Politics: fall of the loons

By Richard North - April 26, 2023

In the national suicide note entitled “Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener”, published in October 2021 just prior to CoP26, we had the idiot Johnson write the foreword to 368-page document.

“The United Kingdom”, he wrote, “is not afraid to lead the charge towards global net zero at COP26, because history has never been made by those who sit at the back of the class hoping not to be called on”.

“Indeed”, he continued, “as we set an example to the world by showing that reaching Net Zero is entirely possible, so the likes of China and Russia are following our lead with their own net zero targets, as prices tumble and green tech becomes the global norm”.

Fast forward to last Sunday and we see a report telling us that local governments in China have approved more new coal power in the first three months of 2023 than in the whole of 2021.

Between January and March this year, we are told, at least 20.45GW of coal power was approved, up from 8.63GW in the same period in 2022. In the whole of 2021, 18GW of coal was approved.

In terms of net-zero and all things green, in 2016 a Chinese Communist party (CCP) five-year plan had placed a heavy emphasis on reducing the use of coal and developing clean energy sources. In 2020 Xi Jinping, China’s leader, pledged that the country would become carbon neutral by 2060.

Following the lead of the central government, local coal power approvals dropped, only to rise again at the end of the five-year plan in anticipation of further restrictions on coal generation.

In 2021, however, China suffered huge power outages and, as homes in the colder north of the country faced the prospect of a gruelling winter without heat, the government’s rhetoric shifted from reducing coal to prioritising energy security leading to the current surge in coal-fired power station building.

China, incidentally, has released more carbon dioxide in the last eight years than the UK since the Industrial Revolution began. The UK’s carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere between 1750 and 2020 were estimated at 78 billion tonnes, compared to China’s 80 billion tonnes in the period between 2013 and 2020.

Any idea that Chairman Xi is going to follow the UK’s example on economic self-immolation is strictly for the birds. Equally delusional is the thought that, even if you buy into the carbon “religion”, the UK sacrificing itself on the altar of net-zero is going to make the slightest bit of difference to global temperatures.

And the only “green tech” in which Russia is currently interested has tracks and 125mm guns, firing shells which are very far from carbon neutral.

Yet, it still goes on. Despite the continuing onslaught of excessive energy costs, we are now faced with the prospect of our increasingly insane government deciding to make domestic gas even more expensive.

In this nation of ours, it seems we have a “hydrogen champion” by the name of Jane Toogood (a name that has to pass without comment), and she has recently recommended adding 20 percent hydrogen to our current gas supplies, increasing the overall cost per household by “over £100” per year, although probably a lot, lot more.

This is by way of preparing for the complete replacement of natural gas by hydrogen – assuming we could produce the volume, which we can’t – a stratagem which would require all gas boilers to be replaced and cooking appliances to be modified – resulting in energy bills rising by at least 70 percent and potentially doubling.

Of course, back in 2021, just when China was raising two fingers to the idiot Johnson, it looked so different to the imbecile as he wrote:

For years, going green was inextricably bound up with a sense that we have to sacrifice the things we love. But this strategy shows how we can build back greener, without so much as a hair shirt in sight. In 2050, we will still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric gliding silently around our cities, our planes will be zero emission allowing us to fly guilt-free, and our homes will be heated by cheap reliable power drawn from the winds of the North Sea. And everywhere you look, in every part of our United Kingdom, there will be jobs. Good jobs, green jobs, well-paid jobs, levelling up our country while squashing down our carbon emissions.

Now, as we gaze upon this lurid prose with a sense of wonderment, we are regaled by Huw Pill (pictured), the Bank of England’s chief economist, who is telling us that British households and businesses “need to accept” they are poorer and stop seeking pay increases and pushing prices higher.

This comes from a man who, The Sun tells us, is a former Goldman Sachs banker, living in a £1.5million home in London, and received a £95,000 pay package for just his first six months when joining the BoE in 2021. His current annual salary is said to be around £340,000.

Meanwhile, after the poor, impoverished energy supply companies are pleading with their best friend, Ofgem, to raise all our bills by £30 to cover the bad debts arising because so many can’t afford to pay their exorbitant prices, we learn that these struggling entities are sitting on a pile of customers’ cash amounting to almost £7 billion.

This figure represents the credit surpluses from increased direct debits. A mild winter and household efforts to reduce energy use, together with government-funded £400 discounts on energy bills, has meant that the suppliers hiked most of their customers’ monthly charges far more then necessary, thus building up a lucrative surplus, £5 billion higher than it was at the same time last year.

Turning to a completely different subject, top of the news agenda at the moment is the crisis in Sudan, where yet another dysfunctional African state is boiling over yet again into an orgy of violence and killing.

Amongst all the turmoil, there is the ongoing drama of the evacuation efforts, which then has the Guardian whingeing: “British nationals trapped in Sudan because families not allowed to fly with them”.

Amongst these “victims” is Muhammed Elahi, a British passport holder who is styled as “a 27-year-old car dealer and former restaurant owner from Birmingham”. He has been living in Sudan since August, when he married his wife, Ghaliya, who is now five months pregnant.

Elahi, who had aspirations of opening a cafe in Khartoum – and therefore had no immediate intention of returning to the UK – is complaining that his wife, who is not a British citizen, will not be allowed on an RAF evacuation flight.

The man says his situation is complicated by the fact that he has a five-year-old son from a previous relationship in Birmingham. “That’s been the hardest for me because I came here to make a better future for him. In a sense I feel like I kind of abandoned him”, he says.

Muhammed Elahi is one of those for whom British soldiers and the RAF are risking their lives to return them to the safety of the UK, paid for by British taxpayers who have just been told that they “need to accept” they are poorer and stop seeking pay increases and pushing prices higher.

But then there is the other side of the story where British embassy staff have bugged out leaving expatriates to fend for themselves.

The common theme is that nothing of this makes any more sense than the government’s net-zero policy. Simply, they are more examples of the many discontinuities one has to confront almost daily. It makes one wonder whether, without realising it, the UK has suddenly been turned into a madhouse.

Things that in even the recent past which would have seemed ludicrous or even outrageous are now treated as the norm, so much so that we are not allowed even to remark about the madness, much less complain about it.

And it is no consolation at all that, while we bludgeoned with warnings that we are about to fry, frozen birds are falling out of the sky in the American Midwest because it is so cold. The birds affected, incidentally, are loons. That’s kind of appropriate.