A cliché that became popular during the disastrous Blair-Brown years was that Governments should always do ‘joined-up thinking’. In other words, that policies should not be pursued in isolation, but that the links between different items on the Government’s agenda should always be borne in mind.
The same, of course, applies to voters. When considering a Government’s record, the connections between different issues, which may not be immediately apparent, often become crystal clear once the electors do their own joined-up thinking.
I thought of this today when I heard a couple of headlines on the morning news. One item reported that energy companies are all set to hike up their prices in the coming days following the whacking great 8.2% price rise on gas and electricity bills decreed by the energy giant SSE.
The other reported that our blue-green-pink Prime Minister David Cameron defended as ‘necessary’ the 9% levies that the Government imposes on energy companies to subsidise its useless and unworkable ‘renewables’ – including the forests of wind turbines increasingly defacing our once green and pleasant land.
So, if you join up the 8.2% price rise that will put £106 on the average household’s SSE energy bills and the 9% levy that the Government imposes on energy companies, a pattern starts to emerge, does it not?
We are all paying for a demented energy policy that is literally blowing our money away in the wind. And I am sure that poor pensioners, as they shiver this winter, wondering whether they can afford to turn on the heating, will be warmed by the thought that they are contributing a necessary sacrifice to Mr Cameron’s Green agenda.
But let’s take the joined-up thinking one stage further. Another news item reported that the EU – in the shape of Jos Delbeke, a bureaucrat rejoicing in the job title ‘Director General of the European Commission’s Climate Divisions’ has threatened to clamp down on ‘fracking’ – the extraction of shale gas by fracturing rocks – because methane gas produced by the process may contribute to – wait for it – global climate warming.
‘We don’t want to copy and paste what happened in the US’ declared Delbeke.
No, indeed. But what actually did happen in the US? The explosion of fracking there has turned the US from a net importer of energy to a net exporter. And we wouldn’t want to follow suit, would we? Much better to remain utterly dependent on oil imported from the Middle East and gas from that nice Mr Putin’s Russia for all our energy needs.
UKIP is the only political party advocating a sane, sensible and sustainable energy policy. We would allow fracking – under strict controls and with the co-operation of local communities – with the aim of meeting, as far as possible, our own energy needs and ending our dependency on expensive imports from disturbed and dangerous areas of the world. And we would not allow a hostile foreign power like the European Commission to dictate how we generate our energy.
Now that’s what I call real joined-up thinking.
Nigel Jones is a UKIP MEP candidate for South-East England.
and what if you don’t get the cooperation of local communities? … and what strict controls do you think are necessary? … or are you just putting out rhetorical sound bites that are meaningless? Lib/Lab/Con/Dem/Kip all in the pockets of the fossil fuel cartels. Google and read “The Offshore Valuation” and see ‘joined up thinking’.
“The report finds that using just one third of the UK’s wind, wave and tidal resource could:
1. unlock the electricity equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil a year (matching North Sea oil *AND* gas production).
2. give CO2 reductions of 1.1 billion tonnes by 2050
3. create 145,000 new UK jobs
off shore windfarms can also be beneficial to marine eco systems. There is quite a bit of disruption as they are being installed, but after a few years marine life can greatly increase. This is because windfarms not only provide shelter to marine life, but they also prevent intensive fishing techniques (like drift netting) being carried out in their proximity.
If every house in the UK put a solar panel & mini-wind turbine on their roof it would cost far less than Big Business electricity companies & big turbines – FACT!
ROI (Return On Investment) would be about 4 years on average with reversible meters cutting the UK’s entire electrical power consumption by 55%!
BUT – big business will never allow local empowerment & logic that cuts their profits !
Wave power impoundment technologies need investment on R&D to get it t viability.
And therefore UKIP will never get my vote – as long as you’re pro fracking. There are other ways – sustainable, renewable and green. Wind, wave and solar for a start.
Why if UKIP would “allow fracking under strict controls” did the party vote against the recent amendment to EU directive 2011/92/EU that required that an Environmental Impact Assessment report be produced before a company could start to hydraulically fracture (frack) shale rock?
yes the US has become a net exporter of gas, but this hasnt lead to significant savings to the cost of energy to the average household occupier. This is because the profits that the energy companies make exporting gas to emerging economies is pocketed by the energy companies, and not passed on as reduced rates to consumers. When you look at renewable and clean sources of energy, yes the initial setup phase does incur a cost that does have paid, but over time the cost per unit of these technologies falls, the only energy source that does so. As to unconventional exploration of gas (colloquially known as fracking), the only way that it could possibly offer any sort of savings to the end user is by offering huge tax cuts to companies, which takes monies away that are essential to the running and upkeep of essential national services (like the police and NHS). The only ones that benefit from unconventional exploration of gas are the gas companies themselves, everyone else suffers.
What needs to be done is to increase the efficiency of our energy usage, like they are in the middle of doing in scandinavian countries. When we become more efficent, and reduce the energy we use, we move ourselves into a better position to exploit the green sources of energy that are in aboundance in the UK. What many like yourself neglect to say, is that the UK rests in the middle of one of the richest environments for clean energy in the world. Between the wind, tides and sun we have more than enough energy to provide for everyone many times over. We have the technology to exploit these resources and while people like you are spreading misinformation about energy this will never happen.
as to the appearance of windmils, they look much better on the skyline than the estimated 90 000 fracking wells needed to fulfill the uk’s energy requirements, each of which destroying hectares of our countryside. just have a look, is this the british countryside of the future that you want? http://slowdownfracking.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/landscape1.jpg
And this photo is not unrealistic. A single fracking well can only extract gas and oil for a maximum radius of 4km. To cover the area in Sussex where shale gas is reckoned to be thousands will be required. Each with transport links, 24 hr light and drilling/pump noise and 15m gas burnt off towers. The US is nothing like as densely populated as Sussex. It’s a very different ball game here. Not a lot of people realise this. I’m sure that anyone who lives in the countryside, near shale gas and votes UKIP doesn’t. I’m certain that UKIP’s leaders don’t either.
of course its not unrealistic, because of the nature of fracking, its essential to have well densities like this for the gas companies to make profits, everywhere there is fracking this is the result to the landscape
and remember that each well creates between 4-20 million gallons of toxic waste water. The only way to sort this out currently is to store it in massive man made lagoons that are the size of a football pitch
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/10/11/big-lagoons-could-hold-drilling-waste.html
Europe foreign? Last time I looked we were part of Europe.
Good to see that you are beginning to add caveats to your early slavish supports for fracking. I imagine the caveats will increase as you find out how much it will cost to get the gas/oil out of the ground in the UK, how little and for how short a time it will benefit us and just how much it will degrade the environment of the people who might otherwise vote for you. One thing to very much bear in with fracking is the the UK is not the US… it’s a very different set of circumstances.