Tag Archives: Net zero

Hysteria/Mission Creep/Overreach

Posted on by
4

When I was head (principal) of a primary (elementary) school in the 1990s, I had a staff member who regarded every small problem as ‘a Major Disaster’ (her words). Everything from a mislaid document to wet weather on sports day was an earth-shattering calamity. She was not the only one to overstate manageable events. Those who wield authority over us, their media lackeys and those with a cause of their own to promote are expert in whipping the populace up into a frenzy disproportionate to the given situation. After a short period in the spotlight, the hysteria and the movements that cause it usually fade, as the media finds something newer and shinier about which to induce panic. Occasionally, the newly out-of-favour movements fight back with renewed vigour, a mission creep extending their influence into new areas.

Looking back over the last 25 years, I and my fellow citizens here in the UK have been expected to be alarmed to an alarming degree about:

The Millennium Bug, when every computer in the world, so the experts said, would crash the instant the year 2000 started. This would, in turn, crash every automated system everywhere, causing chaos and mass fatalities. You all know what actually happened.

Foot & Mouth Disease, when millions of cattle and sheep were slaughtered and burnt. Millions of healthy animals were destroyed in case they contracted the disease.

Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly amassed by Iraq who, we were told, could unleash them on the West within 45 minutes. That there was no evidence of any WMDs and the fact Iraq did not deploy them (because you can’t deploy something that doesn’t exist) did not deter George W. Bush and Tony Blair from launching their oxymoronic (with the emphasis on the moronic) ‘war on terror’. In so doing, they destabilised the world, creating many of the problems we face today.

Child Abuse Scandals: After either missing or covering up the serial abuse of children and vulnerable people by a BBC celebrity, British authorities went to town on ‘suspected paedophiles’, many of whom were nothing of the sort. (A friend of mine was caught up in this hysteria and spent time in prison for a youthful indiscretion many years earlier.) Unfortunately, this national crisis and the perceived need not to offend Muslims came into conflict when, over 20 years, rape gangs comprised mainly of Pakistani men were able operate in up to 50 UK cities with impunity. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, white working-class girls were systematically groomed and raped while the police and authorities turned a blind eye, the consequence of a woke priority taking precedence over the rights and safety of others.     

The Covid Pandemic and Lockdown, when governments the world over (apart from Sweden) panicked about a flu-like virus, closed down entire countries, failed to protect the vulnerable and crashed the very economies needed to fund healthcare and treatment for the infected. Britain was closed down for almost 2 years and still hasn’t recovered from the consequences. Citizens are now paying heavily for actions taken by a government that extended its powers to achieve very little.

        Cartoon by Mark Woods, Spectator magazine, 7th June '25

Mental Health issues and the medicalised labelling of ordinary human behaviours. We all have mental health issues; this is what it is to be human. Some, it is true, have more than others. Determining an individual has ‘mental health issues’ forces him or her to become his or her issues. Instead of being prone to depression (as I was) or anxiety, the individual who experiences these is now ‘neuro-diverse’. Instead of suffering from a condition the individual could do something about they become that condition. Some people, usually males, used to be diagnosed as autistic. Now that autism is seen as a spectrum, everyone is deemed to be on it somewhere; everyone as a result is autistic. People become trapped in their condition with no way out, lifelong treatment the only recourse.

Black Lives Matter. As Lionel Shriver asks here, do black lives matter any more now than they did before all that righteous indignation and virtual signalling from white people?

Identity Politics in which individuals were told as a matter of urgency to self-identify solely on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality. Gender dysphoria became a thing from which the trans-movement emerged. While I’ve every sympathy for those who feel they were born in the wrong body, society was unprepared for and incapable of dealing with the consequences. Women became ‘cis-women’, sex became ‘gender’ (a grammatical term), ‘non-binary’ became an option and the abuse of pronouns was politicised. An individual could identify as a plural ‘they’, while others lost their jobs if they declined to play along. Worst of all, children, who were too young to be allowed a tattoo, were given puberty blocking drugs, and in some cases surgery, because they felt they were the wrong sex. Children.

