Britain’s threat to bomb pro-Palestine Houthis ‘poses serious threat to world peace

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britains-threat-bomb-pro-palestine-houthis-pose-serious-threat-world-peace

BRITAIN’S threats to bomb the Yemeni Houthi movement for attacking Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea “pose a serious threat to world peace” and is “completely irresponsible,” anti-war campaigners warned today.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said that the government would not hesitate to take “direct action” on the Iranian-backed forces after the US military said four boats from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen fired at the Maersk Hangzhou and got within metres of the vessel.

Britain and the US were reportedly preparing a joint statement to issue a final warning to the Houthis.

Stop The War Coalition’s Lindsey German said that the action would be “another potential escalation” in the Middle East, warning that it is “the last thing we need.”

She told the Star: “We have got Israel bombing Gaza on a daily basis with terrible consequences and so far the war hasn’t spread further than Palestine, but the truth is the Israelis are threatening to launch attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“People might wonder what British and US ships are doing in the Middle East and they have to realise they are contributing to a very dangerous situation which may lead to a regional war.”

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britains-threat-bomb-pro-palestine-houthis-pose-serious-threat-world-peace

Continue ReadingBritain’s threat to bomb pro-Palestine Houthis ‘poses serious threat to world peace

Greta Thunbeg hits out at government’s Rosebank oil field plans as ‘out of touch with reality’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/greta-thunbeg-hits-out-government-rosebank-plans-out-touch-reality

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaking on the Pyramid Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. Picture date: Saturday June 25, 2022.

INTERNATIONAL climate activist Greta Thunberg condemned the British government as “out of touch with reality” today as she joined protesters in London against the Rosebank oil field.

Campaigners gathered outside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero against the proposed plans for the new site off the Shetland coast.

The plans were originally expected to get approved before parliamentary recess this month but have been delayed over climate concerns.

Ms Thunberg said that a decision by Energy Secretary Grant Shapps to approve oil and gas explorations at Britain’s largest site would be “deliberately destructive.”

The Swedish activist said: “How can the British government even consider pressing ahead with new drilling when we can see what the burning of fossil fuels is doing to the climate and to people?

“The extreme weather events being experienced around the world right now is just a taste of what’s to come if we don’t get off fossil fuels.”

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/greta-thunbeg-hits-out-government-rosebank-plans-out-touch-reality

Continue ReadingGreta Thunbeg hits out at government’s Rosebank oil field plans as ‘out of touch with reality’

Grant Shapps brutally mocked for ‘invoicing’ Labour for damage caused by Just Stop Oil

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https://leftfootforward.org/2023/07/grant-shapps-brutally-mocked-for-invoicing-labour-for-damage-caused-by-just-stop-oil/

Just Stop Oil paint the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero
Just Stop Oil paint the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero

{Wow, what an nut Shapps is, that takes some effort} The Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, has been ridiculed after his latest political stunt spectacularly backfired.

After campaigners from the climate protest group Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint onto the department for energy security and net zero’s headquarters in Westminster on Wednesday after its decision to issue more than 100 new oil and gas licences in the UK, Shapps decided to invoice the Labour Party for the damage to the building.

The Tory minister drew on a familiar baseless Tory attack line, posting a ridiculous letter on Twitter and claiming that Just Stop Oil was the ‘political wing of the Labour Party’.

The Tories have repeatedly tried to claim, incorrectly, that Just Stop Oil funds the Labour Party. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak previously made the claim which was fact checked and proven to be false by organisations such as Full Fact which wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to prove his claim.

Continue ReadingGrant Shapps brutally mocked for ‘invoicing’ Labour for damage caused by Just Stop Oil

The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Grant Shapps

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Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.

