EU Referendum

Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts

badger-3[i-badger-3]An anonymous farmer friend of mine has been waging a lonely battle over on one of our family of blogs, the Bovine TB blog.

Used as we are to government profligacy, the story of the spread of Bovine TB is one of those hidden scandals where, New Labour, in thrall to the animal rights activists – which have contributed handsomely to their campaign funds – have steadfastly refused to take action against the very obvious and proven vector of the disease – the badger. Make no mistake – this "cuddly" little creature is now a killer.

Yet, despite the long-standing and growing threat, New Labour has spent over £2 billion in not controlling the disease, allowing its slow, insidious spread to the level where the epidemic in the wild badger population is now out of control, causing havoc in the cattle industry.

What Labour luvvies ignore, however, is that Bovine TB is a zoonosis – it spreads from animals to man. Already, we have learned of a number of cases of breakout into the human population – the reports heavily suppressed – but now, with savage glee we can report that the disease has struck where it will do some serious damage.

Reported in The Times today the case of a government scientist suspected of having contracted bovine tuberculosis from an infected badger.

Thirty other staff employed by the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) at Woodchester, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, are also being tested for the disease. The workers are all involved in studying the spread of bovine TB for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

It is the first time that a suspect case has emerged among government scientific staff in the 30 years of official research into the disease – but with the epidemic spread of the disease in the badger population, it will not be the last.

If confirmed, says The Times, senior veterinary surgeons and farmers' leaders are certain to renew their demand for an emergency cull of badgers in the disease hotspot areas of Britain, such as the South West and the Gloucestershire and Herefordshire border.

This time, the government should listen to them. But it has allowed the spread to develop to such a degree that a local cull is not enough. Nothing short of a nation-wide mass cull will now do the trick. Wherever there are badgers, there is disease – there is simply no disease-free stock left in the country and, to protect the human population, emergency action is necessary.

New Labour will be known for many things when it is kicked out, but if there was any justice, it should also be known for the administration that deliberately turned its back on a potent infectious disease and thus allowed TB once more to become a threat.

Not for nothing, it seems, are Tony Blair's initials "TB" – by these, and his corrupt, loathsome government, should he be known.

COMMENT THREAD

Richard S. Lindzen writes on climate change hysteria:

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.

Booker, as always, beats his own drum, but then we have this garbage with which to contend.

And the problem is that it is garbage, but despite that, it is repeated relentlessly, time and time and time again. That is the nature of the beast.

COMMENT THREAD

la-nueva_provincia[i-la-nueva_provincia]Leaving the travails of Afghanistan for a moment, we have the opportunity to read Antonia Senior in The Times, warning about greens under the bed. "Once the lure of communism seduced the idealistic. Today's environmental ideologues risk becoming just as dangerous," she writes.

Over on Watts up with that, we have a record of an "historic snow event" in South America. We also have unusual snow in the Alps and, here in Yorkshire, we've had to have the central heating on – like it's er ... cold.

The real world, however, is making not the slightest impact on the climate change industry, which seems more and more like the Taleban each day ... both want to crawl back into the stone age, the difference being that the warmists want to do it on a global scale.

Meanwhile, a recent report reveals that the US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.

A similar study in the UK would doubtless show that a proportionate amount had been spent by our own government and, as the US study reports, there are trillions to come. With that sort of money at stake, it is no wonder that the skeptics are having a hard time. It really is the same with the EU and, indeed, the defence industry. Money talks while the truth is dressed in rags.

With that happy thought, we can always revel in the fact that the drug companies are about to make a killing out the 'flu vaccine and major industries throughout the EU stand to make up to £4.6bn from selling carbon permits to power companies, for them to add their costs to our bills. Wind farms are going to add to our grief and, as always, the media has lost the plot.

Ever get the feeling you're in the wrong business?

COMMENT THREAD

Netherlands_10-31-06[i-Netherlands_10-31-06]There is a very natural personal tension – which possibly reflects in this blog – between our support for the British (and international) intervention in Afghanistan, where we are seeking to improve the standard of governance in that country, and our view of affairs here back home, where we see the progressive decline in our democracy and the unremitting decay in the standard of government.

In many respects, though, what is happening in Afghanistan – and our management of the "war" in the portals of the MoD main building and No 10 - is a reflection of the greater malaise. For, although it is fashionable to laud the bravery of "Our Boys", the MoD as a parent organisation and the respective Services are as disorganised, dysfunctional and down-right inefficient as all or any of the public-sector organisations.

Nevertheless, it is hard for many people to take on board that the service chiefs, parading in their uniforms, are bureaucrats just like any other public sector bosses – with a strong political edge which makes them politicians in uniform, fighting their corners for their own sectional interests which may (and often do) have nothing in common with the national interest or even the broader interests of the armed forces. The idea that, for instance, General Dannatt is merely a gallant soldier, "above politics" is risible, straight out of the bumper book of fairy tales.

The conduct of the "war" in that far away place called Afghanistan, therefore, has a great deal in common with events here. Both policy development and management here and abroad are being conducted with probably the same degree of incompetence, compounded by serial stupidity, blind dogma and ignorance.

The only thing that is really different is that, in Afghanistan, British service personnel die very visibly (the rest are largely ignored). Their names are posted on the official MoD website and are read out in Parliament. By contrast, the bulk of those who die a miserable, undignified death from avoidable infection in an NHS hospital may be victims of the same brand of official incompetence, but perpetrated by a different band of actors in different circumstances - and they die without official recognition.

Another area of policy which is equally dysfunctional is energy, which combines with that insidious decay in democracy as we see that congenital moron Ed Miliband – whose best friends even despair about his brain cell count – announce that planning rules would be changed to make it easier for 6,000 onshore wind turbines to be built.

Britain's "default position" will now be to accept new onshore turbines, which means the building of "many thousands" of wind turbines will be imposed on country residents "as part of a new green energy strategy" – whether they like it or not.

