'Cut the green c**p'. Has Cameron had a Damascene moment?

[claig]

"David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green c**p’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive, it is claimed.

...

The source said: ‘He’s telling everyone, “We’ve got to get rid of all this green c**p.” He’s absolutely focused on it.’

[[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510936/Cut-green-c-p-Camerons-private-view-energy-taxation-horrify-environmental-campaigners.html]

Some of us have been saying this for years. But there is always praise in Heaven and among the public for a politician who repenteth and seeth the light!

"David Cameron’s wealthy father-in-law is making almost £350,000 a year from a publicly-subsidised wind farm on his country estate.

Sir Reginald Sheffield, who is said to be worth £20million, earns the sum in ‘rent’ from the consortium behind the farm – just for having the turbines on his land."

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027708/Samantha-Camerons-father-nets-350-000-year-subsidised-wind-farm.html

And meanwhile, we are told that something like 500,000 people are now dependent on foodbanks and old-age pensionrs are worried about the spiralling fuel bills of which approx 10% are due to green 'ecotaxes'.

Payday loan companies are profiting from the people on the back of this eco scam, which is an elite policy to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich and from rich countries to poor countries in order to curtail the living standards of the middle and working classes and enrich the rich in an attempt to deliver what they call "sustainability" and their goal of a post-industrial low-growth, zero-growth society as they shut down our manufacturing and productive capacity and deliver us into the hands of the sharks of the financial system.

Their financial regulators do not protect us and some bankers can have very little knowledge and some may even take drugs and still be pillars of society.

"Soaring petrol prices are driving hard-up motorists into the clutches of extortionate payday loan companies , the AA warns today.

It found one in six car owners, hammered by four petrol price spikes in the last 18 months, are going into the red.

According to the study, a sixth are forced to take out payday loans, pawn prized possessions, go overdrawn or dig into savings to top up the tank.

With pump prices hitting an 11 month high of 140.3 a litre in March and still at 138p a litre today, drivers are having to stump up an extra £5 for a small tank of fuel.

A fifth admitted their household budgets are at breaking point because of petrol prices, rising to third of those in low paid, unskilled jobs.

www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal-finance/petrol-prices-rising-costs-forcing-2254913

So it is the commercial and financial impact of green initiatives that you object to rather than whether or not anthropogenic climate change exists?

Yes, because it is no happening. The scares and the scams are a cover for the elite's commercial and financal policies against ordinary people and ordinary businesses.

This is what we are now told that Cameron has said. It seems that he has changed his tune.

"David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green c**p’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive, it is claimed.

But read the comments of Daily Mail readers. Do they believe Cameron and his Damascene conversion?

The elite know that their Green Emperor Has No Clothes. The elite write the Guardian and read the Daily Mail, they know what the public thinks.

The elite will try to stem the tide for as long as they can, just like King Canute tried to do, but they know that one day a politician will arise and say what the public think.

Ok, so you also disagree that climate change is happening?

The elite will try to stem the tide for as long as they can - ironic, given the subject matter!

I don't think it's anything to do with 'the elite' not wanting ordinary people to drive cars. I think it's that all proper scientists have shown that global climate change is happening, and some politicians want to try to address that and some do not.

Why has the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph published this story from what we are told is a "source"?

I think it is because they know that there are very few Tory voters who believe the 'green c**p' and very few who believe what the Guardian says about it.

They want to send us a signal that they are on our side and not "all in it together" with the elite. They know that Farage has called their bluff and says what many Tories think.

So the huskies are gone, the hug-a-hoodies are gone, the windmills are going and 'Tory High Command' has said 'vote blue, get real'.

They are trying to keep it real, to be down with the people and not with the elite. But are they for real or is this only to fool Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph readers because there is an election coming and many of those readers believe that Farage is more for real than them?

'Ok, so you also disagree that climate change is happening?'

Yes

Mind you this does remind me of the fact that on Newsnight there have been recent debates such as the current drug policy and climate change where not a single scientist has been present. This shows up just how poor scientific literacy is for the general public and within Parliment itself.

Ultimately the Universe does not care for politics and dogma - we must find out about it and adapt ourselfs to it not the other way round.

What will Cameron do next?

Instead of being photoed with huskies in the Arctic Circle, will he instead be photoed with a pensioner next to her three-bar heater and her fuel, water and council tax bills?

I support him if he did say 'cut the gren c**p' and I hope he cuts all the other crap as well and gets real and focuses on ordinary people and what they are going through.

"Cutting all the green crap" will reduce the average £1300 fuel bill by about £40-£50 pa. It's typical Tory claptrap aimed at the hard of thinking.

Very interested to read your views on climate change, Claig. I wondered what you thought of room-temperature quantum bit storage? Do you see that as a viable future path for semiconductors? Also, I was curious about whether you believed that structure-led design targeting GPCRs is really going to drive the next generation of new therapeutic molecules, given that about a third of current pharmaceuticals target them? Finally, I obviously was very keen to find out your perspective on whether the discover of the Huge-LQG and possible discovery of an even larger structure in recent weeks deals a fatal blow to the cosmological principle. Obviously, these are all important live scientific debates, and so you'll have a view on them, just as you do on the research base for anthropogenic climate change. They all seem like topics where a layperson can just gen up a bit and get stuck in.

DoctorTwo, it's a start. It will also stop taxpayer money redistribution from the poor to the rich to pay for inefficient windfarms on aristocrats' land.

But as Cameron has belatedly seemed to understand, it will also help business and employment by making business more competitive. It's win-win, the people are happy, business is happy and the elite are unhappy.

