Hardly a week passes by these days without some news about how Ed Miliband (a.k.a. Mad Ed) – the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024 – keeps upping the ante in the ‘fight against climate change’. As a politician, of course, the ante he keeps upping is not his personal cash but taxpayers’ funds.
On Monday, the same day that Stellantis, owner of Vauxhall’s 120-year old van-making factory in Luton, announced the plant’s closure, putting at risk over 1,100 jobs – which it said was brought on in the context of Britain’s Net Zero policies – Mr. Miliband said this in Parliament:
Despite all the difficulties, at COP29, one truth was overwhelmingly clear: the global transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy is happening, and it is unstoppable because clean energy is the route to energy security, unstoppable because it is the economic opportunity of our time, and unstoppable because people in Britain and around the world can see that the climate crisis is here, and that unless we act, things will only get worse.
In less than five months, this Government have [sic] shown that we will seize the opportunities of speeding up at home, and have demonstrated climate leadership abroad, in order to deliver energy independence, lower bills, good jobs, economic growth and the security of a stable climate. We are doing all we can to keep the British people safe, now and for generations to come.
Anyone with even a modicum of understanding of energy markets will be left wondering whether Mr. Miliband really believes in what he says. His detractors must wonder if he is really that illiterate about energy affairs. How does he square his claims of an “unstoppable energy transition towards clean energy” with what is really happening in energy markets in the U.K. and globally? What happens when his climate evangelism inevitably clashes with energy reality?
What the ‘Energy Transition’ Means for You and Me
Mr. Miliband’s boss, Keir Starmer, attended the annual UN climate summit in Baku (COP29) to sign Britain up to be at the “forefront of the battle against global warming” by promising to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. Note the spurious accuracy of 81%. Why not a rounded 80% for a target to be achieved a decade hence? Would that make it any less believable?
In an interview at the summit, Mr. Starmer claimed with a straight face that his Government has no plans to “start telling people how to live their lives. We are not going to start dictating to people what they do”. Perhaps the Prime Minister is unaware that his Government’s Net Zero policies need to do precisely that – dictating approved and unapproved behaviours by businesses and consumers with a system of taxes, subsidies, fines and regulations – to get the greenhouse gas emission cuts that he is espousing.
Subsequently, Bill Esterson, Labour Chair of the Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, seems to have let the cat out of the bag, saying “we will all have to change our lives” if we are to decarbonise the power grid by 2030 (en route to a full transition away from fossil fuels by 2050).
The U.K. target — ratcheted up from targets pursued by the previous, equally climate-obsessed Tory Government – is in line with the weighty recommendations of the ‘non-departmental public body’ the Climate Change Committee, which is described as “U.K.’s leading independent authority on climate change”. When one examines just what such emission targets actually mean for U.K. businesses and consumers, the list of what must happen is startling.
In a detailed document issued by U.K. FIRES, a research programme funded by the Government, official targets of “Net Zero by 2050” will require all airports except Heathrow, Belfast and Glasgow to close by 2030. No one will be flying at all by 2050. There will be no new gasoline or diesel cars by 2030 and by 2050 road use will be restricted to 60% of today’s level. Food, heating and energy will be restricted to 60% of today’s levels by 2050. Beef and lamb will not be on the British menu by 2050.
Restrictions on mobility and social activity will be achieved by ‘15-minute cities‘ where daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare and leisure “can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city”.
These consequences of Net Zero for the U.K. – and by extension the rest of the West if other countries are foolish enough to implement Net Zero targets – are thus not mere conjectures. They constitute the economic and physical-science realities of Miliband’s “unstoppable transition away from fossil fuels”.
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs has a stat for Mr. Miliband. At the end of 2021:
Overall, fossil fuels represented 81% of overall energy consumption. Ten years [before that], they were at 82%. So though all of that investment is in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82% to 81% of the overall energy consumption. … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.
The results of Government policies since the U.K. Labour Government under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008 committed the country to a legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% from the 1990 level by 2050 are plain to see.
The U.K. now has higher electricity prices for its businesses than even Germany, the world’s epicentre of self-destructive green policies. In Miliband’s five months in office, the country’s last coal plant and its Port Talbot steel plant shut down, regulatory approvals for solar farms were rushed through in the teeth of objections in the local community, and the North Sea’s oil and gas field development has been sacrificed to an unchallenged climate lawsuit brought by Greenpeace.
