Quote of the day....

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On the threats to leave from big energy companies:

The departure of rent seeking tax farming parasites is rarely a bad thing for the people whose taxes are being farmed.

Absolutely.

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"The fetish of consumer choice..." - an introduction to 21st century fascism

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All the wonder - the liberation - of choice is but an indulgence. Or at least this is the view of one Andrew Dobson writing in the Guardian.

We need to discard the ideological trappings of an increasingly discredited neo-liberalism – such as the fetish of consumer choice, or the notion of the small state.

The fetish of consumer choice! Andrew Dobson would have us queuing outside GUM in drab conformity before returning to a depressing apartment - just the state TV channel braying out the instructions of our masters. And - when the electricity works which isn't every day - Mr Dobson would have our cupboard (no point in a fridge) filled with the dull product of a state factory.

In Professor Dobson's world this control is needed because of "climate change" - the imperative of impending doom demands that the state takes command and leads. All must be:

...brought back under democratic control, and control of the state must be wrested from those whose interest lies in diminishing its democratic potential for reining in the market and acting in the common interest.

Andrew Dobson does not know it but he is a fascist.

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Motorists already fund all of public spending on transport...

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The IPPR have taken to the airwaves calling for motorists to be taxed until the pips squeak (or something like that). However, the true picture is that taxes on motoring - fuel duty and road tax - already provide every penny that the government spends on transport. Yes folks that's the money spent on looking after roads as well as all the subsidies to keep trains and buses going.

Fuel duty raises around 4% of total government revenue - for 2010/11 this was some £27.3 billion.

The vehicle excise duty (road tax) raised some £5.8billion in the same year giving a grand total of £33.1 billion.

I haven't included a proportion of VAT - on new vehicles, on the maintenance of vehicles and on fuel - but we can guess at a few more billion from this source. Motorists are - with smokers and drinkers - a grade one cash cow for the government.

And, of course, it all gets re-invested in the roads!

In the same year that the £33.1 billion was raised in income from motorists, the total budget for transport was £23 billion - the treasury is clearing a cool £10 billion from motorists!

And - as we know - much of that £23 billion budget goes on subsidising public transport - about £12.5 billion. Which - once you've taken out the bits spent on cycling, air transport and assorted oddities - leaves about £9.5 billion for the roads.

So next time you hear some self-righteous greeny from a think tank saying we should tax motorists more, tell them politely to go away.

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The purpose of environmental regulation is the suppression of economic growth

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It would appear that our MPs (or at least the ones on the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee) haven't been listening to the deep green rhetoric. As a result they don't seem to appreciate that the whole point of environmental regulation is to reduce economic growth. For, as we know those deep green folk like the WWF believe that you can't separate resource consumption and growth. Ergo growth is bad.

"As development increases beyond a certain level, so does per person Footprint — eventually to the point where small gains in development come at the cost of very large Footprint increases."

You've got that? It comes from WWF's Living Planet Report, a report encapsualted as follows:

...green campaigning group WWF...has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world's wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race's energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now.

So the whole point and purpose of those green regulations is to slow - better still, eliminate - economic growth. Right now that's not good politics, so our MPs pretend otherwise. As does the chap from WWF UK:

 "Far from putting British companies out of business, environmental policies may well be the saving of them. Leading businesses are crying out for measures such as mandatory carbon reporting and policy certainty for development of the renewable energy sector," said WWF-UK economic policy officer Luke Wreford."

Now you are confused aren't you! Regulations designed to prevent over-use of resources, to reduce "carbon footprints" and, bluntly, to stop growth are described as the salvation of business. And to justify this we've dreamt up that most oxymoronic of ideas: green growth:

The committee calls for a long-term view based on a proper strategy for green growth, including more investment in renewable sources of energy to reduce UK reliance on imported fossil fuels. 

For investment read "government spending"! Either economic growth is a bad thing (as the Living Planet Report sets out pretty clearly) and regulations or protections are needed to stop it or else it isn't, in which case we need fewer of those controls. In the end environmental regulation will always be anti-growth.