The High Court in the UK recently ruled that a man cannot become a woman, entrenching the views of campaigners and prompting other supporters to claim they knew this all along.

Wokeism; while it’s right and proper to treat each other with kindness, courtesy and consideration, politicising something we were, by and large, already doing was not. Wokeism pushed the boundaries over what could be done or said, or rather could not. Anything that might cause someone else offence was forbidden; commenting or criticising others’ religious beliefs or defending women’s rights became ‘hateful’; having a view on unsustainable immigration numbers made you a fascist. This was the era of cancelling those who did not conform to woke ideals. Toppling statues was popular too on the basis that a long-forgotten figure from 250 years ago may have had a slight connection with the slave trade. Western guilt for actions over which people living today had no part in and demands for reparations to those equally uninvolved ensued.

The ‘necessary’ control of free speech, a panic we’re still mired in. Stupid and inflammatory comments on social media can now earn you a prison sentence longer than that of a paedophile offender, often preceded by a visit from half a dozen policemen who will root through your house looking for evidence that you might have once had a ‘Brexity’ thought. Subjects off limits are; arguing that Covid19 began in a Wuhan laboratory (it might upset the Chinese); Islam, Islamic extremism and the Pro-Palestinian movement (however it’s still okay to criticise and condemn Jewish people for the actions of their government); expressing views different from the UK government’s and whatever the prevailing narrative happens to be. A government agency, ‘Prevent‘, last year redefined terrorism (see below) as ‘vocal support of ideologies that advocate discrimination’ and any expression of what it calls ‘cultural nationalism’. What this means is that those who call out religiously-motivated discrimination, lawlessness and terrorism are to be considered terrorists themselves. Actual terrorism and violence is therefore protected against those who would speak out about it, those who do so being the real terrorists. To put it another way, which I read recently (though can’t remember where): those who say hurty things are far more culpable than those who commit actual hurty things. This Orwellian doublespeak must now be taught in universities and other higher education institutions.  

The Climate Crisis and Net-Zero. You must be alarmed by the climate crisis (see here for how much of it Al Gore got wrong). You must too pay heavily for net-zero, thanks to additional taxes; energy prices in the UK are the highest in the world. You must buy into the government’s attempts to enforce a net-zero energy policy by 2050, despite net-zero being unachievable.

What if, might, could, maybe: the media’s favourite phrases to ramp up hysteria. ‘There might be terrible consequences’; ‘we could be headed for another Major Disaster’; ‘if X happens (though it hasn’t) then Y could possibly follow.’ When did the media stop reporting what has actually happened and take up fortune telling instead?  

* * * * * *

There is some comfort in the fact that the so-called crises and hysteria of the past eventually receded and faded away. So too will many of these current causes. All things, as George Harrison once wisely reminded us, must pass. They will, however, be replaced by others equally irrational and preposterous. Those who create them, be they governments, special interest groups or overwrought Swedish teenagers will expect us to conform to their Chicken-Little levels of hysteria. When they do, don’t be alarmed and be sure to seek out the evidence for yourself.

I Don’t Count

Posted on by
2

 

I don’t count. You don’t count. Not if, like me you’re an ordinary person quietly getting on with life, perhaps working to support your loved ones or maybe retired now, drawing the pension you’ve paid into all your life and paying your taxes. You don’t count. I don’t count.

Politicians only become interested in you, and then only as a statistic, when election time rolls round. They see us, in the UK at least, as a cash cow, needed only to fund not merely those services that are necessary to a functioning society but also for every other ill-thought-through scheme they devise.

When Labour – the equivalent of the Democrats in the States – came to power last year they suddenly ‘discovered’ that the previous Tory (Republican) government had left them with a £22 billion debt. A number of financial institutions disputed this figure and the government produced no concrete evidence for it. Nonetheless, they took immediate action, shelving most of their pre-election promises until the debt could be repaid. To this end, our politicians, being among the most unproductive members of society, cut out an enormous amount of government waste and immediately cancelled projects of no benefit to the British people. The Spectator magazine estimated that they saved in the region of £200 billion this way. They were quids in!

