Gas drilling in Balcombe?

The blog gasdrillinginbalcombe is providing a forum for discussion of Cuadrilla's proposal to see whether exploring in Balcombe for shale oil might be worth while.

This post doesn't aim to add to that discussion, which follows a meeting at which a senior Cuadrilla  man was ambushed.

Rather, I do recommend signing up for email notifications of comments. There's a lively debate going on which not only elucidates issues around fracking but also brings out the personalities of the main posters. Educational and entertaining.

Could Wales leave the United Kingdom?

This is the title of a poor quality piece in The Guardian.

It's mainly a profile of Leanne Wood, apparently the favourite to take over the leadership of Plaid Cymru (who knew?). A "proud republican", she views Wales's economic development as typical of other colonial/extractive economies like those in Latin America. Her "Greenprint" for the south Wales valleys sets out a vision of "food sovereignty" and "self-sufficiency".

The Guardian piece is longer on the profile of Ms Wood than it is on numbers and comes with self-regarding fillers by its writer, John Harris. Judging by the map, we may be in for a border dispute over the Wirral.

Wales has a gleaming new assembly building (who paid?), free prescriptions (who paid?), and "when the coalition in London raised tuition fees to £9,000 (no, they didn't), the government in Cardiff guaranteed to meet the cost of the increase for any student who lives in Wales". Who paid?

Even the Welsh Labour leader has suggested replacing the House of Lords with a chamber split evenly between the UK's constituent countries:

You'd have a lower house selected on population and an upper house selected on geography, so there's equal representation. That's something we could look at now. The US does exactly that, and the US is stable.

This is fairyland. Let Wales go its own way, then. But does it want to?

Sadly, at last year's Welsh Assembly elections Plaid came third, even behind the Tories, with 19% of the main vote. "Not exactly earth-shaking", says The Guardian's man, leaving you to wonder why his long piece centres on a political loony whom they might choose as their leader.

Suddenly, I'm in favour of Welsh independence. Go for it, Wales.

That money belongs to the people

Open Europe reports on comments by europlastic George Eustice MP.

Writing in the Western Morning News, Camborne and Redruth MP George Eustice cites findings from Open Europe’s new report on EU structural funds, which found that if regional policy were devolved back to the UK government, Cornwall could receive an extra £207 million in funding over the next seven years. He argues that “a successful regional policy is incredibly important to the far South West because action is needed to create new industries and higher paid jobs…however we must also remember that there is no such thing as EU money… We simply get some of our own money back.” He concludes that while “some say they prefer the devil they know and are frightened of change… One idea is to put all the extra funding that Britain would have… into a second pillar of the Regional Growth Fund specifically targeted at areas like Cornwall but with less bureaucracy. It’s an interesting idea which could be right for the future.”

Leaving aside the curious notion of "devolving back", let's highlight Mr Eustice's dictum that

There is no such thing as EU money… We simply get some of our own money back.

It follows that there is no such thing as UK government money either. Remember that, George, every time you eat a subsidised meal at Westminster. That money belongs to the people, to your constituents.

That goes for every penny your government spends. That's one reason why they - and you - should practise austerity.

Round peg and all that

Open Europe picks up that former European Commission President Jacques Santer, who in 1999 was forced to resign along with the entire Commission amid allegations of corruption and fraud, has been appointed as Head of the eurozone’s ‘Special Purpose Investment Vehicle’, which aims to raise billions of euros in funding to help deal with the eurozone crisis.

Yes, he'll be heading the SPIV.

Inside party leaders' minds

It's a gruesome job, but someone has to go there.

Is Nick Clegg suffering from split personality or memory loss? He tells an interviewer that he & Cameron will have to take a view if Huhne is charged:

Of course, that is a very serious issue if that were to arise. We as a Government want the highest standards of probity to be in place in everything that is done by Cabinet members.

