Saturday, 13 November 2021

Time to take back our civilization from the parasites and pests, Part One: Indictments

Political governments all over the world today are treating people as if we were mere animals to be exploited, or even objects to be used and manipulated at will. And this is the case even in so-called democracies.

In the United Kingdom, from which I write today (and which is neither a kingdom nor in any way united – but I digress), levels of taxation are now higher than at any time since the immediate aftermath of the second world war. Bad tax laws have been made and used to ruin the careers of many innocent people, including my own as a one-man software consultant. And those same bad laws have recently been used to disrupt the lorry driving industry, precipitating a national supply chain crisis. Meanwhile, taxes are heading higher yet.

Our rights and freedoms were already being routinely violated, even before the arrival of the COVID virus. For example, for many years now there have been cameras watching our every move to catch us out in the smallest indiscretion. There have been data snoopers watching what we do on the Internet, and tracking the movements of mobile phones. And our freedom of speech is under serious threat. We are in constant danger of being accused of nebulous “hate crimes.” And there is a bill going through parliament to allow bureaucrats powers to order removal of on-line material they consider to be “harmful misinformation,” with huge fines for non-compliance. Even if the material is simply telling factual truth! Moreover, they are proposing to exempt officially sanctioned “news publishers” from these rules.

Since COVID arrived, the establishment and its political class have missed no excuse to lock us down, or to take away our right to choose, or to disrupt our economy, or to put obstacles or formalities in the way of people simply going about our lives. They have been particularly hard on the “little people,” such as small business people. The more independent you are, so it seems, the more the establishment hate you and want to hurt you. Meanwhile, they award their cronies multi-million-pound contracts without any proper tendering process. And our right to protest has been seriously curtailed. But most of all, they have continued and even accelerated their green agenda of draconian – and totally impractical – energy, transport, environmental and taxation policies, that go against the needs and the well-being of ordinary people. Meanwhile, we are assaulted by barrages of lies, scares and hype intended to “nudge” us into conformity, or propaganda about “staying safe” or “protecting each other.”

On the day I began this essay, tens of thousands of delegates were flocking in to a United Nations “Conference of the Parties” (CoP) meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. Many were from governments, internationalist organizations and green or “woke” pressure groups all over the world. A lot of them arrived in private jets, and the more pretentious among them travelled from the airfield in huge motorcades. The UK had even relaxed COVID restrictions for high-ranking attendees at the conference: [[1]].

This gabfest lasts (by the time you read this, lasted) 13 days, beginning on Sunday October 31st 2021. Its stated purpose: “to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” And its theme statement: “uniting the world to tackle climate change.”

That theme statement is in George Orwell’s Newspeak. So, let me translate it into English for you. “Uniting the world” means setting up a Big Brother style world government of unelected, unaccountable élites, with absolute powers to do anything to anybody. And “to tackle climate change” means to take actions up to and including the destruction of human industrial civilization, for the sake of nothing more than an unspecific, unproven and unlikely-to-be-true accusation that humans are causing some kind of big problem with the Earth’s climate.

This will be a long, long essay. It will also be provocative! To make it as readable and easy to understand as possible, I’ll divide it into three parts. This first part, Indictments, covers the woeful tale of what is being done to us today under the banner of climate change and other aspects of today’s political agenda. Because it is very much an evidence-based essay, this part will include many external links; skip them if you wish.

In the second part, Diagnosis, I’ll tell you what I think is going on underneath. And in the third, Cure, I’ll offer some (radical) suggestions as to how we might start to move things in the right direction.

A dark green background

First, some background to the latest CoP meeting. Taking my cue from the stated purpose of the meeting, I’ll begin with the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” (otherwise known in UN-speak as “the Convention”), to which the delegates signed up at the Rio “Earth Summit” conference back in 1992. Here’s the text: [[2]]. This was a follow-up to the “Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment,” which they signed in Stockholm in 1972: [[3]].

The Stockholm declaration of 1972

The 1972 Stockholm document seeks “to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment.” And it claims to be “for the benefit of all the people and for their posterity.” Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But there are some nasty things in there, too. For example, Principle 6 required that “the release of heat, in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted.” Odd words, those, in the light of the global warming accusations that came later. And particularly since, at the time, global cooling was seen as the likely problem, not warming. Moreover, Principle 16 provided apparent justification for the Chinese communists’ inhumane and failed one child policy.

The Rio framework convention of 1992

The 1992 framework convention, on the other hand, sought to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” And it defined “climate change” as: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

Moreover, Article 3(4) required “policies and measures to protect the climate system against human-induced change.” And developed countries, including the UK, committed to “the return by the end of the present decade [the 1990s] to earlier levels of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol.”

Two big changes seem to have happened between 1972 and 1992. First, the focus on the human environment had been entirely lost. Something called the climate system, and a project to “solve” some claimed problem by reducing human-caused emissions of certain gases, had been elevated so that they now took precedence over the rights, freedoms, prosperity and aspirations of human beings. Something called “the environment” was now to be seen as more important than the human environment. And second, representatives from Western countries, that were supposedly democracies, had signed up to an internationalist project that, inevitably, would cause great pain to the people they were supposed to be serving.

The Tory manifesto of 1992

In the UK at least, they did all this without a referendum, or even any consultation with the people. Perhaps the Tories thought that the general election of April 1992 had given them a mandate for such actions. Their 1992 manifesto [[4]] makes, with hindsight, interesting reading. They said: “Other parties promise the earth. We have taken action - both nationally and internationally - to preserve it.” And then: “Environmental protection can impose financial costs on producers, consumers and taxpayers, so we must make sure the threat of damage is a real one. But we also accept the precautionary principle – the need to act, where there is significant risk of damage, before the scientific evidence is conclusive.”

Now, the first sentence, about costs, is spot on. But the second is nonsense. It contradicts the words “make sure” in the first. And it misconstrues the precautionary principle. In its true form, the principle says “Look before you leap,” or even “First, do no harm.” It ought to imply that you must not do anything that causes significant harm to anyone, without first being fairly sure that the harm they would suffer if the action was not taken would be greater than the harm caused to them by the action. That is exactly the opposite of what the Tories were claiming. (Of course, there are occasions, particularly in real emergencies, where you should leap. I’m thinking, for example, about the story of an eminent Victorian clergyman, who wrestled a society woman to the ground because her crinoline dress was on fire.)

But governments have – or ought to have – time to make the best possible decisions for those they serve. They ought to make decisions rationally, on the best information they have, and taking full account of what they don’t know. So, I’ll go further than my statement above. Except in proven emergency, no government should ever implement any policy that imposes any burden on the people they are supposed to be serving, without first making, publishing, and obtaining consent for, an objective, unbiased, accurate, fully justified assessment of the costs and benefits of that policy. And most of all, no democracy should ever do such a thing.

