to experience a rise in popularity.
(INCLUDES MOCKING, MOCKING, MOCKING TWEETS)
And it seems UKIP is not the only far-right party making an impact.
France’s far-right National Front has also stormed European Parliament polls, sending shock waves across the bloc…
(WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE?) The National Front, like other far-right parties across Europe, promote anti-immigrant and often anti-Semitic policies…
(SO THERE!) Despite the Eurosceptic gains, established pro-EU parties were forecast to remain the biggest groups in the parliament. The conservative caucus, known as EPP, was forecast to win 211 seats, down from 274, but enough to remain the parliament’s biggest group.
http://www.news.com.au/world/uk-independence-party-set-to-cause-political-earthquake-in-european-parliament-elections/story-fndir2ev-1226931615645
FROM NEWS LTD’S PROFILE OF THE WRITER, DEBRA KILLALEA:
Debra spent six years in the UK working for the Mirror Group (LEFT) including the Mail Online(RIGHT).
Before we all get too carried away, with a 34% turnout, it was a resounding victory for the “We could give a flying ~#*$ Party” Three quarters of the electorate regard Euroelections as either irrelevant or not worth voting for, this doesn’t include those who were unaware of the elections in the first place.
I’ll lay good money on most of those who voted for UKIP, did so with little – if any – knowledge of their thoughts or policies on climate change.
Congratulations, Milord
Look more carefully at the results. The UKIP *did* pick up a lot of councilors but they did not win control of any councils. Look at Labour + Lib Dem results compared to Conservative + UKIP results. You will see that the country actually shifted LEFT overall, not right.
Labour gained 338 seats and won control of 6 additional net councils.
Lib Dems lost 310 seats and lost control of 2 net councils.
A net result of a gain of 28 seats and 4 councils on the left
Conservatives lost 230 seats and lost control of a net 11 councils
UKIP won 161 additional seats at gained control of no councils
A net result of a loss of 69 seats and 11 councils on the right.
The European Parliament elections are showing the same thing. The far right parties gained a considerable number of seats but the center left gained more at the expense of the center right.
Christoph Dollis
Lord M’s manifesto is summarised pretty well in this party document.
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5308a93901925b5b09000002/attachments/original/1398869254/EuroManifestoLaunch.pdf?1398869254
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
UKIP’s entire policy summmed up in one phrase
*Is Christopher Monckton unaware of this? Does he think this is a great climate-change
sweetsweep election?The reference for my previous comment is:
http://www.bbc.com/news/events/vote2014/england-council-election-results
“Why was it exactly you were booted out of the party?”
Usually it’s because Mr Farage prefers to be the only star in the firmament, it’s why they’ll fail at a General Election, that and a total lack of any actual policies.
Slight copy-edit needed: ““A coordinating lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report admits that, “to influence governments”, he knowingly inserted a falsehood to the effect that the Himalayas will be ice-free in 25 years.”
(That was Lal.)
Thanks for your reply. I have been eurosceptic for some time so I did not bother to read about the elections. In my opinion the European Community is half cooked. You can go to other european countries to work but there is not european social security. So, in fact there is not free movement of workers. If you work 10 years in the UK, 10 years in Germany and 10 years in France, you end up in a bad position when you retire.
Same happens with voting. We are electing the european parliament but we can only vote for parties from your country. Makes little sense to me.
Right now we are in the middle of the road, we have to tear down all the barrirrs or go back to the old borders, but we cannot stand in the middle.
jdseanjd says:
May 26, 2014 at 12:44 am
“…At the top of a voting paper about a yard ~(1 metre) long, was UK Independence Now, a party I’d never heard of. 2nd from bottom was UKIP. I wonder how many people were caught by that nasty little trick?..”
That nearly caught me out. There must have been plenty of others who were in a hurry and voted for the “UK Independence Now” at the top of the very long list of candidates instead of the “UK Independence Party” (UKIP) right at the bottom of the list.
Village Idiot says: May 26, 2014 at 12:21 am
Why was it exactly you were booted out of the party?
_______________________________
The problem was putting a left-footer in charge of the Scottish branch of UKIP, especially when that someone has still not realised that we have a de-facto separation between belief and reality in UK politics. This was a clear failure of UKIP leadership to understand the history of the region.
Regards UKIP success, it is true that climate played a very small role in this victory. But it has to be said that this policy was yet another clear indication that Nigel Farage was prepared to swim against the tide of political consensus. And if he was prepared to do it with climate (which is quite contentious), then he was probably prepared to do it with the other European sacred cows of immigration and multiculturalism.
So the UKIP victory was not a simple protest vote. It was a collective understanding that the political consensus in Europe was actually a monarch with no clothes — across a range of issues from climate, to cuckoo-land economics, to spectacularly naive social policies. The people have at last realised that political platitudes do not run a nation or an empire. Sometimes, you need a plain-speaking realist who will make tough decisions, rather than a showman who will play the popularity card. And Farage is that man today. But he has to deliver on that no-nonsense image, otherwise he will sink as quickly as he has risen.
R
In terms of politics, a Liberal Democrat friend once described me as right wing of Ghengis Khan.
But a UKIP meeting in Birmingham full of old Trotsky types who wanted to impose currency controls and sky high taxes on the rich, I was made welcome, even though I disagreed with much of what they said.
Why?
Because the one thing we could agree on was, whatever the decisions about the future of the British economy, the first step was to win back Britain’s freedom from the EUSSR.
Well done EU – you’ve successfully united hundreds of millions of people, created a rainbow coalition which crosses the entire political spectrum, because they all hate your EU bureaucrats more than they hate each other.
Christopher Monckton’s views on climate change are too radical even for the UKIP. Says it all really…..
It isn’t “a total lack of any actual policies.” It has a few core policies. Any position it takes on other matters will only lose it votes. Its policy on those other matters should be, “We’ll let the populace decide on those, by a referendum of either the entire population, or of a randomly selected study group on the topic.” That position will win it votes. (Indeed, if the UKIP had NO policies, it would do even better running on such a populist platform.)
The Tories were both unprincipled and too clever by half in successfully opposing the referendum on instant runoff elections. Such an electoral procedure would save their bacon next year.
My congratulations to UKIP and especially you, Christopher. We in Germany can also report some success. The new party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) founded just one year ago, got remarkable 7 % of the votes, which means 7 MPE.
AfD ist not against EU but for a much slimmer one and wants to bring decisions back to the people in their own country. Regarding the climate issue the AfD program states that the science about manmade global warming is in doubt and is heavily disputed and should therefore not used for measures against global warming. A huge step forward for a german party.
Regarding subsidizing Renewable Energy the party is strictly against it and requires to stop all of them immediately. I am happy to took part in this development.
best regards
Michael
Helmer says UKIP is in favour of fracking, but the headline local government policy for UKIP is local binding referendums on planning decisions. So which is their policy?
Meanwhile of course UKIP don’t define what ‘local’ means. Who gets to vote in a referendum on a nuclear power station, or an inter-city train line like HS2?
Even the few places where UKIP attempt to state a policy, they are full of contradictions. The idea that they can take “tough decisions” thanks to their “plain-speaking realist” leader is just fantasy.
PS: What I meant was that under an instant runoff system, a minor party can’t be a “spoiler”–as the Green party was for the Democrats in 2000, and which the UKIP will be for the Tories in 2015. Hard cheese, chumps.
Christoph Dollis says:
May 26, 2014 at 1:56 am
“What the good Lord wrote is neither sophistry nor deceptive. What UKIP wants, as well as Lord Monckton, is just some common sense applied.”
I’m watching BBC coverage of voter after voter discuss the election, ranging from Labour to UKIP voters. They’re talking about immigration. Don’t be daft.
===============
So you are tuned to the Bolshevik Broadcasting Service and seem to like it?
You’d better spent your time in the real world, so you might have gotten an impression that immigration is not the only subject. The Bolsheviks love it because they can denigrate everyone -to their liking- as rascist, fascist or xenophobic.
Come on, don’t be daft yourself.
Congratulations to Eric Worrall
You have successfully defined the appeal of a protest party. You don’t have to be “for” anything as long as you can unite “against” something..
jdseanjd says: May 26, 2014 at 12:44 am
At the top of a voting paper about a yard long, was UK Independence Now, while UKIp was 2nd from bottom. I wonder how many people were caught by that nasty little trick?
____________________________
Sasha says: May 26, 2014 at 2:17 am
That nearly caught me out.
____________________________
Yes, I saw that. And the BBC and Grauniad will say we do not have political manipulation in the UK. What a load of tosh. The UK liberal-left are the most politically corrupt and fascist (i.e.: anti democratic) people in the world.
Another example was Manuel Barroso, the (unelected) Communist ** president of the EU, who said that having far-right parties in the European Parliament would be completely unacceptable, because they were fascist and he did not agree with their policies. Hmmm, a fascist is someone who is autocratic and anti-democratic.***
Another example of BBC bias was a clip of a mass brawl at one election count as a right wing candidate arrived. The inference being that right-wing = thuggish elements. But what the commentator did not mention was that the brawlers were ‘Unite Against Fascism’, a left-wing terror group funded by the trades unions. It is worth noting that the offices of these thugs are based at the University and College Lecturers’ Union, Nafthe – which says everything you need to know about UK education.
.
** Actually, Manuel Barosso is a Maoist.
*** Dictionary reference:
Fascism: a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.
(For those who are confused here, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-sung were all fascists, while Hitler was a socialist. Get the idea?)
R
Manipulation! Manipulation?
Shall we dance to this jig.
Cammeloon will do what is required.
A few facts, plenty of self back patting and a good dollop of verbal diarrhea – another good job in making those who don’t believe that any recent climate changes are largely man-made, including me, look like a bunch of out of touch loons. Christopher, could you find something else to do with your Sundays………I actually agree with most of your views but you’ve got a great talent in making them sound like something out of a pantomime………
Simon, you should read the policy pamphlet linked above. UKIP was the only party to oppose the climate scam.
I’m sorry rogerknight, the cop out strategy, might work for protest vote scenarios, a party that wants success in an election with real effect on voters lives and pockets, will have to do better.
You are free to disagree, I suggest we leave it there, to avoid boring the rest of the blog with the minutiae of British Domestic politics.
crosspatch:
I write to say that I agree your data but strongly disagree with an interpretation of it which you provide.
In your post at May 26, 2014 at 2:03 am you say
That is true in terms of seats but you do not show the shift in terms of vote share. It seems likely that UKIP split the Tory vote more than the Labour vote.
Importantly, this thread is about the UK EU election which did show a small shift to the RIGHT. The swing was only ~1% which is very small.
The poll total was the same as the previous UK EU election at 34% of the electorate.
But this time the change in share of the vote differed between the Parties as follows
(see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27567744)
UKIP share 27.50% (a gain of+10.99%)
Conservative share 23.94% (a loss of -3.80%)
BNP share 1.14% (a loss of -5.10%)
Right of centre share 46.34% (a gain of+2.09%)
Labour share 25.40% (a gain of+ +9.67%)
LibDem share 6.87% (a loss of – 6.88%)
Green share 7.87% (a loss of -0.75%)
SNP share 2.44 % (a loss of -0.34%)
Left of centre share 42.58% (a gain of+1.07%)
Swing from left to right = (2.09-1.07)% = 1.02%
The important point is that the major effect was UKIP taking votes from both left and right so the resulting swing from left to right was very small.
Richard
Is manipulation! Is manipulation is?
Shall we dance to this jig ajig.
Cammaloon do as required is.
UKIP is in favour of fracking but I’m sure Helmer knows that the time and effort needed for that has largely gone. Regulation/Planning has to take place and I think that is too difficult judging by the delays incurred to date. Business needs to get up in the morning and make money…not screw around loosing time and money. Wages etc have to be paid plus Gov mainly needs to p*ss the tax arising up any wall.
What Lord Monckton shows may not be current policy, but it sure is a good template for such policy.
Whats under the South of England at present according to BGS is not in the right condition (is fractured etc). So thats not a promise of much at all, aside form the fact that most test and check drilling currently cannot move forward fast to at least discover volumes recoverable. And that does not look good anyway – no S.Arabia energy model here or in Scotland.
I suspect they need to re-instate dirty(?) power generation which must mean exit the EU and by default most of what Lord Monckton proposes follows. As hard as that is! Of course dirty power won’t worry China or Germany much?
There used to exist a simple efficiency equation which seeks to equal effort in, against either equal or more out. The latter being much preferred. Well forgotten I believe?
It’s different this time…the EU? Doubt it very much. Meanwhile the USA, Aus, NZ, Canada are forging group trade agreements with the Far East – and the UK is where? We in UK could do that as we did through history….no need for Sarc on that – it happened. Thats another point from Mr Farage…we can easily do that without assistance (so called).
PPS: The Australian instant runoff system has one bad feature that shouldn’t be copied: it allows the leadership of minor parties to direct how the ballots of voters’ who leave their second-choice entries blank should be cast. This allows those leaders to game the system by using carrots and sticks to entice other parties to adopt some of their positions.
The Royal Commission needs to have terms of reference to include full investigation in to any political motives behind deliberately tainted science. The parent body of the IPCC, the UN must be brought under scrutiny under the terms of reference.Provisions must be in place to leave no way the Royal Commission can be halted part way through under any circumstances.
Another idea to work in tandem is a moratorium deal on scientists to report cases where they have been coerced in to perverting the science. Academic bodies that denied funding or sacked scientists due to political pressure must expose the source of the orders or become personally liable for their actions. You can bet that some will crack, knowing that continuing to plug the lie will get them in jail.As the scientists start realizing that holding out will fail, the trickle will become a flood. The trail of deception is likely to lead to some very high places, especially who is pulling the strings of puppets in high places.It could potentially bring down the whole house of cards. Very simple tactic really, but the simple tactics are usually the most successful.Even better if the media can be forced in to reporting the proceedings on pain of losing their licences. At present, they have probably been threatened if they report what is really happening. The Left will really be soiling their diapers over this. Their paranoia will become overwhelming, knowing their grand deception stretching well over 100 years is in grave risk of being revealed for all to see their treachery.
Guy Fawkes has nothing on the extent of the treachery behind the global warming deception.It will require a new public holiday to commemorate when the peoples of the world defeat the grand NWO plot.
Google for “science court” for a very detailed description of desirable features in such a procedure.
Henry Bauer’s footnote 39 (in his Dogmatism in Science and Medicine, ) referenced a bibliography of writings about the science court idea, but its link has gone bad. I Googled for: “Science Court: A bibliography” and got four useful links at the top of the page:
1. Science Courts… and Mixed Science-Policy Decisions
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/taskfor.htm
The Science Court Experiment: An Interim Report*:
(* Reprinted with permission from 193 Science 654 (1976))
Task Force of the Presidential Advisory Group on Anticipated Advances in Science and Technology**
(** The task force is composed of three members of the presidential advisory group — Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz (chairman), Dr. Donald Kennedy and Dr. Fred Seitz – and [16 others])
2. The Science Court is Dead; Long Live the Science Court!
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/field.htm
3, Symposium Index – The Science Court – Pierce Law Center IP Mall
http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/RISK_Symposium_ScienceCourt.asp
4. The Science Court: A Bibliography. Jon R. Cavicchi*.
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/bibliography.htm
AndyL
Congratulations to Eric Worrall
You have successfully defined the appeal of a protest party. You don’t have to be “for” anything as long as you can unite “against” something..
Sometimes you’ve got to stand together to oppose something bad.
AndyL (May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am) says “Unfotunately climate scepticism is no longer UKIP policy. [..] This means that they have no policies on [..]climate change [..]“.
UKIP Manifesto 2014 says:
“The 2008 Climate Change Act costs an estimated £18bn per year – that’s more than £500 for every household in the UK. We will scrap this Act.“.
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5308a93901925b5b09000002/attachments/original/1398869254/EuroManifestoLaunch.pdf?1398869254
Well, they went to this EU election with a clear policy. If they are going to re-write policy before the next one, so what.
May 26, 2014 at 1:56 am | Christoph Dollis says:
From where I sit in Australia, with family in the UK, and being aware of issues in the UK, I would not bandy about the term “daft” as a response to other commenters here. After all, you have just quoted your source being the BBC … the international home of political propaganda … now what was that about being daft ? With all due respect of course.
rogerknights says: May 26, 2014 at 3:06 am
“PPS: The Australian instant runoff system has one bad feature that shouldn’t be copied: it allows the leadership of minor parties to direct how the ballots of voters’ who leave their second-choice entries blank should be cast.”
Not really. There is a system in Senate elections (which are much more complicated) where to avoid ticking everything on a yard-long ballot, you can just tick to have preferences allocated by the party. That is causing problems. But in voting for single member seats voters number preferences themselves. Party advice can be influential with voters, but it’s their choice.
Well done UKIP.
However, UKIP has fully abandoned its 2010 manifesto as several previous commentators have pointed out.
On the subject of climate change, the new 2014 Manifesto says only :
Still, that is progress. And the video of a UKIP delegate that deklein posted at May 26, 2014 at 1:22AM is very refreshing, although the little green man in the European parliament didn’t seem to like it.
The UKIP victory is in no way related to the climate change debate and the interest of the average UK citizen about the global warm is close to nil and the interest in global warming while voting is even less than that.
The European Elections are seen as meaningless both because most of the power is not wielded by directly voted politicians (but by those chosen by the elected presidents and prime ministers) and because to the general public the EU is something that seems distant and quite unrelated to them (which is quite wrong).
In the local elections held in the same day, the UKIP results were much more modest and I doubt that for the general elections they will get a result that mirror this (even though it will probably be a good result given their history, since anti immigration speech always works during times of crisis).
Also I think the association that is being done between skeptic blogs and the UKIP has the potential to be damaging and provide another stone for the MSM to throw.
When it was suggested a few weeks ago that UKIP might top the European elections, I thought the idea was ridiculous. UKIP was just a fringe party. Then we had the most unpleasant concerted smear campaign I have ever seen in this country, where all the media claimed that UKIP was a racist, bigoted, xenophobic, little Englander party. We even had a party calling themselves An Independence from Europe Party, which appeared top of the voting sheet, to mislead voters.
Despite all this, UKIP did come first. There are a lot of small minded pettifogging comments above, but let us recognise this for the achievement it was and this is indeed a party with a healthy scepticism to many of the sacred cows of the establishment including climate change.
Ø “Ban global warming propaganda, such as Gore’s movie, in schools;
=============================================================
With respect, I must disagree. Tyranny is tyranny, whether the tyrant is “theirs” or “ours”.
UKIP would appoint a Royal Commission on global warming science and economics, under a High Court Judge
NO THANKS! Why appoint a half-witted judge, paid by the establishment, to judge the merits of the AGW campaigne?
I was dissappointed that I heard nothing of the UKIP AGW policies here in france and on the UK web but know from reading here and at Tallbloke’s that it exists.
The task for UKIP right now and immediately is formulate it’s policies (all of them) as quickly as possible. Healt, Policing, education and so on. Bring forward your best people and force a debate with the other idiots.
Mike Ozanne says:
May 26, 2014 at 2:13 am
“Why was it exactly you were booted out of the party?”
As a matter of fact, Lord Monckton was not “booted out of the party”.
There was an internal struggle for the party leadership in Scotland
brought about by faction wrangling over the democratic process
for selecting candidates for the EU elections. Lord Monckton and
a number of his close associates, resigned from the selection process
as a result of this. Only then was Monckton sacked as Scottish Leader
by Nigel Farage, but he still remained as a party member and advisor.
No member was “booted out” except, controversially, Paul Henke.
Steve Crowther, in a fit of peak had reacted to Mr. Henke’s objections
to the manner in which the EU candidate selection process had been
apparently botched, and however he has been reinstated as a UKIP
member after a judge overturned a 100-year membership ban on him.
Read the details and see Christopher Monckton’s 2011-2012 election
blog here, which was active during his election campaign in the last
Scottish General Election. Though that blog now appears dormant,
there is still much of interest to be gleaned from its contents, and
some parts of it, mysteriously still seem to be active.
UKIP is not pro- global warming and does not believe in EU target to reduce CO2 emissions: this is a major achievement. UKIP is against the metropolitan left wing culturally dominated public sector/NGO anti patriotic sections of the Labour, Conservative and LD parties which despise patriotic, freedom loving people working in businesses outside of media. Why the Media has become dominated by the left wing middle classes is one of the important questions for for the future of property owning, freedom loving people who believe in representative democracy.
“If you know of any political party, anywhere, that has a climate policy more vigorously and healthily skeptical than UKIP, let me know in comments.”
=======
Ehhrr, well no. I just write this comment that to let you know that I cannot find any political party, anywhere that can match UKIP’s climate-scepticism. I just hope that UKIP manages to wake up those who are ‘kipping’ at the moment.
(U kip if you want to, but UKIP is, really,wide awake)
What I suggest has never been tried, so how can you be so sure?
I sense that much of the populace is sick of parties that make promises about making a “real effect on voters’ lives and pocketbooks.” They’ve heard all that before. They know it’s empty talk. They’re also sick of politicians and political parties. What much of the populace really wants is POWER. “Power to the people” has been, and will be, a winning slogan.
