Amongst much fluff, Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party Conference contained very little new. Much blame was laid at the feet of previous governments. But very little really separates Miliband’s green dreams from his predecessors’ ‘green jobs’, ‘green growth’ mantras. Indeed, this blame was necessary to distract attention from the countless failures of U.K. energy and climate policy since Miliband last had the energy brief. Instead of offering anything of consequence, Miliband aimed to dazzle the conference with high-octane geeky hyperbole, which he and his colleagues are unlikely to be able to sustain in the face of Net Zero’s ongoing collision with reality.
The only tangible policy Miliband committed to in the speech, lauded by the Guardian, was the promise: “All rented homes to meet an [Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)] rating of C or its equivalent by 2030.” Currently, the Guardian explains, “private landlords are free to rent out homes even if they only meet the lowest minimum standard of efficiency, an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of E”. And this policy seemingly crystalises Miliband’s emphasis on “social justice, economic justice, climate justice”.
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The entire net zero project is an assault on the less well off and a big jerk off for the well to do.
In order to drive your car you need to get an expensive new one. The less well off who need to drive their old cars… sorry, you’ll be limited to only certain roads (for now).
Want to rent your property? Fine if you are well off and have the extra cash. If not, too bad.
The entire enterprise is a scheme to sell new tech, new equipment and those who can’t afford it, well just too bad.
It’s absolutely insane. But it’s also cruel and despotic and completely contemptuous of people with lower income who aspire to stand on their own two feet rather than live off handouts and in servitude to the state.
Aaaand physics rears its head, as anyone who has a rudimentary knowledge of engineering knew it would.
I have mixed feelings about Miliband (not about whether he is a hubristic ideologue, that much is clear), but whether he actually truly believes the waffle he spouts, or if he’s fully aware it’s nonsense and is just following his orders as handed down from the powers that (should not) be…?
Either way, I see one of two things happening:
Number one is that the current trajectory continues, and we head further down the road of expensive and intermittent energy, blackouts, cold deaths and mass unemployment (likely); or two, that mass revolt, fracturing of the Labour party and external pressures force the abandonment of Net Zero (possible, as the effects really bite in a tangible manner, but who knows?).
Something has to break at some point.
How can he not understand it’s nonsense? It would require superhuman levels of doublethink. He’s not thick. I have no real knowledge of engineering, I just understand what the word “intermittent” means.
I suggest you consider, he is thick.
Intelligence does not correlate with wisdom and academic achievements are not a perfect measure of intelligence, but in my book you cannot be “thick” and do this:
“In 1989, Miliband gained four A Levels—in Mathematics (A), English (A), Further Mathematics (B) and Physics (B)—and then read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In his first year, he was elected JCR President, leading a student campaign against a rise in rent charges. In his second year he dropped philosophy, and was awarded an upper second class Bachelor of Arts degree. He went on to graduate from the London School of Economics as a Master of Science in Economics.”
The distinction between intelligence and wisdom is so important.
Intelligence is the ability to construct abstract models of the world in your mind.
Wisdom is the result of comparing those models with the real world and correcting for the differences.
Intelligent people who do dumb things are those who are obsessed by their ideas and refuse to accept how they collide with the real world.
There seem to be many of those about and in positions of authority.
I agree with you that Milliband must be very intelligence but is dangerously unwise.
I agree he’s dangerous. I’m not sure it requires wisdom to recognise reality. It requires wisdom to act accordingly. If you’re saying that he simply doesn’t know that his policies are idiotic then you are suggesting that he is disconnected from reality in an extreme way. This is, I suppose, possible, but is tantamount to being mentally deranged.
Mad or bad, not “thick”.
Disconnected from reality in an extreme way is the only explanation I have found for intelligent people wearing masks and rushing out to get what are obviously experimental jabs.
It would be one thing if they inflicted it on others. But when it’s self inflicted harm, disconnected from reality is the only explanation to me.
It’s way more prevalent than anyone of is would like to acknowledge but at the same time it explains so much incoherent madness in our society, particularly amongst policy makers.
I would venture to suggest that the intelligent are most susceptible to it because they are the most likely to become besotted by their own abstract mental constructions, which they are by definition so good at.
Masks were conformism, peer pressure, threat of a fine – mainly. Before and after it was a “rule”, not many did it.
