From the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser
Green Lobby Concerned
The UK Independence Party has overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third party of British politics, Nigel Farage declared today as he made major gains in local elections. As senior Conservatives scrambled to justify haemorrhaging support to the anti-EU party, Mr Farage said he was at the head of a āwave of protestā which would permanently change the political landscape. —Daily Mail, 3 May 2013
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has declared his party is on course to change the face of British politics in the wake of its strongest performance in local elections, making a series of gains across England. In the biggest surge by a fourth party in England since the second world war, Ukip averaged 26% of the vote in council wards where it stood, according to a BBC estimate. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat president, said his party had been “obliterated” in the South Shields byelection, where it came seventh and lost its deposit. –Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, 3 May 2013
Concerns are mounting among green groups that the UKIP surge could have a knock-on impact on energy and environmental policy, given that David Cameron is now under mounting pressure to tack to the right. UKIP leader Nigel Farage has taken a vocally anti-green stance, slamming wind farm developments and questioning whether manmade climate change is happening. Westminster observers are convinced that the growing popularity of UKIP is one of the main reasons some Conservative MPs have become more openly hostile to environmental policies. –James Murray, Business Green, 3 May 2013
The UK Independence Party’s unique selling point – the policy it is best known for – is Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. But as the party has sought to broaden its appeal beyond that single issue, it has developed a full range of policies in all areas…. 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. —BBC News, 3 May 2013
Environmentalists, businesses and carbon market investors were watching last weekās conclave of environment and energy ministers in Dublin closely, hoping to see a plume of white smoke emerging to signal that the ministers had agreed to step in with bold support for the European Unionās Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). But no such signal of support came. [ā¦] Analysts as well as MEPs on the committee say that the proposal is unlikely to pass a second vote in the Parliament unless the Council comes out in favour. Even if the proposal were passed by the end of the year, that would probably be too late. –Dave Keating, European Voice, 2 May 2013
āFor the first time in 10 years, Europe is no longer willing to pursue the green agenda,ā said Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in a recent telephone interview with Friends of Science. Dr. Peiser was commenting on the continuing fallout from the April 16, 2013 vote in the EU parliament where a proposal to delay the issuance of carbon credits (or allowances) was voted down.Ā āWe face a new situation where the green lobby is being increasingly isolated and in a minority,ā said Dr. Peiser. āThey are still there but they no longer dominate the agenda nor do they have political majority in Europe.ā —Environmental Expert, 2 May 2013
On April 16th the European Parliament voted against attempts to shore up Europeās emissions trading system against collapse. The system is the EUās flagship environmental policy and the worldās largest carbon market. Putting it at risk suggests that Europeans have lost their will to endure short-term pain for long-term environmental gain. Nor is this the only such sign. Several cash-strapped EU countries are cutting subsidies for renewable energy. And governments around the world have failed to make progress towards a new global climate-change treaty. Betting against tough climate policies seems almost prudent. āThe Economist, 4 May 2013
āShown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.ā Sad but true, mock book burnings appear to be acceptable behavior of professors at San Jose State University. In this case, Dr. Alison Bridger is doing the honors. She is proudly assisted by SJSU assistant professor Dr. Craig Clements. They disagree with the textās content. Lousy texts get tossed in the trash every day at universities around the world. But when you make a public statement of it, as San Jose State did, you cross a line. You tarnish any legitimate climate research that institution ever does. Unfortunately, all they proved is how politics has stained the pristine world of science. —Inform the Pundits, 2 May 2013
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings. –Heinrich Heine, 1821
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See also Delingpole: The old order is dying. We are living in the age of Farage
He writes: And as to why this nearly wasn’t allowed to happen, I recommend this equally incisive analysis of the hard-Left propaganda techniques which have recently been deployed against Ukip. As Margaret Thatcher (not her real name, I suspect) notes in her article, the cheap shot smear techniques which have been used in this election campaign, are straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.
I have seen members of UKIP isolated this way on Twitter. The Attack Dogs cut off the support network by throwing standard accusations out, other members, frightened to be tarred with the non-existent brush remove themselves from debate. The attack dogs have then isolated their target.
The attackers go after people and not the party; people hurt faster than institutions. Direct, personalised criticism and ridicule works. It is cruel, but very effective.
The Big Three political parties are worried about UKIP. If they werenāt they wouldnāt set their attack dogs to savage the aspiring politicians and the yet to mature new boy on the party political scene.
I’ve seen it too. Experienced it as well. It’s horrible and frightening and can all too easily sap your will to go on.
=================================================================
Sound familiar?
Hip hip — HOOORAY!
Hip hip — HOORAY!
Hip hip — HOORAY!
Praise the Lord.
That is one heck of a shot there in the very heart of the AGW movement. I think the vampire hunters have that wooden stake poised over the chest of the green vampire. Despite all the political parties and their liberal media dumping on Ukip the people have spoke in a very loud voice.
What Janice said and some more.
People are beginning to look at their utility bills, as well as look out the window, and see that reality does not match what the greens and scientists have been telling us. Some are even beginning to realize that climate science, and how it has been conducted, is the number one cause of global warming. On a related note, it has been proven that scientists are the number one cause of cancer in laboratory rats.
regarless?!?!? The north pole is open water for the first time in 200 million years!
go figure!
jim
2,000 elderly UK citizens died of cold in the first two weeks in March. Maybe the rest are starting to get alarmed about the carbon taxes that make heating your home unaffordable. The reason I now live in the Bahamas for 7 moths of the year is that I am not willing to die for the greenies. Let them die of cold.
Friends:
Please don’t get too elated yet.
This was only England local elections: people vote differently in General Elections.
The Green Party increased its small share of the vote.
The ‘major’ UK political parties parties will adjust to react to UKIP for the 2015 General Election.
The AGW-scare has been a zombie since the Copenhagen CoP in 2009. But its political effects continue. In the immediate term one possible UK political response to UKIP’s success in the local elections is to bolster some mistaken energy policies as a method to further marginalise UKIP.
Also, UKIP’s main policy is withdrawal from the EU. The governing coalition parties intend to promise a referendum on EU withdrawal in their manifestos and the Labour Party seems likely to do make the same manifesto promise. This could assist collapse of UKIP vote in the General Election.
At present, the situation of UKIP in the UK is similar to that of the US Tea Party prior to the last US elections. If that is any guide (and it probably is not) then UKIP may be a ‘flash in the pan’.
Of additional note, and purely for interest, Lord Monckton is allied to UKIP.
Richard
Jim? Which planet are you on?
The age of Farage? Try the age of Abe. The Japanese showed the way last year and keep showing it. Just a few days ago was a by-election for the upper house where the AGW-screaming, anti-nuclear-moaning, pro-“renewable”-praising DPJ was murdered in the polls. Upper house elections in a few weeks currently look like they’ll be another massacre for the DPJ.
Seems the Brits are finally waking up as well. About time.
From Janice Moore on May 3, 2013 at 11:19 am:
Lord Monckton?
A recent piece of his that may have been missed:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/obama-climate-video-stars-gop-truthsayers/
Good reading, although more political than the expected WUWT fare.
For our American and other friends who are not familiar with Mr. Farage here is taste of the man:
– Farage proclaimed that āBelgium is pretty much a non-countryā, and indeed he should know, his ancestors emigrated to England from Ardennes on Franco-Belgian border.
– Farage said that president of EU has ācharisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerkā, and then he promptly apologized to bank clerks.
– And finally, Farage is an ultra-sceptic.
This man canāt do wrong.
A short taste of Nigel Farage.
I like him!
Thanks to all international commenters (especially UK in this string). You keep us (US) up on views we can not get from MSM.
I, for one, greatly appreciate your input.
German Liberals (FDP) do not want Schellnhuber as government advisor anymore.
Wind of change.
What richardscourtney says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:46 am
And. Just wait until Rupert Murdoch gets to work on these guys.
The Rupertocracy will not fall – we in the UK will get the party of government that the newspapers make most attractive. Inversely, we in the UK will not get a government made up of members that the newspapers tear into.
/supposition and personal opinion
The only time I remember this failing was when, after thatcher, the tories would have liked labour to ‘win’ an election to cover for the financial difficulties ahead. The floating voter spotted what was happening and, because of/despite John Major standing on a soap-box in Hyde Park the morning before the election, let the tories keep the country. It was a bad 4 years and labour won a landslide next time out. If it hadn’t been for Murdoch in the last election those shock figures could have carried (historically) labour through 3 more polls.
/end supposition and personal opinion
From Eve Stevens on May 3, 2013 at 11:41 am:
Ah good, the government scheme to reduce NHS obligations by “redundancies” among the seniors is continuing apace. A few more years of this, after it becomes expected as normal and the reduction rate can ecalate, and they might free up enough funding for another offshore turbine.
dbstealey says:
May 3, 2013 at 12:00 pm
They fear him.
He was on a politics program last night. When asked ‘what are your political ambitions?’ and answering ‘None’ the politicians, and the host, the former editor of Murdoch’s Sun, all gasped or guffawed. They just could not accept that the guy doesn’t want to be a politician – he is a businessman that is as pissed off as we are that the political class, on all sides of ‘the house’ are made up of easily bought, privileged buffoons with little wit and no experience of the real world . They are, mostly, public schoolboys who have ‘worked’ in the house of commons since graduating with soft degrees.