As it happens, most of them do not. Last September, we reported on the valiant efforts of Owen Paterson MP and Bill Cash in supporting constituents in the charming rural area of Shropshire, called Bearstone near Market Drayton, objecting to the energy firm Nuon building a giant subsidy machine on their patch – worth £43 million, charged to consumers through the Renewables Obligation.

With some pleasure, I was told last night that an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, robustly mounted at which Owen Paterson gave evidence, had succeeded. Local people had formed the pressure group Vortex and raised a large amount of money to do serious research, producing well worked through evidence which prevailed on the day.

Under Ed Miliband's newly announced regime, that appeal would not have succeeded. Thus we see the destruction of one of the most fundamental systems of government, where residents have some control over their own environments.

Yet all this is predicated on the fatuous and increasingly discredited notion that the recent cyclical bout of increased temperatures has somehow been triggered by human activity, on the basis of badly constructed and pathetically limited computer models, driven by self-interested activists who have gulled politicians throughout the world into believing their dire creed.

That the myth of man-made global warming not only survives but has become a primary driver of government policy, to the enormous cost and discomfort of us all, is a classic example of the dysfunction of our government – and of the opposition which has equally bought into the myth. That it is now driving the destruction of our democracy, as the Mad Miliband hands down his edicts, should therefore be of great concern.

Thus, returning to the theme with which we started, one of the best arguments I have heard for withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan is not based on the intrinsic merits – or not – of our being there. Rather, it is the incongruity of our current position where we are seeking to impose good governance and foster democracy in a foreign country when we cannot achieve either at home and are witnessing the destruction of both.

If our troops are needed, they are needed at home, to storm the bastions of Whitehall and Westminster, to shoot the denizens so that we can start over. We need a New Model Army, because our masters are no longer listening.

COMMENT THREAD

LtMarkEvison[i-LtMarkEvison]In The Daily Telegraph today are moving extracts from the personal journal written by Lieutenant Mark Evison, 1st Bn The Welsh Guards. They are moving because in May he died from wounds received in Afghanistan.

According to the MoD website, Lt Evison was the Officer Commanding Number 7 Platoon, which was part of the Number 2 Company Group operating in the south of Nad e-Ali.

The company had four patrol bases or check points, one of which - Haji Alem - was occupied by Lt Evison and his platoon. In addition to defending the check point they were responsible for patrolling the local area in order to deter insurgent activity and improve security for the local population.

On 9 May 2009, Lt Evison was leading such a patrol when they came under enemy fire. He was hit in the shoulder by a single round, and was evacuated back to the hospital in Camp Bastion. Despite the best medical treatment available, he was showing no sign of recovering, and he was flown back to Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. His family were with him when he died.

There are several aspects of the journal which invite comment, but the one entry which is particularly poignant is Lt Evison's description of the old smuggling fort which his platoon took over as its base. He wrote:

Around the fort it is hard patrolling country. There is not much cover and therefore movement is restricted. If we move to the SW then extraction back is difficult. There is a canal directly outside which although gives good cover is terribly exposed on both banks and can be covered by at least three or four firing points. Although one must not set patterns, with only two routes into that area it is virtually impossible. There is a definite lack of steer from above as to how to play this one. I am yet to be given a definite mission and clarity as to my role out here.

In this environment, therefore, Lt Evison and his men are committed to routine patrols, otherwise known as "mowing the grass". Evison himself is uncertain of his mission and the tactical situation is such that patrols are exposed to unavoidable hazards, in an extremely hostile area, where it would seem that the tragic result of his death was almost inevitable.

It would be wrong to draw too much from this single episode but it is reasonable to pose the question as to why Evison and his men were there, and what it was they were supposed to achieve. How did placing men in extreme jeopardy, carrying out a routine which was only too obvious to their enemy gain anything? How did his death, or his patrol routine, actually help further the declared aims of our government or the interests of the Afghani people?

Nad e-Ali district, as we now know, is the focus of a much larger operation, codenamed Panther's Claw, aimed at pushing the Taleban out of the area, following which British troops will, presumably, be repeating on a larger scale, that which Lt Evison's patrols were doing. And it is precisely that type of activity which led to the deaths of five soldiers from 2nd Bn The Rifles, last week.

Crucially, though, the ambush which led to their deaths was mounted in Sangin, a supposedly pacified area yet one in which violence continues, right up to date with the report of a civilian Mi-26 having been downed about a mile from the British base in Sangin, with six killed in the aircraft, and a child killed on the ground.

It is germane to note, in passing, that had this been a British military helicopter - as so easily it could have been - with British soldiers and airmen killed, this would have been at the top of the news agenda. But it seems that the deaths of civilians, to say nothing of an innocent child, are of little media concern.

And now it is that Dannatt bleats to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that: "A high number of deaths inevitably makes you question what we are doing, how we are doing it. The conclusion one has to reach is, going right back to basics on this, that this mission is really important."

This is a man who is professional head of an Army which was unable give one of its front-line officers a "definite mission" and clarity as to his role, having him and his men "mowing the grass" and getting him killed. Dannatt is right to talk about "going right back to basics", but we cannot avoid thinking that he should have been looking in the mirror when he said those words.

COMMENT THREAD

meter[i-meter]It is not only the politicians who are on another planet. Today, according to The Guardian, the Royal Society publishes a report telling us that we will have to pay more for energy if the UK is to have any chance of developing the technologies needed to tackle climate change.

This comes only a week after The Daily Express and others were reporting that energy bills were already set to soar to more than £5,000 a year within the next decade – and now these buffoons want them to go even higher.

But such is their detachment from the real world that John Shepherd, a climate scientist at Southampton University and co-author of the Royal Society report, is able to say: "We have adapted to an energy price which is unrealistically low if we're going to try and preserve the environment."

He adds: "We have to allow the economy to adapt to higher energy prices through carbon prices and that will then make things like renewables and nuclear more economic, as carbon-based alternatives become more expensive."