Sadly, our MPs seem not to have worked this out yet.

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"One Million Pound A Vote" isn't quite enough for Labour to buy Green support....

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Windmills! Not sure about what I personally feel about them (although I'm unconvinced at their value as a solution to England's energy supply challenges - fracking and nuclear power look much better bets) but I do know that plenty of people aren't so keen on having them plonked in their back yard. Including a whole bunch in Denholme.

Right now Bradford Council is consulting on its 'Local Development Framework Core Strategy' which includes proposals for loads more windmills. Which will be sited (assuming the Council avoid the massive row that would come from putting them on Ilkley Moor) in Denholme and Queensbury where there's loads of wind. And residents in these places want to challenge these proposals.

However, it seems we needn't bother complaining since the Labour Councillor responsible for planning has already decided:

Councillor Val Slater, Bradford Council's executive member for planning, said: “Renewable energy ultimately means a cleaner district and less pollution. Although there is an increase in applications for wind turbines we don't actually receive that many.”

I guess this is part of the price that Bradford people will be paying for the backroom deal that led our three-strong Green group on Council to back almost everything the Labour Party propose! It seems that the "One Million Pounds A Vote" deal on renewable energy we saw at the budget council was only part of the payback for the Greens' support. They love windmills and the bigger the better!!

Councillor Martin Love, one of Shipley’s ward representatives and a member of the Green Party, said: “Any increase in renewable energy generation is to be welcomed.

“Something Bradford has got a lot of is hills and wind. We should utilise them for energy generation wherever we can. However, for Wind turbines to be effective we need bigger ones."

I will point out that the hills and wind aren't in Cllr Love's ward, of course!

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It's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?

Fruit & Veg shop in Radda in Chianti - featuring porcini, of course!

It seem that, in the European "eat up your greens now dear" league, us Brits are languishing near the bottom (or so the European Commission - green scoffers all - tell us):

Britons are not eating enough fruit and vegetables despite nutritional advice being widely available, a study suggests. A review of eating habits in 19 EU countries put the UK in 14th place*.

And, we're told that this is a problem - not eating up our greens puts us at risk:

The EUFIC said that high intakes of fruit and vegetables were associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.

Apparently the Poles are top (not surprising as the Polish diet does seem to consist largely of cabbage and potato). Which means that they're living longer of course? It would seem not - the average Briton (even with all those Glaswegians keeling over at 55) lives just over 79 years whereas the average Pole only makes it to his or her 76th year.

What about heart attacks then - eating up our greens means we don't get these doesn't it?

According to the latest WHO data published in April 2011 Coronary Heart Disease Deaths in Poland reached 79,036 or 26.93% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 122.40 per 100,000 of population ranks Poland #78 in the world

..and the UK? The same source gives our age adjusted death rate as 68.8 per 100,000. More to the point, that is better that three of the four top green scoffers in Europe (Germany and Austria being the other two).

Maybe eating greens is good for us (certainly a diet without fruit and veg would be unbearably dull) but blandly reporting data - it seems pretty dodgy data - on eating greens seems to miss the point. Our life expectancy is rising, our rates of coronary heart disease are falling and yet we don't eat as much green stuff as places with a cultural predilection for cabbage.

Any way it's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?


*Most football supporters would prefer to characterise this position in the league as "mid-table" unless, of course, it is the team they hate, in which case it is "risking relegation".

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Perhaps if they stopped to think of those less fortunate?

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Yesterday I reminded the world – or rather that small part of it reading my tweets – that raising taxes doesn’t create economic growth. It was a simple statement of fact – or that was what I thought. After all taxes are a cost rather than a benefit (which doesn’t mean the same as saying taxes aren’t spent on things that bring us benefit). And public spending – where those taxes go – is almost entirely consumption, no different in effect from me buying a new food processor or a meal out when it breaks down.