Peter Lilley – the only physicist in Parliament when the climate change act was passed (as it snowed in London, in October for the first time in 80 years) was told to ‘shut up’ when he asked a couple of difficult questions.
Just to add to the confusion… these were predominately English local elections.
Not British elections.
UKIP has not made progress in the whole UK. Notably they have not made progress in Scotland where there is already 4-party politics. The SNP (Scottish Nationalists) are in power up there.
This means that Labour (the other big part in Scotland) do not need to adapt to UKIP, except perhaps on immigration.
And it means that the Scotland Independence vote will be a very interesting test for energy policy.
The SNP believes that Scotland can live off its oil but also be nuclear free and windfarm friendly. Their energy policy is nonsense and will be attacked as such by those who want to preserve the UK.
That means energy policy will have a high profile in our isles before the next UK (or maybe England, Wales and NI) general election.
Exciting times ahead.
I am all in favour of the UKIP and I would like very much to see them form a government but the sad truth about the UK voting system is that the UKIP would have to get the majority of the votes cast in more than half of the constituencies ; to do that would be a monumental task indeed as the voting system is skewed in favour of the two major parties: the conservaties and the labourites.
The success today of Nigel Farage and his party UKIP through the ballot box has made all of Westminster sit up and take notice, although they are attempting to cover their shagrin with bravado as they attack the victorious messenger, whilst waiting for instruction from the same old policy wonks that got them into trouble in the first place.
Next year it will be the EU elections when the electorate will be smarting from further increased energy bills and UKIP can be given another lift in the polls and consolidation in popularity.
Then we shall see in 2015 whether the protest vote was just that, or whether indeed the mould has been broken.
Just as today when the complacent hubristic Establishment expected 50 seats at most to go to UKIP rather than the 144 that eventuated, so might it be in 2015 at the General Election if they continue their contemptuous disregard for the electorate.
What has been said previously is true, unfortunately. We Brits tend to vote differently in local elections (for town hall councillors), than we do for members of parliament (MPs). This is probably due in part to our first-past-the-post electoral system. If you vote for a UKIP candidate at a parliamentary election, you may inadvertently draw votes away from your second preference. UKIP is on the right of the political spectrum, and if your second preference is the Conservative party (mainstream, and also right-wing, but less so), then you may effectively be increasing the chances that a left-wing party, such as the Labour party, wins. Most defectors to UKIP are right-rather than left-wing.
It’s one thing to defect in local elections, and quite another to defect in parliamentary elections, where the winners end up in charge of spending the country’s budget. Although local councillors have some say in the level of council taxes, they can’t have as much effect on your back pocket.
Maybe UKIP is different: the mainstream parties are increasingly coming to be seen to offer very little policy difference: they’re mostly centrist, pro-AGW, and often pro-EU (moreso on the left than the right). Only UKIP is vocal about their opposition, and these are two are big issues with many, especially the EU. Maybe there’s a sea-change on the horizon, but there have been past precedents in the short-term rise of voting for minority parties that fizzled out. It may be that if the flagship issues of UKIP are adopted by the Conservative party, UKIP will go away as a potential threat. I for one would vote for any party that is genuinely sceptical of AGW and anti-EU and isn’t racist (whether left or right). UKIP is currently my only option. Of course, we have to watch out for the Conservatives only pretending to adopt popular stances on AGW and the EU, and reneging on electoral promises if they win. There’s plenty of precedent for that, too.
“Nigel Farage has taken a vocally anti-green stance, slamming wind farm developments and questioning whether manmade climate change is happening.”
“Instead, it backs the expansion of shale gas extraction, or fracking, and a mass programme of nuclear power stations.”
On the contrary, the UKIP policy is the Green policy. It intends to stop the destruction of much of the beautiful British countryside and seascapes and instead develop clean natural gas and nuclear energy and ironically produce a real and large reduction in CO2 generation.
I voted UKIP and I now have a UKIP representative on the council. Not quite what you expect from a protest vote, I don’t think you are supposed to win if you vote whacky. Hope I don’t have to wear armbands and do special salutes.
jim says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:39 am
regarless?!?!? The north pole is open water for the first time in 200 million years!
go figure!
================================================
Good to know ole’ Jim has been around 200 Million years and kept track of this set of data…even though he sems to have missed a couple seasons in the 20th century.
@Janice Moore:
And pass the ammunition!
Just a little more context – UKIP took 24% of the vote whilst neither the Conservatives nor labour could muster more than 3 or 4% above them.
Due to the vagaries of “first past the Post” elections, the 144 seats acquired by UKIP were dwarfed by the 1000 plus Conservatives and the near 500 Labour seats engendered by the marginally small extra percentage that those parties enjoyed.
Some might question the fairness of such an outcome, but it is the British way, and I suppose it has allowed for peaceful evolution rather than horse scaring revolution down the ages.
It would be a mistake to construe today’s events as less than a seismic shift in the British political balance.
‘They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.’
(Chesterton)
The three identical political parties in Britain, filled with millionaires and men who’ve never worked in their lives except as politicians or politicians’ creatures have indeed forgot. As this article below points out, there are historical parallels (perhaps strained at the moment, who knows?). Climate fraud may play a part in today’s political events in the UK but it’s about much, much more than that:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100215196/eastern-england-is-in-rebellion-this-has-happened-before/#disqus_thread
‘ As the results came in last night, any student of English history must have felt a definite frisson. Because the counties where Ukip did best, as of last night, are two of the most emblematic counties in the annals of English insurgence: Essex and Lincolnshire. The east of England.
The English Civil War was rooted in Englandās eastern hinterland. The military leader of the parliamentary forces, Robert Devereux, was the 3rd Earl of Essex. Oliver Cromwell himself was born in Huntingdon. The mainstay of the parliamentary army was the so-called āEastern Associationā, a militia raised from the counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in 1642. ‘
Here in the UK we live in interesting times, for readers who are not familiar with British politics [everybody] there is no actual democracy in the UK, most of our rules and regulations emanate from Brussels and the executive and legislature in Westminster passes all EU diktat on the nod.
Worse than that, the British administration in all its ‘wisdom’ usually augment EU diktat- therefore making it a more onerous burden on the long suffering people, taxpayers and consumers residing in the UK. They said about the Nazis, the Ukrainian SS ‘the Galician’ were always the worst and most avid adherents of Nazism.
We ‘the people’ of the UK, were not asked before the political government of the time – Ted Heath’s Conservative party in 1972 – rammed through legislation and with a paltry and weak series of negotiations railroaded Britain’s entry into the then – what was known as the Common Market.
As it was long suspected it has come to pass what Heath’s government knew at the time – critics of the EEC suggested that the then EEC was a Trojan horse – a precursor of ‘le grand projet’ a federal state, of a Union of European nations. It was always the dream and goal of Monnet, Schuman and Adenauer – the co-conspirators and original formulators and designers of the EU.
In other words, we Brits were sold a lie – the ‘common market’. In 1972 Britain was not given a choice to vote on it – the lies, deceit and democratic deficit since then has become a chasm – that’s how the Brussels machine works – there is no democracy in the European Union and the law makers reside far away and that is how our political masters in Britain like it.
You see, it doesn’t matter who you vote for in Britain, there is no choice, whether you vote left or right, liberal or Conservative or Labour. All the mainstream political parties believe and adhere to the Brussels line and none desire to leave the EU. The EU is destroying itself and the green agenda is a big part of that industrial destruciton – all of the EU’s problems exacerbate those of the UK – we are sliding down the economic league into third world status – soon we won’t even be able to keep the lights on.
In the intervening 40 years the EU-ropeanisation, dumbing down of the education system the systmatic creep and takeover of cultural Marxist precepts, the rampant secularization – coupled with moral decadence – has formed a society that is too accepting of the status quo, unable to form an opinion and if it does – is shouted down as a racist, or hounded as a denier.
This national defilement, of the corruption and debasement of all basic liberty and freedom has sorely tested many of us who know that the political class and the woeful administration beholden to statist micro-management and big government solutions – is responsible for this mess.
‘We the people’, know absolutely: that things can be made infinitely improved with not much more than a simple cross on a ballot paper and through the auspices of a political party who see common sense, pragmatic policies and the right to full independence to run our own affairs will lead to real freedom, actual liberty and real justice and that – is of paramount importance.
We do no believe the great lie of man made global warming, we do not believe in UN agenda 21, we do not believe in mass immigration.
We do believe in one nation and independent solutions.
UKIP is that party.
Mr. or Ms. Knoebel [@1149] — Tsk, tsk.
*****************************************************8
Dear Mr. Courtney,
I (who wholeheartedly agree with at least 90% of “Tea Party” positions) am happy to inform you that THE TEA PARTY LIVES! [See: http://www.teapartypatriots.org/%5D [#:)]
Your comrade in the AGW fight (even though, as you gently informed me, we disagree about socialism),
Janice
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Mr. Ed Ohiguma, THAT’S GREAT NEWS. (and three cheers for Farage, too!).
Thus, I say………… HALLELU YAH! #[:)]
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Ms. Stevens, good for you. I hope that your tax pounds (I mean Euros — I DETEST recognizing their reality!) are also staying in the Bahamas.
Hal Javert,
It appears that ‘jim’ actually believes that the Arctic is ice free, and for the first time in 200 million years.
