Tuesday 11 June 2013

Greg Barker Next Scalp ?


Probably, if this were a World War II fighter base, the shooting down in flames of Tim Yeo MP would count as a shared kill. After all, we've each of us had a good burst at him – Christopher Booker, Richard North, David Rose, Bishop Hill and – the coup de grace! – the Sunday Times team responsible for that sting at the weekend.

For me, quite the biggest scandal of our era is the one involving energy policy and the great climate change scam. The damage it has done to our economy is incalculable. It has resulted in honest men from Johnny Ball and David Bellamy to Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley being vilified and marginalised, while dishonest men (whether grant-troughing scientists or cynical, greedy politicians or rent-seeking businesses) have been rewarded. It has damaged our landscape, corrupted public debate, ruined people's lives. It has enriched the few at the expense of the many.

None of this would have been possible without the complicity of politicians like Tim Yeo, Greg Barker, Chris Huhne, Peter Hain, Ed Davey, Luciana Berger, Alex Salmond, Lord Deben, Lord Marland, Greg Clark, and all the other assiduous promoters of the great "man-made-global-warming" myth. Each of them, Conservative, LibDem, Labour, SNP alike, has failed what I would consider to be the most basic test by which we should judge our politicians: have their policies made things better or worse for the electorate they supposedly serve?

In the case of almost every measure that has been introduced by parliament in the last twenty years or so – from the Climate Change Act to our current policies on wind farms, biomass and renewables generally – has been an abject disaster for the British people.

Tim Yeo, as we know, has been making £200,000 a year on top of his basic parliamentary salary from his various green business interests. What does it say about our political system that he was simultaneously permitted to act as chairman of the parliamentary committee charged with scrutinising the government department – DECC – primarily responsible for deciding green policy? And what does it say about the state of our media that this scandal was not exposed years ago?

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