The man has enough grip of reality though to realise that higher energy costs would be a "hard sell" to the public, but he reckons it is "not unthinkable". But then he delves into the realms of fantasy, suggesting that part of the revenue needed for research could be generated by a carbon tax that took the place of VAT. And the EU is going to roll over and abandon VAT when?

Mind you, still to come is Ed Miliband's white paper setting out how Britain will source its energy for the coming decades. This is due out next month and one suspects that the Royal Society will look positively sane by comparison.

And, when you realise quite how fragile are the data underpinning the growing madness, one can only marvel at the tolerance and forbearance of British society – that these people are still alive.

COMMENT THREAD

polar+bears[i-polar+bears]One of the explanations for the unseemly rush to get the Waxman-Markey Bill through Congress is that the warmists are on the back foot. The global warming tide is shifting against them and, before too long, their creed will be consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another of those mad obsessions that periodically grip the masses.

This is certainly the view of the Wall Street Journal which notes with approval how the Australian Senate is giving Kevin Rudd's version of a climate change law a very hard time. Furthermore, it observes, Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public scepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The response of the warmists, however, is nothing if not predictable. Having controlled the agenda for so long, their reaction to the changing tide is to rig the debate, closing down on dissenting voices and suppressing alternative views.

One element of this strategy is recorded by Booker in today's column, where he describes the concerted efforts of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) to prevent one of the world's leading experts on polar bears attending a meeting because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

The group is meeting in Copenhagen under the aegis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, set up – as Booker puts it- "to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming," one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December.

The excluded expert is Dr Mitchell Taylor who has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. His problem is that, more than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

To add to his litany of sins, while Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years, he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

Thus Dr Taylor has been told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – are "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

This is but one example of how the warmists control the agenda, another being offered by Watts up with that, which catalogues measures taken by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suppress dissident voices within its own organisation.

None of this could happen, of course, without the active participation of the media and, in his second piece, Booker refers to Lord Hunt, who last week "made one of the most absurd claims that can ever have been uttered by a British minister."

Solemnly reported by the media, Booker writes, he said that by 2020 he hopes to see thousands more wind turbines round Britain's coasts, capable of producing "25 gigawatts (GW)" of electricity, enough to meet "more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs".

Hunt's ideas are so patently absurd that, had a minister announced that the UK was about to launch a series of manned space shots to the moon to mine green cheese in order to solve the global protein shortage, there would be little to compare between the two.

Booker notes though that perhaps the most disturbing point is that the media dutifully reported Lord Hunt's absurd claims without asking any of the elementary questions that could have revealed that he was talking utter nonsense. One cannot of course expect Opposition MPs to take an intelligent interest in such matters, he writes, but if journalists allow ministers to get away with talking such tosh, the slide into unreality can only continue.

This is a broader point that deserves more attention, touching on an effect we see in defence and elsewhere. The media – as a collective – has its own narratives and as long as an utterance fits with those narratives, it is given an airing. That which goes against the grain is buried.

Currently, the media narrative on climate change is that global warming is real and represents a major threat to the planet and humankind. Similarly, all the woes in the military stem from "under-resourcing" and all problems in Afghanistan will be solved by more "boots on the ground". Thus is the debate rigged, through which means our decline into obscurity, poverty and impotence is managed.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]One of the most dangerous phenomena of modern times is how the irrational greenies have hijacked the environmental agenda and suborned it in pursuit of their own political aims. No better example of this is offered than in a piece by Peter Schwerdtfeger, emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide, writing in The Australian.

Schwerdtfeger is reviewing the work of internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who asserts that the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection of minute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies carried out by his research group have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall. Thus, humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2.

What seems to be happening is that pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

This and other work is now showing that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi'an in central China has decreased by 20 percent, but rather than "climate change" this is attributable to man-made air pollution during the past 50 years.

The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

The work also shows the "frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas", not least in the Australian Snowy Mountains catchments, where a phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations may have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

The issue here is that targeted measures to limit specific pollution is a common good, and far from being objectionable, is economically as well as ecologically sound. And, by virtue of their very specificity, not only are such measures cheaper than the scatter-gun approach of trying to reduce CO2 measures, their effects are more immediately measurable and there is a true cost-benefit.

However, Schwerdtfeger remarks that the work has so far has been ignored in Australia (and elsewhere) because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions. And thus do the greenies, far from improving the environment, hold back sensible measures and lock us into the tunnel vision of group obsession, perpetuating the very problems they purport to be solving.

Booker and I had a phrase for this ... "the sledgehammer to miss the nut". Perhaps we should take the sledgehammer to the nut(s).

COMMENT THREAD

rain[i-rain]Gazing though the window at the torrential rain, interspersed with flashes of lightning and rolling thunder, we read also on the online edition of The Daily Telegraph that a month's rain is set to fall in a day in eastern England.

Yet the very same paper gives over valuable space in the print edition to an extraordinary "puff" for the Met Office – written, of course, by that airhead Louise Gray – heralding the production of "the most detailed set of climate change projections ever produced" that will "show the risks of sea level rise, droughts and floods in Britain over the next 80 years to within 16 miles of your front door."

This is the Met Office which told us in early May that we are on track for "barbecue" weather this June, July and August, with rainfall be "near or below average". This was just at the time we were reporting that it was "snowing all over the world".

Even though this is the third year running the Met Office has got is spectacularly wrong, inviting comments from Booker in June about another planet, this did not stop The Sunday Times giving house room to the Met Office's attempts to offer an 80-year forecast, reporting this in glowing detail on 7 June.

That, however, invited a rejoinder from no less than The Daily Telegraph leader the following day, recording how preposterous it was, to issue a weather forecast for 71 years hence when the Met Office cannot guarantee getting it right 71 hours from now.