When you look back, it is obvious that the Tories had been moving in a green direction for years before 1992. The parliamentary debate on the matter [[5]] shows this. And it shows that, as early as the 1980s, the UK Tory government had been a primary agent pushing for world-wide green policies. And Labour were no less eager than the Tories; if anything, even more so. Only Teresa Gorman made anything like a protest on behalf of ordinary people.

The Paris agreement of 2015

The text of the Paris agreement is here: [[6]]. Frankly, it is a revolutionary document; and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The main commitment is in Article 2.1(a), “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels…” Never mind that they don’t bother to say exactly what “pre-industrial levels” means. Or exactly how the global temperatures are to be averaged.

But there are several more discomforting things in there, too. Taking account of “imperatives” including “a just transition of the workforce” – what the hell does that mean? If I read Article 4 right, they committed to making progressive greenhouse gas reductions that will go on and on for ever! And the further through the document you read, the more it sounds like an Enabling Act for a world government in all things environmental, in which the “Conference of the Parties” and the United Nations together play the part of Big Brother.

And let’s face it, the UN is well cut out for that role. It is an unelected, politicized and unaccountable élite, with a strong controlling and globalist tendency. Having only just managed to get (barely, and as yet incompletely) out of the clutches of one unelected, politicized, unaccountable, control-freak élite, the European Union, the good people of the UK now need to start thinking about UNexit, too.

The “Green Industrial Revolution” proposals of 2020

Fast forward now to November 2020, and the UK government’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution [[7]]. As I’ve written before, the phrase “green industrial revolution” was lifted by the Tories straight out of Labour’s 2019 manifesto. And these “net zero” proposals are, in no particular order: Not properly costed. The benefits are unsure. Pie in the sky. Very expensive. Seriously reducing, or even destroying, freedom and mobility for many ordinary people. Disruptive and potentially dangerous. Not properly thought through. Being forced on people with only a sham of a “consultation,” and no chance to oppose the proposals. Likely to raise the costs of travel and of trade. Requiring huge investments of money that people don’t have, in order to bring about a lower standard of living than we have now. Already been tried and failed. Requiring huge tax rises. All but certain to tank. I have set out my own views on these matters here: [[8]].

Not surprisingly, the notion of holding a referendum on the whole “net zero” idea has been gaining traction in recent weeks among sane people in the UK. And yet, the establishment are having none of it; telling us that “the country” has “probably had enough” of such campaigns, and that we “should not be concerned” about the eye-watering costs. Oh, the arrogance of those that are used to spending other people’s money!

But frankly, I can’t see the establishment ever allowing a referendum, or even a fair, free and open debate, on this issue. For they know, as do I, that the climate agenda is nothing but a huge scam. And to allow debate would risk bringing out enough truth for people to start to see the scam for what it is.

Today’s green madness

The political establishment (both national and international), almost all of the media, many of the rich, and most of the generally well connected, seem to have succumbed to a madness. They think that human industrial civilization, which we have developed so laboriously over the last several centuries, is like a scab or a cancer. They think of it as “unsustainable.” And they seem to think of us human beings, not as naturally good, and fit and ready to make our Earth into the peaceful, beautiful home and garden we deserve, but as naturally bad and a blight on the planet.

They are seeking to implant these hateful lies in people’s minds, with the aim of destroying our industrial civilization and taking away all economic freedoms and independence from the ordinary people of the world, leaving themselves in total control. And because of their long reach in media and education, and the implicit trust that many people have in “the system,” they have instilled them into the minds of far too many of the gullible.

The climate change madness

The gabfest taking place in Glasgow is a key element in this strategy of destruction. Like bidders at an auction at which they are spending other people’s money, politicians fall over each other to make commitment after commitment on behalf of the people they are supposed to (but fail to) represent. These commitments, they must know, if carried out will cause severe pain and inconvenience to very many ordinary people. And those ordinary people have never even been consulted on the matter. But drunk with their sense of power, they plan to go on regardless; for it’s our money they are spending, not their own. And we are the ones who are and will be suffering the pain and inconvenience, not them.

Oh surely, there are a few countries in the world where there is some, albeit far too little as yet, resistance to these plans for civilizational genocide. Putin stayed at home in Russia. Xi, likewise, stayed home in China. Modi went home to India, having announced plans that will surely disappoint the extremist agitators. And remember, China and India between them account for 36% of the world’s population. But the die-hard alarmists, including the UK – most of all the UK! – carry on, pressuring the rest to play their game of “anything you can do to harm innocent people, we can do better.”

This is no laughing matter. Already, there is chaos in energy markets. Four UK gas suppliers went bust in a single day on November 2nd. Indications are that the price of heating our homes will go through the roof this coming winter; and it isn’t by any means certain that there will be enough gas and electricity to keep the heating and the lights on at all. Unaffordability and unreliability in energy supplies are not a good combination.

And a lot of the blame for this must be laid at the door of the green alarmists. For only just recently does it seem to have been generally recognized that green “renewable” energy sources can never be reliable enough to satisfy real-world energy needs. They need to be backed up by other, more dependable, sources; and the cost of those back-ups needs to be included in the costs of the renewable energy sources. Hell, that should have been common knowledge decades ago! Even I could have told them: “When the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow.” And: “When the sun don’t shine, there’s no juice on the line.”

The climate change backstory

There is a long, sordid backstory behind the global warming or climate change accusations against us. I have documented this backstory, as far as I know it, here: [[9]].

In summary, there have been lots of shenanigans going on. For example: Politicization of science. Adjustments, often poorly documented or not at all, to the data on which the science depends. Failure to use the scientific method properly. Grafting together data to make their case look scary (as in the “hockey stick”). Dropping data inconvenient to the alarmist cause. Trying to minimize or suppress the Mediaeval Warm Period. Refusing to release data to allow replication of work. Plotting to delete data to avoid freedom of information requests. Trying to suppress skeptical papers, to attack the reputations of skeptical scientists, and to get skeptical journal editors sacked. Claiming the science is settled, when it isn’t. Being unclear about what the accusation against us actually is. Biasing costs and benefits to favour alarmist action. Three UK government inquiries into the Climategate e-mail releases, all of which whitewashed the real issues. Moving the goalposts again and again, always in the direction of increasing restrictions on us.

Important in this story, from the point of view of the present essay, are two episodes from the period of New Labour government in the UK. One was this 2002 report [[10]] from the “Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Analysis.” The other was the decision, in 2009, to drop the use of the “social cost of carbon” (and its replacement, the “shadow cost of carbon”) in making cost-benefit analyses of anything involving carbon dioxide emissions. A government web page [[11]] provides links to various documents on the subject. The documentation and links specifically for the 2009 change can be found here: [[12]].

The 2002 report includes the following: “The purpose of the precautionary principle is to create an impetus to take a decision notwithstanding scientific uncertainty about the nature and extent of the risk.” “The precautionary principle should be invoked when... there is good reason, based on empirical evidence or plausible causal hypothesis, to believe that harmful effects might occur, even if the likelihood of harm is remote.” “‘Absence of evidence of risk’ should never be confused with, or taken as, ‘evidence of absence of risk’.” “Invoking the precautionary principle shifts the burden of proof in demonstrating presence of risk or degree of safety towards the hazard creator.”