Except they did nothing of the sort. What they did was keep up their prolific spending, turning to their cash cow – the British tax-payer – to milk it for even more money by increasing taxes all round. Particularly hard hit were high earners (which I am not), the lower paid, businesses and farmers.

A disputed debt, created solely by politicians (much of it by unnecessarily locking down for two years), now has to be paid for by those who had nothing to do with its creation. As if this weren’t bad enough, the new UK government has extended its control of its people by –

  • Deciding what can and can’t be said online and elsewhere (a new, so-called Islamophobic blasphemy law is currently being considered);
  • Encouraging police to investigate ‘non-crime hate incidents’, while ignoring burglaries and shoplifting ‘incidents’;
  • Restricting how much of our own money we can give away to family and friends before the government helps itself to a massive slice;
  • Freezing tax thresholds, meaning individuals will start to pay tax at lower levels of income;
  • Making taxpayers pay for schemes and projects with no proven track record (carbon capture, net zero);
  • Permitting local councils to increase council taxes, some above the legal limit, for fewer services. (Almost a quarter of council tax collected is spent on ‘unjustifiably generous’ staff pensions.)
  • Allowing government agencies access to private bank accounts in order to determine whether benefit recipients are lying about their income (powers that are set to be extended in 2029);
  • Making tax payers fund mass immigration, which successive governments have failed to control.
  • Requisitioning farm land in order to build more houses. In a second blow to farmers, paying them less than the market value. The government seems hell-bent on destroying food production in the UK.
  • Expecting tax-payers to pay Mauritius between £9 billion and £18 billion to take a tiny island in the Indian Ocean off our hands (though Trump might prevent the handover). 

Also under consideration is a two-tier justice system offering greater lenience to those from minorities. Should penalties for criminal acts be determined by ethnicity?

None of this makes us North Korea, but it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re  living in a Western democracy. What happened to government of the people for the people? Why is there growing resentment in the UK that government is now something that is done to the electorate? Beware legislation that is ‘for your own good’ because it never is.

It’s no wonder so many British citizens feel neglected and side-lined by politicians who view them only as a source of income. Can you blame them, and me, for feeling like we don’t count?

Neil’s Third Letter, to the Sceptics

Posted on by
1

Dear Sceptic,

I understand, I really do. Some of your explanations for what’s going on in the world are way out there. Some of them, in fact, are absolutely preposterous. But, I know how you got there. You’ve spent so long being misled, deceived and, yes, let’s face it, lied to by politicians and some of the media that you’ve come up with your own explanations for things. You’ve suspected in some cases that the establishment’s frequent misdirection and disinformation amounts to conspiracy, and certainly there have been conspiracies of silence in recent years (we’ll get to some examples soon). Unfortunately, this has meant those same authorities have been able to say that your views can be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories. You should be cancelled. Certainly some of your more way out theories – satanic overlords, faked moon-landings and microchip vaccines – need to be. Unfortunately this has also meant any reasonable arguments you’ve arrived at that run contrary to the prevailing narrative have also been airily dismissed as the work of nut-jobs and thrown in the dumpster along with all the whacky stuff.

You were right, it turned out, about Covid19. It was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory, partially funded by the US, from where it escaped in 2019. Even the US State Department has accepted that this is the most likely explanation of the virus’s origin and has asked Chinese authorities to release the relevant data (you can guess how this request was met.)

Look where it got you during the pandemic when you argued for the virus’s lab based origins. Despite the evidence you presented you were labelled conspiracy theorists, were cancelled and hurled in the ‘not worth your time’ trash can. It’s still happening now, because no-one can be allowed to upset the Chinese authorities when it could mean research labs in the West could lose Chinese sponsorship.

