By Jo Nova
UK surprise byelection “shows why conservatives must stand against NetZero”
Suddenly conservative Cabinet Ministers, who formerly cheered on green policies are telling Rishi Sunak, the British PM, to back off a bit on Net Zero. This phase shift is so deep, even the leader of the Labor Opposition is warning his Labor counterpart Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London to “reflect” on his expansion of the ULEZ car tax zone to outer London.
ULEZ is the Ultra Low Emission Zone, where a tax of £12.50 a day applies to high emission cars. Naturally, this hurts poor people with old cars living in outer suburbs much more than the inner city cafe latte set who can afford an EV and luxury religions.
The key point, perversely, is that Conservatives managed to barely hold onto Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. What apparently astonished the political masters was that the campaign to protect car drivers from the Mayor of London’s NetZero punishment was much more popular than they expected. The Uxbridge win plays against the backdrop of two whopping losses in other seats. The message is that salvation may yet arrive for doomed conservatives if they stand up to green policies.
But if the Labor Party are smart (and evil), they will bury their unpopular Green fantasies, keep their heads down, and after winning, bring in the policies regardless. We’ve seen this in Australia — at the last election Green policies were only visible in a few wealthy inner city seats where Green fantasies survive. Out in the suburbs the Conservatives didn’t fight for the battlers against Net Zero and they lost. The costs of Net Zero were barely mentioned.
If Labor “don’t mention the Green thing”, Conservatives can still make it the issue and demand answers and promises from the Labor Party on what they will and won’t do. They can be proactive in putting forward policies the Labor Party can’t even consider, like drilling for gas, No Carbon Taxes, or like letting people decide they can drive whatever car they want.
Thanks to the GWPF and NetZeroWatch for the links.
UK Newspapers are full of the lessons of Uxbridge:
Ulez became a lightning rod
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, MP, The Telegraph UK
The Conservatives offered a clear choice and the electorate responded.
The lesson therefore to take from this by-election is much greater than just the issue of Ulez, important as that is. Voters are angry – angry that their taxes are high and that their cost of living is too high.
They are also angry that the establishment obsession with net zero has led to an arbitrary and very costly 2030 deadline to get rid of diesel and petrol cars, even though it could cripple our car industry, flood the market with cheap Chinese cars and pile further costs on people’s already stretched incomes. Not to mention the very expensive upcoming ban on new gas boilers as well.
It shouldn’t have taken much to work out that a highly-regressive tax on the relatively poor was not going to go down well among Labour voters – yet so blinded are many in the party on green issues that they just couldn’t see it. That includes Keir Starmer who two weeks ago told the obvious fib that Sadiq Khan had no choice but to expand Ulez.
But it isn’t just Labour which should be shaken by this result. Paradoxically, although the Conservatives won, the result is a dire warning to them, too.
Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph:
For the Tory leadership, there could not be a more explicit illustration of the limits to the electorate’s tolerance of supposed green measures. People might just accept some hardships – especially if they are presented as temporary – but they are not prepared to sacrifice their entire way of life.
If you threaten people’s livelihoods and what they regard as their fundamental rights to mobility and self-reliance, they will use the democratic process to get rid of you. The Uxbridge victory which, on the face of it, was the most minimal, may come to be seen as the most important of all.
For fans of Climate-Action, it’s a “disaster”.
So sayth Stephen Bush, Financial Times
It’s the narrow Conservative victory in South Ruislip and Uxbridge that is the real shock.
What is certain is that the results are a disaster for Conservative environmentalists and, by extension, climate politics in the UK. It will feed the internal argument that, when push comes to shove, for all British voters say they care about green politics, they will reject measures that impose a personal cost. It will also seem to some that the best route for a Conservative recovery at the next election will involve minimising, and perhaps even running away from, the net zero target.
It will feed the internal argument that, when push comes to shove, for all British voters say they care about green politics, they will reject measures that impose a personal cost. It will also seem to some that the best route for a Conservative recovery at the next election will involve minimising, and perhaps even running away from, the net zero target.
