Essay by Eric Worrall
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s sabotage of cheaper gas, by immediately re-imposing the fracking ban upon assuming office, in my opinion demonstrates a callous indifference to the suffering of ordinary Britons.
Air fryer and slipper sales surge as UK strives to reduce energy use
Consumers move quickly to prepare for unaffordable energy bills despite mild autumn, finds market research
Sarah Butler @whatbutlersaw
Fri 28 Oct 2022 16.00 AEDTSales of air fryers, slow cookers, microwaves and electric blankets are soaring as households faced with unaffordable energy bills look for ways to reduce their power use.
Air fryers – a small countertop convection oven that uses less electricity than a conventional cooker – are in huge demand, with the number sold in September four times higher than in the same month last year, according to the market research firm GfK. So are electric cooking pots such as pressure cookers, rice cookers, slow cookers or multifunctional pots that can do all three things, with sales up 80%.
GfK said 216% more electric blankets were sold in September this year, as households searched for less expensive ways of staying warm and cooking food – the two most energy-intensive needs in a home.
Such is demand that some popular models of air fryer, such as the Ninja, have sold out. Asda said its sales of air fryers had increased 320% increase on year, while those of slow cookers had more than doubled and sales of heated airers increased by 90% up compared with last September.
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Citizens Advice has said its advisers have been told of people unplugging fridges and freezers, washing clothes by hand and skipping meals in order to cut back on their energy costs.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/28/air-fryer-and-slipper-sales-surge-as-uk-strives-to-reduce-energy-use
In the last leadership election a few weeks ago, which Liz Truss won, Rishi Sunak was favoured by members of parliament, but Liz Truss won the support of the British Conservative Party membership.
Angered by the Truss win, members of parliament rebelled against Truss, and Liz Truss’ attempts to soften the Conservative Party’s extreme green energy agenda by liberating the British energy market. Truss was forced to resign.
Conservative members of parliament then apparently decided not to give Conservative party supporters a second chance to vote against their chosen candidate, so they circumvented the procedural need for a membership vote by ensuring Rishi stood as the only candidate.
One of Rishi Sunak’s first acts as Prime Minister was to re-instate a long standing ban on fracking, which his predecessor Prime Minister Liz Truss had attempted to repeal.
I predict in the next election the British Conservatives will be wiped out at the ballot box if they continue showing such contempt for the concerns of ordinary people. Even though the other major parties currently offer more of the same, by the next election voters will be utterly desperate to signal their need for a change.
Unfortunately the next election doesn’t have to be held until the start of 2025. British voters will likely have to endure two more years of energy policy hell under Rishi Sunak, before they get the opportunity to deliver their verdict on the British Conservative government’s decade of gross mismanagement of energy policy.
It’s been a horror because they aren’t conservative.
I had some hopes for Boris but Carrie had him by the yargles so there went that hope.
I guess it remains true that people need to feel pain before they can learn.
I’m not really a fan of the Carrie theory, its a bit like the old fallacy that king is good but has an evil advisor. However if you think about it, who chose and decided to keep that evil advisor? Or who chose BoJo’s green fanatic squeeze? The buck stopped with Bojo, any actions taken when he was Prime Minister are his fault.
His fault or his success?
We haven’t seen you in a while. Have you found your Russia colluuuusion yet 😉
Before you answer whether BoJo’s policies succeeded or failed, you must ask what were the goals.
Stated goals are not likely the real goals.
I consider his last minute junking of the previously agreed “Pandemic Plan” in early 2020 indicates either someone who dithers for a living, or like The Moor of Venice had someone not wholly disposed to his mental health welfare whispering in his ear for quite some time ( one Neil Ferguson “…once we saw China do it we knew we could get away with “it” or words to that effect). Sure the buck stopped with him, but he had a subservient Cabinet despite what Sunak has tried to suggest – he was one of the doubters, certain bollux for sure. Johnson was very ignorant, and had no capacity to spot a succession of lies and distortions that came from various quarters, i.e. SAGE, and what better for an out and out politico to attach himself to the latest lazy bandwagon in the pursuit of ….votes ……from the brainwashed to the brainwashed?
I think it was close to ‘once we saw Italy got away with it we knew we could’ but not verbatim … 🙂
I agree the Carrie factor is just conspiracy nutjob stuff. Whilst she may have influenced Boris, she has no influence with the rest of the Cabinet and the rest of the MPs. A PM needs their support to get a policy implemented, he can’t go off on his own like a US president can to some extent.
That’s not really true. Blair managed a soft coup during his term, inverting the relationship between the cabinet office and the ministries. Design and implementation of legislation used to be ministerial duty, with some level of approval required from the cabinet office, but now most legislation originates with the pm and is handed down to ministers instead. Cameron further cemented this concentration of power into number 10 for his own ends, leaving us with much of the green morass that is still plaguing government policy today. Now, the pm effectively rules by diktat, especially with the number of enabling acts that have been passed in the last ten years.
Johnson has always been ruled by his namesake. With the concentration of parliamentary power in his hands, the idea that a manipulative wife could whisper in his ear and control government policy is not only plausible, but explains the multitude of abrupt changes Johnson displayed after entering office.
Where have I been? None of this was in “The Crown.”
The Prime Minister’s Office in Canada runs this way, too. Cabinet is now just a focus group for the PM, and for him to virtue signal by making diversity appointments as Ministers. Merit doesn’t matter anymore because it’s only Cabinet.
Eric,
there is also the influence of an old pal Zak Goldsmith and his father, both extreme greens. I know Boris used to be more scheptical but it’s difficult to fight friends and family, especially as he came to have the power.
Of course it is his responsibiliy but that doesn’t really help us.
He was always an upper class Eton educated member of the control class. The whole green agenda is about controlling the populace through this ridiculous scam. There are no honest people that get elected anymore in any of the countries that have been taken over by this globalist agenda.
I disagree respectfully. What babe would be near that hair? She popped in and he jumped for whatever she wanted incuding the green agenda, IMO.
“It’s been a horror because they aren’t conservative.”
Yes. What we had under BoJo was a toxic mix of red profligacy (which began before Covid but exploded during it courtesy of Sunak and his magic money tree) and green lunacy, with large dollops of indecisiveness and political ineptitude thrown in.
This will destroy the conservative party the members will walk and form another party Farage anyone
I have already told my MP she has lost my vote and why. I gave all the reasons why climate change is not an emergency and net zero is impossible but just got the standard answer from the script ALL politicians are reading from. There is no hope until someone who is brave enough to call it as it is and do something about it. I won’t hold my breath!
I love that the UK is promising NetZero when in reality even if the UK completely stopped producing any additional molecules of carbon dioxide it will have zero impact whatsoever on the global surface mean temperature according to any of the models. Of course the models are nonsense but the fact that all of this crap is being done and all of this pain is being inflicted to have no impact is just shockingly dumb lol
I’m reading all this, and it seems like all the recent British Prime Ministers have the Fetterman syndrome … I support fracking …I don’t, I don’t I …do support fracking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0wKPYQ5lGA
I think after all is said and done they will have to support fracking, kinda like Fetterman.
Here is Fetterman in the past – he never supported fracking:
We already have Reform UK, Reclaim, UKIP and the SDP as very minor parties. Is there really a gap in the market for another very minor party? The best that any of these parties can show in the opinion polls is 7% for Reform UK. That would give them precisely no seats in the House of Commons. Most ex-Conservative voters are ignoring these minnows and switching to Labour. That may be regrettable but it’s the reality.