A party that runs against the established tradition of top-down party government will be a breath of fresh air–it will offer something really new and unheard of–something the populace wants, but doesn’t yet realize that it wants: “The people into parliament”–finally, via their randomly chosen, topically focused, bottom-up study groups of mere citizens. Those groups will not be subject to the pernicious incentives that are intrinsic to a state dominated by parties, professional politicians, propagandists, and pressure groups. Those four Ps will become peripheral—where they belong.
THIS platform will give the UKIP a fighting chance. It is one it can win on. Indeed, it’s the ONLY platform it can win on, because only this platform appeals to a widely shared sentiment that transcends traditional party loyalties. All it needs to campaign on is, “You tell me; you’re the boss” and, “Toss the bums out–all of them.” Anything more specific it might advocate, besides its anti-EU stance (including skepticism about climate change, I’m afraid), will lose it votes. (It probably realizes this already.)
Ha ha ha ha, what an excellent result. We have a new endangered species – the Limp Dum MEP.
Now all we need is a little democracy. For those of you in the States, we have a parliamentary dictatorship in the UK. Parliament is supreme, the people come a poor second or third,
O H Dahlsveen says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:37 am
“If you know of any political party, anywhere, that has a climate policy more vigorously and healthily skeptical than UKIP, let me know in comments.”
=======
Ehhrr, well no. I just write this comment that to let you know that I cannot find any political party, anywhere that can match UKIP’s climate-scepticism. I just hope that UKIP manages to wake up those who are ‘kipping’ at the moment.
(U kip if you want to, but UKIP is, really,wide awake)
___________________________________
The wake-up call has been sounded long. But the established parties have decided to stay in bed. C.A.Moron and his bedfellas….or is it bad fellas?
This diminishes Monkton. The UKIP stand for much worse things than climate change, and to pretend their victories here are for climate is dissembling.
the insults & mocking of the MSM will die down, & a more sober analysis will emerge, is emerging. after all, the established parties know they have to win back the very people who voted for Ukip.
anyone who paid attention to the US media’s relentless attacks on Ron Paul when he threatened to shake up US politics-as-usual should be able to appreciate why Ukip’s rise, in the face of similar attacks, is truly amazing:
26 May: Guardian: Matthew Goodwin: Ukip’s rise is no flash in the pan
Never before have working-class voters felt so disconnected from our politics – and ready for Farage’s radical alternative
Nigel Farage promised an electoral earthquake and he has delivered one. In only a few years he has led a party of amateurs out of the wilderness to win a national election and support from more than four million voters. To find an election where a party other than the Conservatives and Labour received the highest share of the national vote you would need to go back to 1906…
Many will spend the coming days dismissing the rebellion as a temporary protest that will soon evaporate. But they ignore mounting evidence that Farage is on the verge of building a far more resilient coalition that is anchored in both disillusioned, blue-collar Tories and disadvantaged voters who should otherwise be supplying Labour with a commanding lead. Those who claim that Ukip’s appeal to the latter is overrated should look at areas such as Darlington, Kingston upon Hull, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Rotherham, Stockton-on-Tees, Wakefield and parts of Wales such as Carmarthenshire. They are all Labour areas where last night a radical right insurgent finished first.
Further evidence of Ukip’s growing impact across the spectrum can also be found in the local elections where the party averaged 20% in Conservative-held wards and 25% in Labour-held wards. Detailed analysis of these results concluded that Ukip is increasingly drilling into red territory. “The net effect”, noted Steve Fisher from the University of Oxford, “is that Ukip’s rise from 2010 to 2014 has been at similar expense to Labour and the Conservatives.”…
The narrative that will now emerge in the Westminster village is that Farage’s voters will abandon him as the general election nears. Inevitably some will leave, but the extent of this drift is being exaggerated…
Yet still our national debate has failed to engage seriously with the roots of Ukip’s appeal and the underlying divisions that have made its rise possible. Instead, many have sought to ridicule, condemn and chase the party out of our politics. That approach has failed miserably. Now it is time for a serious debate about the roots of this revolt on the right.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/26/ukip-rise-no-flash-in-pan
Jeef says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:53 am
“This diminishes Monkton.”
You meant Monckton, but no it doesn’t diminish him,
and still UKIP remains the sole UK Party who will speak
the truth about climate change to the British People.
Seems Europe is back to its old tricks and warming up its anti-immigration sentiments. Too many poor people entering the EU. Not convinced it has anything to do with climate change. And how many MEPS will UKIP have? 25? A pimple on the bum of an elephant.
By the way, last time I heard on BBC World News, the Greens gained exactly ZERO seats, not two.
How, Christopher, can I become a British citizen so I can vote for UKIP? Lol!
“Steve from Rockwood says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:01 am
Too many poor people entering the EU.”
Say what?! You mean too many poor people entering rich countries in the EU from poor countries in the EU, eg, Romanian roma now entering the UK at at least ~20k applicants p/a. Those trying to enter the EU from North Africa, for instance, is minscule in comparison.
Steve from Rockwood says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:01 am
Seems Europe is back to its old tricks and warming up its anti-immigration sentiments. Too many poor people entering the EU. Not convinced it has anything to do with climate change. And how many MEPS will UKIP have? 25? A pimple on the bum of an elephant.
===========================
You got it wrong. It is not about immigration from outside the EU, it’s about internal migration. People come from EU-countries with a minimum wage nine times less than in the UK. They may come in unlimited numbers and may cash social allowances from the very first day without ever having paid a penny into the social security network of the UK. As immigration is uncontrollable, so is the planning for housing, schools, old age pensioners, health service etc, just because no one knows how many people have to be dealt with in the future.
And, assuming you have served your country, you’ll know that a small bunch of determined man can halt a whole regiment of Brussels Kommissars, for example by political sniping or placing political mines at the right locations so that they’ll blow themselves into smithereens…
Larry in Texas says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:07 am
By the way, last time I heard on BBC World News, the Greens gained exactly ZERO seats, not two.
How, Christopher, can I become a British citizen so I can vote for UKIP? Lol!
_____________
You are aware that you must swear an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II. Just a handshake with Lord Monckton won’t do!
an admission from the British Foreign Secretary that what’s neede is an EU “less centralised, more democratic and more flexible” – how incredible that Ukip, painted as raving rightwing loonies, should have brought home the need for such patently sensible policies!
tell David Cameron to bring forward the decades-delayed referendum on the EU, for starters, Mr. Hague :
26 May: UK Telegraph: (Foreign Secretary) William William Hague says election results show a ‘disillusion’ in the EU
As Ukip tops the European elections Foreign Secretary William Hague says the results show the UK with other countries need to “deliver a changing Europe making it less centralised” …
Mr Hague added that the results show that change is needed in Europe to make it “less centralised, more democratic and more flexible”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10856250/William-Hague-says-election-results-show-a-disillusion-in-the-EU.html
pity – Cameron is already proving he has learned nothing:
26 May: NDTV: Reuters: David Cameron Rejects Calls for Early European Union Referendum
British Prime Minister David Cameron rejected calls on Monday to bring forward an in/out European Union membership referendum after his party was beaten into third place in European elections by the anti-EU UKIP party…
Spooked by the rise of UKIP and worried it could split the vote at next year’s national election, some of Cameron’s own Eurosceptic lawmakers have urged him to bring forward the date of that vote to 2016 and to step up his renegotiation drive…
But he suggested the European results had strengthened his resolve to try to strike a better deal with the EU for his country.
“People are deeply disillusioned with the EU. They don’t feel the current arrangements are working well enough for Britain and they want change,” he said. “I would say that message is absolutely received and understood.” (NO IT ISN’T, CAMERON)…
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/david-cameron-rejects-calls-for-early-european-union-referendum-531013?curl=1401106790
There was a refreshing lack of climate change talk in the recent UK elections, though I always mute when Greens are talking. Sadly, parties have been stuffing the House of Lords with climate change warriors recently, and we’re still stuck with the EU. The Lib Dems will bang on about it even more now, as it now represents even more of their dwindling core vote.
But the overall good news is that the electorate don’t care much about global warming, even after the winter deluges, of propaganda that followed the slightly elevated levels of rain and wind.
Until a few years ago I was set to be a life-long Conservative voter. But that changed when Cameron broke his ‘cast-iron’ promise of a referendum on the treaty. I’m now proud to be a UKIP voter. Most likely I’ll never return to the fold while Cameron is leader. If Boris becomes leader – who knows…. (and he has made some climate-sceptical remarks)
Another reason why I won’t vote Conservative is related to energy/climate change. Cameron is keen on fracking, and apparently he said he wanted to ‘cut the green crap’, but he’ll have to do an awful lot more to regain my vote, including ending all wind farm and solar subsidies. The current Conservative policy on wind farms, green taxes and climate change is ruinous, barking mad and based firmly on junk science that is close to fraudulent. It will be a long time before I can forgive him, if ever.
I like the UKIP 1024 manifesto (presumably specifically for the European election). Anyone who thinks the Climate Act should be scrapped gets my vote!
So, I’ll be voting UKIP for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, I passionately want the Conservatives to win and to form a majority government without the Lib Dem loonies. That’s because, on Europe and climate change, the other alternatives are, far, far worse.
Chris
Perhaps they want to preserve their nations and their cultures and not have bureaucrats sell those away without their consent.
There is no “old tricks” about it. The rapid changes happening now are unprecedented.
Lord Monckton of Brenchley, Thank you for your report on the recent election. Your perseverance is an inspiration to all right-thinking people.
As one who has sat through whole the Election2014 car crash let me call it as I see it.
UKIP are undoubtedly the most sceptical of the parties. However, the platform UKIP stood on was not about climate change, sceptic or otherwise, I can’t remember hearing it mentioned, except by their opponents (including our good friend Bob Ward). A google search backs this up. No items regarding the UKIP climate position in the last few months. Their platform was solely about exit from the EU, borders and immigration. This stole votes from the both Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Nigel Farage carried the campaign almost single handedly. Helmer, the party spokesman on climate and energy was pretty well silent during the campaign.
Much of the campaigning has been on social media. As a ‘proxy’ for the temperature of the debate have a look at this: https://twitter.com/search?q=ukip%20climate%20change&src=tyah . UKIP failed to promote or defend its stance on climate change. Trigger warning: the 97% and consensus word is used a lot. Mind your blood pressure.
It has been one of the dirtiest campaigns I think we have seen in England. Right down to the BBC in their election coverage consigning UKIP to the Others even though all the indications were that they were going to be a significant force. The more aware voters saw the negative campaigning from all sides and kicked against it. Political parties need to realise that negative campaigning in lieu of sensible policies always backfires.
The most interesting part was the day after the election when, as usual, all parties claimed a significant victory.
I would like to see UKIPs bluff called in the parliamentary elections next year. I _know_ that unravelling the EU will be a difficult and painful process and it will be amusing to see how UKIP explain why, at the end of the 2020 parliament we are still members.
I should I suppose declare my own interests. I spoiled my paper. None of the parties represent my views or seem deserving of my trust. Voting for a least worst option is no option at all to me.
The astounding thing was that ukip has a fraction of the budget of the other parties and all the msm smeared him day in , day out. Nigel Farage is a hard working machine. The Spectator wrote some interesting articles about him and the party, well worth a read on their online site.
Please increase the size of Josh’s cartoon at the beginning of the article. It too small to see.
The one at the end of the article is fine.
Many thanks to so many commenters who have remarked so kindly on UKIP’s success in the EU elections. UKIP even won a seat in Scotland – the party’s first-ever representation north of the Border.
To those who continue to gripe that climate was not the major issue in the election (not that I had ever said it was), and to those who are determined to maintain that UKIP has changed or will change its climate policy, I say that UKIP is not going to change its climate policy as long as Roger Helmer remains its spokesman on the issue – and Roger came top of the poll in his region of England.
The purpose of the piece was simply to point out that a climate-skeptic party (the only one in Britain) has just won a national election – the first time in 100 years that neither the Conservative nor the Labour Party has won. Whether the trolls and naysayers like it or not, this is another big step in the direction of returning rationality to the climate debate.
The Canadian province of Ontario is having an election right now. Even the (we have a chance of coming second or third in Guelph) Greens aren’t talking about climate change in their campaign materials. Searching their website for ‘climate’ does produce some hits less than a year old. Maybe climate change is still one of their core values but they sure aren’t pushing it on the electorate. http://www.gpo.ca
Googling the (we thought they were supposed to be socialist but now we aren’t sure) NDP website gets no hits for ‘climate’. http://www.ontariondp.ca
The (we have nothing to do with that old premier and if you say we do, we’ll sue you) Liberals have one hit for ‘climate’ that refers to the weather. They’re boasting about cancelling coal fueled power plants. Everything else is talking about ‘business climate’. http://www.ontarioliberal.ca
The (we would rather be living in Arkansas) Progressive Conservatives have plenty of hits for ‘climate for investment’. http://www.ontariopc.com
The wheels are coming off the CAGW bandwagon everywhere and it baffles me that Obama is sticking to it as hard as he is. Sometimes I think the USofA gets its presidents from the same factory that makes Toronto mayors. There have been a few good ones but the quality control seems to have fallen off lately.
Monckton’s Old Blog on May 26, 2014 at 4:57 am
Jeef says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:53 am
“This diminishes Monkton.”
You meant Monckton, but no it doesn’t diminish him,
and still UKIP remains the sole UK Party who will speak
the truth about climate change to the British People.
—————-
Yes, yes it does. For the simple reason His Lordship is claiming a victory for climate when the votes weren’t cast for that reason at all. The UKIP may very well have a policy on climate change, but (to go down a well-worn path ) 97% or more of votes for them weren’t cast for that reason.
I’ll wager further that of the people that voted their way 97% or more have no clue as to their other policies. The ones that disenfranchise poor people, disable the NHS, make education a preserve of the rich and favour corporations over citizens. That sort of thing.
This is a flash in the pan. Once the blowtorch goes on Farage it’s all over.
Climate change should be a major election issue and would be a major issue if the public understood the ‘climate change’ negotiations. ‘Climate change’ is not a crisis, the crisis is the climate change ‘agreement’. The EU elections and the upcoming US elections need to include a climate change ‘agreement’ question.
The EU and the US are currently negotiating a climate change ‘agreement’.
Question 1: Would you be concerned if the US and EU signed and/or were planning to sign a climate change ‘agreement’ which would result in a massive loss of US and EU jobs to Asia (due to the increase in energy costs in the US and EU Vs the energy costs in Asia, see EU for the road map, electrical energy costs in Germany are now three times that of the US, China, India, and most of the developing countries of the world will be partially from the agreement and will cheat)?
The climate change ‘agreement’ will include a massive transfer of US and EU tax revenue to corrupt developing countries (to compensate developing countries for past CO2 emissions) to be spent on green scams which do not work and to be spent on a massive UN bureaucracy to monitor carbon emissions and carbon trading.
The ‘science’ shows there is no climate crisis to solve. The planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes. There has been no new warming for 17 years which is only possible if a significant portion of the warming in the last 70 years was due to natural causes and the planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes.
The climate change agreement will have no significant affect on climate change.
Question 2: Same as question 1 except the planet is cooling.
Britain, land of the anti-stabbing kitchen knife, by law? When I saw that proposal, I saw a country gone mad, then realized my Republican mayor too suggested banning use of salt by every chef in town!
http://gizmodo.com/5291234/first-anti-stab-knife-prevents-deadly-kitchen-accidents
Kate Fourney protested: “. Tyranny is tyranny, whether the tyrant is “theirs” or “ours”.”
Yet most well appreciate bans on quack medical advertising, get rich quick scams, terrorism fund drives, incitement of riot, and yelling fire in movie theaters. Astrology may be harmless fun, but climate alarm would and could turn into the biggest genocide ever, and turn children into domestic terrorists by traumatizing them with a fake emergency with about half of the population being viscerally embodied as enemies.
Pyrrhic?
John
Mike Ozanne says:
I suggest we leave it there, to avoid boring the rest of the blog with the minutiae of British Domestic politics.
Not bored at all. A bit surprised that, judging from some comments, the candidates names are in the same order on all ballots. Around here, the name order is changed from one area to another, so there is no advantage/disadvantage to any particular candidate. Here is a part of the procedure:
Names of candidates for offices voted on statewide rotate by Assembly district, starting with Assembly District 1 where the names appear as first determined by the randomized alphabet. In Assembly District 2, the candidate who appeared first in Assembly District 1 drops to the bottom and the other candidates move up one position and so on throughout the 80 districts. This gives each candidate more than one opportunity to appear at the “top of the ticket” in his/her race.
More for the unbored at: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/randomized-alphabet.htm
So goes France?:
“Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front scored a stunning first victory in European Parliament elections in France on Sunday as critics of the European Union registered a continent-wide protest vote against austerity and mass unemployment.
Without waiting for the final result, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls went on television to call the breakthrough by the anti-immigration, anti-euro party in one of the EU’s founding nations “an earthquake” for France and Europe.”
http://news.yahoo.com/europe-votes-super-sunday-far-spotlight-090146106.html
Alas, both the current leader Marine Le Pen and her influential father Jean-Marie Le Pen seem utterly silent on climate alarm.
Yes, well, a line in your article pointing that out would have headed off the predictable criticism. It’s fine to note that one of their beliefs is sounder climate policy, but you can hardly ignore the reasons why most people actually voted for them or what they chose to actually run on when you write about an election result.
Nigel Farage’s UKIP on wind turbines as long as four years ago:
The UKIP is mainly focusing on an in/out referendum for membership in the EU. Starting with immigration policy, which opens Britain to unlimited and unregulated immigration, and on through energy issues, the UK has next to no say in its own policies. Because of membership in the EU, 75% of its legislation is handed to them from Brussels. Getting out of the EU and returning sovereignty to the UK is what the UKIP ran on, and that is its mandate after winning many elections.
Farage opposes worthless wind turbines, which is a very serious issue for communities and coasts where these are being installed. He also has opposed the new nuclear plant proposed for Hinkley. The plant would be built by China in concert with France, with a guaranteed strike price of TWO TIMES the going rate for electricity. He has rightly pointed out that building plants and turbines with strike prices at double the rate is based on the bizarre idea that energy prices will go up. With fracking and the use of their own resources, Farage says that energy prices can come down by 50%, based on fracking success in the US.
The point is, unless these countries leave the EU, they do not have any say in their own policies.
And all of the parties, not just the UKIP, have sort of scrapped their “manifestos.” However, Farage does not allow the parties to get away with saying that they will control immigration, because their is literally no control on many of these issues. They cannot change EU policy. They simply carry it out.
AndyL says:
May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am
Unfotunately climate scepticism is no longer UKIP policy. They have explicitly stated that NONE of the policies they stood for in 2010 are currently UKIP policy, and that they will announce new policies some time before the 2105 election.
This means that they have no policies on education, health, the economy, climate change, defence – and that apart from opposition immigration and the EU they are a policy free zone. This makes UKIP the perfect protest vote. People can vote for them without having to take a position on any of this messy political stuff.
***************************************************************************************************************************
Actually they do have policies although the manifesto has been withdrawn and the party is looking to replace it. On the UKIP site they have a European Manifesto, a Local Manifesto and the document “What We Stand For.”
They say in the European Manifesto:
“Risk Of Blackouts
“• The 2008 Climate Change Act costs
an estimated £18bn per year – that’s
more than £500 for every household
in the UK. We will scrap this Act.
“• EU renewables targets mean
taxpayers’ money subsidises wind
farms that require gas powered
back-up when the wind doesn’t blow.
“• The EU Large Combustion Plant
Directive will shut many vital oil and
coal-fired power stations in 2015.
OFGEM warns that plant closures could
cause blackouts.”
and
“Reducing Fuel Poverty:
“• Outside the EU, we can abolish EU
laws that add hundreds of pounds to
household energy bills. EU rules keep
energy bills high by forcing taxpayers’
money into wasteful wind turbines and
solar arrays.”
and add in “Where We Stand”
“• Scrap HS2, all green taxes and wind turbine subsidies.
“• Develop shale gas to reduce energy bills and free us from dependence on foreign oil and gas – place the tax revenues into a British Sovereign Wealth Fund.”
I would imagine that the full policy when published will be an updated version of the original and will embrace the current policies.
And the overall slight UK shift to the right in the EU voting was swamped by an overall shift to the left in seats in the EU Parliament. Again, while far right parties did well in some countries, overall in seats, the left gained at the expense of the center right.
Go here and look at the dividing line between the dark blue and the yellow. That is the difference between the right and the left.
http://www.results-elections2014.eu/en/election-results-2014.html
AndyL says:
May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am
This means that they have no policies on education, health, the economy, …
=========
Oh the horror! No policies! Whatever would we do? Obviously, we would all be just blank staring automatons without people in charge implementing policies (and more policies!!) . Vote for us! We have more policies than anyone and we promise to implement more. Goodness from policies coming your way. Tomorrow (like free beer). Of course, when policies don’t work and just gum everything up, it is someone else’s fault (or not enough money) instead of bad policy. …and most bad polices, like taxes are never killed off.
