Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In 2015, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson compared himself to the fictional Wizard Gandalf, saying “In one form or another I will be here. Like Gandalf I will be I will be translated into some new form, more powerful than I can possibly imagine. I will be here and we will make sure that under the ultra-low emissions zone there will be no bus that goes through town that is not a hybrid with very low emissions”.
Delingpole: Net Zero Is the New Remain and It Will Destroy Boris’s Conservatives
Net Zero is going to destroy Boris Johnson’s administration in the way that Brexit destroyed David Cameron’s. None of Boris’s clever advisors and colleagues — not Dom Cummings, not Michael Gove — appears to have understood this yet. But others can see it coming a mile off.
…
But the most gloriously damning analysis of the Conservatives’ looming catastrophe comes from Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs who says ‘the political storm over green targets will be even bigger than Brexit.’
She’s dead right.
Here are some of the highlights from her scorcher of a piece:
Beyond the Red Wall are rumblings of a new revolt, utterly unanticipated by No 10 and overlooked by a liberal media still shell-shocked by the election. With its drive to “green” the economy at any cost, the Tory party has seemingly decided to celebrate its populist landslide by bogging down the country in zero-carbon paternalism. And so we career towards another People vs Establishment conflict that could be more explosive even than that sparked by the referendum.
and
It is becoming disturbingly apparent that the Government prizes green targets over “unleashing” Britain’s potential. The cast-iron case for a road-building revolution, for example, clangs a little too harshly against the hollowness of eco-politan sensibilities. Whitehall is genuinely convinced that Red Wall utopia is cycling to work from a rabbit hutch on the outskirts of Birmingham. They find the idea that people might actually aspire to drive to their downtown office from their semi-detached in Dudley, and at the weekends cruise, sunroof down, to the Bullring for shopping, completely ghastly.
…
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/06/delingpole-net-zero-new-remain-it-will-destroy-boris-conservatives/
What exactly does “Gandalf” have in mind for post Brexit Britain? Boris must surely understand the consequences of his hardline climate policy initiatives.
I love Lord of the Rings, and the superb 2001-3 movie adaption, but LOTR is a rose tinted pre-industrial magical fantasy, not an economic guide book. LOTR is blatantly anti-technology, the only groups in LOTR who truly embraces modernity are bad guys; evil Orcs, felling forests, despoiling the landscape, mass producing foul weapons with their gigantic, smoke belching factories.
In the real world, it was the pre-industrial age which was the real nightmare. Fossil fuel and technology has liberated the overwhelming majority from a miserable life of ceaseless toil and an early death.
There is a reason peasants flocked to the dirty, smoke filled cities during the industrial revolution; despite all the pollution and hardship, life was better in the cities than back on the farm.
Nobody in their right mind would want to return to a brutal low carbon pre-industrial existence, unless perhaps they were utterly convinced someone else would be doing all the hard work. Boris Johnson’s attack on reliable energy and his prioritisation of green targets over prosperity is a big step in the wrong direction.
What about Boris Johnson’s reference to a personal “translation”? I don’t know the nature of Johnson’s 2015 “translation”, but Fictional Gandalf’s mystical journey occurred after he defeated the Balrog, a demon of fire and darkness which lurked in the ruins of an underground city. The Balrog had originally been unleashed by miners who “delved too greedily and too deep.”.
Meh…..
Pretty soon the eco-warriors, and especially the faux ones, will run headfirst into the laws of physics.
Always considered Boris as a chancer and blithering idiot, no doubt he will see the light when public opinion eventually comes to the fore/
On climate and energy,
“BO – YOU DON’T KNOW DIDDLEY!”
https://youtu.be/VaSdlW1W9yU
You are actually fooled by his act? Dont be, he is a clever man.
I’d tend to put more trust in Max Hastings prediction that Boris’ Bertie Wooster impersonation refines to the point where it becomes the man. 🙂
Boris is indeed a very clever man – as indeed are many others of the UK ruling class. Think of David Cameron who Vernon Bogdanor said was the cleverest student he ever taught. You have to be very clever to get into Oxford University let alone leave with a first class honours degree.