Last week, Mr. Miliband introduced a “Warm Homes Plan” to fine gas boiler manufacturers if they do not sell a certain amount of heat pumps. The plan, dubbed the ‘boiler tax‘, requires manufacturers to sell at least 6% of their total sales as heat pumps or face a fine of £500 for each missed installation in the first year, rising to £3,000 in subsequent years. Many firms have already raised the price of their boilers by around £100 in a bid to offset the cost of possible fines.
As if this were not enough punishment on those wanting to keep warm in winter, Mr. Miliband is also relaxing the size and noise restrictions on heat pumps. This led the Telegraph to warn last week that the lifting of the noise restrictions will risk turning neighbourhoods into “war zones”.
What makes green ideologues tick?
In an article written over a year ago on luxury beliefs, I asked: “How did a leading economy like Great Britain come to have Governments (from both sides of the aisle) that promise their people penury and a future without the basic freedoms Westerners have taken for granted for over two centuries?”
Rob Henderson, who coined the term “luxury beliefs” defined them as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class”. Conspicuous consumption of status goods and services by the super-rich – having Bentleys and butlers for instance – might be frowned upon by the likes of Ed Miliband. His moral worth is instead related to his luxury beliefs, of which the “fight against climate change” is the crowning achievement – at relatively little cost to himself personally but at great cost to the lower and middle classes.
Another aspect of the luxury beliefs espoused by Ed Miliband and Keir Starmer is the need to claim ‘climate leadership‘ in international forums. Asked if he was disappointed other world leaders had not attended COP29 – such as those from the top 13 GHG emitting countries including China, the U.S., India, Indonesia, the EU, and all but Georgia Meloni of the G7 countries – Sir Keir said the U.K. was at the summit to “show leadership”.
Evidently, it does not matter to Mr. Starmer that some of the world’s largest developing economies with GHG emissions that dwarf the U.K.’s, such as China (by 35 times) and India (by 11 times) are not on the hook to curtail emissions until aspirational targets kick in decades later (theoretically in 2060) under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Furthermore, these countries are not required to contribute to the $300 billion a year in climate finance promised by the attendees at the just-concluded COP29 climate summit in Baku.
Nor does it seem to matter to Sir Keir or to his green commissar Mr. Miliband that President-elect Donald Trump, an avowed climate contrarian, has already made clear his intentions to exit the U.S. from the Paris Agreement under which the developed countries are expected to achieve Net Zero by 2050. Chris Wright, the nominee to be the next U.S. Secretary of Energy, has this to say about the U.K. in his book Bettering Human Lives:
The U.K., although no longer part of the EU, has continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry. The results are troubling. … The once-leading United Kingdom now has a per capita income lower than even the poorest state in the United States.
The impoverishment of Great Britain does not seem to concern Ed Miliband, one reason he has been labelled “Britain’s most dangerous man” on TalkTV.
Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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Same Home Office twerps that put any number of hoops and hurdles in the way of temporary visas for young sports men and women of the wrong ethnicity wishing to enter this country temporarily to play sport, while coughing up billions of taxpayers’ money to put up jobless illegal immigrants of the right ethnicity in hotels.
https://www.ecb.co.uk/about/policies/regulations/overseas
Sort of state-sponsored Far Left duplicity and truth-twisting you come to expect from the Twerps Office.
Twerps is a bit mild is it not?
Personally I prefer the Deringer to the Beretta or the Smith and Wesson.
We need to bring back public flogging… as a first step.
For civil service incompetence
“Twerp and twerps” such wonderful words!
I just think it’s funny. Bring it on.
It’s all grist to the mill of persuading normies how completely dysfunctional the government and the civil service are.
Totally unfit for service.
Where is the English Milei?
It is not Farage nor Tice.
Where is the English Wilders or Le Pen?
It is not Farage nor Tice.
Where is the English Trump?
It is not Farage nor Tice.
Hell, where is the English Meloni?
Nowhere.
We are on our own.
The closest to Milei might be Thatcher, the closest to Wilders or Le Pen possibly Enoch Powell. Hard to have a Trump as we don’t have a Presidential system, though there are some vague similarities with Farage but Trump is much more disagreeable than Farage and his voter base is fine with that – in fact that’s often why they favour him. I suppose Badenoch is a polite version of Meloni. In general they are all too afraid of being called “far right”.