On a more serious note, considering the “success” of incremental federal government policy intrusions into education, health, and the economy in the US, it might be very refreshing to have a government (party in charge) with neutral policies, especially at the federal level, and let the states and localities implement (and compete) on what they think is best for their constituencies. Very wary, weary, and feeling somewhat beaten down from from domestic federal policies from either side of the political spectrum.
THE EU DREAM IS OVER
Britain has 12% of the EU population, but:
one EU council place out of 28,
one Commissioner out of 28,
under 10% of all MEP’s,
5% of the EU civil service,
…and yet spends more than any other country to prop up this corrupt bureaucratic fairyland except Germany – and that’s only because the Germans had to absorb East Germany!
We were lied to by that misanthrope Heath, and now we are saddled with a permanent eurozone majority in the Council and the Commission. All the EU leaders say they want a “United States of Europe” in spite of their populations saying consistantly that they don’t.
The British public see the EU as the biggest problem in their lives, and have just expressed their collective frustration at not being able to do alter the way the EU is governed, run, or how EU policies are proposed and imposed more and more intrusively over them.
WHY ARE WE SO ANGRY WITH OUR “RULING” POLITICIANS?
Look at the state they have put us in:
Britain will pay £100 billion in gross EU budget contributions in a 5-year Parliament.
Britain loses from the single market given our weakness in goods exports and Germany’s strength, which is where around half our EU deficit comes from, then added to that EU national protectionism in services. From 2007 to 2012 we had a balance of payments deficit with the EU of £241 billion but a surplus with the rest of the world.
Britain loses from open borders. We are a “dumping ground” for millions of economic refugees. In 2013 70% of all new national insurance numbers were to immigrants from the EU and elsewhere. Add to this unsustainable pressure on housing, jobs, state services and finances.
Britain loses £60 billion every 5-year Parliament from the opportunity cost of EU agricultural protectionism (that’s the French we are talking about as they have sabotaged every effort to reform the Common Agricultural Policy in the last 41 years).
Britain loses by not being able to set its own free trade based trade treaties.
Britain loses its foreign policy independence, replaced by Lady Ashton’s superstate building diplomatic service; witness the aggressive expansionism of the EU towards the Urals which has made Putin react in Ukraine.
Britain has lost its fishing grounds (thank you so much, Spain).
Britain has lost its ability to tax multinationals or set its own business, state benefits and consumer laws. This power was lost through the spread of “mutual recognition” and “harmonisation” policies, which now cost the British hundreds of billions of pounds every 5-year Parliament.
Britain has lost its judicial independence to the ECJ AND ECHR.
Britain has been forced to let the EU see the Chancellor’s annual budget, and our economic policy must pay heed to the economic well-being of the EU.
Britain has lost its political sovereignty. Viviane Reding confirmed that 75% of UK laws are set by the EU over which we have next to no influence. So EU laws are imposed on us whether we like them or not. There is a word for this.
It is clear then; Britain getting out of the EU would regain political and judicial sovereignty, cut costs, increase trade, cut consumer prices, raise multinational taxes, cut state spending and control our borders.
That’s why UKIP is so important to us. No other party offers the British back their freedoms and self-determination, and we are powerless over the EU until that happens.
Lord Stern had to make the case by hook or by crook. First read what he said.
Why would the good Lord say that? Could it be that he has certain carbon related vested interests like in Spain’s Abengoa SA? Abengoa is engaged in concentrated solar power, 2nd generation biofuels, biomass and wave energy.
A polar bear dies swimming? Gosh, how far was the next slab of sea ice for that poor polar bear. I bet it must have been hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Unless it was a cub?
A few years back I recall a dead polar bear washed up in Scotland! The bear shouted: I kana get the powerrr Jim.
I urge the UKIP and all other people of scientific objectivity and good will to consider the devastating effects of banning fungicide use in Europe, NZ, Australia, and the US.
Please research the molds, mildews, black spots and blights – both post and pre-harvest – which are controlled only by the use of fungicides. Banning fungicides will result in mass starvation. The dire predictions of the failure of crops and fruit trees supposedly caused by climate change in reality will be caused by banning fungicide.
The banning of fungicide for organic farm use has already begun in many countries. The forcing of agriculture into “organic only” policies has already begun through federal bureaucracies and international agreements. The fungicides control the blackest, most deadly pollution and toxicants of all, the countless, countless molds, mildews, black spots and blights which totally devastate crops.
An excellent result.
Well done Mr. Farage.
I would hardly call getting 28% of the vote a crushing win. Further, I suspect this blog post will be at the least offputting, and more likely directly offensive to the 72% that voted otherwise. But beyond that, what is a political diatribe like this doing in an ostensibly science blog.
UKIP has gone from 3% to 28% in just a few years. No one said it is a crushing win. But the other parties are the ones who have been assaulting UKIP voters with pathetic, rediculous labels such as racists – for wanting to control unlimited immigration from former communist countries and extremely poor areas.
There have been no diatribes, just total command of the facts from Nigel Farage and many others in the UKIP regarding renewable targets set by the EU.
UK’s only climate skeptic party crushingly wins the EU election
Oh alright…it’s a “crushing win.” (:
Vote 2014 Europe: Great Britain
Party Votes % MEPs
ukip 28.62 +11.60 22 +10
con 24.14 -3.73 16 -5
lab 24.22 +8.98 14 +5
grn 7.76 -0.70 2 +1
ld 6.84 -6.82 1 -8
pc 0.77 -0.13 1 0
snp 2.65 0.40 0 0
bnp 1.16 -5.20 0 -2
AndyL says: May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am
This means that they have no policies on education, health, the economy, …
_________________________________
Who needs policies?
Obama got elected by endlessly saying: “yes we can”.
Can what, exactly?
AndyL says:
May 26, 2014 at 12:37 am
“Unfortunately climate scepticism is no longer UKIP policy.”
This is not so, even at the grassroots level there is a great deal of concern about the impact of the government’s and EU renewables policies. Here in Suffolk UK we are frequently asked about wind turbines and solar farms, and this also regularly comes up on the website http://www.ukipsouthsuffolk.org/category/environment/ . UKIP have a policy of opposing the ineffective wind and solar schemes, but also of supporting proposals for renewables which might actually work. Roger Helmer MEP is the UKIP spokeman and he has done much to promote this well received policy position.
Of course, in metropolitan land, not despoiling the countryside and a rational approach to energy production, are both rarely visited concepts.
Wow, this is a really good list of talking points. I wish some of our more libertarian politicians would promulgate these, instead of their wishy-washy nuances.
It doesn´t matter that they ¨won¨.
They have NO POWER.
They can alter NOTHING.
They can do NOTHING.
Their policies only matter in a UK general election, so they have a year to get some.
As for ¨the days of the left and right are over¨.
Nigel, mate, LOOK at the two main parties; one is a slightly blue tinted red, the other is a slightly red tinted blue; They could adopt lavender as their flag colour!!
The difference between them is wafer-thin.
The EU parliament has NO power, NO authority and NO ability to change or do anything.
EVERYTHING has to do with the EU commission who are UNELECTED, mainly placemen from large financial organisations.
The EU is almost totally non-democratic.
UKIP ¨winning¨ is irrelevant, and the other parties and countries KNOW that.
JohnR says:
May 26, 2014 at 10:35 am “UKIP ¨winning¨ is irrelevant, and the other parties and countries KNOW that.”
The UKIP has run on giving the British people an in/out referendum to exit the EU, which was entered as an economic agreement and has become a political union. The UKIP campaign for a referendum has changed the discussion for the main parties. This is the UKIP Party Election Broadcast:
It’s is amazing how an irrelevant party gains so much press.
Jimbo says:
Why would the good Lord say that? Could it be that he has certain carbon related vested interests like in Spain’s Abengoa SA? Abengoa is engaged in concentrated solar power, 2nd generation biofuels, biomass and wave energy.
ANSWER
Lord Stern is the London School of Economics professor commissioned by Tony Blair to write his seminal 2006 review of the economics of climate change – the foundation of many of the policies pursued today. He is a member of the advisory board of Abengoa, a huge Spanish renewables company. Its biggest project, a solar panel array in Arizona, cost £1.2 billion.
Neither Stern’s spokesman nor Abengoa will disclose how much he is paid.
Lord Stern (architect of “green” taxes) is a member of the advisory board of Abengoa, a huge Spanish renewables company. Its biggest project, a solar panel array in Arizona, cost £1.2 billion.
His company, NS Economics, is a vehicle for his public speaking earnings and last year declared assets of £189,000, after one year of trading. Stern’s agent at Celebrity Speakers said his basic rate for an hour-long talk was £50,000 – with first-class flights on top for a conference in the US, and all extra expenses reimbursed.
Stern’s spokesman at LSE said he openly declared all his interests, and had “built his reputation on a track record of high-quality independent research and analysis.” (“Research” which consists entirely of devising new and ingenious ways of imposing “green” taxes on the public to his own enrichment.)
Abengoa’s loans were provided despite their abysmal credit rating. In fact, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee cited DOE for its disastrous handling of the loan program. The Committee unleashed a damaging report in March 2012, revealing that in excess of $16 billion was loaned to 26 projects, of which 22 were rated “Junk.” Following a list of the three American projects, the loan provided for each, its rating, temporary construction jobs, permanent jobs, and the cost of permanent jobs “created or saved.” Note that S&P and Fitch consider BB+ and lower ratings “speculative” and “not investment grade.”
Abengoa Solar, Inc (the Solana Solar Project in Arizona): Rating BB+ by Fitch Dec. 2010; $1.45 billion. This deal was announced by President Obama on July 3, 2010, finalized just before Christmas 2010, and became operational in October 2013. Jobs: 1,700 construction, 80 permanent = $24.1 million per permanent job “created or saved.”
Abengoa Solar, Inc (the Mojave Solar Project in CA): Rating BB by Fitch Sept. 2011; $1.2 billion. This deal was announced in June 2011, finalized in September 2011, and is still under construction. Jobs: 830 construction, 70 permanent = $17.1 million per permanent job “created or saved.”
Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas LLC: Rating CCC by Fitch Sept. 2011; $132m. This deal was announced on August 19, 2011, finalized on September 29, 2011, and the Hugoton plant is expected to begin producing cellulosic ethanol by the end of May or early June 2012. Jobs: 300 construction; 65 permanent = $2m per permanent job “created or saved.”
So-called “green” energy projects cannot support themselves without government subsidy. This is why they are considered “risky.” Left to their devices there is actually no risk at all –– they are guaranteed to fail. Corrupt politicians, especially left-wing corrupt politicians, find them alluring for that very reason. They provide all the feel good, “save the earth” optics leftists love, while politicians get to pick the winners –– and they invariably pick their friends.
Because “green” energy companies are chosen by political process rather than the market, and because this particular political process is inherently dirty, “green” energy companies are also somewhat protected from close scrutiny. How does this play out when the taxpayers’ bill comes due? Abengoa has provided a good demonstration.
Monckton:
Oh please, give us all a break. Your argument hinged on the UKIP winning in 2014 based on the disowned 2010 manifesto from which you quoted at length.
That you indulge in sophistry and verbal sleight-of-hand is deeply unimpressive to the rest of us who can actually read and think for ourselves.
Your article reeked of historical revisionism of which I had hoped you deplored whenever it is deployed by people on every side of the climate debate.
John A,
Hear, hear.
Anti-EU parties also did well in other countries:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/europe/established-parties-rocked-by-anti-europe-vote.html
Over at the Guardian comments section a commenter said
and I see important parallels with the Guardian’s relentless push on ‘Climate Change’ coverage and their relentless attacks on sceptics. The Guardian appears to dream that it is an important media outlet that sways people. You can’t sway the converted.
CAGW like west antarctic glaciers is past the tipping point as we await its irreversible collapse.
We can only hope.
It’s Memorial day in the USA. Today we honor those brave souls, beginning at Lexington and Concord through til today, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for MY freedom.
Freedom (from tyranny) is won on the battlefield with blood and life and treasure.
Freedom is lost at the ballot box. Ceded by propaganda fueled ignorance.
A threat to liberty anywhere, is a threat to liberty everywhere.
Memorial Day and the Meaning of Freedom
“Memorial Day provides the political class countless opportunities to ruin an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable holiday weekend. Like clockwork, local congressmen, mayors, city council members, et al. materialize at parades, picnics, and churches to give speeches about “freedom.”
“But what does freedom really mean?
“Just as we should repudiate Junk English in economics, we should demand precision when it comes to the language of political posturing! In other words, we should insist that politicians use defined terms (I’m not holding my breath).
“In essence, freedom is the absence of state coercion./em> Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.
Memorial-Day Message (2014)
“It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. And it is the annual custom on Barely A Blog to extend sympathies to the Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.
I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but my worshipping at Moloch’s feet will not make you feel better, deep down.
“I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. …”
Don’t the Americans have some experience in the British Commonwealth? And we all know the next heir to it, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpNJAKq7dE. Lovely weather today, isn’t it Chris?
RobRoy says:
May 26, 2014 at 11:15 am
Thanks for remembering those fallen in America’s wars. One of our Revolutionary War opponents’ surname will be familiar to readers of this blog.
The Scottish officer of grenadiers linked below was mortally wounded in action at Monmouth in 1778, by grape fired by New England gunners (including relatives of mine) commanded by Eleazer Oswald, a Cornish immigrant. The Continentals lost the chance to destroy the British Army in the northern colonies that day because of the nefarious misdeeds of English-born General Charles Lee, suspected then & now known to have been a traitor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Monckton
Monckton’s elder brother Robert had been Governor of the Province of New York after the French & Indian War, in which he served, including with Wolfe at Quebec. As Lt. Governor of Nova Scotia, 1755-58, he participated in the notorious expulsion of the Acadians, which ethnic cleansing crime blessed Louisiana with Cajun culture & inspired H. W. Longfellow’s poem Evangeline.
Fascinating, now we have the CAGW deniers raging against UKIP. They deny just about everything that UKIP stands for and even refuse to believe that UKIP will actually bring some common sense into the Climate Fraud debate. I was always of the opinion that they, the CAGW schemers were pointing the finger at us being the ‘deniers’. It appears that now the shoe is on the other foot.
ronds-de-cuir instead of cuisses-de-cuirs
BTW. How are the UKIP negotiations advancing with Front National? Or will also Marine Le Pen wave in Nord-Pas-de-Calais when UK quits the EU? And how will the Scottish and Welsh take it?
Nigel Mirage freely admits he does his level best to avoid debates in the European parliament and tries to avoid involving himself in any way even to the extent of not attending, preferring to take the generous pay and allowances and run. He will no doubt advise his new Euro MPs to do the same and further enrich UKIP’s coffers from the source they hate. This has a couple of interesting aspects. The people who voted for UKIP are probably unaware that they will not be represented by UKIP politicians, and UKIP’s avoidance of engaging with the EU political system will leave the road open for the Tories, Labour and Greens to influence policy coming out of the EU parliament. In the meantime UKIP will continue to sit with far right and extremist groups in the EU, shouting from the sidelines, but making negligible impact on policy. They may have had a marked success in Euro elections, but they are still minnows in the UK political scene and are unlikely to be a force in Parliament for may years, if ever. And that Nigel, is where the power lies. Unfortunately the UK voter has a habit of voting for populist soundbites, but rarely read the manifestos. It’s amazing how many ex-pats living in Europe voted for him. How stupid can they be not to realise that if the glorious leader Nigel had his way, they would lose those rights of work and residency? The words Turkey and Boxing day spring to mind.
Lord Monckton –
A tour de force. You cannot be thanked enough.
I am going to recommend to my local Republican party contacts and my senators and representatives in Congress that they adopt the UKIP climate platform verbatim.
Lisbon treaty is worth reading – to discover the charter of fundamental rights. As a bonus also the right of initiative it seems.
Gareth Phillips says:
Nigel Mirage freely admits he does his level best to avoid debates in the European parliament…
Nonsense. YouTube is filled with clips of Farage debating in the EU parliament. He is extremely entertaining.
UKIP is determinedly not far right or racist. Ir merely recognises the limits to our ability to absorb unlimited numbers with differing cultural priorities and experiences.
If the EU falls into the hands of European extremists which looks more and more likely then our exit as proposed by UKIP becomes even more of an imperative.
UKIP proposes to engage with every nation worldwide of every ethnicity rather than focusing disproportionately on the European attempt to build a new USSR type system with the same democratic deficit and unaccountability.
We in the UK are only going to get one chance to extract ourselves before the whole EU fantasy collapses into insolvency, bitterness and extremism and UKIP provides that exit.
An institution that was supposed to bring everlasting peace to Europe is about to do the opposite.
dbstealey says: May 26, 2014 at 12:36 pm
“He [Farage] is extremely entertaining.”
Indeed. Many laugh wholeheartedly while taking a step to distance themselves from him towards the other opposite where the watermelons reside. That’s less funny to observe in the moderate right MEPs, who are now in majority.
Christopher, please define “cuisses-de-cuir” as you intended it to be understood by one here in Oklahoma where the winds og change are always sweeping down the plains.
Um, UKIP were (or are) not the only party to disavow the belief in AGW. The BNP was the same. They were just like UKIP but more “left wing” i.e. Like the old Labour party.
Friends:
I write to ask for some constraint in this thread by both supporters and opponents of UKIP.
The rapid growth of this new Party has provided better electoral performance than could have been expected and this is good reason for UKIP supporters to rejoice. And that rejoicing is reason for UKIP opponents to promote the fact that UKIP did not win the elections. These responses encourage YahBoo political behaviour.
But if this thread is to have any value then serious and considered opinions need to be shared.
UKIP is the only overtly AGW-sceptic Party in the UK.
UKIP is of the right but not at the far-right like the BNP.
UKIP has had some limited political success and this gives it influence over the major Parties (as the Green Party obtained such influence when it began to have some electoral success).
UKIP needs success in the 2015 General Election if it is to become a serious political force in the UK.
All these issues require discussion which is destroyed by YahBoo such as opinions about the person of Nigel Farage.
Richard
Lets hope UKIP remains committed to the principle: “you have to be for something good before you can be against something bad”
DBStealey. It seems you doubt that Nigel Mirage really has an appalling record of attendance at the European Parliament. Well, the facts are acording to data available on attendance records.
The Independent analysed the attendance record of 55 MEPs from the four main parties and combined it with figures for the number of parliamentary questions they asked, committee reports they were involved in, motions and opinions drafted, and signed written declarations.
The statistics do not include other committee work, or constituency work. These figures were then divided by their estimated total cost to the taxpayer – a figure made up of parliamentary allowances, expenses and salary. Nigel Farage and his deputy, Paul Nuttall, had the worst attendance ratings of any UK politician in Brussels but still managed to cost the taxpayer over £600,000 each in salary and allowances.
Over the last parliament Mr Farage has not drafted or amended a single report and voted just 42 per cent of the time. Mr Nuttall spoke in parliament on average just 10 times a year and asked 24 parliamentary questions.
Mr.Farage claims this is a deliberate policy which reflects his view of the European Parliament.
The partly pseudonymous “JohnA” petulantly complains about my having said or implied that UKIP had won its crushing victory in the 2014 European elections in the UK because of its climate policy. I neither said nor implied that. What I said was that UKIP’s climate skepticism ranked third in the popularity of its policies, after the policies of leaving the European tyranny-by-clerk and of halting uncontrolled immigration.
Nor did I say or imply that UKIP won in 2014 on the basis of its 2010 manifesto (which has not, in fact, been “disowned”, but is being revised, as every manifesto is revised). Opposition to the climate nonsense, a question on which Nigel Farage has gone head-to-head with the unspeakable Barroso in the European Duma, will continue to be an important policy plank for UKIP. I did, however, reproduce UKIP’s 2010 climate policy, “for interest”, and not in any way to imply that UKIP had won because of that policy.
However, it is permissible for me to give some more details of the private polling that was carried out on UKIP’s behalf before it adopted its climate policy. The results showed that of all the issues on which UKIP might take a position but on which it had not already done so, climate skepticism was the one that was most likely to attract widespread support. Since it also has the merit of reflecting the objective truth, UKIP happily adopted the policy and – whether “JohnA” likes it or not – will continue to pursue it.
Whether or not UKIP’s victory is of any interest to the troll “JohnA”, it is of interest to most other readers here, who are happy to discover that in yet another country an avowedly climate-skeptical party has done well in elections. Why, o why, do trolls whine so often and so purposelessly, and with so little legitimate reason?
One of the items that Chris put into UKIP’s 2010 climate policy platform seems to be in error. I’m talking about his reference to:
Before AR5 the IPCC’s attribution claims were always about the degree of certainty that the signal of human caused warming was detectable, not about it explaining any particular amount of observed warming. Here is the statement from AR4’s Summary for Policymakers, page 10:
Others have made statements similar to Lord Monckton’s so maybe I am missing something that was stated elsewhere in AR4, or it could be that a misinterpretation of the above passage somehow got into circulation. If so, one of the circulators is Reuters, which published the following last year just before AR5 was released:
Clearly wrong about SAR and TAR. If there is such a claim in AR4, does anyone know the reference?
Tom Aaiseeitnow says:
May 26, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Christopher, please define “cuisses-de-cuir” as you intended it to be understood by one here in Oklahoma where the winds of change are always sweeping down the plains.