That said I continually marvel at how such very clever people manage to mess up everything they touch when given the leavers of power !!
Correct Fatherup,
We voted conservative and got Boris Corbyn.
As far as his ” conversion” in 2015 goes, I would venture that is when he met his current concubine who is “with child” and is a staunch greenie, with sound left wing antecedents.
I disagree. I spent the fall of 2019 studying at a university in England. I am well into my sixties and have seen a few political cycyles.
There is a massively powerful CAGW groupthink in England. Any politician who wishes to be effective (ie, get into and stay in office and get some of his/her agenda done) must adapt to such powerful forces. Boris yields where he must. It will require time to sort out the minimal effect that CO2 seems to have on the Earth’s climate. Till then, in England, and in Europe more generally, the effective politician cannot fight the CAGW-meme. It is deep, irrational, and religious for the people of Europe….and they will not be argued out of it. Only time and failure of warming, or hopefully a long moderate cooling, like the 1945-75 period, will cool their ardor for a low carbon economy.
So much for BJ. Thank you for Brexit now GTFO.
Wait until Dec 31st before thanking anyone for anything !
I will be surprised if he is not gone by the end of next year. If he screws up on the virus he might not even make next year.
Boris wanted to build airport on Thames, build a green bridge in the City of London but failed, now he wants to build bridge across the Irish sea, and a tunnel underneath.
Gandalf is nothing compared to our Boris, he has nine lives, now only seven left since he got run over by a bulldozer at the Heathrow new runway, he also died in a ditch last autumn, seven lives more left.
Get ashed with Boris !
I’m beginning to think that Boris, who has a lot of dubious history, has something else that he doesn’t want to come out – and he’spaying the price. Added to that, he has a brother, father and wife to be who are mad Greenies. He hasn’t a chance. What he fails to see is that, at his level of command, his family come second.
[sigh]
Harry.
Well put.
We voted conservative and got Boris Corbyn.
Btw that reference to his Damascus moment in 2015, probably refers to the time he met his current concubine (who is with child).
She is a died in the wool greenie whose pedigree is a mother who was /is a bbc coresspondent and grandfather who was some sort of left wing politician.
Maybe BJ dreams to be the wearer of the Ring (of Power) ?
Gandalf Johnson needs to spend fourteen fortnights in a hobbit hole in Middle Africa. After grilling his veggie burgers over a dung fire and planting soybeans in the stony ground, he can conjure up a spell to ward off the locusts. He can then gaze into his crystal ball and view the UK after his zero-emissions future comes to fruition. He might then realize that even Africa is preferable.
Yes. As a long term and reliable conservative voter I will be joining all those that oppose the disastrous policy. I am fed up with politicians kow towing to the green Blob with its agenda to destroy our economic stability. This target of zero emissions, apart from being impossible is totally alien to basic conservative pragmatic principles. If I feel like that then heaven help the conservative party.
I would also have been a life-long Conservative voter, but I didn’t vote for them for many years due to their barking mad climate and energy policies. However, I made an exception in the last election so I could vote for Brexit and also for Boris.
Some years ago I read a piece by Boris in the Telegraph in which he expressed mildly climate sceptical views. He used his favourite word “doomsters” to describe the climate alarmists. Because of this I had some hopes that he might be more sceptical as PM. Of course, I have been bitterly disappointed by what has happened e.g. banning all sales of petrol and diesel cars in a few years. What utter, utter madness. Maybe he has been brainwashed by his girlfriend and family members.
Needless to say, I will never vote Conservative again unless there is a dramatic change. At bare minimum, they would have to promise to take Britain out of the Paris suicide pact. I’m not holding my breath….
Chris
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/17/delingpole-why-is-boris-johnson-allowing-eco-fascists-to-run-riot-in-britain/#comment-2919678
RE: “Bozzer’s new girlfriend is a green fanatic and he refuses to upset her friends.”
I heard that Boris Johnson’s main squeeze was a Greenie. Sounds like Bozzer’s “thinking with the small head again”- not a good move for any man and absolutely fatal for a Prime Minister.
