Net Zero is the new Brexit, “where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country”, Nigel Farage has said. The Telegraph‘s Michael Deacon agrees: as people realise the true cost of eco-zealotry they are turning against it. Here’s an excerpt.
Nigel Farage would have been well suited to the job [of newspaper editor], because he possesses an almost uncannily sharp news sense. That is, he has a special knack for identifying issues that matter to ordinary people yet have been missed or dismissed by those who grandly assume they know better. Free movement, for example, or the small boats. He was banging on about these problems long before most of his rivals grasped the true scale of their salience. In short: like an experienced editor, he always seems to know what the next big story is going to be.
All of which is why I think it would be a grave mistake for his opponents to ignore his latest comments about Net Zero. Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, Mr Farage said: “This could be the next Brexit, where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country.”
The Reform leader’s foes seem convinced that, in fact, he’s the one who’s out of touch. Look at the polls, they scoff. According to the Observer, “Polling experts believe the attacks on Net Zero could backfire on Reform”, because “the policy is overwhelmingly supported by the public”.
Hmm. I wouldn’t be so sure. Many people may indeed have told pollsters that they support Net Zero. But are we quite certain that they meant it?
Personally, I tend to feel that, if you really want to know whether the public supports Net Zero, the question to ask is not, “Do you support Net Zero?” Instead, the question to ask is: “To help achieve Net Zero, what sacrifices would you personally be willing to make? Would you be willing to give up flying? How much more would you be willing to pay in green taxes? Exactly how much poorer are you willing to be? And, given that Britain is responsible for less than 1% of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, how much difference do you think it would make to global temperatures even if this country somehow achieved Net Zero tomorrow? Oh, and before you answer: did you see the FT headline from February, which read: ‘China’s Construction of Coal-Fired Power Plants Reaches Highest in a Decade’?”
Even asking those questions, however, wouldn’t necessarily lead us to the truth. Because public opinion isn’t always what it seems.
For years before the EU referendum, polls consistently gave the impression that the British public had very little interest in the EU, one way or the other. A week before the 2015 general election, for example, Ipsos asked the public what it considered to be the most important issues facing Britain. The EU didn’t even make the top 10.
Yet, just a little over one year later, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. This suggests one of two things. Either a very large number of voters had always held rather stronger views about the EU than they were willing to admit to pollsters. Or, once they were finally forced to consider the issue in real depth, they swiftly formed views that were an awful lot stronger than the ones they’d held before.
Worth reading in full.
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We were having a discussion the other day here about whether Israel or that situation or China or the demographics of the planet especially Africa posed the greater threat to our civilisation. But really, it matters little while supposedly premier institutions like Cambridge stick the knife into us from within.
I will second that tof.
People who produce that kind of stuff make me want to spit because they have great privilege and are abusing it, at our expense. Despicable. The country we have made them rich and “respected” but that respect is not reciprocated. Sinister, patronizing snobs.
Quite so. And it is much, much more than mere censorship, now. It is the active denigration of anything ethnically European, which, very much in the spirit of anti-Semitism, blames “whites” for all human ills. Worse still, it presents as “colonisation” the habitation and natural dominance within Europe of Europeans, rather suggesting the flat lie: that others were once the majority at some unspecified date; or that we are some kind of inhuman bacillus which has no right to live anywhere, let alone make claims to being an indigenous people.
Woke is nothing but Red N@zism; and whites are its scapegoats. From unreasoning, illogical, perverted ideologies like those currently promoted at Cambridge spring genocide and nothing less. This will be dismissed as exaggerated – but were any of Powell’s predictions mistaken? Did he not calculate the numbers? Did he not point out the cultural effects of mass immigration? Did he not make it crystal clear that these cultural difficulties would be used by the left to advance sectarian claims? Well, then: the next dark steps down the stairwell should be looked at unflinchingly. And they are leading to Hell.
Wokery is like one of those flesh eating disorders, where the organism eats itself. The shark and the hyena are less of a threat then itself.
Here we go again – who defines “problematic?”
A problematic read for me could be any number of things but to give just one example and I have made this point previously on DS, articles that are heavy on graphs, charts and statistics are hard work, for me. Basically I lack the patience. Numbers tend to bore me and graphs remind me of maps. I am useless at map reading.
It is not that I cannot fathom these articles, I simply cannot be bothered. Of course suggesting that such articles should be banned because they “bother” me is nonsense.
Shakespeare will be “problematic” for many dealing as he does with the whole gamut of the human condition. Wilfred Owen – too much raw blood and guts. The Metaphysical Poets – far too philosophical, romantic, whimsical, indulgent for modern sensibilities.
Of course I could go on.
Anybody whose words are committed to print will at some point be at risk of upsetting someone, somewhere and it will always be thus. So where does “problematic” start and end?
I doubt a day goes by, particularly nowadays when I don’t come across an article that I find “problematic” in some way or other. Currently the Israel / Gaza situation often presents “difficult” articles but the bottom line is that I make the choice to read or not. And if I stumble into an article I find unpleasant I can always close the page.
Overt censorship cannot and will not work. Any such imposition will result in a flourishing samizdst industry regardless of any threats or sanctions.
The very talk of flagging “problematic” literature is horrifically Stalinist in its intent and proves beyond doubt that those working in our educational / cultural institutions to impose such measures should have their employment terminated immediately and with extreme prejudice.
Yes, articles such as this are “problematic” – they make my pho# kin’ blood boil.
I think you’ll find problematic defined in a dictionary. Presumably Cambridge library will have a good selection of dictionaries to choose from.
P.S. I have problems with dictionaries re-defining technical terms and setting them as their primary definition. e.g. exponential.
Yep ———-“Problematic”. “Hate Crime” “Climate Denier” etc etc. ———-All with the intention of outlawing anything out with particular narratives that seek to impose will on others. ———Tyranny.
What is ‘problematic’ for these ‘censors’, is it is the older, white, middle class demographic that visit the museums, galleries, talks, theatres, historic houses etc and the ones who are most likely to react to the woke nonsense.
Once your target market disappears so will their jobs and some of them are too dim to see it.
Let me get my old Volume of Mark Twain books out. Oh which one will I choose to read with the recliner up and hot cup of cocoa?———- Maybe “Life on the Mississippi” or “Huckleberry Fin”, or “Puddenhead Wilson”.——————But wait maybe I will see the N word. Oh dear isn’t life so hard these days?
Alas Furedi’s article shows that my own alma mater, Pembroke, is at the forefront of the response to the U.L.s rallying call. My own full response, as a member both of Pembroke and the U.L., here.