My mistake, of course, was to mention the dreaded words “economic growth” - forgetting that there are a group of ‘flat-earth’ believers out there who want economic growth to end. After all they’re fine doing stuff like this and earning (in terms of average global incomes) really good money:

Director of Shelf Life Strategic Sales, co-instigator of @thesourceleeds, verbal identity expert

This fine activity (whatever it all might mean) sits quite a long way towards the top of Maslow’s jolly pyramid. I’m sure clients benefit from the great insight but surely such folk realise that their creative and exciting industry exists as a consequence of economic advancement – we no longer need to work in back-breaking conditions regardless of the weather, we can be a “verbal identity expert”.

So what it is with these wealthy, privileged, educated people that makes them say things like:

…and economic growth for the benefit of the few and the detriment of the environment taxes us all in the end...

Do they simply not understand that economic growth benefits everyone – not least because the government has more money to spend on schools, hospitals and other public service wonders? I wonder why it is that their sweeping assumptions about growth – that they do not benefit from it (when their very industry is a consequence of that growth)?

Maybe the answer sits with that little word “environment”? These are the victims of the “Great Green Con”, the triumph of propaganda suggesting that economic growth threatens our very existence. In their oh so progressive world, “unbridled capitalism” is a thing of ultimate evil, gobbling up the resources of the planet and bringing us to the point of collapse.

And what is their alternative? It is hard to discern from under the pile of platitudinous slogans, from beneath the drifts of received wisdom but I think they want some sort of “steady state” economy where verbal identity experts can ply their arcane craft secure in the knowledge that the planet is safe.

In this world people will no longer indulge in exploitative binges of consumption (other than on the products benefiting from improved “verbal identities” I guess) preferring instead a simpler, lower impact life of allotment gardening, home knitting and shopping at craft markets for ‘home made’. Our “verbal identity expert” will eschew a car, refuse foreign holidays and look sneeringly as those terrible, common people for whom such things are a break from the tedium of a job less interesting that the development of “powerfully authentic, precisely accurate statements”. Jobs on farms, in factories, power stations and sewage works. Jobs in shops, banks and insurance companies, job making the things we need and providing the services we want. Jobs that generate enough value for the businesses to afford such indulgences as a “verbal identity expert”.

And further afield, we’ll see African and Asian subsistence farmers and unemployed slum-dwellers whose chance of advancement – from securing the benefits of economic growth – have gone because the “verbal identity experts” have had their way and stopped the growth. Men and women condemned to scrat in the earth, struggling to survive let alone afford the iPad our “verbal identity expert” takes for granted (or the 4x4 truck they really want – but our expert won’t approve of that either).

The argument for zero-growth, for stasis – whether couched in progressive, “capitalism is evil” terms or wrapped in a green coat – is one of the most offensive of all the indulgent philosophies of our educated western society. It captures “I’m all right, Jack” and builds it into an entire system, it is promoted by successful, high-income people and directs its attention to denying the poor the good things those people already enjoy.

Perhaps if they stopped to think of those less fortunate?

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I think they're called gardens?

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You have to giggle when greens and planners come together:

Green party-controlled Brighton & Hove Council has published draft guidance to encourage developers to include food growing areas in new building schemes.

Clearly important to our green pals is this growing:

"We already have strategies in place aimed at encouraging food growing and releasing more space for people to use.  So it makes sense to see how every new development can contribute to these goals."

I think they're called gardens!

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...and how, Manchester, will that help rebuild your economy?

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Manchester - or rather the idiots who run the place - are committing the City to a 48% reduction in  carbon emissions:

The Greater Manchester Climate Change Strategy, put together by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, pulls together the various climate change plans in place across the city-region, with the aim of producing a more coordinated framework.

It outlines four headline climate change goals for Greater Manchester by 2020:

- A rapid transition to a low carbon economy
- Collective carbon emissions reduced by 48 per cent
- Be prepared for and actively adapting to a rapidly changing climate
- ‘Carbon literacy’ will have become embedded into the culture of organisations, lifestyles and behaviours.
  

So the poor residents of this once great city will be condemned to lag behind everywhere else while their leaders choose to further damage the economic prospects of Greater Manchester - and that means higher unemployment, fewer new businesses, less investment and a stagnant unresponsive economy.
 
