Douglas Murray has written an interesting piece for the Times today about what he refers to as “Britain’s new elite”. Who are they? He starts by considering a recent spat between Andrew Neil and Charles Moore in which each accused the other of being part of the “the Establishment”, while, as Douglas says, neither really is – not really. Here is the key passage in which Douglas identifies the people he thinks comprise the current Establishment.
So who is in charge today? What might the elite be right now? Charles Moore addressed himself to this question in his response to Andrew Neil. The new establishment, he suggested, is largely “a public sector affair”. As he said, they run almost everything that comes from the largesse of the state. They are in control of the universities, museums and oversight bodies. They are in charge of the BBC, quangos and all the major charities that receive money from government while also lobbying government.
The fact that this establishment exists can be discerned not least from the private language they have come to employ. These are the people who speak the present-day equivalents of Nancy Mitford’s U or non-U. The “U” of the past used to be about saying “loo” rather than “lavatory” or “sofa” over “couch”. In the present era the elite language signals come from the people who talk about “diversity”, “inclusion” and “sustainability”. They are the people who hold lockstep views on Brexit, LGBT issues and gender fluidity.
If you doubt this then consider for a moment if you can think of anyone who heads — or even sits on — any major public body who holds any of the “unacceptable” views on the questions of our day. Is there anyone in charge of our major institutions who believes that the UK must have a restrictionist immigration system and that the government should enforce the laws of the land when it comes to such matters? Has any one of these people ever spoken out in support of such policies?
What about the grinding intersection that clearly exists at the meeting place of trans rights and some women’s rights? Would any of the women who have spoken out about these matters, from Kathleen Stock to JK Rowling or Julie Bindel, ever be offered the chancellorship of a university in this country, the head of a government body or the chairmanship of a museum? These might sound like rarefied institutions and hardly the sorts of places where the moving and the shaking in the land occurs. And yet that would be wrong. The cultural weather of the country is precisely controlled by the people who control this country’s institutions. And while they are not of any one political party, the people in charge of nearly all such bodies in Britain today are people who have signed up to the exact same set of approved orthodoxies. To step outside these orthodoxies would be to commit a type of heresy.
For all elites have their rules and standards. And the rules and standards of the current establishment are to hold exactly the views that you are meant to hold on issue after issue. Run for a post at such an institution while saying the government’s net zero ambitions are fantasy or that governments across the West need to turn to coal, nuclear or fracking as energy solutions and you will find the coolest reception imaginable. And no job offer at the end of it.
That is the point that Moore made after his bruising doing-over at the hands of Neil. Neil believes Moore is part of the establishment, while Moore clearly believes Neil is. And while both of them are part of something, nobody could say it is the absolutely dominant elite of our time. For while both are masters of robust journalism, neither has the god-like right to cast people out of what passes for society in 21st-century Britain. Moore or Neil might duff an interviewee up and leave them wounded. But they cannot unperson someone. They cannot denounce them as a heretic and ensure that the life work of the opponent is reduced to a radioactive husk.
Worth reading in full.
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A year ago I asked the dept for energy through my mp to conduct a grid stress test, whereby we had freezing temps for a month and no wind in December. I specifically asked for deaths and economic harms arising from this scenario, they point blank refused and gave me a go away pleb reply because they knew the answer. With such ppl in charge it’s inevitable the lights will go out.
Twenty years ago, when Private Eye was readable and Hislop wasn’t insufferable, they banged on about this topic relentlessly, (to no avail it would seem). I recall that the ‘slack in the system’ was a dangerously low 4% of demand. That would go some way to explaining the lack of a meaningful response to your query.
Richard North, who wrote articles and books with Christopher Booker (of Private Eye fame), used to write about this nonsense on his blog 15 years ago. He was predicting brown outs and wrote about the unreliability of renewables, the Drax faux green energy scam, rip off STOR schemes etc but his warnings were ignored.
Wokeman, what do you mean when you say “…whereby we had freezing temps etc”? It’s the “whereby” that I don’t understand. Not being confrontational – just don’t quite understand your initial sentence.