I do not think I overstated my case when, in summary of all this, I wrote here [[13]]: “First, the activists have inverted the burden of proof, and require the defendants (that’s us, who want to do things like heat our homes and drive our cars) to prove a negative. Proving a negative is often impossible. How, for example, would you prove there are no fairies at the bottom of your garden? Second, they want the judge to rule, and to find us guilty, before all the evidence has been heard. And third, even if there’s no evidence at all that our activity causes any harm to anyone, they wouldn’t accept that fact as evidence! In essence they have decreed, in contradiction to the norm of presumption of innocence, that absence of evidence of guilt is not evidence of absence of guilt. We’ve been had, haven’t we?” This 2002 ruse wrote into official UK government policy the perversion, indeed inversion, of the precautionary principle that was already apparent in the Tory manifesto of 1992.

The web page for the 2009 change includes this revealing statement: “The old approach based on estimates of the social cost of carbon should be replaced with a target-consistent approach, based on estimates of the abatement costs that will need to be incurred to meet specific emissions reduction targets. The change will have the effect of helping to ensure that the policies the government develops are consistent with the emissions reductions targets that the UK has adopted through carbon budgets, and also at an EU and UN level.” Reading between the lines, they had worked out that they couldn’t do a credible, rigorous cost-benefit analysis that could possibly justify any political action. But they had already committed to political action. So, it looks as if what they did was make up numbers to match the commitments, and hope that no-one noticed.

One effect of these shenanigans was to make it impossible to answer a vital question, which should have been asked before any policies were even contemplated. That question is: If we took no political action at all, what would the costs have been? Without an answer to this, it is impossible to assess objectively whether or not there ever was a real problem. Even as late as 2019, the UK government had failed to do anything like an objective cost-benefit analysis on the “net zero” project, either on the side of costs of acting or costs of not acting.

Where is the hard evidence of our guilt?

We human beings and our industrial civilization stand accused of causing some huge problem in the climate system. So, where is the evidence against us? Where is the hard evidence, that can be objectively checked by anyone with the skills and the time, and that leads to the inescapable conclusion that we must be punished by having our freedoms, our economy and our industrial civilization forcibly taken away from us? Where is the proof, beyond reasonable doubt, that we are guilty as charged? I’ll say this right at the outset: I have never seen any.

By hard evidence, I don’t mean computer climate models. Such models are, at best, tools. And they are too easily rigged, consciously or unconsciously, to produce whatever result the programmer (and/or the paymaster) desires. Nor do I mean biased reports or “scientific” papers from organizations with vested interests in political outcomes. In particular, nothing in which the UN, its “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC), or political governments have had a hand, can be taken as hard evidence of anything. Nor do I mean reports from the mainstream media, virtually all of which is biased in favour of the green scam. Most particularly, nothing from the BBC – the Biased Broadcasting Corporation, which has long done its utmost to exclude skeptical voices from environmental debate, as at [[14]] – can be taken as being evidence. No; evidence is that which can be seen to be so. And hard evidence is evidence from the real world. Hard evidence consists of measurements made objectively and honestly, and rational deductions from them; and nothing more.

Where is the hard evidence that climate is changing on a global scale? The best data we have suggests that measured temperatures have been gradually rising for roughly 350 years, since the depths of the Little Ice Age. Before that, temperatures had been falling from the heights of the Mediaeval Warm Period, which began around 1,000 years ago. A thousand years or so earlier than that, there had been a warm period in Roman times. And that’s about it.

Where is the hard evidence that all, or a significant proportion of, recent warming has been caused by human activity? Where is the hard evidence for just how much global warming has been caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, as distinct from non-human causes, and from other human activities like land use changes and the urban heat island effect?

Where is the hard evidence, over the years since 1992, of the bad effects the alarmists predicted would happen, such as globally worse droughts or floods, millions of climate refugees, thousands of dead polar bears or millions of square kilometres of dead coral reefs? After all, they have kept on telling us “We have 10 years to save the planet.” So, we must expect there to be at least some objectively detectable bad effects over the 29 years since 1992! Moreover, where is the hard evidence that these bad things (if they indeed did happen) would not have happened, were it not for human emissions of greenhouse gases?

Where is the hard evidence that there is any kind of climate emergency? On what basis did the UK parliament declare an “emergency” on May 1st 2019, without providing any factual evidence, and without even taking a vote?

And an even more basic question. Where is the hard evidence that a warmer world would be a worse world? For historically, human civilizations have tended to flourish during warmer periods, as for example the Mediaeval and Roman Warm Periods. Where is the hard evidence that a warming of, say, 3-4 degrees Celsius from today would be bad for humanity, not good?

In the UK, we have been paying “climate change levies” and similar taxes for 20 years now. So, where is the hard evidence of damage to the climate, that would have happened without those taxes, but has been avoided because we paid those taxes? Oh, and where is the honest, objective analysis of costs against benefits of these policies, that should have been done in the first place? (We know the answer to that one, of course).

Going forward, where is the hard evidence that the sacrifices the establishment want to force us to make would actually resolve the claimed climate problem? Where is the hard evidence that giving up petrol and diesel cars, giving up flying, eating less or no meat, having less or no children, or paying through the nose for home heating less efficient than today’s, would actually make a measurable and positive difference to anything?

Oh, and where is the hard evidence that a “zero carbon” economy actually would be sustainable? That is, able to endure into the future? Why has no prototype project been undertaken with volunteers, to show that a zero-carbon economy doesn’t inevitably collapse with its inhabitants starving or freezing to death? And why haven’t all the CoP26 attendees volunteered to stay on in Glasgow to be part of such a project?

Oh, the hypocrisy of those that want to make draconian restrictions on how ordinary people should live, while themselves continuing their jet-setting, limo-riding lifestyles, often at taxpayer expense! Not to mention the prat of a prime minister, that flew in a private jet from Glasgow to London for no better reason than a dinner engagement. If you want people to believe your “nett zero” nonsense, you wally, you must live nett zero. You have failed to practise what you preach. That makes you a hypocrite; and no-one with even half an ounce of sense will want to listen to you ever again.

A climate protest

On the Saturday in the middle of the CoP26 conference, I happened to visit Oxford. That afternoon, there was a climate action protest march. I watched and listened as they marched around the centre of Oxford. There was much mindless chanting, like: “What do we want? Action! When do we want it! NOW!!!” I did, though, enjoy one of their banners: “We’re up sh*t creek!” Yes, I thought, you’re right; you’re up shit creek. Without your marbles, too.

Yet I could, perhaps, even partly agree with one of their demands: for “system change.” A system, that allows selfish, corrupt politicians to make taxes and bad laws that harm innocent people, has got to be changed or scrapped. But my idea of the necessary changes – towards maximum individual freedom, objective justice, upholding human rights, and prosperity for all those who deserve it – is in total opposition to theirs. For the climate action they call for will destroy freedoms, violate rights, unjustly harm the “little people,” and kill chances of prosperity for all but the political establishment and their cronies.