That the fate of the nation rests on some wanker’s “wankee”!
The horror!
My cowboy Pop 1913-1985 lived on an Eastern Oregon Cattle ranch. He had:TB, Scarlet fever,
various broken bones,rickets and thanks to the scarlet fever a bad heart. He did live, (thanks in part to modern medicine and the fact that the was incredibly tough, he live 20 years longer than was predicted by his doc. This let’s be Hobbits! idiocy has got to be corralled. Preferably with Boris hog tied and branded. but that’s just me..
Sounds more like what Obi Wan said in the original Star Wars.
Gung,
Did you leave ‘k’ off the end of Obi Wan there?
That’s exactly what I was thinking, Master Din. Boris mixing his meataphors.
Boris has no chance against Greta Gollum.
😎
“I don’t know the nature of Johnson’s 2015 “translation”, but Fictional Gandalf’s mystical journey …”
Sometimes third generation revives delusions of a grandparent.
“Boris’s grandmother Irene Johnson (née Williams), known as ‘Granny Butter’, had always been the subject of derision in the family due to her grandiose claims of an aristocratic French background.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/boris-how-we-did-it_1.shtml
“Luke, I am your father!!”
This plays well to Trump’s push back to Bloomberg comparing himself to Obi-wan Kenobe fighting Darth Vader where Obi-wan tells Vader, “If you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
Trump’s response to Mini-Mike was epic:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1235633381595066373?s=20
I generally don’t like a lot of things Trump tweets, but Bloomberg more than deserved this from the President after he wasted $600Million on an ego-project that should have gone to charity.
Oh, I so agree with this comment. What a total a******.
No, it’s pre-Medieval. That’s the time period that the UN and XR want us to return to. Anything to get power – at any price.
Note: If we could get power at (nearly) no price, there would not be a problem and the likes of the UN and XR et al would disappear up their own fundaments.
As posted earlier ….(?)
Meh …. sooner or later the eco-warriors (and especially the faux-warriors) will meet the laws of physics….
Carrie Symonds believes in Global Warming, so does Dominic Cummings, and they seem to be the two people he listens to most. Boris didn’t used to, but he seems to have become convinced. Incidentally, March has started with 7 sunspot free days, following on from the sunspot free days at the end of February. Perhaps we have not yet reached the Solar Minimum and it is going to be even deeper than had been thought.
Thought Cummings was smarter than that.
I am taking it from his blog, where he very much seems to support GW.
Sad news.
Russia loves the West Europe’s fascination for reliance on the useless renewals and closing coal power stations, while Putin is humming Kalinka around the glittering halls of Kremlin.
Maybe my East European background makes me a bit biased, but it is widely known that DC spent number of years in Russia and the BJ’s frequent hobnobbing with supposedly anti-Putin London’s Russian billionaires is not exactly to my liking. There is also a little matter of a report yet to be published.
What Putin loves is that he has fulfilled his major strategic objection, the destruction of NATO, and he has the German economy by the short hairs. No wonder the Russians love him.
Boris has no beliefs of any kind with the exception of one in his ‘superior’ persona.
“Et eruditus sum inprobus
So I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do
About this awkward situation
That’s been forced down right upon me”
February had 28 spotless days, that makes it 35 since the last spot.
Agree no sign of an end to the current minimum, it is now longer than the last one
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/SSN-23-24-min.htm
I haven’t been paying attention. I had thought there was a bit of activity in med-February, but now I look it up, nothing since 01.02.20. The question for me is whether we are still on the downswing to the minimum, or has SC25 actually started, but it is very very quiet so far.
Hi Harry, this is interesting
Latest: SILSO data for today’s sunspot record:
2020 03 07 2020.182 0 (SSN=0)
but https://wattsupwiththat.com/solar/ for both the Continuum and Magnetogram (look at 1024 or 2048 resolutions) clearly shows a SC25 sunspot both by position (bottom left corner, high latitude) and the magnetic polarity for the Hemisphere.
You were right. Three sunspots today, and you know what that means? Do you? I don’t.