And what in the name of all that's holy is "carbon literacy"?
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Caroline Lucas - eugenicist?

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Or something pretty close:

David and Victoria Beckham may have been overjoyed to welcome their new daughter, Harper Seven, last week but, according to a growing group of campaigners, the birth of their fourth child make the couple bad role models and environmentally irresponsible.

As the world's population is due to hit seven billion at some point in the next few days, there is an increasing call for the UK to open a public debate about how many children people have.

Now the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has joined other leading environmentalists in calling for the smashing of what TV zoologist Sir David Attenborough has called the "absurd taboo" in discussing family size in the UK.

 I was aware of the unpleasant agenda that Sir David and his friends at the "Optimum Population Trust" were pursuing but it does seem that the Green Party are dangerously close to aopting this unpleasant view.

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Sin and the price of fish - tax, inflation and the poor

I want to contrast two responses to the news today that inflation is higher for the less well off – a piece of information that quite frankly shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The first response is from Billy (who has a job now):

We heard today that the inflation experienced by the poorest people is greater than that experienced by the richest. This is for the simple reason that inflation in food and fuel is much greater than inflation generally, and even more because the costs experienced by richer people are often represented in large part by mortgage payments on property, and the current minuscule interest rate is in fact making those payments lower than ever before. So feeding ourselves is getting more expensive, but feeding ourselves is also a much greater proportion of poorer people’s expenditure than it is of richer people’s.

All quite straightforward and matter-of-fact so far but then Billy hops over the dogfish:

It’s true as well that feeding ourselves is increasingly becoming not a means of nutrition, but a means of self-abuse. Channel 4′s modern day freak-show, Embarrassing Fat Bodies, illustrated this again last night in its trade-mark gory and repulsive detail. Much of this “eating as self-harm” has its roots in the kind of food people eat, and it’s equally generally true that the diets of poorer people are worse in this respect than those of richer people. One of the commonest explanations of this relationship is that bad food is also cheap food. Poor people cannot afford to eat well or healthily.

Quite what this has to do with inflation defeats me but Billy goes on to describe how his super-healthy diet comes for a mere £40 per week. Brilliant except that if you’re a single mum bringing up two growing kids on a low income that £40 per person adds up – to eat like Billy would cost over £120 per week. And, as Billy knows, that Mum has to find money to pay the heating and lighting, transport costs to and from the shops and various other costs. All from what – around £180 per week. The cheap food makes a difference and our mum can fill up her kids on stodge – cheap bread and meat, pizzas and tinned puddings for half Billy’s budget.

And our single mum can probably afford a few packets of fags and a couple of bottles of cheap wine because she’s buying that cheap food!

Which brings me to the other comment – from Chris Snowdon:

You will sometimes hear campaigners claim that the poor are the main beneficiaries of sin taxes because, having less money, they will be the first to cut down or give up and, therefore, get healthier/cut their carbon footprint/have more disposable income.

This is one of the great myths in public health that has endured despite decades—indeed centuries—of evidence showing the opposite. Tobacco is the starkest example because there has been a clear transition from smoking being equally popular across the social spectrum to it being—after 60 years of punitive taxation—much more prevalent amongst the poor. We know all this beyond a doubt. To continue pushing up taxes on undesirable products in the full knowledge that the poor are least likely to change their ways seems a little exploitative.

That’s right – the decision to keep raising taxes on booze and fags disproportionately affects the poor (and the old). The tax on smoking a hugely regressive and, it would appear, not having much effect on the consumer.

The real truth here is that the middle classes are more protected from inflation and those with large debts love it at the moment. Not only are their rates very low but that inflation is rapidly reducing the real value of those debts. Meanwhile the poor are paying more for everyday goods and Chris sets out the reason very clearly:

...one of the main reasons gas, electricity and food are so expensive is that the price has been artificially inflated to serve an alleged environmental agenda. Oil and wheat prices exacerbate the problem, but the price of diesel from the pumps pushes up the price of practically everything. In the UK, the majority of that price is tax which has been escalating since the 1980s, ostensibly to deter people from driving.

