High-Profile Allies of Anti-Net Zero Parliamentary Group Revealed in Telegraph Letter

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog according to their republishing guidelines.

Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. Credit: Simon Dawson / 10 Downing StreetCC BY-NC-ND 2.0

New allies of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) of MPs and Lords have today been revealed in a letter published by the Telegraph

The NZSG campaigns against the UK’s legally binding net zero commitments. The letter reveals new supporters among influential Conservative MPs and peers not previously known to back the group including former Business and Energy Secretary Jacob Rees-MoggLord Frost, Iain Duncan Smith, Andrea Jenkyns, Jonathan Gullis, and Miriam Cates. 

The chair of the NZSG, Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, coordinated the letter – which called for the suspension of a UK scheme that imposes costs on energy-intensive industries for their carbon emissions. The letter was signed by 29 Conservative MPs and peers.

The revelation comes as the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on climate change, today stated that the UK is missing its climate targets on nearly every front. 

The government has been criticised for supporting the continued exploration of North Sea oil and gas sites, in the face of warnings from international climate and energy bodies. Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, has said that political leadership was “missing” in the pursuit of net zero. 

“The CCC’s report could hardly have been more damning – tearing the government to shreds over its abysmal progress on tackling the climate emergency, and its utterly misleading arguments that fossil fuel expansion is somehow necessary before reaching net zero,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told DeSmog.

“Yet this letter from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group proves that Rishi Sunak has clearly been spending more time listening to a group of climate delayers and deniers in his own party, rather than scientists and independent experts … It’s time for the prime minister to slam the door in the face of fossil fuel interests once and for all.”

All signatories of the letter were asked by DeSmog to confirm whether they were members of NZSG. Only two of the 29 parliamentarians – Conservative MPs Holly Mumby-Croft and Jack Brereton – denied being formally part of the group, while a third, Kelly Tolhurst, said that she was in favour of net zero but that “there is not just one way to meet net zero and it is right to raise concerns over policy that could impact the competitiveness of the UK.”

Founded in 2021, the NZSG has never released a full list of its members, meaning that the parliamentarians linked to the group can only be discerned from the individuals who sign its public letters. 

The New Allies

The list of NZSG allies released today includes individuals associated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s principal climate science denial group, which has extensive ties with the parliamentary caucus.

The letter in the Telegraph was signed by Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns and Lord Frost, both of whom are directors at the GWPF, which regularly questions the scientific basis of human-caused climate change. 

The majority (54 percent) of Conservative MPs who signed the NZSG letter are either current or former members of the European Research Group (ERG) – a faction of the Conservative Party that supported a ‘hard’ Brexit and was reportedly the model for the NZSG.

This includes Rees-Mogg, a former chair of the ERG who served as Business and Energy Secretary from September to October 2022. As revealed by DeSmog, Rees-Mogg spoke of his desire for people to “stop demonising oil and gas” in a private meeting with the head of the United Arab Emirates’s state investment company while serving in the cabinet. 

Rees-Mogg has a long record of opposing climate action. In 2014 he claimed that efforts to limit global warming “would have no effect for hundreds or possibly a thousand years” and in 2013 he blamed high energy prices on “climate alarmism.”

Rees-Mogg currently hosts a show on climate sceptic broadcaster GB News, as do fellow NZSG signatories Esther McVey and Philip Davies

New MPs not previously associated with the NZSG include Miriam Cates, Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who at the National Conservatism Conference in May claimed that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” among young people are being caused by teaching, among other things, that “humanity is killing the Earth”.

The NZSG allies also include several parliamentarians embroiled in controversies. For example, Reclaim Party MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the Conservative Party in April for comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust. 

The Reclaim Party itself has a history of opposing climate action. Its website says that “net zero climate policies punish the poorest in society” and the party’s leader Laurence Fox has argued for scrapping “those woke billions” that “we are spending each year to appease the sun monster with offerings of net zero”.

Another signatory of the NZSG letter was Scott Benton, who had the Conservative whip suspended in April after a newspaper sting caught him offering to lobby on behalf of the gambling industry and leak confidential documents.

The full list of signatories was as follows: Craig Mackinlay, Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, Sir Jacob Rees-MoggLord FrostEsther McVeySir John Redwood, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Sir Robert Syms, Mark Francois, David Jones, Kelly Tolhurst, Sammy Wilson, Andrew Lewer, Jack Brereton, Miriam Cates, Chris Green, Jonathan Gullis, Philip Hollobone, Adam Holloway, Julian Knight, Marco Longhi, Karl McCartney, Holly Mumby-Croft, Philip Davies, Bob Seely, Greg Smith, Andrew Bridgen, Scott Benton, Baroness Foster of Oxton, Baroness Lea of Lymm, Lord Lilley, Lord Moylan, Lord Strathcarron.

