Wealthy British financier Sir Christopher Hohn’s multimillion-pound donations to climate campaigns, particularly supporting low-emission zones, come under scrutiny in a report questioning the transparency of funding behind climate policies. The Telegraph has more.
One of Britain’s wealthiest men has been bankrolling the campaign for low-emission zones and has made a £46 million donation to a climate network chaired by Sadiq Khan, the Telegraph can reveal.
Sir Christopher Hohn, a financier whose investments include a stake in the owner of Heathrow Airport, has donated more than £670 million to climate campaigns via his philanthropic fund in less than a decade.
He is one of a handful of billionaires ploughing money into civil society organisations that lobby local and national governments to enact Net Zero or clean-air policies.
Sir Christopher and Michael Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, are “strategic funders” of C40 cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities who are united in action to confront the climate crisis.
Mr. Khan, the London Mayor and chairman of the group, which has called for people to eat less meat, give up their private cars and take only one flight every three years.
Since 2013, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), co-founded and chaired by Sir Christopher, has given nearly $57million in grants to C40 cities, and Mr. Bloomberg has donated $45 million to the organisation that he used to chair.
The London Mayor has been the C40 cities chairman since 2021, and a source at City Hall said that its more radical proposals were made before he was in post and were not targets.
CIFF is also a major funder of the Clean Air Fund and has donated more than £17 million to it. The lobby group claims on its website that it “drove the creation or expansion of eight Clean Air Zones (CAZ) in Bath, Brighton, Portsmouth and the London Ultra Low Emission Zone – with the potential to save millions of lives.” …
The funding details are revealed in a report on the Clean Air campaign, seen by the Telegraph, which calls for the public to be included in debates about radical policies.
Its authors, from Together and Climate Debate U.K., say not enough is known about the funding behind organisations pushing through policies that have a major impact on people’s lives. Their report alleges that “undue proximity between billionaires and the centre of political power” excludes the public from conversations.
Worth reading in full.
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Informative graph, but Pakistan and Bangladesh notably absent – camouflaged by British citizenship and/or difficult to track stats for non-citizens?
They are on the chart. Both names overlaying each other, mixed in with Nigeria and Slovakia.
Okay thanks, gotcha.
They are overwritten bottom left, just above Latvia and Slovakia.
The question is, what are our authorities going to do with this table? Ignore it, I suppose.
Just look at US crime statistics by race.
Bit of a change of tack from Farage here;
“But it is our intention, ultimately, that if you’ve come illegally, you should not be able to stay.”
”Nigel Farage has announced a change in Reform UK’s policy on illegal immigration, now seeming to support, at least in principle, the mass deportation of ALL illegal immigrants in Britain.
“I know the problem is huge, because there are an estimated 1.2 million people here illegally. And going beyond the last 100,000 is not going to be an easy job. It’s going to be one hell of a battle, and we know that the state, the apparatus of state, will fight us at every point.”
This follows his comments last year, in an interview with Steven Edginton on GB News, where he said it was not his ambition to deport all illegal immigrants, saying “it is a political impossibility.”
During the press conference, Farage also said:
“We will bring a total end to all asylum claims from people who have come here on travel visas, or who are overseas students.”
“We will demand the deportation of all foreign criminals.”
He promises Reform will appoint a Minister for Deportations if the win the next general election.
He also suggests the citizenship of foreign nationals given the right to remain in Britain may be revisited if they commit crimes.
Are Reform listening to criticism that they have softened on immigration lately?
Farage promises further policy announcements in three-to-four weeks’ time.”
https://x.com/Con_Tomlinson/status/1915357142988546439
They are still building the policy platform, and so some fluidity in the detail is to be expected.
Is that Neil-speak for Nigel’s flip flopping? He seems to be blowing in the wind these days, particularly since his chairman bought his way in and they set up yet another limited company together
Nationalities don’t commit crimes. People commit crimes and people also have a nationality. That there are lots of Albanian criminals in the UK doesn’t meant lots of Albanians are criminals (they might or might not be but nothing about this follows from the initial observation).
You’re right, but at a group level, some groups are more inclined than others to certain behaviours. The much more interesting question is what do you do with the information. There are various options, none of which will be followed.
Groups have no behaviour. If some set of people is artificially partioned into some set groups and one then looks for a certain propery among group members, the rate of occurence of the property will vary between the artificially created groups, as it would also vary for any other conceivable artificial partition. This is essentially historical information of no conceivable use beyond being descriptive for the period of time which is covered.
In addition to this, the population numbers used to calculate the imprisonment rates are estimates aka guesses as the actual numbers are unknown and the rates are really pretty low. Eg, according to the Noah Carl article, 70.3 of every 1000 Albanians in the UK are in prison. That’s 7.03% which means that about 13.2 Albanians in the UK aren’t in prison for every Albanian in the UK who is.
If you have an idea what should be done to these 13 Albanians because of the 1 Albanian in prison, I’d like to know about it. My idea would be nothing.
I would stop all immigration for a few centuries. If I ever restarted it I would favour races that had a track record of developing advanced civilisations whose history and culture were similar to ours- basically, white Europeans. I believe that would make our country a better place to live in than alternative approaches. As to those already here, deport all illegals and cut back welfare hoping that at least some of those making a negative contribution would decide to leave. Deport all foreign criminals.
That’s principally something I agree with. But not because of statistics like the one mentioned in this article which I consider essentially meaningless minus better truisms like Operations of criminals are more mobile than those of people who aren’t.
Kind of welcome but only a baby step in the right direction.
Valuable chiefly as an indication that the political weather is finally starting to change on this vital issue.
Long long way to go.