Rupert Lowe gets my vote, figuratively speaking. He’s much more forthright than Farage and bangs on about “mass deportations” and what should be done with illegals and foreign criminals all the time. You’d be hard pushed to ever hear Farage utter that term.
Thanks for that. I know nothing about him other than the name. I will keep a lookout for him.
He’s a Reform MP who asks very pertinent questions in parliament.
Hear, hear.
Rupert Lowe is a fine speaker, very focused on the issues and solutions that need to be implemented. Ben Habib likewise. Zia is also sharp. Lee Anderson gives a refreshing dose of humour and down to earth.
future is looking bright.
A successful businessman I understand. Hopefully gives him an understanding of how the world works.
In what ways is Trump much more disagreeable than Farage?
I meant disagreeable in the sense that he is not afraid of upsetting people when required – more straight talking. For me, it’s a positive quality for a political leader.
They can say stupid things at times on an equal measure. Trump with Operation Warp Speed being a great thing, and Farage with….Make the Blair a vaccine Tsar.
I think you’re probably right.
However the English 2 party system does work, just not like other systems.
The way it’s supposed work is that the tory party will be forced to the fight by the success of reform and general disgust with 2tk and his lot.
They will ditch kemi and choose somebody more energetically right wing, who that might be God only knows.
A bit like we’re seeing in Germany where despite the cordon sanitaire stitch up, afd is dictanfluencing the direction of travel on some key issues.
You would think that, but since Cameron flooded the Nonconservative party with Liberal Democrats in 2009/10, the existing members of the left wing factions – the one nationers, the TRG etc have been fortified, removing any residual power from the Monday Club, the Euro sceptics and so on. Look at some of the thoughts of Badenoch now finding their way out. She is not of the right.
Yes you are right, however, they still have to avoid being outflanked on the right and with a surging reform party and an overton window well and truly shifted rightwards, the electoral arithmetic will be compelling.
The one thing they care about is being elected.
Unfortunately they value this over keeping election promises.
We can but hope.
Sunak seemed intent on losing, but I suppose he had ticked the “British PM” box which left him set up for life.
True…I have seen the video of her pushing “diversity”….enough said!
The guy Kemi run against was making all the right noises regarding immigration and Western culture being superior, but they chose Kemi. Maybe they need to think again. That said, both parties are captured by the Globalists like in that hollowed out ski resort.
Where is Meloni? Bought and paid for by the EU.
Some things never change, and certain corrupt organizations never will, as Connor Tomlinson wrote about RICU last November. I wouldn’t deign to give this absurdity a second thought;
”The body responsible is called RICU — the Home Office’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit. Some learned about it during the COVID pandemic, thanks to Laura Dodsworth’s A State Of Fear. Others may have heard of it in a report by GB News this month, which revealed that civil servants produced a report calling the grooming gang scandal, in which thousands of girls across England were sexually exploited by predominantly-Pakistani Muslim perpetrators, a “grievance narrative” fabricated by “right-wing extremists”. The report warned “right-wing extremist narratives (particularly around immigration and policing) are in some cases ‘leaking’ into mainstream debates”. It classified “Cultural Nationalism” as “extreme right-wing”: with the “main belief” being “’Western culture is under threat from mass migration’”. Another example: “Claims of ‘two-tier’ policing, where two groups are allegedly treated differently after similar behaviour”. As I mentioned in a previous essay, there are ample double-standards to point to in Britain’s justice system, regarding those imprisoned for civil unrest following the Southport murders this summer. The Labour government have denounced and distanced themselves from the paper.
RICU has also received notoriety in recent years as the parent body of counter-extremism programme, Prevent. Like many ostensibly neutral institutions, Prevent has been subject to ideological capture since its inception. A recent video circulating on X, urging those undergoing Prevent training to report teenagers for posting stickers opposed to mass immigration, has alerted some to this. But the insidious absurdities stretch back over a decade.
A review of Prevent found that, in 2019, RICU had compiled a dossier of materials circulated by social media users described as “actively patriotic and proud”. The canonical texts of these far right radicals include: books by Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips, and Douglas Murray; Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan; John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government; Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France; The Lord of the Rings; Beowulf; C.S. Lewis; Micahel Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys; and, without a hint of irony, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Curiously, the Qur’an and Hadiths were not mentioned — despite Islamic groups being the predominant perpetrators of lethal terror attacks both in the UK and the world.”
https://courage.media/2024/11/25/how-islamists-influence-the-uk-government/
” … Micahel Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys …”
Well, he was once Minister of Defence for Thatcher.
