So, now we’ve had Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement or ‘budget for growth’ as it has been called. And all the performing monkeys in the House of Comics played their well-rehearsed roles. The Tories clapped and cheered their Chancellor’s supposed economic genius, apparently blissfully unaware that fiscal drag – not increasing tax thresholds in line with inflation – would mean many people paying more in tax than they did before the Chancellor’s ‘generous’ giveaways. Labour, of course, lambasted the statement as an admission of “13 years of economic failure” and warned: “We were told to expect an Autumn Statement for growth. But the economy is now forecast to be £40 billion smaller by 2027 than the Chancellor said back in March.”
The SNP presumably said something along the lines that Scotland’s economy could only grow if the Scots could throw off the oppressive shackles of cruel English colonial rule. At least they probably said something along those lines, I wouldn’t know as I didn’t bother listening. And as for the LibDems, who cares what they said?
However, as these clowns bicker and trade insults from the comfort of their large salaries, much larger expense accounts and enviable pensions, one might wonder if any of them has the slightest clue what is really happening to our country. While our squabbling politicians disagree about almost everything, there is one policy on which they all agree and it is precisely that policy – hitting 2050 Net Zero targets – which is crippling the British economy and making any prospect of economic growth a mirage. Let me give just three examples.
I have written previously on the Daily Sceptic (‘Britain is leading the world in committing economic suicide‘) about our Government’s plan to gift away £500 million of our money to an Indian company which owns ‘British’ Steel to close down its blast furnaces, reduce the amount and qualities of steel it produces and fire more than 2,000 skilled, well-paid British workers. All this is in order to reduce the steel plant’s CO2 emissions to enable Britain to hit its Net Zero targets. Incidentally, this means that any high quality steel Britain needs in the future will probably come from China where it will be made in the same kind of blast furnaces that are being demolished in Britain.
This is a disaster for the families of the 2,000 steelworkers, a catastrophe for the local community and a serious reduction in Britain’s economic output. However, our Business and Trade Secretary, Kemi Badenoch mysteriously claimed this calamity was a brilliant move by the Government and a huge success for the British economy: “The U.K. Government is backing our steel sector. This proposal will secure a sustainable future for Welsh steel and is expected to save thousands of jobs in the long term.”
More recently we have learnt that the part Chinese-owned energy giant Petroineos is going to close its oil refinery in Grangemouth (Scotland) in spring 2025 because it could no longer compete with overseas rivals. Repurposing the site to just a fuel import and distribution business is likely to result in the loss of about 400 of the current 500 jobs at the Firth of Forth site. As energy costs make up more than half the operating costs of most petrol refineries, we can reasonably assume that Britain’s high energy costs played a major part in the decision to close the refinery. There is a direct relation between a country’s use of expensive and unreliable supposedly renewable energy and its energy costs. The higher the use of renewables, the more expensive the energy. The more a country uses cheap and reliable coal, oil and gas for its energy, the lower its energy costs. Britain has some of the highest energy costs in the world due to our use of expensive and unreliable renewables – around twice energy costs in the U.S. and about four times as expensive as energy in countries like China and India.
Neil Gray, the current Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy (yes, there apparently is such a position in the SNP administration), ludicrously claimed this closure of the refinery as a success for Scotland:
This is a commercial decision and it is our understanding that these works will future-proof the site to allow it to continue as an important fuel supply source for years to come. The Scottish Government is committed to working with industry to secure a sustainable future for Grangemouth that reflects our ambitions for decarbonisation and a just transition for Scotland’s industrial sector while recognising the important role it plays in meeting fuel demand in Scotland.
Hopefully readers will have noticed something none of our journalists seem to have noticed. Every time there is another economic disaster for Britain, the politician responsible issues almost exactly the same word salad of meaningless drivel claiming the disaster is a huge success for our country. So next time there is a similar economic catastrophe caused by our economically-suicidal Net Zero rush to economic oblivion – and there will be many more ‘next times’ – readers will recognise the usual verbiage of economically-illiterate nonsense put out by our lying, self-serving political elites.
My third piece of evidence comes from the Office for National Statistics. According to its latest report: “The number of registered company insolvencies in May 2023 was 2,552, 40% higher than in the same month in the previous year (1,825 in May 2022). This was higher than levels seen while the Government support measures were in place in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and also higher than pre-pandemic numbers.” According to one report, the main reason for the rising number of business insolvencies was: “High energy prices and the end of the Government’s Energy Bill Relief Scheme. FRP Advisory’s recent poll of retailers showed that nearly a fifth of retailers were not confident in trading through the next year in light of reduced support.”