The Guardian is apoplectic — they can see politicians campaigning against Net Zero, so they ramp up hyperbolic scares of mythical voter desire for “Net Zero”. Editors at the Guardian surely know this isn’t true. If voters really did want Net Zero, The Guardian wouldn’t be so afraid that the voters might get a choice.
“Dropping green pledges would be ‘political suicide’, Sunak and Starmer warned”
There are fears that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will loosen their support for such policies after the Conservatives’ surprise win in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection on Thursday. The Tories narrowly won the seat, by just 495 votes, with a campaign that capitalised on opposition to plans by London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan to extend the ultra low emission zone (Ulez).
The Guardian tells us what they want us to think, not what the news is:
Senior figures from business, the scientific community and across the political divide warned that any watering down of climate policies would be deeply unpopular with voters, set back the international fight to reach net zero and damage Britain’s green reputation.
If they wanted us to think NetZero was a futile pagan quest that enriches billionaires, they would have asked different “senior figures”.
UK Flag: Rian (Ree) Saunders
AGAIN if you check the accurate ENERGY use by SOURCE we know that Global energy is generated by 92% FOSSIL FUELS and TOXIC, UNRELIABLE W & S are SFA.
But I’m sure the UK Labour party will be happy to play a waiting game until after the next election and their MSM etc will do their best to continue to help strangle the UK economy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/07/fossil-and-non-fossil-fuels/
330
It’s not too late for the UK Tories:
Remove Rishi Sunak.
Put in Kemi Badenoch (the leader that the Tory Party members wanted all along).
Win the next election in a landslide.
Net Zero and Remain will fast become just painful memories.
But they had better get going fast. Keir Starmer is still in the wings.
362
You’re asking a lot of a bunch of spineless swamp figures, but maybe the selfish desire for self-preservation might convince enough of them. Problem is there are a lot of ones (moles – CINOs) with either vested interests (investments or bought and paid for by big capital), or stupid enough to actually believe they are doing people and the environment a favour by destroying their way of life.
240
Kemi has not distinguished herself so I don’t see her as a popular choice. I do think people want green policies-save the polar bears, of copurse- until it affects them in the pocket. So a fundamental shift to a beiger green, paying lip service would I suspect be very popular. In the meantime the Scottish SNP leader wants to ban new gas boilers and bring in heat pumps from 2025, so they don’t really listen
20
A big problem for Badenoch is that she is British in name only and has not had any experience of growing up in this country. She spent her time either back in Nigeria or in the USA.
00
Kemi’s the one the party wanted, but the parliamentary lot removed her before the members could vote for her. A corrupted system (purely within the Tory party) if ever there was one. Liz Truss wasn’t supposed to get in, but somehow she did, and the ruling clique got her out in no time flat. Rishi Sunak is PM on false pretences, especially if you look at what he said about gas when he wanted votes and what he did to gas after he didn’t need votes.
30
Yes, but she is in a position of power and like the rest of the government is inadequate and underperforms. I don’t see her as a leader, mind you I would struggle to suggest as a new leader someone with common sense. They are all as mad as hatters.
20
EU too:
Behold, the Rise of the Anti-Greens
https://mishtalk.com/economics/behold-the-rise-of-the-anti-greens/
80
Risk of German de-industrialization is ‘very great’ due to increase in red tape and ‘problematic’ energy transition, leading CEO claims
https://rmx.news/germany/risk-of-german-de-industrialization-is-very-great-due-to-increase-in-red-tape-and-problematic-energy-transition-leading-ceo-claims/
EU PMIs Plunge As German Manufacturing Collapses
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/eu-pmis-plunge-german-manufacturing-collapses-inflation-remains-sticky
110
German companies will be fine, they will move to China, most already have factories there, the rest will be making plans. The owners will be fine, they will escape the western meltdown while the workers in the west will be jobless. An additional question is how will China resize its economy given the drop in spending by the west, as the west descends into faux-Marxist poverty; USSR-v2. Losing a big customer is always tough.
