Tom Nelson, the producer of the social media blockbuster Climate: The Movie, often tweets in reply to woke Net Zero nonsense: “It’s not about the climate, is it?” Edinburgh City Council is to ban adverts for cruise ships, airports, airlines and internal combustion engine cars. “It is just basic common sense that if the council is serious about its commitment to climate justice, we cannot allow council advertising space to be used to promote fossil fuel companies,” said Ben Parker, a councillor for the Scottish Greens, who is reported to have spearheaded the policy. Curiously missing from the banned list are medicines and plastics, along with other common products such as clothing, food preservatives, cleaning products and soft contact lenses. Together with countless other useful and essential items in widespread use, they are all derived from hydrocarbons, courtesy of oil and gas.
It’s not about the climate, is it?
The ban echoes similar advertisement crackdowns by local councils in Sheffield, Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Coventry, Liverpool and Somerset. The Financial Times notes that Edinburgh is committed to becoming a Net Zero city within barely more than five years.
Interestingly, all the councils who are moving to deprive their ratepayers of large amounts of advertising revenue, except Coventry, are signed up to the billionaire-funded UK100. This green operation targeting local authorities was founded by Polly Billington, a former BBC reporter and aide to Labour’s Net Zero fanatic Ed Miliband. Its main backer is the European Climate Foundation (ECF), a front funding operation for many of the largest names in climate activism. These include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the vehicle used by Michael Bloomberg to promote banning oil and gas production, and the Children’s Investment Fund, promoting the charitable good works of hedge fund manager Sir Christopher Hohn, former paymaster of eco vandals Extinction Rebellion. Other billionaire funders of ECF include names that crop up regularly in the promotion of Net Zero global collectivisation including Hewlett, IKEA, KR, Grantham and Rockefeller. One of five board members of UK100 is Madeline Carroll, described as a communication and campaigning specialist for ECF.
Local councils around the U.K. have signed up to a UK100 pledge, which commits them to “acting sooner than the Government’s goal” and making substantial progress towards Net Zero in the next decade. “We are closer to the people who live and work in our communities, so we have a better understanding of their needs,” says UK100, a debatable proposition given who is funding this waffle. “This means we can collaborate with them to build consensus for the solutions we need to transition to a Net Zero society that delivers multiple benefits and is fair, just and works for everyone.” Try telling that to the less affluent car owners forced off the roads in London by Mayor Sadiq Khan’s punch-down Ulez policy, backed by the notorious statistical construct of saving 4,000 lives a year. Khan is the current chair of C40, a group of 100 city mayors striving for similar goals as UK100, and backed by substantial grassroots donations from concerned citizens – no just joking, it’s backed by Michael Bloomberg and Sir Christopher Hohn.
Meanwhile, applications are currently being solicited for a three weekend, all expenses paid, residential course for elected officials at UK100’s Climate Leadership Academy later this year. Here, the officials will be groomed, or in UK100’s words given a “unique coaching opportunity”, to develop their political skills, knowledge and confidence “to become leading climate pioneers in local government”. Rather oddly, UK100 says it particularly encourages applications in Wales and Scotland, where you’d think that bonkers Labour/SNP/Greens Net Zero policies are already pretty advanced. There is a promise that ‘graduates’ of the course will have the opportunity “to act as spokespeople for UK100 in national advocacy initiatives”.
It is clear that all this green advocacy is being heavily funded by global billionaires carefully curating the agenda in the mainstream media, as well as academia and in political circles. Removing hydrocarbons in just a few years from human society is insanity on steroids, and support is starting to wane across the world as the full implications of the policy become clear. But it remains popular with the controlling elite who are clearly committed to a process of world de-industrialisation under the guise of a scientifically unproven climate emergency.