The “vaccine” is a trickier one, though the idea that vaccines are magical is deeply ingrained, as is the idea that doctors and scientists don’t lie. Credulousness and the desire to cling to the idea that we’re not being lied to account for a lot of it IMO.
Credulousness and the desire to cling to an idea are just other ways of saying the same thing: disconnected from reality.
I’m not getting into the reasons as to why people, in particular intelligent ones, chose to ignore reality and prefer to stick to the erroneous programmes in their minds.
Peer pressure may be a reason. Fear of facing the implications and consequences of reality may be another. I don’t deny people ultimately deny reality for perverse selfish reasons. I’m just saying that they do. Often.
And of course there are also sociopaths who see reality very clearly but have no qualms about inflicting misery on others.
There is a difference between ignoring reality and sincerely disbelieving reality, the latter meaning you are kind of bonkers. Maybe both are a form of bonkers. And I suppose the end result is the same, and therapy of some form is required in both cases.
Yeah, fine distinction.
I think what happens is both. We see reality as it is, when it is dissonant with our ideas we have two choices. We either accept reality, factor it in and readjust our ideas, or we reject reality, explain it away, rationalise an explanation of some sort that is consistent with our preciously held idea (intelligent people are best at this) and then we continue sincerely disbelieving reality.
I rhink that’s how it works. At least that’s what I see.
Far easier when encountering the dissonance to call it a conspiracy theory and then bask in the smug glow of not having fallen for it.
I understand that he and his brother were very keen on taking the “v” and inflicted it upon their children too.
Or a psychopath!
Let’s call him one of the intelligent stupid then.
He, along with a lot of other people in government, lacks common sense I would say. Either that or he is saying what he is told to say. However, is it really possible to constantly spout utter garbage if you personally don’t believe a word of it? Possibly, I suppose, if the financial reward is sufficient.
I don’t know Milliband. But I would bet a lot of money he believes his bullshit.
I’ve just seen too many ntelligent people do really stupid things, people I know who genuinely believe truly stupid things act in truly stupid ways, to know that there is self delusion in all of us.
Wisdom, common sense, call it what you like, is the result of the hard work of seeing and accepting reality for what it is and letting clearly wrong ideas go.
No doubt it cones easier to sone and harder to others and intelligence doesn’t help. It may in fact hinder, I think.
In an interview with Andrew Bridgen, he mentioned chatting with Cameron & Osborne talking about doing right for the constituents, Cameron just answered….”it’s all a game”.
It is interesting that large language models can pass IQ tests with ease, now. The developers of AI are super- intelligent, but AI is based on the assumption that intelligence is information-processing. Since AI is the culmination of the pursuit of efficiency, this is the conflation of efficiency with intelligence
You’re right, he’s clearly educated enough to realise that he is a trenchant liar. Someone needs to sit him down and treat him to clear explanations of the engineering and mathematical details in the manner of Alex being given aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange.
I tend to think the principal deficiencies of most political leaders are moral and not intellectual
And he is a thick religious zealot, determined to be the saviour of us all.
He is also, of course, a Marxist and we all know that many tens, or hundreds, of millions have died under the yoke of other deranged zealots of that ilk.
Torches, pitchforks and piano wire are likely to be needed. If these people want me dead then I’ll be tempted to preempt them in kind.
Not the Wind power that be . . . because that wouldn’t be much power.
The House of Commons – the Saudi Arabia of Windbags
You clearly don’t understand. Climate Change legislation has banned the use of physics and economics in order that Net Zero can be fully implemented by 2030.
A key element is whether Trump is returned to Office.
If he is, the USA will ditch all the Net Zero nonsense and without it being on board, the Climatrons know it’s game-over.
If you recall the whole Net Zero thing went on the back burner between 2016 and 2020, but re-emerged with gusto when Dopey Joe went full steam ahead, dragging the US onto the same ruinous course as Europe.
They didn’t give a stuff about it during the covi-bollox either – single use plastic by the thousands of tons, all to landfill… some before it was even used
On Miliband I think the answer is “both”—-He is a cretinous eco fundamentalist and he really does believe the garbage that comes out of his silly mouth.
If the latter happens, maybe the Medazolam cull of the elderly will be brought into public attention. The Scottish Covid Enquiry looked into it, but the Westminster one avoids it with a barge pole. Democide is hard to swallow I guess.