200
German companies don’t need to move to China – many are moving across the border to Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and even Spain which has now dumped its lefty government. Energy costs and labour costs are lower.
30
Build Back Worse with ESG (Economic Suicide Guaranteed) principles for Business. There. That should work. LOL.
331
so much; “suicide”.
More “pre-emptive euthanasia”
See also: “Retrospective abortion”:.
90
Around that area
“Profound investment Andrews-style”
https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02c1b25ade67200d-800wi
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/07/profound-investment-andrews-style.html
70
Here’s the latest 2022 data from OWI Data and energy by source shows Fossil fuels are 85.37% + traditional bio mass 6.91%= 92.28% + modern bio fuels = 93% and W & S = 2.13%.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass
140
AGAIN how many 100s of TRILLIONs of $ will all the countries have to spend on TOXIC, UNRELIABLE W & S etc and then REPEAT that lunacy AGAIN every 15 years?
But is there really enough copper, cobalt, lithium etc, etc to feed these TOXIC disasters by 2050 or 2100 or ?
Does anyone really BELIEVE in their TOXIC FANTASIES?
330
Blackout Bowen believes in his TOXIC FANTASY. He also believes in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Maybe he is still a Child in Grown Up clothes.
Grow Up Blackout Bowen and get with the Energy Reality.
280
Follow the “spillage”!
70
It’s not just the Government which (might) change its “mind”. Especially as the voting public are getting annoyed about increasing bills and restrictions that the Green nutters dream up. The Government is facing a huge loss at the next election – a change of mind might cancel that.
The UK is depended on more wind farms to get to Net Zero. Who will build these? The big oil companies have changed their mind. Vattenfall has cancelled one big development because of big cost rises in materials and the cost of funds. Other developments are being checked for financial liability and and Iberdrola agreeing to pay almost $50m to terminate a power deal for a US development that it says is no longer viable.
The 3 biggest turbine manufacturers in Europe all lost money last year. There are shortages in the supply of the necessary ships to install the turbines. Banks don’t lend on uncertain paybacks.
170
Meanwhile, in the Stupid Country, Australia, both factions of the Uniparty support Net Zero.
Dutton pretends to support a nuclear power station although no other power stations.
But he only supports nuclear because:
1) He is a true believer in the anthropogenic global warming fraud. He would support coal as well if he didn’t.
2) He knows that getting planning approval for a nuclear reactor is effectively impossible in a half century or less (if at all), bearing in mind something as straight foward as a second Sydney International Airport took aboit 50 years to decide upon.
Plus he has also stated his support for unreliables.
Australia’s future, if any, relies on the small, pro-freedom, pro-reason, pro-science parties.
351
Extended project timelines happen when Gummint gets involved. Wagners built an international standard airport at Wellcamp (west of Toowoomba) in about two years. Perhaps they might like to build a few reactors, if we can get the politicians and senseless bans out of the road…….
210
I have spoken with the present and past leaders of the Nationals, [not Joyce], and when asked about AGW they both said that they know that it is BS but they have to go along with net zero because the voters want it and they have been threatened that if we don’t go along with it we will be charged 3% more for the money that we are borrowing from overseas.
270
Yes, Turnbull or Morrison (or both) used that lie as well.
But I find it hard to believe that we wouldn’t be able to find a bank that wouldn’t charge at the normal rate.
Australia is a huge debtor and rapidly getting larger and thus a valuable customer for banks. I very much doubt that the claim of any extra interest is anything but a bluff.
And the obvious answer in any case is to stop spending money we don’t have.
290
If overseas borrowing cost more … then oh my, Australians would have to borrow a bit less and not be such big debtors. The solution to high interest rates, is high interest rates.
Australia has massive money sitting in Super funds just lokking for something to invest in, at a decent return. All it needs is finding some investments that do in fact pay a decent return.
00
I do believe they were threatened with higher interest rates, but so what.
