This is yet another thing that was never predicted by those wonderful, high certainty, government policy-influencing computer models.  No doubt this warrants another round of fat bonuses at the Met Office this year!

Well, it might if the EU was the same as the single market, but the two are very different beasts.  Clarke is demonstrating hubris born of him being wedded to the advent of a single political entity based in Brussels, with member states assimilated into one body politic and in control of nothing of consequence.  To realise his dream, Clarke is making deliberately deceitful and misleading threats such as the one above concerning trade.

But when it comes to letting the EU determine for us what trade agreements we sign up to and what conditions we have imposed on us, all is not as rosy as Clarke would have us imagine it to be.

News filtering out from Canada reveals that the trade agreement currently being negotiated between Ottawa and Brussels – the biggest deal for Canada since its agreement with the US – is in trouble.  Canada’s Globe and Mail explains that:

Canadian trade negotiators are running up against bureaucratic infighting among European Union officials, who are backing away from earlier commitments in talks for a Canada-EU trade deal – increasing the chances Stephen Harper will return home empty-handed after a week-long trip to the region.

One of the Canadian negotiators has gone on to reveal that:

The EU side seems increasingly incapable of getting its act together to close a deal.  The various competing directorates within the EU are fighting each other, which is leading to erratic moves such as backing away from earlier commitments – actions that are on the verge of bad faith. The EU has to demonstrate it’s serious about cutting a deal.

While the EU exhibits bad faith with the Canadians, the UK is powerless to hammer out a deal independently with the Canadians because we are not at that Top Table, so beloved of David Cameron, and do not have the right to agree anything outside the EU’s common position.  This is British influence in the EU laid bare.

It is against this backdrop that, according to Cameron, Clarke and the rest of the pro-EU incompetents, the UK would be harmed by extracting itself from the EU’s political structures.  Yeah, it will be really painful leaving behind a grouping that can’t get its act together on anything other than how to afford itself ever more control over us.

I read with great interest the report of your comments to the BBC on the subject of tax avoidance in the context of morality.

In your interview you said of tax avoidance that, ‘It is sinful, simply because Jesus was very clear; pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’  Perhaps, My Lord, you would care to give consideration to the fact that much of our wealth belongs to us and does not belong to today’s Caesar at all?  To accuse individuals and companies of being sinful for finding ways to ensure they only pay the tax for which they are legally liable, is frankly nonsense.

But there is an additional concern here, which is the notion you raise that by only paying the tax for which individuals and corporations are legally liable, they are  ‘not only robbing the poor of what they could be getting, they are actually robbing God, because God says “bring into my store house all the tithes”‘.

This is a disgraceful and outrageous assertion, My Lord.  Government policy throughout the world is far and away a greater cause of poor people being deprived than any other factor.  Your assertions seeks to position government as an absolute force for good, while ignoring the fact so much poverty in the world is caused by government spending decisions.  To lay the blame for poverty and hunger at the door of those people and businesses that do not wish to see the money they have earned squandered on electoral bribes, gerrymandering, servicing vested interests (including at local government level), and feathering the nests of powerful supporters, rather than directed at essential public services and infrastructure, is an appalling inversion of what should be considered as moral.

Where do you see government being ‘just’ or ‘walking humbly’ as it uses taxation as a tool of coercion and takes more than it needs?  Surely, by coveting their neighbour’s goods and taking what they are not owed, it is the government robbing God, the world and my neighbour.  Government has a duty to take only that which is needed, but it refuses to be bound by that covenant and abuses its power.  Why should taxpayers tolerate such abuses at the expense of them and the well-being of their families for who they have responsibility?

The Anglican Church, more than most other institutions, has good reason to doubt the moral credentials of the government, which increasingly interferes in matters of conscience and spirituality and undermines the practice of one’s faith in the pursuit of secular orthodoxy.  It would serve you well to remember that before presenting government as a moral authority only held back from good works because taxpayers strive to retain what is lawfully theirs.

For an educated and intelligent man, your comments point to a naivety and childish simplicity that while it may be touching for some, is profoundly disturbing and results in an articulated ignorance that does more harm than good.