Fact checks

So, let’s look at the record. Here are fact-checks on some of the doom-and-gloom scares we have been fed with. There are many more.

Despite Al Gore's prediction that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013, the September 2021 minimum of sea ice coverage in the Arctic was almost 50 per cent higher than its lowest value back in 2012: [[15]].

Despite repeated claims that polar bears are in danger of extinction, even according to official sources polar bear numbers have risen from around 10,000 in 1960 to at least 25,000 now. One expert estimated polar bear numbers in 2018 to be over 39,000: [[16]].

The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades: [[17]]. For the entire continent, the winter (June to August) of 2021 was the second-coldest on record: [[18]].

There have been claims that low lying atolls like Tuvalu would become flooded and submerged by rising sea levels. But even some of the mainstream media have noticed that, on a multi-decadal scale, many of these islands are actually growing, not shrinking: [[19]]. 80 per cent of all the islands surveyed were either growing, or staying about the same.

Despite the Met Office telling us that “one billion face heat-stress risk” from a 2-degree temperature rise, deaths from droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so [[20]], during which time temperatures have risen by almost 1 degree C. The drop in deaths from natural disasters has been even more spectacular when looked at in terms of death rates per 100,000 people: [[21]]. Moreover, a recent paper [[22]] analyzing data from 750 locations around the world concluded that deaths caused by cold were approximately ten times as many as deaths caused by heat.

Even the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency, and has low confidence in attribution of any changes in hurricane frequency to human activity. Meanwhile, the USA has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. And global costs of extreme weather have declined 26% over 28 years: [[23]]. This whole paper is very much worth a read.

Despite scares about food sources becoming insufficient for the population, yields of most crops per area farmed have risen over the last 60 years: [[24]]. This may well have been helped by the greening of the Earth thanks to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide: [[25]].

Other nonsenses

But climate change isn’t the only green nonsense we’re being beaten over the head with. There are – at least – air pollution, species extinction and over-population scares being bandied around, too.

Only four or five years ago, air pollution was being used in the UK as the main excuse for policies to force us out of our cars. I wrote a substantial (and, in places, a bit technical) article on air pollution from cars, here: [[26]]. Now, there are many parallels between the backstories on air pollution and climate change. Huge charges levied against us, out of all proportion to actual costs of any damage caused, for just going about our daily lives. The United Nations is involved again (in this case, via its World Health Organization). A dubious US study, whose raw data was not available, even after subpoena. A strong likelihood that the toxicities of the pollutants have been over-estimated. A novel and unproven “expert elicitation” method, resulting in a factor of 12 between upper and lower cost bounds for the UK. Suppression of air quality reports that went against the then government’s narrative. A sensationalist report, demanding that government “must now act to remove the current toxic fleet of diesel cars, vans and buses from all our roads.” Hyped headlines about air pollution causing “40,000 deaths annually” in the UK.

It’s plain from all this that the plans for “action” on climate change and air pollution were never intended as separate goals. Both are a part of a wider agenda, two major planks of which are to force us out of our cars and to kill off our access to affordable, reliable energy. As I said in the air pollution paper I referenced above, “That’s the deep green agenda. It’s not designed for our benefit, is it?”

Then there is the nonsense about humans “endangering biodiversity” and causing species extinctions. I have many times asked those that spout off about biodiversity to name one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and to say what it was I did to contribute to that extinction. I have never yet got a specific answer! This is typical alarmist conduct. They are never clear about what they accuse us of, but try to keep it vague and general. They always talk of “we,” and they try to make us feel a communal guilt. But they never address the question of whether, or how much, specific individuals are responsible for any problems. And they fail to show any hard evidence that there’s even a problem at all.

Then there’s Extinction Rebellion. This is an all but terrorist organization; and the impression I get is that what they really want to do is extinguish us. Which, ultimately, is what the UN, political governments and the rest of the establishment want to do to us as well. They want to destroy human freedom and happiness, human industrial civilization and the human spirit.

Then there is the old chestnut about the world being over-populated – with human beings. To which, my usual response is: if you think the world is over-populated, get yourself off it! Or even: your grandchildren first, then your children, then you.

Violations of our rights and freedoms

I thought I might make a list of some of the basic rights and freedoms, that political governments, and the UK in particular, are violating or infringing today. As basis for my (incomplete) list, I will use the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” dating from 1948: [[27]]. It may seem strange that, given the key role of the United Nations in the green agenda, I will seek to use a UN document to support my case. But back in 1948, the UN was new, and not quite as corrupt as it is now.

Article 7: “All are equal before the law.” This reflects that all government should be based on the rule of law. And under the rule of law, the rules to which individuals in a territory are to be expected to keep must be the same for every individual. They have violated this by granting exemptions from COVID rules for some CoP26 attendees, and want to violate it also by exempting “news providers” from the clutches of their new on-line censors.

Article 10: “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” The penalties, to which they wish to subject us on the climate change issue, must indeed be criminal penalties; since they have not identified any specific harms that we have done which require us to make compensation to any individuals or groups of people. They have not allowed us a fair and public hearing; the BBC, among others, have suppressed our viewpoint; there has been no free, fair and public debate on the issue. And they have failed to ensure an independent, impartial tribunal to judge the matter.

Article 11(1): “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” By their re-writing of the precautionary principle, they have stripped us of the presumption of innocence, and required us to prove a negative. There has been no public trial, and no evidence shown that proves our guilt beyond reasonable doubt. And our witnesses, including experts, have been harassed or persecuted. Judith Curry [[28]], Peter Ridd [[29]] and Susan Crockford [[30]] are examples.

Article 12: “No-one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.” We are stalked with cameras, and our correspondence is intercepted by snoopers, without proof of reasonable suspicion of any real wrongdoing on our part. And scientists who have taken the realist side on climate change and related issues have had their reputations attacked, and their careers adversely affected.

Article 13(1): “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.” We have had our freedom of movement unnecessarily restricted, through COVID restrictions being continued in places and at times when the virus was either not significant, or receding as a threat.

Article 17(2): “No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” The levies and taxes which have been imposed on us over the climate change issue have been arbitrary, and have never been objectively justified. Tax laws have also been used as a weapon to hurt people the establishment don’t like, such as lorry drivers and one-man software consultants.

Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This right is being seriously curtailed, particularly with regard to on-line expression.

Article 20(1): “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” This right has been seriously curtailed, most of all for those who want to protest against draconian COVID restrictions, like Piers Corbyn [[31]].

Article 23(1): “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment…” This right has been violated by using tax laws to prevent people from working in flexible ways that suit both the worker and the client.

The results of CoP26

Here is the Guardian’s view (from November 10th) on the likely end result of the Glasgow gabfest: [[32]]. And here is an update to the evening of November 12th: [[33]]. It does seem that the green leviathan has, at last, encountered a certain degree of resistance from a few countries that have worked out that it isn’t in their interests to stay on that bandwagon much longer. That’s encouraging, but not nearly enough yet.

