Some extraordinary statements from Owen Paterson, the man who was the UK Environment Secretary until a week ago. This is baking hot. Paterson also draws attention to the way big-goverment has fed big-government lobbyists 150 million euros since 2007. Can we get this man to Australia? — Jo
I’m proud of standing up to the green lobby
The Telegraph UK I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of – to coin a phrase – the Green Blob.
By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.
Local conservationists on the ground do wonderful work to protect and improve wild landscapes, as do farmers, rural businesses and ordinary people. They are a world away from the highly paid globe-trotters of the Green Blob who besieged me with their self-serving demands, many of which would have harmed the natural environment.
I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.
Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.
It was not my job to do the bidding of two organizations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary.
When I arrived at Defra I found a department that had become under successive Labour governments a milch cow for the Green Blob.
That funding for big-government lobby groups?
The Green Blob sprouts especially vigorously in Brussels. The European Commission website reveals that a staggering 150 million euros (£119 million) was paid to the top nine green NGOs from 2007-13.
Read it all at The Telegraph UK
h/t Jaymez (and then Brice)
How about Scott Morrison sending a boat to fast track Australian Citizenship for him.
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What Ozzies must realise is that the carbon traders are desperate to get a second coalition government with the UK energy system run by the forcers of darkness.
Therefore getting rid of Paterson was a priority, to split the Tory vote.
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Yes, beware the agitators from the money side as well. Imagine the paper profits that could be generated from the intangible derivatives trading of CO2. No real deliverable at the end, only an audit. Pure “Wolf of Wall Street” Nirvana.
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What profits have been generated by and realised since the Palmer/Gore show at parliament house?
Methinks ‘twould be more than enough to fuel Al’s plane.
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All to true.
And thats why Shorten has taken the stance he has.
And so will the next “leader” for want of a better word of the labor party.
Just look at who’s sitting on the bench.
Every one of them support a CO/2 tax and couldn’t give a rats what its called.
The labor partys chances of winning an election will be near on impossible with out the greens.
Keeping them onside is a priority.
My problem with this English politician is he is just another politician.
Where was his heated damnation of these global warmists while he was sitting in first class on the political gravy train?
To little to late.
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Mr. Paterson was far more effective as a silent assassin. Why do you think the forces of Darkness worked so hard to get him defenestrated? Likewise with Mr. Gove in Education. Both are hated by the bedwetters for being so effective in resisting the Left.
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I can’t agree with you Kevin.
He had the “top step” to publicly expose these fraudsters and didn’t.
All he’s let fly with should have been done while he was a minister.
While he commanded public attention.
Where the main stream media would have reported every word daily.
Not now.
He “unleashes his fury on them with a withering attack”
that no one will remember next week.
Where would we be if Abbott had have played the silent assassin?
Since 2009, he’s been in the fraudsters face every day as opposition leader and as prime minister.
No Kevin there are far to many in government around the world who play the “silent assassin” for fear of falling of the gravy train of politics.
Only when off it does their new found wisdom and insights into the worlds ails suddenly appear.
Patterson being just another classical example.
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Well said, Leigh. To ‘come out’ after being replaced as minister looks cowardly and gives the appearance of sour grapes.
What is equally important to note about this story is that it is part of the con being run by the Tories to deceive the electorate into believing they have ‘gone conservative’. They has reshuffled a few ministers and they have ‘talked tough’ on Europe, education and the environment, but, as always, it is all just talk. Just look at the supposed ‘fury’ over the appointment of Juncker as president of the European Commission. What the bet they did a Jim Hacker with Merkel: ‘Okay, we’ll agree to the appointment but you have to let us make a statement condemning it.’
And look at the scandal over the infiltration of Birmingham schools by Islamist extremists. Did they actually DO anything about it. No, they just ordered everyone to shut up about it.
If the Tories are re-elected the process of making british law subordinate to european ‘human rights’ law will run its course and british culture will disappear (hasn’t it already) as the country is today being over-run by hundreds of thousands of migrants wanting to get on welfare. The Tories ‘talk tough’ about it but do nothing.
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I have been saying for a long time – the UK, like Australia, is a single party political state. Both sides have different “wrappers”, but ultimately the same agenda still moves forward.
What does that logically tell you?
Unless people zero in on and expose *that* reality, nothing will change because the Establishment and lefties alike, have people chasing mirages.
This also explains why wealthy powerful people are pro-environment – politics is nt about governance, ist about power. the Establishment use the socialists as useful idiots to do their dirty work, while they cream the results. Win-win.
Sigh.
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I think you should get the DVD of “Yes Minister”, the whole series and “Yes Prime Minister”.
apart from explaining how politics works behind the scenes, you will also have a good laugh!!
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‘Yes Minister’ should be sold was a box set with another series called, ‘The Hollow Men’, which went to air in mid 2008 and lampoons the typical antics of pole-driven Federal political charade of governments (at that time, Kevin Rudd, pre GFC era). Cuts close to the bone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollowmen
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Kevin is far more accurate than Leigh.
One only has to look at Paterson’s actions while he was head of DEFRA; especially his response to the Somerset floods. In that case, while he could not take action to prevent the disaster in the first place due to systemic inertia, the floods “flushed” the system of many silly ideas that’d become rooted throughout the bureaucracy; infected by (the now) leftist, luddite fronts like the PSPB. It took Paterson to grasp the nettle and to shove it down the underpants of those who had worked against the tradition of maintenance of wetland drains in Somerset.
Owen Paterson is obviously fuming at being kicked out before he finished the job.
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I just hope there are neurosurgical techniques that can address what ails poor Tanya Plibersek. I feel really bad to see her suffering like that.
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Talking about the wonderful Shorten Plan, I am slightly surprised more has not been made of Craig Emerson’s comments on Bolt TV last weekend.
Yes, I know Emerson is a ‘former’, but to paraphrase, Emerson said an ETS was the MORALLY correct thing to do.
Not scientifically.
Nor environmentally.
He used the word Morally.
