The fatcat ecocrats exposed: Web of ‘green’ politicians, tycoons and power brokers who help each other benefit from billions raised on your bills
- Four of nine-person Climate Change Committee, official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions
Other industries would stand accused of damning conflicts of interest but when it comes to global warming, anything goes…
The Mail on Sunday today reveals the extraordinary web of political and financial interests creating dozens of eco-millionaires from green levies on household energy bills.
A three-month investigation shows that some of the most outspoken campaigners who demand that consumers pay the colossal price of shifting to renewable energy are also getting rich from their efforts.
Enquiries by this newspaper have revealed:
- Four of the nine-person Climate Change Committee, the official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until very recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions.
- A new breed of lucrative green investment funds, which were set up to expand windfarm energy, are in practice a means of taking green levies paid by hard-pressed consumers and handing them to City investors and financiers.
- £3.8 billion of taxpayers’ money funds the new Green Investment Bank, set up by the Department of Business and Skills. One of its biggest deals involved energy giant SSE selling windfarms to one of the new green funds, Greencoat Wind. The Green Investment Bank’s chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, is also chairman of SSE. The bank says it ‘provided expertise’ to enable BIS to take a £50 million stake in Greencoat, which helped fund the SSE sale.
- The same bank’s chief executive, Shaun Kingsbury, is one of the UK’s highest-paid public sector employees. His £325,000 salary is more than twice the Prime Minister’s.
- Firms lobbying for renewables can virtually guarantee access to key Government policy-makers, because they are staffed by former very senior officials – a striking example of Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’.
Among the most astonishing features exposed by our investigation is the way in which vehement advocates for radical policies designed to curb global warming are making huge sums of money from their work. Here are some of the key figures among the new breed of fat-cat Ecocrats…
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Britons will rise up. Doubt it. Most won’t give a monkey’s buttock about this and for good reason. It is Private Eye style journalism. Shock, horror, etc. Nothing to get very excited about. And it is the most establishment of comfy middle class newspapers. Tomorrows fish and chip paper.
Margret Hardman says:
“As for David Rose – in fact checking quarters, his reporting is seen with bemusement.”
Blaming the messenger.
“Tomorrows fish and chip paper.”
The Internet has a longer memory than that, surely.
“Most won’t give a monkey’s buttock about this”
Beware the anger of a silent majority.
Hard luck, Margaret. Don’t you think you should throw something a bit more opaque over that emperor suit you are strutting around in?
The irony is that if these claims had been made about bureaucrats and politicians in charge of, say, social security or child welfare, the Guardianista Left would have responded with a collective cry of: “Yes, of course! Power and money always corrupt!” But like the religion that it is, environmentalism has always attempted to seize the moral high ground: ‘WE are not like THEM’. It’s a sign of how out of touch with reality you are if you can be shocked by discovering your heroes behave like everyone else.
Tim, they won’t. It’s meaningless to most people. You might think it’s important but the Mail’s core readership won’t care. Look at their website to see what the Mail really thinks. Not blaming the messenger, but in the world of Littlejohn, huff and puff today, then move on.
Janice Moore says: December 14, 2013 at 7:36 pm
Captain Renault is a goldmine indeed!
“Realizing the importance of the case, my men are rounding up twice the usual number of suspects.”
“I’m only a poor corrupt official.”
Margaret Hardman says: December 14, 2013 at 8:47 pm
You are snail expert Sir Paul Nurse (of secret meeting fame) and I claim my £5.
Hopefully David Rose will do a follow-up article on “green” subsidies of recent EDF nuclear deal in Britain, which doubles the future price of nuclear generated power in one hit, giving the company an unbelievable 10% per annum return on investment – guaranteed, index linked !
Much of the ground work for this was done when Gordon Brown was PM and his BROTHER was a PR rep for EDF. (Not suggesting any impropriety, of course but there is _just a possibility_ of similar cronyism being involved).
Much of the public justification for accepting the enormous increase in the price nuclear generated electrical power was the fact it’s “low carbon”.
So it does not matter whether you are a fan of nuclear or renewables, the bottom line is the same. The tax-payer gets screwed and fat-cat cronyism wins.
Hats off to David Rose for exposing the fact that these green lobbyists are no different to any other financial group.
As long as I get 4 times more thumbs down than up when commenting on other blogs, stating a 17 year pause of warming with climbing CO2, implicating a very low impact of CO2, I think the moment that the tide is really turning might be quite far away. But it is a good sign that it’s 4 to 1. It was 10 to 1 not so long ago, and news stories like this will eventually reach the general public. The scam WILL be exposed and the crooks WILL be prosecuted.
When the slime is literally pouring off, as with this lot, you would think that a bunch of them should be going to jail.
Enron to the power of N.
No surprise here. The UK is now as corrupt as many banana republics, which it is fast becoming.
After Gore’s $millions, we are shocked, SHOCKED to find that it’s all about money.
Everyone is missing the crux of all this. Benefiting financially by promoting “good” is perfectly acceptable Otherwise, Al Gore would have long since been run out of town on a rail. Why is it virtually impossible to find a political liberal anywhere in the world who does not fervently promote green energy? Because it is good! When promoting “good”, the end justifies the means, ordinary rules of behavior are suspended and anything goes.
Lord help you, though, if you get caught profiting from promoting “bad”.
I’m sure someone has already said this, but they don’t call it “green” energy for nothing.
Unfortunately, this does not surprise me one little bit – the financial ends justify the corrupted means..
Politics used to be about properly representing the people for the great good; now it’s largely about representing yourself for the individual ‘good’ and getting away with it.. We need a far better class of politician and a public who actually are able to think for themselves beyond believing what is pumped to them through a largely compliant and complicit media…
Some form of revolution will have to happen to change the situation – one hopes it won’t be a ‘V’ style undertaking.
The “better class of politician” can’t gain admission to the club/gang. You must have allowed yourself to be reliably compromised to gain nomination by a party to any election.
It is bit like Flannery in Australia. Until sacked by the new government he was earning a huge amount of money advising the government as well as getting grants for his geo-thermal enterprise.
110% certainty that 100% of recipients endorse the 97% consensus!
Margaret Hardman says: December 14, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Sorry (my comment at 11:01), Nurse is a yeast expert, Jones is the snail (and fruit fly) expert.
Nigel S, I am happy to have shown up James Delingpole for what he is, or would be were I Sir Paul Nurse, expert of the genetic control of the cell cycle. You should watch that Horizon clip. It is very entertaining. In fact the entire programme should be required viewing.
The British Establishment has always operated in this effete and corrupt way.
When there are snouts to be put in the trough for a ‘good cause’, they can be guaranteed to be the first in line.
Carbon credits/green energy subsidies were always going to attract white collar and/or organised crime. All David Rose has done is expose a tiny part of this global insanity.
As for carbon credits, which have no tangible or residual value, and you can just keep on selling them, although they tend to decline towards zero over time, there is very good analogy:
A hooker: you’ve got it, so you sell it, but you’ve still got it and so you sell it again, etc., etc. Eventually it becomes so unattractive that no one wants to buy it anymore.
This story has the potential to take on a life of its own in the media & parliament, beyond affecting the DM’s readership. IOW, it may “have legs.” (Not least because some influential people may be looking for an excuse to derail the greenshirts.)
If the DM endorses the UKIP, that would be a bit of a game changer.
AW would make this a sticky post
I’ve said it before, It’s all very well blindly following the science, but it’s a good idea to follow the money as well.