The leader of the GMB union, Gary Smith, has blasted Net Zero, saying: “We’ve cut carbon emissions by decimating working-class communities.” Kate Andrews in the Spectator has the story.
Last week there should have been a great victory for the British turbine industry. Auctions were held for offshore wind power, asking companies to bid for the right to supply electricity at £44 per megawatt hour – a third of the price offered eight years ago. The Government and the renewables lobby hoped that a successful auction would show that wind power could compete with fossil fuels. Instead, developers worried that they couldn’t turn a profit on the amount they would be paid for energy. There wasn’t a single bid.
‘It was very embarrassing,’ says Gary Smith, leader of the GMB union. “Whitehall told us wind was getting cheaper and cheaper. Now there will be no bids for the next round of licences because the wind industry can’t afford to put up the projects.” The auction flop was humiliating not only for the Government but also for Sir Keir Starmer, who has said he wants a Net-Zero carbon electricity system by 2030, along with no more licences for North Sea oil- and gas-drilling.
Starmer’s 2030 deadline is “impossible”, says Smith. “I don’t even worry about it. It cannot be done.” No amount of enthusiasm can overcome these particular hurdles. “The National Grid can’t get [undersea] cables. There are four suppliers of cables in the globe, they’re all booked out to 2030.”
GMB is one of the biggest union donors to the Labour party, but when it comes to oil, Smith’s position is closer to the Tories. “There will be more drilling in the North Sea,” he says. “What are we going to do? Put up the infrastructure and have nothing to plug in? It’ll look great, but we’ll be watching it in the dark.”
It’s a point you’re unlikely to hear made in the House of Commons. “The renewables lobby is very wealthy and powerful,” says Smith. “I think people on the Left, for good intentions, have got hoodwinked into a lot of this.”
Smith has been a GMB member for his entire working life. He joined at 16 when he was a gas service engineer in Edinburgh. Since he became General Secretary two years ago, he has made it his priority to point out the problems with Westminster’s Net Zero targets. He believes the blind rush for a green revolution is harming those who can least afford it: “We’ve cut carbon emissions by decimating working-class communities.”
He describes the green levies that have added £170 a year to every household bill as a modern-day poll tax, “disproportionately paid for by the poorest”. “The poor pay the same as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a leaky, freezing council house. You’re paying basically the same for renewables.”
These kinds of impositions might be tolerated, he says, if there were any sign of the “green jobs” promised by every Government since Tony Blair. “Communities up and down the east coast can see wind farms,” says Smith. “But they can’t point to the jobs.” Much of the green work seems to be either London-based lobbying, or clearing away the animal casualties of wind-farm blades: “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds.”
What’s gone wrong with the green jobs initiative? Smith’s answer is simple – everything is built elsewhere, then imported to the U.K.. “Our energy infrastructure is now built in China, it’s built in Indonesia, it’s built in the Middle East, and, ironically, in sovereign oil and gas wealth-fund backyards.” It often feels like a betrayal of what’s been promised. “We’ve got a wind farm going up ten miles off Fife – it’s been built in Indonesia. We took taxpayers’ money to go to court to overturn a ban on the wind farm, to get [planning] consent… As soon as it’s consented, the project’s sold and the work we’re promised is shipped off to Indonesia.”
Worth reading in full.
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Wow, the politics of dream land! or today’s whimsical leaders, same thing!
Gary Smith needs to stop making this about “Left” and “Right” and wake the f up.
Maybe he is waking up. Who will have him, I wonder?
EDIT: He isn’t waking up. He thinks it would all be fine as long as we make all these windmills in good old England. Someone needs to show him a few electrical energy calculations.
For him, it’s all about “jobs” – whether they are useful jobs or not.
He does recognise the importance and validity of oil, gas and nuclear, though. Thumbs up for that.
He needs to join up the fact that no-one will invest in wind farms, with no-one will invest in making the turbines for wind farms. However, it is, at least welcome that someone from the left appears to have discovered critical thinking, and I hope they become more practiced in the use of it.
Who would have thought that conservatives would morph into communists and a union guy would turn into Thatcher.
“for good intentions”… When I was a child my gran, a most feisty and rather cynical lady, would often say that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. I never really understood what she meant, I sure as hell do now.
Time for people to wake up and understand that governments are not there to give us rainbows and unicorns and make all our troubles go away. They are there to realise and maintain a structure of basic necessities throughtout society that benefits us all, things such as food supply, roads, energy, police and fire departments, real education (i.e. reading, writing, maths, not making up genders, languages and history on the fly).
Unions have the power to help bring about change, let them start truly representing the workers and put real pressure on the governments whose sole purpose at this point is lining their pockets and pleasing their corporate overlords.
A true political leader would buck this nonsense, point out the emperor is sitting in the dark and start building nuclear power stations, firing up coal stations and drilling for oil and gas to keep the lights on until nuclear can take over. The government that does this will have a jump start on the others that still follow the disastrous, greedy corporate-led net zero nonsense and will be able to call the shots. Let others call you a planet destroyer, in a few years they will be on their knees begging for to help them keep the lights on.