Yours sincerely,

AM

Have you noticed how until fairly recently weather forecasts just predicted the weather that was expected (to the usual mediocre standard).  But now it is a more common sight to see the weather forecaster standing in front of a split screen with the map on the left and large ‘weather warning’ triangles on the right.  But the weather warnings are seldom extreme events, they are the same kind of conditions we have long been used to on a sporadic basis, but now instead as simply being accepted as the varying nature of our weather they are presented in a way that deliberately suggests the conditions are somehow extreme, out of the ordinary and cause for concern.

I can think back to a May in the late 1980s where I was on my way to the coast and we had snow in southern England.  I can think of numerous occasions where heavy rain resulted in serious floods that covered playing local fields and football pitches.  Even ditches became small rivers and we kids built makeshift rafts to sail along them and try to sink each other.  I can think of several rotten summers where school holidays were characterised by rain, lack of sun and cooler than usual conditions that made a day jumping in the local river and larking about on the riverbank in our swimming trunks less than balmy.  What we are seeing now is not exceptional at all, and I doubt previous generations going back centuries would find them exceptional either.

The issue here is not that the weather has suddenly got very bad, it is that the weather is failing to conform with the Met Office’s predictions for a global warming thermaggedon.

The real reason for this hyped up meeting it that, having had to quietly and reluctantly dial down the rhetoric on ‘global warming’ in the face of observed events, the Met Office is seeking to reinforce its push of the ‘climate change’ narrative, where even conditions that run contrary to the Met Office’s previous predictions (not warmer, not drier, and not less snowy after all)  just happen to have the same human induced carbon root cause requiring the same politically driven taxpayer funded ‘solutions’.  There is nothing new under the sun here, apart for the desperate and cobbled together justifications for ‘action’ being presented to us.

Anyone being taken in by these hyperbolemongers deserves to be taken for fools.  The Met Office remains a poorly performing laughing stock devoted to hype in service of their and the government’s vested financial interests.

The piece opens:

It’s an interesting take, to focus on the extent of subsidy paid to wind farms against the number of wind farm jobs that exist.  But that doesn’t take into other subsidy that pours into the industry from other taxpayer funded sources.  Also it encompass jobs that were focussed on building and installing the subsidy farms in the first place, so the piece undermines itself.  When that happens it doesn’t do any favours to those of us opposed to the government’s insane and utterly disastrous reliance on wind farms for baseload power, for such pieces leave us open to attack for inaccuracy.

What the piece should do is remind people that creating jobs which are reliant on public subsidy does nothing to boost the productive sector of the economy.  It is simply another government mandated burden on the consumer/taxpayer.  That is because the roles that have been created at these subsidy farms would not have been without legislation designed to skew the energy market to underpin uneconomic wind farm development, and without rules put in place to confiscate extra money from us to service their upkeep we would not be paying so much for our energy.  The energy market would not have opted for wind if left without interference to develop the most cost effective and reliable energy solutions that would be delivered at less cost to the companies and their customers.

But while we are on the subject, let’s take a quick look at the contribution being made to our power needs by all those grotesquely expensive wind turbines pitting the countryside up and down our nation, within the last hour…

 
1.4% is a disgraceful return for the huge sums of money that have been taken from us to service the government’s unjustified and pressure group driven decarbonisation agenda.  Hanging would be too good for these people as punishment for the wholesale theft we have suffered at their hands and their justification for it on the strength of an unproven hypothesis.

They should count themselves fortunate that most people have, as intended, been distracted from real issues affecting all our lives by mind numbing TV programmes and glitzy trivia.

For those who do not watch the American TV series ‘Revolution’ on Sky, the image above won’t mean much (*see bottom of this post for a brief explanation – no spoiler).  But those who do will understand this dismissal of the UK government’s increasingly unhinged energy policy and wishful thinking for keeping the lights on.

In an ICM survey of more than 2,000 people carried out in the UK for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 64% of respondents said they were worried about the prospect of power cuts, and 93 percent said they are concerned about higher gas and electricity bills.  Their concerns are entirely justified.

But what is both striking and disturbing is the language used by a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change when asked to comments on the findings.  They are reported as saying:

The U.K. energy system is, by international standards, extremely resilient.  We are confident that the reforms we’re introducing, the cross-party support they enjoy, and the interest we’re seeing in the market, will mean the lights stay on for the long term.

