From The GWPF, newsbytes on the subject of UK Businesses Threaten To Flee Abroad To Escape Green Energy Levies
British industry’s ability to compete with companies overseas is under threat from punitive green energy costs, the new president of the CBI has told The Sunday Telegraph. Sir Roger Carr warns in an interview that the Coalition must give “some sort of support” over rising energy costs to UK manufacturers or else risk seeing businesses relocate abroad with the consequential loss of jobs. His comments – ahead of a CBI energy conference on Tuesday – come amid growing concern over the cost of renewable energy subsidies and so-called ‘green stealth taxes’. —The Sunday Telegraph, 12 June 2011
The CBI and Britain’s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed UK “carbon floor” tax (unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU’s various “anti-carbon” policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs. Sooner or later, politicians must emerge with the sense and the courage to question this madness – as many other people are now beginning to do. But there is little sign of their emergence yet. —Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 June 2011
The Coalition’s obsession with climate change is damaging Britain’s recovery from recession, former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson warns today. Writing in the Daily Mail, Lord Lawson delivers a scathing assessment of David Cameron’s so-called ‘green agenda’ and says it is ‘time this Government grew up’. Lord Lawson, one of the most respected Tory figures of recent decades, accuses the Prime Minister of risking Britain’s economy to make a ‘symbolic’ point. In a devastating verdict he writes: ‘The Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on. It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”. —Nigel Lawson, Daily Mail, 11 June 2011
It is time for Britain to walk away from its ridiculously stringent renewable energy plan.
This whole story is an instructive and depressing example of what happens when consensus rules. “The science is settled” was the line, and our politicians, few of them any more scientific than you or I, fell in with it. It was once famously said that, for evil to prosper, it is necessary only for good people to do nothing. But the peculiar hypocrisy of modern culture is such that it is when our leaders rush around trying most self-consciously to do good that the real damage is done. —Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 11 June 2011
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As an escapee from the socialist labour utopia of what was great britain I see Mrs Thatcher as the first and perhaps only pollitician to see through the global warming scam and admit it, and she closed down the hopeless mines and broke for a time the obscene union monopoly in many manufacturing industries, In later years, due to the lack of opposition that could form whole sentences, she became less able. The unions are a big part of this worldwide recession.
It’s all very well the CBI ranting about the punitive carbon taxes on British Industry, but at their conference, they will also politically correctly speak of the need to reduce our carbon dependence and promote renewable alternatives. “Green” energy companies are also members of the CBI and these will fight their corner in defence of the present structure, though there are not very many of these as the vast majority of our “green” energy plant and products come from abroad. A colleague from Denmark over in England this weekend paid particular thanks to me for the support given by the British government in boosting the value and income from his Vestas shares.
Until the CBI and major British companies, many of whose success actually rely on the availability and abundance of competitively priced electricity and fuel, gain the courage to speak out against the “consensus”, little will change. They are tying their hands behind their backs because at the same time, they still worship at the shrine to Global Warming. So nothing significant is going to happen until the CBI and British companies drop this pretence and begin to challenge not only our present political overreaction, but also the corrupt “science” at its heart.
Sadly, the UK is history which will probably be written in Cantonese: http://www.debtbombshell.com/
tallbloke says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am
“…As a trained engineer, I despair at the destruction wreaked by Margaret Thatcher (Aided and abetted by Nigel Lawson) on the UK industrial base, and the continuation of her mad economic policies by a series of watered down self-servative administrations since. A lot of my american friends hold Margaret Thatcher in high esteem. They didn’t live here and watch the way she wrecked our country…”
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Just to correct the history, the UK went down the pan immediatedly following WW2 with the US insisting on the break up of the commonwealth and the UK paying huge sums to the US as the price for US support (shipping military hardware) during WW2, I believe that it is only in the last few years that the war debt to the US has been paid back!