Both Bilbo and Frodo could be compared to the landed gentry. They owned property and had people who worked for them.
Other than having adventures, neither Biblo nor Frodo appeared to do anything like actual work in the book.
Not so, Bilbo worked very hard to avoid contact with the Sackville-Bagginses.
But yeah you’re right. No stated occupation at the beginning of The Hobbit. Of course he didn’t need to work after, with his modest share of the Smaug’s treasure.
U.K. Voters need to write to their mp early and often on the lack of evidence for a “climate emergency” and asking them to make this lack of evidence known to the Prime Minister along with a request that the “climate emergency” declaration is withdrawn. Continuing to pursue a non problem cannot possibly be productive or serve to “unleash the country’s potential”.
Alternatively, if the mp believes there is a genuine emergency, ask them for their top five pieces of evidence and ask if these can be shown to be wrong, are they then prepared to request that the “climate emergency” declaration should be withdrawn?
Good words, slow to follow. It is getting to that point for me. I dislike writing to my (Conservative) MP because, once started, I may always be doing it. As a new voter to Boris’ Party since 2015, it really is reaching the point where the best I can do next time is not vote. The other main parties are just as bat shit-crazy.
I voted for Cameron in 2015 only because he was caught off-camera saying “We need to get rid of this green shit”, or words to that effect. I am in despair that UK politicians almost all seem to think they have to kowtow to rabid greens for fear of them switching sides, when there appears to be a sizeable anti-green vote available for the taking.
Johnston needs to stand up to the Eco-Fascists and say, “Wormtongue, your leechcraft would leave me crawling on all fours like an animal”. But before that can happen a real Gandalf needs to cast out the Saramon that infects his soul.
As analogies go, the ‘wiz’ Boris Johnson is more akin to Saruman of Many Colors than Gandalf the Grey. Saruman’s arrogance, treachery, and grasping greed for more power were ultimately the causes of his long fall from grace and demise. Allying himself with the ‘dark forces’ promoting faux Climate Catastrophe and fictional CO2 pollution, Boris of Many Colors Of Deceit has betrayed the doughty folks that put him in power. May his political fall be swift….. and brutally complete.
This is an interesting comparison. I think Saruman in the story was trying to convince himself he was one of the good guys, he was probably telling the truth when he said he had accepted inevitable defeat, but hoped by becoming allies of the dark power he could moderate its violence. Of course, if the dark lord had won, he would have had no further use for Saruman.
‘Useful tools’ are discarded, when their usefulness to the puppet masters ends.
I think the vast majority of politicians are tools.
Useful?
Not too sure.
The NetZero has a potential to transform Britain into a colony of the USA.
Britain actually has a remarkable opportunity. Some of the best engineering talent in the world still resides in Britain, a lot of countries come to Britain when they need high tech precision machinery. Australia would happily lend out a bit of wasteland for Britain to help build a new spaceport, developing local space capability is a big deal here in Australia, but nobody has the money to do it. Britain also has substantial R&D skills in other areas.
But you need a booming economy and massive surplus cash to attempt to develop these advantages.
Its a shame Boris doesn’t seem to see it.
Might it change when these engineers spend 12 hours a day hunting and gathering?
Yup. Northamptonshire are still F1 Motorsport World Champions (Mercedes in Bracknell). The Force India team are also Northamptonshire, based at Silverstone itself. Red Bull team falls about 10 miles south, in Milton Keynes. Renault and Williams teams are over the border in, cough, Oxfordshire, but we don’t normally like to mention such places. Cosworth, historically the third most successful engine manufacturer is still based in Northampton itself. I walk past their engineers on the cycle path.
Boris appears to want all these engineering enterprises to go extinct. Every single one are probably in Conservative constituencies, so they stand to lose more, politically.
…and didn’t even know Mercedes make their F1 engines just up the road in Brixworth. God bless fossil fuels.
I think Boris is being sweet to his eco-nut family and lover. These are early times and he ‘will get the message’ if he doesn’t already have it. For most politicians, there are things that are too big to fail no matter how wrongheaded and destructive they are.