One of the outfits campaigning for the Edinburgh ban, notes the FT, was Adfree Cities, a “volunteer group” lobbying for the reduction of “harmful adverts”. According to its web site, Adfree Cities is a network of bodies challenging corporate outdoor advertising and reclaiming public space for art, community and nature. Another interpretation might be removing the rights of a citizen to promote lawful products in favour of plastering public spaces with hideous Banksy-inspired illegal graffiti. According to Adfree Cities, advertising impacts us in many conscious and unconscious ways, “damaging our environment and wellbeing”. Of course, all of this juvenile attention-seeking requires outside funding and in this case it is supplied by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
This Left-wing money mountain sprays funding across a large numbers of activist groups, including operations claiming climate motives. Among recent beneficiaries is Climate Outreach which received £157,112 for work on climate change and migration, DeSmog which was helped with £157,257 to run its farcical ‘blacklist’ of sceptical scientists and writers, Faith for Climate, which was given a £170,000 grant for its Faiths for Climate Justice project, Fossil Free Pride given £164,500 to help sever ties between “queer culture and the fossil fuel industry”, and People and Planet which received a handsome £355,931 for climate justice.
It’s not about the climate, is it?
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure just ain’t so” ——Mark Twain. ———–We now live in a pseudo science dictatorship, where government in a symbiotic relationship with the scientists they fund, enforce pseudo scientific truth on us and are assisted in this endeavour by mainstream media, led from the front by the BBC, whose policy it is to never ask any questions or do any investigative journalism on the myriad of climate claims for which no real empirical evidence exists.
If you question the climate alarmism we are bludgeoned with on a daily basis you are accused of being funded by fossil fuel companies. Where is the evidence for this funding? —-There is NONE. It is claimed that if you disagree with the doctrine of climate change emergency you must have an agenda to protect the profits of fossil fuel companies who despite providing 85% of the worlds energy are to be classed as evil. But what makes people think government don’t have an agenda? Ofcourse they do. It is called Sustainable Development and NET ZERO. And who is it that funds most of the “science” of climate change that we are not allowed to question? ——Er –Government. This is a scientific coup. Government have overthrown science and installed their own scientific regime. We are in a scientific dictatorship and Mark Twain if he were alive today would know for sure that what we are being told “just ain’t so”.
Perfect
Not so perfect. I just spotted a couple of grammatical mistakes.—-But cheers.
This government action is a direct breach of the right to free speech.
That right is enshrined in UK law in two ways:
1) Human Rights Act 1998
2) as part of English Common law as confirmed by the Supreme Court
House of Lords in the Spy Catcher cases which suggested that the English common law no longer ‘treat[ed] freedom of speech as a merely residual liberty’ [Attorney-General v Guardian Newspapers Ltd [No 2] [1990] 1 AC 109].
The House of Lords overturned a number of injunctions that had restrained publication of a former MI5 agent’s memoir which detailed activities of the UK security services.
Lord Goff stated: ‘I wish to observe that I can see no inconsistency between English law on this subject and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights’. ….. “I have no reason to believe that English law, as applied in the courts, leads to any different conclusion.”
Later in Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd [1993] UKHL 18 (18 February 1993) Lord Keith in giving judgement for the whole court confirmed a UK common law right to freedom of speech when he stated:
“My Lords, I have reached my conclusion upon the common law of England without finding any need to rely upon the European Convention. My noble and learned friend, Lord Goff of Chieveley, in Attorney-General v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd. (No. 2) [1990] 1 AC 109, at p. 283-284, expressed the opinion that in the field of freedom of speech there was no difference in principle between English law on the subject and Article 10 of the Convention. I agree, and can only add that I find it satisfactory to be able to conclude that the common law of England is consistent with the obligations assumed by the Crown under the treaty in this particular field.“
What is more, the House of Lords in that case confirmed freedom of speech is not just about the right to impart information to others. It includes the right be be informed – that is the right to access to information. Lord Keith stated:
Article 10 is in these terms:
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers …
These rights apply to any legal entity including private limited companies who want to advertise on bus shelters.
On this basis it is possible to conclude on the highest legal authority in the United Kingdom that if Edinburgh City Council is banning ads on bus shelters for holidays then it is breaking the law without a shadow of doubt.
