Pay up to save the Green Elephant!
A new chapter in the saga of fear propaganda has been opened. It’s about energy supplies, about energy prices exploding, about supermarket shelves being empty, about Christmas being cancelled because there won’t be food or sweets – it sounds all so familiar. The first cries of ‘government support’ – that is: give us money! – for certain industrial sectors are already being heard. Johnson, that outstanding pooh-pooher, blames this dire situation on covid: shortages happen now because the world’s industries are ramping up production post-covid and this is ‘like everybody rushing to put the kettle on after the TV show has ended’. How inane!
Government has learned that fear propaganda works, that it prevents people from asking inconvenient questions and that it helps to make us plebs agree to shelling out more of our hard-earned money. This time round however Whitehall and the MSM cannot hide behind the argument that this was unforeseeable, that this is something entirely new, something which nobody could possibly have any experience regarding finding a solution.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who admonished us last week that we need to use less because fossil fuel prices are so volatile, that renewables are not to blame (link) warns in the DT today that “we” are facing three-day weeks as in the 1970s, again blaming Putin (paywalled link). Just as with covid, it’s not our woefully inadequate government which should be blamed nor our British industries, caught out by relying on ‘just-in-time’ production. It was face masks and protective clothing 18 months ago because ‘nobody could foresee’ …’ – now it is gas storage and CO2 production because ‘nobody could foresee’ the explosion in energy costs.
One wonders what all those oh-so-clever market observers in government and industry were doing – were they on holidays? Were they WFH? They must have noticed prices climbing and climbing since the end of July. The scare graphs printed all over the papers do show this nicely. Moreover, CF Industries, a US Industry group producing fertiliser with CO2 used in food production and supermarket food storage stopped production five days ago because of the high cost of natural gas. Was our benighted covid government caught out by that decision? If so – why? Don’t expect an answer – our mandarins are infallible!
There’s one extraordinary point which is only mentioned in a sentence here and there in those MSM reports. The main product made in those two plants is fertiliser. Fertiliser not being produced in time for the autumn seeding of crops means a definite reduction in producing food staples here in the UK next year. One would think that this is a far greater danger to our country. I expect writers like AEP will next bewail the fact that we’ll be depending on more food imports from elsewhere, just as we’re so dependent on energy imports from Europe – and that it’ll all be Putin’s fault. We might even, the horror, have to beg him to export staples to us next year!
Meanwhile the newly installed Business Secretary, Mr Kwarteng, is ‘in talks’ with industry not about getting those two fertiliser plants back online – no, he is in talks about how to deal with the demise of smaller, independent suppliers of household energy by shelling out more of our money. Our MSM are not yet pointing the finger at our unprepared government though. They are dithering because they haven’t yet been told how to deal with that green elephant in the corner, CarrieBo’s beloved ‘green policies’. Some heads are however raised above the green parapets:
“Today, the country’s biggest power firms, including Eon and Centrica, will also call on business secretary to help Britons by removing the cost of green subsidies from payments.” (link)
About time, too – and it’s about time to put the blame for the coming misery firmly where it belongs: on the heads of the multitude of the green bovine excrement acolytes wherever they are: government, NGOs, Brussels and first and foremost the BBC. Because of them, workers have to cope with motorway blockaders now while all of us have shelled out for years for that ‘green elephant’. In case you forgot – there’s a certain Ed Miliband who served up this mess, sacrificing Labour’s ‘clients’, the working class, on the altar of ‘Green’. When those big energy suppliers mention that green surcharge, see the ‘excuse’ already being peddled:
“Industry sources also suggested that VAT or green levies on energy bills could be frozen or reformed to ease the burden on prices. It may be difficult to suspend green levies as the revenue raised is used to support vulnerable and low income households.” (paywalled link)
Hell will freeze over before VAT and green surcharges will be frozen! Government needs the money! Those of us who’ve kept an eye on the consequences of supporting ‘green energy’ won’t be surprised. The scandal of energy pricing for wind farms has been written about for a long time. Hopefully more taxpayers will recognise that, again, we’ve been had, that our green surcharge is yet another scam where our money flows into government coffers while being told it’s all to the good because ‘the vulnerable’ will be protected, while the Treasury rakes in some more dosh thanks to VAT.