Another cracker from JDNL
Sadly Jane we are way beyond redemption via any known political mechanism, those days are gone. The whole cess pit that we are falling in to needs to be drained.
What is required now is a whole new approach to life on this planet. The globalists, the Davos Deviants are intent on complete destruction and the first job of the survivors will be to round the perps up and ensure they remain where the sun don’t shine. Unfortunately, before that can happen there will be massive, world wide suffering and deaths. The future is grim and unless the sheeple wake up redemption will there be none.
As Toby Young of this parish recently suggested to Laura Dodsworth, we need Magna Carta 2.0. The people need to write a charter to keep the politicians in line and we need a mechanism to hold them to account other than just voting them in and out of parliament every 4 years.
There is no tyranny worse than the one that terrorises you for your own good. At least the mass murderer and the rapist sometimes sleep. The eco socialist is permanently awake, plotting your impoverishment.
To me this is just a symptom of a bigger issue. The elite class Globalists that have organized through elite organizations like the UN, Davos, fake charities, oligarchs & are seeking to control the world. Sounds like a movie, I know but it is hard to deny at this point. If they control the 5 eyes countries they are well on controlling most of the world and its wealth. They are not hiding anything. They are seeking to hobble Western countries and their societies in order to control them. They must get rid of fossil fuels because that is what has raised so many out of poverty and given them independence. They have armies of influencers, lobbyists and their representatives in the highest positions of power. They are manipulating elections and controlling government policies now. They know all about electrical power and the effects of wind and solar. Talking about engineering or economic issues is irrelevant. The time to organize political opposition is long overdue.
Green jobs are the summit of mount bullshit. These meaningless concepts are entirely subsidised by the tax payer and simply recycle our money into BBC Metropolitan dinner party fantasy land and the pockets of big business.
Expecting ‘green jobs’ to have an effect on your economy is like expecting your own piss to keep you alive in a desert.
It does keep you alive for a while, but eventually you die a horrible death
What about all the non GREEN jobs they are destroying?
Out of curiosity: Everyone like’s complaining about Bad Stuff™ New Labour did. But why is nothing of it ever repealed? Is parliament really sovereign? Or do we have something like a sham government in No 10 that’s not really allowed to undo or change anyhting Saint Tony’R’Us® ever desired?
You know the answer to your question RW.
No, I actually don’t. I have some conjectures about that and the one I consider most likely is that we have the best government money can buy. Eg, Rishi’s transition from climate crap critical to staunch believer with nothing but one of those COPXY boombaby billionaire happenings in between. This strongly suggests that someone has convinced him that toeing this party line is just more profitable to him. He’s actually still oscillating on that, sort-of like someone who’s trying to please two masters who are naturally at loggerheads with each other, voters he’ll need come the next general elections vs somebody he must also please who’d love to resurrect that Aztec tradition of daily human sacrifies to ensure The Mighty Climate remains in good humours.
Parliament could be sovereign if it wanted to be, though the “international community” might make things hard for us. I suspect a lot of time it suits both parties to throw up their hands and pretend there’s nothing they can do about things – it means they can blame someone else and also means they can see policies pursued that they really want, not the ones they promised before the elections.
To be fair, constantly making new laws and regulations and frameworks and quangos then getting rid of it all and replacing it is quite disruptive for everybody affected. I was a school governor for 8 years and the volume of paperwork and guidance that we and the head and senior leadership team were expected to read, understand and implement was ridiculous. A good argument for governments to err on the side of doing less, not more.
Ahem. Parliament is a NOT sovereign, the people are. A detail that has been carefully buried.
1215 – Magna Carta (the written British Constitution) was an unconditional surrender document, whereby King John ceded sovereignty to the people, binding his heirs and successors in perpetuity.
A key element of Magna Carta was no taxation without consent.
Parliament and the Govt have no legitimate power over us and taxing us is theft. They impose their power and usurp our sovereignty by using the coercive powers of the State.
Revolution would be if enough people knew and understood this and said, “Get lost”.
Well, maybe, but that wasn’t really my point. Parliament is sovereign in so far as it can repeal previously made laws with relative impunity, provided they don’t violate our slightly vague “constitution” (though that didn’t stop them abusing the Public Health Act to do lockdowns). In the context of RW’s question, it is therefore “sovereign” over previous legislation, and not bound by it as long as previous legislation is repealed.
Regarding taxation, I am not a legal expert so I am unsure as to the meaning of “the common consent of the realm” which seems to be the wording used. I doubt when it was written they meant every last adult human had to agree to taxes being levied. I imagine the “realm” meant the landowners who were reserving the right to cut up rough if the monarch got greedy.
1215 – Magna Carta (the written British Constitution) was an unconditional surrender document, whereby King John ceded sovereignty to the people, binding his heirs and successors in perpetuity.