———————————
lemiere jacques says:
May 26, 2014 at 12:00 pm
ronds-de-cuir instead of cuisses-de-cuirs
———————————–
French for “pen-pushers”, a pejorative slang term for bureaucrats. Also see meaning #1:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rond-de-cuir
Impotent in a political sense they may be, but they are unlikely to be eunuchs.
In answer to Mr Rawls, who asks whether the IPCC in 2007 really said that most of the warming since 1950 was anthropogenic, here is the text of the panel from the Summary for Policymakers:
“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.”
“Very likely”, in IPCC (2007), means “more than 90% confidence”.
The draft text had originally advocated 95% confidence: however, the matter was decided not by any scientific process but by a show of hands among government representatives. China objected to any confidence interval for what is inherently not a statistical process. Other nations wanted 95%. The show of hands among non-scientists settled the meaningless figure at 90%.
In the 2013 IPCC report, the confidence level was boosted to 95%. However, as Legates et al. (2013) demonstrated, only 0.5% of abstracts of 11,944 scientific papers published on the climate question since 1991 stated that most of the warming since 1950 was anthropogenic, and many of these abstracts were merely quoting the IPCC itself. There is, therefore, no more basis in the literature than there is in statistics for the IPCC’s “95%” confidence interval. It is a sham and a fiction.
Interesting article by John Vinocur, in the Wall Street Journal, headed:
“Vladimir Putin’s Woman in Paris
Marine Le Pen wants to neuter the EU as a political force. The Kremlin couldn’t ask for a better ally.”
In response to the discussion about the meaning of “cuisses-de-cuir”, it literally means “leather-thighs”. It describes bureaucrats, whose thighs are pachydermatous enough to survive the constant sitting-around that they do.
Mr Stokes, who can be guaranteed to come to the aid of totalitarianism in all its dismal forms, cites with approval an article in the Wall Street Journal in which it is said that no better ally for Mr Putin can be found than Ms le Pen, who wants to neuter the EU as a political force. On the contrary: if the EU can be neutered – and more and more people in its satrapies wish that it could be – then Europe will become stronger as the EU becomes weaker. Mr Putin is no doubt well aware that the EU has weakened Europe morally, militarily, politically and financially.
Monckton of Brenchley says: May 26, 2014 at 3:31 pm
“Mr Stokes, who can be guaranteed to come to the aid of totalitarianism in all its dismal forms…”
Can’t blame me. It’s WSJ. Rupert Murdoch speaking.
Seems that everyone who has a different view here either has a character defect or is some alternate life form. Need we shred the author along with the argument?
Nick Stokes says:
May 26, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Murdoch doesn’t approve or disapprove every guest editorial in media outlets his company owns.
John Vinocur, the former New York Times editor & author of the article you cite, was decorated by Sarkozy, with whom he remains cozy.
Le Pen might reverse France’s disarmament under the Socialist regime that replaced Sarkozy’s government, which development her putative pal Putin might not welcome.
Ah, but there is the rub! If 1/4, 1/2, or more than 1/2 of the warming since 1945 is due to human influence, four things must be established either by the IPCC (and the CAGW religion at large), or specifically disproved by the IPCC (and its AGW religion at large):
1. How much of the warming PRIOR to 1945 can be specifically attributed to man’s release of CO2? Ferdinand E. (responding to my question last night) acknowledged that the IPCC rejects man-made warming prior to 1945, but I have not seen that repeated anywhere else, though it is true.
2. What is the IPCC’s specific measured evidence of aerosols being the cause of the global cooling/static/not-big-enough warming seen between 1945 and 1975 in all temperature records? Polution was heavy – but only a few selected cities above very, very small land masses compared to the world at large. (Pittsburgh, London, Los Angeles for example are real examples of particle pollution that are cited, but these three extreme cases are less than 3 counties in three states in the 3% of the world that is the US and England.)
3. By 2100, if no change in man’s release of CO2 (Hansen’s Mode C, or business as usual), what is the probability of the global average temperature
– not increasing at all.
– increasing less than 2 degrees C
– increasing between 2 and 4 degrees C
– increasing between 4 and 6 degrees C
– increasing more than 6 degrees C?
They cannot assign a 100% chance of a 4 or 6 degrees rise, since only half of the models exceed 4 degrees temperature rise!
4. At each of these levels of potential increase, what are benefits of that increase in CO2, warmth, and more humidity and economic growth; and what are the specific changes that the IPCC calls “harms” or “costs” of carbon? That is, what exactly is the economic “costs” of a decreasing Arctic ice field? What body is “officially” authorized or recognized as assigning “costs” and what is their political and economic biases? Or their checks and balances, if any?
Daily Mail: ‘We’re coming for YOU, Red Ed’: Farage boasts there is no limit to UKIP’s ambitions as he reveals plan to go after Miliband’s Doncaster seat in the wake of Euro triumph
Tories, Labour and Lib Dems face fresh turmoil as results are announced
After 11 regions declared, UKIP has 24 MEPs and 29% of the vote up 11.68%
Boris Johnson claims surge in UKIP support is part of ‘peasants’ revolt’ (NICE ONE, BORIS)
The Lib Dems clung on to just one MEP – in the South East – as it faced wipeout elsewhere…
Speaking on Swedish television, Mr (Tony) Blair said: ‘Of course we should be worried when a party like UKIP comes first in the European election, it would be foolish not to be. But on the other hand we also have to stand for what is correct and right for the future of Britain in the 21st century. (HAHAHAHAHA)…
Farage: ‘We have formed the people’s army to fight the establishment. I love Europe, it’s the European Union I have a problem with.’…
Pitching the Lib Dems as the true voice of pro-EU politics in Britain, Mr Clegg saw his MEPs wiped out in almost every region in the country (HAHAHAHAHA)…
But just Catherine Bearder held her seat in the South East, making her the only Lib Dem in Brussels when they previously had 12…
A strong showing in the nationwide Euro elections vote will be seen as vindication after weeks of deeply damaging headlines and accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia aimed at UKIP candidates…
In an embarrassment for Labour leader Ed Miliband, Ukip even topped the poll in Doncaster, where he is an MP…
Mr Cameron faced embarrassment on polling day when new figures showed net migration hit 212,000 in 2013, more than double his target of reducing it to the ‘tens of thousands’…
Meanwhile Mr Cameron has been urged by influential Tory MP David Davis to bring forward his promised EU referendum by a year to 2016 in a bid to persuade defectors to UKIP he is serious…
But in an apparently emotional interview this afternoon, Mr Clegg (LibDem) insisted the ‘gutting’ result had not led him to consider is position, vowing instead to ‘finish the job’.(HAHAHAHA)…
But former MP Sandra Gidley said the Lib Dem brand had become ‘toxic’…
Ed Miliband (Labour) is facing calls from his own party to promise an EU referendum, as senior Labour figures waned a general election victory is not ‘in the bag’…
Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, said promising an in-out referendum was the ‘minimum’ response required to the poll in which Labour narrowly beat the Conservatives into third place…
‘It is a very unattractive policy to say vote for us but we can’t do anything about your major concerns because Europe won’t let us. So I think we have to improve our offer on Europe. We can’t just keep saying this has been a major wake-up call.’…
The weekend papers will have made for grim reading, reporting members of Mr Miliband’s frontbench team calling their leader ‘damaged goods’, ‘weird’, ‘a problem’ and claiming ‘he has got to go’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638960/Will-earth-Ukip-confident-triggering-political-earthquake-winning-European-elections-tonight.html
RACookPE1978 says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Good luck trying to pin IPCC down on a precise estimate of what share of observed global average temperature change (whatever that figure may be, + or -) since (pick a date) AD 1850, 1900 or 1950 is attributable to human activity, other than “adjustments” to actually measured T, that is. Then add on top of this obfuscation, whether their confidence in whatever percentage the human contribution might be is at the 90, 95 or 97% level & you get the intentionally anti-scientific farago of meaningless figures that is the farce of CACA.
I’m 90% sure that less than 50% of whatever warming has really occurred since 1950 (not much) is due to human activity. Unlike IPCC, I can actually show my work to derive these admittedly unscientific (but not anti-scientific) numbers.
Perhaps he was busy building a winning team, and making occasional high-profile forays into the European Parliament, where he couldn’t do much anyway. Probably, his goal is to win power or influence in Britain itself. He doesn’t believe in the European Parliament, after all.
What you call “appalling”, I doubt his supporters see as such.
pat says:
May 26, 2014 at 4:43 pm
Encouraging that the major parties might actually start listening to their constituents for a change.
Does this mean that drainages in the Zomerzet Levels will be allowed to be dredged again?
BTW, who drew the boundaries for EUP constituencies? Was he or she drunk at the time?
… and talking of the Zomerzet Levels, did you hear of the man from Frome who longed to visit Holland because he’d heard they had a Zuider Zee?
Or this limerick, best delivered in a stage Zomerzet accent:
There once was a lady of Ruide,
‘Oo ate zo many apples she duide.
The apples, fermented
Inzuide the lamented
Made zuider inzuide ‘er inzuide.
Gareth Phillips says:
…Nigel Mirage really has an appalling record of attendance at the European Parliament… Nigel Farage and his deputy, Paul Nuttall, had the worst attendance ratings of any UK politician in Brussels but still managed to cost the taxpayer over £600,000 each in salary and allowances.
Q: What is the requirement for attendance?
And:
Over the last parliament Mr Farage… voted just 42 per cent of the time.
That is far more than Senator B. Hussein Obama, who routinely voted “Present” instead of Yea or Nay. That was when Obama was in attendance, which was rare. Obama gave no excuse for his failure to vote, or even to attend. But as you wrote:
Mr.Farage claims this is a deliberate policy which reflects his view of the European Parliament.
So Farage has a good reason. Obama just wants the glory of the position, and to party, golf and travel with a stupendous entourage, all on the taxpayers’ dime.
But still, the U.S. is slightly better off than the UK. This is a quote from 2008:
But we’re getting there.
The election results show that the average UK voter is fed up with Clegg and his ilk. I trust that same disgust will be shown in the U.S. in 2016.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:07 pm
I hadn’t. Pretty funny. But why go to Holland for zuider when Devon is so near? Admittedly, Devon doesn’t have a whole sea full of cider, but close.
I recall a comment on Youtube re the Poldark series, in which an American viewer said she couldn’t understand a character’s “British” accent. An English commenter replied that it’s a West Country accent, & he couldn’t understand it either. Technically of course West Country is “a” British accent. Obviously, there isn’t just one. A French friend of mine in Queen’s College Middle Common Room said he was proud of his English ability until he visited Glasgow & could ken ney uh wor’. I told him, no worries. Me, either, & my great grandfather spoke Lolland Scots.
But then, until I got used to the local dialect, I had trouble ordering catfish at the best deep fried fish joint on the South Side of Chicago, too.
Cornishman A. L. Rowse thought Standard American English closer to the speech of Shakespeare than Received Pronunciation, & now there is, as you may know, a movement to stage Elizabethan plays in their Original Pronunciation, presumably a dialect of Early Modern English (which sounds like “talk like a pirate”). But we know from spelling in diaries that the London accent already existed then, but was shared by at least the middle classes (if not the court), not just the ancestors of East Enders & Cockneys.
Pretty funny though that Shakespeare’s native speech was probably West Country. “Parting iz zuch zweet zarrow!”
Monckton of Brenchley says: [ … ]
Limericks, eh? OK, here are a few [I have lots more, but most of them are unprintable here].
An oldie but goodie:
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night
And:
A fencing instructor named Fisk
Fought a duel that was frightfully brisk
So fast was his action
The Fitzgerald Contraction
Foreshortened his foil to a disk
Next:
There once was a lady from Knizes
Whose breasts were of two different sizes
One was so small
It was nothing at all
But the other was large, and won prizes!
And finally, my favorite. Say it in a sing-song voice; it will help you remember the chemical name for DDT:
A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain
The cause of his sorrow
Was Para-dichloro-
Diphenyl-trichloro-ethane.
Oh, and incidentally? People want results, not “A for effort”.
dbstealey says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:57 pm
I can’t post my limerick that rhymes greenhouse gases with proponents of CACA either.
There once was a limerick that rhymes
greenhouse gases with serious thymes
The poster went nowhere
The replier went elsewhere
and Lord Monckton was left with a ringing hole in his chymes.
Bravo Nigel!
Indeed the European Parliament is a front window for NATO and the backroom frolicking of Baroness Ashton and Victoria Nuland…
RACookPE1978 says:
May 26, 2014 at 6:42 pm
Not bad.
Maybe better than the anti-CACA haiku I was hectored into producing.
Time for a WUWT poetry contest?
How satisfying this is!
milodonharlani says:
May 26, 2014 at 7:08 pm
Producing anti-CACA hectoring haiku’s?
Guestsenheit!
I hope your cold gets better … Try some warm fluids, bed rest, a luke warm thermometer and … 8<)
Here is some ammunition for all of you climate skeptics:
The theory of climate change due to greenhouse gasses has a fatal flaw–all of the 1970 – 2000 warming (about 0.5 deg C) is attributed to greenhouse gasses by the “warmists”.. However, in the same time period, hundreds of Megatons of aerosols were being removed from the atmosphere due to efforts to clean the air. The cleaner air allowed greater insolatioin, and hence, surface warming.
This warming needs to be subtracted from the 0.5 deg C “greenhouse gas warming” and is so large that any warming attributable to CO2 completely disappears. .
All of the above is easily proven.
What a load of bull. The UKIP don’t give a damn about anything except their popularity. If it became politically expedient to completely reverse their position on global warming, they’d do it in the blink of an eye. Allying yourself to people who will say anything, because right now they say what you want to hear, will come back to bite you on the arse.
Disappointing that Anthony would allow Christopher to use this blog for political propaganda like this.
Philip Schaeffer says: May 26, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Exactly. We’ve seen enough h. sapiensophobes who regard themselves so high that they are bullying the rest. Last thing we need promoting another bunch like that only with a different color hat.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
This is a brilliantly impressive post. So much important relevant information proving that the “climate change” alarmism is indeed a scam.
For a political party to gain power with this policy as part of its platform is the most encouraging thing I have seen in the quest for the truth to be absorbed by the public. There must be a turning point somewhere along this long difficult fight for true science and honest and responsible government, this is the closest so far, in my opinion.
no one in the uk under 57 has ever had a vote on europe membership and what it is now is not what was voted on then. To keep it honest and focus their minds there should be a vote on membership every 10 years. The political class do not want to give a vote because its a money spinner for them and they know the public will not vote to stay in a group where the books have been unaudited for decades and billions goes to organised crime and all the public sees is their wages slashed and contracts put on zero hours and forced into pay day lenders and food banks.
I wondered when apologists for the now-doomed EU tyranny-by-clerk would appear here. Messrs. Schaefer and Kateenkorva are too late. The EU is finished because it refused to be democratic. Its rapid and enthusiastic but self-serving adoption of the climate nonsense at hideous environmental and financial expense is one of many reasons why it has made itself unpopular.
Thanks to Lord Monckton for the AR4 reference. I missed the highlighted statement!
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html
O’Neill nails it:
21 May: SpikedOnline: Brendan O’Neill: Nigel Farage and the fury of the elites
There is a positive kernel to the public support for UKIP
Try as I might, I cannot remember a time when Britain’s various elites were as united in fury as they are now over UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In the run-up to this week’s Euro-elections, in which the Eurosceptic UKIP is expected to do well, leaders of every hue, from the true blue to the deep red, and hacks of every persuasion, from the right to the right-on, are as one on the issue of Farage. From Nick Clegg to the Twitterati that normally gets off on mocking Nick Clegg, from David Cameron to radical student leaders who normally hate David Cameron, fury with Farage has united all. It has brought together usually scrapping sections of the political and media classes into a centre-ground mush of contempt for UKIP. Not even Nick Griffin – who is a far nastier character than Farage – attracted such unstinting universal ire. What’s up with this Farage fury?…
The real motor to the anti-Farage outlook, the fuel to this unprecedented fury of the elites, is a powerful feeling that he has connected with the public, or a significant section of it, in a way that mainstream politicians and observers have utterly failed to. The elites see in Farage their own inability to understand the populace or to speak to it in a language it understands…
That Farage’s popularity in the polls has remained pretty high even as our elites have been attacking him on a daily basis fills them not only with fury but with fear: their arguments seem not to have much traction outside the Westminster bubble, outside of medialand, where despite their best efforts the awkward, annoying little people still remain fairly favourable towards a loudmouth politician who isn’t PC and drinks beer. The fury behind the attacks on Farage is really a fury with the throng, with the masses, whose brains have clearly been made so mushy by UKIP propaganda that even the supposedly enlightened arguments and policies of their betters can now make no impact. It isn’t Farage they hate – it’s ordinary people, and more importantly their own palpable inability to make inroads into those people’s hearts or minds.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/nigel-farage-and-the-fury-of-the-elites/15045#.U4NW73JdXYR
Monckton said:
“I wondered when apologists for the now-doomed EU tyranny-by-clerk would appear here.”
Why not? You’ve showed up as an apologist for the UKIP, so why stop the madness there?
Zeke says:
May 26, 2014 at 9:08 am
Re your comment regarding fungicides It seems off topic but when (as you did) add it in with all the other food scams in the last 50 years regarding pesticides and fungicides , the bio fuel scam depriving millions of food and the sheer reluctance to get the third world out of poverty by providing them with local electricity (Geo thermal FI) you are spot on!
“jauntycyclist says:
May 26, 2014 at 11:34 pm”
From memory no-one had a vote on joinging the common market (CM), now EU. If I recall correctly it was Heath who took the UK into the CM without a madate from voters in 1973. Please correct me if my memeory of this event is wrong.
Lord Monckton,
While I find little to disagree on your assessment of climate change science and policy, I find it unfortunate that your support confuses politics with climate skepticism. Not all left leaning people are signed up hessian pant wearing swivelled eyed lunatics, but their intuition and epistemology would default to concern over global warming. Presented with the evidence as it currently stands, and the consequences of ill-thought through policy, they can and would shift their position. However, if it is associated with UKIP and policies that would take the UK out of Europe, it may only serve to entrench and polarise left v right positions much as it has been in the US.
Personally, I am one of those. I am extremely pro-Europe, and I generally favour the liberal democrats when I vote although I disagree entirely with their policy on climate. There is no way in a screaming fit I would vote for UKIP. My worry is that people with political inclinations such as myself but who have not investigated the climate issue as thoroughly, would dismiss reasoned arguments regarding climate change policy because it is associated with a political party they vehemently disagree with or even find unsavoury.
I respect your views on Europe, you, like everyone else are entitled to them. I don’t agree with them, but I would fight to the death your right to express them. But they are vastly different in nature than the scientific question of climate change and rational policy consequences, and I worry that your credibility with people who most need to hear what you have to say regarding the climate issue is undermined by your association with UKIP.
Your elequent and entertaining writing on matters of climate and Europe do also sound emotive and partisan, and it would be an extreme understatement to observe that you may not be entirely objective. I am aware of the attacks you have suffered in the course of your attempts to disseminate rational skepitcal arguments, so I sympathise, and you certainly can turn a phrase, but I do worry that in the world of imperfect emotive humans, it can alienate the undecided, especially if they disagree with you on matters of politics.
Philip Schaeffer says:
What a load of bull. The UKIP don’t give a damn about anything except their popularity.
And the UKIP is different from other parties how, exactly? They all want popularity. In this case, the UKIP gets it. That’s democracy, no?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 26, 2014 at 5:07 pm
… and talking of the Zomerzet Levels, did you hear of the man from Frome who longed to visit Holland because he’d heard they had a Zuider Zee?
Or this limerick, best delivered in a stage Zomerzet accent:
Thanks you Sir, I really really needed the laugh this late at night after reading some of the “contrary” comments!
dbstealy said:
“And the UKIP is different from other parties how, exactly? They all want popularity. In this case, the UKIP gets it. That’s democracy, no?”
What’s you point?
Monckton:
I scarcely know where to begin with your response. To criticize your post by making factual statements about its reasoning and its citations is not being a “troll”, it is to engage in a democratic debate. Democracy is hardly your strong suit, is it Viscount Monckton of Brenchley?
For those of us who weren’t born with inherited wealth and inherited titles that permitted membership of Westminster up until recently with voting rights and legislative powers without democratic consent, sticking one’s head above the parapet with full disclosure is to invite economic disaster upon not only myself but also my family.
Setting up and administering Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog was trial enough, but then I was possessed with practicalities of keeping the blog alive for the benefit of science and fighting trolls myself and not personal promotion.
The UKIP did not promote its climate scepticism in the 2014 election other than the very limited proposals on referenda on wind farms and the scrapping of subsidies for renewals. It did not fight the 2014 campaign on the 2010 manifesto, despite your efforts to conflate the two.
But here I shall be specific in response to a key claim. You say
Here is what Nigel Farage said about that 2010 manifesto:
So not “revised”, not “continue to pursue it” but binned as “drivel”. The entire 2010 manifesto was sent to the round file. Bleeding demised. Gone to meet its maker.
It is mendacious of you to describe the 2010 manifesto as anything other than a temporary policy. The author of the 2010 manifesto, David Campbell Bannerman returned to the Conservative Party afterwards after handbags were swung inside the UKIP.