We’ll have to wait and see what they ultimately come out with. But as more and more people around the world gradually become aware of the disruption, poverty and suffering to which the drivers of the green juggernaut want to subject them, there will soon be, I think, the start of a vast popular backlash against the “global warming” scam and all those responsible for it.

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Tuesday, 9 November 2021

A walk on the Marlborough Downs


I seem to have picked a popular place today!


This is the spot where I wrote most of my prize winning essay back in 2007


A wide open vista - and a northerly wind to match


With a stone in my boot, I couldn't pass up this invitation


It may be November, but the vegetation here still has some colour


Looks almost like summer, doesn't it?


...but it's autumn


The birds haven't got to quite all the berries yet


Last time I was here (May 2019), everything was carpeted with bluebells


Walking is easy in these conditions...


This sign looks almost as old as I am


On the straight and narrow


The Road goes ever on and on...
(and it was more than four miles back to the car, too!)

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A bus trip from Oxford to Swindon


As a Cambridge man, I have long thought of Oxford as "old school"


Not "Mid all the Traffic," but above it


No, this is not a bug in the photo. These were several bugs, that had squashed themselves against the windscreen


This bus is travelling at warp speed!


Oxfordshire farmland


Berkshire Downs in the background


Probably the second most important building in Faringdon


And the most important


All Saints' Church, Faringdon


Four out of five windmills working. Good enough for government work

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Thursday, 7 October 2021

Some thoughts on Reform UK’s first party conference

As I had planned, I attended the Reform Party UK’s first ever party conference on Sunday, October 3rd, 2021 in Manchester. This report gives some thoughts I took away from it.

I will say at the outset that I do not by my nature support any political party. In fact, I often say (only half in jest) that I would like to see politics made a capital offence. Retrospectively. I was there, not as one of the party faithful, but as an interested and friendly outsider, wanting to learn as much as possible about where the party was planning to go.

The hall capacity was a little under 400. Where I was, towards the front, it was about three-quarters full. This was a small meeting, compared to the two major Brexit Party events to which I went in 2019. And the demographics were different. Whereas at the Brexit Party’s event at the NEC in Birmingham I had seen all age ranges from 30 to 70 about equally represented, here the audience was almost entirely aged over 50. And while there had been quite a few black faces in the audience in Birmingham, here there were very few; and one of them was a speaker! But, I’m pleased to say, I saw only one participant wearing a face mask.

The occasion lacked the sense of energy and excitement, which the Brexit Party events in both Birmingham and Maidstone had engendered. Perhaps this was inevitable, given that this event marked the public start of a very long haul, which the party faces in order to gain sufficient support to make a difference.

We were welcomed by John Kelly, the party’s North area manager. He didn’t have time to say very much; but he did mention the still strong desire of some vested interests in government, notably the civil service, to go back into the EU. To which I would say, I reckon it’s far more than just the civil servants. So, we must guard still against Rejoiner scheming. The Battle of Brexit may have been won; but the campaign is still ongoing, and the war as a whole is hardly even started.

Next up was Nick Buckley MBE, the party’s candidate in the recent Manchester mayoral election. He spoke of the role of Manchester in the Industrial Revolution. Of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, which took place just a few hundred metres away. And of the first meeting of the TUC, which took place in Manchester. (Though he made it plain that trade unions today no longer put the rights of the workers first). He spoke of removing “a mountain of bureaucracy,” and of the party’s aims to “convince people that a better model exists” and “to inspire the voters.” I thought his speech was excellent given the time constraints. Just the kind of precedents I approve of; anti-establishment movements to make life better for the “little people”. And just the kind of things I, for one, want the party to be doing.

Then we had Alan Graves, a former Labour councillor in Derby who defected to UKIP in 2014, and has now come across to the Reform party. He and his team have been very successful in local elections there, so that there are now 6 Reform councillors in Derby out of a total of 51. He was supported by his son, Alan Graves Junior, who showed signs of a potential to become a very good speaker. The background and attitudes of this pair surely give the lie to the view, put forward by a leftist friend of mine, that the Reform Party are nothing but “right-wing nutcases.”

Next came Cai Dewar from Wales. He is a Pentecostal bishop; and he’s certainly a preacher-man! He spoke of “everyday people who are ready for reform” and “a completely new direction of prosperity for all of our people.” He described Welsh Labour as being “out of touch with anything outside the Cardiff Bay bubble.” He slammed them as showing “no care for us as a people” and “no concern for us or our way of life” (particularly on lockdowns), and having “not listened to us at all.” They have “put Wales on a road map to destruction,” and they “blame everyone else for their own failings.” What is needed is “fresh common-sense ideas that work for the people.” And in particular, re-vitalizing the economy and encouraging small businesses. His closing line was: “Good government focuses on the people, not on driving them down into poverty.” It was all a little bit over the top; but I have no doubt of Cai Dewar’s ability to inspire people to get involved and to seek better things.

The final speaker of the first session was the party’s deputy leader, Dr David Bull. Here, for the first time, there surfaced a kind of nationalism with which I am not very comfortable. He started with “We believe in Britain” and talk of “our great country,” where I would have talked about “British values” (the values of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution) and “the great people who live in this country.” Still, I enjoyed his description of Theresa May as “that bloody difficult woman” and his castigation of the Tories because they “never thanked us.” He spoke of a “seismic political movement, and you can feel it.” He’s quite right; but I didn’t feel a metaphorical movement of the earth nearly as strongly in that hall as I had at the Brexit party events, particularly in Maidstone. He reported that the polls were showing Reform support at about 6% – not far behind the Greens – and that was without having announced a single policy yet.

Most importantly for me, he said: “We are a bottom-up party. We take ideas from our members.” That is something which distinguished the Brexit Party from all the rest. And if it is carrying over into the Reform party, that’s all to the good.

The first speaker in the second session was Dominique Samuels on “A young person’s perspective.” She said she is looking for “truth, common sense and freedom.” So am I, lady, so am I! And she said “The media don’t have the best interests of people at heart.” Absolutely spot on, again. Having only just left university, she was well placed to tell us about the despair that students have been feeling, and the problems they have suffered, as a result of the COVID measures. And she concluded with “Stop voting for the least worst!” She exited to a standing ovation, which she thoroughly deserved.

Next came the party’s chief executive and the organizer of the conference, Paul Oakden. He slammed the current political system, saying that it “ignores the will of the majority, and puts all power into the hands of the few.” Too true, I say; and not only all the power, but virtually all the wealth too. He looks for “a better, bolder, braver Britain.” He gave some news on changes to the membership structure, and told us of the party’s target to contest every seat in England and Wales at the next general election, and many in Scotland. And he made an explicit commitment to the candidates: “We won’t stand anybody down.” But it was his final words of wisdom that stuck in my memory. “The state is the servant of the people, not the other way round.” You can’t hit a nail on the head better than that.