You’ve pointed out too that the UK government’s efforts to eliminate the country’s less than 1% contribution to to global emissions is futile. At £22 billion, its plan to ‘capture’ carbon waste is both ridiculously expensive and pointless: carbon capture has never been successfully achieved by any country that has previously attempted it. Never mind, the British taxpayer will fund this particular tilt at windmills (no pun intended); you can be dismissed as climate-change deniers, purveyors of false information as well as conspiracy theorists. A three-in-one success!

You’ve suggested that the current narrative on immigration doesn’t hold water. The government says we need present levels of immigration to fill job vacancies, sustain the economy and fund others’ welfare benefits and pensions. You’ve highlighted the unfounded assumptions inherent in this strategy, pointing out it has failed to improve the economy. You’ve suggested too that in the long term it will necessitate even more immigration to fund those currently entering the country when they draw welfare and claim their pensions. It’s a ponzi scheme writ large that merely kicks the can down the road. And for your trouble you’re labelled far-right, racist and Islamophobic (even when you don’t mention Muslims). You can always tell when those who seek to control the narrative have no counter argument; they’ll subject you to name calling, political slurs and seek to censure your views. Get with the narrative or else!

I could go on –

Question the idea that people alive today are somehow responsible for the slave trade 300 years ago: racist!

Express the view on the deleterious effects of the trans-movement on women’s rights and safety: transphobic!

Ask whether the plonkers who make stupid comments on social media should receive longer prison sentences than rapists and thugs: hate-filled bigot!

– but I won’t. Often, sceptical free thinker, you don’t get it right and others are taken in by your more whackadoodle theories. Unfortunately when you do have a point, backed by sound argument and evidence, it can easily be dismissed by lumping you in with the whackier of your brethren, and ultimately by silencing you and the platform on which you write. That’s Britain today (or is that just a conspiracy theory?)

Yours,

The Apostle Neil

Featuring the Battle of the Century! Doomsday v. Panacea!

Posted on by
5

Human beings love doomsday scenarios. We have perpetually convinced ourselves that the circumstances in which we live are the most dreadful ever and, to quote The Beatles, can’t get no worse, The earliest Christians thought it: things were so bad that the end was surely to come. YHWH would tolerate the awful state of affairs no longer. But to the surprise of no-one he did.

Those alive in 17th century Europe couldn’t conceive of a worse time, what with the plague and all, and persuaded themselves that the world was ending. During the Covid lockdown we were told that the human race faced being annihilated by the virus and that whatever we’d previously regarded as normal would never return. Today we’re assured that the planet faces extinction if we don’t stop using fossil fuels. At the same time others claim that democracy/the West/civilisation are in such decline that the world will soon disintegrate into anarchy. Who knows, perhaps one day one of these modern doomsday scenarios will come to pass. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Equally though, we are adept at devising panaceas, universal remedies to our problems. We have an unshakeable belief that by making a few simple changes – a new government/president/policy/ invention/initiative/innovation – we will avert disaster and resolve the challenges we face.

How have the panaceas of the past fared? The Jesus’ cult’s promises of new life and heaven of earth collapsed in the first century when God failed to rescue those who identified as his Chosen Ones from the wickedness that surrounded them. Nevertheless, Christianity bullied its way on to the present day, still offering the same tired solutions to age-old problems. Religion, in all its forms, only makes matters worse.

Revolution is no solution either, as the socially aware songs of the 1970s advised us. The French, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions changed situations but they didn’t usher in an age of peace and prosperity or remedy everything their instigators said they would. History demonstrates again and again that violence fails to improve anything. The freedom and independence that the Baltic states now enjoy came not from revolution but from the foresight of Mikhail Gorbachev who knew Russia could no longer afford to sustain its satellite states. Putin however knows better and seeks to reabsorb them back into his own soviet union.

