Ed

Catholic, Political Strategist #postliberal

Co-Founder @ClimateDebateUK

[Ed @edmsren]

In 100 seconds @clim8resistance Co-Founder of @ClimateDebateUK explains why we are in such a mess on energy:

[Ben Pile @clim8resistance]

David Miliband, who oversaw the previous Labour government's Climate Change Bill, can take responsibility for a policy that has cost us much more than £30 bn a year.

By some estimates, it's as much as £3 trillion lost already.

We pay approx. £12 bn just in green power subsidies.

Environmental taxes (including subsidies) cost us more than £50 billion a year, according to the ONS.

And then there are all the consequences of those high costs, including our deindustrialisation.

Europe's deindustrialisation -- especially Germany's -- makes closer relationship with them even more daft.

@DMiliband was not concerned with the economic consequences of the Climate Change Act in 2006/7/8. He said that "living within our means, environmentally" was the priority.

[Catherine McBride OBE @CeeMacBee]

Protecting EU Suppliers, not UK Consumers

Adding a CBAM to imported products when there is no alternative domestic supplier, such as ammonia for fertiliser production, will necessarily increase agricultural production prices.

The UK produces less than 30% of the fertiliser it uses each year, but even this production relies on imported ingredients, most importantly, ammonia. CF Fertilisers’ Billingham plant ceased ammonia production in July 2023. This was the UK’s last major ammonia producer.

In 2024, the UK imported 3.22 million tonnes of the fertiliser products that will be covered by the UK’s proposed CBAM. Almost all of which will be charged for both CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions - making the CBAM doubly expensive. Increased costs for UK fertiliser mixers will be passed on to farmers, eventually raising the price of domestically produced food.

Most of the UK’s ammonia now comes from the US, but it is not cheaper due to differences in carbon taxes that a CBAM is meant to levelize. The price differential when the UK still made ammonia was due to the difference in natural gas prices between the US and the UK.

US natural gas prices are a third to a quarter of those in the UK.

Instead of adding a CBAM to imported fertiliser that the UK doesn’t make any more, the UK should encourage UK gas production and exploration in the North Sea; allow hydraulic fracturing for gas; and remove the additional 38% ‘Windfall’ tax on North Sea gas production, thereby lowering the cost of the UK’s domestic natural gas feedstock for fertiliser production.

[Ben Pile @clim8resistance]

He supported the NS windfall tax, which could have been used for reinvestment. And he supported Net Zero and still does.

He wants to tinker at the edges to sustain the agenda he supported, not address its fundamental problem.

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

My complaint against the BBC over David Olusoga’s Empire has now reached its final internal stage.

After months of evasions, unargued assertions, and failures to engage with the substance of my case, I have drawn the obvious conclusion: the BBC complaints team does not seem to see itself as a fair judge of standards, but as a defender of the BBC, come what may.

Read my latest at The Biggar Picture: https://t.co/n4YZ01Sh0S

[James Woudhuysen @jameswoudhuysen]

"Reform’s support is not a mood, it is a movement." @GHWTowler in terrific form, complete with criticisms of the party. Highly RECOMMENDED

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

This is eye-opening. One of the reasons the US has better long-term prospects than Europe is demographics.

Why don’t people understand what collapsing birth rates mean for pensions, healthcare, and real estate? Europe won’t be able to maintain its current standard of living.

[Jack Elsom @JackElsom]

EXCL: Yvette Cooper says she looked to block Peter Mandelson's £75,000 payout "several times" but was scuppered by Whitehall HR processes.

Foreign Sec tells me: "I totally understand everyone’s frustration with this one, I can tell you."

https://t.co/AaQTW7vIYQ

[Clarissa Reilly @clarescastle]

This should be gripped by @WilliamJHague as he indicated he would do if he became Chancellor of Oxford. Time he stepped up.

[Henry George @intothefuture45]

Contrary to Badenoch et al's claims, stuff like this isn't just a few bad apples in HR or whatever, but entrenched throughout the structures of the state and the third/fourth sectors. It's good that some senior Tories have admitted the problem, but as usual don't go far enough.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Stairs at the University of Balamand, Lebanon

[Justine Brian @JustineBrian]

‘The authorities have become more sensitive to issues of race and identity, while the policing of sections of the working class deemed to be racist has become more assertive.

When police officers arrived at the scene of Nowak’s murder, they took killer Vickrum Digwa’s claims of having been racially attacked as the truth…’

A point you rejected when made by others as you assumed it could only be made via the lens of white-victimhood, rather than critique of the chimeric police anti-racism policies and practice.

[Tim Bailey 🏳️‍🌈🇬🇧🇮🇱🇭🇰 @DeepHouseBear]

@jimthegiant Birmingham Pride had its public funds removed by the Labour Council a few years ago, and is now entirely self funded on ticket sales and sponsorship.

Not sure what your point is.

[Ben Pile @clim8resistance]

Supported the government, supported the policy agenda, failed to leverage the support into political power/money, now regrets it.

It was economic madness in 2008. Why did it take @GMB_union so long to work it out?

[Alan D Miller @alanvibe]

Honouring Henry Nowak

[Dan Salt @Danjsalt]

In a bad mood

Go into Co-op before jumping on a train

Have approximately this conversation

Dan "Can I get a plastic bag as well please?"

Man "Sorry I've only got those big £1 bags"

Dan "For fucks sake I just want a bag - sorry not having a go at you but I just want my old life back - it feels like every time I turn around government is annoying me"

Man "Yeah apparently politicians have nothing better to do"

Dan "I'm sick of it, this country is a mess"

Man "Total mess but no one seems to care about it"

[Madeline Grant @Madz_Grant]

Ron-Al-Macdonald

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

From Julie Burchill @BoozeAndFagz: "The police are not our ‘mates’: The casual cruelty shown to the dying Henry Nowak speaks to the stinking rot of our DEI-ified police force". #HenryNowak:
https://t.co/npwh0z7Trv

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

@zoecabina @Quillette 2/n Next: @zoecabina holds anchoring bias to blame for how the police reacted. I might accept that, except police ignored a member of the public who called to say a man was shouting he had been stabbed. Also, Vikrum Digwa was known to police already. But much more than that...

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

1/n I completely disagree with @zoecabina of @Quillette on all of this. For a start, #HenryNowak's family didn't only ask the murder not to be used for further division. They also asked for a #kirpan ban ("ALL knives"), and more. Those other requests get ignored.

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

This bit from @CamCavendish is very misleading, most of it is flatly wrong. In external medical opinion, #HenryNowak's life could have been saved had the police acted promptly. They didn't. So they shoulder some of the blame. No, some our focus should be on the mispolicing too.