Trump and Farage showed that nothing bad is too big to fail if you have boldness and determination and ordinary people have latched on to this last chance to escape the dystopia planned for them. This inspired and increased support for upstarts in the EU who are already beginning to take back their lives and culture one election at a time.
A characteristic of these new bold leaders is they are hard to love. They can piss you off regularly and frustrate you to the limits. With possibly the exception of Farage, who would be a great friend to have, none have notable endearing qualities. Boris passes this test. He will put a stop to all this nonsense before too long.
Many who have abandoned Christianity have adopted Climate Change to satisfy their need for religion. As with most religious zealots, they won’t be satisfied until everyone is forced to bow to their god.
Tolkien despised technology considering it a form of “black magic”, machinery in all its forms, factories, power-stations, cars, roads:
“How I wish the ‘infernal combustion’ engine had never been invented”.
He refused to own a washing machine (no doubt sending his laundry out) and a television.
I had high hopes for Boris and Britain leading the developed world back to sanity, considering how he handled Brexit. I’m utterly astounded and disappointed now that he’s revealed his true colours. Those who voted for him based on his realistic and common sense that he displayed on becoming leader must be appalled and feel betrayed. Unfortunately with his majority, he’ll be untouchable for 4 years.
We got really lucky with Trump. He saved us and we can now tower over the world in prosperity and material comfort, as they impale themselves on the green pike.
No matter what,
as for my understanding,
if Boris the “Gandalf” fails to deliver in and as per consideration of the TV licensing, aka the the BBC tax on the British,
by completely scraping it and completely removing it, the guy will simply fail and show that he was good for nothing at all, from the start to the end of the day!
regardless of anything else or any other expectations.
If he can not deliver such as an easy thing under the circumstances, no much he can do else, “Gandalf” or not.
Simply a waste of time and effort in the consideration of such as failure, where and when the rest matters no much at all.
cheers
“TV licensing, aka the the BBC tax on the British, by completely scraping it”
He could scrape a little off the top. But scrapping it would be better. 🙂
Tolkien makes it clear in the preface to the Lord of the Rings that any attempt to read allegory in his books is a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of his writing. He said in one of his letters that he wrote the books and the universe purely for literary creativity (i.e., storytelling). It was never intended to mirror real world things to his readers.
Tolkien’s views do not apply to a politician trying to aggrandize himself with fallacious comparisons to the fictitious but righteous character Gandalf the Grey. Boris Johnson is more appropriately comparative to Saruman the Many Colored, in his treachery and duplicity. May his political fall be equally brutal and complete.
On the other hand he drew heavily on his WWI experiences and on teh march of industrialisation across early 20th century England.
Consider JK Rowling, of Harry Potter fame. Nothing could be more anti-socialist than her Hogwarts, which reeks of privilege and private education, but she herself purports to be as hard left as they come.
I wonder if self preservation and a quiet life causes those in the Arts to publicly espouse what they privately deny. I have a good friend in Equity – the actors Union. If anything is to get funded it has to have a ‘right on’ politically correct theme, and actors like Laurence Fox who have bravely come out against all this nonsense just don’t get work…Equity ensures that. It is now run not as a support for the arts professional but as a political activist organisation. It sees itself as Part of the Revolution.
“Equity”….. How doubly ironic!
Tolkien also drew on the rising Axis powers, describing orcs as “swarthy”, and sometimes slant-eyed, clearly meant to refer to the Japanese. And “Nazgul” = “Nazi”…
How is the word “Muggles” allowed in this age of political correctness? Surely it’s discriminatory to classify someone by their lack of magical ability.
As recorded here on April 24 last year, “Greta Thunberg: Britain has a mind-blowing ‘Historical Debt’ ”, scores of British MPs were so transfixed with Greta’s nonsense that Britain had special responsibility for the Industrial Revolution that within a short time they were happy to have the Mother of Parliaments déclaré a ‘climate emergency’.
Only the passage of time is likely to end this strange period in history which does deserve a new chapter in Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”.
I can only hope all this is lip service and can kicking.