Greg Smith told DeSmog that he is “committed to challenging assumptions on the best way to end our reliance on fossil fuels and decarbonisation.”

He added: “There is a lot of groupthink in this space that just doesn’t stack up when challenged and it is better to work out the better solutions now than wait for them to go wrong and mess up people’s lives.”

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group was set up in 2021 and campaigns against climate action and for more fossil fuel extraction. The group has publicly pushed for more North Sea oil and gas exploration, the removal of green levies from energy bills, and lifting the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas.  

As DeSmog has reported, the group has extensive ties to the GWPF and its campaign arm Net Zero Watch (NZW) – sharing personnel, resources, and campaign goals. 

NZSG chair Craig Mackinlay’s has employed GWPF and NZW head of policy Harry Wilkinson, a former researcher for GWPF founder Nigel Lawson, as a parliamentary aide. At the time of its launch, NZSG’s deputy chair Steve Baker MP was a director of the GWPF, and received £5,000 from GWPF chair Neil Record while in that role. 

Baker, who is not on today’s list, stepped down from GWPF in September to become a government minister, and in October said he was still administrator of the NZSG’s WhatsApp group but was no longer lobbying the government on climate policies. He received another £10,000 from Record in February.

NZSG’s policy demands track those of NZW, and Mackinlay has helped promote NZW reports. In March 2022, Mackinlay gave a supportive quote to a NZW report calling for “rapid” new North Sea exploration and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

The GWPF continues to deny climate science. A recent paper called the UK’s record temperatures in 2022, which saw a 40C heatwave, “a warm year, but unalarming”. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost body of climate scientists, says that “Climate change has already increased the magnitude and frequency of extreme hot events” and that “future extreme events will also occur with unprecedented frequency”.

The GWPF’s influence also appears to be growing. In May, Allison Pearson, the Daily Telegraph’s chief interviewer and a columnist at the newspaper, joined the GWPF board, where she sits with former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Lord Frost, and Andrea Jenkyns. 

Craig Mackinlay was approached for comment. 

Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog according to their republishing guidelines.

Continue ReadingHigh-Profile Allies of Anti-Net Zero Parliamentary Group Revealed in Telegraph Letter

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

Universal Credit forces people to use foodbanks

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Universal Credit was is Iain Duncan Smith’s project to do away with many ‘legacy’ benefits for them to be replaced with one benefit. Affecting low-paid workers as well an non-workers, UC is a terrible mess and not fit for purpose.

It is disappointing that Citizens’ Advice Bureaux have accepted £51M (39?) from the government to advise UC claimants.

Foodbank use to soar after next stage of universal credit, Trussell Trust warns

GOVERNMENT plans to move more people onto universal credit (UC) could lead to a huge increase in those turning to foodbanks to survive, the Trussell Trust warned yesterday.

The charity, which runs more than 400 foodbanks across Britain, said that demand in areas where UC has been in place for at least 12 months has increased by 52 per cent, compared with 13 per cent in areas where the new benefit has been in place for three months or less.

Benefit problems are the main reason for referrals to receive emergency food supplies, the trust said, adding that people moving onto UC account for a rising proportion of foodbank referrals.

Waits for the first payment and the shift to the new system have been blamed for causing hardship.

 

Continue ReadingUniversal Credit forces people to use foodbanks

New Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

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New Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

Now you see it…  Now you don’t.  The government’s rustled up a party trick for the kids this Christmas. They’re going to make 3.7 million of them disappear.

Britain’s children aren’t going anywhere, of course, particularly those who are growing up poor. But with a legislative sleight of hand, the government plans to quietly give up on the targets to end child poverty enshrined (with cross-party support) in the Child Poverty Act 2010.

And with it, they’re hoping to magic away any mention of child poverty at all. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission will become the Social Mobility Commission. The Child Poverty Act will become the Life Chances Act.

All this is more than a little politically convenient.  Apart from a solitary BBC Today programme interview with Iain Duncan Smith last year, which left presenter Evan Davis audibly flabbergasted, not even the Government claims it is on track to meet the child poverty targets.

Indeed, the latest available projections, from the Resolution Foundation, warn child poverty will rise from 2.3m children to 3.3m by 2020 – a figure that will be even higher once the poverty-producing impact of the Summer Budget and the Autumn Statement is totted up.

 

I suppose there may be a few chimneys left for them to sweep and the poverty will keep them small enough.