Likewise, there is a conscious effort to 'wean people' off fossil fuels, and the rising price of gas and electricity reflects the policy of successive governments who are forcing energy companies to use less efficient, pricier forms of power (obviously this is not helped by the fact that these companies are also greedy bastards operating in a sham of a market).

The next economic disaster in the making – the cartel of power companies, distributors and governments all hiding behind a wholly specious argument about reducing “carbon footprint” and “saving the planet”.

And in the meantime the poor are paying more for everything to fund the nanny state's obsessions and this grand environmental scam.

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Is this the price of regulation?

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Two stories in today's Daily Telegraph. Firstly, Tata Steel is laying off folk on Teeside again - and here's one of the reasons:

EU carbon legislation threatens to impose huge additional costs on the steel industry. Besides, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about the level of further unilateral carbon cost rises that the UK Government is planning."

Heavy manufacturing companies are penalised by European laws forcing them to buy carbon permits costing about £15 per tonne of emissions. 

Assuaging the cod guilt of Mr Huhne and his pals mean hundreds more on the dole in Redcar. Good result there for the Greens and fellow travellers.

Secondly, the banks aren't hitting their lending targets (resulting in froth and splutter from Vince):

Analysts at UBS said that while a "significant proportion" of the fall in lending was the results of poor demand, most of the blame can be placed at the door of the Government and the cost of meeting new capital and liquidity standards.

Tighter regulation means less lending - pretty simple and predictable really.

We might need to save the planet (although I suspect it's fine really) and to regulate the banks. But these actions come at a cost - unemployment, business failure, slow economic growth and more poverty.

But you knew that, didn't you?

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Friday Fungus: Disposing of disposable nappies!

This week's economist reports on the work of Dr Alethia Vasquez-Morillas that looks at using mushrooms to deal with the trickiest of waste management challenges - disposable nappies. These nappies, so convenient to mums and dads, create something of a headache for waste managers:

DESPITE their name, disposable nappies are notoriously difficult to dispose of. Studies of landfills suggest they may take centuries to rot away.

And because of this our green friends have applied their unique form of passive-aggressive promotion to the advocacy of "real nappies". But now they can relax as Dr Vasquez-Morillas has found what looks like the solution:

This research assesses the feasibility of degrading used disposable diapers, an important component (5–15% in weight) of urban solid waste in Mexico, by the activity of the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus, also known as oyster mushroom. Disposable diapers contain polyethylene, polypropylene and a super absorbent polymer. Nevertheless, its main component is cellulose, which degrades slowly. P. ostreatus has been utilized extensively to degrade cellulosic materials of agroindustrial sources, using in situ techniques. The practice has been extended to the commercial farming of the mushroom. This degradation capacity was assayed to reduce mass and volume of used disposable diapers. 

And you've guessed it, those lovely oyster mushrooms gobble up the nappies pronto!

As she and her colleagues describe in Waste Management, cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months. Within four, they are degraded completely. What is more, she says, despite their unsavoury diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus (better known as oyster mushrooms), are safe to eat. To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.

Wonderful - dealing with a previously intractable waste management problem and providing a food source! What could be better!

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The eco-city - ineffective and authoritarian?

Milton Keynes - is it really so bad?

Ever since I started indulging my fascination with urban geography, I have experienced the promotion of certain selected European cities. Places help up as paragons of municipal virtue – places like Montpelier (pdf):

Planning for recent growth in Lille, Montpellier and Lyon began before explicit sustainable design agendas were common. Nevertheless, these cities exemplify a number of planning and design strategies that advance sustainability on the urban scale. Chief among these are: 1) promoting density and diverse use in the city center, 2) developing urban infrastructure and transit systems that conserve energy and preserve the quality of the urban core, 3) counteracting sprawl through the establishment of concentrated patterns of growth in the urban periphery, and 4) “urban recycling:” the adaptive re-use of existing built fabric and the reclamation of urban post-industrial sites.