I wonder where he gets his misinformation?
“The UK Independence Party has overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third party of British politics, Nigel Farage declared today”
The dear leader is somewhat prone to extravagant pronouncements, that sadly fail to square with reality. UKIP came fourth in the council elections, winning 147 seats, out of a total of 2362 up for grabs, putting them fourth behind the LibDims with 352 seats…
http://www.ukpolitical.info/
I’m politically neutral so don’t take this as support for any party but if this truly is an indicator of a shift in voting tendencies on the right this is terrible news for any right leaning voter.
It means the vote on the right is split and as the electorate on the left has lost any faith in the libs that leaves only one party for them to vote for.
The Tories need to get their act together if they want to win the next GE or there is only going to be one outcome. New Bloody Labour, who lead us into this mess. And considering that Cameron and his pals have shown themselves to be bumbling idiots reduced to throwing ideas at a whiteboard to see what sticks I think that it is unlikely they will come up with a plan to get themselves out of this mess.
All we need is a roadmap out of economic despair. Carry on like this if the alarmists are even 1% right we won’t be able to afford to deal with a changing climate as we’ll have no energy, no industry and no bloody money.
roger:
At May 3, 2013 at 1:08 pm you assert
No, it would be premature to construe todayās events as being a seismic shift in the British political balance.
Your assertion may be right, and in 2015 we will know if it is.
But it is a mistake to permit your exuberance to overstate your judgement in this forum where many (perhaps most) onlookers are not familiar with UK politics.
At present this mid-term local government election result is a surprise. But it may be no different from a mid-term By-Election which overthrows a ‘safe’ seat: such an overthrow is common, but the seat usually returns to the usual party at the following General Election.
In a TV Interview (BBC2) this afternoon Farage was surprisingly honest about this. He recognised that UKIP needs to analyse the data from this local election with a view to deciding target constituencies for the 2015 General Election, and then to pour its resources into those constituencies. If UKIP can thus obtain some MPs then UKIP will have made progress. He did not state the obvious corollary that if UKIP fails to obtain any MPs then it will have made less progress than the the Green Party which also promised a “seismic shift” a few years ago.
Two probabilities are in UKIP’s favour. It seems very likely that there will be a hung Parliament (i.e. no individual party having overall control) after the next general Election. And the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote is not likely to recover at the General Election. These probabilities provide opportunity to gain MPs in target seats by collecting sufficient votes from voters who previously would have voted tactically to prevent another party winning in close seats.
But, on the other hand, the local government election results have marshaled the ‘main’ parties against UKIP and (as Henry Galt says at May 3, 2013 at 12:08 pm) the press have yet to decide if they want to oppose UKIP.
Added to that there are the points made by M Courtney (at May 3, 2013 at 12:22 pm) and John Law at ( May 3, 2013 at 12:53 pm). It cannot be known if those issues will work for or against UKIP. When that becomes clear then the ‘main’ parties and the press will respond.
Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. But in 2015 we will learn if your assertion is correct.
Richard
Surely only a plurality!
People from outside the UK should note that:
1 – these are minor elections for part of the UK’s local government structure. Although these elect councillors who deal with local issues, traditionally this election is used as a protest vote against central government.
2 – The UKIP party has cross-party support, but is more likely to appeal to right-wing voters since it has a strong libertarian ethos. In the current elections there were a large number of Conservative seats being contested, so there were a lot of disgruntled right-wing voters voting.
3 – UKIP therefore did quite well. This is not, however, an indication that the party will do well in General Elections across the whole country.
Janice Moore:
re your comment to me at May 3, 2013 at 1:14 pm.
I apologise if you thought my comparison was disparaging to your political party. That was not my intention.
I used that example as a way to try to explain to US readers how an apparently important new party may not alter the result of a following national election by winning seats from established parties. Which is not to say that new parties do not affect a nation’s politics. For example, some analysts say Kerry’s response to fear of losing support to the Tea Party assisted Obama to retain the Presidency. Whatever the truth of that, the UK Labour and Conservative Parties will adjust as a response to the success of UKIP in the local government elections.
Sorry, that I offended. I was trying to provide dispassionate information on the UK political situation and perhaps my use of a US illustration was mistaken.
Richard
UKIP’s sensible energy policy for the UK is described at http://ukip.org/media/policies/energy.pdf.
It’s energy spokesman is the excellent Roger Helmer, a Member of the European Parliament who defected from the Conservative Party to UKIP just over a year ago (http://www.rogerhelmermep.co.uk).
Dodgy Geezer says:
May 3, 2013 at 1:46 pm
So you’re saying if they didn’t advance in this election, we should expect them to do well in the Generals? How weird…
What has been overlooked here is something very rewarding, reassuring. When it happens, it always seems to amaze. It is that when policy gets bad enough, THE VOTER is far wiser and miles ahead of politicians. Tories, Liberals and (hopefully) Labour are right to be scrambling about to distance themselves from the stink of two decades of self-immolating policy – disastrous to the economy, deadly for the poor and fixed income elderly. Equally amazing, is that politicians, like those in UK would never even suspect they are miles off the track if ordinary folks didn’t tell them. The reason the policy stinks is because it was put forward by those who don’t give a hoot for people. For the future, you budding politicians, if the policy is such that it ignores the well-being of its citizens and wreaks harm on the economy – IT STINKS!
As Maggie would have said, probably, UKIP ā if U want to ā but this lady is wide awake!
Exciting but not game changing. The UK electorate are well known for protest votes at local council and by-elections,i.e. Westminster seats that have become vacant mid-term.
Nevertheless, there would seem to be a change in the MSM, excepting the BBC, regarding both climate alarmism and the totally undemocratic EU. We can only live in hope.
UKIP needs more policy depth if it is to make a long term impact.
I suspect it will require five more years of no warming, and perhaps as much as ten, before the forces of the AGW paradigm are forced to admit defeat.
In the meantime we can only hope that our politicians can keep from inflicting irreparable damage to our economies with misguided and panic-stricken carbon strangulation policies.
RockyRoad says: May 3, 2013 at 2:13 pm
“So youāre saying if they didnāt advance in this election, we should expect them to do well in the Generals? How weirdā¦”
That doesn’t follow.
1: The logic is that ‘UKIP advancing in this election’ is not necessarily related to ‘UKIP advancing in the General Elections’
2: Preposition 1 does not imply a fixed relationship between this election and the General Election.
That’s the point.
How they do in this election;, advancing, retreating or spinning round and round has no proven relation to the General Election.
dbstealey says:
May 3, 2013 at 1:14 pm
Hal Javert,
It appears that ājimā actually believes that the Arctic is ice free, and for the first time in 200 million years.
I wonder where he gets his misinformation?
********************************************************************************************************
‘Jim’ has a pond in the back yard which he calls the North Pole.
‘Jim’s’ time frame is a little different to us normal people. 1ms = 1 year
‘Jim’ checks out his pond every year or so.
It was so cold this winter that ‘Jim’ didn’t check his pond until the weather warmed up a bit.
This is the first time ‘Jim’ saw water in his pond for a few years our time (200 mill his time)
Agreed.
With reference to other comments here: Yes, these were local elections and no, the level of support may not hold up in a General Election but the key thing is the pressure it puts on the ruling elite to re-assess their positions.
No party can hope to do well at the national level unless it has a strong grass-roots movement which means the local councils. People get incensed about local amenities and if UKIP can demonstrate skill at the base, they are more likely to get support higher up the food chain.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Scottish National Party were seen as a fringe bunch of loonies […personal snip] and look where they are now.
From Wikipedia: “The Labour Party was founded in 1900 and overtook the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s.”
I voted UKIP at the last general election after years of prevaricating. I am a ‘small c’ conservative, and have been concerned that my voting for UKIP would split the Conservative vote. (Not all on my own, you understand!) However, one has to start somewhere. The above quote about the Labour party shows the two party system can be altered. We just have to be brave and go for it. I have come to the conclusion that it would be worth letting Labour in by default in 2015. Another four or five years of them would be the making of UKIP. These things take time.
There is also Richard North’s Harrogate Agenda for the future. See EUReferendum.com.
Great result for UKIP in the local elections, and second place in the bye-election is the cherry on the cake!
I think this is far from just a protest vote, as most people I know are fed up with the established parties who have all forgotten what the people of the UK want and offer no alternatives to green energy, a united Europe and subservience to the multinationals and bankers who have bled us all dry.
A change is long overdue and UKIP will only get stronger as they get better organized, with more of a voice in the main stream media.
If you want to make sure they will succeed, then us UK voters need to get off our arses and join UKIP now – it’s only Ā£30 for a full years membership and they are looking for people to help bolster their local infrastructure for those that are interested.
Lets push our current bunch of self-seeking complacent politicians off their pedestals and support a party who listens to the people.
This was a comment I posted on James Delingpole’s blog. It highlights the problem of postal votes in bye-elections. UKIP possibly won at the ballot box.
Let’s do away with postal votes!
Absolutely. Based on the blog below there might even have been a chance of UKIP winning South Shields purely on the ballot box. Who knows? Even Eastleigh only stayed LibDem by dint of postal votes.