Continue ReadingNew Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

Shall we start a new series ~ A DECADE AGO TODAY?

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W(h)ell it’s coming up for it, no?

A decade ago today …

I’ts coming up for G8 at Gleneagles, 7/7 and you can’t go down here, we haven’t let those undesirable lefties die yet, terrorism BS, the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.

There is an issue here. It is that corporate media participated in this absolute BS. Corporate media participated – it’s more than participated in – more like were ever so willing and ready to usurp democracy and support Fascism.

edit: Corporate Media loved that Alasister Campbell BS. Well he was still there wasn’t he – Alasister the people’s princess Campbell?

It’s terribly dangerous down there. There are people dying and we’ve got to let them die to get the numbers right. Oh not those sisters from Kentucky of course. No, we only let those people die that we want dead. Don’t imagine that we don’t have such terrible trouble identifying who we want to die of course – they don’t have wallets full of credit cards or mobile phones. Oh no, we couldn’t possibly identify who takes a day or two to die.

and we’ve got to get the numbers right

for the

53rd victim

of the Londond bombings

17/6/15 I think that I’m probably not going to do that actually. It’s there for anyone to investigate – I think that it’s actually quite blatant. I find it very weird that people are wanting to believe people that have proved themselves repeatedly to be totally untrustworthy. Isn’t that weird? I think that it is.

Perhaps the real point is that if you want to know the real truthy reality about things it is not at all difficult. Basically you investigate for yourself. A tiny bit of your own investigation is often enough. Don’t we know that nation states do terrorist atrocities? 911? There is one state where their speciality is bus bombings … and then they take it on tour.

Why do people want to believe such so discredited sources? Think about it for a moment. This person has been proved to be so divorced from the truth and yet you want to accept it without question? The SAS caught in Iraq dressed as Iraqis with a car bomb? That John Reid is such an evil bstard. Charlie Hebdo? Oh FO. It’s almost as if you deserve it.

Don’t you realise that the governments are the terrorists? They do it so that they stay in power by keeping you scared. Can’t you see that?

Terrorism provides them with a distraction to so absolutely useless they are. Iain Duncan Smith with universal credit that hasn’t worked for so many years. Do you think that perhaps he just wants to kill disabled people? That may be a more realistic conclusion. The Health and Social Care Bill. What absolute nonsense that was. Was it intended to FU the NHS? Was that the intention – just feck it up so much?

3am 17/6/15 I do hope that people recognise that the BS they get from corporate sources is exactly that, that governments are evil and rule through using deception and fear, that democracy is an illusion, etc.

I used to refrain myself by the concept of democracy. When you analyse it, it seems just an illusion of representative democracy – voting machines with hanging chads and the New Labour tarty’s promotion of absentee (postal) voting.

The police have been killing people with impunity.

A foreign state has been killed a poor innocent person on the tube and Ian Blair, Tony Blair and all the rest of them have covered it up …

Hardly a democracy, is it?

3.25 Total cnuts: Ian and Tony, Reid, the blind cnut, Clarke, I’ll think of some more. They were in government, they’re not anymore. I wonder if they thought they had omniscient loins when they were in government. Tonee and his flatmate are paedos. Er, I’m not just saying that because I hate them.

3.32 I want hard techno

Continue ReadingShall we start a new series ~ A DECADE AGO TODAY?

Some thinks …

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Thinks to be ammended, changed

Thing(k)s have moved on now since I was politically active.

I think (consider) that it was well out of order that I was (am) considered a suspected terrrist through legitimate political activism. edit: the point here is that legitimate political activists are (were?) labelled and persecuted as terrorists – and consequently subject to arbitary execution – instead of being recognised and respected as participants as should be the case in any democratic society.

It’s outrageous that totally innocent, unsuspecting people were killed for the Neo-Con New Labour project. It lead to the absolute fallacy of UK suicide bombers. The governments of that era are the terrorists and there is evidence of that. Almost a decade ago now and look what they have created … edit: The governments are still the terrrists – Charlie Hebdo BS.

It’s also outrageous that none of them have been held to account for their not only outrageous but clearly so illegal actions. Rendition, state-sponsored terrorism, just plainly covering-up for a blatant murder at Stockwell tube station. edit: I could call it a state-sponsored execution and I know what state did it.

,,,

TBC

3.50 13/6/15 And now we have these incompetent upper-class twats who appear to be lacking in legitimacy (elections). edit: The problem is that if they were not legitimately elected then … are any laws passed legitimate? if they’re not a legitimate government, what of attempts to displace them?

