Fears that Rishi Sunak’s recent watering down of green targets will economically harm the U.K. are unfounded, says Ross Clark in the Telegraph. “If anything, it will do the opposite.” He writes:
Mark Carney did enough damage as Governor of the Bank of England, keeping the economy pumped up on quantitative-easing and ultra-low interest rates for so long that we are now suffering the inevitable consequences as the monetary policy under his leadership is unwound. But at least he isn’t my financial adviser.
Readers may just remember his speech to Lloyds of London in 2015 when he warned that investors exposed to fossil fuels faced potentially “huge” losses as coal, oil and gas assets became stranded. In fact, oil and gas shares have been one of the few ways to preserve your wealth over the past couple of years as much else – including Government bonds issued in Carney’s day – have crashed around them.
But it hasn’t stopped the former Governor from trying to tell Rishi Sunak that he has made a dreadful mistake in slightly relaxing some targets to ban electric cars and gas boilers and in granting new licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction. Apparently, in Carney’s world, it is going to harm inward investment into the U.K., as companies start tut-tutting at the Government’s backsliding on Net Zero. “What I find when speaking to companies is their first question is: am I getting clean power?”
He didn’t specify which companies these are, but I guess they don’t include, for example, German industrials giant BASF which has wound down some operations in Europe because of high energy prices and instead invested £10 billion in China. Nor, I would guess, does it include steel companies which similarly are being driven abroad by high energy costs, carbon levies and so on. Nor, surely, can it include Norwegian state oil company Equinor, which would not be investing in Britain had it not been allowed to develop the Rosebank oil field.
Worth reading in full.
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Obviously quantitative easing and ultra low interest rates are terrible for long term economic prosperity but the idea that Mark Carney is the one who did it is ridiculous.
Every central bank in the world has been doing this, and not because they were following the lead of the Bank of England.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no respect and make no apologies for the technocrats and bureaucrats that deem to govern us. They’re all a bunch of puffed up, clueless, career chasers as far as I’m concerned.
But the real reason we have insane monetary policy is because we live in a debt ridden world that nobody wants to face up to. And as the ball of debt gets bigger and bigger, the policies just have to become more extreme.
Modern western societies are economically unsustainable. The state tries to offer far too many services that are economically unviable. Western populations are addicted to these unsustainable services and would revolt the moment anyone tries to take them away.
So we’re stuck with it until it collapses, coming up with ever more outlandish tricks to stay ahead of the growing snow ball of debt bearing down on us.
Quantitative easing and ultra low interest rates are such tricks, The idea this is Mark Carney’s doing is, as I say, ridiculous. It’s everyone’s doing. Mark Carney is just one of a number of self elevated people who are willing to do society’s bidding and pretend for a while he’s somehow doing something for us.
You have got to be kidding me. Seems JSO ( Just Sod Off! ) have changed their tactics. If these individuals aren’t banged up in a police cell by now then that’s further proof that the law is an ass.
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1710687019389661205
Looks like the break down of law and order in the US is spilling over in the UK.
What is happening here? Are they destroying the pumps?
The failures by the police are deliberate. In this instance this is appears to be criminal damage so if plod fail to act then the question must be why.
The issue here is not necessarily a failure of the law but a failure of those paid to invoke it that is the problem.
I suspect that is the first time that floppy haired they/them has ever picked up a hammer.
NET ZERO harms everyone and everything. It is worse than the problem it is supposed to be solving. Yet here in the UK we have forced ourselves in law to do this with not a single question of cost/ benefit ever being asked. mmmmmmmmmm. A Cautionary Tale.
Most of the centre right challenger parties manifesto promise is to scrap Net Zero. They deserve our support.