1. His promise to the voters.
Steve says his promise was "to pay close attention to climate change policy"; he says he has done that now and as a result is against decarbonising by 2050.
Bullshit, Steve: your promise is in the manifesto in black & white (& yellow highlighter)
2. Four lies in one paragraph next.
End of:
- comfortable lives
- mass car ownership,
- foreign holidays,
- domestic heating.
"Project fear" or what?
Calm down Steve, the CCC estimated net zero will mean 2% lower per capita GDP than otherwise in 2050. Brexit passed ....
that milestone by 2018.
Per Capita GDP lower in 2050, than it otherwise would be - by 2%. Let's put it another way: assuming a typical 1.75% per year growth, decarbonisation means we achieve in December 2050 the standard of living we would have achieved in February 2050.
So?
3. "...the drive for renewables has led to electricity prices nearly doubling"
I have screen-grabbed the relevant bits, because I know brexiters don't know how to click links:
4. Next you try the old con-a-granny trick: say a big sounding number without any context.
"£11 Billion" Oooohhh!. You mean 1/2,000th of one year of UK GDP... spread over two decades. That would be about £10 a year then, for the average Brit.
4.continued
You also deliberately create the impression that past subsidies - eg for Hornsea - mean there will be a need for more of the same; bigger even.
But you MUST know renewables went "subsidy negative" in 2019 due to reducing costs.
5. "Government planning to [ really, really piss off homeowners and any other classic Tory voter demographic ]. Bullshit. This is more Climate Change Deniers Project Fear. Do you really think anyone will fall for this unbelievable scaremongering, Steve?
6. "Electric cars £10K extra"
They can also be £5K extra or £3k extra, Steve.
7. "Heat pumps are:
A. 3x as expensive
B. more costly to run
C. only heat modern homes.
A. The difference in price is due the HP market being 25K units a year vs 1.8M for boilers. Creating a 1.8M HP market will level the prices.
B. Only if installed incorrectly.
C. Myth.
The "only modern homes" myth had an element of truth 10 years ago when the refrigerants commonly used delivered a maximum water temperature of 50deg C and didn't work below -5 deg C outside.
These days newer refrigerants allow 80deg water and work in -25deg C outside air.
9. "£100,000 per household"
Hm... whom should we believe - UK Civil Servants, or paid-up lobbyist for Fossil Fuel Climate Change Deniers cum MP for hire?
Lets say the civil servants are right - 40K per household
Anyway: infrastructure is financed by borrowing, not taxation!!!
The actual tax rise required to cover £40K of borrowing is £300. And it is spread over 30 years.
So next year my tax goes up by £10, then another £10 the year after, etc etc.
£10 a year to save the World? Sounds like a bargain to me. One fewer round of drinks every 2 years.
And why should the red wall voters even pay that £10 ? - surely the billionaires can cough up a bit more; if only to make the view from their private rockets still worth looking at.
YOUR government chooses who bears the tax burden most.
10. "No way to generate power when the wind isn't blowing"
You mention a couple of pie in the sky solutions but ignore 3 that work:
A. HVDC interconnectors so that we can draw solar power from Portugal or wind power from Denmark or nuclear from France.
B. Demand-side ...
management (ie smart grids)
C. Fck it: have some gas turbines and even diesel genny's on standby; if they only run a few hours a year we have still achieved a massive Carbon reduction. (Don't get hung up about "net zero", 99% reduction is good enough)
11. Fusion
More mis-direction by Steve. Point to a pie in the sky technology to divert attention from realistic, affordable, renewable alternatives to fossil fuel.
12. "Unless someone invents a way to store energy in massive bulk"
They have, Steve.
Check it out: sunamp.com
It doesn't store electricity; it stores heat. But if your heat is coming from a heat pump, this allows the heat pump to run at 10 am but deliver ..
...its heat at 5 pm say.
One in every house in the UK and you can store 250GWh of heat (equivalent to storing 60GWh of electricity). All for <0.5p per KWh cycle. ( ie about 1/10th the cost of Lithium batteries)
And it doubles as a HW cylinder, but smaller.
Throw 25M electric car batteries into the mix and a "virtual market" to allow people to sell spare storage capacity and you have another way to "store energy in massive bulk".
Do you notice how renewables. HPs and EV's work so incredibly well together, BTW?
13. Pahahahahhaha!
This one is your best lie yet, Steve. We haven't even exited the grace periods yet or put our own border red tape (Brex tape) in place.
14. "Obtain the consent of the public"
The manifesto pledge could not have been clearer. If an 80 seat majority was a mandate for the oven ready deal, it was a mandate for net zero.