Next was Isabel Oakeshott, a political commentator who has been to more than 20 Tory conferences (and several Labour ones, to boot). Her presentation was a tour de force on the topic of – government lies. “Three weeks to flatten the curve.” “Vaccines are for adults only.” “There are no plans for vaccine passports.” The Tory government, she said, “distorts, dissembles and actively disinforms.” Habitually, I would add. Having promised to “level up” the country, they are not only failing to do that, but they also fail to “level with” the people. She summed up the Tories as “dishonest, incompetent and cruel,” and undemocratic, too.

She had built up her case gently, but inexorably. There had to be something special to come at the end. And there was. “I will neither forget nor forgive any of this, and neither should you.” Amen, my lady! And then, her final thought: “But we mustn’t let it get us down.”

That brought to the podium party leader Richard Tice. I liked his metaphor of “a nation of lions and lionesses led by donkeys.” And the ideas that “our future and freedom are not the government’s to lend back to us” and that “we need big, bold, brilliant reforms.” Moreover, his soubriquet for the Tories, “con-socialists,” is not only apt, but has also had a degree of coverage in the media. I confess that I didn’t get much out of the policy part of his speech; probably because he stuck quite closely to the policy document the party issued back in May, which I had reviewed and critiqued less than three weeks earlier.

There were a few sentences towards the end on the subject of “climate change,” one of my particular bugaboos. He labelled the Tory policies as “nett stupid,” saying they were “delusional, not achievable, and will impoverish us all.” That’s all true; but his counter-proposal of doing things that are “achievable, affordable and proportionate” ignores the elephant in the room – the (strong) possibility that there is actually no substance at all to the accusation that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused or will cause catastrophic global warming. I shall say more on that subject a little later.

At lunchtime I went out, and saw the party’s campaign bus parked outside, with its slogan “The Tory boiler ban will freeze your gran.” I’d have liked to add to that: “An electric car can’t take you far!” And my two perennial moans about renewables: “When the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow” and “When the sun don’t shine, there’s no juice on the line.” But I digress.

First up after lunch was David Kirkwood from Scotland. He is an IT consultant like me, so we share the pain of having had our careers ruined by a bad tax law called IR35. This same bad law has recently been used to screw up the careers of tens of thousands of lorry drivers; not to mention to cause a national supply chain crisis. I therefore heartily endorse his view that “We must put HMRC back in their box.” But there’s much more going on in Scotland. Not only have the SNP already launched vaccine passports for events – a requirement which, in direct contradiction to the rule of law, will be waived for the VSIP’s (Very Self-Important People) attending the COP 26 climate alarmist gabfest in Glasgow next month. But their policies have also wrecked many owner-managed firms; a big issue, because there are no less than 340,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Scotland.

But he had wider-ranging things to say, too. “Freedom is innate; governments can only curtail it.” Spot on, pal. Of the Reform party: “We don’t have the self-serving freeloaders that other parties have.” Long may that continue! And his concluding words: “Let’s go and get ’em.”

Next came Alex Wilson the recent by-election candidate from Chesham and Amersham, with two of his colleagues. They made three very good points. “We must reach the silent majority. We must walk, talk and promote Reform UK.” “It’s all about offering people choices they wouldn’t have had before.” And: “We must rescue our culture from the ‘woke’ brigade.”

Next up was Kirsty Walmsley, talking about education from the point of view of a parent. “Children are brainwashed,” she said, “with political ideologies that do not reflect the values of our society.” “The education system has been failing for decades.” And she made an interesting point that parents who were forced to home-school for a while because of COVID school closures didn’t have either the knowledge or the computer resources to do it properly.

Then we had Julian Malins QC, who had been the party’s candidate in Wiltshire for crime and police commissioner. He made a long list of policy proposals. Restoring the role of stipendiary magistrates (which New Labour abolished in 2000), appointing more of them, and giving them more powers. Reforming the criminal legal aid system. Specialist courts for motoring offences. Getting rid of “imprisonment for public protection” and indefinite sentences, so that all offenders who have been imprisoned on this basis receive fixed terms. Subjecting the Crown Prosecution Service to competition. Getting rid of over-complicated rules that prevent many civil trials from proceeding at all. More generally, self-governance should be restored to the professions as a whole. And the “English Inquisition” as he calls it, that prevents new lawyers getting positions in which they can be trained, must be abolished.

I know little of the detailed ins and outs of the justice system – two weeks in the jury box are my whole experience of it – but I have listened to enough “expert” speakers on different subjects to know a real expert when I hear one. The Reform Party needs experts like Julian Malins.

Next was Patrick Benham-Crosswell on energy and emissions policy – a subject on which I have some considerable knowledge. I’ll talk about his presentation at the end, because what the next speaker, Claire Fox, said was extremely relevant to the audience’s reaction to it.

I confess that I like Claire Fox. Despite her earlier Marxist leanings, she talks plenty of sense. Her elevation to the House of Lords, as an avowed supporter of abolishing that body, seems a bit odd to me; but I suppose it may have seemed better to be a “mole” inside (or, perhaps, even a Samson) than to be permanently outside.

Claire Fox spoke on the subject of Culture Wars. She explicitly introduced herself as a friend of the party, but not a part of it. She said: “Culture wars are unavoidable.” You will become embroiled in them “just by speaking truth to power.” “You will need free speech” – and you will need to fight for it. Many victims of the culture wars “get ostracized, or lose their jobs.” And then, her four keynote messages for the Reform party. One, “You must take on the cancel culture, and beat it.” Two, “Don’t do your own version of it. You mustn’t legitimize the cancel culture, for example by name-calling.” Three, “Your job is to win hearts and minds.” And four, “Don’t get angry, get even. When they go low, you go high.” I totally agree with all four (though it’s very hard not to get angry with what is being done to us). And her last sentence, to me, makes two separate and important points. One, never give up the moral high ground. And two, a boxer delivering a low blow becomes very vulnerable to a big shot to the head.

She provided two final gems. “The party must be open-minded and flexible.” And “The only way to change politics for good is to have ordinary people doing it.”

I skipped the final session, as I thought I had already learned enough to be able to write this missive; also, because the subjects to be discussed in it were things in which I either have little interest, or had already covered in my comments on the May policy document.

It remains for me to cover Patrick Benham-Crosswell’s presentation, and the reactions to it. He began by stating three objectives which must be met on energy policy: getting emissions down, keeping the lights on, and not breaking the economy. He didn’t specifically mention carbon dioxide – and that, to me, was a red flag already. For the label “emissions” covers two completely different things that the alarmists hype as big problems: “global warming” and air pollution. And they need to be treated as separate issues.