Not really. It was an abortive attempt to negotiate a peace treaty between king John and a set of rebel barons neither side ever intended to keep. Both sides switched to open warfare basically immediately afterwards instead. It continued to be resurrected (and reanulled) as political tool by whatever party considered it useful. Nowdays, all but three clause have long since been official repealed.
You might like to read this to see how sovereign parliament is.
https://pjcjournal.wordpress.com/common-law-vs-statutes/
As I said above, this thread started with a post asking why previous legislation isn’t repealed more often, and as I said above I think parliament is certainly sovereign over previous legislation – I am slightly unclear on UK constitutional law but I am not aware there is much basis for anyone challenging legislation on the basis that it violates the “constitution”, which is certainly something that happens in the United States.
The debate here about the extent to which parliament is sovereign and whether we are governed by consent is interesting but not directly relevant to the original question.
The distinction in the piece you link above between “laws” (by which the author seems to mean natural laws, whatever they are) and “statutes” is a bit vague to me. Even what are generally agreed upon as natural laws vary considerably across history and cultures, and there are very few of them – don’t murder, assault, steal, equal rights, parental rights etc. Even those are embodied in statute to enable courts to enforce them in an agreed and consistent way. Countries with written constitutions limit the power of the legislature, though in practice as we saw with lockdowns that can get thrown out of the window if you manage to get enough people on board with your evil schemes. Ultimately we are governed by consent and the only guarantee against tyranny is the willingness to withdraw that consent. A written constitution is only worth the paper its written on if respect for it is strong within the place it operates. In the US, it still counts for something, in other places, less.
I think, ToF, given the extreme difficulty of organising us peasants to do something against the wishes of our politicians, the only guarantee against tyranny is if our politicians don’t go there.
Sadly seems a bit like that sometimes
Nothing is repealed because ‘politics’ is a Continuum, and only the name changes on the Buggins turn principle Labour – Conservative – Labour – Conservative – rinse, repeat.
I’ve experienced (to varying degrees) every British government since Maggie Fetzer (German verb (zer-)fetzen, violently tear to very small pieces, German pronounciation rhymes with Thatcher) and thus, I’m pretty certain that the sequence of strangly impotent PMs-for-a-day-or-two only started with Cameron.
Parliament isn’t sovereign – that’s a lie that has been repeated so often that the public believe it to be so. We the men & women are sovereign. Without our consent there is no government in the UK. Sadly that memo hasn’t been circulated as widely & as loudly as the lies…
If the trade union leaders don’t wake up sharpish they need to understand they will end up on the scrap heap just like their members and their pensions gone too.
This guy simply needs to stop funding Labour which is an anti-working-class party of the globalized academicrate.
Apart from the Public Sector ones, of course.
As long as people like Gary Smith think that cutting CO2 emissions is the answer to whatever little climate change is caused by humans we’re bolloxed. It’s not CO2 Gary Smith, cutting beneficial gas CO2 emissions won’t change a thing climate-wise but it WILL destroy the West and cause the deaths of millions if not billions of people world-wide.
This “CO2 Will Kill Us All” hysteria will continue until people like Gary Smith wake up and say something like “Not only will Net Zero cost thousands of Union jobs, it won’t do a damn thing for the climate. We’re throwing TRILLIONS at a false solution.”
The solution to the non existent problem is way worse than the actual non existent problem.
Yes well the Unions installed and maintained the Labour filth in power from 1997 with the Blair creature setting this hare running and signing Britain up to the EU madness.
So – serves ‘em right. No sympathy here.
“hoped that a successful auction would show that wind power could with fossil fuels”. —-This is a bit like saying a hedgehog can compete with an apple. ——–Fossil fuels are full time energy. Wind is part time energy and needs the fossil fuels (gas) running all the time to step in when the wind stops. It is kind of like having to own 2 cars because one of them only works some of the time. Net Zero is what happens when you decide that all of your junk has somehow got to fit in your garage but you never checked to see how much junk you actually have or what size your garage is. And you had no intention of actually check ing any of those things, you simply decided the junk was going in that garage. Isn’t that insane? Yep. Net Zero is INSANE. But the difference is that the people indulging in this Net Zero insanity know exactly what they are doing.
Anybody remember Johnson’s famous words?. “I want us to be the Saudi Arabia of wind”
Honestly; the combined IQ of parliament must be in single figures.
Maybe the buffoon thought we could sell wind to Saudi Arabia
The GMB leader seems to be waking up to the fact that the modern Labour Party bears no resemblance whatsoever to the traditional Labour Party.
In the early 20th century the Labour Party was created to advance the social and economic position of the working class.
The 21st century Labour Party is deliberately destroying it.
I’ll take this guy seriously when he declares “there is no climate emergency”.
Gary Smith is right. Labour’s Green Prosperity Energy Plan is totally undeliverable.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/ed-stoned-labour-net-zero-plan-undeliverable