The official response of the responsible government department only claims they are ‘confident’ the lights will stay on, not that ‘the lights will stay on’.  That should set alarm bells ringing – assuming there is sufficient power for them.

As for being resilient by international standards, perhaps when compared to Tanzania and Nepal it is today.  But thanks to the insane environmentalist-driven policy agenda being pursued by the government, which is shutting down reliable energy generating capacity and only replacing it with vague ambitions, hopes, platitudes and unreliable wind turbines, in years to come there will be less of a distinction.

There is also a reference in the Bloomberg story to government plans for new generators and grid upgrades, which leads us into a whole other dimension, the flaws about which have been rehearsed elsewhere in months gone by.  But in the context of the current focus the issues and possible solutions are worthy of revisiting, which we will do here later.

* I won’t spoil the plot for those who might decide to buy the Revolution box set in the future, but the plot line is that in a single event, all electrical power across the world has been turned off, but mysteriously when in close proximity to one of the pendants the any item with electrical circuitry works again.

After weeks of ‘Concrete Willy’ Hague yapping at the door of the White House like a deranged Pomeranian, begging the Americans to support the ‘Free Syrian Army’ with materiel support, the US government has now decided that its ‘red line gamechanger’ on the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime has been crossed and that it will directly aid the rebels.

There is no way this ends pretty.  It is clear that the west has failed to learn a damn thing from previous ill-judged interventions and the needless fighting of proxy wars.

It’s bad enough there is a desire to provide arms, training and assistance to the Free Syrian Army (short of sending battalions to actually engage the Syrian forces and their allies).  The rebel side is badly fragmented with ineffective command and control and finds itself in bed with the very worst Sunni Islamist extremist elements, who hate the west with a passion and want to turn Syria into another Yemen before constructing a hardline Islamic state that would make what is quietly happening in Libya and Egypt look like amateur hour.  Weaponry sent to Bashar al-Assad’s opponents will inevitably fall into the hands of those who will gleefully turn them on the west, or Israel, at the first opportunity.

But making it that much worse is the small matter of US, British and French involvement inviting a violent response by Iranian backed Shi’ite terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, which support Assad and are currently pushing the rebels back out of areas previously captured from Assad’s military.  It also sets us on collision course to a proxy war with Putin’s Russia, which is keen to re-assert itself as a major world power and sees proxies as the route to redeveloping its global influence in lieu of a re-strengthened military machine.

It won’t be the politicians who suffer the known consequences and known unknowns of involvement in a conflict that does not directly threaten us, but ordinary people who comprise the soft targets these terrorists prefer to target.

We don’t have any skin in this game and there is no need for us, the French or the Americans to get insert ourselves into the Syrian conflict.  It is insanity to hand over weapons to people who are already motivated to turn them on us, and it is insanity to provoke a possible hornet’s nest of terrorist activity directed against us and our interests by groups that currently leave us alone.

When the matter comes before the House of Commons, MPs must vote down the government’s request for permission to arm the rebels at the expense of British taxpayers, some of whom could end up victims of retaliation for our involvement.  We have no place in Syria’s conflict and should stay the hell out.

Oborne postulates that most people believed social media, in various forms, would be a very good thing for political debate and that it would make public life more open and democratic.  He declares that while there is some evidence that this is the case, there is also a great deal of evidence that the reverse is also true, going on to say:

Reading Oborne’s piece it’s evident that some people still struggle to make complex or thoughtful arguments even when afforded 1,213 words in a national broadsheet.  But anyway, I digress.

The sum of Oborne’s delicate rant about Lord Ashcroft is this commandment:

Thou shalt hide, ignore or at the very least play down any information or story that in any way demonstrates David Cameron is not as wise/popular/capable/hunky* as Oborne imagines him to be and wants everyone to believe him to be; any reference to any story that embarrasses the Conservatives when they behave badly; any focus on the strategist whose only concern is electoral victory irrespective of what it means for the British people.

There is a certain desperation as political ‘pundit’ Oborne is calling for any dissent or criticism of Cameron to be eradicated.  It is unhealthy and dangerous to demand that a person should be held as beyond scrutiny and criticism, and that people should self censor facts about that individual and his performance in case it undermines the exalted position Oborne feels he should be afforded.