"David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green cp’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive , it is claimed.

Ok, it probably wont surprise you that I believe that there is a strong probability that climate change is happening :)

To let you know where I'm coming from, my background is in science, live in a small semi, send dd to a comp, and def not one of the financial elite that you refer to (though by developing country standards I guess most of us are).

I've read round the subject fairly widely, attended conferences where the subject has been debated, been to lectures on it given by climatologists and physicists, not politicians, or those in the financial sector and the evidence I have seen presented does seem to strongly suggest that climate change is happening and that it is being driven by changes created by man.

The question that remains in my mind is what do we do about it? At the moment a large part of the government policy has been aimed at changing the behaviour of consumers by negative means in the hope that will force businesses to change their behaviour. It is working in part, people are having to cut down their energy use - and manufacturers are responding with products that create lower emissions. But it is also not working very well.

Firstly green taxes' are hitting the poorest disproportionately hard and as well as being unfair, its not very effective as it tends to be the better off who are the highest energy users, who can absorb the price rises better. There isnt enough protection for those who genuinely cannot afford to heat their homes or get to work.

Secondly, greener goods=more things to sell. People are encouraged to ditch old light bulbs, old fridges etc in favour of newer models - but when you look at the energy cost of manufacturing the goods in the first place, it is often questionable as to whether the total carbon cost was worth it. So the winners are the businesses rather than the planet.

But I strongly believe that those of us who can do something must. Because harder winters, rising sea levels, stronger storms and in fact many of the effects of climate change will hit the poorest in the world hardest. I'm someone who believes that we owe it not only to the poor of this country but also to the poor across the globe to try our best to minimise the impact that we are having on our climate.

a country that def isn't considered to be 'among the elite'

'I wondered what you thought of room-temperature quantum bit storage? Do you see that as a viable future path for semiconductors? Also, I was curious about whether you believed that structure-led design targeting GPCRs is really going to drive the next generation of new therapeutic molecules, given that about a third of current pharmaceuticals target them? Finally, I obviously was very keen to find out your perspective on whether the discover of the Huge-LQG and possible discovery of an even larger structure in recent weeks deals a fatal blow to the cosmological principle.'

It is not the time and place to explain those topics on this thread. Start another thread if you would like that explained. And anyway, what do they have to do wih what Cameron is alleged to have said i.e. 'cut the green c**p'?

'They all seem like topics where a layperson can just gen up a bit and get stuck in.'

Please don't knock laypeople. Some of them probably know more about banking than Labour advisers such as Paul Flowers.

'People are encouraged to ditch old light bulbs'

I don't know if the Guardian reported this story.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363448/We-pick-toxic-new-bulbs-Councils-say-energy-saving-lights-dangerous-binmen.html

''We will not pick up toxic new bulbs': Councils say energy-saving lights are too dangerous for binmen'

'Councils across the UK are refusing to pick up low-energy lightbulbs from homes as they contain toxic mercury, which gives off poisonous vapours.'

I think, Claig, the point was, are you interested in and do you know about contemporary issues in science generally, or is your focus more on conspiracy and the elite and.... well, I'm not too sure, really!

Quite agree re. laypeople - they are certainly able to read, evaluate and consider all sorts of theories, and their opinion shouldn't be dismissed as politically motivated, Daily Mail-induced fuckwittery at all... except when it manifestly is! I don't think homehelp was knocking laypeople in the slightest.

Was that a whooshing sound of my post flying overhead just then? Or did you get-and-ignore the point I was making?

I'm not knocking laypeople. I'm a layperson myself, not a scientist. I'm just not - how can I put this charitably? - self-confident enough to believe that a bit of reasoned thinking will allow me to form a credible opinion on live scientific topics - whether climate change, quantum informatic, drug discovery or astrophysics. These are hard subjects that require professional training and specialist knowledge.

I find it particularly odd that you raise Paul Flowers in this context, given that a significant part of the concern in relation to him is that he was a layperson and not professionally trained!

Poor countries will benefit in theory as the elite pursue their policy of transferring wealth from the rich countris to leaders and governments of poor countries.

Whether this money will really help the ordinary people in poor countries remains to be seen. It may end up in the hands of corrupt leaders and some may go in commissions to the elites and some may end up in Swiss bank accounts rather than remain in the bank accounts of middle class and working class people in richer countries.

It all depends on whether the elite get their way easily of if the public cry 'the Green Emperor Has No Clothes'.

Thank you, SteamingNit. Exactly so.

So Claig... do you think the scientists who propound climate change as a) real and b) happening are lying, or wrong?

Is it that they are all in the pay of the elite, so they make shit up because they want old people to be cold and hungry, or is it that they believe they're right, but actually they're not, and 'the elite' seize upon their errors to found a system of elitism by which they can keep old people poor and hungry and unable to drive and use nice light bulbs? Who do you think is just misguided, and who do you think is actually lying

You're right Claig there is a big issue with the new light bulbs (there are lots of issues) but it doesn't mean that climate change isn't happening, it means that some of the solutions that are being tried to cut emissions are not great.

'are you interested in and do you know about contemporary issues in science generally, or is your focus more on conspiracy and the elite and'

Yes, I am more a student of politics than of science, which is why I av some understanding of the politics of green political movements.

The fact that the Prime Minister is alleged to have said 'cut the green c**' is a positive sign that he finally gets the 'Tory High Command's' view of 'vote blue, get real'.

It is a message that New Labour would do well to heed.