So this adds an interesting aspect to Freedom of Information in that it seems there is a right to freedom of information as part of the right to free speech.
The list of benefactors at the end of the article is just the tip of the calving iceberg (due to plant food of course). Money and evil. The level of brain dead stupidity, corruption and criminality of this cult is astounding.
Like the baby-murdering industry I notice that the shrill advocates are evil hypocrites. In the case of baby murdering the demons screaming about rights were born. In the case of the climate idiots, they can easily take off their hydrocarbon produced clothes, exit their hydrocarbon lifestyle, renounce their hydrocarbon based existence and for penance run naked to the woods, to live as foragers and hunters.
As with the baby murderers lead by example. For the millionth time, fossil fuels don’t exist. Hydrocarbons do exist.
Yes isn’t it bizarre how the “climate idiots” can sit on a comfy couch in their cosy house with a laptop on their knee pontificating about the very fuels that allow them to have a comfy couch, a cosy house and a laptop. Because without the fossil fuels that provide 85% of the world’s energy they would have none of those things, and infact would probably be dead by now of preventable disease or of a life of back breaking labour.
We do have the rare bit of good news where the Company who sponsored some leftie book festivals were outed by Charlotte Church and now they are finding it difficult to obtain other sponsors!
How does the council think all those tourists and students arrive in the city? Are they anticipating similar campaigns in other countries rather than the too-obvious actions of preventing cruise ships from disembarking and closing the airport?
That picture isn’t Edinburgh. I’m sure it would have been easy to find one.
They think this is virtue signalling to their leftist friends.
Look him in the eyes and say that this isn’t about making people feel miserable and vulnerable by confronting them with disease and death whereever they go. No more holidays for you, Mister, gotta line up for for cancer prevention treatments NOW!
In Reading, it’s already basically impossible to be anywhere in public (in town centre) without CANCER! CANCER! CANCER! being written on the walls everywhere. That’s still about Increasing the perceived level of personal threat by hard-hitting emotional messaging. This really cries for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation solution — that the people behind this are only Soft power evil doesn’t make them less evil. As modern torturers, they want to break people’s minds and not their bodies. These are needed for work.
With everything Green, first comes the nudge then comes the PUSH. At first you will have the choice whether to pretend to save the planet, but if you don’t pretend to save it of your own accord, then you will be coerced into it.
Net Zero is the LAW. Don’t think you will be allowed to sit there forever with no smart meter, or that you will be allowed to sit cosy in your house with that excellent gas boiler.
It’s not just about reducing access to international travel / holidays abroad, local / regional/ national and day-to-day travel is affected, too.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/four-new-uk-driving-laws-29277418
Four new U.K. driving laws from 1st June 2024:
‘Motorists are being alerted to four new driving laws that come into effect from today. The changes, which start from Saturday, June 1, could result in hefty fines for some drivers if ignored.
Major rule changes will be felt in three Scottish cities where petrol and diesel drivers will be affected by the introduction of Low Emission Zones (LEZ). These zones, which will operate continuously, will utilise Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras linked to local and national vehicle licensing databases…
Vehicles that fail to meet the required standards will be identified and fines issued. This regulation will be enforced 24 hours a day, every day of the year…Glasgow recently revealed it had collected over £1m in penalty charges from 33,000 drivers of non-compliant vehicles who entered the restricted zone, after becoming the first Scottish city to introduce such regulations.’
’Prof Jill Belch, a researcher from the University of Dundee, has suggested that it may take a few years for these zones to show a significant impact on the health of those residing or working within them.
However, she anticipates a swift decrease in acute asthma attacks. “The first thing we’ll see is that the pollution levels will come down and that’s great,” she said. “But it’s not just hospital admissions, it’s the long-term effects with dementia and heart attacks.”’
Sigh, I’m surprised there’s been no reference to the long term effects of LEZ schemes on balding, athletes foot and nose picking.
I’m pretty sure that photo is not Edinburgh.