Yet we have been led to believe that wind and sun will give us “energy security” and reduce emissions to save the planet in this “climate crisis”. But insofar as a climate crisis actually exists the UK are only causing 1% of it, and anything we do here will have about as much effect as a mouse biting an elephant. All over the western world governments are leaving cheap abundant energy in the ground and fobbing their populations off with wind and sun, and spending taxpayers money on other fanciful energies like hydrogen and tidal etc. We can all see the result by having a quick check back over our energy bills. They are heading in one direction only —UP. There is a golden rule in energy production and that is to “produce it as cheaply as possible”—–Western governments adhering to UN and WEF pretend to save the planet mandates are producing it as expensive and unreliable as possible. Cheap abundant energy is the driver of the economy and the Progressive Left are using the manufactured climate crisis supposed to be getting caused by our CO2 emissions to control and regulate economic activity. They claim CO2 is causing a climate emergency, but remember CO2 is also something else. —–It is the one gas that can be directly tied to industrial capitalism and that is really what climate change politics is about. Control of wealth and resources, with climate as the plausible excuse. I recall the words of the former head of the National Grid (Steve Holliday) “We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”. —-Yep, and we should all realise why.————— Anti capitalist politics masquerading as science and saving us from the manufactured crisis.
Excellent post
We have energy and financial illiterates in charge, it would seem.
Illiterates, full stop. Products of a so-called education system which rewards conformity, groupthink and unquestioning faith in the system.
“In what world does it make economic sense…..”. This one, on the financial planet. Those that invest in it evidently expect a return.
Highly subsidised inefficient industry. If government subsidised masturbation one could generate a return but nothing productive would be produced.
Of course our “friends” across the channel would never use our dependence on their supply of electricity to blackmail us ….. oh deary me no.
The original iteration of the EU after WW2 was the Coal and Steel Community ….. intended to prevent the more belligerent nations on the continent from having the ability to wage war. Then farming (ie food) was added to the list in the EEC. And now we have the EU and energy supply has been added.
The Not-a-Conservative-Government claims to have left the EU, but they are still applying EU law and regulations across vast swathes of our economy and governance.
It’s articles like this that make the DS so important. It’s a complex subject which David Turner has made very understandable.
The electricity generation industry seems perfectly aware of all this, they also know that the entire grid needs rebuilding but multiple times larger & they know none of these things can happen within the current net-zero timetable.
DS is very important, but what percentage of the population read it?——It is fine for you and I and all the other subscribers to vent about the phony climate crisis and the charade of an energy policy that is supposed to prevent it, but what is really required is mainstream airtime. Who remembers the Channel 4 Matin Durkin Documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” back in 2007? ——-That program really sent the climate and political establishment into a tizzy. We had all the activists spitting blood from their eyes on BBC etc that anyone could dare to question all their phony global warming politics masquerading as science. ——A One Hour Documentary at 9 pm isn’t much to ask is it, considering 99% of all media is poisoning us all with climate propaganda, otherwise known as “official science”?.———Mr Morrison, I am sure you agree that all of the great stuff you write in your articles on the DS could use a bit of a viewing by an unsuspecting public.
I should really have said Chris Morrison and all others who write on this issue.
This article isn’t about climate change or net zero, its about electricity pricing models.
The DS helps to equip people with counter arguments that might get through. You don’t have to be a climate change sceptic to have your eyes opened to the implementation failures. It’s a bit like putting Al Capone away for tax evasion, not his worst crime but a crime all the same.
People won’t revolt over whether sea levels are rising or whatever, but they might over their monthly utilities bill.
We have a Department of Energy and Climate Change. I am sorry but everything to do with energy is also to do with climate. Energy policies and anything to do with the price of energy is directly tied to assumptions about climate. The energy failures and the energy poverty that result from that are a direct result of climate politics.
Full original article on the author’s substack:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/the-great-interconnector-swindle
I was aware of the gas networks but not the electric equivalent. No doubt the tax payer is underwriting along the way as well!
Security? My eye
how hard is it to cut a cable anywhere along its hundred mile length? or, turn off the juice if your feeling shirty with a particular country?
The only true energy Security is to supply your own fuel from your own country and make your own electricity, with enough capacity for a surplus should it be needed!
You can only do that with Coal Gas and Nuclear. They are the only on demand sources of energy. Everything else is part time.
True, I don’t remember the Germans controlling our power grid in 1940.