What we are seeing is Oborne tilting to the cult of personality, irrespective of Cameron’s ability or performance.  Oborne has finally gone over the edge and if any proof were needed that he cannot be relied upon to provide objective comment, this is it.  It is certainly impossible to miss the welling-up of cult-like adoration that Oborne feels for Cameron as he rounds off his piece thus:

So here is a word of well-meant advice for Lord Ashcroft: it’s time to quit the Tory party. You are no longer happy in it, and it has never felt entirely comfortable with you. The time when rich men, especially those with a record of (legally) avoiding British tax, could buy a political party has gone. If you want to make persistent, childish and personal criticisms of a Conservative prime minister, it is much better that they should be made from the perspective of a private citizen.

And here is a word of advice for the Prime Minister. If Lord Ashcroft carries on using this treacherous and disloyal language, stop pretending not to notice. Strip him of the Conservative whip, kick him out of the party, and set an example.

This is what passes for political reporting these days.  This is how Oborne thinks he is serving his readership.  My God, how far the fourth estate has fallen.

The tired old line that HMRC should investigate Google, for doing something Hodge accepts is within the law, was trotted out by the tired old hypocrite as red meat for the spittle flecked trade unionists, those who expect to be kept by the productive part of the economy and some smaller businesses that due to their domestic nature are unable to benefit from transfer pricing and structuring their activities across different jurisdictions.

It is increasingly annoying to see individuals and companies being demonised for taking legally compliant steps to keep as much of their money as they possibly can rather than fork it over to the government, as various politicians and talking heads are rolled out to declare this has ‘cost’ the ‘country’ money, often suggesting that others will have to make up the shortfall or ‘services’ will need to be cut.

Hodge did it again today declaring Google’s actions ‘cost’ the country money and that they are not paying their ‘fair share’.  Firstly, it is not the country’s money to begin with and secondly, Google’s actions have not incurred a single penny of state expenditure so there is no cost.  The only ‘cost’ to the taxpayer will be any ministry activity stemming from demands for waste-of-time ‘investigations’ into activity that  is legal under EU law.  However, should the companies feel pressured into paying more tax than they are required to do under the law, there is likely to be a cost to customers of those businesses which would probably increase prices to preserve its margins to satisfy returns for entrepreneurial owners and investors.

But what is most annoying is the unchallenged platform afforded to idiots like Hodge which sees her given a free pass to make her ridiculous assertions.

Not once has a single interviewer on national TV or radio, speaking to these people of prestige, ask them to qualify their claims that money not taken from people is a ‘cost’, much less justify why exactly the government needs all this money to begin with and detail what it is spent on.

Not once have they challenged them to explain why the amount taken from us keeps increasing but the scope and delivery of services is continually reducing.

Not once have they demanded an answer about why discretionary spend on non-essential bribes and whims seems to continue unimpeded and only the essential services government should be focussing on are affected by downward changes in spending allocation. Make no mistake, spending by the government is still rising, fuelled by increased taxes from a growing workforce and dangerously irresponsible levels of borrowing.  This witch hunt is a deliberate ploy to distract us from the government’s abuse of our hard earned money.

Taxation is necessary to fund essential infrastructure and services.  Taxation laws should be clear and simple.  The amount of tax taken from individuals and companies should be kept the the minimum necessary to provide only  essential infrastructure and those services that safeguard the vulnerable in our society and those in need of a hand up.

But taxation is abused by the government, which gets involved at great cost in matters that should be none of the government’s business.  Government abuses taxation to bribe voters and further vaguely ideological ends by confiscating our money and redistributing it in a deliberate effort to make people dependent on the state while restricting our power and ability to choose for ourselves the most beneficial ways the money can be spent to support our families. Dressing up this witch hunt as being in the interest of the British people is disgraceful.

While government continues to use taxation as a tool of coercion and to further its own interests at the expense of ours, every single legal loophole that enables an individual or a company to reduce the amount of tax for which we are liable is not just appropriate, it is imperative.

In recent surveys held by the British Chambers of Commerce, and now by the SME networking business, BNI, business owners have been asked if they want the UK to remain in the EU and continue to import and export with our neighbours, or to leave.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a substantial majority of business owners, given this false choice, will opt to stay in the EU in order to preserve their overseas trade.  Why is it a false choice?  Because in none of these surveys have the business respondants been asked if staying in the EU would matter to them if the UK left the EU but remained part of the single market and trade continued as freely with EU states as it does today.

