Until fairly recently I had always assumed, as I suspect many people still do, that the Green Party was a well-meaning body for people who are not really interested in politics or economics, and as a result decide vote Green because they presumably want to protect our country side and wildlife. The naivety of a student eh? Since then of course, I have done my homework and discovered that this is not so and that the Green Party is actually an aggressive, self-righteous, closed minded, dogmatic descendant of those on the 19th & 20th Century extreme left. Do away with the failing old, in with the new paradise etc.
The recent figure that the Greens had taken over UKIP in terms of members made headlines, suggesting without cloak that they were the new party to watch out for and that UKIP was now old news so to speak. This was of course not the case, whilst the amount of members went up the amount of people supporting it barely moved. This can only have meant that people who were already voting Green decided to either fully join or renew their memberships, they are not hot on UKIP’s heels as Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll showed.
I disagree with the Greens on almost every single one of their main policies. Fair enough, so do many people vehemently disagree with me. What really disgusts me though is the pompous disregard for those who do not think the Greens have the right methods of keeping our planet healthy. It seems to have escaped their attention that you can be against windfarms and green levies, believe that low taxes are the best way forward and be sceptical about anthropogenic climate change and still be a moral, thinking individual.
Windfarms are an offense with no disguise. A large chunk of lazy metal, scarring our landscape. In 2013 the Public Accounts Committee produced a report highlighting the £17 billion used to subsidise landowners for this form ‘intermittent renewable’ energy (a term which should make even the greenest Greenie suspicious). On top of this however, goes the extra £1 million per week required to turn these ghastly things off when they need to be. Now, as far as intermittent renewables go these tasteless jokes are as intermittent as Ed Miliband’s successful PR stunts. They do not produce any energy when the wind is not blowing enough, and they do not produce any when it is blowing too hard, it has to be just right for the stubborn turbine. This is the equivalent of having Goldie Locks as our Secretary of State for Energy.
To give an idea of how useless they are being whilst destroying the scenery for hikers and country dwellers, The Telegraph studied a typical windfarm in Anglesey two years ago when a turbine in one full day produced enough energy to boil two kettles. Given the amount of money spent on these wind farms out of our £85 billion per year spent on renewable energy, we are currently applying to the Guinness Book of Records for the ‘Most Expensive Round of Teas & Coffees Ever Made on a National Scale’. One or two other issues worthy of note are that these ugly turbines have been known to kill bats and birds, and they also run on CO2 when the wind is not blowing enough… the very thing they’re supposed to reduce.
The problem is that this is all funded by the tax payer. Now this could be defended if Wind farms were any good. However seeing as this is so clearly not the case it is a waste of time to try and justify them. In so far as clean energy goes, the Greens have absolutely no moral superiority over anybody on this because there is almost nobody in favour of wrecking our planet, it is the only one we have. I for example would be in favour of solar panels on houses if people want to have them installed. I think tidal power would be wonderful provided it caused no harm and was in-keeping with our rivers. I like most people love our rivers and will not have them polluted. I love our country side, hate to see it destroyed or have anything industrial built on it where ever it can be avoided. I would sacrifice almost anything at any price to preserve our peaks and lakes, as I spend every second I can in these places. Nobody can tell me that I do not care about the environment or our land and it would be unjust to do so.
My question though is, does nobody think it is a little bit rich to charge all these measures to tax payers when the basis for their existence is so floored? To claim that the debate on man’s contribution to global warming is a settled one is an act of extraordinary dishonesty. This does not mean that it is not happening, but there so far seems to be no reason to assume that we are worsening it given the revelations of the Climategate scandal, and the nature of the confounded ‘evidence’ suggesting we are killing the planet. If you have read my last sentence and have already decided that this must be wrong because ‘everybody believes in it without question and it’s all over the news and things’ then you are at a disadvantage.