āWe earned them votes tonightā, said Emma Lewell-Buck. The House of Commons has gained a social worker who canāt speak English.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/05/we-earned-them-votes-tonight-in-south-sields/
My view is that the UKIP result was massively inflated by protest votes. Until the Coalition the Lib Dems were the habitual beneficiaries of protest against the main parties but, now that they are in government, that vote has nowhere else to go.
Like down here in Australia, we have 3 parties that are all basically left-wing in ideology.
Centre left, far left socialist and far loonie left green.
A decent new real conservative party would be a real fox in the hen-house !!
but the sad truth about the UK voting system is that the UKIP would have to get the majority of the votes cast in more than half of the constituencies ; to do that would be a monumental task indeed as the voting system is skewed in favour of the two major parties: the conservaties and the labourites.
Not relevant really. You need to win seats to win elections. But you don’t need to win elections to get your key policies in place.
To substantially influence the way the country is governed what the UKIP has to do is make sure it is popular enough to threaten the Conservative’s hold on a substantial number of seats. It doesn’t have to win any ā just threaten to take enough Tory votes away that the Tories lose marginals so that Labour gets the overall victory.
When that threat looks real, the Tories will change their policies in order to regain the UKIP voters. They have to, or they know they will lose.
The Conservatives then might win the election in terms of forming a government, but only at the cost of taking the UKIP’s line on a number of issues. That then is a win for the UKIP, because realistically it cannot hope to govern anyway.
This is how the Greens get their policies into place after all. How many seats have they ever won? The political parties know that if they don’t put some Green policies in place that they will lose votes to those that do. That is why we have the pitiful sight of the Conservatives trying to look green.
First past the post makes it almost entirely impossible for the UKIP to win a share of power. But that doesn’t mean its efforts are useless. It merely needs to be credible, not victorious, and it will drag the Conservatives away from their green policies. Not hard, since those green policies are a poor fit anyway.
John Law makes a very good point, often overlooked. Let’s not let them win the name game, either! Good Show!:]
The Conservative party made a big mistake in opposing the recent proportional representation bill. Under that system, UKIP voters could have picked the Conservatives as their second choice. Now, instead, their first-past-the-post system will fatally split their votes and let in Labour. Can’t be helped anymore.
Every media outlet in the UK tried to taint UKIP during the week, but when it came to the election the people said a big fcuk you to the MSM and a big fcuk you to the climate cassandras at University of East Anglia.
UKIP will continue to grow because they have the courage to run on what people actually want instead of what they have been programmed to want.. This whole leftist ball of politically correct wax tends to numb the brain and dull the senses.. Zombies shuffling along in step, with the MSM banging on the drum.. Until you cant put food on the table or provide heat in your home (if you have one)..
Then you wake up to the fact that you have been fooled by a bunch of over educated idiots (yes such a thing exists).. What you have to understand is higher education involves political indoctrination into the leftist club.. It shouldn’t, but it does..
Add professional conduct to a political ghetto and you end up where we are today..
In deep trouble..
“Unfortunately, all they proved is how politics has stained the pristine world of science. āInform the Pundits, 2 May 2013”
Could some one please tell me why proving this is unfortunate?
And jim…the North Pole pool I have is just seeing its first ice free status evah in 4.5 billion years!! I am so proud of its unprecedented showing.
“In other words, we Brits were sold a lie ā the ācommon marketā. In 1972 Britain was not given a choice to vote on it ā the lies, deceit and democratic deficit since then has become a chasm ā thatās how the Brussels machine works ā there is no democracy in the European Union and the law makers reside far away and that is how our political masters in Britain like it.”
I’m fairly sure that the good people of the USA would gladly welcome the UK as the 51st state (or 51st, 52nd, and 53rd) if you’d like to submit yourself. š
Agreed. They didn’t see it coming. Now they can marinate in the irony of it all.
————
I’ve got a sure-fire tactic winning for the UKIP. Maybe I’ll write it up and submit it as a story here by the end of the month.
A bunch of estate agents and car salesmen won some council seats on the basis of their stance on the EU……..got nothing to do with climate and makes absolutely zero difference to anything.
Mooloo:
“To substantially influence the way the country is governed what the UKIP has to do is make sure it is popular enough to threaten the Conservativeās hold on a substantial number of seats. It doesnāt have to win any ā just threaten to take enough Tory votes away that the Tories lose marginals so that Labour gets the overall victory.”
You talk as though these are parliamentary seats. They are poxy council seats. It means absolutely squat.
Clearly Americans are utterly clueless about British politics.
Here we see Westminister tradition repeating.
The establishment attacks on the UKIP are almost word for word the insults and lies canadian media & talking heads, threw at the Reform Party of Canada.
Same conditions, 3 major parties, all corrupt and sleazy, same threats if you vote for these crazies you will split the conservative vote.
News flash, when they are not acting conservatively, they ain’t what they claim.
You can’t split zero.
Reform changed the nation and now, merged with the remnant of the Tories, is the majority Government.
“jim says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:39 am
regarless?!?!? The north pole is open water for the first time in 200 million years!
go figure!
jim”
Jim, here are pictures of arctic ice cover today http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-image/
The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3 mya – 3 mya) was 2-3Ā°C higher than today, global sea level 25 m higher and Northern hemisphere ice sheet ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene#Climate
This is less than 200 million years.
Also, this is rather huge … Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber had been officially blocked from heading any longer the German WBGU advisory council to the government. Shellnhuber, who is also director of the Potsdam Institute for the Climatically Insane is now officially out and so likely are several of his cronies of whom he had stacked that council.
Ding Dong!
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/03/schellnhuber-rejected-why-the-german-government-is-moving-to-overhaul-its-climate-advisory-board/
Dear Mr. Richard Courtney,
There was no need to apologize. I appear to have written my note above to you based on my misunderstanding your 11:46 AM post today. I wasn’t offended at all. I thought that perhaps you thought the Tea Party grassroots organization (not an actual political party — the “party” in the name is simply the one that happened in Boston in 1773) was defunct (a “flash in the pan”). I’m so pleased that it lives that in my excitement, I miscommunicated.
All is well.
Your sister soldier in the Battle of AGW,
Janice
CHAD Wozniak [re: 12:58, 5/3/13]
@Janice Moore:
And pass the ammunition!
****************************
@ Chad:
And we’ll aaaaallll staaaaaaay FREEEEEEEEE!
Re NZ Willy and Roger Knights: That Bill may have been called a Proportional Representation Bill, but it was not that. It was a bill concerning the replacement of “First Past The Post” by the “Alternative Vote”. Replace one bad system by another. We suffer from the latter system in Australia. It does not give proportional or even good results except by happenstance. The Liberals suffered from the “split vote” argument for years, and will probably do so for years to come. To get good representative parliaments you must ensure that constituencies do not give 100% of the seats to the candidate (aka party) with the largest number, however small, of votes. You must ensure that seats elect enough candidates so that any reasonable block of public opinion can be represented. This is probably around the nine-member mark, which enables any group with support of at least 10% of the voters in that seat to get at least one candidate elected. And for the last seat, anything more than 5% of the total vote will suffice.
Sorry – this is well away from Climate Change and its vagaries, but the point is, if there are seats with say 9 members to be elected, the electorate has the choice between the candidates within parties as well as candidates only of parties. So voters in addition to making a party choice can make a choice on other issues, such as “Climate Change”. There is less need to hew to the Party Line!
Au contraire, Dudley, the Australian preferential system is a great system, and the UK would have done well to adopt it. It’s true I said “proportional” in my previous post, that was my mistake, I meant “preferential”. If the UK had passed preferential, then UKIP voters could place Conservative as their 2nd choice, and vice-versa. Now, instead, Labour will get in. The Aussie preferential system is a great system for electing a government which can actually govern, and I wish we had it here in New Zealand.
OK, I accept you meant “preferential”. Fair enough. But as for “The Aussie preferential system is a great system for electing a government which can actually govern” – I fear you have not been noticing what has been happening in Australia over the last three years. We have the most incompetent government in the world – at least nobody has publicized one as being worse. And it does not govern! A minority government which decided to rely on the support of independents and Greens, with disastrous results, where the Prime Minister is normally known as “Juliar”, where the government put up a bill to rigidly control the press, which went for a massively expensive National Broadband system which costs about three or four times what it should. One that instituted a fixed price Carbon Tax, with risers every year from 1 July on, to a price about 8 times that of the European Carbon price! Govern perhaps, but certainly not well.
Re: Crosspatch @2031, 5/3/13 — … the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Carbon Fairy Witch!
Merkel: …. und I do not care if your name is JOHN JACOB JINGLE HEIMER SCHMIDT! You are aus!
Dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah!
Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber Schmidt, out — of — a — job!
And now that he is out,
We all can stand and shout,
There goes HANS-JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER SCHMIDT!
Dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah, daaah, dah!
Hmm. Do the children of any country other than the U.S. sing that little ditty? (Repeat with first 3 lines quieter on each repetition – always fortissimo on the last line and a half then, quieter….)?? …….. crickets…….
Sorry for the very WIERD musical post.
AND NOW! FOR SOMETHING COMPLEEEETELY DIFFERENT!
@Janice Moore –
Hope we can stay free without resorting to ammunition, but sometimes I wonder insofar as the alarmies and lefties seem to respond only to the same sorts of threats of force that they levy against skeptics. At age 65 I doubt that the armed revolt would occur in my own lifetime, but I can see those of us who value their liberty eventually being driven to that point, if the alarmist house of cards fails to collapse as we hope and may now expect it to do.