I can agree with the second and third of his objectives. But on the first, where is the cost-benefit case for reducing emissions in the first place? In the case of air pollution, there is a long and sordid history, all coming out of a study done in the USA back in the early 1990s. The study itself is dubious, and the UK’s rationale for adopting it as a guideline for policy (in 2009) is even more fraught with uncertainty. But as to carbon dioxide emissions, I can say with confidence that no proper cost-benefit analysis on anything involving carbon dioxide emissions can be done under current UK government rules. This is because, also in 2009, New Labour abandoned the use of the “social cost of carbon” for calculations involving carbon dioxide emissions. As I have written elsewhere: “Cynically paraphrased, their argument seems to have been: ‘We know we can’t do a credible cost-benefit analysis that justifies any political action on this. But we’re already committed to political action. So, we’ll make up numbers to match the commitments, and hope that no-one notices.’” I have already written on both these issues; the articles can be found via the links which I included with my recent response to the party’s May policy document.

The audacity and dishonesty of the conduct of all the main UK parties on environmental matters over the last 30 years beggars the mind. Isabel Oakeshott understated her case; the current Tory bunch are not the only ones that have been dishonest, cruel and undemocratic. They have all of them, however, been extremely competent – at screwing us all.

I was interested to see the man next to me shake his head vigorously when the speaker mentioned tidal power as an option. I was even more interested when, after Claire Fox had finished her speech and the session, I joined a conversation with two people sitting behind me. They, like me, had come to the conference to find out where the party was going. They, like me, were dissatisfied with Patrick Benham-Crosswell’s presentation. And they seemed to know what they were talking about. One of them even suggested that the Reform party might have failed to take a strong stance on the energy and emissions issue because of fear of repercussions from the cancel culture. It came into my mind then that Claire Fox’s remarks may have been intended as a friendly warning that the party must do what is right, rather than what may seem to be “popular” at the time. Which is exactly my own position. Any movement that compromises its principles – which for the Reform party, Dominique Samuels and I agree, should be truth, common sense and freedom – is dead as a force for good.

When I left the hall and joined the throng outside, the first conversation I came to was on exactly the same subject. I put in my sixpennyworth, as always. And one of the participants, a fellow Cambridge man about three years my junior, told me he had been in the energy industry for his entire career. As with Julian Malins, I can tell an expert when I hear one. I didn’t ask his name, which was a pity. He should have been speaking in place of Patrick Benham-Crosswell.

In my view, the Reform Party must grasp the “climate change” nettle; and it must grasp that nettle now, before COP 26 begins. The reactions of others I spoke to about the issue told me that I am by no means alone among Reform party supporters in such a view. It isn’t necessary, though, for the party to come out as full-blown climate skeptics on day one.

My suggested approach would be to institute what I call an “Audit of the Conduct of Environmental Politics in the UK.” I would like to see the Reform party commit to an independent, unbiased, objective audit on how the issues of “global warming” and pollution from vehicles have been dealt with in the UK. You might present it as “a second opinion from independent experts,” and say to those that oppose the idea, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” The purpose of this audit must be to:

1.         “drill down” to the hard evidence, identify what is known and what is not known,

2.         put the evidence, and the unknowns, into context so they tell the full story,

3.         get the truth out to the public – the ordinary people who are affected by these policies.

I presented this idea as my “policy pitch” at the Maidstone meeting of the Brexit party in 2019, and it was very well received by my listeners, including candidate Ahmad Malik, who coincidentally was the Brexit party candidate for the same seat that Alex Wilson contested in the recent by-election. I have looked out my “crib sheet” for that pitch, and will attach it to the e-mail I will send to the party with this missive. Once the general public finally come to understand what has been going on in environmental policy over 30 years and more, and how badly they have been misled, I think that David Bull’s “seismic political movement” can really get some traction. This has the potential to be a huge vote-winner; after all, more than 70% of the UK electorate are car drivers, and face severe restriction or even complete loss of their personal mobility due to the establishment’s “green industrial revolution” policies.

One lesson I took away from the party conference is that, in that audience, many people were extremely clued-up about the issues being discussed. This is a very strong asset for any organization, and I think the party should be making as much use of it as it can. As to my own contribution, I will be happy to help in whatever ways make the best use of my particular knowledge and talents. As a hard-core libertarian, I am always liable to be on the radical wing of the party. But in the current state of things, if the Reform Party can’t or won’t rescue our freedoms from out of the maw of the establishment and the political class, I can’t see anyone else who can. Our only option then would be along the lines of gilets jaunes. At 68, I really don’t want to have to go there.


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Friday, 1 October 2021

Gay pride and green prejudice

Last Saturday, as I sat at my computer at about 11:30am, my aural senses were assaulted. It sounded, at first, like a mullah with a megaphone. But Muslim prayers don’t last more than a few minutes. And these noises carried on.

They were still going on through the afternoon and into the evening. There was lots of loud, rocky-poppy, not-very-tuneful music. Now, I live just round the corner from Charterhouse School; and they have a reputation for holding such shindigs. But the sound didn’t seem to be coming from that direction.

At about 6pm, somebody gave a speech. I couldn’t make out a single word; it sounded, more than anything else, like a rant by some crazed South American dictator. Then the music re-started. By 7:30pm, I had decided to take a walk around the district to find the source of the noise. It wasn’t Charterhouse; it seemed to be coming from down the hill. In some places, including my home, the sound was very distinct, even loud; in others, I couldn’t hear it at all.

As I walked down the hill, parties of mostly young, well-heeled-looking people were coming in the opposite direction. I had to walk well more than a mile, all the way down into the town, to find that a huge festival had taken over the town park. It had just finished, and vans and lorries were starting to cart away tents and other temporary fixtures. In the town centre, I saw signs to “Surrey Pride.” So now, I knew what the festival had been; the local Gay Pride parade and party. The Wetherspoon was chock full of happy looking people, mostly younger than the usual clientele. And the railway station was as busy as I’ve ever seen it.

When I researched it the next morning, I found that the big London Gay Pride parade had been cancelled again this year; apparently due to bureaucrats imposing COVID restrictions so stringently that the organizers could not meet them. Which meant that this gay event in Surrey, where the local council is a bit more accommodating, attracted far more people than normal. I heard that 7,500 came to the event; that’s a third of the population of the town!

The very next day, in the next town, was the final day of a nine-day “Great Big Green Week.” This was part of a national publicity event, under the aegis of the World Wildlife Fund, to try to soften people up for the upcoming “COP 26” meeting in Glasgow; at which the rogues that claim a right to run the country plan to drive yet another nail into the coffins of our prosperity and our freedoms. It was all about politicized green hooey, like “the journey to climate justice” and “the power we all have to take positive action on climate change” and “celebrating action for nature and the climate.” And that particular day had been declared a “car free day” in that town, with road closures all around the centre.

My brass band was playing on the bandstand near that town centre on that Sunday afternoon. As a principled and vocal opponent of the green movement and everything they stand for, I had withdrawn from the event as soon as I found out about the green week going on in the vicinity. Not to mention the difficulty of lugging a big, heavy, awkwardly shaped tuba from wherever I managed to park to the bandstand and back – and the town is hilly! Tubas and “car free days” don’t mix. So, I wasn’t there for any of the green events. But I find it difficult to believe that those who attended these events could have enjoyed themselves nearly as much as the gay people obviously did.

