BREAKING NEWS: United Utilities, the largest corporate landowner in England, is pulling grouse shooting on its moorland by way of not renewing its leases when they come to an end… Its grouse shooting leases cover many high profile moorland landscapes, including the Forest of Bowland AONB, the Goyt Valley, Longdendale Valley, and the West Pennines. With this in mind, this is a major shift in direction which opens up these spaces for natural recovery…

EXCLUSIVE: Former Minister Zac Goldsmith says Privileges Committee would have been “sacked and replaced almost on day one” if it were a court of law….coming up tonight on @Channel4News In 1st TV interview since resignation, fmr Minister Zac Goldsmith speaks to Channel 4 News on the ‘kangaroo court’ and questioned on whether it was a factor in his resignation, before coming close to accusing Rishi Sunak of lying over the £11.6 billion promise over the climate.

Exclusive: The government is facing legal complaint for failing to take action over dirty diesels after new research finds millions of vehicles still pumping out high levels of pollution across Europe - suggesting many could be fitted with illegal “defeat devices”. @channel4news… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Seven years ago the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal revealed German carmaker Volkswagen had been using devices that hid how much pollution their vehicles caused when they were being tested…

Monday morning so have some very good news. The pace of green tech change from the four biggest global polluters appears to speeding faster than the promises their Govts - away from COP here is a real-world picture from ECIU Energy And Climate Intelligence Unit … China: installing 165 GW of renewables this year, up 25% on previous year; electric vehicles sales projected to be 6m in 2022, double those of non-EV cars in 202…

Historic High Court ruling finds UK government’s climate strategy ‘unlawful’
In a landmark victory for climate justice that comes as the UK faces its hottest day on record, the High Court has ruled that the government’s Net Zero Strategy breaches the Climate Change Act… Mr Justice Holgate finds that the Net Zero Strategy, which sets out plans to decarbonise the economy, doesn’t meet the government’s obligations under the Climate Change Act to produce detailed climate policies that show how the UK’s legally-binding carbon budgets will be met.

Here is page 1. It’s all clearly drafted by Cabinet Office lawyers. The original request went in in December. They are supposed to deal with it within 20 working days under the Act. This page proves they hold the info and believe they are exempt from the Act from giving it to you Page 2 the CO says the info would prejudice its the investigating itself & the police investigation. Remember when this request was made there was no police investigation because the CO and Met agreed the police would go away.

Three months on the Cabinet Office has responded to my Freedom of Information request about how they cut a deal with the police to stop them investigating alleged unlawful Downing St parties during the COVID shutdown… They sent me several pages of argument from. Their lawyers stating that they hold the information that I asked for but there is no freedom of information and no public interest in publishing it because….

OIL, GAS & UK TAX - the following fact sheet from Uplift may be worth reading for everyone on the day BP post a 30x last quarter profit explosion…. Since the Paris Climate Agreement UK has given well over £4 billion of your money to oil companies mostly to pay for clearing up their mess in the N Sea - politely known as decommissioning…

CABINET OFFICE/PARTYGATE in December both the Met Police and Cabinet Office accepted in public statements that the police had decided not to investigate allegations of illegal parties in Whitehall during lock down… CABINET OFFICE/PARTYGATE both said this decision was taken.After “communication” between Met and CO. In my discussions with CO it was further accepted that these communications would have been minuted.

POLICE/PARTYGATE So, we no longer await Gray, we await the police . Met Commissioner Cressida Dick says the police will now probe the allegations of No 10 parties… Worth saying - as ever - all involved remain entirely innocent until judicial process may decide otherwise. No 10 says the PM does not believe he has broken the law…

POLICE & PARTYGATE What follows are the facts of correspondence between me and Met Police (MPS) I make no comment. It is for you to draw any inference…. On 20/12/21 I asked MPS a number of questions, because none of them was answered by the MPS holding statement news.met.police.uk/news/allegatio… …

POLICE AND PARTYGATE - more from my own inquiries soon but the Good Law Project is taking legal actions against the Met over its failure to investigate No10 parties…. Responding to GLP the Met wrote a letter stating that they relied on the Govt’s assurances that no rules had been broken…Met said no point in interviewing No 10 staff about parties because they would have refused to answer questions that exposed them to a risk of prosecution…

It’s official - today rewilding goes mainstream. The Govt is burying the disastrous EU farming subsidies which paid English farmers to destroy our wildlife - instead payments for wildlife protection. On paper a radical and long-needed move…. So the principles are fantastic but we need action now and detail (all sides agree) is lacking here. That said the concepts are , frankly, fantastic and reward the many farmers already doing this …

Downing St attempted media control. This is from the invitation to today’s PM event: « Please be advised that there will be no question and answer session for the media...However, you are of course encouraged to report on the speeches and content of the event itself. »

 » So the media are invited to report the speech but banned from questioning those in power. For the record @alextomo (not invited) asked a question as did @davidshukmanbbc (invited)...

Looks like Cuadrilla is packing up its fracking operation in Lancashire after causing a series of earthquakes considerably larger than anything it said would be possible.... This comes after announcement of forthcoming energy white paper will priorities renewables over fossil fuel energy ...

Before she resigned, Shale Gas Commissioner Natasha Engel admitted routinely destroying her correspondence with fracking companies.... Responding to a Greenpeace FOI she wrote : “I tend to deal with everything on the day and
delete what has been done
to avoid any huge build-ups or risk of duplication.
“The same is true of the
few notes I take in meetings which I review in the evenings, action and throw
away”.