Agree 100%, Dudley, “Juliar” is all yours, and I presume the 3 independents who supported her will be smartly turfed out of their seats come the next election. Once Abbott is in charge I predict you will feel much better about your electoral system. I fear next year New Zealand will have a very uncertain next election, with an electoral system which only transfers the popular divisions into identical parliamentary divisions, with a hardcore set of party hacks in list seats that we can never get rid of. As for this year, Go Abbott!
Hi, Chad,
Say, did you ever hear someone’s CB radio transmission come in over a TV program you were watching. Ha, ha,h a, haaa. This thread is getting hilarious!
Yeah, our ammo is FACTS.
If this were a political blog, I’d discuss how our 2nd Amendment rights could be taken from us via a corrupt administration and a pseudo-martial law declaration, but, not the place. I’m with you, Chad!
(BTW, ever since you mentioned why you could not easily travel a long distance, I have been praying — hope all is well)
Take care.
Mister richardscourtney says: “the situation of UKIP in the UK is similar to that of the US Tea Party ”
And I say the Tea Party is alive and healthy.
One Tea Party Senitor from TEXAS has the Liberals in a dither!
When I looked last night, there were 4 x comments on this thread. I’ve just got up and there’s now 75. Some of the comments are purely political.
However, Guy Leech’s comment (May 3, 2013 at 2:06 pm) is one of the the few relevant replies that remain in keeping with WUWT ethos for debating the AGW scam. If you missed it, his link to UKIP’s Energy Policy makes for essential common sense reading.
http://ukip.org/media/policies/energy.pdf
richardscourtney says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:46 am
/////////////////////////////////////
Richard
I am more optomistic.
All political parties have now stated that UKIP’s policies need to be scrutinised. Given the financial problems the UK is facing and the balance between deficit reduction and austerity and growth, they will in particular look at UKIP’s proposed financial stewardship.
The material point is that UKIP’s environmental stance is not a stand alone policy. They make it clear that it is costing the UK Ā£20 billion per year to comply with the Climate Change Act which they would scrap. Ā£20 billion per year is a large sum and on its face it would enable some element to go on deficit reduction, some on tax cuts and some on growth/less austerity. No other political party can save or source an extra Ā£20 billion to help deal with the UK’s present financial difficulties. That is material since at the moment the main stream political parties are looking at cuts which are often measured in the hundreds of millions, only occassionally billions, and tax changes (up or down) of two or three billion. This is a magnitude less than the sum available to UKIP.
In forthcoming debates/scrutiny, UKIP will inevitably be questioned on how they propose paying the bills. They will inevitably refer to scrapping the Climate Change Act and the money that is wasted in pursuit of this. No doubt they will explain the case against windfarms and how subsiides are hitting the poor and how the carbon credit (UK floor price Ā£16 per tonne and escalating) is hitting the competitive of industry and how it will hit the consumer in the pocket. No doubt they will also discuss shale and the revelotion that has been seen in the USA because of this. No doubt UKIP will argue that the drive for shale gass extraction is a policy for growth. It will create much short term employment, and will have future benefits much like North Sea oil and will help regenerate the North of England and will assist the competitiveness of UK industry and will help the consumer in lower fuel bills.
I do not think that the average UK citizen knows very much about the costs of the Climate Change Act, nor about the effects of the carbon credit tax imposed on UK industry which is out of kilter with the rest of the world. There will be much debate upon how all this green madness is adversely effecting the consumer and how windfarms do not reduce CO2 emissions at all. I suspect that the majority of UK citizens consider that windfarms are green, ie., actually reduce CO2 emissions. They are in for a shock when they learn that they do not reduce CO2 emissions and will not reduce global temperatures even by one thousand of a degreeC!
Debate on these issues is bound to occur and even the BBC will be forced to report. I do consider that UKIP’s success will have an impact on public perception of the green agenda and the damage that it is inflicting. In time, this is likely to play a roll in moving the political stance of other main stream parties.
Mooloo says:
May 3, 2013 at 4:15 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////
I agree. Ideas will be dabated irrespective of whether UKIP can or can not realistically win any seats at Westminster, and as a consequence of these debates and public opinions, the ideas of main stream political parties may shift.
To win elections, the party must represent the middle ground. This raises two issues for the Conservatives.
First, if they were to move towards UKIP’s position would they lose more votes from people who are left of UKIP but presently support the Conservatives than they would gain by attracting voters who presently support UKIP but would move to the Conservatives if the Conservatives were to adopt some of UKIP’s policies?
Second, where does the centre ground lie? Is it the position that in fact, the centre ground in politics is more right than the main stream political parties presently assume to be the case? For example, is the centre ground occupied by those who wish to see a curbing in the wellfare state (at least to the extent that benefits do not exceed the average family income after deduction of tax), less immigration, a referendum on Europe, less interference by the state etc? If this is the case, then it will be easier for the Conservatives to move some way towards UKIP’s policies.
I consider that there is reasonable prospects that the political map will change as a consequence of the surge in UKIP’s appeal. I for one do not consider this to be nothing more than a protest vote. Indeed, even if it was, protests should be taken seriously because to ignore public opinion ultimately bites.
Nicholas in the Jerry Moonbeam Kalifnutso state:
re your post addressed to me at May 3, 2013 at 11:21 pm
And I did not say otherwise. Please read what I wrote.
Richard
richard verney:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at May 3, 2013 at 11:56 pm.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/newsbytes-climate-sceptics-win-rocks-britains-political-landscape/#comment-1296838
It is not surprising that some – you say including you – are “more optimistic” than my post.
I tried to provide a dispassionate account for information of people not familiar with UK politics. If my attempt were successful then – depending on their personal political desires – some people would be more and others would be less “optimistic” than my account.
I think you make some good points which provide opinion on points made by me and others in the thread. I have included a link in this post so others can jump to your post from here.
Richard
OTC, it has something to do with climate policy–the UKIP has been forthright about the money that would be saved by abandoning the current Climate Change Act, as Richard Verney argues a couple of comments upthread. Its victory has already shaken things up, which is a necessary preliminary to restructuring them.
Strawman–Mooloo was not talking about these victories as though parliamentary seats were involved. He was saying that victories in local elections are harbingers of what may occur in future national elections. They are thus meaningful in that they show which way the wind is blowing. Politicians are very alert to that, so this victory will tend to make them trim their sails on policies that look like vote-losers. Here’s what Mooloo wrote:
Richardscourtney says
And he’s right too warn against over-celebration.
But it is yet another significant landmark along the funeral procession of alarmism in UK.
For the first time a party whose policies are explicitly anti-renewable energy (among other things) has won a huge proportion of the votes.
This cannot be ignored.
And in related news, two senior guys form the Department of Energy and Climate Change have jumped ship.
http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/news/news_story.asp?id=198505&title=Decc+plunged+into+%27chaos%27+as+second+senior+civil+servant+departs
Ahh…poor dears. No doubt they’ll find alternative ’employment’ with some renewable subsidy farmer somewhere….who better than they to know how best to suck on the public teat?
@wamron
Au contraire, mon brave. The difference is that they have frightened the living daylights out of all three of the ‘major’ parties…who may well conclude that their consensus adherence to European policies on climate are a huge electoral liability.
That may lead them to re-examine policies that seemed sensible and attractive pre-Copenhagen, pre-temperature standstill and pre-Climategate. But are now as enticing and sensible as yesterday’s used chip paper.
And if UKIP continue their rise, climate and energy will come more and more to the fore as a live topic.
Early in my career I was involved in an extremely interesting documentary about the European union, which lead me to investigate further and develop a nuanced view on the institution. Anti-EU sentiment to my mind is driven by the same availability bias that constitutes most CAGW alarmism. It’s no the very considerable good that the EU does that gets the attention, but the undeniable daft bureaucracy, which ironically is dafter than a lot of people realise.
I personally am absolutely no supporter of UKIP and the principles they stand for, and a lot of people worry that they are the ‘polite face’ of bigotry, and it worries me that rational skepticism of man made climate change and the pointless futile policies that follow from the alarm are going to be entangled in politics in the way it has become polarised in the US. CAGW is first and foremost a scientific issue and should not be polemical. For those of us who put social responsibility ahead of personal liberty, the consequences of irrational policy based on uncertain science is detrimental to our goals.
I would say this in fairness to UKIP, it is true they have been subject to actual bigotry of the kind that ironically people fear from them. Michael Farage’s views, and the manner he has expressed them, shows him to be an excellent politican and leader. I do not agree with most of them, but I cannot deny that they are not reasonable and more moderate than UKIPs reputation would make us think. I just think they are somewhat shortsighted.
M Courtney says: May 3, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Just to add to the confusionā¦ these were predominately English local elections.
Not British general elections.
_____________________________________
I think you miss the point. UKIP used to be hopeless in local elections, while ‘other right-wing parties’ used to get 10x their votes. But UKIP always did much better in general elections than the ‘other right-wing parties’.* If that trend continues, then UKIP will do very well at the next general election.