I am intellectually interested as a democrat in the progress of UKIP or any political party or grouping which can make binding changes upon my life and the life of my family. But I am not a supporter of UKIP, for the party makes commitments and policy statements that I cannot, in all conscience, support.
Perhaps because you and I have very differing views on what constitutes “legitimate” and “reason”.
Philip Schaeffer:
Your post at May 27, 2014 at 1:23 am says in total
Please allow me to help because it is clear you have not been reading the thread and you have forgotten your own words posted in this thread.
dbstealey was replying to your statement that said
His reply to your statement asserted the truisms that it is self-evident that each political party – including UKIP – needs sufficient popularity to win elections. As dbstealey says, UKIP obtained sufficient popularity to win most UK seats in the recent EU Parliamentary election, and that is how democracy works.
You claim that “popularity” is the only care of UKIP. Perhaps you are right, but that is NOT what UKIP said during the election campaign. And if you are right then UKIP’s failure to fulfil what they said in the campaign will lose them popularity so they will not get re-elected.
You do not like UKIP. I don’t either.
And you are opposing UKIP here. I think that is a mistake: there is a time and place for everything and the place for pushing any brand of politics is not WUWT (although US ultra-right constantly try).
There is a difference between opposing and not supporting.
In my opinion WUWT makes a severe mistake by supporting or opposing any particular political grouping. Such politically partisan behaviour can only alienate climate sceptics who belong to all other political groups. I strongly commend that you read the post from Agnostic at May 27, 2014 at 1:08 am which is here.
Richard
i am not of the right (whatever that is), but i am thrilled that Ukip has shaken up the political establishment. and i am thrilled with a number of Ukip’s policies. the fact the MSM played the racism card to the exclusion of almost everything else in their attacks on Ukip and ignored what is generally known about the party, including their scepticism about CAGW, is merely more proof the MSM are simply gatekeepers of the left/right paradigm & the status quo:
Jan 2014: Index on Censorship: UKIP pledges to ban climate change lessons in schools
The UK Independence Party has promised it will ban the teaching of climate change in schools, if elected in May next year.
The party’s 2010 manifesto included a pledge to ban Al Gore’s Oscar-winning global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth from schools.
But this week UKIP Education spokesman MEP Derek Clark has said the party will go even further. Clark told Index on Censorship:
– We will still ban Al Gore’s video for use in schools if I’ve got anything to do with it. I will not have much opposition within the party. It is, of course, not just this video which needs banning; all teaching of global warming being caused in any way by carbon dioxide emissions must also be banned. It just is not happening.” –
Dr Nick Eyre, Jackson Senior Research Fellow in Energy at the ECI and Oriel College Oxford and Co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said of the proposal: “It is anti-scientific nonsense – as well as a worryingly repressive approach to education. The very strong link between climate change and anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is overwhelmingly accepted by the global scientific community, and has been for at least 25 years.”…
COMMENT by Richard –
Good, I’m glad UKIP have announced this policy. If they are so unbelievably ignorant about climate change then it’s safe to assume they are equally ignorant about all their other policies. I assume that this chap can provide evidence to back up his opinion? What next? Shall we have an equally stupid policy announcement about evolution? Gravity? Flat earth?
I would like to suggest that all politicians must pass an exam about the scientific method before they ever get a sniff of power then perhaps they might stop making such galatically stupid comments.
COMMENT by Dave –
Nope, the 97% comes from many independent sources, one of which is here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
Your 31,000 scientists is approximately 0.3 per cent of the group they were drawn from.
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/01/ukips-inconvenient-truth-platform/
name another political party in the West with the courage to state state so clearly & reasonably:
Ukip: Nigel Farage steps up his criticism of reckless EU foreign policy
Mr Farage said: “We are seeing vanity take the place of reason in foreign policy and the result is to destabilise a whole series of countries to no positive effect that I can discern. It is not just the Ukraine.
“The civil war in Syria was made worse by EU leaders stoking the expectation of western forces helping to topple the Assad dictatorship despite the increasing dominance of militant Islamists in the rebellion.
“In the case of the Ukraine, Brussels has for many years been feeding an entirely unrealistic dream of a future as an EU member state and large net recipient of funds.
“This has encouraged brave young men and women in western Ukraine to rebel to the point of toppling a legitimate president and led to the utterly predictable debacle whereby Vladimir Putin has annexed part of the country and now casts a long shadow over hopes of genuine democracy in the rest of it.
“I do not support what Putin has done – of course I don’t. But the approach of David Cameron, William Hague, Nick Clegg and other EU leaders has been disastrous. If you poke the Russian bear with a stick he will respond. And if you have neither the means nor the political will to face him down that is very obviously not a good idea.”
Mr Farage also called on the British media to take a look at the present situation in Libya, which Mr Cameron claims to have liberated. “It is ungovernable, unstable, divided and very, very dangerous. If that is a foreign policy success, I would hate to see what a terrible failure looks like,” said the UKIP leader.
“The British public were already fed up of being dragged into conflicts where no pressing national interest was at stake. I know many people are, like me, now deeply worried about weak and vain leaders allowing an expectation to grow up that European countries such as Britain will always side with uprisings in the naive belief that benevolent liberal democracy is bound to replace existing regimes, fundamentally imperfect as they are. That is not the way the world works. So I repeat the charge: the EU has blood on its hands.”
http://www.ukip.org/nigel_farage_steps_up_his_criticism_of_reckless_eu_foreign_policy
also, as Lord Monckton states, Ukip’s triumph was at the expense of all major parties, including Greens, all of whom claim to believe CAGW is real. now those parties will grovel to win over the Ukip voters they have insulted for years. nice.
+ Pat
UKIP ought not suppress other opinions, as wrong as they may be.
By doing so they’d just show that sort of intolerance they do not want to be done onto themselves. Teach the kids WHY these opinions are wrong, which mistakes are still being made in the government grants funded pseudo science.
Lord Monckton once succeeded in considerably slowing down the awkward ‘Inconvenient Truth’ being shown to british schoolkids without considerable corrections being made. It didn’t better the movie but made an ugly scratch on the face of Al-baby Gore.
May common sense be taught, not censorship.
why Farage’s foreign policy makes sense and US/EU policy doesn’t:
25 May: Bloomberg: Putin’s Energy Trumps U.S. Sanctions as Rosneft Extends
Reach
By Elena Mazneva and Ilya Arkhipov
One by one, executives from some of the world’s largest energy companies
climbed the dais to sign accords with OAO Rosneft (ROSN) chief Igor Sechin
as Vladimir Putin stood behind his blacklisted ally, nodding approvingly.
Executives from BP, India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and companies from
Norway, Abu Dhabi, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba and Mongolia all signed deals at
Sechin’s table on the last day of the St. Petersburg International Economic
Forum…
“It’s pure foolishness for countries to talk about cutting their energy
dependency on Russia because that dependency can never be one-sided,” Putin
said. “It’s always a case of mutual dependency and that means it increases
reliability and stability in the global economy and in energy.”…
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the largest U.S. oil company, went ahead with a
deal to deepen its ties with Rosneft yesterday, even after the Obama
administration urged American CEOs to skip Putin’s annual economic
showcase…
BP signed its first accord with Rosneft since the Moscow-based company’s $55
billion acquisition of BP’s TNK-BP venture with a group of billionaires last
year. BP, based in London, agreed to $300 million of financing for a joint
development of deposits near Kazakhstan…
The deals cap a week in which Russia’s other dominant state energy company,
OAO Gazprom (OGZD), struck a historic $400 billion accord with China to
supply natural gas for 30 years…
China agreed to pay $25 billion up front to help Gazprom finance the $75
billion it will cost to build a pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Chinese
border and develop the fields to fill it. Putin said the project will be a
boon for Russia’s entire Far East region.
“I want to stress that this will be the world’s biggest construction site,”
Putin said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-24/putin-s-energy-trumps-u-s-sanctions-as-rosneft-extends-reach.html
yet the CAGW crowd are willing to throw the developing world under the bus, insisting they adopt a renewables’ policy that even Germany can’t afford, and which mainly benefits the likes of Siemens, GE & Westinghouse!
26 May: Reuters: Pius Sawa: Oil exploitation contradicts Kenya’s climate
goals, legislator warns
(This story is part of a series of articles, funded by the COMplus Alliance
and the World Bank, looking at progress and challenges in developing nations’
efforts to legislate on climate change. The package runs ahead of the June
6-8 World Summit of Legislators 2014 in Mexico City, organised by the Global
Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International).)
Yet while Kenya’s climate policy focuses on promoting low-carbon
development, the current government is also prioritising mining and oil
exploration. Petroleum discoveries have been made in Turkana, the Nyanza
region around Lake Victoria and off the coast in the Indian Ocean. Coal has
been found in Kitui in the east, and iron ore in Taita on the coast. The
government has enacted a mining bill, and dedicated a new ministry to the
sector…
British company Tullow Oil, meanwhile, has sunk seven oil wells in the
semi-arid northwestern county of Turkana. In a January update, it said it
had discovered estimated reserves of over 600 million barrels, adding that
the overall potential for the basin could top 1 billion barrels. The company’s
exploration director, Angus McCoss, said results so far suggested the area
could become “a significant new hydrocarbon province”.
Kenya is hoping that resource exploitation will create jobs and wealth. But
Ottichilo believes it runs contrary to efforts to tackle climate change.
“Our policy and law is focusing on low-carbon strategy, meaning we want to
go more towards renewable energy rather than fossil fuels for our
development,” said the environmental scientist…
The draft bill identifies activities that have increased Kenya’s emissions,
including industrialisation, vehicle pollution, illegal charcoal burning and
uncontrolled logging for firewood.
Among the solutions it proposes are fines and jail sentences for polluters,
solar equipment and energy efficiency in new buildings, and community kiosks
that sell solar lamps and charge mobile phones using solar power.
Under the law, land owners would be required to plant trees on 10 percent of
their land, and farmers would be helped to adapt to climate change,
especially in dryland areas…
Martin Oulu, a climate change consultant in Nairobi and researcher in the
Human Ecology Division of Sweden’s Lund University, said Kenya’s oil
exploitation should be viewed from an equity perspective.
“Even though Kenya might be seen as becoming a ‘polluter’ by exploiting its
oil, the country’s emissions per capita will still be way lower than those
in the more developed northern countries,” he said.
Poverty levels remain high in Kenya, and it is off track to meet several of
the Millennium Development Goals. If oil exploitation generates state
revenue that is used to lift people out of poverty, and it is carried out
with the best technology causing minimal pollution and harm to other
economic sectors, then the potential rise in Kenya’s carbon emissions is
more than justified, Oulu argued…
http://www.trust.org/item/20140526131230-mdjnu/
Lord Monckton
While I agree with everything you write about in terms EU democracy, or rather the lack of it, I don’t think the UKIP success had anything to do with their stance on climate change. It never featured in the election. The Greens also managed to increase their vote in the same election.
One thing that did annoy me, and like many of his colleagues and someone you must know, Michael Heseltine seems to think that the rise of UKIP is just a protest vote. It doesn’t seemed to have occurred to him, and Heaven forbid, that the UK electorate actually like the UKIP arguments; but then we’re just a bunch of thickos who aren’t capable of understanding anything nuanced and therefore should just listen to the fine, better people that occupy the corridors of power. What I want to know is who gave him the right to express the views of the voter. This is why they’re losing support, and I think the Lib Dems seem to be the only one of the main parties that now gets it, with Nick Clegg admitting he lost the argument.
Please define common sense.
John A. That was an excellent post answering some of Moncktons obvious errors. I also salute the manner in which you challenge the posters here who label anything they disagree with as coming from a Troll. We need more like you to elevate the standard of debate.
I do apologize to all those who thought that by mentioning UKIP’s recent success here I was trying to promote UKIP. That was not the intention of the piece, whose focus was on pointing out what UKIP’s climate policy is, and on drawing the attention to the fact that a party with that uncompromising policy is now the largest UK party in the European duma.
In answer to “JohnA”, who appears to be every bit as testy as Steve McIntyre, whose blog he used to manage, the main points of UKIP’s policy – whether JohnA likes it or not – have not been repudiated by Nigel Farage: indeed, he has just won a spectacular election victory on the basis of them.
“JohnA” mistakenly assumes that the passage I cited as UKIP’s climate policy was from the 2010 manifesto. No: it was the policy as I drafted it and promulgated it at a UKIP press conference in London. I have no idea in what form the policy eventually appeared in the manifesto, which was far too long for anyone to read. The manifesto is, as I have already said, being redrafted under the direction of Tim Aker, now an MEP, and – on the economic side – Steven Woolfe, now an MEP.
And it continues to assert, in direct contradiction to what is explicitly stated in the piece, that I had intended to state or imply that it was UKIP’s climate policy that was dominant in the minds of those who voted for it. No: I say again that I said the climate policy ranked third behind EU membership and uncontrolled immigration. The climate policy was, of course, much mentioned in Scotland because our once-beautiful landscape is being carpeted in useless windmills.
There are also those who say I ought not to admit to any connection with UKIP because that would dilute the climate message. Well, sorry, but I have more than one bee in my bonnet. There is an old saying that those who have no bees in their bonnet are dead, those who have one bee in their bonnet are mad, and only those who have many bees in their bonnet are both alive and sane.
John A
Please define common sense.
As in common, such as “a spade being a spade and shovel being a shovel” and not putting your hand into a fire lest ye be burnt.
BTW there are plenty out there who would rather discuss the accuracy of such labels as shovel and spade. It comes from the insidious emergence of post-Enlightenment relativism which your question…
Please define common sense.
….stinks off!
cd says –
“The Greens also managed to increase their vote in the same election.”
no they didn’t. their share of the vote was down 1%, according to The Guardian, tho elsewhere i noted someone say they were down .75%. not sure which of the two was the final figure:
26 May: Guardian: George Arnett: Seven key points from the EU election
The Greens look set to have a good night: they’re set to increase their total number of MEPs to an expected total of three…
***Not a bad night at all for the party, but even better considering that the on a national level the Green’s share of the vote was actually a little bit down – by one percentage point…
COMMENT bythe harper:
How the hell do you manage to claim that the Greens vote actually being down nationally, makes it an ‘even better night’ for them.
If ever there was a night to prove they are actually going to be taken seriously as an alternative, this was it. If they can’t even attract the disaffected Lib vote, or grow from the general dissatisfaction with the rest, what is the point of them continuing in their current guise?
COMMENT by upmyonions:
Well, the Greens have been given next to no coverage by the media.
(LOL) Just imagine how well they’d have done if they had been given even 5% of the publicity completely gifted to Farage and cronies…
COMMENT by upmyonions:
(LOL) It’s actually pretty shameful of papers such as The Guardian and The Independent that they haven’t pushed The Green’s….
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/may/26/seven-key-points-from-the-eu-election
btw Greens did poorly in Czech Republic. had to post this excerpt from the following site, as the Radio Prague page seems to be broken:
iNetPost: Green Party leader may step down over poor showing in European elections
Radio Prague: The head of the Green Party Ondřej Liška is considering resigning as party leader in the wake of the party’s poor showing in the European elections. The party received 3.7 percent of the vote, failing to cross the five percent margin needed to win seats…
http://www.inetpost.mobi/tags/green-party/article/201405260929d4.green-party-leader-may-step-poor
Just remember what Linus Van Pelt says, “never discuss religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin”
….the first two have recently caused much debate and division here on this blog. This leaves the Great Pumpkin. I look forward to watching the heated discussion!
Lord Monckton
No need to apologize. You just rubbed it in to the cousins across the sea that there is a politcal party in the UK that has an attitude of scepticism towards the climate matter. And it is pretty nice to show the world that there is more in the UKIP basket than merely EU matters and controlled immigration. It hope it widened the horizon of some readers. Enjoy your beehives!
In response to Mick, in most Officers’ Messes in the grander British regiments there were four taboo subjects for conversation: politics, women, religion, and railways. The reason was not that these subjects might cause controversy, but that they were calculated to cause boredom.
Interesting response there in defence of UKIP and it’s policies. If Monckton is claiming that the 2010 manifesto has not been repudiated, merely revised, can we take then as proof that Nigel Mirage was lying through his teeth to the UK voting public when he stated In a phone-in on a radio station,as well as other occasions that he had already acknowledged that much of the 2010 manifesto was “nonsense” and UKIP had gone back to a “blank sheet of paper” in terms of its preparations for the next election in 2015. Is the truth that in reality the manifesto had not been binned, trashed or whatever phrase was in vogue with regard to the policy document and the voters were misled? By the way, another UKIP politician has fallen by the wayside after including in his manifesto an idea that all disabled children should be compulsorily aborted to save on caring bills. Happily he has been disowned, but as the latest in a long line of UKIP crazies one does start to wonder about the rest of the crew.
Goethe said America has it better than Europe, but that was then.
The role of the EU in Europe, ie an unaccountable, distant, self-aggrandizing, power-grabbing, overweening tyranny via bureaucracy, is played in the US by the federal government. It may prove easier for the UK to secede from the EU than it would be for Texas, say, once again to try to leave the Union it first joined in 1845.
Congrats, Lord M! Just-Call-Me-Dave got his warning ‘fer sure, and forsooth the Warmies are beginning to see some losses, what? Aussie-land’s down, Canada slinking away (whilst smiling and crooning platitudes to the Messiah to the south) and now Albion’s eying the exit sign. Wise man say, expect turbulent and messy “climate change” from the mandarins before all’s better, so best to keep those hatches secured, methinks. And about time for you to guest-post on ++Cranmer too, M’Lord; wall-to-wall Kippers there who are perplexed over this subject and you’ll do a much better job explaining than I did two years ago. For certains there be plenty of trollery there…and your appearance will draw them like rats to a meat lorry, but expect this man and many others for to join in the fray and guard your flanks. All the best!
Am I dreaming? Me post just went up …plop!.. just like that, without the old moderation wait!!! Many thank yous in advance for an explanation.
[Ask not for whom the mods toil, lest they troll for thee. 8<) .mod]
Good summary there, pat (May 27, 2014 at 4:53 am). Africa is the looming battle-ground. After decimating its population with the DDT ban, hobbling its agricultural sector with a ban on GM crops, the Engineers now want to keep the starvation levels by blocking Africans from the stupendous quantities of energy right under their feet. Is it too extreme to call this a slow genocide-with-a-smile?
Pat quotes Richard:
If they are so unbelievably ignorant about climate change then it’s safe to assume they are equally ignorant about all their other policies. I assume that this chap can provide evidence to back up his opinion?
The ignorance is entirely on the side of ‘Richard’. “This chap” has no obligation to prove anything. The evidence must be provided by those promoting the AGW conjecture.
Unfortunately for ‘Richard’, there is no testable evidence for AGW. That is probably because the AGW effect is so tiny.
When people like ‘Richard’ cannot even understand how the Scientific Method works, ignorance abounds.
The comment by ‘Dave’ says: Your 31,000 scientists is approximately 0.3 per cent of the group they were drawn from.
Wrong, as are just about everyone reading the SkS nonsense. The OISM Petition was co-signed by more than 31,000 exclusively American scientists and engineers. All co-signers are professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, including more than 9,000 PhD’s.
The alarmist crowd has tried to come up with more co-signers on several competing petitions that explicitly blamed human activity for global warming. Every one of them failed to get anywhere close to the OISM numbers. Reality is that the alarmist clique is much smaller than scientific skeptics, who comprise the true ‘consensus’.
The numbers prove it. I challenge climate alarmists to get more than 31,000 people with degrees in the hard sciences to sign a statement that human activity is the primary cause of global warming — excuse me, global warming that happened in the past. Because for more than a decade now, global warming has stopped. Global warming is not being caused by anything now. There is no global warming.
So don’t hold your breath. Alarmists have too few True Believers in their clique to get anywhere near even 5,000 co-signers with degrees in the hard sciences.
LOL! Thanks, mod for the Explanation Cryptic. No more intrusive queries on this matter from this man here!
John A:
You persistently carp about “Monckton’s obvious errors”. Indeed, the first of your several posts in this thread was at May 26, 2014 at 1:28 am and it began by saying
Sorry, but your behaviour will not do; it is harmful and disruptive.
UKIP is the only significant UK Party which opposes the AGW-scare. Viscount Monckton is actively involved near the ‘top’ of UKIP, and he has described what he sees as being the performance in recent elections of UKIP. Information concerning progress to defeat the scare is useful whichever country the progress is achieved. And (as I said in an above post) UKIP’s electoral success provides UKIP with political influence over the major UK political Parties.
I do not like UKIP. The only policy they have which I could support is their policy on AGW, but so what? There is nothing to gain by a Party-political fight on WUWT, but there is much to lose by distracting the report on UKIP from Lord Monckton by requiring him to defend UKIP.
Your abuse disrupts the thread by requiring a response which is not useful. If you think Lord Moncktons accounts are wrong then politely state your disagreement, your reason(s) for it, and why you think it matters because responses to those statements would be useful.