Craig Emerson is trying to sell the Shorten Plan as something that will help us sleep at night.
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I think you are correct. Unfortunately UKIP will be in second place in the majority of electorates. If they had preferential voting UKIP would have a great chance of forming the government. UKIP will take votes from the Tories, Labour and the Liberals but coming second they will not give enough seats, so not much change. Maybe, if the Tories wake up there could be a coalition between them and UKIP. The Tories need to dump Europe, AGW, and make free trade deals with Australia and Canada as a start; then look at Norway, Switzerland,India, Japan, South Korea and maybe South Africa. The socialists in Germany, France, Italy and Spain are bad news.
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Nice…..exposing the green pinkos for what they are
Truth hurts….I hope they can cop it sweet and stand on their own feet like sceptics do
I know who has more backbone, and it’s not the CAGW crowd.
It is what it is.
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Steve,
Proof of the pudding etc etc, let’s see howm many Greenies are concerned enough to put up their own money and support Flannery’s Climate Council following his plee for donations.
A previous post calculated that the million dollars in previous donations was only just enough to pay the salaries of the five council members for a year with unpaid volunteers doing the actual work.
How convenient, that was almost 1 year ago, more about saving their lifestyles than saving the planet.
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Looks like we can count on one Red Thumb as a donor.
Looks grim for Flannery when the Climate Council needs to rely on tax payer funded welfare recipients to privately replenish its coffers.
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It’s a shame such frankness can only happen once the politicians move on.
In Australia how many Labor politicians and journalists came out of the woodwork to tell us how unbalanced and difficult to work with Kevin Rudd was – after Rudd lost the 2013 election.
How many people are going to come out of the woodwork and tell the public they always knew the catastrophic global warming theory was hog wash – after it is dead and buried?
It is great to read the truth from Owen Paterson now, but how I wish he and others had the intestinal fortitude to make the statements when they were in a position to do most about it.
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I have often thought this also especially with ex-politicians appearing on The Bolt Report, there is a definite performance put on while they’re in the job, a personality act if you will, that seems to be dropped once their out of the new inner circle.
It’s a shame really that they think so little of the average voter they’re prepared to bung on a personality that is deemed responsible enough for the average punter without offending or frightening them.
Second thoughts I hold the same view of the average voter so a puppet show is probably not a bad idea, some puppets can show no strings attached while some puppets may need more of a hand up.
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Yonniestone. Once a crocodile, always a crocodile.
Never smile at a crocodile!
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Jaymez: Owen Paterson was never in a position to much about it. He was minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but “Environment” was entirely separate from “Climate Change” (yes – within .GOV.UK it really was!) being the fiefdom of Ed Davey SoS for Energy and Climate Change. Under the coalition agreement of 2010 this was the province of the Liberal Democrats and until the break up – which will take place sometime before the May 2015 General Election – is beyond the authority of the Prime Minister! I believe you have had recent experience of the power of a minority in coalition (indeed – you still have).
Contrary to the general impression I think these headline changes may be more about releasing certain parties from the collective responsibility of Cabinet to campaign against their Liberal Democrat partners. Our politics is as honest and gentlemanly as yours.
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diogenes2:
So Cameron has left the Libdems out on a branch while he has a saw handy?
Should there be any trouble in any very cold winter just before the election he will put all the blame on them?
I think he has forgotten all his efforts to be green. As was said where he took to the dog sled, WHO would you want to lead the nation? The one posing or the intelligent one up front with his feet on the ground and who knows the way and will do the hard work?
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It is a shame. Politicians should not be afraid to speak more frankly.
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I think that Politicians in office, have to be careful not to upset any particular group of people, to avoid losing their seats and their influence at the next election. When they leave they are free to say what they want without having to worry about what voters think. Obviously Paterson was doing good work, but if he had high profiled what he was doing, he may not been left there to do it.
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Agreed. Had he said this while he still had his Cabinet position who knows what the outcome might have been.
In a seperate English field, players (in an in-house meeting) were asked for their opinions. Kevin Pietersen learnt the folly of trusting his team-mates.
I think Paterson understood this better than Pietersen
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Kevin Pietersen also learnt the folly of walking down the pitch to Glenn McGrath .
Arrogance does that. !!
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I read this morning that the sun has gone very quiet. Note especially this comment:
If the model proposed by this blog’s authors and contributors is correct, we are in for bleak times ahead.
So, Jaymez, you ask who will come out of the woodwork when the facts can no longer be adjusted to support the lies, exaggerations and witch-doctory. You have to look at the hierarchy of the GW game to answer that question.
At the top you have the scammers who are cashing in on it. They will just move on to the next scam.
At the bottom of the GW hierarchy is the great mass that comprises juveniles brainwashed at school and socially conditioned by peer pressure to adopt what appears to be a virtuous cause, well meaning people who respond to simple messages but are unable to resolve more complex problems, and, lastly, people who are aggrieved at society and adopt any cause they see as being ‘against’ the beliefs and interests of mainstream society. The latter are the self-loathing leftists, and they will never change – they will just find another reason to hate society. Many of the juveniles will grow out of their beliefs and many of the well meaning people will quietly move on to something else.
It is in the middle layer that you might expect to see reversals and retractions. These are the ideologues — the inner-city self-appointed elitists such as professionals, journalists and academics who have concluded that they are superior to everyone else. Their psychological profile is interesting. They believe that someone ‘clearly’ as ‘intelligent’ as they are should be at the top society’s hierarchy. But to their great angst they find themselves pushed down the order by those who have wealth and power. Sub-consciously, they are drawn to leftist politics, because opposition to the institutions of society (capitalism, free speech and so on) is seen as the only way they can socially distinguish themselves from ‘ordinary’ people who are ‘clearly’ beneath them. There is a large element of envy there, too. They gain a sense of malicious pleasure from bringing down those they secretly see as being above them in the social order. Take a look into the mind at your typical Bollinger Bolshevik and this is what you will find. Put simply, their beliefs are nothing more than mental masturbation, and that will never change, because that is the nature of the species. When the GW game is up, they will simply move on to the next item in their socially destructive agenda.