All we need is a few defections of MPs from the Conservatives to UKIP. There are many Conservatives who hated David Cameron for his husky-hugging and wind turbine escapades,** and with many of his other liberal-green policies, but would not dare switch to UKIP because there was no hope of keeping their seat in Parliament. Now there is a very good chance that they can get elected as a UKIP MP, they may well be persuaded to switch. If they do, then UKIP will have a home-run at the next general election.
The other possibility is a deal between Conservatives and UKIP at the next election. And in this case, the deal would have to involve: support for the armed forces; support for grammar schools; more action against European union; and a withdrawal from all these Green subsidies.
.
* Notice the Orwellian self-censorship we have in modern UK. You are not allowed to mention certain political parties here.
** Cameron put a wind turbine on his roof, calling this the future of UK electrical generation. Yes, this is how stupid and naive our prime minister really is – he thought that an average of 7 watts of electrical generation will run a large household. Unsurprisingly, Cameron’s wind turbine did not last for more than 6 months. And THIS, was the primary foundation for UK electrical power generation for the 21st century. Can you believe the stupidity of our political classes? This is why Mr Farage, who comes across as a real laddish man-of-the-people and a realist who has not been infected with politic-speak, will go from strength to strength.
.
If you want a real laugh, please see Mr Farage savaging the EU parliamentarians about their undemocratic Communist appointments system:
Farage and UKIP are the only opposition party in the EU parliament, who will hold these undemocratic Communists to account. All of the top posts in the EU are held by Communists and Marxists, like Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JosƩ_Manuel_Barroso
this Irish journalist – a China specialist for various MSM – has a way with word, like Farage, but she does goes downhill after the excerpts below:
3 May: Guardian: Jennifer Duggan: Is China really a climate change leader?
A new report portrays China as a leader in tackling climate change but its emissions are still rising dramatically
Chinaās environmental woes have attracted a lot of attention internationally since the start of the new year. Air pollution was first up in January as levels in a number of cities, including the capital Beijing, hit lung clogging off the record levels. Dubbed the āair-pocalypseā, hazardous smog left air pollution left cities enveloped in a thick layer of smog.
And just last month water pollution took an unusual form in Shanghai after thousands of dead pigs were found floating in the cityās main river which provides drinking water for up to 20 per cent of the cityās 23 million residents. Concerns have also been raised about dangerous levels of soil pollution after heavy metals were found in soil samples.
Chinaās environment has suffered to help fuel its record-breaking economic growth. Its coal-powered factories and power stations pump out thick clouds of soot making it the worldās number one emittor of greenhouse gases.
With its posionous air, water and soil, it is hard to see China as anything other than an environmental villian but a new report portrays it in a different light, as a leader on tackling climate change. The report āThe Critical Decade: Global Action Building on Climate Changeā was carried out by the Australian Climate Commissionā¦
The Climate Commission report portrays China in a very complimentary light but it does state that China is reducing its āemissions growthā ā meaning China is still increasing its emissions, just not as quickly as previously.
To put these increases into context, another study published earlier this year by consultancy firm Ecofys for Greenpeace estimates that
āChinaās five northwestern provinces plan to increase coal production by 620 million tonnes by 2015, generating an additional 1,400 million tonnes of CO2 a year, almost equal to Russiaās emissions in 2010ā³.
So which is it? Is China a leader on tackling climate change or one of the biggest contributors? The truth is bothā¦
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/chinas-choice/2013/may/02/china-climate-change-leader
also, as funny as Farage can be, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, is in a spot of coal bother:
3 May: Australian: Leo Shanahan: Greg Combet said he was āentitled to trustā ex-union boss John Maitland over NSW mine
The licence allegedly delivered Mr Maitland and other investors, such as Newcastle businessman Craig Ransley, a $48 million profit when the licence was subsequently sold to NuCoal in 2010. No training mine was ever built.
It is alleged Mr Maitland personally turned a $165,000 investment into $14 million.
Mr Combet, a former ACTU secretary, said he trusted Mr Maitland as someone he had dealt with in the union movement for many years and was supportive of the training mine to address the skills shortage in the regionā¦
Mr Combet was asked by counsel assisting the commission Peter Braham SC whether he would have supported the mine if he knew āit would only train 25 new miners a yearā and would be extracting ā90 million tones coalā as a commercial mine in three years.
āNo ā¦ (my) support was for a training mine,ā Mr Combet saidā¦
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/combet-trusted-unionist-john-maitland-over-a-training-mine/story-e6frg6nf-1226634559262
Those commenting from the UK are now starting to realise what the results mean. The vote for UKIP will realign British politics. Whether or not the population voted for them because of their policies or in protest against the other political parties the outcome will be the same.
First, the Conservative party are going to have to shift further to the right if they want to regain cohesion in the general election in 2015.
Second the Labour party will wish to be the centre ground and try to sweep up disenfranchised conservatives and Lib Dem supporters moving slightly more to the right than they are now. This will cause a split between the hard left support, the Unions the financial base and New Labour. They have a year to square this before the run up to the election or they face an unasailable task of gaining a majority vote.
Third the Lib Dems are now fractured internally and humiliated externally, they need a new leader and soon. If they now do not stand against coalition policy that will move towards the right then they will disintigrate. If they do stand against the policy they may have to leave the coalition and force an early general election, which given their current standing would be disasterous for them but also for the other parties.
Fourth UKIP will ride the wave and do fantastically in the European elections next year. As for the general election in 2015 their fate now relies upon the direction that the Conservatives take. If the Conservatives don’t adjust to the right then they will be a force in the general election. If the Conservatives do adjust to the right then their support will dwindle.
The outcome of these local elections, the people want a shift in politics to the right and away from Europe. The message to British political parties…. ignore this at your peril. Politicians think that we the British people are here to be led and directed as it has been for a long time, UKIP is our baseball bat, come and preach to us…. I dare ya!
jim says:
May 3, 2013 at 11:39 am
“regarless?!?!? The north pole is open water for the first time in 200 million years!
go figure!”
Every CO2 molecule is a tiny mirror floating in the air, sending heat rays to Earth.
As a long time member of UKIP, I am very pleased for the success in the county elections in england this week.
UKIP are a plain, simple speaking party that believes in small Government, democracy and independence.
Obviously this does not fit well with people who accept what the three large failed parties in the UK believe in and say.
They all want to remain within the EU club, keep the EU law above UK law, which means we have to obey all of the stupid climate change nonsense.
The EU and its subset organisations prevent the UK from ejecting foreign criminals back to their home country!
But it is not all the EUs fault. UK politicians dreams up the CLimate Change Act, the most expensive bit of law ever to be introduction into the UK.
David Cameron, surrounds himself with advisors who all went to the same school as he.
British politics has been waiting for a shakeup like this for years.
British people are very happy.
Until a few years ago I would have been a life-long Conservative voter. But no longer. I’m now proud to be a UKIP voter. Here are a couple of reasons why:
1. I want Britain to be a free and democratic country that makes its own laws.
2. I will never vote for any party whose policies are designed to push up the price of energy in the name of the global warming cult.
There are other reasons e.g. their opposition to wind farms and possibly opposition to the green renewables nonsense in general, and support for shale gas and nuclear.
In this week’s local elections UKIP scored a notable triumph. They will almost certainly do even better in next year’s European elections. Even if they never form a government they may well have a very beneficial influence on future government policies in the areas of immigration, Europe and – very important – climate change and energy policy.
At last, a glimmer of hope….
Chris
Ukip listened to people and then formulated policy. The others try to bend people to their crackpot policies.
Ukip is also against wind farms and other useless forms of ”renewables”. They are now in a position to block future wind farm developments through local councils.
That is a start.
pat says:
May 4, 2013 at 2:19 am
“this Irish journalist ā a China specialist for various MSM ā has a way with word, like Farage, but she does goes downhill after the excerpts below:”
It is difficult to say whether she doesn’t know the difference between CO2 and soot or whether she is deliberately obfuscating. I guess you don’t have to be a doofus to work for the Guardian but it sure helps a lot.
Agnostic says:
May 4, 2013 at 1:35 am
“Itās no the very considerable good that the EU does that gets the attention, but the undeniable daft bureaucracy, which ironically is dafter than a lot of people realise.”
“CAGW is first and foremost a scientific issue and should not be polemical.”
Well, a defender of the EU would say that, wouldn’t he; as the EU expends billions of Euros into producing global warming “science”; thus his beloved EU would easily be able to overwhelm any number of skeptics with more “science” made to measure; more computer output than could be refuted in a lifetime; together with “scientists” like Schellnhuber who redefine science itself the way they need it.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/research-domains/transdisciplinary-concepts-and-methods/project-archive/eyes
This way the EU politbĆ¼ro can dominate, keep the skeptics busy, and continue taking all the resources they want to take; continue to rule with impunity while the continent turns into a wasteland.
“very considerable good that the EU does” – remind me, what was the youth unemployment rate in Spain? You say it would be WORSE without JosĆ© Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy? Well it wouldn’t be twice as bad, as 120% percent youth unemployment is a mathematical impossibility.
JabbaTheCat 1:17:
Yes UKIP came fourth in numbers of seats, but third in numbers of votes. UKIP’s support was fairly evenly spread while LibDem support clusters mainly in the South-West. It’s the way the system works; you get 23% and 147 seats while the Conservatives got over 1000 seats on 26%. Still 147 up from just 8 is quite impressive, and good news for sceptics.