This is very true, however there are only two (peaceful) ways of changing the political system. You either start voting for the minor parties to increase their presence in parliament or you displace the “elites” in the major parties via influx of conservative members. Which one is more likely to succeed is our choice to make.
I live in North Shropshire. Last by-election a Conservative majority of over 20,000 overturned. I can see it happening across the country. Pity all the other parties likely to win the next election are even more extreme eco-zealors. We have Blue Labour, Red Labour and Yellow Labour all vying to be the Greens.
Bil,
I have corresponded on this matter with our new Liberal Democrat M.P. for North Shropshire.
I laid out a fairly detailed critisism of our energy policy and the impossibility and extreme cost of trying for net zero with renewables.
The response was she wants to go faster for net zero with current policy.
Yellow Labour trying to be Green. I commend your ambition in trying to engage with her, at least you tried.
Done the same & got the same on Anglesey … although our MP does advocate new nuclear at Wylfa.
I love that they will say that as though it’s something to be proud of. These people have truly been manipulated by either some crazy level brainwashing or someone else is ensuring they have an opinion that supports the globalist agenda.
The UK produces no appreciable amount of carbon dioxide. There is nothing the UK could do to reduce the world production of carbon dioxide. Even if the UK completely stopped producing carbon dioxide it will have no impact on any models at all on anything. And if you went to use of all fossil fuels it would also have no impact on anything.
It is crazy to me to destroy people’s lives economically and make it so that people cannot live comfortably all just for show.
As long as cagw is being taught in schools and promoted in the media and supported by people in office as well as other prominent peoples, you have to expect a certain percentage of the population to BELIEVE. Many well educated people believe the claims about cagw. Many have said they are not scientists, so they just have to take the word from the so-called experts. The believe fossil fuels will destroy the planet, therefore justifying almost anything. The other article about Suzuki illustrates that mindset.
I’m a member an dtbe feeling in my branch is of a sense of relief that Sunak is in charge. Truss botched the launch of her risky policies and that destroyed her.
David,
Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt’s policies may suit the financial markets but they will lock us into more stagnation and very low growth for a long time, particularly given their energy (non) policy. Energy cost is the key to expansion or otherwise and it will take a huge effort to reverse all the bad policies of twenty years.
Who does the government represent, the finacial markets or the electorate?
The financial markets of course.
Sunak brought us to the situation we are in. How do you think more of the same is going to make things better?
What was risky?
Good question. Very good question. Excellent question. Not being Rishi Sunak, perhaps? Not exactly a policy, of course.
The west is being ruled by a combination of green madness, corporate greed and Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The Iron Law says that every bureaucracy ends up serving itself and not serving the purpose for which it was created. The UN, EU, WEF, WHO, and all the others, are no longer doing their job for the benefit of the people they are supposed to serve, but are instead hell-bent on increasing their authority and their taxpayer-paid incomes.
What really hurts is that the green madness of the psychopathic elites and the corporate greed of the big pharmaceuticals (coronavirus ‘vaccine’s) was supported by the corporate greed of big IT and big media and the almost total corruption of politics right across the western world. Without the Murdoch press and a few others who still have the guts to print sane opinions, we have been let down by both of the major systems – media and democratic government – that were set up to inform and to serve the public. It seems it is going to take a long time to remove enough politicians from the system so that good ones can come through, because the system itself has been captured by venal incompetents on both major sides in most countries.
What happened to Liz Truss is a case in point, where the ruling party and opposition are both controlled by people who have absolutely no understanding of how vitally important energy is to the modern community. When the Tory party rank and file managed, against all odds, to put in someone (Liz Truss) who understood that and would act to get the UK’s energy going again (fracking for gas), there was a storm of opposition from the jilted cabal in her own party – a cabal which thought that only they had the right to rule. They used a movement in the British pound’s value to create a storm and remove her.
Well, I have news for Mr Smarty-Pants Rishi Sunak: You may think you are a brilliant manager of money and will get the UK’s finances working smoothly, but you are in just as much self-delusion as the worst of the others. Without energy, the economy collapses, and when the economy collapses it doesn’t matter how well you manage the money, there won’t be enough money to be managed.
For all her many faults, Liz Truss did understand energy, and her approach could in time have succeeded, if only her party had supported her and had done their best to make her approach work. With the ignorant Rishi Sunak running things, it appears that the one thing that could rescue Britain – energy – will be denied them.
This ^
You write, “Angered by the Truss win, members of parliament rebelled against Truss ….”. There is the whole problem in nut-shell : Truss had the mandate from rank-and-file Tory members to re-commence fracking – and yet, when she set out to do so, her despicable backbenchers shamefully destroyed the orderly running of parliament, mocking the Speaker, yelling insults at their own prime minister, giggling in contempt of parliament.
In effect, the Tory government lost the plot – the House of Commons ceased to function. And The House still cannot function legally, I suggest. Only a new parliament can.
Because of that fact, King Charles now has legal reasons to dissolve parliament and demand fresh elections – he would have 85% of the population behind him, and be lauded as the most important English king in 400 years for saving the constitutional monarchy.
And it is not at all certain that Labour would get a majority in a new parliament. I rather suspect that candidates clearly coming out in favour of fracking would be elected – be they from the Conservatives, Labour or Liberals or from other parties. That is what the majority of the population wants : Energy is what’s important in Britain (as in the rest of the world).
One thing is certain : the recalcitrant Tory backbenchers who rebelled would not be re-elected!! And isn’t that what they deserve?
This is a complete misunderstanding of the UK Constitution, politics and society and of the current state of mind of the electorate.
We obviously have different opinions – it would be helpful if you would kindly point out to us exactly where and how I “misunderstand the UK constitution, politics and society” – and just how big a proportion of the British electorate would prefer fresh elections.
King Charles has no constitutional or legal power to call a general election unless asked to by his Prime Minister.
I believe you are wrong. If the House of Commons is no longer functioning, a constitutional monarch is obliged to call for fresh elections. That, in fact, is the specific reason for that type of democracy – which, of course, is not unique to Britain. This is to protect democracy.
No. The House of Commons is functioning (badly I grant you) and he has a Prime Minister with a majority in the House. He can only do as asked by his Prime Minister. It’s King Charles’s government. He accedes to the Government. We have a constitutional monarchy where the monarch only rubber stamps laws as directed by the government and passed by Parliament. The Monarch does not have Presidential powers. The Monarch are seriously constrained.
Correct. The King (or his representatives in those countries who have the King as Head of State) has no authority whatsoever to dissolve Parliament. If the government loses a vote of confidence–unlikely while it has a majority–, then it falls and the PM will ask the King to dissolve Parliament. The King may ask one of the other party leaders to try to form a government instead of acceding to the request, though. This happened once in Canada, the so-called “King-Byng” affair when the minority government lost a confidence vote. (King was the PM, Byng was the GG.)
dissolving parliamnet didn’t work out well for the other charles.
Truss fell because she was incompetent.
Truss and Kwarteng introduced a budget with many fundamental flaws.
1) It was billed as a True Tory Budget by the Daily Mail without being funded by North Sea Oil. Thatcherism doesn’t work without massive cash injections.
2) She sacbked the senior civil serany who advised herr that the budget could ot work. This showed she preferred ideology over caution. Not good for the market reaction.
3) She renamed thei sbudget as a “Fiscal event” so as the Office of Budgetary Responsibility disd bot publish their estimate of he costs of the budget. This showed she did not trust orthodox economics (as she sid) and te market does.