As an aside I would like to expand a little on the issue of scammers moving onto the next scam when the GW scam is up. During the dotcom boom in the late 1990s a lot of people made small fortunes by starting IT companies, writing up fancy prospectuses about what they were going to do, then listing the company on the stock exchange and selling their shares a few days later as the share price was swept upwards in the dotcom boom. These same individuals would then register a new company and repeat the process, and they did it over and over until the money dried up. They produced nothing and earned fortunes from flogging illusory ideas. This is what is happening with all these absurd renewable energy schemes. Across the world there are billions of dollars of taxpayers money being thrown away and scammers are moving in for the feast. They put up fancy proposals to government and throw a bit away on actual construction work but then siphon the vast majority off in ‘administrative expenses’. Then they go on to the next project and repeat the whole process.
It is a shame that no-one has the time and resources to investigate these projects and find out who is behind them and where the money went. I recall reading of a grant given to someone to ‘develop’ a ‘wind powered pump’. That’s right, a windmill. Most conservatives quite rightly have many gripes with the Abbott government for their cowardice in not undoing the harm the Left are doing to our society, but, to give credit where it is due, they are taking a lot of the money off the scammers. You won’t read about it in the media, because I think the Abbott government is too scared of the Left to do it openly. But go to the web sites of all the green left alternative energy advocates and you will find lists of myriad programs for which the Abbott government is cutting funding. They still need to man-up and deal with the BOM and CSIRO, but at least they have made a start.
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The Abbott Government has made remarkable progress having been if office for only ten months, and with due regard for the hostile Senate that is dominated by the left. In my opinion judgement of Coalition achievements need to be considered on the basis that they are handicapped at Senate level added to by the crazy PUP wrecking squad.
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” … They still need to man-up and deal with the BOM and CSIRO, but at least they have made a start. …”
Yes and yes but the vector is the ABC. If not dealt with, in parallel, it’ll be a case of new wine placed in old bottles.
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Thats a good essay on the psychology of the warmists, Barry.
Having worked in academia for many years, I made the acquaintance of many of the people you refer to as the ‘middle layers’. They have an exaggerated sense of their own importance.
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Yes so true that some politicians who have a conscious “spill some of the beans” when they exit politics, but not all of them do it. It goes to show even those with a conscious in politics are crook and cover up mainly to build their career agenda. Politicians are not to be trusted regardless of who they are.
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Jaymez, sorry accidentally hit the red instead of green thumbs up( didn’t expand the screen properly )
So + 2 to compensate. 😉
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Ultimately Adam Smith’s invisible hand will defeat the Green Blob.
With Australia repealing carbon pricing, and South Korea following Australia’s lead, and countries like Japan and Russia paying little more than lip service, and much of Canada ignoring CO2, the pressure of global competition – of trying to compete against countries which don’t put a price on carbon, will force the green blob countries to capitulate.
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Exactly Eric. You said in 1 line what took me 40 to struggle out. Adam Smith’s hand is indeed at work now despite the best efforts of market corruptors.
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Eloquently summed up in a nutshell Eric.
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In practice, the green blob countries will soon be confined to the EU: see this. And, as the EU’s price on carbon doesn’t work, it hardly needs to capitulate.
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Eric,
I think you are way too optimistic.
The Green Blob has pretty much won in the western world, and what we are witnessing is a belated rearguard action, doomed to defeat as the youth have for the most part been indoctrinated. Whatever is lost in economic profit through poor competition isn’t fixed by the invisible hand because of the power of sanctimony – there is a huge gain in feeling morally superior. Any economic loss is more than made up for by the feeling of moral superiority. Witness Ms. Gillard’s government.
Europe is completely lost. In Italy, people live with 3.6KW going into their houses, and have washing machines which take two and a half hours to do what an Australian washing machine does in twenty minutes.
In the Netherlands, people pack up their used Nespresso coffee capsules and give them to their postman to take away for recycling.
The constant everyday genuflections to the environment/ recycling/sustainability act to counter the invisible hand and rationality.
Regards.
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Yeah I disagree – I used to give gen y a bum rap, but as time goes on and as they age they will understand they have been lied to and deceived mightily.
Don’t worry – Australians don’t like being taken as fools and all the carbon credits in the world won’t stop the electorate taking its vengeance on those in ANY political party who have been collaborators.
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Totally agree Steve.
We keep hearing “think of the children”, but if you could fast forward and ask all the unemployed young adults would they rather have a job or an economy that basically produces nothing and runs on windmills, I think we know what the answer would be.
By grinding our economy to a halt at a time when the world is struggling anyway, Labour and The Greens have set back employment growth by a generation. This cartoon has always summed it up for me. Julia presided over a suite of policies that basically killed Australian industry dead and now in true style, Shorten tries to blame a 10 month old Government for the fact we don’t have any manufacturing.
The next generation will look back at this one and see a bunch of frightened luddites who sat on 45% of the world’s uranium and did nothing with it. Who sold coal for a song to be burnt overseas while trying to survive on 16th century windmills for our own power and paying through the nose for the privilege. Who discovered we had almost unlimited natural gas and ignored it as a power source when we needed it most, then allowed the price to be tied to an overseas mark and the profits to be shipped off shore.
If things continue to go the way they have for the last decade, the result of all this will be Shorten as PM and Christine Milne made a Dame, because the older I get, the more I realise we are self abusing slow learners as a nation.
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Steve, they can and will learn. But they will be very slow to learn unless somebody leads them. That somebody must be Tony Abbott.
And it should not be too difficult. As I see it, all that is needed is to keep publishing the temperature data since 1988 alongside the CO2 data. The evidence is clear to see, that the CO2 effect, which we think we know, must be only a minor player in the rise and fall of temperatures.
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Well FWIW – can someone please start putting together a repository of this info so when the internet filter makes its appearance to “protect us”, that this inof can be accessed please in years to come…..
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Amen to that.
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The carbon taxes from the Green Blob is an attempt to put heavy lead (Pb) gloves on Adam Smith’s hands.