One ventures that Mz Gray and the editorial team on her paper should occasionally read their own leaders, although a newspaper that has just appointed Geoffrey Lean as environment editor is clearly not in the market for sensible coverage of climate change issues.

The great problem is that, apart from skewing the agenda, there is – as we pointed out earlier - a huge "opportunity cost" in devoting so much space and resource to the climate change obsession. The paper can ill-afford to waste its valuable space on such matters, when there is real news to report.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker+crops[i-Booker+crops]Building on our pieces about global weather conditions and the harvest prospects, Booker launches into the issue today in his column.

The simple thesis is that accumulated evidence points to the beginnings of a global cooling trend which, inevitably, is having an impact on food production. But so besotted are out politicians with their myth of CO2-induced global warming that they have not noticed what is happening in the real world.

Booker also notes that it is more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, he tells us, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century.

Right on cue comes another article on sunspot activity from Watts up with that, adding strength to the overall thesis, which tells us something serious and disturbing is happening.

It really cannot be stressed enough how close are the margins of global food production. With total world consumption of grains in 2009/10 forecast at 1,736 million tons, actual production is expected to reach only 1,721 million tons – and even that is an optimistic forecast which is being revised downwards as each month passes.

This means that the global community will, over the next year, be living off accumulated stocks, currently standing at 344 million tons, representing 17 percent of total production.

That is a healthy enough position for the moment, except that most experts believe that global production has peaked while consumption can only continue to increase. Even without the weather effect, it will not take very long at all for global stocks to erode but, if the harvest conditions are replicated next year and beyond – which looks increasingly likely – it will not be at all long before we are looking at real shortages.

Increasingly though, it is not only the politicians who are wrapped up in the global warming myth. Just as the so-called science begins to crack apart and the warmist religion looks less credible each day, The Daily Telegraph appoints as it environment editor Geoffrey Lean, a fading refugee from the bankrupt Independent on Sunday, to promote the discredited creed (this marking a further stage in the newspaper's retreat from conservative values).

Grasping at the last gambit which the warmists hope will rescue their creed, Lean tries to make the case that promoting green issues is actually good for the economy, jobs, the universe and everything. He fails to note, of course, that Spain's drive for renewable energy has cost 2.2 jobs for every job "green energy" created, and that much of the capacity is now off-line to avoid destablising the grid.

What Lean is actually doing though is pointing up the fact that greenery is now big business, something we have pointed out before, presenting the corporates with yet another opportunity for plundering the private purse. As The Times noted last March, "green" investment is making a lot of rich people even richer

Now wonder, as Lean points out, the chief executives of 100 top companies ranging from Dupont to Deutsche Bank have called for tough measures to cut emissions of carbon dioxide. And to drive the point home, we also learn that WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) now enjoys an annual income exceeding $650 million. Green activism is seriously big business.

On the other hand, agriculture and food production are mature industries, fragmented and delivering poor margins, without the opportunities for government-sponsored "rip-offs" which characterise the green movement. Thus, the "smart money" is still in global warming because that is where the fortunes are to be made. That a very significant proportion of the world faces starvation is clearly a small price to pay for the greed and stupidity of the green lobby.

COMMENT THREAD

lambertportrait[i-lambertportrait]It comes to something when even the CBI notices something is wrong. But Richard Lambert, the director general of the CBI, certainly seems to have put his finger on the problem (or part of it) when he complained last night of politicians who have become obsessed by their own problems.

He is thus demanding that politicians "get a grip" and get back to tackling "the biggest economic, social and environmental challenges of our lifetime." He is also scathing of the government's plans to introduce electoral reform, declaring that "Politicians are airily throwing around ideas for constitutional reform - ideas which may be desirable in themselves and will need serious discussion in calmer times - but which are a massive diversion at a time when so many urgent policy decisions have to be agreed and implemented."

As for the "money quote", Lambert then accuses politicians of appearing "wholly preoccupied with what's going on within the Westminster village, and in doing what they can to strengthen their own positions over the short term."

One gets the impression that Lambert was referring to Westminster politicians as a breed and not confining his comments entirely to the government ranks, but in what could be a graphic illustration of the "bubble effect", Philip Hammond, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury chose to interpret this as an attack on the government.

He thus told The Daily Telegraph that: "Mr Lambert's comments should come as a powerful wake-up call to Ministers who have been more worried about protecting their own jobs than saving other people's, and to a Prime Minister who refuses to acknowledge the extent of the challenges we face. It's clear the only solution is a general election."

Elsewhere, we see the latest Populus poll in The Times with the Tories taking a hit, dragging them down five points to 36 percent – in common with other major pollsters which all have the Tories below the magic 40 percent. And, on preferences between Labour and Conservatives, 44 percent prefer a Labour government against 42 percent favouring the Tories.

That is not to say that there is any likelihood at all of Labour winning at the next general election, but it does reinforce the euro-election result, where only one in ten of the electorate actually voted for Mr Cameron's merry men. And, as my co-editor reminds me, in the South East region, where Mr Hannan, darling of the claque held sway, the Tory share of the vote actually declined.

For quite a while now, we have been railing at the fundamentally unserious nature of British politicians and, while it is self-evident that the grand personages in Westminster are not listening to us, perhaps some of them will listen to Mr Lambert.

To judge from Hammond's reaction though, this seems unlikely. This is a shame. Just as you cannot defy the laws of gravity, there is a limit to how long you can take the piss out of the electorate (and there is no better way of describing how politicians are treating us) before it loses patience completely. That time may well be drawing nigh.

COMMENT THREAD

Brain+Overload[i-Brain+Overload]Perhaps the most important report in a newspaper today is a piece in The Daily Telegraph headed: "24-hour news streams and constant Twitter updates causing brain overload".

The importance does not stem from any topical immediacy but in explaining, in part at least, what is happening in politics today – more specifically why it is happening.

The piece describes work by Professor Dilip Jeste in the current edition of Archives of General Psychiatry - and other work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - telling us that digital advancements feeding a 24-hour news culture could be starting to move too quickly for the human brain and causing it to overload.