And Freiberg:

For 25 years - since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster - Freiburg’s guiding principle has been the saving of natural resources. It now has car-free neighbourhoods (while we still tell ourselves that ‘would never work here’) and trams that run through green corridors. It has a football stadium where the stands double up as solar energy factories.

The Freiburg charter sets out twelve principles for ‘sustainable urbanism’, drawing together ideas of diversity, tolerance, walkability, good public transport, high quality design and more. It misses some things out - it doesn’t adequately address poverty and inequality, although its principles help to mitigate them - but it offers a very good way of thinking about cities.

Here are the wonders of ‘old world urbanism’, setting out the agenda for a carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, people-focused city. But is it quite as shiny as the pundits make out?

However, there is another face to Montpellier. Away from the modern developments lie older areas developed in the late 19th and early 20th century. A growing population led to urban sprawl, which took place outside of the city walls (e.g. The Gambetta). Here terraced, ‘2 up – 2 down’ housing is packed into narrow and cramped streets, lacking the open space of the Antigone. Even with the influx of high tech jobs, unemployment in Montpellier rose from 16.7% to 22.4% of the active population. A large majority of these are the North Africans who have made Montpellier their home, but cannot locate within the newer developments. Both lack adequate housing provision and high crime rates are now major problems in Montpellier. Social and ethnic polarisation is therefore highly evident.

Perhaps we are looking only at that which we wish to see rather than at what is actually happening:

It's a brave utopian vision - but, oddly, Rieselfeld is the last place I would want to live. Its housing blocks, built to a uniform height (usually four storeys), are reminiscent of the Eastern Bloc. Because the properties are all the same age, the place lacks character and charm. On the walk to my hotel, I pass an area of pitted waste ground reserved for the last phase in Rieselfeld's development, awaiting the excavators and cranes that accompany any such work in progress. It might be 'the gateway to the Black Forest' (as one resident put it), but the quarter lacks some of the facilities you might expect of a small provincial town.

And residents in the Freiberg tenements speak of the social control:

In Vauban, if Rieselfeld residents are to be believed, green living is compulsory. 'It jumps in your face a little,' Claudia Duppe warned me, 'and there is a lot of social control. If you walk into the quarter with an Aldi carrier bag, it's, "Sorry, I'm not talking to you; you shop at a discount supermarket and you don't buy organic." It feels claustrophobic, because everyone expects you to behave in the same way - and of course you are not allowed to have a car.'

This is the wonder of ‘old world urbanism’ – charmless boxes to live in, neighbours who shun you for buying cheap food and €18,000 a year just to park your car. Indeed to avoid this charge you have to sign a declaration that you will never own a car – something I’m pretty sure plenty of residents ignore.

If this is a better world, it is a better world I don’t want. A dysfunctional, bossy world tossed between trendy urban obsession with ‘sustainability’ and the pretence that creating swanky inner city neighbourhoods can resolve the fact that there aren’t any jobs. Ignoring the simple fact that this economic renewal requires transport links – and that mean roads, cars, trucks and airports as well as trams and bicycle lanes.

There are certainly things to learn from these places – the conformist, Stepford sort of places that the Greens would have us believe is the future of urban living. But the lesson is as much a warning about how authoritarian and controlling the ‘sustainability’ agenda has become as it is about whether these places work any better than Milton Keynes, Atlanta or Calgary.

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Doesn't look full too me!

The Greens, their fellow travellers and the proto-fascists at the Daily Mail have returned to the subject of population and how the human species, like some spawny bacterium, is devouring the planet with its excessive breeding.  And coming up on the rails is the BBC celebrity – in the form of “wildlife expert” Chris Packham. Demonstrating an almost complete ignorance of population geography or demographics, Mr Packham launches an appeal for us to have fewer sprogs:

The Springwatch presenter suggested offering Britons tax breaks to encourage them to have smaller families. He effectively endorsed China’s controversial one-child policy, which sees couples who adhere to the rule given a lump sum on retirement. But he stopped short of suggesting people should be penalised for having too many children.