Coupled with this, immediately following WW2, the British Work force ethic became more relaxed and then in the 60s and 70s there were crippling strikes in all major manufacturing inductry. In fact it was the strike actions in the 60s and 70s that led to the loss of industry and killed the work shop of the world. The motor bike industry was already goine long before Thatcher and the car industry was on its knees. So too with washing machines and sewing machines and the like and consumer electronics was lost to the Far East. The only industries of any note still remaining when she took office were coal and steel and both were in desperate straits. That is not to say that they should not have been saved in some form or other but it is wrong to blame Thatcher for the industrial down fall of the UK. Indeed, I recall recently hearing that more industry was lost during NU Labour’s term in office than during Thatcher’s governments.
Thatacher did of course (initially) jump on the Global Warming band wagon since she wanted to promote nuclear in place of coal. Unfortunately, she did not succeeed in rolling out nuclear (unlike France) and she later changed her mind about Global Warming no doubt because she was never a true believer and simmply alligned herself with it for short term political gain (to help destroy the coal industry/defeat the miner’s trade union which she thought was holding the country to randsom).
Tallbloke – all v. true – except the alcohol isn’t that cheap!
And Old Guy said, “Revolution be in the air me thinks me love. Grab some powder dear, we’re going to pay No.10 a visit tonight.”
There is something so incredibly stupid about the Upper Class, they never learn that they are not the people and do not speak for the people. A pox on their heads!
Do not blame Margaret Thatcher. The real blame lies with her advisor – Crispin Tickell.
Dave says:
June 13, 2011 at 4:24 am
Do not blame Margaret Thatcher. The real blame lies with her advisor – Crispin Tickell.
Don’t blame BP, it was their American sub-contractors.
Chris Edwards says:
June 13, 2011 at 3:34 am
As an escapee from the socialist labour utopia of what was great britain I see Mrs Thatcher as the first and perhaps only pollitician to see through the global warming scam and admit it, and she closed down the hopeless mines
See through it?? She started it!
Talk about revisionism. Sheesh. And she was still crapping on about it at the first UNFCCC conferences in the 90’s.
Get real.
UK coal mines: Safe working conditions, low sulfur product, no kids enslaved with zero protection.
richard verney says:
June 13, 2011 at 3:51 am
Just to correct the history, the UK went down the pan immediatedly following WW2 with the US insisting on the break up of the commonwealth
Richard, there are some good and fair points in your comment and I see faults on both sides. I still think Thatcher went way over the top in her approach though. As for NuLabour, let’s remember that Tony Blair’s father was a fundraiser for the Tory party, and that he himself was a product of the Cambridge PPPE course, along with the rest of the top politicos of both stripes.
Self-servatives, the lot of them. Grrrrrrr.
Cassie King says:
June 13, 2011 at 3:15 am
The UK social democrat regime seems utterly determined to destroy whats left of British wealth creating industry
You are referring to our current coalition government, the senior partner in which is Margaret Thatchers very own Conservative party, which is still pushing the same global warmist agenda she set.
Sorry to intrude on your stereotyping, as you were.
Jack says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:17 am
Maybe if we cut politicians
payby 50% we wouldn’t have these problems..Fixed it for you. Removing the top half of each one should do it.
Pascvaks says:
June 13, 2011 at 4:08 am
And Old Guy said, “Revolution be in the air me thinks me love. Grab some powder dear, we’re going to pay No.10 a visit tonight.”
“Guy Fawkes: The only man ever to enter parliament with honest intentions.”
@ur momisugly tallbloke says: June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am
Absolutely stonking piece. One to paste into a document and save! Thanks!
@ur momisuglyChris Edwards says: June 13, 2011 at 3:34 am
[ ] “I see Mrs Thatcher as the first and perhaps only pollitician to see through the global warming scam and admit it, and she closed down the hopeless mines…”
Yes, some credit for very belatedly recognising the Frankenstein monster she had created.
But, whilst after the 1984/85 strike a lot of “hopeless” mines were indeed (and belatedly) closed down, the process that she started, just like the cAGW monster she had created, carried on and still carries on uncontrolled.
By the early 1990s, the British coal industry was easily the most productive, the most efficient and the safest in Europe. Production costs were a third of those in Germany, a fifth of those in Spain. After Major privatised the industry at the end of 1994, AFTER privatising the power generators (directly contrary to the contemporary advice, which was to privatise both industries together), and with the structure of the electricity supply industry such that they had every possible incentive to pursue the “dash for gas” and just stick the infrastructure costs on consumers’ bills, the coal industry was in big trouble. With a mixture of inept management, increasing targetted “environmental” controls, starved of investment both directly and in the power generation plant, with continued Government incompetence and malice, the UK industry is now almost irelevant.