So the market crashed. Interest rates had to rise to prevent pension funds going bust. This put the pain on mortgage holders who suddenty found themselves $100s or £1,000s of pounds worse off each month because of Conservative ideology.
The only thing that the Conservative Party could do to restore any credibility was to sack the wally and replace her with one of the many people who said that her flagship policy could not work, Sunak.
Of course, the replacement (Sunak) has no mandate of any kind and so is fragile as a paper weathervane. It’s still not stable. The UK needs a General Election and Sunak needs to fight for his right to be PM.
Ah, the poor wee mortgage holders. What rate were they having to pay? If you really want to know about the pain of paying a mortgage go back to the 1970s and 1980s when interest rates on mortgages were frequently above 10 percent. Somehow I survived.
Rubbish; LDIs were the existential threat to DB pensions long before the Truss/Kwarteng budget. LDIs are a disaster in waiting and expect a huge surge in lawsuits against Trustees for breaching their fiduciary – legal – responsibilities to pension scheme members. Interest rates had to rise because of inflation NOT to avoid DB pension schemes going bust. Any investment “scheme” that has a fire sale of assets as a natural endgame, should monetary policy from the alleged independent BoE need to raise interest rates, is 100% inappropriate for DB schemes and very reminiscent of Lloyds, 2008 CDOs and Split Capital Investment Trusts debacles. Do not forget that the BoE printed money since 2008, Sunak demanded the same in 2021 – a world class disastrous failure and totally unnecessary. Unless No Mandate Sunak addresses low growth in the UK we are destined to experience austerity for a generation or more. Let no one forget this truly dangerous failure of a politician ensured UK debt soared and he did diddley squat to force the BoE to raise rates early enough – to combat the very inflation that many warned of and that slaughtered Gilt yields thereby increasing UK debt interest.
Inflation was ignored by Carney & Co – as well as Bailey more recently – for a decade or more; Carney lift shafted the markets by his egregious comments about policy measures “that might happen” to address inflation. He never ever did and he is for ever more the worst publicly appointed criminal as BoE Governor ever; he oversaw an eye waveringly massive transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers – I doubt it can ever be properly quantified.
And everyone told her that. But she sacked or silenced them and then did something stupid.
It’s her own fault. She honestly believed that growth comes from reduced investment and trickle down economics.
As opposed to printing money?
As opposed to redistributing money from those who will save it to those who will spend it and benefit most.
How do you know who will save it?
Those who don’t need to spend it will save more than those who can’t save.
Of course, some will go to investments but that investment would largely happen anyway.
Think, does an extra tenner a month really matter to someone on 20k a month? How much more does it matter to someone on just 800 a month.
Don’t you just love the way socialists actually believe they know how to spend other people’s money, better than those who actually earned it.
How do you know who won’t need it?
Dude you have clairvoyance into the inner minds of humanity. Well done!
Translation, take the money from those who earned it, and give it to people like me.
Like most socialists, you suffer from the delusion that money in the bank doesn’t benefit the economy, and the delusion that getting people to spend money they don’t have is the key to wealth.
For those of us who don’t live on the green and sceptered isle, could you please define all the acronyms? Thanks.
A defined benefit (DB) pension scheme is one where the amount you’re paid is based on how many years you’ve been a member of the employer’s scheme and the salary you’ve earned when you leave or retire.
A liability-driven investment, (LDI) is primarily slated toward gaining enough assets to cover all current and future liabilities. The general approach to liability-driven investment plans consists of minimizing and managing liability risk followed by generating asset returns.
You are wrong. Truss fell because her backbenchers destroyed the orderly procedure of business in the House of Commons. They openly mocked the Speaker, they yelled insults at their own Prime Minister, they giggled and carried on like recalcitrant children in complete contempt of Parliament.
On that day the House of Commons did not function – and consequently, on that day the Tory government did not exist. Truss was forced to resign. And I think it can be legally argued that only fresh elections can restore the legality of The House. This government is illegal. The Tories have usurped power without a mandate to govern.
No. She fell because she had lost the confidence of the Commons and was so no longer able to form a functioning government.
This happened when she lost the confidence of her own MPs, who collectively had a majority of 80+. At that point she could not continue to head a government. She therefore resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, whose confidence she had lost, and her remaining duty was to resign as Prime Minister once a new leader had been chosen…
And one other thing. The most important thing.
To advise the monarch who he should next invite to form a government. Which advice is always taken. And she advised him, correctly, to invite the leader of the largest party in the Commons, because he would certainly be able to form a government. That was Sunak.
Of course the government is not illegal. Of course it isn’t! This has happened many times before in the identical way. When Brown suceeded Blair, is one pertinent case. But also when Johnson succeeded May. Or when Churchill succeeded Chamberlain.
You need to read a little UK constitutional history. This all goes back to 1688, the system has been in place since then, and it works fine. Elections now are either when the term of a Parliament expires, or when the PM of the day advises the monarch to dissolve. Advice which is always taken.
The idea that there is something illegal about it is hare-brained.
The government is legal but unworkable. It has no mandate. The MPs have not stood on a manifesto that they are being asked to support. No-one endorsed Sunak as PM.
His position is so weak he is forced to placate all the wings of the Tory party and that is not possible.
Without a General Election he is too weak to govern.
This is a common misunderstanding. The present government has exactly the same mandate every other government has had since the eighteenth century.
That is, its MPs were elected in a general election in sufficient numbers to enable its leader to assure the Crown that he or she could form a government. And then, when invited to do that, was able to do it.
There is nothing special about a manifesto. Its no part of the British Constitution that a government can only implement what is in its election manifesto. Its elected to govern, its perfectly entitled, under the Constitution, to do things not in its manifesto or not to do things that were in it. Circumstances alter cases.
As for Sunak’s mandate, constitutionally he has the exact same mandate every Prime Minister has had since the early 18th century, since the first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole in fact. His mandate comes from being the leader of the party with a majority sufficient to permit him to form a government.
The British have never elected their Prime Minister. Not since the first holder of that office, who is generally agreed to have been Walpole, and not Walpole. They only elect their local Member of Parliament, and that may or may not result in a government composed of MPs of that party.
Sunak’s position is very strong. He has a majority of around 80 in the Commons, and he was appointed as party leader by a majority of the MPs of his party. That is all any Prime Minister ever has, and more than most have had. The critical thing for any UK Prime Minister is that he commands the support of his MPs, and for the moment at least there is no doubt Sunak does.
You have misunderstood the way Parliament works.
The PM can only govern with the support of the majority of MPs. On paper he has that – a huge 80 seat majority.
In practice he doesn’t have that. The MPs have not backed his policies. They have not represented him to their constituents. They have no commitment to his agenda.
Whenever Labour get a debate it can ask questions that separate the leader from the constituents and the party will collapse in chaos.
That just happened.
And it will happen again.
We shall see. There are a couple of years of this Parliament to go, and if you’re right there will be another leadership contest before the next election. Or at least a substantial defeat for the government mainly driven by dissent among its own MPs.
I am skeptical that will happen. But its not certain, I could be underestimating dissent. I think the issue its most likely to come to a head on, if it does, is Net Zero. Maybe the tax and spending proposals?
An early indicator on this last will be the coming financial statement. Its going to cut spending and increase taxes, so if you’re right, there may well be a revolt over that. I think they’ll buckle down and support. I think the main thing driving them will be fear, and the feeling they have had a near death experience with Truss, and that will drive support for Sunak. But it will be interesting to see. i could be wrong.