This charming childless chap thinks that the pandas will die out if we don’t stop breeding:

‘I question the way, for example, people have two children with one partner, then split up and have two with their next partner, just to even up the score.

'Fact is, we all eat food, breathe air and require space, and the more of us there are, the less of those commodities there are for other people and, of course, for the animals.’

I hate to be a controversialist on this matter but it really is about time we started thinking about this issue on the basis of fact rather than prejudice (indeed the Daily Mail’s problem with population growth appears to be the lack of blonde, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon Christians).

The Journal of Comparative Family Studies celebrated its 40^th anniversary with this observation:

A global fertility decline has left only a small set of countries and a few percent of the global population with very high fertility. The dominant pattern is fertility decline to low levels-with over half of the global population now living in countries with below replacement level fertility. Concerns of a population explosion are now geographically concentrated and are being supplanted by concerns of a population implosion (i.e., declining population size and rapidly aging populations).

Britain’s problem is going to be an ageing population, declining fertility rates and the crisis of too few workers (something that contributed to our recent immigration episode). Yet there remain useful idiots like Mr Packham to indulge the nastier elements of the Green movement such as the Optimum Population Trust – the ones who think the UK population should be cut to just 29 million and who promote draconian disincentives to larger families.

It is organisations such as this – and the equally unpleasant uber-greens at Forum for the Future – who are wrong, both in their science and in the proposals they put forward to control fertility. Just because a few celebrities can be rolled out to tell us not to have babies doesn’t mean for one second we have a population problem.

As the picture at the top makes pretty clear – whatever is said about England’s population density (and it does suit the green fascists to select England rather than the UK for their figures) – the country is a long way from full and very unlikely to be concreted over anytime soon!

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“But in Las Vegas, that would mean serving cactus and sand.”

I just loved this (ever so slightly grumpy) article about locavores by Pavia Rosati, a New York based food and travel writer:

But when your ideals cross the line from practice to pontification, you’ve gone too far. When does that happen? When you send an entrée back to the kitchen because the chef served it with a lemon wedge, and you’re in Chicago. When you spend less time at Sunday brunch hearing about your friends’ Saturday antics and more time raising a silent, judgmental eyebrow at their lack of dietary discipline. Mango juice? How very dare they.

No one can honestly argue that a can of agri-giant corn kernels bathed in goo tastes better than an ear of fresh local corn, but hearing locavores yammer on about it makes me want to wallow in a big vat of corn syrup. 

Entertaining, challenging and balanced - a great article. Do read it!

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Friday Fungus: Mushrooms and saving the planet

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Feeling lazy - watch this and learn. A really fascinating talk from the godfather of mycology, Paul Stamets. In this he explains how fungi mycelium works like the internet and how we are a planet of mushrooms!

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A few comments following a Bradford Council meeting....

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This isn't a coherent 'single issue' posting but a series of specific and (I think) significant thoughts following a meeting today of Bradford's full council. Don't expect anything change-making or brilliant - this is after all a Council meeting!

1. We had a visitation from the Bradford Coalition against the Cuts. This took the form of a petition which (according to our standing orders) grants the petitioner five precious minutes addressing the assembled members - so long as those members are minded to receive the petition. I would say that the petition was sound except that it appeared to lose touch with reality after the first couple of sentences. I was especially taken with the "there is no crisis" line - these folk really are barking.

2. There were the usual set of questions to the leader - these are not particularly edifying nor indeed to they address the real issues facing the district. Especially when asked by Green Party members - today, aside from their normal collection of eco-loon questions the Green leader asked: "Can the leader tell us the cost incurred by the Council in responding to Freedom of Information and any other requests from the 'Taxpayers Alliance' during 2010." Clearly it is scandalous that this organisation - evil Tory scum to a man - dare exercise the right to secure information from Bradford Council! Dear Readers will need to know that the answer was £565 - all of it officer time at the agreed Audit Commission rate.