To give it a contemporary edge, Jeste refers to "constant emails, news alerts, and Twitter updates" which are contributing to numbing our brains and outpacing our neurons' processing capabilities. The combined research shows that our reactions to traumatic news stories are becoming increasingly flippant as our minds are trying to seek comfort in the simpler things that cause no stress or provoke a need for analysis.

The research has found this overload may also be causing increasing levels of depression and the quicker we know about events, the less it seems to be sinking in and having the expected effect.

This seems to be very much a physical effect, in that the neurones associated with traits such as human wisdom or empathy, are sited in the slower acting, recently evolved regions of our brain. They are bypassed when the world feels stressful. The tendency is for our primitive survival instinct to take over and dictate behaviour.

Thus, the constant bombardment of news outstrips our abilities to digest the facts, match it with appropriate reactions and then behave accordingly.

What is not stated in the research – but merits special study – is the fact that one of the groups most exposed to this phenomenon is the politicians – and especially MPs. And it is not only the electronic media – it is the whole rush of information from diverse sources.

We ruminated on this last year, remarking that, in the hothouse of Westminster, there is simply no opportunity to pause and reflect. Our politicians are deprived of the time and space they need to take stock and think things through.

What this research seems to do, therefore, is put scientific clothes on what we have called the "bubble effect" where MPs in that very peculiar and stressful environment are entirely dysfunctional for a reason. We are not designed, as human beings, to cope with what they have to deal with.

Not least, this might explain the "Iain Dale syndrome" where reactions ... are becoming increasingly flippant (or lightweight) as "our minds are trying to seek comfort in the simpler things that cause no stress or provoke a need for analysis." Hence, you see the tendency to avoid hard-edged issues and retreat into the soap opera of politics, focusing on the tat, the personalities and the theatre. It is perhaps not surprising that so many of the claque are devotees of Twitter.

I have written to Prof Jeste with some observations, and hope he will respond – and will keep you posted if he does. But, if he and his colleagues are half way right about the effects of "brain overload", we have to think very hard about how our MPs work, what we ask of them and how they manage their affairs.

If we are actually asking of human beings more than they can deliver, then we should not be surprised if they fail to perform as expected.

COMMENT THREAD

BNP+002[i-BNP+002]
Where one would like to see the blogosphere leading the charge, dominating the political debate as it is doing in the United States, the heart sinks when we see the desperately trivial contribution to the "great constitutional debate" made by Tory Diary.

Oblivious to the discussions going on around him, Tim Montgomerie suggests only what amount to marginal changes, failing to address the fundamental failures in the system, arguing for such things as a five percent annual reduction in taxpayer funding of political parties until it is completely eliminated. Even his one substantive point, "A renegotiation of our relationship with Europe that will see key powers returned to Westminster" is weak, building on the Conservative myth that renegotiation is in fact a possibility.

Elsewhere, in the much-derided MSM, we get two intelligent contributions. One is from Adrian Hamilton in The Independent on reform of the Select Committee system. The other is from David Green, director of Civitas, in The Daily Telegraph.

Green offers "a radical solution would be to ensure the complete separation of powers by emulating countries such as Germany, France and the US, where government ministers are forbidden to serve in the elected assembly."

As for Hamilton, he argues that most select committees are led by placemen, made up of the mediocre and tasked with the irrelevant. He is worried that calls for reform are directed at the wrong problem. The aim, according to the reformers, he says, is to enable parliament better to hold the executive to account. Yet is setting up Commons Committees as attack dogs on the government really their most useful function, he asks. Hamilton thus continues:

If the problem were an overweening central government out of control, as the reformers suggest, that might be so. But the problem of government in Britain is not really an untrammelled executive, for all the size of recent parliamentary majorities. It is that policy making and legislation is so poor.

The failures of health and education policy, the negligence of financial regulation, the mistakes of military procurement, the lack of North Sea depletion policy or a balanced energy strategy, the perversion of Public-Private Finance Initiatives, the timidity of the transport approach, the tardiness of environmental measures – all these arise not from an over-strong executive, but a political system that has been unwilling or unable to work through and discuss alternative approaches to central issues.

Select committees ought to fulfil this function.

That is a good point, arguing for a more proactive involvement by committees. Riding a populist bandwagon after the event is not fulfilling any special public duty, says Hamilton, echoing our argument on defence procurement, where the committee should be involved before a purchasing decision is made. It should not be left merely to comment on the failures, some time after the event, when money had been wasted and men have died.

Arguably, these two issue of "separation of powers" and reform of the select committee system are amongst the most important we need to address. But they seem to have passed the political blogosphere by, and are sadly absent from Montgomerie's offerings.

Some long time ago, we reviewed a report on the political blogsophere, and not much seems to have changed since. The commentary is still largely lightweight and derivative, and the MSM is still making the running. The blogosphere needs to up its game.

Nor is this an academic issue. Despite the "right" preening itself on dominating the blogosphere, the BNP – as the above graphic shows – is still the lead political website by a long chalk. And yesterday, we saw another by-election success for the BNP, where it took 19 percent of the vote in Middlesborough's North Ormesby & Brambles Farm ward, coming second after Labour and relegating the Conservatives to third place.

Unless we as a collective are able to offer better, real improvements to the system, the BNP will win the argument by default. Either we fill the vacuum or they do.

COMMENT THREAD

Arbuthnot[i-Arbuthnot]When it comes to government spending, I am seriously old school. Working for local government as a young man, I was schooled in an environment where everyone, from the boss downwards, was conscious that every penny we spent came out of taxes, extracted from people many of whom were less fortunate than ourselves, to whom we owed a duty to be frugal.

Not a penny was spent unless it could be justified, even to the point of absurdity, where the job actually suffered because we were not allowed to buy the necessary equipment when it was thought "too expensive".