If they stopped wasting squllions on windmills & solar there would be so much less interest to pay on much lower borrowings.
200
Looks very much as though we’re paying much higher interest rates even going along the cultists road to ruin!
120
100% correct. The threats are real as most global capital is now controlled by by those big funds who are all WEF aligned and on the ESG and DEI bandwagon, but like you say with all the subsidies needed to make the other fantasies “work” those extra 2% interest payments fade to insignificance.
110
Pay now or pay later. 3% extra interest then seems a heck of a lot better deal in retrospect than driving the prime mover into the energy cul-de-sac and now having to borrow multi-billions to get it out.
60
When Trump pulled put of the scam, banks didn’t charge the US any more interest.
Nothing bad happened at all, only goodness.
200
Morrison and Frydenberg (+Joyce/ Littleproud ) just wimped it, basically. There is another contributor to this blog ( Dennis??) who always contends that the LNP feds had plans to build a new coal powered station in Qld and then a couple of gas fired power stations in other states. But they never really publicised those goals widely and loudly. Certainly not after the scam of Net Zero became buzz words. Angus Taylor sure as hell didn’t, because I followed his Twitter blog for years and all he wanted to promote was pumped hydro and other crazy projects. Plus Angus still called himself the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Bit of a dead give away right there.
60
Would that 3% add up to more than the planned waste of money on unreliables and all the losses to the economy wrought by the effects of high price energy that is intermittent anyway?
40
Weed out the WEF/ UN acolytes in both parties and problems will be solved.
There’ll then just be one bump in the road…… there’ll be no government or opposition left. The whole bunch of weak, lying, immoral clowns will be down at Centrelink .
200
Or, at their beach-hoses, keeping tabs on their off-shore “portfolios?
140
And fossil fuels still generate 94% of Aussies’ energy and TOXIC, UNRELIABLE W & S about 4.7% and hydro about 1.1%.
https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Australia-Energy-By-Source-1965-2022.png
110
Climate Alarmists Are Finally Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud In Their Agenda
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/22/opinion-climate-alarmists-are-finally-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud-in-their-agenda-david-blackmon/
And,
Weather maps once benign green are now blazing red. URL for original image has expired but you can see 2009 vs 2019 vs 2020 here (misinfo apparently – 2020 had flames added):
“From weather reports to climate hysteria” – “That’s how manipulation works”
Theo Okbo
https://belux.edmo.eu/posts-misuse-weather-maps-to-back-false-climate-claims/
Posts on this at Climate Depot, notrickszone and Iowa Climate Science Education.
140
>LA Times – “Would an Occasional Blackout Help Solve Climate Change?”
Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?
https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2023-07-20/would-an-occasional-blackout-help-solve-climate-change-boiling-point
And,
I was once employed by an electricity reticulation organization where security of supply was a priority. After outages at neighbouring networks our switchboard would light up with inquiries as to how and if they could change networks. They could see the lights on a few farms away.
These would be folks that had just commenced milking their herd when the power went off.
130
>“From weather reports to climate hysteria” – “That’s how manipulation works”
Warming-obsessed media wrong again
By Vijay Jayaraj
There is not much new about media hyperbole in weather reporting, but July’s climate alarmism may be more breathless than usual.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media were inundated with posts containing flaming red maps of Southern Europe and Northern Africa.
Like these: >>>>
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/warmingobsessed_media_wrong_again.html
Vijay – “Imagine substantiating scientific claims by referencing a Hollywood movie! Such is the sorry state of critical thought”
90
They’ve changed the color coding of weather maps to make them flaming red to give the illusion the whole planet is on fire or in meltdown.
It is an effective propaganda technique directed at poorly educated people.
80
First, they controlled things to ensure that the people would be poorly educated.
30
>”Weather maps once benign green are now blazing red”
The Strange And Creepy Glee Over The European Heat Wave
https://climatechangedispatch.com/the-strange-and-creepy-glee-over-the-european-heat-wave/
Also, 1,800ºC is 1,798.5ºC over the 1.5ºC “limit”.