Message received. Then later Clegg says:

I would like to see David Laws back in government – not just because I admire him a lot and he is a close colleague and friend of mine – I just so happen to think he would be very good for the Government and good for Britain.

That would be Mr Laws the self-confessed expenses thief. Wasn't there something about standards of probity in government...?

Meanwhile, Mr Miliband has been demonstrating the hazard of spending too much time surrounded by other lefties. In his interview he says:

I think we can create jobs in the public sector. We can give help to the private sector too.

He is then asked whether he is backing an “increase in the size of the public sector”, and replies:

Well, we’re not short of things to do in our country. When we look around and we think about the jobs that could be created for our young people both in the public sector and the private sector – we’re not short of things to do.

What the Rubik genius is short of, though, is money. State debt under the coalition has continued spiralling upwards - but we don't want to talk about that. Let's take and more more money out of voters' pockets to do the things which our gifted masters have identified as the "things to do in our country"?

Why not go the whole hog and take all of everybody's earnings, and just give them enough back to feed and warm themselves? After all, money grows on trees, voters don't know what's good for them, we can trust the superior wisdom of people like Ed Balls and Peter Hain and the awful Mrs Balls. Those ghastly voters will only fritter the money away on lager and holidays and conservatories and their children. The philosopher geeks know best.

Mr Miliband has picked out the big political issue:

Intergenerational justice, intergenerational fairness and equality is going to be the issue of the next 10 or 15 years. Is this generation, my generation, going to do right by the younger generation?

By bequeathing them ever higher levels of debt, Ed? Those "intergenerational" tags just roll off the tongue, don't they.

What fun it must be at Primrose Hill dinner parties dreaming up ways to spend other people's money!

Lawyer gets 12 months for perverting the course of justice

This man committed a driving offence but told lies to try to get off.

Sentencing him for 12 months at Lewes Crown Court yesterday, Judge Guy Anthony said: ‘I doubt a drink-drive conviction would have led to this but any conviction of perverting the course of justice is serious.’

That's what happens if you're caught telling lies to get off a driving charge.

The Scots are adults for goodness sake

John Redwood writes a tortuous piece doing his best to support the UK government's line that "the UK Parliament should decide on when the referendum on Scottish independence is held, and what the question should be".

This government is wrong on big policy issues, such as cutting spending (it isn't), the EU (they're ceding more powers) and greenery (CO2 doesn't cause significant AGW, and they should be pushing for cheap shale energy). They're even poor at politics (privatising forests? planning reform?). Why do I continue to be astonished by the UK government's ability to pick the wrong battles and fight them badly?

A Scottish referendum was a manifesto commitment by the SNP to Scottish voters, was it not? In other contexts Tory MPs champion subsidiarity, do they not? If the Scots voted to secede, would an imperialist Westminster seriously consider refusing them permission?

To suggest that Westminster is capable of organising a referendum but Edinburgh isn't is patronising humbug. It's not even convincing humbug. Alex Salmond must be rubbing his hands with glee. The more the snooty Etonian continues to patronise them, the more likely the Scots are to vote to leave.

Independence may or may not be a mistaken policy, but the decision is for the Scots to make and they do not need the condescending permission of the English or anyone else.

As Norman Davies keeps saying in Vanished Kingdoms, constitutional arrangements come and go.

Abolish overseas aid tax

The Select Committee on International Development wants to tinker with the overseas aid the government gives away. Aid given by the UK to countries with a history of fraud and corruption should be "conditional" on them improving their governance.

Not good enough.

Overseas aid shores up inefficient governments, which can then survive without reforming their countries.

In the spirit of the "great society", let individuals make their own decisions about what overseas aid they will send, and where.

Abolish overseas aid tax! We haven't got the money anyway.

The chimera of man-made global warming

We know that previous warmings have not been caused by rises in atmospheric CO2 (yet they're not fully understood); we know about the lack of detailed correlation between the carbon dioxide and temperature records over the last 100 years; we know about the absence of the model-predicted temperature hotspot high in the tropical troposphere.