While our politicians all claim to know exactly what needs to be done to put Britain firmly on the path of economic growth, their economically-suicidal Net Zero policies are actually driving us towards economic decline and bankruptcy.
Sadly, when Starmer, Rayner and Miliband take over, our country’s plight will be even worse.
As for me, as part of my vote of confidence in Britain’s hopeless politicians, I’m moving all my savings out of Sterling and making sure all my pension fund investments are in international companies which won’t be impacted by the coming Starmer Sterling collapse.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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They hate the country and they hate humanity, the damage is wholly deliberate.
I completely agree, what other explanation could they give for treating the population with such utter disregard and contempt.
They are deliberately dismantling the UK. You can’t “build back better” without first destroying what is already there.
Actually there will be no ‘ build back better’ because the money won’t be there, unless the government decides to mortgage everything to the World Bank – not inconceivable. On top of absent funding we will have a skills shortage although possibly this could be cured by importing the required labour – hmm, not inconceivable either.
The reality is that there will be no build back better and not just for the reasons stated above but simply because if build back better is needed it will be impossible to achieve off a thoroughly broken, disheartened and hollowed-out society.
The real physical destruction of those seeking to immiserate the people of this country would be our only hope but the degenerates currently in charge are hardly likely to see the logic in this proposal.
Thats exactly how every other Marxist regime has operated from the Russian, to the Cambodian to the Chinese regimes, and every one of those “Destroy and rebuild” strategies resulted in the deaths of millions of ordinary people whilst the architects lived in splendour, and my guess is that this new band of dressed up wolves in sheeps clothing believe that this time it will be different.
Yes.
But it is an issue of faux morality for them, not reality.
Unfortunately it’s not just the UK, it’s all Western countries. A lot of NL’s wealth of the last 50 years has been based on the North Sea oil fields, which the government intends to shut down – with nothing to take their place. The news is constantly filled with items about how new companies cannot get an electricity supply as the grid is full, there is not enough capacity for the hundreds of thousands of homes that need to be built for the unending flow of ‘refugees’ and ‘asylum seekers’ (an obscene insult to people who genuinely are refugees or asylum seekers, who probably make up a minor percentage of the whole). In addition, homes cannot be built because of all the stupid ‘green’ regulations, the same ones that are intended to decimate the food supply.
I think the powers behind this can be divided into 2 groups: those who are corrupt b’stards who are doing this intentionally to enrich themselves and their cronies and impoverish millions, almost undoubtedly while being paid handsomely by a foreign power (note the country mentioned several times in the article that will, by coincidence, benefit from all this climate nonsense – all roads no longer lead to Rome but to Beijing). And the morons who stuck their brains up their arse a long time ago, who cannot and will not think for themselves and will virtue signal us all into the modern middle ages. These people are influenced by an increasingly corrupt social media, led by the likes of thick tok – oddly enough, also a creature of the country mentioned several times in the article.
Rather brilliant I supposed – not having to fire one bullet, just sit back and watch the West destroy itself through corruption, greed and sloth.
Rather brilliant I supposed – not having to fire one bullet, just sit back and watch the West destroy itself through corruption, greed and sloth.
Highly poetic justice — the abstract entity created to ensure that them damn Germans never get uppity again and also demand (or – Heaven forbid, that would be 1871 all over again! – actually even get) a state of their own falling prey to what it believed to be its own and perfectly harmless pet sharks. Parliamentarism eating its own people, all in the name of democracy. It’s a real pity that the Chinese are in no position to exploit this because they’ve already stretched their forces to the limit. China only has borders because it so far failed to conquer what’s still outside of them.
In the meantime, due to the climate change, the enormous amount of snow which has fallen in Germany in the last few weeks (predicted to never happen again in our latitudes by climate experts a mere 23 years ago) is – at least – unusually warm snow (that’s not a joke, it’s from an actual German news report).
You would get along nicely with Eva Villardingerbroek (did I spell it properly?) —-Great comment. —When people do something that won’t make any difference you realise they are not doing it for the reasons they say they are. —–A scam.
This […] reflects our ambitions for […] a just transition for Scotland’s industrial sector.
Who gets to define what is or isn’t economically or technologically just for people in Scotland and what’s the definition? Moreover, how come that politicians get to interfere in what’s supposed to be a competitive economy based on some abstract concept of justice not codified in any applicable law? Isn’t that – by defnition – injustice?