Liz Truss’s short-lived cabinet was very climate sceptic with Jacob Rees-Mogg appointed as as secretary of state for business and energy, Kwasi Kwarteng and Suella Braverman. https://gal-dem.com/conservative-cabinet-members-climate-change-liz-truss/ discussing Liz Truss’s cabinet

After examining the climate voting history of the entire new Tory cabinet (via the website TheyWorkForYou), gal-dem can report that every single person has either generally or consistently voted against climate change measures. Surprisingly, while some of the cabinet members had expressed that climate change is man-made and an urgent issue in press interviews or online, they still voted against any mitigation or adaptation policies, and often looked to unviable solutions such as carbon capture.

The most worrying appointment is Jacob Rees-Mogg as business, energy and industrial strategy secretary. The climate denialist will now oversee the government department responsible for energy and climate change. Climate organisers are deeply worried about what this will mean for the UK. 

“Putting someone who recently suggested that ‘every last drop’ of oil should be extracted from the North Sea in charge of energy policy is deeply worrying for anyone concerned about the deepening climate emergency, solving the cost-of-living crisis and keeping our fuel bills down for good,” says Dave Timms, Friends of the Earth’s head of political affairs. Indeed, Rees-Mogg is likely to push the idea that more fossil fuels are a solution to the energy crisis, when it is really our long-term reliance on gas and oil and inaction on energy efficiency that has sent energy bills shooting through the roof. Contrary to popular belief, and the Tory line on the energy crisis, Russia cutting off the gas supply to Europe is only a part of the problem.

Surviving from Truss’s cabinet into Sunak’s you have the climate action hostile Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.

https://gal-dem.com/conservative-cabinet-members-climate-change-liz-truss/

Suella Braverman – Home Secretary

The new home secretary, who ran for leader this summer, accepted £10,000 from a leading climate sceptic to support her campaign. She also argued that the UK should suspend its legally binding commitment to net zero by 2050 and blamed the energy crisis on our green commitments. This is, of course, false. The current energy crisis is due to the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels, the wholesale prices of which have surged. 

Unsurprisingly, Braverman almost always voted against measures to prevent climate change.

https://socialistworker.co.uk/the-troublemaker/climate-change-denial-lobbyists-access-cabinet/

Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch met secretly with a US think tank that has taken millions of dollars from climate denial groups. She also claimed it would be “irresponsible” for Britain to follow climate science. Badenoch met ­representatives of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which campaigners say has a long track record of “distorting” climate science.

Yet Badenoch dined with lobbyists in November while on an official visit to the US. The  AEI has received more than £265 million in donations from climate denial groups since 2008, including almost £4 million from US oil giant ExxonMobil mScant details of the meeting were published by Badenoch’s department last week, as her Indo‑Pacific trade deal faced criticism for “making a ­mockery” of British pledges to tackle deforestation.

The AEI, which also met with Liz Truss in 2018 when she was trade secretary, has sown doubt over climate change science. It described  the landmark 2021 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as ­“alarmist” and “deeply dubious”.Benjamin Zycher and Peter J Wallison, senior fellows at the AEI, played down its findings by claiming that “we don’t understand all the elements in the complex climate system—the effects of clouds alone are understood poorly”.

The think tank also ­separately criticised Cop 26, the annual UN climate conference hosted by Britain in 2021. One of its authors claimed that delegates spread a “false narrative” that urgent action is required. Badenoch also gave a speech at another US think tank, the Cato Institute, during her official visit.It was founded by ­billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, one of the top funders of climate denial in the US. Cato is “focused on ­disputing the science behind global warming,” according to Greenpeace US. The minister gave a speech promoting free trade at the institute’s headquarters in Washington DC in which she hinted that some climate change policies could “impoverish” Britain.“We can and should solve it by using free trade and investment to accelerate the technological progress that will protect the planet. We must protect the planet in a way that does not impoverish the UK, the US or, let’s be honest, any other country,” she said.

Grant Shapps appointed by Sunak as Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is a regrettable move.

Outgoing climate chief ‘disappointed’ by Tory and Labour net zero plan

The outgoing chair of the UK Government’s statutory climate advisers has been left “extremely disappointed and increasingly concerned” that neither the Tories nor Labour are prioritising a move to net zero.

Lord Deben was asked on Times Radio, whether he was “surprised” by the lack of enthusiasm for the climate crisis by both major parties at Westminster, giving the scale of the challenge to tackle it.