Zero carbon is a headlong rush back to serfdom. But the greens make the mistake of thinking that they will be the Eloi while in reality they will join the ranks of the Morlocks. The Eloi will be the ones with the guns.
The real question here is simple:
‘Who TF are Civil Servants to decide how UK people ought to live, what they ought to aspire to etc etc?’
None of them have the balls to stand for election, all of them hide behind ‘Whitehall’ to promulgate their anti-democratic elitist views.
Civil Servants SERVE. They do not frame policy, nor do they decide what is best for us all.
A bit too difficult for Oxford 1sts to understand?
Perhaps they should have spent more time bonking and less time reciting Latin, Greek and other dead languages whilst being a denizen of Isis?
I don’t really know what to make of Boris, other than he seems to have more than his fair share of luck.
He achieved something that I thought might be impossible getting out of the EU with the determined opposition of both the EU and Westminster swamp dwellers. I think a large part of this was due to the general public, outside of those eating directly from the trough or with romantic notions of universal peace etc., saw through the facade and had enough of globalism.
Boris was in the right place at the right time and astute enough to take advantage of harnessing the simmering resentment.
There is still a lot of work to do and it would almost certainly be a mistake to try to tackle green stupidity at the same time. The general population of the UK don’t seem to have applied much thought to it, being fed a daily (hourly!) drip of propaganda pushing the ideas. Anyone voicing heretical thoughts is viciously torn down by the media. Now is not the time.
Get Brexit finished, play along with the green playbook, and in a very short time opinions will change as electricity becomes a very expensive and intermittent resource, as cars become essentially useless and horribly expensive both to buy and to run (that expensive electricity) and there are bans on charging at home because the infrastructure can’t take it (and people get fed up of tripping over the extension cables running out to the car parked on the street because you don’t have a garage).
England is a cold country. With houses being forced to abandon gas and depend upon electricity, the intermittent nature will become more than just an inconvenience.
This can happen within the next four or five years. Then there will be grass roots support for abandoning the entire idea. Sometimes, it’s easier to let people just hang themselves.
“Get Brexit finished, play along with the green playbook, and in a very short time opinions will change as electricity becomes a very expensive and intermittent resource, as cars become essentially useless and horribly expensive both to buy and to run (that expensive electricity) and there are bans on charging at home because the infrastructure can’t take it (and people get fed up of tripping over the extension cables running out to the car parked on the street because you don’t have a garage).”
Is that really a good plan? Allowing long-term damage just to say “I told you so”?
It may not be a good plan, but it is maybe the only workable one.
Take on the fight now and probably lose – and stand a good chance of losing Brexit with it.
Let people learn the hard way. The gas and coal will still be there, as will atomic energy.
Rather than fighting against it, let them push to accelerate it. The sooner people start to freeze to death in the dark the sooner things will change.
RE: “..play along with the green playbook…”
Not only “No!” but “Hell NO!” You don’t ‘play along’ with cancers, psychopaths, or ‘green’ fraud.
It’s the city (i.e London bankers and financiers) that are driving this lunacy. The keyword is “climate finance” and even the German head of the EU Ursula Von Der Leyen is throwing around a figure of 1 trillion and though the UK is no longer part of the EU the city has every intention of keeping their trotters in the climate trough. Who are the interests that fund the Tory party? Follow the money and you will find the motivation.
The Boris hybrid buses, besides being horrendously expensive, failed at their primary task of emission reduction. They did less mpg than a normal bus, i.e. burnt more diesel. Hybrids are ideal for commuting where the engine charges the batteries on long rural roads, and the batteries pay off in town. However London buses travel on congested roads most of the time and have to keep stopping at bus stops. As a result the engine struggles to keep the batteries topped up, and because of the efficiency losses in the system, ends up burning more diesel.
Someone, somewhere, provided a link to a detailed account of the changes that the UK would have to make to reach zero net emissions by 2050. Unfortunately I cannot remember which was the entry it came under, nor the actual name of the organization which did the Report.
I am certain it was not a government inspired piece saying everything would be all cake and jelly, but from a rather more truthful view, trying to give as accurate as possible scenario without gilding the lily.
Can anyone direct me to the link, please?