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This is a wonderfully frank admission of the financial non viability of green energy projects by Pac. Hydro
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4043246.htm
Basically they are admitting that without significant tax payer investment they don’t have a workable business model and their only desperate grasp of an argument is something about moral imperatives…
Some facts about Windfarms, investment and employment from someone who has been involved in the construction of 5 including Australia’s biggest, to counter Pac. Hydro’s claims about how many jobs would be associated with Kyenton should it go ahead. The sweeping generalisations of “millions of dollars into communities” and “lots of jobs” is deliberate language used to avoid having to explain how minor and fleeting the benefits of windfarm construction are and how there are also some undetailed downsides.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-21/industry-uncertainty-puts-renewable-energy/5611876?section=business
In round figures a windfarm the size of Kyenton would employ around 100-125 people during construction, construction would take around 12 months, 14-16 at the outside. Of those 100-125 people about 75% would come from within 300km of the project, being general labour and machine operators. The high paid jobs are the other 25% and they are by their nature naturally taken up by specialists in wind turbine construction and operations, SCADA, HV and LV electrical installations, engineering etc. In Australia about 75% of that 25% would be non residents or non citizens as the major windfarm builders are all off shore expertise companies such as VESTAS and Re-Power. Once constructed a 45 turbine windfarm would employ around 3-5 technicians for about 10 years. It could be that 1 of those may come from the local area, but its unlikely. More likely is the running and servicing of the site would be farmed out to an international windfarm techs outfit, as with most things, outsourcing is preferred. Finally there are a myriad of unspoken expenses for the community as the people of Macarthur discovered.
http://www.standard.net.au/story/2343130/moynes-13m-wind-farm-roads-compo-pothole/
So this notion that renewable energy projects, particularly windfarms provide some sort of ongoing employment that is of any significance whatsoever is a complete furphy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-16/keppel-prince-says-federal-budget-cuts-threaten/5457180
Keppel Prince has had the lions share of turbine construction and handling work in Australia for pretty much as long as turbines have been constructed. Every single time it looks like they wont be constructed KP tells the media how many jobs are on the line. If this company has not managed to make any money from wind turbines, then I have to say I don’t know who could. Its just more evidence that tax payers have been subsidising this industry for a long time.
Simply put the market is always right. If renewable energy projects were such a great investment, banks etc would be falling over each other to get involved. The fact that they exist by sheer courtesy of a policy over reach by a deluded left/green mutation government and teeter on the brink of financial disaster at every turn says it all really.
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An interesting piece on energy from wind/solar/oil and comparing it to nuclear is at
http://www.energytribune.com/2771/understanding-e-mc2#sthash.okQylQbP.AQC4jSrX.dpbs
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Also, this ‘create jobs’ lie needs to be put into perspective. If you take money from taxpayers and give it to someone else, you do not increase economic activity. All you do is destroy jobs in one part of the economy and create them in another. The difference is that the jobs created by our spending are the jobs the economy needs, whereas government subsidies divert funds to inefficient jobs that the economy does not need.
There are only three ways to create ‘new’ jobs and only one of those is sustainable in the long run. The sustainable one is to increase the ‘velocity of circulation’ of cash, meaning the number of times in any period of time each dollar is used. This requires a healthy economy, confident consumers and limited government. A perfect example of government destroying economic activity is capital gains tax. People hang onto their investments for a lifetime rather than lose a quarter of their profit. Hong Kong has no capital gains tax.
The second way new jobs are created is by the government creating ‘new money’ – that is, the Reserve Bank buying government bonds or private financial assets simply by creating money. You can argue all day about the benefits and disadvantages of this, but the main point to remember is that in the wrong circumstances it can destroy wealth by creating inflation.
The third way to create news jobs is to bring new money into the economy. Foreign investment is one way, but I want to concentrate on the other way, which is the favourite of governments, including the Howard government, and it is just adored by big business, including, it seems, Rupert Murdoch–that is, ramp up immigration to bring new cash into the economy. Mass immigration is the quick fix scam governments use to create economic growth and conceal underlying weakness. For example, everyone goes on about the British economy going gangbusters at the moment, but how much of that is nothing more than foreign cash pouring in to take advantage of the current property boom? I suspect that is the single largest contributor to Britain’s current economic ‘growth’.
But mass immigration is nothing more than a deceitful government Ponzi scheme. Keep stuffing people in and hope that the social and infrastructure problems don’t catch up with you before the next lot of scumbags win office.
Don’t you just hate our political system. It attracts all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. The Swiss are so lucky. Through direct democracy they have the power to STOP government from destroying their society.
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May I take issue with Keith and Jaymez?
Owen Paterson most certainly did express his views within government and was bound by collective Cabinet responsibility [CCR] in his public pronouncements. Maybe Australian politicians are allowed to speak more freely but in the UK CCR is important and a minister will be instantly sacked if he departs too far from the official policy, publicly. Privately Paterson has done and has had several rows with the Energy Secretary Ed Davey who could not be greener [or more stupid].
Paterson in less than two years has radically reorganised the Environment Dept. concentrating on growing the rural economy, improving the environment and safeguarding both plant and animal health as he outlined in the article. He supported the badger cull and one farmer said that his cattle were free of bovine TB for the first time in years.
Obviously he was going to get sacked eventually for his known views that are so diametrically opposed to the Liberal Democrat coalition partner. However, far better to stay in government and achieve some rolling back of the green agenda, that will take his successor some time to undo.
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Hi John, I understand about Cabinet solidarity which is also the case in Australia – though Cabinet leaks are common! But Paterson could have attacked the rent-seekers without breaking cabinet solidarity.
After all he was only writing what most people are thinking when he wrote:
“By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.”
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John Hewitt:
The fact that he got a lot of death threats indicates that he was well known as an obstacle to the greens.