Other panaceas of the past have similarly failed to deliver. The so-called industrial revolution created our modern world, led to the end of slavery and gave us the standard of living those of us in the West enjoy. Now we must deal with what many perceive as its legacy: world pollution, climate change, dwindling resources. Eliminating these is the new panacea. Once these challenges have been met, or so we’re told, the world will find itself on a much better footing, on course to recover from the damage we’ve caused it. Hence Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. It’s as simple as that. Except we know that surely it isn’t when the biggest polluters – China, Russia, India and potentially the US (Trump says he will pull out of climate change agreements if returned to the White House) – are not wholly on board.

We are a very long way from eliminating the use of oil: for a long time to come it will be needed to lubricate machinery, engines and windfarms, and for the production of plastics (a panacea in their own right not that long ago), computers, mobile phones and building materials. That’s not to mention the need for oil in the nation’s defence: the navy’s ships, the air force’s planes and the army’s tanks. We do not yet have the means of replacing the oil which fuels and lubricates modern life. We can be sure too that when we do, this new panacea will also have its own drawbacks, which will only become apparent once we have committed to them. We know this already with nuclear power which, once fossil fuels are eliminated, will be the principal means of producing electricity in the enormous quantities required to supply to industry, for heating, lighting and transport, including electric cars, which, if politicians have their way, will be the only kind available. We are already using ‘environmentally-damaging methods’ to extract the rare minerals used for the manufacture of batteries, a process which also, ironically, creates more CO2 than the manufacture of a petrol car (itself a panacea not too long ago): ‘According to MIT’s Climate Lab, one ton of mined lithium emits almost 15 tons of CO2’.

While there are those who claim that EVs cause less environmental damage than petrol (gas) vehicles, damage is still damage. It is not net zero. The dream of worldwide net zero is impossible. The only way it is even approachable is for the car and other forms of transport to disappear altogether – and we all know that isn’t going to happen. Even  hypocritical eco-warriors use the car and other forms of transport dependent on fossil fuels to get themselves to whichever work of art or ancient monument they plan to deface. 

China, which produces two thirds of the world’s electric car batteries, accounted ‘for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023.’ Then there’s the disposal of spent batteries: do we have policies for doing that in an environmentally friendly way? Is there an environmentally friendly way?

As you can probably tell, I’m not a believer in panaceas, whether religious or politically devised. They don’t work and never have. In years to come, the West will be wringing its hands at its plundering of the Congo for cobalt and South America for lithium for electric car batteries. ‘How could we get it so wrong?’ we will cry. ‘There must be a better way, a better panacea. Meanwhile, we must do penance and make reparations.’ I don’t have the answers, but extremist approaches like the half-baked schemes of Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (yes, really), and pursuing impossible dreams do not seem to me to be the solution.

On my Mind

Posted on by
6

After a lifetime of voting in national and local elections I think it unlikely I will ever vote again. I am disillusioned with politicians of all stripes and at every level. Their decisions over the last few years have been disastrous and certainly not for the betterment of the British people. After so many broken promises I can’t find it in myself to believe in them any more.

Leaders and politicians take us into war but it is always ordinary people, quietly going about their everyday lives, who suffer. Religion lies at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East, motivating terrorist acts of unimaginable brutality. A god at war with himself, with innocents paying the price.

The human capacity for overreaction does not solve problems. Every unusual event is now classified as a crisis to which we respond irrationally and without resolution. In the UK during the 21st century, we (or rather politicians and leaders) have failed to address or resolve:

The so-called millennium bug (came to nothing after unnecessary panic and the waste of millions of pounds);

Foot and mouth disease (millions of healthy animals slaughtered, many lives ruined);

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (never located and never used; non-existent. The irrational insistence by western powers that they did exist led to war and the destabilisation of the world);

Covid pandemic (lockdowns did not protect the vulnerable and elderly but successfully crashed the economy, from which the UK has still to recover);

Net-zero (electric cars, heat pumps and Ulez zones will not save the planet, yet they and similar measures will impoverish millions. We do not have the technology to halt, let alone reverse, climate change; it is hubris to think we will);

Illegal immigration (the UK and other European nations cannot cope with the strain on our infrastructure. Meanwhile the tax payer funds the accommodation of people who are here illegally, the system fails to process legal asylum seekers and politicians dither).