In response, Lord Deben said: “Well, I don’t think I’m surprised, I’m just extremely disappointed and increasingly concerned because it seems to me that it is the priority.

“There is nothing more important than securing the world for our children.

“And indeed, I may be quite old now, but it’s securing it for me, because this is changing so fast that we are going to make the world an impossible place for us to live in the way in which we have lived up to now.”

Continue ReadingThe climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Grant Shapps

Coming soon: The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet

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It appears that Sunak has assembled a cabinet of facilitators of climate destruction – like Rishi Sunak himself and Grant Shapps – as well as some outright climate-change deniers like Suella Brverman. Still being a climate-change denier is ridiculous or insane and most definitely shows defective judgement.

Continue ReadingComing soon: The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet

Starmer, Reeves, Streeting, Khan, Sarwar party with Murdoch

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use.

Contempt for ordinary people paraded again

Image of Rupert Murdoch, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves, participants at Murdoch's summer party.
Keir Starmer, his mini-me Wes Streeting, the dire Rachel Reeves have partied with S*n owner Rupert Murdoch and a string of Tories at his ‘summer party’, including Rishi Sunak, Suella ‘ship them all to Rwanda’ Braverman, disgraced former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and ‘Scum’ hacks:

The contempt of Starmeroids for ordinary people has long been on show, with Starmer writing repeatedly, and Reeves and Streeting at least once, for Murdoch’s ‘Scum’ rag despite its lies, racism and its decades-long smear campaign against the victims and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster.

So great is the arrogance of the Labour right that they no longer even bother to try to hide their billionaire fetish and barely even try to pretend that they have the needs of ordinary people remotely at heart. No doubt the apologists for the ghoulish regime will roll out their tired excuse that the party needs to appeal to the hard-right readers of the S*n, but appealing to the millions who need real change is clearly an idea that has been passed through the shredder repeatedly to make sure the interests of the rich and powerful are not threatened.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use.

Continue ReadingStarmer, Reeves, Streeting, Khan, Sarwar party with Murdoch

Grant Shapps assures the UK’s oil and gas industry it has his full support to continue drilling 

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https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/industry/grant-shapps-assures-the-uks-oil-and-gas-industry-it-has-his-full-support-to-continue-drilling/

Meanwhile, at the Royal Courts of Justice, campaigners celebrated a High Court ruling that granted charity Greenpeace permission to proceed with a judicial review of new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea.

The UK’s Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, has reassured Britain’s oil and gas industry that it has his full support to continue North Sea drilling during a keynote speech given at the Spectator’s Energy Summit on Wednesday.

At the event, which was sponsored by National Gas as well as Drax, Shapps told an audience mostly composed of energy sector professionals that it “simply makes no sense whatsoever to deny our own oil and gas, and instead import it – with twice the embedded carbon – from elsewhere in the world”. He added that it is “very important” to understand that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognises the need for “some” oil and gas production in 2050 when the UK has reached net zero.

Meanwhile, just one mile down the road at the Royal Courts of Justice, campaigners celebrated a High Court ruling that granted charity Greenpeace permission to proceed with a judicial review of the government’s decision to launch a new oil and gas licensing round in the North Sea.

On Wednesday morning, the judge gave Greenpeace permission to conduct a full judicial review into the government’s failure to take into account the environmental effects of consuming the oil and gas due to be extracted in the new licensing round, in which fossil fuel companies submitted more than 100 licences for exploration. 

“See you in court” one campaigner wrote on Twitter tagging Shapps, who was in the process of assuring his audience that the government “will not shy away from awarding new licences where they are justified”. The fate of the controversial Rosebank oil field, with the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil and therefore exceed the UK’s carbon budget, remains undecided.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/industry/grant-shapps-assures-the-uks-oil-and-gas-industry-it-has-his-full-support-to-continue-drilling/

Continue ReadingGrant Shapps assures the UK’s oil and gas industry it has his full support to continue drilling