Oh! I forgot, it’s the nasty sceptics who issue death threats, sometimes months before they know they have or have not. Sarc off
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What I find especially hypocritical is how they demonize capitalism while profiting through its machinations. But they are not alone in that hypocrisy. Most on the left do it as well. I once heard a term – affluenza. It is a made up word, but what it means is the guilt that someone feels from making money. I think the left define the term.
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Funding is the key, as well as getting academia more accountable.
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Many commenters here applaud Owen Patterson’s words, but question why he was less vocal while in office. Actually, he was effective in office countering green / Labour / Lib Dem nonsense but he had to toe the Tory party line. Remember David Cameron had himself photographed with a husky in the Arctic Circle during the polar bear endangerment period in an attempt to give himself green credentials, and Tory policy is still officially green. If someone like Patterson receives the plaudits of James Delingpole while in office, you can be fairly sure he did a good job.
Sadly, with an election not too far away, and with Labour leading the polls, Cameron felt the need to axe both Patterson and Michael Gove (education) who were probably the only proper conservatives in the government. THat is evidenced by how often the Guardian attempts to smear both.
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They are desperate to fulfil the Agenda for the 21st Century at all costs and the CAGW ‘creation’ is pivotal to that. They are failing on the science front, and now rapidly losing on the propaganda front, despite the billions thrown at it for some 30 years. But no plans or policies are allowed to contradict any part of the Agenda and so now it’s death threats-the last refuge of the scoundrel.
http://www.green-agenda.com/agenda21.html
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You can also try: ‘The Green Agenda – Agenda 21’ (Google)
Get it while it’s there.
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“Can we get this man to Australia ?” Says Jo.
In the meantime you’re dumping all your rubbish on us poor Brits.
We have our new Australian Governor General, Lynton Crosby, – when he says ‘jump’ Cameron jumps. A man in no small way responsible for the removal of Gove and Paterson.
The new head of our Green Party is an extreme left-wing Aussie journalist named Natalie Bennett.
Adelaide University trained David Hone who is now SHELL’S “Senior Climate Change Adviser” has, with his protege Geoffrey Lean of the Telegraph and MP Oliver Letwin done more than any man to prevent any fracking in the UK. He has published over 300 blogs on “Carbon Trading” and on “CCS”.
Finally you’ve dumped Stephan Lewandowsky on Bristol University and he’s invited Mann and Cook over to talk to us !
Give us a break, Australia, just because we gave you Gillard, this is more than we deserve in retribution !
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You also gave us Tony Abbott, English father, born in London, the one man army who took a personal stand against the carbon lobby and made it to party leader and now PM on one burning issue. Still, Gillard was a huge price to pay. Maybe we need to improve our screening at immigration.
You can keep Lewandowsky and Cameron seems to jump a great deal anyway. As for the Greens, they will never have a scientist or ecologist or environmentalist in charge, so an extreme left wing Aussie seems absolutely appropriate for an anti-capitalist agit-prop bunch of self promoting dangerous loonies. Old communists never die, they just join the Greens and the only Green they want is cash. Damn the grass and trees. They are made from carbon anyway.
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Come off it, you seem to forget where John McTernan comes from.
60
mafia is an ngo….so…
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I’m hoping that Owen Paterson will write an autobiography. It sounds as if he could tell us a lot more about what goes on in the ‘green’ camp. Certainly there are enough obnoxious characters who post online to indicate that the ‘planet huggers’ aren’t quite the benign force for mankind that they claim to be!
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Go read some of the newer stuff on Tallbloak. ,You folk, at this opportunity, are much to polite. Come back after you sharpen your pitchfork!
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I think the word “collaborator” for those who would wreck our economy and way of life, is apt.
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I also think its time to bring back old fashioned values of good and evil, right and wrong.
Modernist nonsense thought removes absolutes, which makes young people prone to deception.
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David Cameron is a green fanatic, he has even boasted about it. He has a wife who is a certifiable ecoloon.
So not surprisingly, Owen Patterson had to go. Having to work with another certifiable ecoloon and serial incompetent like Ed Davey must have been hell.
The UK is doomed to a future of unreliable expensive energy supplies, Owen Patterson was one of the few politicians to realise ‘green crap’ was bankrupting Britain.
Cameron decided to rid himself of a number of competent ministers, who were largely replaced – in an amazing act of patronisation – by unknown women of unknown competence.
Cameron has always been ‘ a never mind the quality, feel the width’ type of man. So Patterson never had a chance.
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This kind of exposure could go a long way toward convincing people that they have a problem quite different from what they’ve been told.
I wish someone on the inside of the present administration here would step up and speak the truth.
Dream on, Roy.
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It looks like Trenberth’s so called missing heat is MISSING in the deepest oceans as well. But will the MSM now start telling the truth and stop this charade of very recent co2 increases causing CAGW? The so called missing heat has probably left the planet and has disappeared into the abyss of space as some of the latest studies seem to find.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/21/deep-oceans-are-cooling-amidst-a-sea-of-modeling-uncertainty-new-research-on-ocean-heat-content/#more-113270
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Well, somebody had to prepare Ed Davey’s (political) grave. Let’s hope it’s the blobs’ grave also, but I suspect their life support funds will outlive any politicians career demise.
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Hopefully the current administration will seal his timely departure with hearty praise from Mr Cameron saying that he is staunchly behind everything Ed does and that he’s safe in his current position.
Well that’s how it usually goes. 🙂
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A Snake’s Head Fritillaria is checkered lily- purple. A Silver Washed Frittalaria is a butterfly- orange with black dots.
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“The Green Blob” parody invites some confirmation bias,
– The original Blob was red.
– It was science fiction.
– It consumed all to make everything one.
– It was killed by freezing using Co2 fire extinguishers.
Is Warhol laughing in his grave?
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Sorry Yonnie – it was not killed. It was made dormant and then flown to the Arctic to remain frozen (it would have been better in the Antarctic). And of course the final scene is “The End?” (question mark). They were hoping for a sequel, but the original just did not do well enough. Of course 60 years later, they have dragged out the original with a sequel – called Michael Mann.
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Bloody hell, I knew it was wrong just after I posted and thought no one picked it up, no escape here though! 🙂
In the sequel is Michael Mann defeated with a frozen hockey stick?