Agnostic 1:35am:
Mr Farage’s first name is Nigel, not Michael.
Re Roger Nights
But Roger.they dont have ANY members of parliament!
Council elections in the UK are only relevant in indicating preferences between the parties people vote for at parliamentary elections. People vary their voting habits in council elections in many ways. Then at the next parliamentary election they vote for a major party. Council elections have long provided “successes” for fringe parties, such as the BNP or even joke parties such as the Monster Raving Looney Party (for Americans, its actual name). In one council election a gorilla was elected!
If Conservatives saw people vote Labour in a council election they would worry. If they see people vote UKIP, further right than Labour they dont need to worry…because the only way those UKIP voters can keep out their Labour candidate at the next parliamentary election is to vote Conservative. They know that UKIP voters know that a UKIP vote will let Labour candidates win. So they can rely on those who voted UKIP in a council election to vote for the Conservatives next time.
These Earth shattering changes mean absolutely nothing.
UKIP is also taking votes from Labour.
A likely scenario at the next General Election is for UKIP to take from both parties giving them the balance of power and Lib Dems relegated to an irrelevant 4th place.
Even if Labour then has most seats a Tory/UKIP Coalition could then ensue giving us a better solution that the current Tory/ Lib Dem arrangement.
So people need not be afraid of voting UKIP to avoid a Labour majority. Tory and UKIP combined would be able to block and frustrate any unwanted Labour insanities even if they did not form a coalition.
People should always vote for their first preference and should not vote tactically. The system works best without tactical voting but of course at the moment Tories want to use fear of Labour to bring voters back to them.
Hopefully the electorate will see through that.
Friends:
I am writing this in hope of helping non-British readers of this thread.
In my post at May 4, 2013 at 12:40 am I wrote
As demonstration of that I cite posts by Richard Verney and Wamron.
Non-Brits may be surprised to learn – and may have difficulty understanding – that they are both right. I commend those seeking to understand the discussion in this thread to read both, and I provide links to the two posts to assist this.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/newsbytes-climate-sceptics-win-rocks-britains-political-landscape/#comment-1296838
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/newsbytes-climate-sceptics-win-rocks-britains-political-landscape/#comment-1296968
Richard
I have to agree with Richard Courtney and others.
Protest votes in local elections are common and don’t usually last until general elections. The voting system in any case is seriously biased against smaller/growing parties.
The voting for UKIP was based almost entirely on immigration (and a general contempt for the mainstream parties). No mainstream party has any serious policy to limit immigration (and their adherence to the EU means that they could do little anyway).
The Tories will make enough anodyne noises to neutralize the UKIP vote at a general election – eg non-binding promises of “re-negotiations” with the EU or, if they have to, a suitably rigged referendum in which all the main parties and the entire media will scaremonger their way to remaining in the EU.
Unfortunately, although UKIPs energy policies are a big deal for most of us here they played almost no part in the media debate and I doubt that most people who voted for UKIP could even list them with any degree of accuracy.
Because of this, and given that all the other main parties are as gung ho for CAGW as the EU they bow down to, don’t expect UKIPs energy policies to have much if any influence.
The other parties might make noises about modifying their attitudes to immigration or the EU (without actually doing much) but they won’t do even that about energy.
It’s when the lights start going out that energy will leap up the agenda, not UKIPs almost unnoticed, at the moment, energy policies.
Wamron: Your scenario is what the Tory’s are desperately hoping turns out to be true, but there’s precedent that suggests it may not be. Consider the Canadian elections of 2011 – the ideology of the parties is different, but there is an overall similarity between the position today’s English Tories find themselves in and the position that the Canadian Liberal Party (a center-left party that considered itself the “natural” governing party.) The Canadian liberals were sure that the rising New Democrat party under Jack Layton could be managed, and would maybe just be a junior partner, or failing that, people would know not to elect Harper’s conservatives by voting for the more extreme New Democrats.
What happened? Canadians were sick to death of the Liberals due to a generation of high handedness and mismanagement, and voters went to either the New Democrats or to the Conservatives. The Liberals had their worst showing in a century, and the party they opposed, the Conservatives, took firm control of the government.
The same think could happen to the Tories if they don’t come up with some way to co-opt the UKIP. And Cameron may not have the political stones to do that. I wonder if he realizes that Farage and his followers would gladly take down a Tory government just to get a scalp to hang on their belt. In their thinking, after another Labour government presides over even a greater decline, they will be poised to emerge victorious. It’s a plan to win everything by Letting it All Burn. Dangerous, but for those with no power at all always an attractive option.
Similar history to the UK. The Liberal Party befriended the fledgeling Labour Party in 1906, and even came to an arrangement whereby certain seats were allocated to the Labour Party. Won the 1910 elections with Labour and Irish support. Elections due 1915 postponed because of the war, and then won the ‘coupon’ election in 1918. Formed coalition government with Conservatives, but Lloyd George was pushed out, replaced by Bonar Law. At the 1922 election the Conservatives won a majority but this only lasted just over a year. The 1923 election resulted in another hung parliament, and Labour provided the government although they were the largest party. As the Conservatives after Bonar Law’s death had, at the instance of Baldwin, changed from a “Free Trade” party to a “Protectionist” party, they could not expect support from the Liberals, who remained staunchly “Free Traders”. The Labour Party had more seats than the Liberals, who have never had a look in since, till the latest election.
The absurd nature of the UK electoral system was shown in the 1983 election. The Labour party got 27.58% of the vote the Liberals got 25.38%. Labour won 209 seats, Liberals won 23!
Signed – “Disgruntled Liberal”
Correction: Sentence “The 1923 election resulted in another hung parliament, and Labour provided the government although they were the largest party.” should read:
“The 1923 election resulted in another hung parliament, and Labour provided the government although the Conservatives were the largest party.”
Nowhere above did I say that UKIP would form the next govt, I merely suggest a plausible scenario whereby they hold the balance of power and the moral high ground in 2015.
Denigrating the 25% of voters that chose UKIP is no longer a ploy available to the other parties.
Whilst LIB/LAB/CON fight over their common perception of where the centre ground lies and jostle one another for prime position, the electorate is moving away from the outmoded fin de siecle policies that those parties perceive defines that position.
Nigel Farage had the full attention of the electorate over Europe and Immigration, but very cleverly imho held back on pushing the card that is the UKIP Energy and Climate Change manifesto and now has the distinction of being the prime, and as yet only, occupier of that niche.
Cameron, Clegg, Milliband and their parties are all so heavily implicated in the AGW scam that they cannot change horses now without admitting that UKIP are right.
UKIP can now hold back that card for a time of maximum effect.
As Dr.Roy Spencer shows, April gobal warming at a miniscule 0.1C despite rising CO2 makes the disconnect even more obvious and the all party policy of ever increasing energy bills a gross error of judgement.
2015 is two years away ā enough time for the final calamitous fall in AGW belief and for a scandalised electorate to punish the guilty parties.
And still they donāt get it on planet Westminster!
And neither does Wamron, bigtime.
But they will.
From the article: “Westminster observers are convinced that the growing popularity of UKIP is one of the main reasons some Conservative MPs have become more openly hostile to environmental policies.”
Every time something like this appears in print, conservatives should call out the author of such nonsense. The hostility is not toward all environmental policies, but to bad environmental policies. None of us want to return to the days when walking through a center city to get to work required a change of shirts upon arrival at the office due to the accumulation of coal ash on one’s clothes, nor to the days when rivers ran full with city sewage.
But bankrupting, or in some cases starving or freezing, the people for the sake of implementing bad environmental policies is another matter entirely.
This would do more to cut the rate of the UK’s co2 output than windmills.
@DirkH
“Well, a defender of the EU would say that, wouldnāt he; as the EU expends billions of Euros into producing global warming āscienceā; thus his beloved EU would easily be able to overwhelm any number of skeptics with more āscienceā made to measure; more computer output than could be refuted in a lifetime; together with āscientistsā like Schellnhuber who redefine science itself the way they need it.”
Dude, the EU does a whole lot more (and in ways most people simply don’t realize) than organize committees to ‘fight’ climate change. None of the stuff mentioned there is anything different from what an individual government whose advise was that CAGW is a reality would do.
Spain’s current woes – are primarily a result of the global financial crisis. Up until then they were considered a model economy. But this isn’t the forum for a debate on those matters. I merely wanted to point out that taking a polarized view on the EU is exactly the same kind of delusion most of us here abhor when it comes to climate science. If all you see is waste and ineptitude, of course you are going to come to the conclusion that the EU is monolithic bureacracy of no value whatsoever. If all you read about is that the weather is worsening and that CO2 and temperatures are going up, of course you are going to be alarmed at mans effect on the climate.
It’s really only when you start digging, and trying to see both sides of the argument that you can come to any sort of balanced view. UKIPs view towards the EU isn’t balanced. They want the UK to withdraw from the EU – that’s their mandate. They don’t appreciate the stability, both political and economic, that such an institution provides its member states, in a part of the world that is historically at war most of the time, precisely because of that instability.
On the other hand, I have to credit Michael Farage for leading UKIP to a more moderate position, and arguing it patiently and articulately. I don’t believe he is correct, but he makes valid and worthy points worth listening to. It’s a fresh message, well argued, and long suffering austerity stricken voters are prime candidates for giving someone new a go.