We are being led – by our government – into an era of ever increasing energy insecurity. It doesn’t take an Einstein to project into the future and see a time when we could be cut off from almost every source of electricity at will. What happens then when the climate alarmists wet dream of no electricity generation by anything other than a whiff of breeze or a pallid sun trying to break through the smog of chemtrails? We will freeze in winter unless we have the money and space to install some form of inefficient heat pump, which, of course relies on electricity so that’s out too. Log burners? They’ll come for those at some point and we’ll have ‘smoke marshals’ looking out for wood smoke. And all of it based on one side of a never publicly debated argument in which we could finely eviscerate ALL their arguments as cleanly as a fishmonger filleting a fish. The climate argument that never was and never will be because all the adherents or perhaps we call them worshippers at the altar of climate emergency have no other outlook or perspective other than what they’ve been indoctrinated with for the past 30+ years. I do wonder if common sense will ever return but I am not holding my breath. Although maybe I should because THEY have poisoned the very air we breathe too. If ever there was a time for a righteous rebellion, it is now in whatever form that rebellion can take. To sit and watch as THEY wage war against us is not an option.
Quality Aethelred.
Cheers, HP!
Demand for power has this year twice exceeded the peak demand of last year.
Perhapd all the immigrants can be employed on treadmills to generate some leccy.
To the phony planet savers Net Zero is an “investment”——-I wonder if any of our readers and subscribers on here can think of any type of investment where you don’t know the cost, you don’t know if it is practical or if the technology required can even be invented and you certainly do not know the outcome. —- Imagine buying a car or a boat or a life insurance policy but you have no clue how much it is going to cost, and you don’t know if the car or boat will sail? And you don’t know if the policy will ever pay out.
Well I am confident that the likes of Claire Coutinho would be so bamboozled by this article that it would sail way above her thick skull.
“Safe and effective” comes to mind for some reason.
The alleged energy security is predicated on ‘the wind is always blowing somewhere’ fallacy. In fact large areas of Northern Europe are becalmed at the same time in Winter for the same meteorological reasons, so if the wind isn’t blowing in Britain, it is likely it will not be blowing in Scandinavia.
The price of electricity is calculated due to a complex formula but the fact is, it is linked to the most expensive source being fed into the mix, not the cheapest. Mostly this is gas, so price of gas determines electricity prices not ‘free’ wind energy.
This has given rise to much weeping and wailing among the UK & European political slime about how to unlink gas from ‘renewables’ so we can get all that ‘free’ electricity.
Inter connectors are only of any use if they work. Have people forgotten already that they can be interrupted, like the second gas pipeline from Russia to Germany? Underwater cables, be they for power or data, can be destroyed. The UK did it even back in WW2. We should not be under any illusion that rogue states with the capacity to damage them know exactly where they are.
IMO investing in more gas fired power stations without fracking for gas in the UK is another bad idea with respect to energy self-reliance. we will be importing 80% of our gas by 2030 as it is let alone if we need more because of new gas fired stations. Bring back coal with modest investment in flue gas scrubbing. Like Lawson sensibly did in 81-83 we can stockpile coal at stations to avoid supply disruptions for months. China has just published record coal production and usage figures for 2023 and it’s only going to continue ramping up. We are being totally stupid on believing all of this green propaganda and making ourselves completely dependent on imports and as a result totally noncompetitive for any industrial base in this country. When have any doomsday green predictions actually happened? The Great Barrier Reef is blooming, the arctic sea ice is going great guns, Antarctic Ice is not receeding, Polar Bears are not dying out. Surely anyone can see like Javier Milei said at Davos recently that Green policies are simply poverty and subservience to central government and burocrats socialism in disguise?
Burn Parliament down, that’ll keep the electorate warm.
It don’t matter if this is dirty or expensive. If it’s not produced in the UK, our nut zero, eco-loons can stroke their egos and polish their CO2 free badges because it doesn’t count towards UK emissions.
Take the Prices Graph BACK to 2019 & you’ll see it’s even a Bigger Rip off than the conclusions. IS the same Graph for GAS. I have written to the CEO of Octopus & these Hedge Funders just get a Dummy to cut & base nonsense.
The DUKES report seems to show 2022 being a net export year and 2021 an import year, yet this article shows the opposite, can someone verify the source of the data used here?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c23a300c8b960013d1b05e/DUKES_2023_Chapter_5.pdf