Read the criticisms of Al Gore’s Hockey Stick Graph, you’ll see that the hypothesis was based on tree ring data which gave completely unreliable results on the climate due entirely to the choice of tree. Research the arguments against manmade contributions and look at the scathing reviews of the global warming figures. The polar ice caps hugely increased in size only a couple of years ago, NASA rebutted its own figure which said 2014 was the hottest ear on record conceding that this was not true and independent scientists are wondering if the planet is about to go into a cooling period. Traced properly, the figure saying that 97% of scientists believe in manmade global warming will lead to the shocking revelation that this was based on a questionnaire submitted to thousands of scientists, to which most did not reply and the figure was based on the answers of 75 scientists. 75 scientists. So much for 97%. I believe one of the first questions on this was something like ‘Do you agree that the temperature has increased in the past 150 years’ or something to that effect. Well, since 1850 the increase in average temperature has been 0.8°C. There has been no increase in temperature since 1997/98 yet we have still been producing enormous amounts of CO2. Also, the weather in Britain is rubbish anyway. There are arguments against the motion, perhaps much stronger than those in favour and until manmade global warming has been proved beyond any doubt it is unfair to charge such sums. Our energy policies and useless green measures are decided almost entirely by the European Union, however the Green Party are quite clearly not the adequate response to this. Again to be clear, this does not mean we are not contributing to increased temperature, that is still possible. But there are those who maintain that there is NO reason to think that we are, and they are perfectly entitled to think this, it is perfectly reasonable. Personally, I am undecided.
Global Warming is still not settled, it is a theory. The debate is raging and anyway it seems to me that it would be better to use our cheap coal while we can. Lord Lawson spoke on climate change a few months ago, his reports showed just how little of the carbon emissions we are responsible for (something like 0.2%). If we were to completely eradicate all our emissions, China and India would replace it in under a year, so you tell me honestly if it is worth taking more money from people to subsidise these expensive and inefficient measures when we could put that money into developing things like soar, tidal or nuclear energy (which is nothing like the nuclear energy Homer Simpson works with for those of you who base your nuclear research on The Simpsons, it can be disposed of perfectly well in small glass containers).
Anyway, back to the Greens…
Along with their arbitrary partisan energy policies come a series of other questionable suggestions. Scrapping trident and reducing the armed forces? At a time when we can just about squeeze our army into Wembley stadium? At a time when we are frequently criticised by our allies and our own Generals for diminishing our armed forces to the point of evisceration? Who on earth could look the public in the eye and say that they do not need a strong army. Who will are enemies be in 10 years and what will their relative capabilities be if we further reduce our own. This is an error below a child. Replacing it with a ‘home defence’ force sounds very much to me like employing the cast from Dad’s Army to protect us. I would of course, trust Cpt. Mainwaring over the Greens. You cannot predict the future, and to curtail your armed forces is a very dangerous thing to do, whilst assuming everybody will always be nice.
The Greens suggest that if we want to sustain our planet then we will unfortunately have to shrink our economy. They call it ‘localising’ our economy which sounds great, but their means of achieving this are to ‘control imports’. Again, nothing seems too bad thus far but to reduce your imports (which is exactly what they intend to do it was revealed in Natalie Bennet’s ‘Car Crash’ interview with Andrew Neil) means you must also reduce your exports to avoid a trade deficit. This is explained in much better terms than I am prepared to give in chapter 12 of this book which I would recommend to everybody interested:
http://mises.org/sites/default/files/Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson_2.pdf
So now we have reduced our economy to conditions unspecified, Mainwaring and the Walmington-on-Sea platoon are waving their sticks and yelling at our enemies from the coast, LCpl. Jones is bellowing about how ‘they don’t like it up ’em’, and nobody can find solitude in our country land as it is now infested with the sleeping turbines. That’s the situation in our fictional Green Party world, and then they would also like to abolish our monarchy. I will say only this as people are already entrenched in their views on this. The monarchy may not do too much (apart from the Queen’s appointments per year which outnumber the number of days in the year, our Princes William & Harry’s rescue missions and bravery in Afghanistan, the incalculable stream of revenue they bring in each year in tourism alone, and the upholding of our traditions with tremendous commitment day in day out). So yeah, obviously they don’t do much but they prevent a more insidious agent taking their place, just like the king in chess. They offer the perfect balance to our parliament just by existing and obeying the unspoken traditions on which we depend. You make your own mind up.
So anyway, who votes for the Greens? Given that the appeal base presumably consists mostly of children, I think their membership would rocket if we progressively extended the vote to 16 year olds, then 12 year olds, then 5 year olds until eventually every sperm was encouraged to get down to their local polling station every time an election was held when they had been taken in by the heavenly utopia the Greens say they can give. But hey, just my opinion of course. Feel free to comment, criticise, render my arguments useless and change my mind with undeniable facts in the comment box!
consideringandranting 