They’re very keen on blaming poor people instead of bankers and their rich mates. Iain Duncan Smith seems very keen on killing people.

edit; They like killing foxes and badgers.

3am 14/6/15

It’s very dark isn’t it? Has it always been this dark and disgusting?

I regarded Tonee as totally insane and installed into his position. Is this continuing? Are leaders of the Labour Party installed by a greater power? and it follows according to their agenda?

Maybe we should ask those labour party members that attend bilderberg meetings? They won’t tell you actually.

They do plan decades ahead. I’m pleased and proud that I played my part in knocking those plans off course. US official policy as prescribed by PNAC was to fight many wars on many fronts. That didn’t work did it?

PNAC policy appears to be total domination of everything. I oppose that.

4.08 14/6/15 PNAC policy is also fake manufactured terrorism. I oppose that too.

Continue ReadingSome thinks …

Some light Christmas reading

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A few politics articles for light Christmas reading …

Why are taxpayers spending £60m on a bridge for Joanna Lumley?

The bridge has been sold as a new public right of way by Johnson. In reality it is anything but. TfL’s business case suggests that just 0.03% of all those using the bridge will be people making new trips. The rest will be either tourists or others already on the Southbank.

So who will benefit from this bridge? Well according to the business plan, the biggest benefit of the bridge will be to “residential property values”. Incredibly, they estimate that the bridge will raise local property values by an estimated £84 million.

So excellent news for the tiny number of wealthy property owners in central London. Not so good news for the millions of people struggling to afford the cost of their monthly travelcard to work.

TfL bury Boris bike fare hike under the Christmas tree

Bullingdon Tory idiot Boris Johnson

The cycle hire scheme, perhaps Boris Johnson’s most notable achievement as mayor, has so far been serially underused, with a complex hiring mechanism turning potential users away.

Promised “at no cost to taxpayers” it remains substantially subsidised to the tune of millions of pounds a year.

A poor value-for-money sponsorship deal with Barclays and a complex hiring mechanism, means that it has so far failed to generate anything like enough revenue to cover its costs.

Iain Duncan Smith to meet Universal Credit target in 700 years’ timeImage of IDS Iain Duncan Smith

Ian Duncan Smith promised that more than a million people would be signed up to his universal credit scheme by April 2014, with twelve million signed up by 2017.

However, new figures released today reveal the DWP currently have just 17,850 people on their caseload.

This means that at the current rate of progress, it will take them almost 700 more years to meet their original target of twelve million.

Christmas cannot be captured in fairytale endings, Archbishop warns

[T]he true spirit of Christmas cannot be captured in fairytale endings, the Archbishop of Canterbury will tell the faithful.

Life-size cardboard Ed Miliband cutout ‘held HOSTAGE’ after being ‘stolen’ from County Hall

A statement from Worcestershire County Council read: “We are aware that a life-sized picture has gone missing out of the Labour room within County Hall.

“Staff and elected members are working closely to ensure that it is returned and this situation is concluded.”

The cut-out is the same height as the Labour leader – at 5ft 9in.

It is alleged that prior to its disappearance, some staff members turned the cardboard Ed around so people walking past could only see his backside in the window.

Continue ReadingSome light Christmas reading

Appeal against the bedroom tax!

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There’s a judgement that says a bedroom is a room furnished as a bedroom or used to sleep in. All bedroom tax decisions can be appealed. Time is running out to appeal.

The Bedroom Tax is Dead here’s why | SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites)

Bedroom Tax – Finally Killed by Plain Old Common-Sense?

The effect of this outbreak of common-sense is that, potentially, any or all of the original Bedroom Tax decisions taking effect last April are wrong – as councils cannot have known the actual situation and were making decisions based on an assumption that the rooms concerned were bedrooms. What’s more, despite the time elapsed since then, these decisions are still appealable – appeals can be accepted up to thirteen months after the date of the original decision. This clearly makes it important to act quickly. Anyone in any doubt about the correctness of their Bedroom Tax decision should write to the local authority decision-maker and seek an appeal in their own individual case. But this must be done soon – it will probably be too late by April.

The implications of this legal development may even go so far as to invalidate all of the decisions. If a room isn’t habitually used as a bedroom, it may fall outwith the normal everyday definition of the word – and therefore beyond the scope of the legislation as it stands. Technically, in order to assess whether a particular room qualifies as a “bedroom”, the local authority would have to go out and inspect it. In practice, this would be a task on a scale made impossible by limitations on resources. But unless a property has been thus assessed, then no decision can properly be made.

 

Continue ReadingAppeal against the bedroom tax!