It’s a climate catastrophe.
10
How The BBC’s Heatwave Colour Schemes Have Changed
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/07/24/how-the-bbcs-heatwave-colour-schemes-have-changed/
“Still, at least the BBC have not gone for blacks, as Sky News have”
10
Sweden weather maps – green with sun symbols vs blanket red/orange for similar temperatures in the 20s but years apart :
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-meme-forecasts-idUSL1N2Y11HY
10
I have to ask ‘what heat wave?’ Where I live in southern France it is a little warmer than last year, I now need to have a small fan on during the day to circulate the air – at night the cold air comes in through the open windows. My met station tells me it is just about 24C in direct sunlight also with the heat being reflected from the buildings across the narow road.
00
Green policies should not be “watered down”. They should be eliminated.
If the Tories just said “no more Net Zero bullshit,” they’d be in government until 2030 at the least.
230
Not convinced.
The gullible masses believe the BS, particularly the city living, middle classes who believe they are insulated from the harms. After all these are the same masses who queued up for the self harming clot shots !
The tories and Labour have only one objective and that is to hold onto power by any means. Net Zero may be scaled back but it won’t go away whilst the virtue signallers draw breath.
40
In poll after poll for the last decade even when 90% of people say they “believe” in climate change, almost none of them want to pay anything to fix the weather. What does “believe” even mean if people won’t spend $10 a month willingly to stop the world spontaneously bursting into flames?
It means they don’t think it matters.
98% of people booking plane tickets couldn’t be bothered to spend a dollar or two more buying “carbon neutral” passes for their tickets.
Here in WA, the most trusting place on Earth, if everyone believed in vaccines why did they have to mandate it, threaten their jobs, stop them going to gyms, and tell them they wouldn’t be allowed into hospital to see their own sick children? Despite a complete media propaganda storm, and full censorship of all dissenting opinions, somehow one quarter to one third of West Australians were not rushing to get vaccinated.
100
Yes, it’s the contradiction thing, they believe but won’t do anything about it. It’s Orwellian doublethink in action.
The problem though is not the one third who didn’t comply, it’s the two thirds who did.
20
Or maybe they don’t do anything about it, because they have no idea what the fantasy Green ideology is cost them. It is after all, hidden from them at every step.
Should we blame and be angry at essentially honest nice people for not realizing the world is a much nastier and more corrupt place, or should we sit down and have a beer with them at the pub and start working on changing that?
A lifetime of propaganda takes more than a few minutes to undo.
50
It is not enough for Conservatives to change policy on Net Zero. They have to go out and sell it. That is the job of a politician after all.
10
John Kerry testified before the US Congress last week.
I felt pity for him.
Of course, he can experience embarrassment in luxury.
The rest of us won’t be so lucky.
It will take decades to recover from this farce, even if sanity was completely regained now.
The psychological damage alone, not even counting the economic swindle, of the climate charade to the whole of society, with the added travesty of the ‘Pandemic’ is incalculable, not yet fully realized, and hard not to view as a purposeful creation of evil people.
240
If Trump gets elected (the THIRD time!) he has the ability to close down the scam worldwide, as he came close to doing last time – and look how that ended for him…
240
It’s all about seeking consent for a controlled demolition of western culture, values, society and make way for massive depopulation.
120
when Trump is elected in 2024 the dims will acknowledge the 2020 election of the bidet was a fraud, that DJT was actually elected and therefore has had 2 terms and is Constitutionally ineligible to serve.
I expect nothing less from that collection of lying …
190
Unlikely as to be officially President you need to be inaugurated as Donald Trump has not served a second term. More likely is that Donald will have to start his term from prison. Here is a tip, the US will have its first female president before year’s end. As the evidence against Dementia Joe and his crime family grows, his puppet masters will remove him on the grounds of ill health so he can’t be impeached. Then it will be Commie Kamala, the queen of the word salad as president.