3. And so to our motions - we discussed (really we did) whether we should oppose suggestions that a 'super-diocese' be created by merging Ripon, Wakefield and Bradford dioceses. Understand that the real worry is that the super-diocese might just be called Leeds - which would never do! I wonder what - if anything - this has to do with us Councillors but I do understand the politics (let's be blunt - Leeds is, if not an actual plane of hell, certainly a portal to the dark side).

4. Which brings me - in the manner of these things - to Child Poverty. We discussed this important matter, or at least that was what the motions and amendments said was the topic. In truth it was a confused, rambling and meandering debate - little more than a list of grievances, few, if any, directly connected to the issue of poverty. Everything was covered from nicking egg sandwiches and knickers from Tesco (apparently a sure fire indicator of neglect), through tuition fees - which may or may not be a good thing but certainly have no connection to child poverty - to EMA. The whole purpose (so far as I could tell in amongst the nonsense) was to try and show that the Liberal Democrats in Bradford were still lovely, caring, right-on folk despite what's happened in Westminster. And I guess despite said party supporting a Conservative administration from 2000 to 2010!

I'm pretty sure that we didn't make any decisions of substance - we'll probably write a letter of two to some ministers and will see a couple of member working parties (including one on the Bishop) set up. But not a lot else - that would be to rock the boat! Although the last vote was good as it involved a dozen of us - honest drinkers all - voting against a nannying fussbucket amendment on licensing. Which will, of course, teach us to put down such motions in the first place!

Next time we'll be voting on the budget - which at least is a real decision!

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So my Green friends, you'll oppose police infiltration of the BNP too?

****

I listened to an 'outraged' environmentalist called Dr Chadderton on the radio today complaining about covert surveillance by the police. Apparently he - and his fellow eco-loons - are upset because somebody spied on them for a 'shadowy' police branch: The National Public Order Intelligence Group*.

Dr Chadderton's beef was that the state was infiltrating 'peaceful' organisations seeking to influence the agenda and campaign to protect the planet. Nice, innocent, unthreatening green folk who knit jumpers from lentils, dine on curried mung beans and carry out acts of vandalism on power stations.

Now I have some sympathy with Dr Chadderton's view point. However, when the BNP were complaining about undercover infiltration by public authorities and covert surveillance, I didn't hear Dr Chadderton's greenie mates complaining at the misuse of public funds investigating legitimate political organisations. Nope, they were all for it - expose those nasty fascists, they said.

Hypocrites?

*The Police are slipping - what kind of 'shadowy' body has the acronym NPOIG?

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Severn Estuary - a quiet victory dance

The Severn Estuary is one of the most important estuarine environments in Europe. Home to a vast range of migratory and local birds as well as the insects and sea life that maintain those flocks geese, clusters of waders and assorted great wanderers of the seas and skies. It is also home to one of the most famous bores in the world - not a unique feature but still one of the wonders of Britains Rivers.

Slimbridge - at the heart of the estuary - is the birthplace of modern wildlife conservation as the brainchild of naturalist, Sir Peter Scott:

Slimbridge is home to an astounding array of wildlife including the world's largest collection of swans, geese, and ducks.

Yet, the emerging green industry lobby wished to destroy all this - to flood Slimbridge meaning it's purpose would be no more, to wash over the mudflats at Weston damaging important ecosystems and to make it so the great bore will never be seen again. This rape of natural England is being done in the name of 'climate change' and 'green energy' - an entire and unique natural environment destroyed so people can have cheap electricity.

Fortunately - at least for now - the Government has decided not to proceed with proposals for a 'Severn Barrier'. At present the reason is the lack of investment finance but I hope that, in time, we'll come to realise that it's no improvement if 'green' energy sources involve the destruction of unique habitats, the pillage of an entire ecosystem and unknown collateral damage to the wider environment.

We can perhaps start now to realise the need for an energy policy founded on commonsense, practicality and respect for the environment rather than one driven by 'green' fundamentalism. And that means nuclear power as well as wind, tide and water. Oh yes and some of that terrible oil and coal too!

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