And 300 years supply of affordable and efficient energy effectively sterilised.
Tallbloke`s correct, Margaret Thatcher was of a mind to finish the power of the unions for good.
The most powerful union was the NUM, To finish the NUM she had to curb britains reliance on coal,and humiliate Arthur Scargill (e`s always worth a google) the NUM leader.
It was thought (by conservatives) that the anti-nuke brigade would see sense(lol), oil and gas would provide the rest.
Turning carbon dioxide into the jew of gasses was absolutely vital to wresting political power from the national union of mineworkers.
There is a peculiarly excellent documentary called Tory Tory Tory! by the bbc,If you can find it, it`s excellent
Post normal politics seems to be absolving the conservatives of any blame,
thats a pity,
there`s lots to go round.
Broadly speaking,it was a bit like this.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1xqo1_part-04-la-grde-arnaque-du-rechauff_tech
I was actually under the impression that this blog was about AGW/CAGW/global warming and this particular thread about economic policy being determined as a result of belief in AGW. Not a forum for uninformed American ignoramuses like ‘Tallbloke’ and his pals to peddle their prejudices and political propaganda.
[reply] Actually Mr Epigenes, I’m a Brit. and also a WUWT Moderator. TB-mod
Hmm, in Australia they are going to have a carbon tax and industry plans to just take it like sheep. So do UK industry types just have more backbone than Ozzies? I don’t get it.
Well, I guess that is one way to lower your ‘carbon’ emissions by 10%. Just move 10% of your businesses offshore. See how easy that was! And you can do it again year. China and India must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Take a look at the agenda for the CBI Energy Conference 2011 on 14th June here:
http://climatechange.cbi.org.uk/events/cbi-energy-conference-2011
And look at the venue – The Royal Society!
The URL tells us all we need to know – it’s about ‘climate change’ not energy security or efficiency. It starts with the false assumption that energy production affects the climate. The CBI is part of the problem not part of the solution. By their own policy failures they are, and remain, complicit in the collapse of the UK’s heavy industrial base.
“tallbloke says:
June 13, 2011 at 1:02 am”
Well said, although I do blame unions and management also. Thatcher 50%, unions 25% mangement (or lack of) 25%.
My first day at first job after college in 1971, as I was going in for the first time, the work force was going out on strike we passd in a corridor. However one had to also take into account that we were making electrolytic capactitors on 1930’s vintage equipment to a 1940’s Post Office specification; we didn’t compete with Japanese and German competitors on price or quality. When modernisation came it was too little too late, and needless to say the factory became a housing development many years ago.
I guess we’re rushing into renewables because we got it so wrong in the 70s and 80s and there is no manufacturing left in the UK with a few exceptions.
I now work in logistics moving stuff on its final leg from China (mostly) to the retail outlet.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/6/13/climate-change-removed-from-curriculum.html this seesm interesting English will not include climate chnage in curriculuim anymore by force
Gareth Phillips says:
June 13, 2011 at 12:30 am
To be honest this is little to do with green taxes. This is an old chestnut where banks and businesses threaten to flee abroad every time they hear something they don’t like. Usually it’s because of a tax on their obscene bonuses after losing our investments, or being asked to help sort out the mess they made in some other way. In the event very very few of them go, It seems they feel places like China may not treat them so kindly if they mess up when based in such authoritarian regimes.
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The outflow of jobs and industry to China is fairly obvious and well documented, and I don’t think that financial service industries are big targets of carbon taxes. It’s odd how libz expect industry to willing lay down and accept being taxed out of existence.
Also You apparently don’t realize how things operate in the PRC. The Chi-Coms may come down like a ton of bricks on their own local agitators, but they are very accomodating to businesses, which have relocated to the PRC. Afterall Why interupt your competition when they are in the process of committing suicide.
Mr TB mod can you see if my comments in the sin bin or i’ll re-type it.
[reply] Sorry, It’s lost in cyberspace. TB-mod