20
The Dims still denai that DJT was ever a legit president, so they would have a hard time saying he had two terms-not that such inconsistency matters to them. At the heart of the documents allegations is that since Trump was not a legit president he should not have access to classified documents and had no authority (a prerogative accepted of every other president in history) to decide what should be declassified and classified, and should kiss the ash of the government employees at the National Archives.
Contrast that to Bai-den given a pass for grossly mishandling government documents over a period of 50 years and when he technically had no authority over classification of documents.
But Bai-den is one of them, and DJT is not one of them.
10
Don’t expect to see or hear any comment on this rejection of net zero from our media in genera!!
The only voice in the wilderness will be Rowan Dean on “ Outsiders “!
150
Dutton might grow a backbone and say Net Zero is folly, the MSM would have to report it.
10
They’d be too busy reporting on the emergence of flying pigs.
20
Political parties are floundering, wondering which way to turn to win.
The Libs are misdirected – going the way of green – because of the people they hang out with. That is, the people in Teal seats, or those like them. These are the people that politicians mix with. and it affects their opinions. They don’t hear the minds of other people apart from words in the media.
But the Teal seats are not really normal Australians. They are middle class and comfortable, and so their minds marinade in a gin of green ideals, especially “the science” – because they don’t believe in God and those stupid stories anymore.
170
They’re not middle class, they’re wealthy. But then most Aussies are wealthy without knowing it. My wife and I were just talking about somebody we deal with in the area who run a small business and claim to be struggling but who have champagne taste in most things in life. You guys who grew up in first world countries are raised that way and have no idea how good you have it, and are completely clueless about the need to preserve that for future generations.
100
Pay now or pay later. 3% extra interest then seems a heck of a lot better deal in retrospect than driving the prime mover into the energy cul-de-sac and now having to borrow multi-billions to get it out.
00
IF
“The Guardian is apoplectic” then the British public must be awake to the damage they are suffering.
This seems like a rerun of the European Union drama, Brexit, where the British shewed that they are capable of voting to change things that were not going right.
Two for Britain: a thinking public and a functional voting system.
This must be a lesson for the USA to observe and learn from.
Go Watt Tyler!
40
The French novelist J.K. Huysmans was once told he had reached a choice between the foot of the cross and the muzzle of a gun.
Seems to me Sunak has a choice between admitting he was wrong, or joining Just Stop Oil and glueing his buttocks to a road.
40
🙂 🙂
20
What Sushi does will depend on what his masters at the World Empire of Fascists want. We have local elections in May next year which includes for the London mayor. If these goes badly for Sushi then he could be removed prior to the General Election in November.
00
Gove occasionally comes out with something sensible but I don’t trust him any further than I could throw him.
Here’s hoping that election result might lead to some (common?)sense at last.
30
Yes. Gove is a backstabbing opportunist, he only speaks when it serves his ambitions.
60
Who can forget the pictures of Michael Gove as he sat gazing at St Greta like a lovesick teenager.
https://deframedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/24/greta-thunberg-meets-uk-politicians/
Sharing a platform with Layla Moran, Ed Milliband and Caroline Lucas…..need I say more?
30
That’s the Labour Party in the UK. They have abandoned labour and the working class, but they can still spell. For now, anyway.
20
Yes, the Labour Party hates the working class as they are normal non-woke conservative people. It is an irony that if you go back to the founding of the Labour Party you will find that they were a party with conservative values.
10
Early next year the Abanese Labor government will introduce Fuel Efficiency Standards. Code word for emissions tax.
Over 1.1 million new cars are imported into Australia every year and the new tax will use the “frog in the pot method” (turning the heat up slowly over 7 years) on all imported cars by adding an additional $500 or more, every six months over a seven year period. All to get approx 50% of all new vehicle sales a EV type by 2030.
The penalty given in the link on page 27 is $100 for every one gram of Co2 per car km on a sliding scale.
This could be Australia’s ULEZ moment, the lightning rod that attempts to end Australia’s love of I.C.E. cars.