Meanwhile, as ministers talk about ‘emergency measures’, it becomes abundantly clear that the only measures they’re thinking about is getting us to pay for it (my emphasis):
“Taxpayers face a multibillion-pound bill to help energy companies cope with the fallout from rising gas prices under plans being considered by ministers. The government is in talks with the industry over how to deal with the predicted collapse of dozens of small suppliers as wholesale gas and electricity prices soar. Consumers could end up subsidising the supply of energy to millions whose providers are likely to go bust in coming months. Two senior industry sources predicted that the bill could run to several billion pounds if, as feared, dozens of suppliers collapse.” (link, paywalled)
Why indeed should government think about scrapping the obscene subsidies for “renewable energy suppliers” when we plebs can be made to shell out some more. We’ve always paid up, haven’t we – and some more ‘surcharges’ to help the poor wind farmers on top of the NI hike, never mind the coming local council tax hikes, is neither here nor there. It’s all in a good cause, innit.
So don’t expect the green chickens coming home to roost. Government and MSM have brainwashed us over decades that ‘green = good’. Here’s one other news item which has only been mentioned in passing but which the CO2 ‘crisis’ has brought to light:
“Sheep and cows are still usually anaesthetised by carbon dioxide before slaughter. The RSPCA says that using carbon dioxide is more humane than some mechanised methods” (link, paywalled)
See how good and caring “we” are! Never mind that CO2 stocks will run out in a fortnight, never mind that fizzy drinks will run out, that food kept fresh by CO2 will revert to the olden days of short shelf-life – it’s all good because ‘we have diverse gas supplies’ and there’s always wind, innit like!
It’s not the vision of the 1970s which should frighten us. Far more frightening is the vision of the years in the early 1800’s. Those were the days! No cars, no electricity, people eating mostly root crops – the perfect ‘green dream’ life! Already, the first ‘advice’ articles from wimmin are cropping up, telling us not to obsess about washing our clothes and ourselves – yes really (paywalled here and here) – just as in pre-Victorian times.
Extraordinary, isn’t it, that all those clever ministers, industry bosses, managers and MSM writers seem to believe that the solution is ‘moar taxpayers’ money’ rather than ‘kill the Green Elephant’.
KBO!
Photo by Brian Auer 
Amazing what can go wrong when a Government adopts an ideology like “Climate Change” without thinking about the consequences.
Especially when they have the power to suppress all scientific evidence that does not support the official line.
It goes back well before the arrival of Princes Nut-Nut, though it’s easy to blame her for the escalation in the stupidities.
The great power-station Drax; once coal powered, now burning wood-chips imported from the USA.
North of England generally WET. In Cumbria there are three large dams, Thirlmere, Haweswater and Wet Sleddle. They “export” water to Greater Manchester… downhill… and all that water generates not one volt of electricity. Why not?
A fire in the transformers at a National Grid facility in Kent has cut an electricty supply from France.
Lancashire sits on a large gas-field. That gas can be freed by fracking. But fracking is not “approved”
The Fertiliser plants that closed due to high energy costs used GAS; Imported GAS.
Small compensation to learn that stupidity is international. At a stroke of his pen,Joe Biden changed the USA into dependency on imported energy.
As we sit around this coming winter, wrapped in blankets and burning candles, we will have time to decide whether we want this situation to continue… if enough of us survive till spring to do anything.
I’m sure you are right Richard Mawdsley. The anti fracking scandal was definitely the green elephant’s doing.
Why indeed do those dams not produce hydro electricity. Sounds like a large source missed.
And for heaven’s sake – green elephant again – we are sitting on loads of coal but importing biomass.
PB – ”when I was a boy and you were at Rickards Lodge” (educated guess) my Geography teacher went through the main coal fields in Scotland, England, and Wales. He stated thhat Britain was ‘built on coal’. True then, true now.
Way out WRONG guess Biscotte. Anyway I think I’m a lot older than you so you’re wrong there too.
‘Built on coal’ could mean at least 2 things – our industrial revolution was built on coal – or that there is/was a lot of coal underneath us to be mined and used.
I agree with you it is there and we should be using it.
I can remember the drilling for shale gas in this country being stopped due to disruption by protesters, before the process had gone far enough to know whether there were viable resources there. I suppose Lancashire might be part of this European Shale belt and the ‘news’ item I saw may have been ‘spun’.