10
At last! Thinking people are gradually waking up to the cui bono rationale of the Green Lobby and their facilitators.
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Looks like the Canada Revenue Agency isn’t buying the guff.
http://www.mysask.com/portal/site/main/template.MAXIMIZE/?javax.portlet.tpst=e4c43b55b5646bb94df4821050315ae8_ws_MX&javax.portlet.prp_e4c43b55b5646bb94df4821050315ae8_viewID=story&javax.portlet.prp_e4c43b55b5646bb94df4821050315ae8_topic_display_name=Environemnt%20News&javax.portlet.prp_e4c43b55b5646bb94df4821050315ae8_topic_name=Environment&javax.portlet.prp_e4c43b55b5646bb94df4821050315ae8_news_item_id_key=29213106&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken
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Some background.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/11/29/vivian-krause-new-u-s-funding-for-the-war-on-canadian-oil/
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Neville –
you might want to listen to this and comment:
AUDIO 29 MINS: 21 July: BBC Discovery: What has Happened to El Nino?
At the start of 2014 meteorologists warned of a possible El Nino event this year. The portents were persuasive – a warming of the central Pacific much like that which preceded the powerful El Nino event of 1997. But since then the Pacific climate system seems to have stalled. What’s going on? What are the prospects for an El Nino to develop later this year? What impacts might it have? Roland Pease delves below the Pacific surface to find out what drives El Nino cycles, the most powerful single climate fluctuation on the planet, and asks the experts why it is so hard to forecast. “The year started with a bang,” one expert tells Discovery – will it end with a whimper?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022tlhq
the following? it’s a “mask”, not an “effigy”!
21 July: UK Telegraph: Christopher Hop: Greenpeace demands Owen Paterson apologise over burning effigy claim
The former Environment secretary said Greenpeace had set an image of him on fire in protest as his controversial plans to control TB in cattle by culling badgers.
Greenpeace UK posted a photograph of a protester dressed as Mr Paterson, reading a copy of The Daily Telegraph on Twitter, the micro-blogging website.
It said: “This is the ‘effigy’ that @owen_patersonmp says we ‘burned’. 100% verifiably untrue. Much like his climate denial.”
It then Tweeted: “Hi @owen_patersonmp, will u apologise for false claim we burned ‘effigy’? Here it is this morning. It’s a mask.”
A Greenpeace spokesman added: “He claims we burned an effigy of him, something that never happened and never would.
“If he can’t get the small things straight, it’s probably for the best that Mr Paterson no longer dictates policy, and we wish his successor well.”…
There was speculation that Mr Paterson might be confusing a similar stunt by Greenpeace with in February this year moored “a spitting image style Owen Patterson” [sic] on the Thames directly outside the Houses of Parliament.
In June last year, protesters were recorded on Facebook burning an effigy of Mr Paterson which was hung from the railings in front of Parliament.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/10980328/Greenpeace-demands-Owen-Paterson-apologise-over-burning-effigy-claim.html
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21 July: UK Telegraph: Geoffrey Lean: Owen Paterson is ‘paranoid’ retorts green group as reshuffle row intensifies
This morning the green groups which long campaigned for his sacking – and indulged in unseemly gloating when it occurred – hit back. Friends of the Earth, for example, called him “paranoid” and “never fit to hold office”.
In my Telegraph column this weekend I explored some of the reasons why Mr Paterson – like his predecessor, Caroline Spelman – was fired, making them the only two environment secretaries in the 44-year history of the post to be dismissed from a job that usually leads on to high office. But, whatever the explanation, Mr Paterson seems determined to lead an assault on the greens from the backbenches and to join with Liam Fox in, as one ally put it at the weekend, “roughing up” the Government generally. This one, doubtless, will run and run…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100280776/owen-paterson-is-paranoid-retorts-green-group-as-reshuffle-row-intensifies/
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go figure!
21 July: Financial Times: Jim Pickard: Chancellor backs down on cutting carbon targets
George Osborne has been forced to back down from an attempt to weaken measures to tackle global warming, the Financial Times has learnt.
The Tory chancellor had sought changes to Britain’s “fourth carbon budget”, which sets a limit on greenhouse gas emissions through the 2020s, after claims it would make British businesses less competitive than EU rivals.
But on Tuesday the coalition will announce there will be no change to the targets, which were agreed three years ago after a bitter fight between the Tories and their Liberal Democrat governing partners.
The budget effectively commits the UK to a 50 per cent cut in greenhouse gases, compared with 1990 levels, by 2025.
The announcement will form part of an energy “package” agreed by both sides of the coalition, which will incorporate an agreement on fracking and on fuel poverty…
The news on the carbon budget will delight green campaigners but will prompt disappointment from manufacturing groups such as the Engineering Employers Federation…
Mr Osborne wanted to alter the target because he feared it could make it harder to achieve his plans for up to 40 new gas-fired power stations to come on stream over the next 15 years…
The CCC repeatedly insisted there was no economic or legal reason to change the policy and warned that changing the carbon budget could damage investor confidence in low-carbon energy generation.
Ruth Davis, UK political director for pressure group Greenpeace, said the announcement would be a victory for responsible policy making over political point-scoring…
The UK has a legally binding target of reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b397b8fe-10fc-11e4-94f3-00144feabdc0.html
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unbelievable!
22 July: Australian: Nick Cater: Shorten long on compassion
SOONER or later Australians will come to their senses and realise they do want a carbon tax after all.
That, at least, is what Bill Shorten appears to be banking on, backed by the confidence that his powers of persuasion will succeed where those of his predecessors failed…
Shorten, however, has been around long enough to appreciate the risks of picking a fight on this divisive political issue. He would understand the gulf between the planet-saving passion of the bien pensant and the indifference bordering on hostility it evokes in the population at large.