I retailed some of those experiences in a post written nearly four years ago, where I had to threaten to resign just to get basic protective equipment, like an overall and a pair of wellies out of the council, having been refused because the boss thought it an unnecessary expense.

Those were the old days, when we were paid for 40 hours a week and routinely did sixty, with no question of overtime, because that is how long it took to do the job properly. Even then people grumbled. But we were local government officers, proud of what we did, nevertheless conscious, every waking hour, that we had to deliver value for money to justify our existence and to be able to look at ourselves in our mirrors when – as they were then – the rate demands went out.

That core experience never goes away and it thus shapes my view of the present controversy over MPs' "expenses", and the continuing revelations that are pouring into the media.

Unlike many, and in particular the media and political claque, I have no problem with MPs being paid well. To do that job properly – of which I have more direct knowledge than most – requires a special person, with special skills and a huge amount of dedication. It is not one I would be prepared to do, for any amount of money.

But the qualification is doing the job properly - providing value for money. If the MPs devise a system – which they have done – which conceals from the public exactly how much they are actually paid, disguising part of their payments as "allowances" rather than salary, I have no particular problem with that – as long as the recipients give value for money.

As it stands, against a headline salary of about £64,000, the actual value of MP's remuneration package – including their "allowances" and pensions, is in the order of £150,000. That is an extremely generous payment and for that, we are entitled to a great deal. And it is here that the "deal" begins to unravel, as we see the latest revelations and in particular those relating to Mr James Arbuthnot, chairman of the House of Commons defence committee.

Actually, I care not that he claimed "a series of payments made to maintain a home in Hampshire that he rented before buying a £2 million home without a mortgage two years ago," such payments including the maintenance of his swimming pool. Since these payments were, de facto part of his salary – as every political hack has known for many years – how he spends his money is entirely his own affair. No more do I expect scrutiny of his expenditure than would I expect public scrutiny of how I spend my pitiful income.

What does bother me, though, is precisely the issues I raised - whether he (and all the other MPs) earns his very generous salary - whether he provides value for money. In this context, we have followed more closely than many others, the career of Mr Arbthnot and, as an MP, it is probably fair to say that, in terms of hours spent, and effort, he works harder than many of his colleagues. But, in terms of effects achieved, it is also probably fair to say that he – and his colleagues on the defence committee – consistently fail to deliver value for money.

This is a point we have laboured many times, in many different posts – a sample of which is here, here, here, here and here.

That is where I fall out with the claque, which is revelling in the discomfort of MPs, without addressing the substantive point. It is not what they are paid which matters, it is what they do for the money.

Roughly, in terms of salary equivalent, MPs cost us £100 million a year. On one project alone, the defence committee could have saved us that. Collectively, each year – through effective and robust control of the executive – MPs could save us billions. And, should they do so – and had they done so - they would be worth the money they are paid, no matter how it is packaged.

Having worked in and alongside parliament for well over 20 years, as a lobbyist, campaigner, researcher and analyst, and directly experienced all levels of government, from local authorities to the EU, I perhaps have a better idea than most what can and cannot be done, and the limits of power at each level. But I am convinced that a robust, assertive House could do far more than it is doing, and achieve far more – not by the "Punch and Judy" bickering that we see so often, but by steady, persistent resistance to the encroaching power of the executive.

Seeing from first hand what these wastrels could do, and what they do not, while plundering the public purse as payment for services not rendered, evokes the deepest, darkest hatred of the breed. There are exceptions, but they are few. We will have our reckoning – it is only a matter of time.

COMMENT THREAD

HarrabinRogerD1[i-HarrabinRogerD1]The Guardian is telling us that two BBC environment and science reporters are to lose their jobs as part of BBC News's latest round of cuts.

The BBC's team of science and environment correspondents includes Roger Harrabin (pictured), David Shukman, Christine McGourty, Pallab Ghosh, Sarah Mukherjee and Jeremy Cooke, all of whom report for various news programmes across BBC TV and radio services.

"The science and environment beat is a massive growth area and the reporting team are pre-eminent so many there are puzzled to say the very least about it," said a BBC source. "It needs expertise for these stories, a lot of preparation needs to be put in, and to lose two reporters in one go is madness."

The source also pointed at the "huge irony" of the decision given the "importance the organisation places on climate change as part of the news agenda".

The real irony is that anyone can seriously suggest that being a BBC environment correspondent requires any expertise. After all, how difficult can it be to regurgitate press releases from the WWF and Friends of the Earth?

COMMENT THREAD

cfl[i-cfl]The Daily Mail is in outraged mode at the news that power firms are " handing out energy-saving lightbulbs to dodge their obligation to help families cut carbon emissions."

Local councils, we are told, say the free distribution is part of an "outrageous" attempt by the businesses to shirk their responsibility to install more meaningful energy saving measures in homes.

Thus does Paul Bettison, chairman of the LGA's environment board, say: "The failure of energy companies to really help householders cut their fuel bills is an outrage. Energy suppliers should be filling our lofts and walls with insulation, not filling our cupboards with light bulbs."

That last bit has a personal resonance as we have received so many free lightbulbs under various schemes that we have more than we can possibly use for the next ten years, even supposing we wanted to use the damn things.

But what the Mail doesn't make clear is that this is in response to the government's Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), part of the deal whereby the energy companies avoided a windfall tax, accepting instead a statutory scheme requiring them to fund domestic energy reductions.

As the Defra website helpfully explains, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) is a statutory obligation on energy suppliers to achieve carbon targets by encouraging households to take up energy efficiency and low carbon measures.

It is the Government's principal driver of household energy efficiency and carbon reduction. It is open to suppliers how they meet their targets, but they will typically promote subsidised offers on loft and cavity wall insulation, as well as a wide range of high-efficiency lighting, heating systems, appliances and energy saving devices.