Thanks for this link to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s platform. She does an incredibly good investigation into the whole murky web of alliances. I watched that Hope Not Hate documentary when the guy got a fake passport and also wondered thought how the hell he got away with that. It’s worth watching as it tries to discredit the writers of Aporia magazine as white supremacists,
How long?
Until we get a Reform Government I would think. Hopefully 2029.
Too many people still supporting the Fake conservatives.
Only if Reform start having policies now and start getting organised now. I can’t see it happening.
” hopeless Home Office”
Hardly “hopeless”. They are doing exactly what they think they are meant to be doing, which is continuing the establishment’s decades long project (really more than half a century now) to impose millions of people of alien cultures on the UK and for questioning this to be taboo.
The Home Office are staffed by personnel of foreign descent and white Leftard traitors, so it was ever thus.
Mass immigration into the UK started immediately post war. Home Office employees would have all been white British then. But the politicians wanted it and people went along with it- maybe they thought we needed the workforce to help reconstruction or we owed them for fighting for the Empire. White guilt was probably a thing even then. Powell was thrown under a bus.
“The Alleged Problem of Grooming Gangs” ????——-Always we are told not to cause “offence” and if we do it is a “hate crime”. Well you do not get much more offensive that telling thousands of young girls and their families that they were “allegedly” gang raped. —-This is disgusting wokery. How can this absurd Politically Correct Virus be eradicated?
Who wrote it? who commissioned it? all individuals should be removed from post, they are anti democratic and a danger to society, plus they clearly have zero empathy for the children who were raped and tortured by gangs of Pakistani men, as they prize the lie of diversity being our strength over the violence visited on young girls. We pay their wages for this?
all individuals should be removed from post
Absolutely right.
I think they must have an AI report writer with various defaults, press the button and ‘Far right’ appears as the answer to every question. From what I can tell, our civil service is idle and appalling.
‘ Should be removed’. Trump is doing a lot of removing across the pond but this is pie in the sky .. there isn’t a hope in hell of that kind of positive action in Ol’Blighty. Let’s face it our elites are too busy promoting ‘ being kind’ and pussy footing about the negative influence of Islam on the West. Wish I had faith in Reform but the rot is way bigger than someone like Farage can comprehend.
Two words spring to mind: “smoke” and “fire”.
Did Axel Rudakubana have any NCHIs recorded against him?
Brilliant question. I have submitted an FOI request. Doubtless it’s confidential as he was a “minor” at the time.
There are not enough candidates to replace large numbers of civil servants so we need a few effective non-politicised leaders (or politicised against woke, etc) together with new management boards.
Their appointment must be accompanied by changes to employment terms for the staff, annual reviews and other normal private sector supervision. Often the failures to follow policy will have to lead to dismissal.
not “enforced redundancy”, not transfer but dismissal with prejudice.
We don’t need to replace large numbers of civil servants.
We need to cut numbers by 50%.
Yes but if the other 50% are also disobedient lefties you’d need to get rid of them all. (I’m sure there are a good number who would follow orders, just need to work out which ones).
My considerable experience in the Civil Service confirmed that all those with right of centre views were workers. Those left of centre got lazier the more Marxist their opinions.
Whoops, posted before I read this.
My thinking exactly…..Why do we need more than, say, the 1990s. Where is this big state juggernaut taking us!
Current civil service numbers could be reduced by at least 50% and so long as the recruits had at least ten years private sector experience and a decent CV there would be no disruption to output, in fact it would noticeably improve. Anybody with left wing views would be barred.
Would Pixie Balls or some other government official care to start naming some of the apparently many “right-wing” extremists who are currently stomping the streets of Great Britain causing mayhem? I would love to meet a few for a chat, swap ideas and all that.
Je suis Right Wing.
The problem is that these political civil service appointments are already happening and have been happening (in all likeliness) since the days of the Blair governments. AFAIK, the so-called civil service is a Labour (and left Labour at that) dominated shadow government of the UK under direct influence of the extreme wing of the US democrats and only people happy with this direction of travel will be hired by all the other people who got already hired because of this.
The solution is thus not to politicize civil service recruitment but to depoliticize it again and to reassert government control over the civil service. Civil service unions financing lawfare suits to torpedo government policies should just be treated as people hired for a certain job (implement government policies) refusing to actually do it. All involved people to be dismissed immediately with prejudice. End of.