Re-reading your post, the acid test is a simple one, its the votes. You’re of course right to say the government and PM need the support of their party. The test for whether they and he have that is whether they can get measures through, or whether there are revolts of such magnitude that they lose key votes.
Or, I suppose, if the anticipation of such revolts leads to them abandoning legislation with the result being a sort of paralysis.
I don’t think there is much chance of this happening.
The other points you make don’t seem to me to bear on the situation. Labour can ask all the questions it wants, it always has. It has little or no effect in Parliament.
The MPs have not represented him to their constituents. No, but its irrelevant, they do not have to. The government and the PM, in the British system, don’t get their legitimacy from any such process. There is no such process in the Constitution.
People dislike the fact that Sunak has come to office and that the Conservatives are still in power without any prospect of an early general election. So they invent all kinds of reasons unknown to the Constitution why there is something wrong with the situation. There is not.
Are the Conservative MPs committed to the Sunak agenda? In practice, yes. Sunak and the government are going to have the support of the MPs in the only context that matters, the votes, and the reason is self interest – their main drive at the moment is to have a general election as late as possible. They have had a bad scare with Truss, and they will support Sunak even on legislation they are not totally happy with to avoid having an early election.
Anyway, that’s my view. We will find out together! If they lose a vote of confidence on a Conservative MP revolt, you will have been proved right. I think its vanishingly unlikely. Turkeys voting…!
‘This all goes back to 1688, the system has been in place since then, and it works fine.’
Sounds like it ‘works fine’ in the same sense as our Federal system works fine here in the US, i.e., a consistent decline towards collectivism.
No, that is not how the history has gone. The system has moved through a sort of oligarchy to universal franchise and representation. At the same time the complexion of the government of the day has varied from liberal to laissez faire capitalism to socialism and points between.
Immediately after WWII, for instance, it lapsed into doctrinaire socialism, and then backtracked under Thatcher. Then it moved to a sort of Euro style social democracy under Blair, and now…? Hard to characterize, a sort of centrist conservatism perhaps?
The characteristic is that its been flexible and able to accommodate to massive changes in the world and the country. To manage the acquisition and dissolution of a huge empire, two world wars, a depression, not to mention massive internal reforms. Its done pretty well. Its hard to think of any political system that has done better. Are there even any that have done as well?
Its success is also shown by how widely its been used as a model, and how well its lasted in countries that have adopted it.
This ^
WRONG! Truss’ policies were less ambitious and less radical than Thatcher’s. yet Maggie succeeded BIGLY. The UK desperately needs lower taxes, secure and low cost energy, and pro-growth deregulation, as well as completion of BREXIT. Instead under Sunak, the Will of The people will be betrayed, the idiot-class of bureaucrat empowered, and the future lost to once Great Britain. SACK THE LOT OF THESE BASTARDS.
Don’t forget that Sunak declared himself in favour of fracking while he was standing against Truss in the first election.
And there has been an “English king” for 315 years.
How did this happen? Truss would have been fine with some good handlers around her. Maybe you just need balls.
You don’t understand the British system. A PM has to have the confidence of her MPs to be able to govern. Boris lost this with his slapdash covid gatherings and other things. Truss lost it by a botched policy implementation. Most people in my local branch of the party are quite relieved Sunak is in charge now.
Stay warm.
Sunak is a WEF puppet (as are many of his cabinet), he’s not “in charge” of anything, he’s under instructions.
Yes, this is exactly right. You can only form a government if you have the confidence of the MPs who form the largest party in it. She had lost the confidence of the Conservative MPs, because of incompetence, and thus, they being the largest party, had lost the confidence of the House of Commons.
Hahahaha competence…she appeared to have great policies.
Recently sent to my friends at Britain’s GWPF:
Sunak’s move against fracking is puzzling – the great cull this winter of the elderly and poor in the UK (and Germany, etc.) seems inevitable, and Sunak’s recent actions will have no impact on that – it’s too late for fracking to help this winter. Is he waiting for the probable huge UK death cull to reverse his decision? That seems high risk, low reward. If Sunak really believes that fracking is wrong for Britain, then he is as stupid as Charles3.
I honestly believe most of them are waiting for the magic to happen. Most British MPs are legal background, most of them know nothing about technology, and most of them don’t know even the basics of the British economy.
Only a few MPs have a STEM degree, most are ignorant fools.
I think that it’s pretty ignorant to say that somebody is an ignorant fool unless he’s got a STEM degree.
We’re talking politicians, so it was a fair comment. Wanting to be a politician should automatically disbar you from being one.
H/t Billy Connolly.
Most MPs belong to anachronistic political parties which makes them ignorant fools in my eyes…
“Most MPs belong to anachronistic political parties which makes them ignorant & arrogant fools in my eyes
Quite so.
Would suggest most don’t even have a legal background. Many are PPE graduates never having had a real job other than as staffers and interns for politicians.
Thank you Eric for all your very good work.
My co-authors and I published almost every important fact on the Climate scam in 2002. I even warned Baroness Verma (British Undersecretary for Energy and Climate Change) in 2013, predicting the exact scenario that is unfolding now – see:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/17/open-thread-35/#comment-3603080
It was obvious even in 2002 that the Climate-and-Green-Energy campaign was a scam and the left’s technological “solutions” would lead to a catastrophic energy shortfall. The only difficult part was our correct prediction of natural solar-driven global cooling by ~2020, which started either in Feb2016 or Feb 2020 – I prefer the latter.
I fear the cold polar vortex will hit Western Europe hard this year – hope to be wrong.
IF the great cull of Europe’s elderly and poor happens this Winter as I predicted, there is criminal culpability on the part of the climate scammers, and prosecutions and imprisonment should result.
I’ve been saying for ~20 years that the Climate Scam has been promoted by “scoundrels and imbeciles” – the scoundrels knew they were lying; the imbeciles believed them.
I just yesterday updated my paper at CorrectPredictions.ca – it is now over a year old, and records how we accurately predicted the catastrophic outcomes of both the Climate and Covid scams – the latter I nailed 30+ months ago on 21Mar2020. In both cases I was ignored and the killing machine has been working overtime and there is much more carnage to come.
There is no satisfaction when you get it correct but are ignored and the deaths keep happening.
It is difficult to believe that this catastrophe was not part of the left’s Plan to destroy our civilization. There is a powerful logic that says, “No rational individual or group would be this utterly obtuse, this wrong, for this long”.
Best personal regards,
Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., Calgary
https://energy-experts-international.com/
“Most British MPs are legal background, most of them know nothing about technology…”
Out of 650 MP’s there’s only about 120 odd who have a legal background, that’s hardly “most”.
There are 100 odd MP’s that have a STEMM background and there are many who have also served in the military.
I pointed out to my MP (very cons) over 2 years ago that (a) energy bills would soar and be unaffordable (b) we would be heading for power cuts and (c) the Conservatives would lose their reputation for economic competence like when they left the ERM and be unelectable for a generation.
His answer was this was the only way to control GSAT! Twat.
I wrote to him a couple of months back to remind him of my warnings.
He replied “your views are noted”.
Labour will get a landslide and make things worse. I despair.
No, they have too much on the plate to deal with this as well. Only provoke fights when you are ready to win them. He is quite right, this is not the time to get engaged in another front.