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/consultation_paper_-_australias_fuel_efficiency_standard.pdf
20
One of the joys of motoring in Europe/UK is driving vehicles with higher performance that nonetheless use less petrol. Pity about the petrol prices.
00
Which vehicle is available in Europe but cannot be purchased in Australia?!?
20
It is the configuration not the model name.
00
Which configuration would that be?
10
This echoes Churchill’s comment that democracy is a lousy system until you look at the alternatives.
What is also needed is a a further party with openly anti-Green policies in order to keep the toes of the Tories and Labour held to the fire. That’s ReformUK, Nigel Farage’s old Brexit Party rebranded and currently run by Richard Tice (although Farage might yet return). Like the Brexit Party, it can have a major influence on a General Election without ever winning a seat. It should scream at the electorate to demand a clear Yes or No to Labour over Green policies and take silence as Yes.
Germany too needs such a party, although it has a slightly different electoral system.
30
Hmm, I maybe sensing the panic, But I certainly do NOT feel the heat: Mann! – it’s cauld outside overnight and early morning. Birds, birds? you ask, Heaps of them this year – what’s goin on… eaten ALL the cherries and Geans, now even the later Sour Cherries have gone – all before they’re ripe. Soft fruit for what there is, is NOT Sweet – lack of sunshine.
and on the political front, Mikey Gove twisting things again. A fellow Scot? pity. just like all the other Tory INO Weasels.
10
As for the election results: poor turnout sends a noisy message and the results get lost in that noise: Simply put: Tories didn’t lose all 3, Labour & Liberal ( non of the others?) did NOT even gain TWO seats – ha ha ha!
10
The big lie is gradually unraveling. For years we’ve had the propaganda rammed down our throats 24/7 that the world is frying and we need to switch to clean green energy that is cheaper, cleaner, apparently even less racist and will provide more high paid jobs and save the planet, create world peace and so on… And as energy prices started to rise as RE was rolled out, the lie changed tack, promising with just a bit more RE it will suddenly become cheap and repeating this lie every year with more certainty, despite ever increasing energy prices. But, you can only cry wolf for so long and now with the long list of lies and RE transition on its last legs and with energy now an expensive luxury item, only affordable by the wealthy elites and with the impoverished middle class now sitting in the cold and dark under the burden of extreme energy inflation, reality bites hard. The last straw is the added car tax aimed at those who will never afford the luxury elite-class EV and so the people’s fightback begins.
30
Of the 3 by-elections last week, only Uxbridge has any real bearing on what might happen in November 2024. That the people have rejected the ULEZ comes as a shock to the Tories just shows how totally out of touch they are. Having embraced the Net Zero lunacy it will be hard for them to be trusted if they propose to turn this back – it’s not as if they have not lied before in their manifestos. And Labour tones down the green crap, who on earth would trust a party who sincerely believes some women have penises. Even the idiots in Labour are realising that there is little opportunity to raise the taxes they need to pay for their stupid ideas given how much damage the Tories have done to the nation’s finances. Probably the first time the Tories would not be handing Labour an economy to ruin. Before the next GE we have local elections in May which include the London mayor which may play some part in the run up to the GE. Sadly for us to follow the other countries in Europe that have realised they need a party of the right running things it would need a miracle like the rise of the Dutch Farmers party.
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Yes, Jo.
Here in “good old Blighty” it seems that voters were, unusually, given an opportunity to vote on the harsh green measures of the eco-zealots. These are the policies of what I call BLIGHT-WING politics. They sound fine at first if you are not allowed to examine them too closely, but you soon come to realise that they are putting a blight on your life, a blight on the lives of your family, a blight on your community, and indeed a blight on your whole country.
Let’s end this BLIGHT on Western politics. Expose the eco-zealots’ policies for what they really are, namely expensive green-washing projects that enrich the rent-seekers at the expense of ordinary people.
End the BLIGHT-WING politics now!
Regards and best wishes from Blighty,
John.