But the canny suppliers have found that, simply by putting seemingly endless quantities of lightbulbs in the post to their hapless consumers (who have to pay for them through their bills), they can achieve their notional targets, even though most of the lightbulbs – as we have found – cannot be used and therefore will not deliver any real energy savings.

However, what these bulbs are doing, according to The Times is far from wholesome. In China, it reports, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of "green" lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

So, one "environmental" policy here leads to an environmental disaster elsewhere. The "silver lining" of largely mythical energy saving creates a dark cloud in China. But, no doubt, the greenies feel that poisoning a few thousand Chinese workers is but a small price to pay for their obsession. Since they are going to end up killing us all, they might as well start with the Chinese.

COMMENT THREAD

Strategy[i-Strategy]So it is done. "What we are trying to do is combine the measures, militarily and civilian," says Gordon Brown in today's statement, something which gets close to joined-up government, even if it is many thousands of miles away.

With Nick Clegg reminding the House that, "Public support for the conflict is under strain", the statement trailed the publication of the document "UK policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan: the way forward", setting out the clearest statement yet of where we stand in this troubled corner of the world.

A mere 32-pages including the covers, the relatively modest length belies its depth. Its main claim to fame is to offer a seam-free approach to a unified policy which encompasses both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Looking for clues as to a change of direction, however, what stands out is the remarkably candid appraisal of the current status. Thus states the document:

The security situation in Afghanistan remains serious, particularly in the south and east. Insurgents are unable to defeat international forces directly, or Afghan forces where they have international support.

But the insurgents' switch to asymmetric attacks (against which international and Afghan forces can only provide the population with a certain degree of protection); their access to havens across the border in Pakistan; and the combination of poverty, lack of good governance, weak rule of law, lack of progress on reconciliation and social and economic development, and perception of widespread corruption, mean that the insurgency has not been delivered a decisive blow.

The local population therefore lacks sufficient confidence actively to back the legitimate government against the insurgency. Without an improvement in security, particularly in the south and east, sustainable progress in Afghanistan will remain difficult; and what progress there has been so far will be put at risk – as will wider regional stability, and our own national security.

But, while what few headlines we have so far seen concentrate on the temporary boost in troop levels – with 700 more to be deployed to provide security during the forthcoming presidential elections - of much more long-term importance is this little nugget buried in the strategy:

We will support the Afghan government by investing in stronger markets that will promote an entrepreneurial business culture. To assist the vast majority of Afghans who live in rural areas, we will increase our support to agriculture and rural development, including transport to market, and support for access to international markets for agricultural exports.

In particular, Helmand province, with its abundant natural resources, has the potential to be a centre of agricultural production and growth for Afghanistan. To help realise this potential, we will invest £68m over the next four years in agriculture, rural enterprise development and infrastructure.

Current projects include: a major road-building programme linking Lashkar Gah to Garmsir, Nad-e-Ali and Gereshk; the refurbishment of the Gereshk hydropower plant (as part of a wider programme to double electricity production in 2009-10); and agri-business infrastructure in Lashkar Gah (funded by the US).

This might by some be considered as coming under the category "too little, too late" but, given that these developments will be almost completely ignored by our kiddies korner media (to say nothing of the increasingly trivial korner of the political blogosphere), it is remarkable that there has been any progress here at all. Crucially, we then see this:

We will also continue to support the Afghan government to deliver basic services, such as health and education, by providing direct support to pay the salaries of teachers and other key workers. In parallel, we will build the government's capacity to collect taxes so that, over the longer term, it can begin to reduce its reliance on international support.

The first sentence is interesting. For too long, there has been money spent on rapid impact projects, building schools for the photo-opportunities they afford, only for them to remain unused or not fully exploited because the communities cannot afford to pay teachers and central government is unable to come up with the cash.

As to the last sentence, this is possibly the most important issue of all. As long as Karzai gains most of his income from international aid, his greatest concern will be keeping his foreign paymasters on-side. The welfare of his people is of secondary concern. Thus, if Afghanistan is to develop, there must be a transition from external dependence, building up a strong tax base so that the central government becomes dependent on its own population.

There is much to be said for the premise "no taxation without representation" but less is heard of the very obvious requirement that, for there to be representative government, there must be taxation. When people are taxed by government, they tend to take an interest in politics. Where there is no tax, there is no nation.

Such issues are, in fact, those which are the focus of policy-makers behind the scenes. They are grown-up issues upon which resolution will depend on whether the visible military adventure is successful. That is where the work lies, and where we must see progress, and it where our attention should be focused. Boring though it is, one crucial metric of success is how many Afghanis fill in a tax return.

That we see a strategy document addressing this is very much a start. That we are seeing recognised the vital role of agricultural development, and the road-building programme is also an improvement. We are further on than we were, and that is something.

That leaves the strategy document to make a statement of the "bleedin' obvious". The challenges facing Afghanistan and Pakistan are substantial and complex, it says. "They require a multi-stranded approach, covering security, building more effective and accountable governance, and promoting development in an often insecure environment."

Pace Nick Clegg and his observation that, "Public support for the conflict is under strain", what is also required is a better understanding by our own public of the issues involved, the priorities and the nature of progress.

On this we cannot expect any guidance from our kiddies korner media, or from our gifted MoD. But, for the grown-ups, the strategy document is directly accessible. The beauty of the internet is that we no longer have to rely on spoon-feeding from the media. We can read things for ourselves and make up our own minds. If we do not, we only have ourselves to blame.

COMMENT THREAD

Darling22[i-Darling22]With over 3,000 budget-related pieces on Google News and doubtless more to come, it is hard to see how anything by way of useful comment can be added to the torrent. If you started reading now, you might just have caught up by the next budget.

The key points, we are told, are a £7bn squeeze on the rich followed by a brutal freeze on public spending in the next parliament, setting up the government for the general election.

But, while Darling offered a financial budget, he also delivered what is hailed as the world's first "carbon budget", committing the UK to a revised target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 34 percent of 1990 levels by 2020.