It was gut wrenching to hear about Truss being pushed out and Robot Sunak getting in and promptly deciding to keep the ban on fracking for the life sustaining gas that everyone on the planet is clamoring for.
Callous and uncaring, apparently in the pocket of WEF and Big Green, cares damn-all for the average Briton.
The tone of The Guardian article is so matter-of-fact as if The Guardian had not been campaigning for over a decade to bring about the very situation that now confronts UK citizens, such modesty, the least they can do now is take some credit.
What do you even do at this point? I’m only vaguely familiar with the UK’s system of government. But this is going to actually kill people this winter with the already skyrocketing energy prices. What options do they have when the people in charge go completely off the deep end, as these absolute maroons have? At this point it’s hard to tell if it’s just blatant stupidity or they’re just flat out pure evil. They can’t be so ignorant to not understand that people will die because of this, is that what they want? I don’t want to believe it, but it’s difficult not to come to that conclusion. I hate to say and think that, but it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to see it any other way. Completely blows my noodle.
The only thing people can do at this point is look out for their neighbours and friends. Brits are good at that, hopefully that will keep down the death rate. Heating a home with guests visiting costs half as much as everyone staying home and paying for heating two homes.
The energy will not be available at any price So the rich to hog it bugger the plebs
I hate to say and think that, but it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to see it any other way.
__________________________________
Yep, that’s what the “Duck Test” says. One of the posters here at WUWT said no one can be that stupid for this long. It has to be by design. Or words to that effect. The “Snake Oil” sales pitch has worked. It’s a question of how much time will it take for people to admit they’ve been duped. So far it’s over 40 years.
Some Quotes:
“No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.” ~ Winston Churchill
Being a visionary is one thing. Being an ignorant and dangerous ideologue is something else entirely.
“Shutting down the whole economy is the only way of limiting global warming to 2°C” Yvo de Boer head of the UNFCCC
Fracking would not have made any difference to this winter. What they have done is subsidize gas and electricity short term. Long term they don’t know what to do, and that’s because its very tough. With or without fracking.
To subsidize the CONSUMPTION of gas and electricity just makes it even more certain that the predicted shortage of gas and electricity this winter will have a bigger impact. It should be the PRODUCTION of oil, gas, and coal that gets encouraged or “subsidized”. A shortage of gas will initially shut down industry, then impact electricity generation to maintain pressure in the domestic gas supply. Once the electricity supply is cut, most homes will lose their main heating (gas central heating) until the electricity is restored. However, with scheduled rolling blackouts likely to be of 3 hours, it is likely that heating will be turned up both before and after the blackout – operating less efficiently, using more gas, extending blackouts. How many magic money trees do we still have – we seem to be burning through an awful lot of them lately.
Yes, I agree. The timescales are different, though. No government could have avoided the subsidies this winter. But they really do need to take on the green lobby on fracking. I can understand why not to do it right now, but its essential to get to it in about six months.
What could they do?
The could stop backing the war in Ukraine they instigated, force negotiations, lift the oil/gas sanctions on Russia, open what is left functioning of the pipeline NATO tried to destroy. But that would take politicians who care about their own citizens.
50 rubles have been deposited in your account, comrade.
Or maybe those rubles made there way into your account 🤔
Britain instigated the war in the Ukraine????
Putin sending 10’s of thousands of troops across the border had nothing to do with it?
Oh dear, both post and comments so far are completely misguided.
In terms of Charles and the Constitution, no, Charles cannot unilaterally call a general election. That is a former Crown prerogative which, since 1688, has been exercised by the Prime Minister of the day. He or she advises the monarch that dissolution is in order. The advice is invariably taken. The monarch starts trying to dissolve Parliament on his own, and there’s a genuine Grade A constitutional crisis which probably ends the monarchy.
There is a reason why the UK Parliament goes through that parade of Black Rock knocking and being denied entry. Its to mark and exhibit for the country the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown. During the controversy over the Johnson attempted prorogation, the question was not whether the Crown could prorogue. It was whether Johnson could so advise. If he advised, the advice would have had to be followed.
The current energy situation in the UK is mainly down to the Climate Change Act of 2008. It was the brainchild of Ed Miliband, introduced by a Labour government, but was passed almost unanimously in the Commons.
There is no-one to vote for in the UK who is not fully sold on Net Zero. That’s just the way it is.
All the evidence at the moment, and there have been lots of polls, suggest Labour would be returned with a landslide majority. Polls a couple of weeks ago indicated that the Conservatives would hold under 50 seats (compared with 357 today, out of a total of 650).
You think this would change the political class’ approach to fracking, you are dreaming. Starmer, the Labour Party leader, committed recently to taking all power generation in the UK to wind and solar by 2030. The insanity is uniform across both parties and the entire political class.
The account of the fall of Truss is also completely wrong. She and Kwarteng embarked on a fiscal policy of big tax cuts and greatly increased spending at a point where debt is a high percentage of GDP. And announced it before having put together any account of how to finance it.
The consequence of this was an immediate fall in the price of government bonds, so called ‘gilts’. Because of the way the UK pensions industry has implemented investment policies, this led to margin calls, which they then were meeting by selling more gilts. If this had been allowed to continue, a substantial chunk of the UK pensions industry would have gone bust in days. The BoE intervened, and more or less rescued the situation. But the problem was, Truss and Kwarteng did not consult before doing it, and did not seem to have thought about what the consequences might be in the markets.
It gets worse. Mortgages in the UK are tied to the rate on gilts. Because rates have been so low for years this has led to a housing bubble, which is mainly driven by the monthly repayment levels. When gilts fell and rates rose, mortgages fell through on pending transactions. Then, there is worse still. Most mortgages are short term, less than five years. They renew at the prevailing rate. So huge numbers of them were going to renew with doubling of the monthly payment. This was about to produce a huge housing price crash, with follow-on systemic effects.
The commercial property sector was in a similar state. Again, Truss and Kwarteng had not done any analysis or consultation so were totally taken by surprise.
Bottom line, they had taken the country to the brink of a systemic financial crisis which threatened the collapse not just of property sector and pensions but also of lots of the finance sector.
This is why she had to go. Replacing Kwarteng was the minimum the market required. But faced with this sort of incomptence, the Conservative Party knew if they persisted with her there would be a wipeout at the next election two years from now. One that would probably eliminate them as a political force. So they acted.
They also knew that the country and the markets would not stand for another protracted multi-month election campaign. So they adopted the tactic of requiring 100 MP votes to qualify for going to the membership.
Two got that number, Johnson and Sunak. At least, we are told Johnson did. We do not know that for sure. Johnson then pulled out on the very rational grounds that he did not have enough support among MPs. The thing the Truss episode shows is that you cannot be a viable Prime Minister without whole-hearted support from your MPs. No matter how much the membership likes you. There was no point having another PM who was detested and held in contempt by half his party. or more.
Whatever, this has nothing to do with fracking, and the next election will not either. Sunak probably simply decided this was one fight too many at this point, and he was probably right with the press and BBC so fully behind the activists on this one. He may return to it in a year or so. Fracking would anyway have made no difference to this winter.
He is moving very cautiously, and its reasonable. There is a genuine cost of living crisis, there are probably going to be blackouts, energy prices, though coming down, are still high, and the subsidies announced are not affordable long term. Meanwhile migrants are pouring across the Channel. The unions are holding concerted and politicized strike actions. And there is a real crisis in government finances.
The last thing he needed was to paint a target on his back with fracking.