All this set me thinking: what are the similarities between gays and greens, and what are the differences? As to similarities, both are politically active, and both often express themselves in ways that those who are neither gay nor green find “woke.” But there the resemblance ends. For most gay people, their movement is about a feeling of community, and taking pride in being what they are. Whereas for greens, it is all about the agenda.

I cannot overstate the injustices to which gay people have been subjected over the decades. In the 1950s, the relentless hounding of seminal computer scientist Alan Turing by the UK state led to his suicide. That anyone could be convicted in court for an act, carried out by consenting adults, which neither harms anyone nor is intended to harm anyone, is an appalling indictment of the “justice” system of the time. That the victim was someone who had made an outstanding contribution to the war effort against the Nazis, yet could not get the recognition and the credit he deserved because he was bound by the Official Secrets Act, made the injustice worse. That it took until 2014 for him to receive a pardon (later followed by 75,000 others who were convicted of similar “offences”) testifies to the slowness with which government wheels grind when it comes to rectifying even the most blatant injustices.

I have no homosexual inclinations myself. But I have had a number of gay friends, and I appreciate that being gay is simply the way they are. I don’t see anything wrong in it, as long as the acts are carried out between consenting adults; and as an individualist, I find it churlish at the least to castigate people just because they are different. I don’t see why gay people should not have been allowed to marry each other, or to adopt children if they were otherwise suitable to do so, or even to serve in the armed forces. And I understand why gay people want to parade and to party, both among themselves and with non-gay people too.

I do, however, have strong objections to “hate crime” laws, that can make a small slip of the tongue into a “crime,” thus seriously damaging freedom of speech. And as a ratepayer, I am annoyed at being expected to pay for the construction and maintenance of things like “changing places” toilets. If gay people, or any other group, start to get politically aggressive and to demand things such as these, I am likely to reduce or even to withdraw my tolerance. But to those gay people who do not try to politicize the issue, I say: Take pride in yourselves, my friends; take pride in being human, take pride in what you are and in what you do.

I wish I could be as kind to the greens. For 30 years and more, they have been politically aggressive to the point where they have instilled their agenda into the entire UK political class. And that agenda is one that is hostile to good people in general, and to me in particular. They are seeking to make driving cars so expensive, that the effect will be to take away the mobility of everyone but the rich and well connected. They are seeking to make affordable air travel a thing of the past. They are seeking to make heating our homes both more expensive and less efficient. Their schemes have already caused energy prices to skyrocket, and the UK electricity grid to become dangerously unstable. Groups that are all but terrorists have blocked motorways and dug up lawns. All this in the name of “reducing emissions” of carbon dioxide and other gases, purportedly to stop some amount of “global warming” that, so they claim, would have catastrophic consequences to the planet and to human civilization.

And yet, no-one has ever supplied any hard evidence that shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that all these expensive and freedom-killing measures would bring any benefits at all. No-one has even measured accurately how much of the warming that has taken place over the last 300+ years has been due to human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. No-one has proved beyond reasonable doubt that a moderate amount of warming – say 3 or even 5 degrees Celsius globally – would have a large negative effect on human civilization. In fact, historical evidence suggests the opposite; in past warm periods such as the Minoan, Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods, our civilizations have flourished. All the “evidence” our accusers have is computer models and hype.

Moreover, there’s a long and ugly backstory to the whole issue. The body that supposedly assembles the evidence on “global warming,” the IPCC, is a United Nations organization; and the UN has been the force driving the green agenda for more than 50 years. There have been more and more extreme green commitments made by successive UK governments, without ever allowing the people any opportunity to object. All the mainstream parties are in on the scam. There have been bad “science,” and data misrepresented to make it look scarier than it is. There have been attempts to suppress papers skeptical of the green narrative, and to persecute or to sack skeptical scientists. There has been a huge, concerted hype fest in the media; and the skeptical point of view is rarely, if ever, allowed to be put to the public.

Worse, the UK government has shown very bad faith, by doing at least two inexcusable things behind the scenes. Firstly, they re-wrote the “precautionary principle” so that, instead of “look before you leap” as it should be, it became in essence “If in doubt, government must act.” By this ruse, they abandoned all pretence of objective, impartial risk analysis, and of presuming us innocent until proven guilty. And they inverted the burden of proof, demanding that we, who are accused of causing catastrophic “global warming,” must prove that we are not causing any problem. Which, in general, is impossible. And most of all when we are not allowed to speak up for ourselves; nor to call witnesses, including experts, for our side.

Secondly, they dropped the use of the so called “social cost of carbon” in doing cost-benefit analyses on anything involving carbon dioxide emissions. This has made it impossible to do objective cost versus benefit assessments on these issues; and, in particular, has made it impossible to answer the question: “how much harm would CO2 emissions cause if we did nothing at all to reduce them?” Cynically paraphrased, their argument seems to have been: “We know we can’t do a credible cost-benefit analysis that justifies any political action on this. But we’re already committed to political action. So, we’ll make up numbers to match the commitments, and hope that no-one notices.”

Where gay people on the one hand show pride, greens on the other show prejudice. They are pre-judging us human beings, and our industrial civilization; they are pre-judging us guilty. Guilty without due process or the presumption of innocence, guilty without an impartial tribunal to judge the case, guilty without any hard evidence of any wrongdoing.

No, I cannot be kind to those that promote or support the green “net zero” agenda. Nor can I be kind to the politicians, bureaucrats, academics and hangers-on that have set out their stalls to impose on us green policies that will bring great harm to us personally, and enormous harm to Western civilization. I regard them all as traitors to humanity.

What I’d like to see is all those that have promoted or supported this “net zero” agenda made to live in a green enclave, where they will have to make their “net zero” dream into a reality. They will have to prove that a “net zero” economy is sustainable, in the true meaning of the word, “able to endure into the future.” Without any kind of subsidies from anyone, and most of all without anything from government. Meanwhile, we the good, ordinary people will carry on with our business as usual. And when reality strikes, and the lights and the heating in their enclave go out, permanently, we’ll laugh at them and say “good riddance.”

I came across a claim that the Great Big Green Week got 200,000 visitors. They seemed to think that was a lot. I don’t know whether that was one location or many, but that’s not a vast number of visitors for a large-scale event that lasted 9 days. In contrast, the 2019 London Gay Pride parade attracted 1,500,000 people. And even that parade last Saturday attracted fully a third of the population of the town it was held in.

It seems to me that, if the people of the UK could vote between the gays and the greens, the gays ought to win hands down. And deservedly so. Because no gay person I have known has ever tried to force me or anyone else to go gay; but the green agenda is all about forcing me and others to “go green” against our wills. Most gays are tolerant of others; but greens are intolerant of anyone who doesn’t agree with their extremist views. And, as Jane Austen might have said if she were alive today, where gays show pride, greens show prejudice.

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