It’s well-known that the billionaire-backers of climatism “invest in elections”, to use the phrase of one of them. Hence, how can there be any question here? Maybe Millibang is so daft that he doesn’t understand that what he’s been ordered to talk about makes no sense. But it’s much more likely that he knows which side of his bread is buttered and simply doesn’t care as his very job is to fool the electorate into accepting things it really shouldn’t be willing to accept.
Everybody who positioned himself as true COVID believer not that long ago also tries to appear as true climatism believer and why would these people suddenly stop their habitual lying just because this time, they are really serious about something which is really a serious issue?
Does that sound particularly likely?
It could be that Reform get in in 2029, if the world is still on its hinges by then.
Perhaps these “unions that have noticed” should have suggested to their members that they all vote Reform in the last election then.
Green Jobs All Going to China
Good. The Chinese then pay for them, not us.
Green jobs. Write out one million times: “Jobs are a cost. A cost is not a benefit.” Then report to headmaster for a thrashing.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; the interests of producers is to be considered only as much as it serves the interests of consumers. Adam Smith.
The aim Dear Mr Minibrain, Order of the Bacon Sandwich, is to produce things that consumers value, want and therefore make them wealthier.
Jobs are a cost. Engaging in activities whose output impoverishes and immiserates consumers by producing products they don’t value or want isn’t justified by ‘creating jobs’ – the cost of which adds to our impoverishment.
New jobs which destroy old jobs are only economically justifiable if they create greater economic activity and greater wealth, making us all better off.
The purpose of economic activity is to serve the interests of consumers, not schitt-for-brains politicians and Ecofascists.
But as Herr Starmwurstfúhrer has pointed out, the problem with free markets is nobody controls them, and consumers annoyingly have choice! Gasp! They decide for themselves what they want, and this means Government cannot control people’s lives and ensure they get what the nitwits in Government want them to have – this is anathema, like garlic to a vampire, for Socialists.
I mean – people deciding things for themselves? The very idea!
Yep——The purpose of energy companies is to produce ENERGY. Not JOBS.
Why does nobody ask Miliband and the other net zero believers:
what is the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere
and what do they want to get it down to?
Net zero rather implies zero CO2 – which would be interesting for life on earth.
Below 150ppm, fatal for all life.
GREEN ——-Cost = Astronomical. Benefit = Small. But why must it all be done by 2030? Remember that if the climate official science is all true that it is “Global Warming” is it not? It isn’t UK warming. But then once you challenge the Green Blob on this, they suddenly change their tack and speak of such nonsense as “we want to be world leaders”. But the only thing they are leading in is impoverishment of their own citizens while the alleged global warming continues to play out (or not) and totally ignores our tiny amount of emissions relative to the rest of the world. Even Tony Blair who you would assume would be totally onboard with the “Energy Transition” and whose government gave us the “Climate Change Act” in 2008 has said that what we do in this country will have no effect on global climate. —-So why do it? ——I have answered this question many times on DS but it always needs repeating. —–It isn’t and never was about the climate.
It’s hard to understand whether Millibrain really believes this stuff. We like to call him thick, but can he really be this stupid? His education would indicate that this subject can’t be that hard for him to understand. Is he that insulated, that his SPADS are just lying to him, or is he lying himself?
As the article says, this is basic physics. The electrolysis of water is GCSE stuff. Without going into massive equations, your “scientific gut” would tell you that to build a windmill, generate electricity, to then electrolyse water to create hydrogen to burn it later to generate electricity would be massively inefficient. Carbon capture, meanwhile, just adds costs to energy (as well as being pointless). Just liquifying natural gas loses 10%,
This is all just complete pie in the sky, I’m genuinely baffled. I get that the majority of the population don’t even have a science GCSE, so are perhaps hoodwinked, but how long will this last? The rubber must surely reach the road soon?
Sadly I think it’ll only land with the majority when the lights go out / internet access & Netflix stops….
“Something is going to break, and it’s either Net Zero, or it’s the Government.”
Both are interlinked so both WILL break but will be hidden by censorship. Blackouts will be blamed on us not trying hard enough and the building of even more wind farms.
The Telegraph today are reporting that industrial electricity prices in the UK are four times what they are in the USA. Who could possibly think that energy-intensive industries might think of relocating their business, jobs and profits – not Miliband.
The unions are indeed beginning to be sceptical.
Britain faces ‘huge social and economic scars’ under net zero, warns top union boss (telegraph.co.uk)