***His decision to stick with a policy that he could have quietly let slip is confirmation that the educated middle classes now form the nucleus of Labor’s core constituency…
Portraying Tony Abbott as the man with his foot in the boot that grinds the vulnerable into the dust is not difficult…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/shorten-long-on-compassion/story-fnhulhjj-1226996579255
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Sorry, my comment should have been here.
00
***may Amdur rest in peace:
21 July: Bloomberg: Christopher Flavelle: A Carbon Tax Even Republicans Can Support
A new survey suggests the conventional wisdom about carbon taxes is wrong: Promising to give people their money back with rebate checks isn’t the best way to win public support.
Polling by the National Surveys on Energy and Environment, a joint project by the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College, shows that Americans in general (and Republicans in particular) still don’t like the idea of a tax on carbon emissions in general. Democrats are evenly split, and Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it…
One way to soften that opposition is to commit to returning the revenue that’s generated. That could be done in different ways, including using the money to reduce other taxes. But the simplest way is just cutting people checks. And when David Amdur, an economics professor at Muhlenberg College and the survey’s lead author, tested that option, Democrats supported a carbon tax by more than 2-to-1, as did more Republicans…
(Using the money from a carbon tax to cut the deficit garnered far less support, regardless of partisan affiliation, suggesting that the time when the deficit was the public’s overriding concern is past.)…
???But Amdur found that the best way to gain public support for a carbon tax — and the only way to persuade a majority of Republicans — was to use the revenue to fund research into renewable energy…
The poll’s sample of 798 included 221 Republicans; it’s possible that a larger survey would yield different results…
That doesn’t mean the advocates of such a tax can start celebrating. When asked whether they would support a carbon tax even if it raised energy costs by 10 percent, respondents of every partisan affiliation said no — including Democrats, by a significant margin. And however you spend the proceeds of that tax, it will increase energy costs. That, after all, is the whole point…
***Amdur died before the results of this survey were published. His research suggests, however, that the path to a carbon tax with bipartisan appeal isn’t hopeless after all.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-21/a-carbon-tax-even-republicans-can-support
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I note that the left side of politics is painting a false image of Prime Minister Tony Abott by misquoting him, one example is;
“The Coalition believes in lower, simpler, fairer taxes, it is in our DNA, but we have got to get the budgetary position under control and the trouble is that this (Labor) Government has got a budget emergency on its hands.”
Tony Abbott – August 18, 2013
Union Labor says that he promised no new taxes. The quote above was of course made in the month before the election that the Coalition waon and the budget referred to was Labor’s 2013/14 creatively accounted and under funded Budget.
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21 July: RTCC: World Bank sees ‘momentum’ behind global carbon price
That is the view of the World Bank’s top climate official Rachel Kyte, addressing delegates at an environmental conference in Pori, Finland.“The question I would ask if I was Australian was would I want to be in the Pacific when every one of my trading partners is on track to have an emissions trading scheme or an economy that prices carbon in within the next 2-3 years?” she said.“My answer would be no.”…
“And for the developing world, put a trade system in place to allow them to be competitive, and provide them with the finance and tech that will allow them to follow ***a different trajectory than we did.”
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/07/21/world-bank-sees-momentum-behind-global-carbon-price/
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21 July: Reuters: Some Chinese carbon projects to exit UN offset market if allowed
By Susanna Twidale and Kathy Chen
Some developers of projects to cut carbon emissions in developing nations, particularly China, are likely to pull out of the U.N. offset scheme and move to markets with higher prices, if plans to allow them to exit are implemented.
At a meeting last week, members of the board overseeing the U.N’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) said they would work on new rules to allow any registered project to exit the system. They will discuss proposed rule changes at its next meeting in September.
Some developers in China, where almost half of all registered CDM projects are located, said they would be interested in leaving the CDM, because carbon credits can fetch much higher prices in China’s new domestic trading schemes…
Over 7,500 projects are registered under the scheme, which has channeled more than $400 billion in climate finance to developing countries according to the U.N..
But a lack of demand for credits after countries failed to take on tough emission reduction targets has led prices to plummet to 0.20 euros from over 20 euros six years ago…
Companies covered by the Chinese pilot markets can use Chinese Certified Emissions Reductions (CCERs) to cover 5 to 10 percent of their total emissions.
CCERs have been valued at around $3 per tonne in the two deals that have been made public so far, much higher than the current value of CDM credits…
CDM-registered projects cannot also generate CCERs. Registration in two schemes would allow double-counting, awarding developers twice for the same emission reduction.
“We are waiting to see the EB’s (CDM executive board) decision on how projects can withdraw and switch to another mechanism,” an official with China’s NDRC said.
But some developers said that even if deregistration is allowed, they would probably stay in the CDM in the hope that a new global climate pact will revive demand and prices…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/21/un-carbonoffset-idINL6N0PW2KP20140721
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More porkies from the clueless Fairfax media.. But why does Fairfax and their ABC tell so many porkies to their silly uneducated audience?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_age_tells_untruths_to_push_is_warming_alarmism/
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If Gina decides to take over Fairfax the watermelons will only have the ABC to confirm their global warming fantasy. Gina despises the left and rightly so!
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Neville –
Fairfax must be writing constant CAGW articles 24/7. here’s another:
22 July: SMH: Mark Mulligan: Green energy is the way forward, says economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall
Australia’s public and private sectors should be teaming up in renewable energy projects to drive the diversification away from mining exports, according to Australian economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall.
Mr Blundell-Wignall, who is special advisor on financial markets to the Secretary-General of the OECD, said the end of the country’s mining investment boom and softening commodity prices gave urgency to the development of new growth engines for the Australia economy.
Public-private partnership investment in infrastructure, including green energy generation, was part of the answer, he said. Projects could be funded using financial instruments that were attractive to long-term investors such as ***superannuation funds*** and insurance companies…
After weathering the GFC is relatively good shape, Australia would suffer if wobbles in emerging world economies, particularly China, continued to undermine commodity prices, he warned.
“Australia’s in an unfortunate situation, in that we run our country tolerably well and we didn’t need to get into this zero interest rate business, because we never had the big financial banking bust that everyone else did,” Mr Blundell-Wignall said.