Michel, your post shows that you understand the political situation in Britain. I think that the new prime minister wants to gradually relegate climate change policies to the back burner but he has to tread carefully. One sign of his approach is his decision to avoid attending COP27.
Michel’s post shows understanding of British politics, but no understanding of energy or of the relationship between energy and the economy. As I said in an earlier comment: Without energy, the economy collapses, and when the economy collapses it doesn’t matter how well you manage the money, there won’t be enough money to be managed.
I think that is the better description. The only adjustment I would make is to point out that there is an underlying systemic financial problem that was about to come to a head anyway and Truss risked bringing the crisis slightly forward. It is going to happen soon anyway and will be global.
Nice summary Michel. There has been an energy policy failure for 20 years largely due to withdrawal from the nuclear market as the greens hate this form of energy. Fracking in our circumstances-a much more crowded country than the US-may or may not work, but would certainly not help this winter or likely next.
We get none of our power from Russia and am currently supplying gas to the continent via interconnectors. If the winter is normal then, as for the last 5 years, we will get through without power cuts. As with the last 5 years if it is a prolonged cold winter then there may be cuts. so the weather is supercritical. What we don’t need are prolonged periods of cold, calm, cloudy weather as that will lessen the now considerable input from wind and solar and unfortunately we do not have fossil fuel back up if (when) they fail.
Obviously many people will be affected but the picture being painted is overly gloomy. Our cafes locally are still very busy, the roads are busy I tried to book a hotel but it was full. Govt has provided considerable financial help on fuel prices and the big crunch is likely to come next April when that is theoretically withdrawn.
As for our new PM his green credentials are as yet unknown. He isnt going to Cop and persuaded the King not to go.
Fortunately we are way ahead of Europe with LNG capable ports so we can top up with gas from US fracking if the supply is available.
Thus far it is mainly over-borrowed zombie businesses that are closing down. Prices have gone up but many have no mortgages and will be little affected. Those with savings will have an increased income from higher interest rates.
The 1970s were similar.
Stephen
Most people have no mortgage and most people are savers not borrowers. As you say it’s mostly the over borrowed zombie businesses closing who existed because of absurdly low interest rates. Just got back from Exeter and everywhere is very busy and got the last table in the restaurant. Trains very busy. all is not doom and gloom although some will suffer especially those on large mortgages and big houses bought with cheap money. the poorer off obviously need assistance
The Leader of the Chinese Communest Party said some wise words.
“We will continue using Fossell Fuel until we have a reliable alternative.”.
Unlike the “Western” countries who madly build renewables without then seeing if they work, before decreasing the use of Fossell Fuel.
The political situation in the UK favours big parties, so any new party who may truly reflect the feelings of the population simply does not stand a chance.
Here in Australia we have Proportion Represation system in our elections.
There is critism of such a system, but it does, especially in the Upper House, the Senate, give small parties a say.
Only when there is enough World pressure to change how the IPCC is run, with its fiddling of Facts, for the so called summery, & politicians stop accepting it as facts, will we finally start to expose Climate Change as the giant Hoex that it truly is.
Michael VK5ELL
Gordon Brown’s pension bomb is ticking
You’re referring to his decision to abolish the tax free status of dividends paid to pension funds?
Yes, that was the root of the disaster, it was a tax on pensions which led to underfunding which in turn led to the LDI fiasco… When you take half the pension funds in the country into a long term underfunding situation it doesn’t bite at once. But eventually the bill comes due.
The precipitating factor in this case was the fall in gilts, which has been going on for a year, and took a sharp dive with Truss’ so called mini-budget. But the root of the disaster was Brown’s measure. Without that they probably would have gotten by.
It was stupid. A much better way was to increase corporation tax. More transparent, and the effects show up immediately in the income statement. Underfunded pension liabilities are much harder to quantify and assess, and don’t get the same attention. Wrongly, but they don’t.
Then you have people who want to get rid of savings so that they can increase spending.
So, in a nutshell:
There’s been a financial crisis unfolding for decades and nobody thought that reliable & inexpensive energy (e.g for use by manufacturing) might have been a solution.
In fact, they thought the exact opposite
Pray tell: what did China do?
Excellent point.
The one thing I would add is that the trigger for Truss to go was an Opposition debate on banning fracking.
This looks like it should have gone through on the nod as the Conservative manifesto said they would ban fracking. But there’s a twist.
The clever point being that, if this opposition debate won, the Labour Party would then get the power to set the order of debates in the House of Commons as the Governing Party (Conservative) could not be decisive.
So Truss made it a matter of confidence.
‘Vote as I say or we have a General Election’. Which the polls all indicate that Labour would win and most Tory MPs would lose their jobs.
Thus, Truss having ordered her MPs to vote against their manifesto (and constituents’ wishes) to support fracking then had a lot of abstentions. Her Chief Whips (officers responsible for party discipline) resigned with swearing that was herad and well-reported. Senior memebrs of the Cabinet were witnessed intimidating their own MPs to vote in the way that the Governemtn needed. Chaos. And Suella Braverman resigned as well as Home Secretary. And a PM PR guy got sacked for briefing against an ex-Chancellor (also a Tory). And PMQs was a thumping win for Starmer (Labour leader) against the abject Truss as usual.
Basically, that Wednesday the Labour Party completely out-classed the Conservatives in every way. And it was obvious even to people who don’t follow politics.
She was beaten by the Opposition and her own stupidity. It wasn’t her own MPs who brought her down.
Well, her own MPs recognised the inevitable, and made it clear to her. Yes, the final straw was the chaos in the Commons that evening, you’re right.
What the Conservative 2019 Manifesto actually said about fracking was:
“We placed a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect. Having listened to local communities, we have ruled out changes to the planning system. We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”
The Labour motion was for a ban set in law, even more stupid than the moratorium but not the same thing.
The 2019 election was in any event a single-issue election. Anyone, inside or outside of the Conservative Party, who interprets the result as supporting anything else in the manifesto is living in cloud-cuckoo land.
The point being it forced Tory MPs to choose between their leader or their constituents. Labour split the Tories apart. And thus tipped the failed PM out of power.
I agree almost 100 percent with that analysis. However, if Sunak never intended to remove the ban on fracking then he should not have promised to do so.
He’s a politician…
“There is no-one to vote for in the UK who is not fully sold on Net Zero. That’s just the way it is.”
That’s the problem. The whole lot of them are delusional.
“ The account of the fall of Truss is also completely wrong. She and Kwarteng embarked on a fiscal policy of big tax cuts and greatly increased spending at a point where debt is a high percentage of GDP. And announced it before having put together any account of how to finance it.”
Hahaha…how to finance it. Thank you for the laugh.
We have a problem in the UK with no party offering an alternative to Net Zero. So no end in sight.
I have gone back to basics, I grew up without electricity or any mains service, so I’ve a good stock of thermal vests and longjohns, warm shirts and woolen jumpers. But also a camping gas stove and lightwith spare gas cartridges. I’m also prepared to go as far as retained heat cooking. I have hot water bottles rather than an electric blanket, when there’s no electricity everything stops working.
I don’t have to rely on electricity to survive, but who I vote for to get out of this situation is the big unanswered question at the moment.
Griff will be one of the first find out what living a low carbon lifestyle is like if there’s any justice, and can report his findings here when his power comes back on
Hopefully, Griff freezes.
Hopefully not
And anyway how can we have cold weather when it’s the hottest year evaaaaah?
Along with every other idiot who supports Nut Zero mass stupidity. Especially those who hold political power.