But “minority governmemts” are commonplace under proportional representation.
Agnostic says:
May 4, 2013 at 9:33 am
“They donāt appreciate the stability, both political and economic, that such an institution provides its member states, in a part of the world that is historically at war most of the time, precisely because of that instability.”
You have got to be joking. Stabiliity the whole edifice is breaking apart, ask the Greek EU members, ask the Spanish EU members, ask the Italians, in fact ask the Germans. The last reason that Europe was at war amongst itself was due to a single institution trying to exert its will upon the populations of many nations. So we are not at war, so what did those who last fought envision for their offspring, what did they put their lives on the line for, for this state of play, why do you think that politics in many European countries are heading to the right. The EU has failed to provide stability, it’s a busted flush, time for change,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Really really not joking. You think climate change is complex, try disentangling the panoply of conflicting interests that constitute the EU. The real miracle is that has worked at all. I’m not trying to apologise for the EU….but the various forces and interests that go to make it up is really mind boggling. When you start asking how that would play out if there was no EU is when you start to realise its true purpose.
Rod says:
May 4, 2013 at 7:51 am
“… conservatives should call out the author of such nonsense. The hostility is not toward all environmental policies, but to bad environmental policies…”
Rod, no one is going to go backwards and fill London air with soot – this is taken care of. THE environmental policies – the single issue that makes up environmental policy IS CO2 in the atmosphere. Thinking sceptics bemoan the fact that other enviromental issues do not even come up on the radar! Isn’t CO2 the single danger that is going to burn up the planet and kill all its inhabitants? No, EU environmental policy IS CAGW prevention. Don’t be a “small c” conservative. The “c” in UK is so small now that it looks like a zero. Democrats in the USA are so far right of UK conservatives (or those of Europe for that matter) that it is at best a misettnomer. And we are concerned about the leftiness of Democrats. The NDP (New Democratic Party) in Canada would be right at home with UK conservatives – and you know what they say about a party or country that feels the need to put the word “Democratic” in their name (or Democrats as in Christian Democrats). Its a bit like the “sciences” that need the word science in their names to be sure people don’t think they are part of the Humanities. Oh, bother, the Humanities have become…..I’d better quit here.
āThey donāt appreciate the stability, both political and economic, that such an institution provides its member states, in a part of the world that is historically at war most of the time, precisely because of that instability.ā
The USSR provided stability both political and economic for a number of years but they had difficulty with the concept of democracy.
The EU provided stability both political and economic for a number of years but they had difficulty with the concept of democracy.
Spot the difference.
Agnostic says:
May 4, 2013 at 1:13 pm
“Really really not joking. You think climate change is complex, try disentangling the panoply of conflicting interests that constitute the EU. The real miracle is that has worked at all. Iām not trying to apologise for the EUā¦.but the various forces and interests that go to make it up is really mind boggling. When you start asking how that would play out if there was no EU is when you start to realise its true purpose.”
The various forces consist of money and power, the EU is bankrupt, the books have not balanced for years and still we are expected to finance an ever increasing budget fo a bureaucracy that is self fulfilling. If there was no EU there would be less waste of public finance, there would be less of a requirement for taxable contributions from the populace. There would be more money in the economy, more economic recovery, less stagnating recession and more growth. People are not spending because the hours that they work are providing less for their families than their forefathers could. More of their income is being converted to bureaucratic excess in the name of making the lives of the many better, that the working man /woman is becoming the minority in society. When you now work your family becomes second to all the needs of institutionalised charities such as greenpeace and wwf that control the political allegiances of parties tied to the European line. We are deemed to be too well off and decadent in our lifestyles to think about the needy in the world and it has to be done for us even though most of us are struggling to maintain what we achieved ten years ago. What is missing from the requirements is will and choice and thereby ends the involvement of democracy and freedom. The EU is a cancer that is sucking the life from society in the name of society.
Another heartening sign is the out-of-the-blue emergence of a new anti-euro (currency) party in Germany. About a quarter of the voters said they’d consider voting for it later this year. A trend is emerging of opposition to entrenched consensus-elites.
@ Agnostic
Despite having your error over Nigel Farage’s name pointed out to you, you repeat it a while later.
Because of that, tell me please, why should anyone take a blind bit of notice of anything you have to say?
Re Roger Knights – May 04 at 1004 – But āminority governmentsā are commonplace under proportional representation. True. But there is a difference in how the MPs are arrived at between FPTP, MMR, AV, and most of the continental European systems using a List method of attaining proportional representation. Party candidates are usually chosen by party members in their constituencies (except in Australia, where they are usually chosen by Trade Unions, Party Factions, or the “Leader”. Party members normally have the more extreme views – someone with centre of the road view doesn’t join. So with single member seats, or those where party lists are the rule, candidates tend to be more extreme (at both ends) than the overwhelming majority of the population. By contrast, where there are, say, 9 to be elected, and a party is hopeful of getting 5 or more elected in a majority of seats, it is necessary to ensure that there are candidates who “don’t frighten the horses”. For our local elections way back, candidates spoke at a Residents’ Association meeting. One Green candidate spoke well, another spoke like a ‘ratbag loony’. The first was elected, the second just failed – I think he had put so many people off!
In Ireland, both parts of Ireland were given PR using the STV. South kept it, the North did not. Enid Lakeman, in her book, commented that as a result Southern Ireland had sunk out of sight as the most peaceful nation in Europe – she compared it to the continuing unrest in Northern Ireland.
But to get back to the subject, with FPTP, you only get candidates who adhere to the Party Line. I strongly suspect that the same will apply to MMR in NZ. By contrast, with PR/STV, it is reasonable that some of the candidates will be for CAGW, others will be against. So the electorate can decide without the messy subterfuge of a ‘referendum’ where the ruling clique can, and probably will, ensure that the question is worded to favour their views. Remember Sir Humphrey explaining this to Bernard?
So, for good decisions by Parliaments re CAGW, you need to have PR/STV.
Sorry, I had got off the track a bit there. If you have an electoral system where ‘moderates’ are most likely to be put up for election and get elected, it is more likely that they will work together in a coalition government, or even as a minority government, relying on one or other of the other parties for support on any particular policy.
ADH – Correction, “(except in Australia, where they are usually chosen by Trade Unions, Party Factions, or the āLeaderā. ” should read:
“(except in the Australian Labor Party in Australia, where they are usually chosen by Trade Unions, Party Factions, or the āLeaderā. “
Wamron,
“They know that UKIP voters know that a UKIP vote will let Labour candidates win. So they can rely on those who voted UKIP in a council election to vote for the Conservatives next time.”
They may think that – it seems intuitive – but they (and you) would be wrong.
As a small c conservative, I have seen the main parties moving closer and closer together until they appear to have merged into one amorphous hybrid. There is little difference in substance between the 3 of them – any differences are on style.
Therefore, I no longer fear electing Labour by the back door. To me it makes no difference. From what I have read on various political blogs, including conservativehome, this is the way most conservative voters feel.
Though you may be correct that the Conservative party don’t believe conservative voters will desert them at the GE, this merely suggess that any future changes of policy will be unlikely. That way of thinking will be their undoing.
Hear, hear Vince. We didn’t have to vote this time sadly but we would have voted UKIP and will do so, as always, in the EU elections next year and if nothing changes drastically we will do so again at the GE’s in 2015.
I am 53, my husband 58. We have voted Conservative since we were old enough to vote. Our children (and their partners) have continued the tradition as politics was discussed regularly as they were growing up and they recognised that traditional family life would only be upheld by a Conservative Government. Sadly this is no longer the case. If Labour wins the GE so be it, they made the financial mess we are currently in and they deserve to clean it up or, most likely, make it worse as usual. The Conservative Govt has lost it’s way under David Cameron and UKIP is the only party that holds true any values we, as a family, have for so long held dear; namely personal responsibility, for individuals but also as a Country!
For the last few years we have been jollied into national pride; the Royal wedding, the Queens Jubilee and then the Olympics. You cannot court National pride on one hand, only to crush it with the other. The EU is the one big cuckoo in the nest for ordinary people, and only UKIP provides any sort of answer to it! David Cameron’s promise of another referendum if he wins the next GE, the first of which was renaged on, is laughed at and rightly so. The old fashioned British sense of right from wrong is still alive and well; you can trick us once but we will not be fooled again.
Now if David Cameron is replaced by a true blue, rather than the red/blue/yellow (shitty brown colour) that we have now, things may be different. I can’t be the only Conservative that wishes that Farage was in the running!
Oh and by the way the ordinary people of the Country care nothing about AGW one way or another, despite the ‘Greenest Government Ever’ promises Cameron made to win votes at the last GE…whoever advises him on these matters needs to be fired as soon as!
I’ve never personally met anyone who believes in it and regularly have to explain to people that it’s down to this that they are in fuel poverty; happily the higher energy prices go the more harm it does the AGW gravy train. They are also very interested to hear just how many M.P.’s have their snouts in the renewable scam trough!
However I would be very surprised if more than a handful of voters actually voted for UKIP because of AGW itself, although it will come to be a very welcome bonus for UKIP that they are the only realist party on this issue in the future, as prices continue to rise and the elderly sadly die in greater numbers, due to not being able to heat their homes, as the cooling continues.
More power to your elbow Mr. Farage, Sir!!