Richard
Gareth Phillips said (May 27, 2014 at 6:48 am): By the way, another UKIP politician has fallen by the wayside after including in his manifesto an idea that all disabled children should be compulsorily aborted to save on caring bills. Happily he has been disowned, but as the latest in a long line of UKIP crazies one does start to wonder about the rest of the crew.
It bears to remember, Mr Phillips, that new and contrarian parties always attract oddbals and “cowboys,” and that the MSM in the UK has worked long and hard to paint UKIP as the party of “swivel-eyed loons” and to hide some astounding loons from the parties it favours. I too am glad that UKIP cleaned house on this kooky compulsory abortion suggestion and without wishing to derail this conversation into the deadly quagmires of the abortion debate (and thereby end my pleasant honeymoon with the mods here before unpacking my luggage), it’s fair to ask whether justifying abortion on the grounds of culling the disabled, or on sex selection for that matter, is any worse ethically than on the grounds of “choice.” Yes, the compulsory bit in the hare-brained proposal makes a substantial difference, but the point I’m trying to make is that different standards are applied on issues and parties quite matter-of-factly, and that in the case of UKIP’s label, perception and manufactured reputation precedes reality.
UKIP’s intellectual principles, not subject to expeditious compromise, are what? Where is the clear signal that right now global warming skepticism is one?
John
John Whitman says:
May 27, 2014 at 9:52 am
Maybe this from May 22, in which Farage reaffirms that he disagrees with Charley Slesvig-Holsten-Sønderborg-Lyksborg on “climate change”?
“I refer more towards his views on climate change. The Prince has given two speeches to the European Parliament in the past: The first and most memorable being when he called for the EU Institutions to have more legislative power. This was based upon his firm belief that climate change is man-made, and only the power of supranational institutions like the EU – with their two parliaments and MEPs knocking up millions of air miles every year – can stop that.
“MEPs gave the heir to the throne a standing ovation after that speech, in which he declared that in 10 years’ time we would have no polar ice caps left. Well, that’s seven years ago and I haven’t seen any polar bears drifting down the Thames clinging to life rafts. Nor did I join in the standing ovation at the time, as I did not agree with what the Prince said. I also do not think it is appropriate for the heir to a constitutional monarchy to want to take power away from his mother’s government.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/nigel-farage-i-seldom-agree-with-prince-charles-and-im-not-about-to-start-9420530.html
Could just be Nigel’s own opinion & not party policy, but IMO it is a signal, if not clear.
All I can say is, I wish Her Majesty long, healthy life, with longevity to rival her mother’s. I note that sadly the Queen Mother suffered the tragedy of outliving one of her daughters.
Richard Courtney:
Cobblers. Who died so that Monckton may make statements on WUWT that are demonstrably false without criticism? Harmful and disruptive to what, exactly? Is there some cause that I’m supposed to have signed up to that prevents me from calling it as I see it?
I have said on occasion that some of Willis Eschenbach’s statements may be wrong, but Willis has never taken it as an insult nor called me a troll. He has considered criticism as part of the process. Perhaps unlike Monckton he doesn’t think he has divine judgment on his side.
In other words, it is for Anthony Watts to decide whether I’m being harmful and disruptive. Perhaps you should report me?
My abuse? I called Monckton’s statements in the article we are commenting on as sophistry and deceptive, not Monckton himself. It was Monckton who referred to me personally as a troll and whining without legitimate reasoning. He was being personal and abusive. I was not.
In any case Monckton has paid me the backhanded compliment of saying that I am as testy as Steve McIntyre, something I have always aspired to. If only I had Steve’s mathematical talent as well.
Certainly I can separate science from politics rather easily (unlike quite a few commenters on WUWT) and I don’t need any lessons on manners from you.
REPLY: I personally appoved JohnA’s first comment, which was held in moderation. Criticism is indeed part of the process. Some days Richard seems to think that WUWT is his own personal blog, and that he gets to play the role of moderator. I’ve been trying to gently push him towards being less caustic and to prevent starting these interminable food fights, but so far he doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. Unless he makes some changes, one day he’ll go too far and I’ll be forced to show him the door. Moderating the food fights he produces has become rather labor intensive.
FWIW, Monckton’s piece was a bit over the top, but then with UKIP being a dark horse candidate, some of that was to be expected.
Now, can we all just get along? – Anthony
John Whitman said (May 27, 2014 at 9:52 am): UKIP’s intellectual principles, not subject to expeditious compromise, are what? Where is the clear signal that right now global warming skepticism is one?
From Monty Python’s “Wot? Tigers? In Africa?” …Wot? Intellectual principles? In 21st century politics?
Go on, now, Mr Whitman, what intellectual principles do you see in any other parties? For that matter, what intellectual principles did you engage in applying unequal scrutiny, standards and expectations on a political newcomer? For the time being any party that is not aggressively pushing warmism is miles ahead of the others.
I cannot resist this.
Monckton:
Please forgive us poor wretches who fail to grasp the English language and who mistakenly read the triumphalist piece entitled “UK’s only climate skeptic party crushingly wins the EU election” and continues to denigrate every other mainstream party as well as comparing the European Parliament to Tsar Nicholas’ Duma, as promoting the UKIP.
Heaven forfend that we should be so literal-minded!
I confess I completely missed the subtext where UKIP’s own policy and personnel upheavals were subjected to rigorous analysis. Perhaps others of the lower orders and former colonists were similarly bamboozled by the rhapsodic paean of congratulation that we mistakenly read with their own eyes, and not seeing the undertone of restraint and caution.
Mr John A, the rhapsodic paeans of congratulations (I do like that one very much) can perhaps be explained by the fact that Britons have been represented by three parties who are, superficialities aside, indistinguishable. Among conservative Brits especially (whose numbers should not be under-estimated as we learned), there has been a growing frustration over the fact that unelected outsiders are replacing native governance…the ancient authority of Parliament… and are dictating policies on immigration, energy, taxation, human rights and such. Resistance, to echo the Borg, has been futile, as the cost of moderate dissent or even questioning resulted in being dismissed as “deniers,” “homophobes,” “racists” and such. Now, the maligned and abused hoi poloi have said “enough” and the shout was heard loud and clear. Yes, a slap at the toffs whose only skill has been to fill out their expense report forms, while waiting for the EU commissariat and the government-funded “NGOs” to do their thinking for them. Simply put, a protest vote, but one with deep and far-reaching consequences. One can only hope, that is.
Good arguments have been made by you and others who have reasons to dislike or distrust UKIP, but what matters I think, is that the dam of shamed silence has finally broken. All parties are now on notice that ignoring, ridiculing or shouting down the voters whenever they complain will not come without consequences. The media has now learned that putting all of its proverbial eggs in the basket of political correctness may be unwise. It all portends interesting times, does it not?
One could argue that yonder Brit’s have been protesting against un-elected outsiders from the continent and Scandinavia for many thousands of years. But, it is true that the last successful outsider from the continent to regulate the entire island came ashore back in 1066. Even before that, it was only smaller groups of outsiders – but they were only locally successful before. But no one can claim any success between 1067 and 1967’s modern liberal era. (1948 began the trend ?)
John A to Monckton of Brenchley:
Yes, that was pretty pathetic. It was even more predictable.
John A was very much on point. Even if one believes he was mistaken, that doesn’t make him a troll, but what is more mistaken is the implication that UKIP’s climate policy had much whatsoever to do with their election showing in a historic, Europe-wide election with similar results throughout the land for decidedly different reasons.
Monckton both says John A managed the much-respected Steve McIntyre’s blog and dismisses John A as a troll. Nicely done!
/sarc
Anyway, while I doubt the ranking of climate change as even third, there was nothing trollish about John A’s comments, and much wrong about trying to summarily dismiss him has a troll.
RACookPE1978 says:
May 27, 2014 at 11:47 am
IMO the invaders of 1066 didn’t manage to regulate the whole island. Scotland managed to maintain some independence from the Normans & indeed even their Plantagenet heirs, as too did Wales for a while. Edward I subdued Wales temporarily, which is why Chucky is Prince thereof now, but the Crown was still having to fight the Welsh even under Henry IV, by whom his son Henry V was wounded by an arrow in the face. Edward I had trouble in Scotland, though.
Henry IV BTW, when he usurped the throne in 1399, became the first King of England to speak English as his mother tongue since Harold took an arrow in the eye in 1066. The Edwards probably had increasing familiarity with Middle English & Richard II (usurped by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke) might well have been fairly fluent, but their first language was Norman French, as of course was the case for their predecessors back to William the Conqueror.
Then there were the Hanoverians…
Avi ben Barzel:
Ah yes, ’tis terrible when we are governed by unelected outsiders rather than unelected insiders such as the British Monarchy, the House of Lords and large parts of the British state beyond the reach of democratic consent, law or even scrutiny by way of a legal fiction called “Crown Immunity”, Official Secrecy and the Unwritten (and therefore infinitely mutable) Constitution.
It leaves one with a terrible choice – which unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy do I vote for? And does it matter who withholds my rights just so long as I don’t exercise them?
Fair enough, John A, but the election result was about more than democratic consent.
The whining troll “JohnA” persists, amusingly, in attempting to generate more heat than light. When a troll is in perpetual nit-picking mode, there is little point in making further attempts to talk it down out of its tree. Best to let it weep and gnash its Obamacare dentures, and send it the occasional handkerchief, with perhaps a violin thrown in for Christmas.
The fact remains that Britain’s most climate-skeptical party has just won the first national election in 100 years not to have been won by Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber in the shape of the “Conservative” and “Labor” parties.
And it never ceases to amaze me how much some folk, including the troll JohnA hooting and hollering from its monkey-puzzle tree, still resent the fact that when Britain ruled a quarter of the globe she did so largely from the unelected House of Lords.
Notwithstanding that glorious history of spreading the Pax Britannica worldwide from the upper chamber, UKIP’s policy, which I have long and strongly endorsed, is that the House of Lords should now be entirely an elected chamber. The US Senate was not at first elected, but it is now. The Lords should follow suit.
Oh, and another of UKIP’s popular policies is that even the people’s elected representatives should not necessarily have the final say. On any matter on which the people by initiative referendum demand a change in the law, the elected representatives should be bound to give legislative effect to the people’s will. So the trolls who think Britain is not democratic enough – and, a fortiori, that the EU is not democratic at all should lay aside their violins, wring out their handkerchiefs and rejoice that at last there is a party in Britain demanding the very democracy whose lack they have so whiningly deplored. Stop blubbing and cheer up!
Pat
no they didn’t. their share of the vote was down 1%, according
OK it was their number of seats that increased and not their vote. I stand corrected.
I think the Greens get far more positive coverage than UKIP. One of the problem for the Greens is that their message is pretty much the same as the three major parties. UKIP has alternative arguments.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 27, 2014 at 1:02 pm
The Senate was always elected, but originally by state legislatures, not directly by voters.
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm
That changed in 1913, the ominous year that also saw income tax legalized. Oregon pioneered direct election, a cause championed by my great-grandfather when a state senator. IMO this has proved not such a good idea. Two of his other Progressive Republican issues were votes for women & good roads.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 27, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Other parts of the Oregon System of reform were initiative, referendum & recall. Sounds as if the UKIP platform is strangely reminiscent of turn of the last century (19th to 20th) US Populism or Progressivism (not the same as its modern “liberal” version),
Anth0ny Watts:
This is your blog and I have never – not ever – attempted to usurp that. I have always supported the moderators and I have no method to moderate anything here.
I was not the cause of the “food fight” : I was objecting to an existing “food fight” and explaining why I was objecting while stating what I would prefer. My objection was my first contribution in that “food fight”.
This link is to my post which is of such concern because it is asserted to be “caustic”, implies I think WUWT is my “personal blog”, and is starting a “food fight”.
Richard
Mr John A, the quick answer to your challenge would be that being governed by unelected domestic officials is arguably better than being governed by foreign counterparts mainly in that they are still part of their societies, localities and countries. All classes may be fundamentally selfish, but proximity and interdependence guarantee that many interests will coincide. Also, you cannot easily dismiss the value of shared language, culture, history and beliefs.
I’m curious as to why you apparently miss the obvious: That Brussels’ rule by ciphers and bureaucrats over individual nations is indistinguishable from crude colonialism? Where you have unseen foreigners dictating your policies, taking charge of your resources and economy, dismantling your traditional customs and freedoms and transferring populations into your country with people whom you have not invited?
Can whatever group that financed the spoof alterntive to UKIP so that they came near the top of the voting form, while UKIP came near the bottom be identified ?
Perhaps they were setup and financed by one of the other parties as a deliberate spoiler ?
“Monckton of Brenchley says: May 26, 2014 at 11:52 pm
I wondered when apologists for the now-doomed EU tyranny-by-clerk would appear here. Messrs. Schaefer and Kateenkorva are too late. The EU is finished because it refused to be democratic.”
Do you attribute the credit due to my questions? Or due to the recommendation to flick through the Lisbon treaty before publishing an article on the topic? Either way, judging from your choice of pet-name, we are now sufficiently acquainted to exchange views about democracy and now-doomed tyrannies:
What does United Kingdom Independence Party propose for democracy?
-The Commonwealth of Nations? Where can I vote for the future head? Or can you do something? Oh wait, that’s not an option. The heir refuses both to regard his subordinates and to abdicate.
-Revival of self-serving, now-doomed tyrannies notorious for fighting ruthless wars all over the world?
-To extend the right of initiative to the EU citizens? Or the right to stop whining and quit the EU? Oh wait, that’s in the Lisbon treaty, which some at both ends of the EP spectra keep on objecting to.
-What other options are there? Care to share?
Is this enough to shed that apologist-label? Or can we agree to move on from politics to a safer topic, like the weather and climate?
Mr/Ms Jaakko Kateenkorva, …can we agree to move on from politics to a safer topic, like the weather and climate?
Potentially one of the of the wittiest lines on this thread. Would have been all but perfect had you taken your own advice and saved yourself the trouble of penning all that complicated stuff above. I say “potentially” because as things are, it reads as a sour and churlish, “I’ve had the last word on this, so everyone move on.”
– – – – – – – – – – –
milodonharlani ,
Hey, thanks for your tentative detection of a possible global warming skepticism signal that is somewhat associated with the current position of the UKIP. But it does look somewhat indirect and faint as signals go. : )
So I still fail to see is the hard explicit signal in the current UKIP showing their global warming skepticism.
John
Mr Whitman, if I may be of help. After an extensive stint of research consisting of typing “UKIP on global warming” into Google’s search bar and being inundated with about 898,000 results in what felt like an eternity (0.47 seconds), I considered all the sources carefully and somehow happened to settle on the very first entry, a Guardian article sniffling and whining about the multitude of aggressive “anti-environmental” policies by UKIP. It indicates a strong signal; too strong for Guardian’s “world’s leading journalists on climate, energy and wildlife”:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/04/ukip-energy-climate-policies
No, no, no need to offer payment for my research services; direct some change into Anthony’s tip jar instead.
“Avi ben Barzel says: May 27, 2014 at 2:36 pm”
Thanks. The style was matched to how we’ve all been addressed right from the start, but ukipian is the last resort.
The strongest skeptic asset is in my opinion the opposite: respect of human rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. The environment is not in it – and for good reasons.
Mr/Mrs Kateenkorva, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean. No doubt the fault is mine.
The strongest skeptic asset is in my opinion the opposite: respect of human rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. The environment is not in it – and for good reasons.
Ooh, ooh, wait, I thinks I gots it. Environment is not in the charter of human rights because the environment is not human? Mum used to say I wasn’t the brightest in the litter, but she was wrong.
– – – – – – – – –
Avi ben Barzel,
Sorry, I did not yet get around to a response to your comment to me on May 27, 2014 at 10:43 am. So, instead I’ll respond to your above quoted comment to me (May 27, 2014 at 3:18 pm).
I like your style very much. It is a pleasure to read. Thanks.
Please reconsider alternate approaches to your Google research assessment resulting in The Guardian article on the UKIP. As an alternative approach to The Guardian, it should be more cognitively valid to consult the Oracle at Delphi about the UKIP. N’est ce pas?
John
I like your style too, Mr Whitman; the word pithy comes to mind. One must take care to properly pronounce the fricative, of course…
That’ll attract some sympathy in the press. And it’ll appeal to them as a nice scandal too.
“remote and incomprehensible”! love it.
27 May: Deutsche Welle: EU leaders to ‘digest’ voter rebuff in Brussels
(AFP, Reuters)
France’s President Francois Hollande has called for a reduced EU role…
EU leaders were due to hold a preliminary discussion about who should get the job of next European Commission president at their informal dinner in the Belgian capital…
***French President Francois Hollande whose governing Socialists were relegated to third place by France’s far-right National Front and the main opposition UMP, went on television on Monday to accuse Brussels of being “remote and incomprehensible” for many EU citizens.
“This cannot continue. Europe has to be simple, clear, to be effective where it is needed and to withdraw from where it is not necessary,” Hollande said…
http://www.dw.de/eu-leaders-to-digest-voter-rebuff-in-brussels/a-17664622
whilst the MSM has played down Ukip’s CAGW scepticism – all the Stakeholders know the facts:
27 May: Business Green: Jessica Shankleman: Will the rise of anti-EU parties derail Europe’s environmental ambitions?
Brussels insiders remain optimistic the EU can still pass ambitious 2030 carbon targets, despite a rising tide of scepticism.
In Brussels, Lib Dems, including Sir Graham Watson, Chris Davies and Rebecca Taylor, who have all been vocal in their backing for the green agenda for the past five years, are packing their bags, while UKIP is preparing to send 24 politicians to the European Parliament – 11 more than they won in the last election.
The loss of all but one Lib Dem MEP will be felt acutely in the corridors of Strasbourg and in the Parliament’s environmentally-focused committee rooms. Davies in particular has led calls for strong policies to support carbon capture and storage technology and reductions in vehicle emissions…
Could the success of UKIP, with its climate sceptic and anti-renewable energy position, derail efforts to agree ambitious new green targets for 2030? And will Marine le Pen’s National Front lead a charge against a 40 per cent emissions reduction target?…
Previous voting records are also a good indicator of what is to come. Analysis by Thomson Reuters Point Carbon reveals that Socialists, Liberals and Greens provided the key support for the European Commission’s 2030 energy and climate package report in February. The pro-European centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) was split over the issue and those on the right were broadly opposed…
The split at the heart of the EPP on environmental issues is likely to deepen further because Poland, which has traditionally opposed more ambitious climate policies, has become the second biggest delegation in the group after Germany with 23 MEPs…
The first major test for the new Parliament will come in September, when MEPs on the new environment committee meet to discuss long term changes to the Emissions Trading System (ETS), in a bid to boost the price of carbon in the fragile market and build on the temporary fix that this year saw a reduction in the number of allowances being auctioned.
Sanjeev Kumar, founder of the NGO Change Partnership, said he was optimistic that proposals to create a new ETS Market Stability Reserve (MSR) in order to tackle oversupply in the market would pass. “At first glance, there is a stronger majority for than against measures to address climate change, clean energy and inclusive growth,” he said.
***However, Hæge Fjellhei, senior policy analyst at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, was less certain about the outlook for environmental policies, predicting the composition of the new Parliament will have implications for the development of European policy for the rest of this decade. “It’s really difficult to see how the debate is going to go forward now in the new environment committee,” she told BusinessGreen. “About half of the parliamentarians are new so I’m assuming it’s going to take some time for them to get their heads around the issue. It’s complex and not straightforward to just jump into. The whole election process has of course postponed the debate on this issue.”…
Beyond the Parliament, the EU Commission is also due for a reshuffle in November, which could bring an end to Connie Hedegaard’s time at the Climate Action department, sparking fears that any change could undermine progress towards a 2015 deal.
There remains a chance that Hedegaard will remain in the post to allow her to continue in the job through to 2015, but insiders admit it is still too early to tell whether or not there will be a change, particularly as member states have yet to elect the new Commission president…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/analysis/2346788/will-the-rise-of-anti-eu-parties-derail-europe-s-environmental-ambitions
LINKS FROM ABOVE: 27 May: Business Green: Natalie Bennett (Green Party leader) calls on main parties to face down UKIP climate scepticism.
I’m pleasantly surprised that the percentage of thinking people in the UK that is not sclerotically bound to be faithful to their political parties no matter what idiocies are perpetrated on the citizenry is large enough to form some belated opposition to the mindless recklessness that is running the show. There can’t be many thinking individualists remaining that believe Europe has the slightest chance in a thousand years of ever recovering from the devastation wrought by the Lilliputians of the established parties and the frivolous sunshine states among them. Breaking EU up and turning loose the deadweight states may allow Germany to survive and if the new UK party can mature and grow, perhaps the UK. Maybe the UK will see some synergy in linking and free trading with its former english-speaking Commonwealth and import some non European ideas (they hate Prime Minister Harper for telling them how they had to properly manage their economies in the future so I’m not hopeful on this score).
Until recently, I thought how naive Europeans were to think that they could found a United States of Europe to be an economic competitor to the United States of America. It seemed touching how far away they were from understanding how a real economy works, or indeed what work even means. Well, I’ve had to come down quite a bit on this matter. Oh, I wasn’t wrong about Europe – its demise is even written into its constitution. However, how wrong I was about America. I thought it was still made of stern stuff, even though hapless governments get put into office now and again. Frighteningly, it appears to have caught the European virus for which no known cure is on the horizon. Obama was ensuring it’s citizens that he was eyeing Spain!!!! as a model for his new economy when even a casual reader of world news could see that Spain’s economy had already collapsed as designed for.