Farage has consistently supported energy sanity, hopefully Britain will finally give him a go. Its either that or more of the same IMO.
Eric
Farage isn’t even an MP despite standing several times. He might organise a new political party though and have some influence
Either people rally to him or its same old same old. I was privileged to have a one on one chat with him for 20 minutes a long time ago, he’s the only senior politician I’ve ever met who passes the pub test.
One of the issues is people vote along party lines instead of voting for the person who aligns mostly with the voters views
This plays into the hands of every governments desire to control the populace
the British Conservatives will be wiped out at the ballot box if they continue showing such contempt for the concerns of ordinary people.
One of the myths of being a government is that you need to listen to the wishes of the ordinary people. Not completely true. You need to listen to the people who vote for you.
Your supporters need to be rewarded. They vote for you. Votes keeps you in the gravy.
The people who don’t support you need to be at best teased and convinced that your way is actually pretty cool and that that maybe switching your vote next election is a good idea. At worse you openly mock them (and when I say ‘worse’, yes, this is a bad idea) and in practical terms you should nod and smile a lot before not bending a knee to them.
This is actually important. You cannot please everyone. So don’t try. Please your core. Grow your core by making them look both successful and welcoming.
Try to bring in new people but NEVER do so at the expense of your core. Do NOT sell out your core principles. Remember, you can’t please everyone so whatever you do, don’t try and please people who already hate you.
Example – let us say you are part of Netball Australia and your core supporter is offering you $15m dollars. Do you say thanks or try and take the moral… Too Soon??
Okay – let us say you are Football. You look over at the rugby crowds and think you would like a bit of that market. So you change your round ball into a ‘squashed’ rugby ball cause that will bring the rugby fans to your game.
NO. Rugby fans will be bemused and Football fans will hate you for ruining the game.
So, what is worse for the Conservative Party in this context? They have overruled the party members. They are not going to forget this. The ordinary public might vote, but the party members do all the leg work.
This led to the DelCon movement in Australia after Turnbull decided the world wasn’t revolving around him enough. The claim was Turnbull would move the party to the centre and pick up more votes and the ‘right’ could just deal with it as they had nowhere to go. They were Deluded Conservatives.
So the DelCons just decided that someone else could do all that election campaigning and that protest voting was completely valid. Turnbull’s massive inherited lead got gutted.
Don’t piss off your core.
This situation has persuaded me to rush through a home solar plus battery installation. Many are doing the same with the sector now overloaded.
If the current stupid energy policy continues the next step will be to upgrade to a system with off grid potential but the demand for suitable batteries will be overwhelming.
If you try to run a solar system in Britain in winter you’re in for a learning experience. One thing Britain does not have in winter is lots of sunlight.
We don’t have a lot of sunshine the rest of the year either
Go nuclear lad or burn more fossil fuels or both.
Batteries and unreliable sources of energy are a waste of money.
Nuclear might be a bit extreme for Stephen’s castle, but I suppose it depends on how big it is. Rolls Royce are looking for sites for their 470MW SMR 🙂
The potentially 13GW of UK Solar managed just under 3GW peak today, and might make 15GWh if we’re lucky. 1.2GW rated Sizewell B nuclear plant produced… well, difficult to know exactly, but at noon it was producing 1.2GW, and most probably will finish the day at 24*1.2 = 28.8GWh! So just that one plant will likely produce nearly twice the energy of the whole solar fleet today. I wonder which was better value?
We were going to build several of those reactors – I think it was John Major (Con) who killed them off. Fun fact – the UK has closed more reactors than Germany.
That is a sad fun fact 🙁
While micro-wind (the type used on boats) is probably more suited to the UK, using solar to charge a battery system is more responsible than letting other consumers pay the costs on generation of a grid-tie when your solar is producing. You simply fail to get the main reliability benefit if it is not capable of off-grid operation. As others have stated, we are really too close to the pole to get much energy from sunlight in winter, but every little helps, and if you are are able to keep your lights on from your solar (batteries) rather than drawing power from the grid, that is good for your neighbours who are relying on the increasingly fragile grid system. The other rush is to install solid fuel stoves, even though solid fuel has increased in price, the ability to have a stockpile of fuel for winter is a massive comfort.
Sunak’s reinstatement of the ‘ban’ is a token gesture that makes little difference to the situation that resulted from the vote in parliament a couple of weeks ago. Truss’s last stand, and pretty much her final downfall, was forcing her members, with a 3-line whip, to defeat a Labour motion to ban fracking. It was, however, only defeated when the government included an amendment to its own position whereby local people would have a say on whether fracking would be allowed. Due to fear-mongering across the board, the chances of local people agreeing to it were practically nil, so it was, to all intents and purposes, already banned.
To proclaim that this shows contempt to the British people, the majority of whom now believe, due to the efforts of the press and politicians, that fracking is A Bad Thing, makes me think you can’t find anything useful to say Eric.
One “outside the box” suggestion I saw (sorry, forgot where) was to offer residents in the vicinity of the fracking site, free energy for the life of the frack well.
May need some tickling, but sounds interesting.
Risky is a banker…
“by ensuring Rishi stood as the only candidate”
I’d love to know what Eric thinks they offered Penny Mordaunt to persuade her to withdraw. She was fizzing mad to be given her old job back as Leader of the House of Commons.
Who knows? Probably told her not to.
In case anyone is looking at a cold winter, B&M do single sized fleece blankets at £5 for 2 and Home Bargains do larger ones at £10 for a double pack. They are thin but cheap and layers are good.
The irony being that “fleece” blankets, unless different in the UK, are made from polyester, i.e., fossil fuel derived.
It is very clear, they do not want to offend Tory party sponsors. Prim minister Sunaks employment hstory has Sir Chris Hohn in it. Hohn founded The Children’s Investment Fund, a London-based hedge fund, in 2003.
Hohn according to the Guardian
<blockquote>
“Instead, he has pumped money into Extinction Rebellion (XR), the ‘respectful disruption’ campaign that has staged high-profile sit-in protests around the world. When Hohn was revealed as XR’s single biggest donor, he said: ‘Humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact.’”
</blockquote>
It sounds like: “Let them strike matches !”
Sadly this has been Conservative Party polocy for many years going back to David Cameron’s time
Remember Cameron’s hug-a-husky photo op….
Poor article.
Truss wasn’t fired because of her willingness to frack. She was fired because she both cut taxes and tried to increase public spending at the same time and this spooked the markets. She then lost the confidence of her party.
Also Truss wasn’t in favour of fracking. She insisted it needed local approval, which it is never going to get. She could have pushed it forward based on national interest outweighs local interest, but she chose not to.
Inventing a green agenda for her outing and Sunak appointment is conspiracy theory territory.
I’m a member of the Conservative party and the story you present is not factually correct. Truss, who I voted for, unfortunately lost the confidence of her MPs because of an overly reckless fiscal policy which was implemented incredibly poorly. I can only speak for my branch, but from a position of supporting her about 60-40, they know support Sunak by a similar margin.
In addition you surely know that licensing fracking now will make no difference to the gas supply this winter. I suspect Sunak doesn’t want his core policies derailed by endless dabate and protests from the usual anti fracking idiots.
Reckless 😉
We are still waiting for new nuclear capacity because successive governments preferred to put off making decisions. More delay on fracking and it won’t make any difference to next winter, either. It’s also worth noting that gas spot price is way down from the peak, maybe things won’t be as bad this winter as they were looking only a month or two ago; if that’s the case it’ll be more down to luck than any judgement shown by our politicians.