"Using fear" Lord, Jesus, the hypocrisy: Steve's whole article is fearmongering.
15. So, Steve Baker, what first attracted you to the Billionaire Koch brothers' lobbying network? 😉
16. Saving the planet is a noble endeavour.
Aaahh! THAT'S why you are doing your best to undermine efforts to do so, Steve; it is because you are the most ignoble, mercenary and corrupt little man who ever became a Tory MP... and that is saying something!
End
• • •
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In 2016, the brexit referendum was a petri dish for the US General Election. The same people - Cambridge Analytica, Thiel, Bannon , the Mercers & Putin - ran the same plays and won both times.
What if the UK riots are a dry run for the US election?
The UK riots show that if enough fuel has been poured, a small spark can start a big fire.
In the UK politicians like Farage, Cameron, May, Braverman and Patel and newspapers like the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun, for years splashed the petrol of anti-immigrant hatred.
2/
Eventually it took one tweeted lie - that the murderer of 3 little girls was a Muslim , "illegal" immigrant ,and a recent small boats arrival - to set the spark.
A small ecosystem of bought-and-paid-for RW influencers quickly fanned the flames, and the rest is history.
3/
Brexit has a new trilemma, even worse than "Leave the SM & CU AND No NI/IE border AND no NI/GB border".
Now it is "Growth AND low immigration AND stay out of the SM &CU"
If Brexit just makes us poorer, parliament after parliament, decade after decade, it cannot stand.
1/
It may take some time; the English have an unmatched ability to keep going long after everyone - including themselves - can see it's not working. (Watching a retired bank manager taking on a space smaller than his car can be hours of fun - or piano vs. staircase half-landing.)
2/
But eventually people will have enough of getting poorer and the prospect of getting ever-poorer, when there is an alternative just there for the taking.
The trilemma faced by Brexiters like Bill Cash, ranting about immigrants, is their red lines on immigration & SM/CU are
3/
I have seen various estimates of how much extra peak demand would be added to the UK grid if all 23 M gas-fired Domestic Boilers were swapped for ASHP's overnight.
The average UK dwelling is 90m2 and typically has radiators sized on rule of thumb at 100W/m2...
1/
So... in theory, if all the Heat Pumps were working at 82 deg flow/ 71 deg C Return, and all the radiators in the UK were simultaneously putting out 9 KW per dwelling, that comes to 207GW of heat. Which on a very cold day would require 100GW of Electricity. (Shock horror!)
2/
But that is nonsense. In reality, most ASHPs operate at 55 Flow / 50 Return and at those water temperatures radiators that emit 9kW at 82/71 will emit about 4kW.
So... what if we keep the old boilers instead of replacing them and just retrofit an ASHP in series?
3/
A couple of days back I tweeted how the Government now permits employers to pay migrant workers in shortage occupations 20% less than the going rate.
(Which Article 45 of TFEU would have prevented, before Brexit)
How did they cover it?
Badly. Anyone reading it would think it just applies to builders, carpenters and fishing industry - people not like "us" (managers, engineers, scientists, actuaries, vets etc)
Anyone using the BBC for information would think it just affects some horny-handed types on building sites and - who knows - maybe bring back the good old days of Polish plumbers who could re-do your ensuite at 1 weeks notice.
Either the Tories have not thought through the implications of the post-brexit immigration rules... or they have thought them through all too well.
I have a nasty inkling of what they might be up to, but it takes a bit of explaining.
Let's start with "before brexit"...
1/
Article 45 TFEU is a fundamental right of workers which entails the abolition of any discrimination based on nationality as regards remuneration. Plain-speak: an employer could not underpay an immigrant from Italy, say, just on the basis that they were not from the UK.
2/
Prior to brexit the majority of migrant workers were from EEA countries and this rule protected them.
It was not legal for a UK employer to bring in "cheap foreign workers" to undercut UK staff, and as result immigration from the EU was heavily skewed toward the jobs...
3/
Here we have Electricity and Gas prices in Euro per 100kWh, in February 2023, throughout Europe.
Where it gets REALLY interesting is when you compare the ***ratio*** of Electricity price to Gas price: See next tweet.
1/
The UK has by far the highest ratio of Electricity price to Gas price.
This is a result of Tory Government policies: 1. Gas for electricity incurs a Carbon Tax, whereas gas for boilers does not. 2. The price of ALL electricity is set by the price of Gas-fired electricity.
2/
.... which, of course, includes the Carbon Tax!
3. The government loads "policy" costs - such as the warm homes discount for poorer households - disproportionately onto electricity bills; £140 uplift for electricity vs £34 for gas.