These surveys are inherently dishonest, therefore their results are completely meaningless.  Reporting the results in the way the Telegraph has today, while making no mention of this fundamental, deliberate and persistent flaw in the questioning, means what we are reading is nothing less than blatant propaganda produced by people who restrict the options to choose from for a reason.

Doesn’t Cast Iron Dave realise that the UK is not at the top table of a number of international institutions because British governments have handed our place over to the European Union to ‘speak for us’ as one of 27 nations with often conflicting interests and needs?  For an ‘instinctive Eurosceptic’ he does seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time parroting the EU’s line and encouraging us to be fully assimilated, paid up members of it.

Perhaps it’s because our glorious media prefers not to remind people about the independence this country has given away, and certainly doesn’t want to shine a light on inconvenient facts such as those that show countries like Norway and Switzerland have seats at the top tables of more international institutions than the UK, as members in their own right, speaking for themselves with confidence on the world stage.

It will only be a matter of time until there is an attempt to replace UK and French membership of the UN Security Council as permanent members with an EU seat instead.  What then for Cameron’s drivel about the UK’s place at the top table?

Cameron claims that Eurosceptics are in ‘denial’ when we claim that the UK could go-it-alone and succeed in the global economy.  The fact is Cameron is not only in denial when he claims that the UK cannot, he is deliberately and knowingly lying.  There is absolutely no need for the UK or any other nation to surrender control of itself when everything EU membership supposedly delivers can be achieved through simple cooperation between neighbours.

Actually, perhaps it’s not dunces that Eton and Oxford are turning out, but rather deceitful Europlastic quislings who argue that Britain is not sufficiently capable of speaking for itself on the world stage and not strong enough to manage its own laws, trade relationships or control its own borders when other smaller and less well resourced countries manage perfectly well.  Yes, that sums up Cameron to a tee.

‘Bias by omission’ is the phrase that generally explains these instances where the British public is kept in ignorance about developments they would be very interested in if the media deigned to report on them.

It is bias by omission that we are witnessing today as the British media – working in concert to keep their readers in the dark – turns a blind eye and deaf ear to the important story about the decision of the Swiss people, via a democratic referendum, to tighten up Switzerland’s asylum rules. You can read the story and coverage of the implications of the Swiss vote over on Richard’s blog.

This omission is noteworthy as the subject is one which provokes substantial debate in this country and focuses attention on the inability of the UK, as part of the EU, to control its own borders or asylum and immigration policies.  Perhaps it is this, more than anything else, that the establishment and its media poodles want to deflect attention from.  Any debate that shines a light on the negative and often harmful consequences of EU membership must not be aired, in case it prompts people to hanker for the UK to once again manage its own affairs.  Further, any example of real (if imperfect) democracy in action, compared to the system of elected dictatorship that operates in this country, might have British serfs making demands to determine matters for themselves in a similar fashion.  That of course would never do.

Following the howls of protests from the media about proposals for regulation of their ‘industry’ underpinned by statute threatening the so called freedom of the press, this example of propaganda through silence is as deafening as it is contemptible.  Perhaps the only freedom that matters to the press is the ability to remain part of the establishment and act as its outrider, set apart from the people and operating against their interests, and occasionally throwing a bit of inconsequential red meat to the masses to give the impression of challenging the prevailing orthodoxy.

Politicians often butter up the media by repeating the mantra that we have the best and most effective press in the world, which challenges, probes and investigates before reporting fearlessly.  The evidence, such as this today, shows what utter bollocks that idiotic claim is.  Perhaps what they really mean is that the British press is the most craven and compliant.

Either way, this latest example of bias reinforces that the British people cannot trust the British media to be fair and impartial.  It is not anything of the sort, not even remotely.  Our press is not of the people for the people, it is the political class’ bulwark against the people.  The British media is not being useless when its collectively fails to report important stories in this way, it is simply being complicit in furthering the agenda of the political class by working to keep people in ignorance and maintaining the establishment’s grip on us.  It is on their side, not ours.

If you’re saying to yourself that this is overblown, hyperbolic, conspiratorial nonsense then pause and take some time to think in depth about why we are seeing the events that are currently unfolding, quietly and virtually unnoticed, in the UK today – a UK that is a modern, industrialised society.