Well, that’s one version of events.
What makes this even more odd is that Fracking is going on in the UK, the cute Greenies at the Eden project frack but because they frack to get to thermal energy and not Gas or Oil its ok. Even then they caused earthquakes too, waited a few months and carried on.
I am sure that reinstating the ban was a condition of his getting the office, not that fracking would help this winter. I doubt he will last because the crisis is intractable at this point. I would like to see Labour get in and fail even bigger.
It will take a while for sensible policies to emerge and we are just beginning. What is entrenched is bad policy across the parties. A big ship to turn around.
Sadly I think you are right. I used to think once the pain arrived people would quickly come to their senses, then Chavez won power in Venezuela.
“I would like to see Labour get in and fail even bigger.”
I’m guessing you won’t be suffering that.
Thanks for the sentiment, though
The fracking arguments in the UK are of no import when it comes to adequate fuel supply. The available quantities are insignificant. It’s a denier/ alarmist polemic.The fracking issue did not bring Truss down. Like the rest of the world, the general financial and political climate is unpredictable as well as being very difficult to control.Up to now there have been no serious problems keeping the lights and the heating on in theUK. Should that change, then the green rhetoric will not be so convincing.All governments will be praying for adequate fuel supplies and a mild winter this year. If that happens then they might be able to kick the can down the road…_
“Up to now there have been no serious problems keeping the lights and the heating on in theUK..”
Am I correct in understanding that you are dismissing the 20-30,000 excess winter deaths in the UK as immaterial? Seems a crime against the elderly to me.
I didn’t make any comment regards excess winter deaths. I didn’t comment on how many times the 28 bus is cancelled either, do you think I should I have done?
I was pointing out that in the U.K. there have been no serious problems, to date, in supplying gas and electricity. Which is true.
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Affordability of such supplies is another issue, and is not raised in the above article.
I stand by my post…_
I like it how the fatest fat cat politicians tell ordinary peasants that they can survive if they give them more power and more money and do all they tell them to do.
dont think it will take to 2025 as the poms are known to get out and protest/riot when govts are idiots..poll tax etc
smart to buy the new pressure cookers and airfryers anyway
my power use bill dropped 50 a quarter from stopping stovetop cook daily to pressure cooker use for doggy dins cooker cost me 50$ so paid for itself in 3mths;-) airfryers are excellent options @1kw compared to 3k for home ovens as well. and HWB or wheat/rice bags are also useful the rice/wheat dont stay as hot for the same time but easier to reheat in m wave and dont cost water either
Here, inside the M25, I have a Hot Water Bottle. A long one, perhaps two feet [60 cm] long. I filled it a couple of weeks ago, with water at room temperature. It has a warm [woolly?] cover, so I warm it at first, but it helps keep me warm later. Only my energy involved – I don’t empty/refill it.
And as Andy H, above, notes, layers are a great comfort.
Auto
Same in Oz although we mostly don’t have the extreme winters-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/chris-bowen-is-the-most-dangerous-man-in-government/ar-AA13zsXb
There’s been a rush on rooftop solar by those owning homes with the readies as a result. Guess where that leaves high interest rate first home buyers and struggletown?
I was having a new roof on the house so incorporated in-roof solar panels, the trays the panels sit in offset the cost of roofing slates. My energy bills this month are 25% less than in July. The problem is getting batteries, they are a rare as rocking house sh!t.
And in further news,UK battery firm Britishvolt near collapse as seeks funding
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63457813
“ministers withdrew the funding after learning it would be used for day-to-day operations.”
They were having a giraffe.
Britishvolt seems to have been in trouble since it started. Originally meant to open late 2023 it has twice put that date back and is now talking about late 2025. The only two car manufactures it has memorandums of understanding are Lotus and Aston Martin and they are niche,luxury, car manufacturers who do not sell in the quantities a battery gigafactory needs. Looks like Britishvolt is on the ropes and the count has reached 8.5
Not just Britvolt. BMW are moving production of the electric Mini as it’s too expensive to manufacture in Britain. You can’t make it up.
Everything falls into perspective when you understand that Monty Python’s Flying Circus was reality TV, not sketch comedy.
All that yelling and shouting in parliament is evidently just a show. In fact what they are doing to their own people is callous and dastardly. That is displayed by how Truss was treated when she was attempting to save British lives and income.
Britain has no real Conservative party. Banning fracking shows this guy is a complete captive of the far left greens. Sad that the British really don’t have a choice except Left and further Left.
“Angered by the Truss win, members of parliament rebelled against Truss, and Liz Truss’ attempts to soften the Conservative Party’s extreme green energy agenda by liberating the British energy market. Truss was forced to resign.”
This is such an odd take on the last few weeks.
You don’t think that the tanking of the Tories in the polls might have had something to do with the party deciding Truss was not the safest person to be in charge?
Sunak and his merry mob were plotting the overthrow of Truss even before she got into No.10. Yes, she made some mistakes, but her policies were sound, other than the 2-year subsidy for domestic energy bills. MP’s wanted Sunak, and they will suffer at the next election as a result.
the Hi Risk Anus (anag. 5, 5) Has been plotting for longer than that. Apparently he registered the domain “Ready for Rishi” over 9 months ago.
The plot consisted of letting Truss run the country, and waiting until she’d destroyed it and the party.
Maybe there will be a new Prime Minister next month?
Sunak is a weak leader with an ego greater than his ability. During his leadership campaign, he said he would lift the fracking ban, but he’s not gone back on that promise. He said he would not go to COP27, but he now says he may, because Johnson is going. This is not the actions of a strong leader, but a weak narcissist that puts his own need for power beyond the needs of the country.
I have voted Tory for almost 50 years and been a Party member much of that time. I’m ashamed of what this Party has become, and I’ll never vote for them again.
The problem is that in Britain all the mainstream parties have bought into the renewable good, fossil fuels bad narrative, and they cannot extricate themselves from it without admitting they are wrong and billions of taxpayers money has been wasted by successive governments chasing unicorns and applauding mad Greta.
“Sunak is a weak leader with an ego greater than his ability…” Substitute “her” for “his” and you’ve described Liz Truss precisely, Jack.
Break out the thermal imaging cameras.
Maybe Uncle Joe will come to the rescue right after the midterms, bearing windfall oil profit money. Well, it does make you wonder what all is stacked up behind the midterms.
It is worth noting that the 2019 conservative party manifesto says that they would not
allow fracking. And they won an 80 seat majority on the basis on their manifesto. Hence
Rishi Sunak’s in reinstating the ban on fracking is actually following through on the promises
made by his party. It is also something that is extremely popular with the conservative party members most of whom would only support fracking if it occurred somewhere far away from their homes.
In addition there is no way that fracking could do anything to ease gas shortages in the near future. It would take at least a decade if not longer for fracking in the UK to produce significant amounts of gas. On top of which there is no evidence of large gas reserves that could be extracted via fracking in the UK. The geology is very different from the US.
Also, any oil from fracking will just be sold to the highest bidder. It’s not clear how that will make fuel cheaper in the UK.
For all of this year we have had above average temperatures in Wales, We are late in the Autumn and temps are still higher at night than they would normally be in the day. Spring plants are growing, animals have not hibernated, We may need air conditiioners soon more than we need heating. What can possibly go wrong ?
Sunak’s job is to self destruct the Tories.
The Brit’s are about to get a very expensive education.Some of them posthumously.