Any way if Bojo is determined to demonise fossil fuels because of the dreaded CO2 then he’d better get his skates on to improve our capacity to produce electricity from nuclear power.
(Uranium from Oz.)
I bet you a fiver there is no useable gas under Lancashire.
The European Shale Belt (for want of a better name) has been drilled and tested without result. I’ll be happy to be put right if you know different.
All the viable offshore reservoirs in Morecambe Bay and Liverpool Bay are played out. The Morecambe Flame and the Bay Driller are long gone. There may be some small reservoirs under the untouchable Crown Estates areas but elsewhere you will need a domestic gas meter to test them.
The problem with fracking as I understand it, is that to get the gas out they have to inject something as well as water. So, there is a short and long term danger they also , because a longer term danger in that you are messing with what is altreadt trapped and will eventually be released..
And What convinces me is the motives of those greedy for a new way of obtaining money. Which is too obviously showing..
‘Hell will freeze over before VAT and green surcharges will be frozen’
Hell may also freeze over before any shire Tory is deselected!
Brilliant picture atop the article: the green elephant in the room. They keep lying that ‘green’ energy is becoming ever cheaper; what they deliberately forget is the adverb ‘relatively’. They push up fossil fuel prices with carbon taxes, whilst over 25% of electricity bills are green subsidies, plus the outage payments when the wind blows too hard or the rises when it blows too little, and have the nerve to tell us green is cheaper. But not that EVERYTHING is vastly and unnecessarily MORE expensive. Not to mention the absurd insecurity an unreliability. Now it seems the chickens (standing in for bats and birds), well the ones that haven’t been diced by the blades, are coming home to roost.
Hell froze over many years ago.
Thay’ve all come up here to get warm.
Nice one T G Spokes !!
Those CF Industries fertiliser plants in Billingham and Ince made about 60% of the UK’s CO2 as a product of their manufacturing processes.
Never mind, CO2 is essential for the planet, not a threat at all.
Jack. Of course CO2 is essential. Already there are threats that hospital operations may have to be cancelled due to dwindling supplies. It’s essential for the food and drink industry. Hubby put extra beer supplies on the weekly shopping list!
Fertiliser plants? So, already we have to rely on artificial fertiliser to grow the crops we need. What’s going to happen when we all have to eat less meat because the cattle are all being done away with due to the methane they apparently produce? Hasn’t it dawned on TPTB that cattle also produce manure or otherwise, natural fertiliser? Without that we shall have to rely on this artificial stuff and heaven knows what’s in that.
Agreed Sonya. The stupidity has been going on for years and goes round in circles.
Meanwhile it is not just the price that’s worrying me it is the fact that our energy sources are imported from other countries and can be switched off if we fall out, or they also are running out.
Viv’s green elephant in the room is huge sure enough but there are other threats to me and my country.
Oh well, perhaps as she says it is a new saga in the fear propaganda, to make us pay our new increased taxes, like we ‘cheerfully’ submitted to the wu-flu scam.
I’ve never liked fizzy drinks. Not much consolation though.
Viv – Here’s another thing to ad to this. It appears that the Evergrande situation in China is deteriorating; one bit of news that has only just come out is that Evergrande may have already started liquidating, it is giving away property at rock bottom prices to some of its creditors.
The trouble is, China can’t afford for its market to become flooded with ultra cheap property, this would crash the property market and the economy. China has to be very careful about bailing out Evergrande or else it will ruin its Communist credentials.
One theory that I’ve heard is that China will only bail out Evergrande debt that it owes to Chinese creditors, overseas investors will be hung out to dry.
Here’s the interesting bit: will Western governments and banks have to bail out Evergrande, a Chinese company in order to save their own skin? Would it really surprise anybody if they did? We’ll have to wait and see.
The reason that I’m mentioning this is because I’m already trying to imagine the BS, excuses and waffle that will come from the lips of Johnson and Biden as they try to justify the printing of hundreds of billions of dollars and pounds to bail out a Chinese company. Of course we humble tax payers will be on the hook for the interest on the debt created.
Let’s be ready to create a stink if something like this happens.
Create a stink flyer? Are you suggesting we all produce methane !?!