Now in a post on Watts Up With That "232 complete and unadjusted GHCN station records are analysed for step changes in the period 1960-2010", and it is argued that:

• Abrupt changes in temperature linked with natural climate events may be widely responsible for the “global warming” during the second half of the 20th century
   
• 50% of sample stations have not experienced increased mean temperature (”warming”) for more than 18 years
   
• 70% of Europe stations have not experienced warming for more than 20 years.
  

In short, if the theory of CO2 induced AGW didn't exist and someone now proposed it, they'd be laughed out of court.

The politicians who pauperise us with their adherence to this out of date superstition deserve worse than our contempt and rage.

We need to tell them loudly and repeatedly that we are not fooled.

Shale v wind again

The New Nostradamus of the North quotes Ronald Reagan saying

Don´t be afraid to see what you see.

He sees the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturer in trouble - that's those wind turbines that kill 440,000 birds each year in the US alone.

Unlike wind power, shale is not subsidised with money taken from taxpayers. The Marcellus shale is producing ethane, bringing the US the prospect of lower prices for auto parts, Styrofoam and other products.

As Nick Grealy writes:

Shale ripples through the economy as mega trend for the rest of the economy.

Next mega trend: Could the US disconnect from the rest of the world as global growth engine based on job creation in manufacturing? That story is six to twelve months away. Who would ever have seen that coming?

Note to the green boy and the Huhne loon: the days are past when our sources of information are limited to the BBC and the daily paper. We out here know this is going on.

Note to the Miliwimp: you could support shale in the interest of jobs and economic resurgence. You're paralysed by your political correctness.

Inside the Guardian ghetto

In writing on the occasion of a William Beveridge anniversary, Liam Byrne isn't out to present a scholarly summary of the famous Beveridge White Paper, he's testing how a few new welfare themes might be received in today's political climate.

The Guardian has picked a few readers' letters commenting on his article. Their choice tells you how extreme is The Guardian's ethos, how far adrift of current political reality.

Lead letter writer Professor David Byrne is presumably no relation to Liam. The Prof has certainly decided to use personal rudeness to make his point. For instance

... his article is an insult to the memory of Beveridge and to those who today have no work because the capitalist economy has failed them. Mass unemployment is, as Beveridge put it in his first book in 1909, primarily a problem of industry, of the system, rather than a result of the deficiencies of the unemployed.

Oh yes, excellent practical politics. The next prof wants everyone to have "a basic universal income, so that people do not feel compelled to avoid unpaid occupations". This would be financed by a wealth tax. Hm. Suppose everyone opted for unpaid occupations then?

After the two leftie profs, the next writer says the "mass unemployment that threatens this country" is (will be?) caused by "a capitalist system gone feral". Her solution?

We have to share around the products of a wealthy society and ensure the gap between rich and poor is viewed as a problem to be solved, not the normal consequence of capitalism.

State enforced equality for everyone, then?

The next prof is warning us that soon people "will find that they must pay for their healthcare, as the private corporations involved in clinical commissioning groups decide what they will and will not offer". Hm. His Labour government must have been spending all that money on something. What, then?

The next writer challenges Liam Byrne to come up with a new housing policy, and seems to want rent control, comparing policy on housing in the different society of the late 1940s with policies today. The current housing minister, Grant Shapps, has his faults (he is a Friend of the Earth), but he is making useful reforms to housing policy which eluded his predecessors.

Eyelids drooping? We'll look at just one more letter, where the writer has hit on the simple solution:

Were pensioners paid a decent pension and were employees paid a decent wage, there would be no need for these subsidies and our welfare benefit budget would fall dramatically.

And who's going to pay for that?

The Guardian has chosen for publication letters pushing points I've outlined above - far outside any mainline political discourse.

Are these kneejerks what passes for thinking in the Guardian ghetto?