Can a Republican government fix things in the US of A? It will be inheriting a system and an ivy league apparatchik bureaucracy that is unmanageable if the hope is to get the US economy functioning again with it. A lot of necessary pain ahead. And Europeans who traditionally have mocked and looked down on what was the world’s economic engine, should be praying for a quick recovery of the former life-giving giant that allowed them to play and pretend.
UKIP is certainly being mocked and looked down upon by the governors of Europe – maybe there is some hope after all.
Richardscourtney said:
“Please allow me to help because it is clear you have not been reading the thread and you have forgotten your own words posted in this thread.”
Didn’t take you long to start with that rubbish did it? Grow up and get over yourself.
“His reply to your statement asserted the truisms that it is self-evident that each political party – including UKIP – needs sufficient popularity to win elections. As dbstealey says, UKIP obtained sufficient popularity to win most UK seats in the recent EU Parliamentary election, and that is how democracy works.”
Yeah I know. We all do. No one was talking about those other parties. The subject was the UKIP, and pointing out the failures of other parties does not take away from what I said, especially in a thread about the UKIP. Does a murderer in court have a point if he points at a bunch of other murderers and says, “yeah but look at them, they did it too?”
“You claim that “popularity” is the only care of UKIP. Perhaps you are right, but that is NOT what UKIP said during the election campaign. And if you are right then UKIP’s failure to fulfil what they said in the campaign will lose them popularity so they will not get re-elected.
You do not like UKIP. I don’t either.
And you are opposing UKIP here. I think that is a mistake: there is a time and place for everything and the place for pushing any brand of politics is not WUWT (although US ultra-right constantly try).”
Well, I didn’t make the thread about what it’s about, and it wasn’t my decision to allow it on this site. Given that it is here, it is more than reasonable for me to comment on the UKIP.
Richardscourtney:
Seriously, why did you feel the need to start out by insulting me with that post? Is it really that hard to communicate without such insults and snide remarks? Would you really run stuff like that on me if we were having a conversation face to face?
I really don’t understand what is going through your head when you make these decisions.
“Ohhh.. there is that guy again, and he supports the wrong team… I’ll show him with a well crafted insult!!”
If it isn’t something like that, I’d love to know, cause about now it makes as much sense as why soccer hooligans do their thing.
Philip, Richard usually debates in this manner, going for the man instead of the ball. Don’t take it too hard, it’s his method he uses with most people he disagrees with. If it annoys you, just don’t respond. I also believe that WUWT should not be used for politicking, however it is difficult to avoid, usually due to the idea that hard sceptism of the majority view of climate change is strongly linked to right wing politics, hence this is a site where people like Monckton and Tea bag party followers will tend to slide in promotions for their own political viewpoints. Having said that, there are people on the Left who also have concerns, but due to their political beliefs they would usually get a hard time from the majority of posters on this site due to the slant of the ideas, so would likely avoid the area. Some of the ideas on politics are plainly bonkers and ill informed, but it’s useful to see how strong a correlation can be between daft political beliefs and views on climate science. UKIP do not like renewable energy sources, but I suspect that is due to financial concerns rather than an objection based on scientific understanding, though I would expect UKIP to have an opposing stance to the mainstream due to their hard right political beliefs.
Philip Schaeffer:
Your posts at May 27, 2014 at 8:45 pm and at May 27, 2014 at 9:04 pm are a good attempt at ‘stirring the pot’ but you are mistaken if you think I am willing to assist your “food fight”.
Your earlier post ignored the contents of previous posts including posts from you and I pointed that out. Those facts are not an “insult” whatever you may pretend. (n.b. This is not a “caustic” comment. It is a factual refutation of a falsehood about me.)
I now only write to refute your assertion which is disguised as a question, and is
You would “understand what is going through [my] head” if you read what I wrote and you quoted.
Supporting the “wrong team” has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, I was objecting to your attempts to stifle information from and about a “wrong team”. As I wrote and you quoted me having written
Please stop posting falsehoods especially your false accusations of “insults”, and when writing posts then remember other words – including your own – in the thread. (n.b. This is not an attempt at Moderation: it is a response to trolling directed at me).
Richard
Friends:
I ask people to read my reply at May 27, 2014 at 11:51 pm to Philip Schaeffer if they are tempted to be fooled by the post from Gareth Phillips at May 27, 2014 at 11:43 pm.
This link jumps to my reply to Philip Schaeffer.
Richard
Ps. It’s interesting that Monckton issues multiple personal insults at JohnA, slides in a criticism of Barack Obama and strangely suggests he supports a peoples fight for democracy, while glossing over the fact he supports the idea that a person can be born to rule over others and should not have to face a form of election or democratic process. Then compounds the issue by labelling JohnA a troll because he has his own opinions on an issue.
Maybe we could agree a few rules on the nature of the process of trolling ?
1) A troll is not just someone who just disagrees with you.
2) A reasoned argument which avoids insulting individuals or groups is not trolling.
3) Insulting someone then calling them s troll is, paradoxically , trolling.
4) Pointing out the paradox of someone using approach (3) is also not trolling.
5) Going for the man instead of the ball is trolling.
6) issuing personal insults is trolling.
There may be disagreements, fair enough. Sometimes it is difficult to put over a point which an individual feels passionate about without raising the heat of a debate, so trolling can sometimes be a subjective idea existing in a grey area. But if we believe we are annoying someone, maybe we should back off and stop it, unless we think it’s all a point scoring game instead of a reasoned debate.
The link did not work. It is this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/26/uks-only-climate-skeptic-party-crushingly-wins-the-eu-election/#comment-1647632
Richard
That was wrong, too.
I think it is this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/26/uks-only-climate-skeptic-party-crushingly-wins-the-eu-election/#comment-1647691
Richard
Richard, the last one worked ok.
Gareth Phillips:
Thankyou.
Richard
And apologies to you Richard if I seemed to insult you, I meant to say that your bark was worse than your bite and not to get worried over minor issues.
Cheers G.
Let’s make a new word, trolloper.
I define trolloper as a person who habitually initiates taunts which consist of accusing fellow bloggers of being trolls when disagreeing with them.
John
“John Whitman says:
May 28, 2014 at 3:08 am”
I have to agree with this!
Trolloper, nice word John. I bet with 2 years it’s included in the O.E.!
Whining trolls such as Gareth Phillips too hastily come to the aid of the wounded whining troll “John A”, whom I call out as a whining troll for the following reasons:
John A, in his threadbare, lamentably undistinguished, bad-tempered and calculatedly offensive contributions to this thread, has asserted or implied as fact the following points:
1. “In the European election of 2014, UKIP made no mention of climate change or climate skepticism.” This statement was a falsehood. UKIP had in fact devoted 10% of its 750-word 2014 manifesto to the issue, as follows: “Risk Of Blackouts: The 2008 Climate Change Act costs an estimated £18bn per year – that’s more than £500 for every household in the UK. We will scrap this Act. EU renewables targets mean taxpayers’ money subsidises wind farms that require gas powered back-up when the wind doesn’t blow. The EU Large Combustion Plant Directive will shut many vital oil and coal-fired power stations in 2015. OFGEM warns that plant closures could cause blackouts.” What is more, the falsehood cannot have been anything other than deliberate, for “John A” goes on to mention that UKIP’s policies on wind farms and on coal-fired power stations are in the manifesto but deliberately omits to refer to the very first item of UKIP’s policy: “The 2008 Climate Change Act costs an estimated £18 billion per year – that’s more than £500 for every household in the UK. We will scrap this Act.”
2. Next, “John A” asserts that Nigel Farage had dismissed the 2010 manifesto as “drivel” and wonders why I say commitments made then “are somehow relevant to the reasons why people voted UKIP in 2014”. The implications that the climate policy I had promulgated was from the 2010 manifesto and that the commitments contained in the climate policy I had promulgated had been dismissed as “drivel” are both false. For one thing, if “John A” had not carefully omitted to state UKIP’s continuing intention to “scrap” the Climate Change Act 2008 that appeared in the 2014 manifesto, it would have noticed that the first item of policy in the 2010 statement I promulgated was to “repeal the Climate Change Act”. Two further items of policy from my 2010 statement were to “cease to subsidize wind farms, on environmental and economic grounds” and to “commission enough fossil-fuelled and nuclear power stations to meet demand”. Plainly, all three of these items of policy that appear in the 2014 UKIP manifesto had also appeared in my 2010 statement of UKIP’s policy and are, therefore, “relevant to the reasons why people voted UKIP in 2014”, insofar as these statements of climate change policy are the third major item in the 2014 manifesto after leaving the EU and regaining control of immigration.
3. “John A” writes: “It seems to me that people voted UKIP largely as a protest vote against further EU integration (which is a common theme across the EU) and against continuing mass immigration (ditto).” Here, “John A” is implying that I had suggested that UKIP’s climate policy was the main reason why people had voted for it, when I had explicitly and correctly stated in the head posting that climate ranked after leaving the EU and controlling immigration in UKIP’s hierarchy of policies. Here is what I actually said: “However, after opposition to the EU’s militantly anti-democratic structure and to the mass immigration that has been forced upon Britain as a direct result, UKIP’s third most popular policy with the voters is its opposition to the official EU global-warming story-line.” Sure enough, reflecting this fact, on the first page of the 2014 manifesto’s list of policies, the first policy to be mentioned is leaving the EU; the second policy to be mentioned is controlling immigration; and the third policy to be mentioned is the climate policy.
4. “John A” describes the 2010 policy statement on the climate as “a policy position that even a right-wing party like UKIP does not promulgate any more”. Yet in fact, in the very short EU 2014 manifesto, three of the policy points from the 2010 policy statement are explicitly mentioned.
5. “John A” falsely asserted that my “argument hinged on the UKIP winning in 2014 based on the disowned 2010 manifesto”. This assertion is not just false but manifestly false. I had explicitly asserted that the first reason for UKIP’s victory was its opposition to Britain’s membership of the EU; that the second reason was its desire to control immigration; and the third reason was its climate policy.
6. “John A” asserted that in the head posting I had “quoted the 2010 manifesto at length”. That assertion is false and without any foundation. The head posting explicitly states that I am quoting from the climate policy that I had promulgated in 2010. Like Nigel Farage, I have never read the 2010 manifesto and could not, therefore, quote from it.
7. “John A” falsely asserted that I had “tried to conflate the 2010 and 2014 manifestoes”. I had mentioned neither. Nevertheless, it is of course true that three of the key elements in my 2010 policy statement also appeared in the 2014 manifesto.
8. “John A” falsely asserted that I had stated that the 2010 manifesto was “other than a temporary policy”. I had not mentioned the 2010 manifesto. Nevertheless, my 2010 policy statement remains, in substance, the policy of UKIP to this day, which is why three key elements from it were explicitly reproduced in the 2014 manifesto. And it is in the nature of manifestoes that they are temporary, and I had neither said nor implied anything to the contrary.
9. “John A” asserted, on no evidence, on no knowledge, ad hominem and off topic, that I had “inherited wealth”. I didn’t.
All of these statements or direct implications made by “John A” were, therefore, manifestly, transparently, deliberately false. On the basis of these wilful misrepresentations, “John A” drew the following unjustifiable and offensively-expressed conclusions:
1. That I had “made statements that were demonstrably false”. Pot calls kettle black. All my statements, as “John A” knew perfectly well from the outset, demonstrably true.
2. That “What Christopher Monckton has written is pure sophistry and I can only describe it as deceptive.” Pot calls kettle black. All of “John A”’s statements or implications itemized above were false, deceptive, and mendacious.
On any view, “John A” is guilty of trolling. I am very grateful not only to Richard Courtney but to many others for having taken it to task for its bad behavior, which Richard Courtney has rightly characterized as “harmful and disruptive”.
“John A”, having wilfully misrepresented the position over and over again after the fashion of other trolls here, ought really to apologize. However, I shall not hold my breath, for grace never waits upon gracelessness, and I shall instead content myself with ensuring that this thread is archived at the Lord Monckton Foundation, where future generations will be able to study the extraordinary lapse of intellectual rigor and common decency that had infected the Western world, of which the repellent and disfiguring contributions of “John A” to this thread are all too typical, and hence intergenerationally paradeigmatic, examples.
Finally, I make no issue of the fact that the proprietor of this site allowed “John A” to accuse me, over and over again and falsely, as will now by now be apparent, of lying (in that from the outset and repeatedly it used words such as “mendacious”, “deceptive”, and “sophistry”). For it is known that I am able to defend myself, and that I am collecting these deplorable instances of direct and malevolent falsehood on the part of “John A” and various other whining trolls as part of a major project to restore the classical modes of logical thought and morality to the education system and, eventually, to the national and international debate.
Truth alone is worthy of our entire devotion, as the early 20th-century philosopher Fr. Vincent McNabb used to say, and that is something that “John A” and various whining sub-trolls on this thread have yet to learn.
“Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 28, 2014 at 3:58 am”
You can’t help yourself, can you? Anthony Watts, I am surprised you still allow this on your blog.
REPLY: I don’t always see all comments posted, especially those posted while I’m sleeping and approved by other moderators – Anthony
Richard.
“I believe that you didn’t read the rest of this thread or remember your own comments, so to state that as a fact isn’t an insult” is basically what you logic comes down to. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that you honestly thought I didn’t read the rest of the thread or remember my own comments.
Where your argument fails, Christopher, is when you dismiss a critic as a troll for what may be errors. Correct the errors you perceive if you’re so inclined, but the knee-jerk calling of gazillions of people, many of whom are often in agreement with you, trolls, undermines you.
It just looks wrong to be going on a blog with people who are frequently in agreement with you and calling them trolls because they disagree with you about something.
As Stated before, climate malarky will continue to spin up until it is recognized as a cost that loses elections. Then silence will be the new norm but actual policy change is another step.
Thank you Monckton, I am most grateful for your excellent ( if long winded) illustration of the nature of a ‘Trolloper’ I shall use it in my teaching sessions.
Philip Schaeffer:
re your post at May 28, 2014 at 5:21 am.
I did NOT say what you pretend to quote me saying.
Your falsehoods are pure trolling.
Richard
I am glad that Mr Phillips now appears to accept that it was inappropriate for the whining troll “John A” to accuse me of having been “deceptive”, “mendacious”, and “sophistical” – in short, to accuse me of lying and then to persist in his accusation in continuing, sullen defiance of the facts as I have now relentlessly unfolded them. His conduct was the misconduct of a troll, and it has no place in threads such as this.
If I am accused of lying when I have not lied, and if the person accusing me of having lied has himself lied (for instance, in having stated that UKIP’s 2014 manifesto had nothing to say about climate change when it can be proven that the troll in question had read the manifesto, which had plainly repeated as its first policy item on the subject my policy statement that the “Climate Change” Act should be repealed), then I am fully entitled to describe such a liar as a troll.
Calling a liar a troll is less impolite than calling it a liar. However, since “John A” nastily persisted in its lies, and nastily persisted in calling me a liar, I have naturally had to spell out in some detail what the evidence actually is, so that those who have not rushed, as Mr Phillips foolishly did, into taking the side of the liar without having taken the trouble to verify any of the facts will realize how foolish they have been.
So to Mr Dollis, who has adopted a carping, sniping tone throughout this thread and now bossily tells me I should not call a whining troll who has repeatedly lied while falsely accusing me of having lied a whining troll. By now it will be apparent to regular readers of these threads that I do not call people trolls because they disagree with me, but because they either persistently misrepresent what I had actually written or persistently misrepresent the truth or resort to ad-hominem attacks or – as in the case of the unspeakable “John A”, which has made a particular idiot of itself – all three.
Why is it, one wonders, other than rank bias, that sub-trolls such as Mr Phillips and Mr Dollis are willing to indulge the outright falsehoods of the likes of “John A”, and to indulge his false assertions that it was I who told lies, and to indulge his ad-hominem remark about my supposed inheritance (of which “John A” has no knowledge, wherefore a becoming silence would have been appropriate), while sniping and carping at me for demonstrating that “John A’s” lies were exactly that?
For once, let these knuckle-dragging sub-trolls do a little homework and look at UKIP’s 2014 manifesto. There they will find the reference to “climate change” that “John A” said was not there. Yet if they read his earlier postings, they will see that he mentioned the UKIP policies on windmills and coal-fired power stations that occur in the very same paragraph, in which the very first item was the reference to the “climate change” Act. So “John A” had known perfectly well that the 2014 manifesto mentioned “climate change”. It was not an “error” on the part of “John A”: it was a wilful misrepresentation, part of a series of related and carefully-contrived wilful misrepresentations designed to cast me in an unfavorable light because “John A” does not like UKIP’s commitment to restoring democracy in Britain. On that, “John A” is of course entitled to its view. But it cannot expect to get away with lying and persisting in its lies, and hope that I shall not call it out as the liar that it is.
Finally, in calling “John A” a liar not only am I stating the well-demonstrated and properly-evidenced truth but also not directing that amply-justified epithet at any named person. For “John A” has chosen furtively to call me libelous names from behind a pseudonym. I can, therefore, call it any names I like, without reproof, for it has been cowardly enough not to identify itself, except to the extent of admitting, rather late in the day, that it once administered a climate-skeptical blog. The only “John A” of which I was previously aware was a band.
If trolls post here under pseudonyms, and continue to exercise a right that they should really be denied, of making and persisting gravely false allegations against named individuals, they must expect to be treated with the ridicule and contempt they deserve. I am not alone in having become weary of the utter falsehoods that so many in the climate debate feel free to perpetrate, and I shall continue to do what I have always done: to point out the falsehoods as bluntly as may be necessary until they cease.
I’m a climate skeptic and a euro-skeptic, from a member state of the EU and the eurozone. I followed the EU parliamentary elections closely, and Europe wide I must say that climate was nearly a non-issue. Economy, national sovereignty, immigration, EU bureaucracy, voter apathy and Ukraine dominated the debates.
I don’t understand Chris of Pomposity at all. There seems to be very little substance behind his argument, and when challenged on it, calls everyone who challenges his faulty view a troll. As mostly a silent and non-debating follower of this fine blog, I don’t see why he should be given such a prominent position here. His threads mostly repeat themselves on the temperature record, which usually seems a side point, the real issue being self-promotion and self-indulgence. For a neutral reader, the undecided, lukewarmers, doubters, I gather, he must seem like a caricature of the “climate denialist” and his arrogance is off putting. Come down a peg or two, Chris Monckton, be a normal, humble person. You act like a cartoon character of the Victorian snob. Climate skepticism is a good cause, but I doubt very much that your approach or style is fruitful at winning over new supporters for it.
“Buddenbrook” is entitled to its opinion, but if I were to call it a liar it would understandably take offense. I was called a liar and dealt with it. Why is “Buddenbrook” so selectively silent on the unfounded allegations of mendacity by “John A” to which I have chosen to respond?
My monthly updates of the global temperature non-trend seem to have attracted much interest and have made some contribution to the growing public awareness that the modelers’ predictions are in this major respect exaggerations. And I write on many other climate-related matters. I imagine that I am given space here because what I say is of some interest to those who administer this site and to their readers. My pieces regularly attract a rather higher than average number of comments, and – though the pompously puritanical “Buddenbrook” may be surprised at this – quite a few readers (and one or two of the moderators) enjoy my vigorous and sometimes detailed responses to various trolls, name-callers and other time-wasters.
And if “Buddenbrook” thinks my “view” is “faulty”, let him say why. Otherwise he is indulging in mere yah-boo, and doing so from behind what appears to be a pseudonym. If so, that is cowardly.
Avast me mateys, thare be
sea monstersTrollopers*** here. Arrgh. Aye, two of em ‘orrible things thare is amongst yee.*** a Trollop is defined to mean a person who habitually initiates taunts which consist of accusing fellow bloggers of being trolls when disagreeing with them.
John
[No, no. A trollop is a female troll. Which may the same thing as what you defined. 8<) .mod]
John Whitman:
re your post at May 28, 2014 at 7:50 am.
In can invent definitions for words, too. Anybody can. But I choose to use definitions which pertain to the history of the defined word.
For example, a johnwhitman is defined to mean a person who proclaims trolling as an art-form and who habitually trolls.
So, having addressed your side-track, I request a return to the subject of this thread which the troll infestation has successfully diverted by .
Richard
“I did NOT say what you pretend to quote me saying.
Your falsehoods are pure trolling.
Richard”
Looks exactly like what you are saying from where I’m standing.
“On the contrary, I was objecting to your attempts to stifle information from and about a “wrong team”.”
What on earth did I do to stifle information from and about anyone?
“I am glad that Mr Phillips now appears to accept that it was inappropriate for the whining troll “John A” to accuse me of having been “deceptive”, “mendacious”, and “sophistical”
Apologies Monckton, I fear you have confused me with another person, with all due respect I said no such thing. There does seem to be a fair amount of criticism of your approach which really can’t all be classed as Trolling, so when in a hole etc. Apparently UKIP received less than 10% of the UK vote, but that is the nature of democracy. UKIPs success was remarkable, but it was apathy that won a landslide victory. Lets hope whoever wins the UK Parliamentary election next year has sufficient votes to claim a governing mandate.