“But nevertheless we’ve been sucked kicking and screaming into having lower rates then we would have rather had because everyone else has been doing it.
The sooner Australia developed sustainable, non-mining growth engines the better, he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/green-energy-is-the-way-forward-says-economist-adrian-blundellwignall-20140722-zvlog.html
watch those SuperFunds, folks.
OECD: Private Pensions: Adrian Blundell-Wignall
Senior Positions
2007 – Deputy Director in the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs
2000 – Executive vice-president, head of Asset Allocation, BT Funds Management
1993 – Head of Derivative Overlays and Levered Products at Bankers Trust Funds Management, building a new $4 billion business
1991 – Head of the Research Department at the Reserve Bank of Australia: directing a department and participating in monetary policy discussions at the internal pre-Board meetings
http://www.oecd.org/daf/fin/private-pensions/adrianblundell-wignall.htm
30
I think this is what Owen Paterson was trying to say:
“The New World Order is a global system of fascist corporate technocratic rule that uses non-profit organizations masquerading as grassroots to facilitate and fabricate consensus for the corporate agendas that can be summed up to be the destruction of the nation-state, dissolution of the concept of citizenship, property rights, privacy rights, and all other rights rooted in the concepts of nations and citizens.”
The NGOs are given money by the European Union to form “grass roots” lobby groups to lobby the Union itself to implement more of the policies that it (The European Union bureaucrats) want.
The Labor Gov was doing it too – The Australian 20/12/2012
“Industry and government concern over the EDO (Environmental Defenders Office), which receives about $1.5m (from the NSW government), was triggered this year after revelations the group took part in a secret, Greenpeace-led meeting in the Blue Mountains that hatched a plan to end the Australian coal export boom by snarling up major resource projects, including in the courts.”
Its the new paradigm.
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O/T kinda – about politics (I think):
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wellhung-palmer-united-party-senator-jacqui-lambie-boards-the-oversharing-express-on-radio-station-heart-1073-20140722-3ccr2.html
Lambie overshares on talkback radio … this is the quality of senators we have. A nd to think Abbott got raked over the coals for a wink… what’s the betting she gets off with little said.
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It just gets better eh?, first we’re subjected to the Gillard “freak show” and now the PUP bogan parade.
I’m sure every politician can cut loose with some adult humor but not in public thanks!
@ #4.1 I lament the inability of politicians to function publicly without an adopted safe persona, I now retract this complaint at the risk of Jacqui Lambie oversharing and me tossing my lunch over the keyboard again. 🙁
40
Puzzling how when an ordinary nut threatens a pubic official, the state police and local police, and telephone/internet providers can immediately trace the threat right back to the telephone number and location or the specific computer and who used it to send the threat and arrest the offender in a manner of hours or days. But when the radical leftist greens make many, many death threats to a public official, no one is ever found, identified, arrested or prosecuted even when there may be hundreds or thousands of death threats, threats to children and other family members surprisingly the are never investigated or identified.
The every day nut is punished but the radical leftists seem to be immune and even encouraged. Strange how corrupt and radical left our politicians and police at all levels. Shows the immorality and secret alliances of tyrant leftists and criminal leftist greens.
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Owen Paterson is owed a great deal for the words “GREEN BLOB” and the connotation he has placed on it.
Even so soon after, I am starting to see the phrase pop up in many places. 🙂
It needs to GO VIRAL !!!!! Anyone know how to get a youTube thing going??
It could cause a great deal of heartache and pain to the members of the GREEN BLOB brigade !! 🙂 🙂
71
ps.. Wanting to do my bit to push up the rather low atmospheric CO2 level, I just got myself an SV8 Commodore Executive with my tax return. 🙂
Comes from only earning for half a year !
After the old van I’ve been driving, it sure is BLISS !! 🙂
The GREEN BLOB can eat my dust !!!
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the Griss enjoying his new ride http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb1uDc_qa-4 🙂
40
Probably need to change your avatar again.
30
What ??? Again?
I can’t keep anyone happy 🙁
Finding portrait avatars isn’t easy, y’know !!!
30
now you know what we face in the uk. as has been stated it is a great pity ministers do not feel they can air these views in public whilst in office.
the next general election will be interesting . if ukip can maintain the level of support from the european elections they should achieve a presence in parliament. there is no need for them to get large numbers of people in ,just a few ukip mp,s would be enough to put the required foot up the backside of the establishment in the uk.
my only fear is people in the uk have become so self centered that not enough people actually care about the bigger picture anymore to vote for the change that is so desperately required. uk politics has gradually become rotten to the core,filled with career politicians that have little grasp of reality outside of party politics ,it was not always so , i hope we have not gone beyond the point of no return.
20
A very nice comment made on WUWT by David M Hoffer ,wrong thread , but I thought it was well worth sharing.
Let’s try and put your alarming “news” about the recent temps in perspective.
Say you start a bank account, and every year for 100 years, you put $1,000.00 in it. You’ve picked a really sh*tty bank though, they don’t pay interest, so after 100 years, you’ve got 100,000.00 in the bank. In year 101, you put in a single penny. Congrats, you’ve now got 100,000.01 in the bank. In year 102, you put another penny in. Congrats, you’ve now got 100,000.02 in the bank. In year 103, another penny goes in, and you’ve got 100,000.03 in the bank.
Now Felix, it would be quite accurate to say you’ve had the most money ever in year 103. In fact, you could even say that the last 3 years have all set new records for the amount of money you have in the bank. Those statements would both be true. But the fact of the matter is that years 101 thru 103 are meaningless. You’ve had a pause in your savings, and trying to claim otherwise is just silly. Your savings from the last 3 years are effectively zero.
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Busy bodies !! You call them BUSY BODIES !! They are a pack of money grabbing global criminals operating with impunity because the sceptics refuse to do anything SERIOUS to cut the evil bastards down and governments keep on HANDING THEM MORE AND MORE OF OUR TAX MONEY TO BLOW ON THEMSELVES.
30
Wow. I missed this.
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