This, of course, is hubris personified as the man won't be around a chancellor after the election in 2010, and there will have been a least two more elections by the time a further ten years have elapsed.

By then, also, the likelihood is that the already apparent cooling trend will be well established and the "climate change" scam will be history, buried in winter snows and power and food shortages.

Darling's projections for his carbon budget, therefore, are likely to be about as accurate as his general financial forecasts, but that has not stopped him announcing a £1.4bn package of measures to help create low-carbon economy.

What he is actually doing is creating a low-money economy so it is some small consolation that climate change campaigners are complaining that the package is "inadequate", but then that would be their refrain even if we committed 100 percent of GDP to their obsession.

Adrian Wilkes, chief executive of the Environmental Industries Commission, thinks the package is "timid and inadequate" while Friends of the Earth's director Andy Atkins whines that, "The government has squandered a historic opportunity to kick-start a green industrial revolution and slash UK carbon dioxide emissions."

As to the bones of this fantasy, he has allocated £375m for home energy efficiency, and £525m "support" for offshore wind power. On top of that, Darling is spending £405m of our money to develop low-carbon technologies.

The actual amount to come out of the tax fund is about £510m over the next two years - 9.6 percent of the chancellor's total spending commitments. Much of the rest comes from a temporary increase in the Renewables Obligation Certificates, which we will have to find out of increased electricity bills.

There is also to be available £4bn in new loans from the European Investment Bank, aimed at helping "green" schemes overcome a critical lack of commercial money, with banks reluctant to commit money to these increasingly mad schemes.

The worst is not over though. Today we are to expect an announcement on carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants. These are probably to be funded by money from the EU and an unspecified "new mechanism", likely to end up as a levy on consumer bills. Soon, when you can get it at all, electricity will become a luxury reserved for Sundays and bank holidays.

Unfortunately, according to North Jnr who watched the parliamentary debate after the budget, there is no immediate (or any) relief to hand.

And despite there being an opportunity to ditch at least 9.6 percent of the public spending commitment, without anyone noticing, no such suggestion was forthcoming. We carry on regardless, as madness continues to afflict our benighted land.

COMMENT THREAD

floodmain[i-floodmain]
One thing that does not come over from the growing collection of videos on "police brutality" during the G20 demonstrations is the context. Greenie protestors have developed and refined the art of provocation to a quite remarkable degree, calculated to try the patience of a saint and geared to trigger precisely the responses which have been so assiduously filmed.

As to the demonstrators themselves and their creed, one can only marvel at the police restraint – that there were in fact so few instances of "brutality" when the natural and human instinct would be to irrigate the area liberally with tear gas or something with a more permanent effect.

The nature of the beast is well described in The Australian this week, an atavistic creed which is uniquely damaging to our way of life and our prosperity. Says Christopher Pearson in this newspaper:

The environmental romantics have a loathing and fear of population increase, seek to return to the past and promote pagan superstitions. Well before the crunch of global warming appeared, the environmental romantics hated the modern world despite the fact that in industrial societies we live longer, we are healthier, the air and water are getting cleaner, the area of forests is expanding and we have far greater freedom than in past times. It is the energy-intensive communication systems of the modern world that allow the environmental romantics to spread the word.

Quite how stupid and dangerous these "atavistic romantics" are, however, comes not from the streets of London but from the local US press which reports that "Oklahoma is getting a late dose of winter weather as a storm system pushes through the state, dumping snow across northern and western sections of the state."

Amazingly, the US National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning through Saturday for much west-central, northwest and north-central Oklahoma. A winter storm warning also was in effect through Saturday for southwest, central and northeast Oklahoma.

For the consequences of this weather anomaly, however, you have to read the Tulsa World which tells us that the freezes before this last one have already done serious damage, having devastated Oklahoma's winter wheat. It could end up killing 40 percent to 60 percent of the crop.

Mike Schulte, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, is saying that most wheat fields in the southeastern part of the state had 90 percent of the crop destroyed, adding that only areas close to the Kansas border have avoided most of the damage. "Its real bad out there," Schulte says. "In some places it's a total loss."

Actually, the situation is not that happy in Kansas either and there are disturbing signs beginning to emerge from commodity markets worldwide, with damage and disruption by no means confined to the United States.

As Booker has sought to point out many times in his column, we are no longer seeing a warming trend and, over the last seven years there has in fact been a distinct cooling trend. With the climate models sharply diverging from reality and an ominous quiet sun, there is now real, observable evidence to suggests that we are going to have severe global stress on crop production.

Where there have not been intensive periods of cold, there have been serious floods (pictured) all of which have conspired to reduce crop yields which, this year, could drive down global stocks to critical level.

The possibility of a global food crisis resulting from cooling was one we flagged up last year, almost exactly to the day. The possibility now looks more frighteningly real. But – as we have observed before – the consequences are manageable as long as there is an early and well-directed policy response.

That is the reality of politics – the politics of global (and national) food production – which lies at the heart of our survival and prosperity, and on which the world relies upon for its stability. But, since our politicians have outsourced food policy to Brussels, and our idle political gossips probably think food comes from Tescos, there is absolutely no prospect of the issue being given even momentary thought.

Instead, while the claque is wrapped up in its interminable court gossip, the "atavistic romantics" dominate the streets demanding exactly the opposite of what is required, screaming "police brutality" to an eager audience, when we should be shooting them all before their warmist creed drives us into starvation.

That our political claque can no longer focus on anything that even remotely approaches serious issues – like our survival – is the politics of stoopid.

COMMENT THREAD

Homeowners who do not to take action to improve the energy efficiency of their properties should be treated as criminals, one of the country's most influential environmentalists said last night.

Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, believes tough measures are needed to force people to cut their use of fossil fuels and thinks governments should consider making it a crime for members of the public not to take measures such as installing cavity wall insulation.

"It's clearly a moral crime against the climate," he says.

COMMENT THREAD