The narrative of the day, be it trans/gender issues, racial identity or climate change must not be challenged. Get with the agenda or be abused and cancelled. Whatever happened to free speech? I’m concerned about the attempts to control our thinking here in the UK.

Alarmist media that spend more time espousing their own opinions and endlessly speculating than reporting facts.

AI: More artificial than intelligent, AI is a disaster so far. Imagine Alexa handling the complexities of your business transactions or your banking and data security: ‘I don’t know the answer to that. Please try asking a different question (I.e. one that has no bearing on what you need to know but which fits my algorithmic agenda.)’ Does the human intelligence foisting AI on us bother to test the interface of AI and real, frustrated people?

Does bureaucracy exist only for its own self-perpetuation?. It certainly seems so.

 

 

On Climate Change

Posted on by
11

Climate Change is happening.

But, like young Sheldon, I have questions.

The UK’s carbon emissions are, according to the government’s official figures, 1.1%, while China, USA, India, Russia and Japan produce 58% between them: will the UK reducing its output by 1.1% to zero make any substantive difference to carbon levels and the climate?

Why, as Tony Blair asked last week, are ordinary households being expected to foot the bill for the UK government’s net zero measures? Why not those who produce the most carbon?

When China alone produces 28% of the world’s emissions, and is doing nothing to reduce these – in fact it is increasing them year on year – what use will it be if the UK impoverishes itself in its drive to net zero?

Why does the UK government feel the need to regard itself as a world leader in the drive to net zero when no-one cares what the UK is doing?

Is net zero achievable when the generation of power always produces some level of pollution? How is global net zero achievable when powers like China and Russia refuse to reduce their carbon emissions?

If there is widescale changeover to electric vehicles by 2030 (a UK target for new cars) will there be enough electricity to power them? How will all this extra electricity be generated?

Given most carbon emissions worldwide are from electricity plants, why is the population being ‘encouraged’ to change from oil powered vehicles to electric ones that require electricity plants to create their fuel?

Why do Just Stop Oil and other eco-activists travel to their demonstrations in transport powered by oil and other fossil fuels? Why do they heat their homes using these same fuels? Why do they have mobile phones made from plastic derived from oil, to communicate with each other? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why does one of Just Stop Oil‘s leading spokespersons, Dr Grahame Buss, take a £1 million pound pension from Shell Oil while demanding ‘the masses’ must be the ones to make radical changes?

Why do politicians travel by private jet and in motorcades to Climate Change conferences? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why, when climate is defined as weather over prolonged periods of time, does the media show us pictures of isolated weather conditions to illustrate climate change?

Do forests spontaneously and naturally combust?

Did the recent wildfires in Greece and elsewhere spontaneously combust as the direct result of high atmospheric temperatures or were they, as the evidence suggests, started either deliberately or through human carelessness? If so, why does the media portray them as examples of the effects of climate change?

Who decided that scrub and undergrowth in forests should no longer be cleared? Why did they, when layers of scrub and undergrowth, once alight, ensure fires spread more rapidly?

If, according to NASA, there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year (and) between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent’, why are recent, highly localised fires being represented – even by NASA! – as an increase attributable to climate change? 

According to UN Secretary General António Guterres, ‘the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived’. What exactly is it that is ‘boiling’? Is it oceans, rivers and lakes? Soil and rocks? Animal bodies? If so, where is the evidence that this is happening? Is such alarmist hyperbole persuasive or remotely helpful in combatting climate change? Or does it lead ‘the masses’ to believe politicians exaggerate the extent of climate change?

Can we slow down or even reverse climate change when it is a natural, inevitable part of nature’s cycle and, in terms of our own contribution, the biggest polluters are not interested?

Are we all doomed?