He did say why. (Obviously.) He said:
That’s his impression (which is roughly my impression too from a distance). Maybe he’s right; maybe he’s wrong. However, it is absurd to say he didn’t say why.
– – – – – – – –
.mod,
Cute. But isn’t a female troll is more likely to be called a trollete or troll babe, n’est ce pas?
And I should clarify that trolloper is not associated in my defined way with the dictionary defined trollop (slutty behaving lady). Although completely unrelated, I find the latter is of more noble stature than the former. : )
John
More like 27.5%, an 11% increase.
Gareth Phillips says:
…UKIP received less than 10% of the UK vote…
Results.
Christoph beat me to it!
richardscourtney
You give the impression of the a person who when on holiday, if left alone long enough in a bedroom (a normal one, say in a B&B), after half an hour there’d be an awful kerfuffle coming from your room after you’d manage to get into a fight with the duvet…there is something of the Basil Fawlty about you.
And please, I don’t mean that as an insult, it’s just you sound like you love a good scrap! And at any time.
Hi Christoph Dollis, yes, they received 27.5% from those who voted, but only 35% of the UK population voted. Amongst the UK voters the share received by any party was less than 9%. UKIP did indeed have a substantial increase in votes, but it was from a very low base. It’s useful to look at local elections as an example of how people vote when they are directly affected by the outcome. In that particular election Labour gained 6 councils and an extra 338 seats. In contrast UKIP gained no councils, but did win an extra 161 seats. In comparison, Labour won a four figure amount of seats, but their victory was seen as a poor show, UKIP won a tenth of that, but the result was viewed as earth shattering. So it’s all about perspective. If I were a UKIP supporter I’d be happy, if I supported Labour I would not be overly concerned. But my party did better than expected so I am confident.
Is UKIP half-baked. Yes. Has its sudden success taken them by surprise? Yes. But don’t believe for a moment that it won’t quickly mature having surprised themselves. When prospects of forming a gov are remote, there is no hurry. One can experiment widely looking for a raison d’etre. They did already know that there was wide spread dissatisfaction across the policy spectrum and just to be against most of it was a good way to make room for a new party. Also, they have been listening to the unhappiness of the electorate. The other parties haven’t been. They’ve just rolled along merrily with the idea that they know what is best for all.
In elections, the best strategy, if it can be taken advantage of, is pumping on one’s record and belittling that of the others. Since this strategy, after the past two decades, is not available to the incumbents, then there is pretty much a level playing field in that department. You will see pols from labor to conservatives desperately looking for ways to adopt UKIP’s broad policy positions without appearing to. Emboldened, and matured, UKIP is going to look like a savior of last resort. People may not love UKIP but they are looking for something different. If Farage has any rhetorical flair and shows himself to be a thoughtful iconoclast, the “entitlement” parties will have no useful arrows in their quivers. In Canada, I recall an old Liberal saying that, after the corruption and negligence of the Liberal Party in two decades of power against little opposition, they do deserve some time in the “penalty box”. An idiot could redesign governance of the UK.
– – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
If you go back and do a word search on this thread for the word troll, you will see that the thread was irretrievably distracted by Christopher Monckton’s initiation of taunting people by his troll name calling. There was only one other person on this thread who accused another of being a troll. That other person was you . . . . so you aided in Christopher Monckton’s thread diversion into troll name calling. You two created it as a diversion.
As to inventing words, enjoy it. All words were made up by somebody. N’est ce pas?
Will my invented word ‘trolloper’*** live beyond this thread? I do not know or care.
*** trolloper is defined as a person who habitually initiates taunts which consist of accusing fellow bloggers of being trolls when disagreeing with them.
John
Sure, but not 100% of the people vote in UK national elections so it’s still higher than the number you state, when you consider that. That said, they do better at the EU than nationally because people don’t want to waste their votes in the national election. That effect will hold, but be lessened, in the next UK election. I’ve seen political paradigms change, for example, in Canada. This is what you’re seeing here, and it’s Europe-wide. It won’t happen in one national election. More likely three.
No
No. This is precisely the task their leader set out for himself and communicated to the party. I knew damn well it would be a good showing for nationalist parties across Europe opposing accountability at the EU, excess immigration, and even a lack of respect for ethnic self-determination in parts of Ukraine.
It’s you who this took by surprise.
*opposing unaccountability at the EU
cd:
re your post at May 28, 2014 at 8:45 am.
Please provide evidence when making personal attacks of that type. Otherwise you could be assumed to be a troll of the John Whitman kind.
Richard
– – – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
RE; the causers of the troll distraction can be found by Word Search (often by Ctrl+F) function. That is the observed evidence.
John
I will point out, Christopher, that you failed to make the case that climate had much to do with this result to an audience who would like to believe that it did.
Christopher Monckton,
Can you answer the open question to the general audience here that I asked in a comment yesterday on this thread? Where are the current (say in ~6 months) public statements explicitly made by the UKIP that indicates the existence of a current PR signal from the UKIP that it has a basically skeptical position toward significant or alarming AGW? I am not interested in what other parties or MSM say about the UKIP on alarming AGW, but I am interested in what the UKIP’s statements currently (in the last `6 months) signal about its position on alarming AGW.
I think that if the UKIP, in the last ~6 months or so, had virtually no public and explicit focus on alarming AGW then it seems that would not have been a very relevant factor in the election outcome.
John
Have UKIP made any recent statements about Climate Change?
Here is their 2014 Euro manifesto:
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5308a93901925b5b09000002/attachments/original/1398869254/EuroManifestoLaunch.pdf
And here is the relevant passage:
“Risk Of Blackouts
• The 2008 Climate Change Act costs an estimated £18bn per year – that’s more than £500 for every household in the UK. We will scrap this Act.
• EU renewables targets mean taxpayers’ money subsidises wind farms that require gas powered
back-up when the wind doesn’t blow.
• The EU Large Combustion Plant Directive will shut many vital oil and coal-fired power stations in 2015.
OFGEM warns that plant closures could cause blackouts.”
You must remember, in an election, it is important to remind the voters how current policy affects them and what is proposed so, it is the increased energy costs that need to be highlighted, and the action required to improve the situation is “scrapping the 2008 Climate Change Act”.
There have been many statements and discussions by UKIP members about the Science, or lack of it, and the manifesto was a short, no frills document outlining the party’s intended direction.
The 2008 Climate Change is one of many peculiar policies that have recently been foisted upon Britain.
When your children return from school on their first day at school and ask why no one in their class understands them, or why they get no teaching because their teachers are spending all their time trying to teach the non-English speakers some English, instead of improving their writing, reading and arithmetic skills, or they are forced to learn Arabic, so they can read the Koran, with the boys at the front of the class, the 2008 Climate Change Act pales into insignificance!
OK, but I think he made ad buys and public speeches—not something on the website 16 wonks who weren’t actually paid by a party or their media organisation to read, read.
*he meant
The 2008 Climate Change Act was passed by Parliament. Unusually, for Britain, the date for the re-election of members has already been pencilled in: it is next year.
The elections last week were for local and Eu representation. The leaflets were designed accordingly. It is well known that UKIP want to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act, it is one of their USPs, but there are many aspects of the Green agenda that need to be addressed and some have been included in leaflets, such as “End[ing] wasteful EU and UK subsidies to ‘renewable energy scams’, such as wind turbines and solar farms”, dropping the EU Landfill Directive and closing unnecessary central government departments and quangos. I would think that the Environment Agency would be a good candidate for inspection!
The leaflets had the UKIP web address ukip.org and, on the home page, under the heading getINFORMED, you will find the information available. Not difficult to find, wonk or not!
As most of the British public are now sceptical of the ‘alarming AGW’, to me, it was sensible to move the discussion onto other subjects, including more details of cost savings that could be made around the Climate Change budget, as I have mentioned above.
Wow, Robert, that was a sensible argument. Much easier to follow than any which came before.
One question though—how did you manage to make a cogent statement without calling a bunch of people who generally agree with you trolls? I thought that was a necessary first step to any good rebuttal?
/sarc [but not at you]
Mr Dollis, who continues to fail to contribute anything constructive, says I did not convince a skeptical audience that the climate had much to do with UKIP’s election result. Of course not. Nothing in the head posting said or implied that, and I stated that the climate policy ranked third after leaving the EU and controlling immigration.
Mr Whitman asks which of UKIP’s recent public statements addresses the climate. Try the energy policy document, or Mr Farage’s head-to-head with Barroso in the European duma on supposedly melting sea ice, or the demand by one of our MEPs that the teaching of climate propaganda in schools should be banned, or Mr Helmer’s statement on the absence of “97% consensus”, or UKIP’s 2014 EU manifesto itself, which ranked climate change policy third after leaving the EU and controlling immigration, precisely as I had said in the head posting.
John Whitman:
re your post at May 28, 2014 at 10:14 am.
Of course, as you say, you are never the first to mention trolling. Similarly, a thief is never the first to mention theft.
You have a long history of supporting trolling on WUWT. It is your method of trolling and has obtained objections from others including me.
Richard
PS I notice that Philip Schaeffer – having had such success trolling this thread with your assistance – has now started trolling other WUWT threads e.g. here.
John Whitman says:
May 28, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Christopher Monckton,
…
I am not interested in what other parties or MSM say about the UKIP on alarming AGW, but I am interested in what the UKIP’s statements currently (in the last `6 months) signal about its position on alarming AGW.
I think that if the UKIP, in the last ~6 months or so, had virtually no public and explicit focus on alarming AGW then it seems that would not have been a very relevant factor in the election outcome.
John
===============================
Either you haven’t understood what Lord Monckton wrote in his original article or you are after something else. Lord Monckton showed us his contribution to UKIP policies and you come up with some sort of “show us this show us that”, which means distraction and obfuscating Moncktons arguments. Why do you expect UKIP focusing on a subject to your liking? UKIP, through its representatives at various meetings and speeches made clear what its attitude towards energy and climate policies is. Go and get informed yourself. It will certainly do you no harm.
I suppose you are after the man and not the ball. Foul play, that is.
Except for emphasising the key issues (which go further than the two you mentioned).
Anyway, you’ve certainly contributed a lot of shrill shrieks of, “Trolls! Trolls, trolls everywhere, I tell you!”
Further, brilliant job, Nigel. I didn’t even bring up Syria (I did bring up two other issues more critical to the electorate than climate in this election that you, Monckton, didn’t mention in your post, including Ukraine, i.e., Europe overstretching itself to the east dangerously), , but certainly it’s something I’ve talked about elsewhere several times..
Good on him for making the practical and moral argument about Syria too. It’s disgraceful that taxpayer dollars go to supporting Al Qaida affiliated groups with all their Syrian mass beheadings and other murders. European policy on Ukraine is abysmal too, in part for the reasons Nigel Farage mentions as well as the one I mentioned here. And racial harmony is also an important concern given the largely unwanted mass immigration, as he says and I alluded to also.
You may consider these and other issues unimportant, Monckton, but Nigel Farage and the British electorate disagreed, as did those across Europe writ large.
(I’m contrasting it with the purely economic arguments.)
Anyway, let’s call a truce. I accept that UKIP’s climate policy was a factor in their victory. We disagree about its importance. I’d put it say 5th or 6th, you’d put it at 3rd. There’s no point in arguing about that forever. It’s a difference of opinion. My main objection was on what I feel is the overuse of the word “troll”, where presumably we also disagree.
– – – – – – – – – –
Monckton of Brenchley,
Thank you for a timely reply. Your reply is interesting as it indicates your basis of extolling the UKIP in the election just completed as having currently a climate skeptic position.
The UKIP does say some things recently leading up to the completed election that gives some impressions of opposing the climate related policies of its political opponents, however, does that mean it has a basic skeptical position on alarming AGW from CO2? I do no see sufficient evident that it currently has a basic skeptical position on alarming AGW from CO2.
I am willing to look at further evidence that the UKIP may currently have a basic skeptical position on alarming AGW from CO2. I remain skeptical about it.
John
Ha ha ha ha!
moderator,
Please note the double entry of the same post which currently are both in moderation. Please delete one.
John
[5x repeats, actually 8<) .mod]
[5x repeats, actually 8 in any event I suggest only the comment of mine with the latest timestamp/date should be considered for posting.
John
Mr Dollis says he “accepts” that UKIP’s climate skepticism was a factor in its victory. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t: the head posting was silent on that question, and I take no particular view on it, except to say that the UKIP manifesto listed three subject areas, and only three, on the first of its two pages. In order, they were leaving the EU, controlling immigration and dumping the Climate Change Act. UKIP itself, in line with what our private polling had revealed, and in line with the strong support we are getting in various parts of the country where windmills are being built or threatened, concurs with what I had stated in the head posting: that climate change ranks third in importance after leaving the EU and controlling immigration.
The point of the posting, readily grasped by the various enviro-extremist journals in the UK, is that because of UKIP’s climate-skeptical position it will be much ahrder fo the EU to get away with closing down Europe’s industries in the specious name of “Saving The Planet”.
As for Mr Whitman, he too now realizes he originally spoke too hastily, and has come to understand that UKIP does indeed have a current and active policy of opposing the climate nonsense. If he wants to read more about it, let him do his own homework rather than rushing critically but inappropriately into print here.
Anthony,
Can you help me?
The below comment was submitted by me early this morning but never showed up.
Can you have it posted? Sorry for troubling you, I know you are a very busy person.
John
– – – – – – – – –
– – – – – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
There is a fundamental reason you find trolls everywhere in the many who disagree with you whereas I have developed a view over the years where I find no trolls whatsoever in the same threads and topics. The reason that is the case is that you and I have antipodal concepts of troll. We have been through this several times in the past year or two. I have given you before my concept of troll and I repeatedly asked for yours but I do not recall you responding.
As to your reference to Philip Schaeffer on some other thread, it seems you continue with a behavior of troll taunting but now with apparent pursuit. Amazingly you taunt him with troll name calling in absentia on this thread concerning the other thread.
Finally, I do appreciate your considerable critical efforts over a long time to clearly distinguish yourself from me wrt fundamental differences in our intellectual basis and our radically different blog commenting behavior here at WUWT. It is quite revealing intellectually. Thanks.
John
John Whitman:
re your silly excuses, nonsensical assertions and daft tauntings addressed to me at May 29, 2014 at 4:41 pm.
STOP TROLLING!
Richard
Calm down.
– – – – – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
A pleasant dialog.
Your response to my comment to you seems mostly to be of the nature of a certain kind of non sequitur***.
Let me rephrase what I said to you in the earlier comment of mine. I did find evidence that the UKIP in the just completed elections adopted some positions that were in clear opposition to the climate policy positions of their political opponents, but I saw no significant evidence that the UKIP currently has a basic position that is skeptical of alarming AGW from fossil fuels. I am open to seeing some actual evidence the UKIP currently has a basic position that is skeptical of alarming AGW from fossil fuels, given that the evidence was not shown to me in this thread.
**** non sequitur used in the sense of a literary and/or conversational device that is often a way to show irony
John
John Whitman says:
May 30, 2014 at 7:44 am
…
but I saw no significant evidence that the UKIP currently has a basic position that is skeptical of alarming AGW from fossil fuels.”
…
You seem to have a distinct unwillingness to take notice of what others have to say. Nigel Farage made it crystal clear at a public meeting in Torquay in March this year what the party line on energy and fossile fuels is. Look and listen, it’s on youtube.There are other similar statements, e.g. from Roger Helmer.
So what is it that you want? Do you want to see UKIP using your phrase …”that the UKIP currently has a basic position that is skeptical of alarming AGW from fossil fuels.”… to the letter? That would be mere cantankerous conceitedness. I believe it’s time for you to understand that politcal statements can be given in other ways than copying your ideas verbatim just to satisfy some narrow-mindedness.
I endorse the opinion of richardscourtneys and others paraphrasing it:
“Don’t feed the Trolls”
– – – – – – – –
Non Nomen,
Trolls? What trolls?
Re: UKIP => And of course your views are yours to express. No problema. Show me some current (say in the last six months) links to officials of the UKIP saying in explicit essence that they are significantly skeptical of alarming AGW from fossil fuels. I will be convinced by your view if you show me that. I am very open to your evidence. Please show me a link to your evidence.
John
Your reply really is mere cantankerous conceitedness. I believe it’s time for you to understand that politcal statements can be given in other ways than copying your ideas verbatim just to satisfy some your narrow-mindedness.
You haven’t got it and you’ll never ever will.
I endorse the opinion of richardscourtneys and others paraphrasing it:
“Don’t feed the Trolls”
What ever. Roger Helmer doesn’t believe CO2 is in anyway harmful to this planet.
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/lets-talk-about-co2/
And I agree with him.
Righto. Helmer is a good man. Experience of life and common sense. He’s from the real world. I hope he’ll make it in the Newark by-election…
John Whitman says:
May 30, 2014 at 9:40 am
This from May 2013, so more than six months ago, but how come policies from UKIP’s platform in last year’s elections don’t count now? Have they been revoked?:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-22396690
ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: UKIP is sceptical about the existence of man-made climate change and would scrap all subsidies for renewable energy. It would also cancel all wind farm developments. Instead, it backs the expansion of shale gas extraction, or fracking, and a mass programme of nuclear power stations.
Those six months are another of his (John Whitman) preposterous impositions. He is just trying to dictate the rules.
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Non Nomen,
Trolls? Please name the trolls.
Re: “You [John Whitman] haven’t got it and you’ll never ever will.” => Thanks for that clear and concise response to my request that you give the evidence.
The “never […] will” part of your comment fondly reminds me of this PP&M rendered song from my youth (my teenaged sister played it incessantly as PP&M was one of her favorite folk groups);
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=marvelous+toy+by+p&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SNNT_en___US388&q=marvelous+toy+by+peter+paul+and+mary&gs_l=hp..0.0j0i22i30l4.0.0.1.163348………..0.bnbPzolgfVo
: )
John
I hope you’ll leave for Trollshavn asap. And for heavens sake: don’t dawdle!
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Hordaland/Oster%C3%B8y/Trollshavn/
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Richard111,
Much appreciated. Thank you for providing one piece of potential evidence. I will take a look.
John
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milodonharlani,
As usual, I appreciate your comments.
Thank you. I will take a look at it for possible evidence.
NOTE: I nominally said within last six months because the context of Christopher Monckton’s post was impact on the just completed election. Six months before the election seemed reasonable where over longer periods many political parties can often shift their platforms to increase support.
John
John Whitman
I don’t have a dog in this particular fight but my interest was piqued by the reference to the UKIP conference in Torquay, which is our closest large town.
I did a search and here is the Guardian report of the meeting dated 28 Feb 2014.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/feb/28/nigel-farage-speaks-at-ukips-spring-conference-politics-live-blog
At 11.08 is a clear reference to the UKIP energy policy and the ability to link to a 14 page pdf which explains their energy policy and references climate change.
Until the last couple of days there were also posters up around our village which clearly referenced Ukip and climate change.
I don’t know what your original point was as it is no doubt buried in this long thread but undoubtedly climate change is still a current UKIP issue.
I personally would doubt that it attracted many voters specifically, as most concerns were centred round the EU and immigration. However, the reference to climate change IS definitively there.
tonyb
@ climatereason
May 30, 2014 at 12:02 pm:
That John Whitman seems just too slothful to read and listen.
From my posting
>>Non Nomen says May 30, 2014 at 9:06 am:
“Nigel Farage made it crystal clear at a public meeting in Torquay in March this year what the party line on energy and fossile fuels is. Look and listen, it’s on youtube.” << Neither did he look nor did he listen.
And, presumably due to lack of phantasy or whatever else may lack, incapable of putting "UKIP CO2" into a search machine.
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climatereason,
Hey, thanks. I will look at it.
My interest in the matter is not EU political (hell, I am a Yankee). I want to see if there is a clear basic skeptical position regards to significant / alarming / catastrophic / lukewarmist AGW from fossil fuels, given that they had positions opposite to other political parties on climate / energy policy.
Intellectually interesting.
John
John Whitman says:
May 30, 2014 at 11:57 am
As I have appreciated your comments.
IMO UKIP’s climate change position probably wasn’t crucial to its electoral success, but apparently the party’s platform didn’t change from 2013. Here is their current issues statement. Please see “Rebuild Prosperity” planks:
http://www.ukip.org/issues
“Scrap HS2, all green taxes and wind turbine subsidies.
“Develop shale gas to reduce energy bills and free us from dependence on foreign oil and gas – place the tax revenues into a British Sovereign Wealth Fund.”
Poll: 72% of UKIP Voters Will Stick with the Party at the Next General Election
Just under three quarters of people who voted UKIP in last week’s European Elections intend the stick with the party in next year’s General Election, according to a ComRes poll for ITV.
The poll also reveals that a third of people who voted Conservative at the last General Election could see themselves voting UKIP next year, compared to a quarter of people who voted Liberal Democrat and 18 percent of Labour voters.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/30/Poll-72-Percent-of-UKIP-Voters-Will-Stick-with-the-Party-in-2015