Think about the impact on this country’s increasing population, that shows no sign of slowing its growth, of the political decisions that have been taken to prevent the construction of reservoirs that would increase our water capacity, the purpose of which is to force our growing number to use less water than is currently used by the smaller number of us today.

Think about the impact on this country’s increasing population, that shows no sign of slowing its growth, of plans being hatched right now, the purpose of which is to force the larger population in the future to use 27% less energy than is currently used by the smaller number of us today.

Think about the impact on this country’s increasing population, that shows no sign of slowing its growth, of regulations put in place the purpose of which is to prevent the larger population in the future disposing of waste efficiently, by reducing landfill capacity and so far quadrupling the amount we are charged for getting rid of our refuse.

These are just three examples of the assault on the British people by conducting a controlled reduction in the capacity and provision of the essentials for life itself, essentials for the way of life that has developed and sustains us, and essentials for effective sanitation to maintain a healthy life.  And in each of these examples not only is capacity and provision being reduced dramatically per capita, but the corporate monopolies that have been granted control over these essentials are being permitted and/or compelled to drive up the charges for them – not only stripping away from us more of our disposable income and securing huge profits for themselves, but also reversing decades of effort and action to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have affordable provision.

One would typically expect a tipping point to be reached where the population draws a line and challenges the establishment that, rather than implementing common sense and affordable solutions to maintain standards and quality of living, is instead so committed to adversely affecting people’s lives.

With that in mind, now think about why government seizes every opportunity to control and restrict the right of people to assemble in protest, monitor who communicates with whom, carpets our towns and cities with CCTV cameras that have ever increasing capability, seeks to harvest our DNA and centralise our health records, furthers the proliferation of court hearings held in secret and imposes harsher sentences on people who reveal the details of secret cases than on those who commit violent offences.  Could it be anything to do with keeping the people in check, so protest against the damaging and oppressive actions can be prevented and the agenda can be pursued to the advantage and benefit of the elite few?

There is more besides, but these examples illustrate the point clearly enough.  At the end of the line of the erosion of our liberties and privacy is the establishment’s desire to control and dominate the people, treating all of us as suspects to be monitored and controlled and trotting out the cant that if we’ve nothing to hide we’ve nothing to fear – and of course there is the corporates’ desire to cash in by providing the ‘solutions’ at our expense.

Clearly bored (for the time being) of demonising companies who quite properly seek to minimise the tax they pay, Margaret Hodge has moved the Labour Party agenda on to eeevil reduction of central funding to local councils.

Never mind that councils now derive more income from the charges and fees they impose on residents than they collect in Council Tax.  Never mind that the budgets of local authorities are loaded with spending commitments on non-essential activities that have never been to voters for approval.  Never mind that the funds from central government that local authorities are being to work with are no lower than they were only several years ago.  Never mind that just before the end of each financial year departments are falling over themselves to spend money left in the budgets so they can claim the same amount or more in the next budget round.  No, the councils are apparently on the edge of catastrophe.

This is all about power.  Whoever controls the money wields the power.  The problem is, as I saw all too clearly when a councillor in a mid-sized authority, not only do voters have no say in how the money is spent, elected councillors often have little idea exactly how much and where money is being spent.

The proliferation of ‘cabinet’ run councils and devolved powers to council officers mean the elected members have little to no control over where the money goes.  To molify them, councils now give members a sum of money each year to spend within their ward on a local initiative – subject to approval.  In my local authority the Labour councillors in one ward pooled their money to fund a one-day festival for ethnic minorities.  Me and my fellow ward councillors pooled our money and used it to fund SmartWater being put on residents’  personal property in a burglary hotspot.

Thousands of pounds were spent across the borough each year, but not a penny could be spent on the essential services an authority should be providing.  Regardless of the utility or otherwise of the councillors’ decisions, the fact remains councils and councillors were focussed on discretionary spending.  By way of another anecdotal example, a nearby authority broke its own funding criteria to divert hundreds of thousands of pounds to a maintain a theatre that was failing because it didn’t offer anything that enthused residents to want to use it. At the same time funding for a local care home was reduced.  Another example saw the council stump up thousands of pounds for PCSOs to walk the streets, even though residents had already paid the policing precept to fund officers, meaning residents were paying twice of ‘police presence’ on the streets.  Yet another saw demands to fund NHS staff to help reduce teen pregnancies, even though the primary care trust had decided it wasn’t a sufficient priority for money from its own budget.  And everywhere, the sustainability agenda never goes without cash, as councils – regardless of what councillors or party groups say or want – follow the directives, regulations and whims of supranational entities.