Yes we can’t have banana skins thrown in an aggressive way!
?
About the ousting of Dominic Raab:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65333983
There’s little detail about this available and hence, I don’t really have an opinion of this.
What I was trying to get at was that civil servants (or people acting on their behalf) using judicial review to shoot down government policies (the Rwanda plan) is de facto an abuse of process. Nobody was planning to deport civil servants to Rwanda (might be a good idea though) and hence, they had no standing in this, regardless of the contortions which were used to justify it. That was transparently just a pretext for refusing to implement a certain government policy for political reasons. If some civil servant was honestly convinced that the government was exposing itself to legal problems by acting in a certain way, he could and should have told this to the responsible government people but the decisions is ultimately theirs and civil servants are just executing agents. If a minister believes a and a civil servant believes b, a is what it’s going to be for the civil service.
I can see the system being swamped with self reported “crimes”, such as … my mother has called KS two-tier, come and arrest her, she won’t resist, as she is 92 and has dementia.
I am Spartacus.
This is how it went in Scotland, before the Law was amended.
The Human Rights Act is riddled with laws which undermine NCIHs. Freedom of belief, thoughts and expression; compensation, unlawful detainment, freedom from discrimination (yes, that can be applied to whites too, amazingly); no punishment without law; freedom from degrading treatment; liberty rights.
Now they can do their serpent thing with semantics as much as they want but the laws are stacked against them and they know it – hence their egg-shell approach when robustly challenged. If they want to continue to bring themselves down so be it. And as an aside, what company from overseas would choose to invest here when laws can be attempted to be so arbitrarily applied?
Well, would they like to inform the traumatised victims of brutal rape and abuse at the hands of the grooming gangs that it was all in their imagination? That their experience was just an “alleged problem” exploited by the “Far Right”… that old chestnut of a distraction from the spectacular failings of successive governments to address the most heinous criminal activity happening regularly on a disturbing scale?
Perhaps they would also like to look the victims of torture and abuse in the eyes and call them racist for making allegations of torture and abuse.
How long till the U.K. moves to political Civil Service appointments
We already have since Tony the Liar and his Liar-in-Chief Campbell forced out all the impartial civil servants whose duty to the state was not considered right for New Labour.
This is precisely what I was thinking
This is typical of institutions, universities, large corporates, MSM in Britain. It has become a self fulfilling prophecy. Namely, the mindset of the people who obtain the senior positions is that of the people who wrote this report. Over the last about thirty years, to even be hired into any reasonably senior roles the candidate had to spout the standard line on identity politics, liberalism, DEI or they had no chance. Even remaining silent is often insufficient. Hence the group think that produces such nonsensical reports. It is self reinforcing and the individuals have both gained employment and senior positions via this mindset. Essentially they have been rewarded for it. This is precisely why changing democratic governments actually changes little as much societal power resides in the leaders and employees in these institutions. It has always been like this but identity politics has been weaponised to make it worse. Nor is it simply a left wing problem, as the ‘top’ public/private schools and universities also push this nonsense, as they are preparing their pupils/students for roles in these very institutions. To fix it we need to reform the institutions and change the people leading them. Otherwise, nothing is going to change in Britain.
I just wish we knew the names of those Home Office civil servants who say things like: “The “alleged” problem of grooming gangs and claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are part of a “Right-wing extremist narrative” and police should record more non-crime hate incidents.”
These people do not represent the views of the majority.
If the UK ever gets a Trump-like breath of fresh air then these people need to be pinpointed now in readiness for the purge.
Re “a leaked Home Office report”…
Another meddling ‘report’…prepared by faceless bureaucrats.
Who ARE these people?!
This is what we need to know, the identify of these unelected people who impose their ideology on the community.
And make the ‘elected’ representatives accountable for their diktats, e.g. the Labour Party, which got into power in the UK on the votes of just 20% of the electorate, that is, 80% of people didn’t consent to being ruled by that shower.
“Stop Press: The Times says the lion’s share of these Home Office recommendations have been “rejected”
Not all? This means that some recommendations will be accepted.
It looks like the home office is full of left wing communists and totalitarianists. How could such a report so much against the British people come from anywhere in our government.
It seems like Starmer has been in there stamping his feet in a child-like way, insisting on his Trotskyist policies being imposed on all of us. That man is a traitor to British values.