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IMO The problem in the West is that there is no party or politicians one can vote for that provides a real alternative voice to the overall and all encompassing madness. All western states suffer from uniparties. You can vote for whoever but you’ll get the same old sh*te. Manifestos and election promises are worthless.
The recent local elections were won and lost on single issues not overall policies. In two elections the people voted for ‘anyone but the tories’ and in the other it was an ‘anti green measures’ vote.
The national elections will probably be different and along the usual tribal lines. Where I live you could put a blue rosette on a turd and ‘they’ would still vote for it – I have no representation.
Andrew Bridgen, Jeremy Corbyn, etc. there are good honest people out there but they are effectively neutered. Decent policies cannot break through the propaganda wall, the state ensures that doesn’t happen.
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Steve, that’s a great outline of the Australian political system, past, present, future and emerging.
It’s easier to hide the rotting garbage of politics at the national level, but is progressively more noticeable at the state and local government levels because the rot is literally in your face.
Having said that, there are the occasional glaring examples like the saving of the Great Big Barrier Reef and the Foundation that was put together to accomplish that.
How President Trumble could get a cheque signed by the treasurer of the day for the equivalent of seven and a quarter tons of Gold Bullion is beyond comprehension in a properly functioning Democracy.
The fact that the signing treasurer later became the new president probably says it all: we are doomed.
Until we force accountability back into the system we will accelerate the decline.
Don’t forget, don’t forgive, Prosecute!
Oh sorry, that’s not possible at the moment.
Our legal system is “supervised” by the government.
So, good luck Australia.
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FWIW
“James Hansen on Fire”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/25/james-hansen-on-fire/
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The media coverage and politicians’ comments on the Uxbridge vote against the ULEZ zone extension seem to treat the ULEZ £12.50 per day charge as if it were a tax on harmless CO2 emissions. It is not, it is a tax on harmful NOx and particulate emissions, i.e. genuine atmospheric pollutants. ULEZ criteria are based on a Euro standard which the Transport for London website summarises as “Euro standards are a range of emissions controls that set limits for air polluting Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Particulate Matter (PM) from engines.”
TfL describes the vehicles which will not be taxed as follows: “Lorries, vans and specialist heavy vehicles (all over 3.5 tonnes Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW)) and buses, minibuses and coaches (all over 5 tonnes GVW) do not need to pay the ULEZ charge. They will need to pay the LEZ charge if they do not meet the LEZ emissions standard. Most petrol vehicles under 16 years old or diesel vehicles under 6 years old already meet the emissions standards.” The main victims of the tax are drivers of older diesel vans in London.
I’m delighted that this bye-election seems to have triggered political movement against the insane Net Zero policies, but I’m also a fan of accurate reporting and of reducing genuine atmospheric pollution in London by NOx & particles.
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They could achieve that aim by other means.
A limited zone tax is Not sensible and smacks of political belligerence and grandstanding.
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Guy, you could improve London’s air still further by banning all internal combustion engines tomorrow. But adult politics involves adult trade-offs. Remember that our cities have literally never had cleaner air in all of human history than today – thanks to sewers (London’s ‘great stink’ of 1858), smokeless fuels (the ‘great smog’ of 1952), unleaded petrol and catalytic convertors. For the surprisingly large importance of unleaded petrol, see
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/
In contrast, particulates are grossly over-feared:
https://junkscience.com/2023/03/pm2-5-mass-killer-or-mass-fraud/
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Of course Guy, the problem is that studies have shown that the ULEZ zone makes no difference whatsoever to the pollution. Although Khan has stated that they do lower pollution it has been shown that, yet again, the stats used were doctored to give the required result. The ULEZ zone is a simple means to extract money out of drivers to fund the profligate spending of the London mayor. And, drivers already pay increased road tax for older vehicles, so it’s a double tax that is destroying small businesses in the city. One of the main ‘real’ polluters in London is the Underground but they are exempt, I believe.
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The only thing saving unpopular “climate action” policies from the dust bin of history are gas-lighting by the MSM, and oppressive administrative law being forced upon the people against their wills by the unelected.
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