These are not the actions of ‘Baron Hardup’ stuck in a dusty Chief Executive office, getting by on a frugal stipend.  Rather these are the actions of people who fancy themselves as businessmen, only without competition or risk, where they cut a dash on six figure salaries and half a million pound pension pots as they devise new ways to extract ever larger sums from residents under pain of prosecution.

The fact is councils have expanded their reach into far too many activities where government has no business, let alone being core to their remit of providing essential services.  Try to get a line item breakdown of all the spending and grants made by your authority and you will be made to jump through hoops before being told some of the information is confidential, with items hidden on ‘pink papers’ that are barred from public release, so you can’t even see how your money is spent in your name.

Scare stories from the Public Accounts Committee and the Local Government Association aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.  Local democracy is anything but, accountability is non existant, and to maintain their perceived control the councils are misleading people into thinking working this coming year with budgets that were perfectly fine five or so years ago is completely impossible and requires a raft of essential services that have been provided for decades to be cut.

These ‘cry wolf’ warnings are not financial, they are politically motivated and they have nothing to do with serving the interests of the residents.  It’s time residents woke up and started to challenge the deceptions of these thieves in suits.

There can be no doubt that the development of the strategy took hundreds of hours of painstaking planning, discussion, re-working and collaboration with interested parties to bring to fruition.  One can only stand, applaud and marvel at the sheer élan to which we are bearing witness.

So take a bow Ed Davey, no mere Energy Secretary, but an intellectual colossus making arguments of such unassailable depth and citing empirical evidence of such weight that every sceptic of the orthodoxy of climate change should declare their complete and unconditional surrender and endorse Davey’s factual reality.

What else can we do?  After all, Davey has deployed an argument so substantive as to be beyond contestation by mere mortals.

He has argued in powerful terms that we are guilty of being ‘blinkered’ and bloody minded, that it is we who have been undermining science for political ends, that it is we who have turned the issue of climate change into a political football and that it is we who have an uncritical campaigning platform in the media to be used by individuals and lobby groups.

No, really.

It takes a special kind of thick-skinned arrogance to be able to take the full range of accusations levelled against the government, for refusing to examine or consider scientific findings that challenge the extent to which man and carbon are allegedly influencing the climate, and level those at sceptics instead.

Moreso to attempt to deflect attention from the BBC, Guardian and Independent in particular, which uncritically report every alarmist claim – however ludicrous and unscientific – as fact and truth in support of the warmist agenda while ignoring anything that contradicts them including scientific findings, and denouncing ‘right-wing’ newspapers who very occasionally allow sceptics to point out where predictions made with a high degree of certainty have failed to materialise, and models have failed to reflect actual observations we see around us.

As for citing the sceptics for supposedly using climate change as a political football, it is downright dishonest to pretend that anyone other than the politicans have used climate change in such a way.  The topic has been booted back and forth in a metaphoric arms-race between the parties to impose climate change related taxes on businesses and households (overt and hidden extra costs on energy bills, air passenger duty, petrol prices, recycling rules, closure of power plants etc).  It has been exploited to force expensive ‘solutions’ on us that create far more of an environmental hazard (lightbulbs, wildlife killing and illness inducing windturbines), outlaw ever more things to limit choice (restricting the kind of boilers that can be used).  And it has been used as an excuse to pledge ever more money – with a significant sum heading overseas – to tackling a phenomenon that is barely understood, the source of which is still unproven, and which consistently fails to result in the catastrophic outcomes predicted.

If challenging all this is construed as blinkered and bloody minded by the likes of Davey, it is also without any shadow of a doubt  completely and utterly justified.

Davey is not just lazy, uncritical, dogmatic and ignorant.  With his quasi-religious zeal and immunity to reason, this swivel-eyed climate change loon’s attempt to stifle dissent and keep the bandwagon rolling on in spite of evidence that challenges it, is downright dangerous.