I have to live here, and I have shower of squirming parasites that want to pour concrete in gas wells and force everyone who buys a new house to get rid of the gas central heating and install a heat pump. ———–The Green/Red fantasy economics especially in a country like Scotland whose SNP desperately want to be back getting told what to do by Germans in the EU is even more extreme because they see getting more gold stars on their lapel for pretending to save the planet as one sure way of returning to the protection racket, to be rid of the evil Tories. They are even prepared to simply become local administrators following instructions from Brussels and pretending they really are a government and telling their voters they are now “Independent”. —–But Independent of what? ——-The dictionary says Independence means “free from the authority and jurisdiction of others”. In the EU no one is Independent. I believe the Poles get fined half a million euros a day for daring to keep using coal. ——Climate Justice acts in mysterious ways
Climate Change Hoax – leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
I see articles such as this quite often. Typically they start with “Can’t they see that…”, “Why won’t they just…”, “Surely they must realise that…” and so on. The assumption is benign, that politicians are simply confused, befuddled, haven’t quite caught up.
People need to wake up. The government is NOT ON OUR SIDE.
Closing an oil refinery is a “shoot in the foot” move by a load of idiots. Refineries produce a huge range of products, many of which will become many times as expensive, difficult to move and subject to politics in other countries. I want some medicine precursors. These are available on 6 months lead time from China at £1 million a ton. Just what we need!
My guess would be that the ‘technology transfer’ to the new owners has now been completed. Hence, they can fire all the productive people – a highly just transition – and replace them with ⅕ the number of salesreps peddling Chinese products to whoever can still afford them. The SNP and – more importantly – the associated Greens¹ will get a ‘just’ share of the profits and everybody’s going to own nothing and be happy about that.
¹ That’s generally the party which has turned corruption into an art form. In the 1980s, they used to bemoan forests said to be dying because of SO₂ emissions from cars. Nowadays, they’re cutting them down to make space for more windfarms. Deforestation is evil. But only in Brazil and even then, only if the current president is from the wrong party.
I don’t believe the “too expensive to operate” excuse anyway. The only thing a refinery buys may be electricity, the oil is the input and they have lots of it! Many generate their own electricity anyway using whatever excess product that is not selling that week. It is much more likely that a lot of expensive maintenance is required, and the owner doesn’t want to invest the money, as it quite clear that the Scotts don’t want oil, or pruducts, anyway! I remember the row when North Sea Oil was first found and all they were interested in from “Scottish Oil” was the money, and lots of highly paid jobs (many of which they still have)! In reality they really do not want Britain to have any non-imported fuel or energy, so we are beholden to their masters. Obvious really!
Eugenics groups and the green movement is driving this revolution. This has all started as far back as 1960s with some very powerful people and groups and have continually strengthened their game plan over the years. They see humanity as hurtling herdlike towards the cliff. Growth in prosperity and numbers of people are exploding leading to an unstoppable growth in consumption as billions more achieve wealth & prosperity which increases exponentially. They see the earth as being threatened. Cheap oil and gas is the foundation supporting this. The elites globalist goal is to stop this growth in it’s tracks. Once you understand this then every crazy thing these elite globalist groups are doing becomes clear. It’s increasingly becoming obvious this is not a crazy conspiracy theory as it has been portrayedin the past. Climate change is just the tool they are using to stop or curtail the use of cheap oil and gas. Humanity’s growth and prosperity cannot continue exponentially.
“Government is committed to.—“.de da de da de da….It is like those things you hear when you phone a call centre “Your call is important to us”.——-I always visualise a choir of weasels when I hear this stuff coming from the squirming hand wringers. All we get is an endless stream of mandates and regulations to reduce energy use and promote any alternative fuel or energy source as long as it isn’t any good and costs 3 times as much. We now are to get the energy we need from algae, or bat droppings mixed with Ruskoline. ———We must all head to the scrappy with our perfectly good car. We must all chuck the gas oven in the council skip. We must plant 30 trees before flying to Tenerife. Every politician and TV channel talks of the “climate crisis” But if something is s crisis wouldn’t we see it? If there is a “climate emergency” wouldn’t it be apparent? The fact that storms, droughts, floods and sea levels are not getting any worse doesn’t seem to stop people throwing paint at works of art or supergluing themselves to buildings. If someone shouted your house is on fire but you had a look inside and saw no flames, would you not double check and then announce “Everything is fine? ——-But with the climate apocalypse no one checks anything for themselves. They are quite content that David Attenborough, Di Caprio and the King said it’s true and that is good enough for them and off they go down to Asda for more super glue.