Blair's Nuclear Legacy

Tony Blair's announcement tonight that nuclear power is "back on the agenda with a vengeance" reveals several interesting facets of his leadership.

For an issue of such national importance, he chose to reveal his pro-nuclear position to the employers' club, the CBI. Blair's last major announcement on energy in November 2005 was coincidentally at another CBI shindig. The message to the people is clear. Blair couldn't care less about the opinion of the public when it comes to important issues like energy and the environment, but makes sure that the interests of big business are pandered to.

By pre-empting the conclusions of the energy review, Blair is also saying that consultation is useless in the face of his own personal opinion. The Sustainable Development Commission has worked hard in producing a way forward in solving our energy problems without resorting to nuclear power. Jonathon Porrit must feel somewhat let down. Perhaps by being close to government Porrit felt he would have an opportunity to convey a green influence over government policy. This doesn't seem to be the case.

The drive to change the planning process to speed up the delivery of new nuclear power stations represents a shift of power from local planning authorities to the government. The planning system is already heavily weighted in the favour of developers. So much for David Miliband MP's 'practice of empowerment'.

Recent commentaries over Tony Blair's accession planning have hinted that he wants to leave a lasting legacy. Given that waste from nuclear power stations will be around in a radioactive state for tens of thousands of years, it seems that Blair's Legacy will still be here long after the Pyramids have turned to dust.

Brown fails the environment - again

Despite his promises to make this year's Budget a 'carbon budget', Chancellor Gordon Brown has failed yet again to provide an adequate Budget response to the threat of climate change. In summary, he will:

• Freeze fuel duty increases until September
• Apply a zero road tax rate for the "most environmentally friendly" cars and a new rate of £210 for the 1% highest carbon emitters
• Retain home insulation grants to ensure a quarter of a million extra homes would be insulated over the next two years
• "Plan to" index the climate change levy in line with inflation from 2007 to cut CO2 emissions further
• Set up a new £1bn energy and environmental research institute, funded by government and private industry
• Introduce new incentives for piloting smart metering and a new labelling scheme for energy efficient goods to make homes greener
  

He failed to:

• Take any steps to curb the increase of emissions from the growth in aviation
• Introduce nationwide council tax rebates and cut stamp duty for low-carbon, energy efficient homes to encourage householders to be more energy efficient, and install micro-generation systems
• Reduce VAT on home insulation
• Introduce tax breaks, grants and other incentives for householders to install micro-generation systems
• Set an annual carbon budget
  

Environmentally, his Budget is a failure.

Don't do as I do

On the same day, Prince Charles claimed that climate change is the world's greatest threat. Whilst even the greenest of us suffer from pangs of guilt over our lifestyles, the Prince seems to be oblivious that such a statement from a man who flies everywhere, and drives guzzling Aston Martins, has a hint of hypocrisy.

Good day for good laws

It's great news that the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill passed its reading on Friday 17th March and finally looks like it is passing up to the House of Lords. This Bill will make it simpler for householders to fit microgeneration equipment like solar panels, domestic wind turbines, and combined heat & power units (CHP), and connect them to the grid to sell surplus electricity to wholesalers. This would mean that each home (and business) could become energy generators, reversing the trend to large remote sites. The Bill will also require Government and local authorities to implement, and measure the effectiveness of, strategies to combat climate change.

My MP (South Shields), David Miliband, couldn't attend.

Press pedal power

Tyneside newspaper the Journal quoted two extreme organisations in its article ‘Police, Camera, Crash’ on 6th March. It's clear that the newspaper has it’s own anti speed camera agenda.

The paper described the Association of British Drivers as 'a leading motoring group', which seems odd, as it isn't clear in which field the lobby group is leading. It certainly isn't membership as the ABD has less than 5,000 paid up members - a tiny proportion of the UK's 31 million drivers. It can't be in common sense as the ABD portrays climate change as a conspiracy. It isn't road safety as it campaigns to increase speed limits and classifies 20 mile per hour Home Zones as having "unreasonably low speed limits". The ABD is so rabid that it praised the prosecution of a nine-year-old road accident victim in Switzerland. Sensibly, the case was dismissed.

The Journal also quoted ABD affliliate Paul Smith. His ironically named "Safe Speed" organisation follows pretty much the same old anti speed camera pattern. The poor chap seems to have squandered years seeking in vain for proof that speed cameras make roads more dangerous.

It's a pity that in the interests of balance the Journal failed to get opinion from the likes of to Transport 2000 or Road Block to at least try and present an unbiased picture.

Instead of being the 'Voice of the North, it looks the Journal is happy being Voice of the Driver.

New Labour loses old values

It seems that New Labour have begun to shrug off the last shackles of socialist ideology in Stephen Byers' announcement that the party's connections with the unions should be 'modernised', as he euphemistically put it.

Although the unions have for a long time played dead for New Labour, it seems they're not going to be 'playing' the part for long. New Labour doesn't want a "small, unrepresentative number of people" to affect Labour's policy making.

There is some hypocrisy here. Whilst the unions are being put out into the cold, New Labour welcomes the fat cats and consultants into it's loving tendrils.

Angry doodles

The clinically stupid and plain racist are up in arms, outraged that our boys in blue in London failed to bag loads of arrests at recent demonstrations against the so-called 'Muhammad Cartoons' in London. Apparently those protesters with the more militant bent should have been arrested for their threats of violence and revenge.

I don't believe that we should give in our rights to free speech every time someone's religious feelings are hurt. We've seen it with the efforts of the fantical Christian Voice's attempts to shut down "Jerry Springer - The Opera", and Sikh groups stopping the play "Behzti".

Anyhow, if your god or prophet is blessed and all-powerful, cartoons taking the piss aren't going to bother you too much. Besides, if it does get up your god's nose, he (assuming a your god is a man) can just send the cartoonists a plague of locusts, smite their asses, or simply wait until judgement day (or whatever day of reckoning your god has) to remind the doodlers of their evil deeds.

However, many fail to realise that protests like this are intelligence gold for the security services. Most demonstrations now, irrespective of the political purpose, have in attendance a contingent of police (and likely other security services) whose sole purpose at these events is to collect intelligence. Thousands of photographs and hours of video footage is taken and pored over by excited spooks.

Perhaps there is a point that the law should be seen to served. But any heavy handed attempts by the plod to wade into these demonstrations arresting folk would just scatter the radicals to whatever dark corner they came from.

So whilst it would be nice and suit our sensibilities to see these yobs arrested, it isn't the clever thing to do.

Opus doosie

Catholic group Opus Dei want the film version of The Da Vinci Code given an adult rating.

A spokesman said: "Any adult can distinguish reality from fiction. But you cannot expect a child to make proper judgements."

Following the logic that kids can't handle fiction, the Bible should be given an 18 rating, and the Church prevented from peddling their God stuff to impressionable childen.

South Tyneside Road Rage

South Tyneside Council have consulted fringe raging road lobby group the Association of British Drivers (ABD) over the borough's new road safety policy. The ABD group wants higher speeds on our roads, categorises South Tyneside's 20mph home zones as having "unreasonably low speed limits", and has spent years claiming that speeding doesn’t cause accidents.

It's easy to come to the conclusion that asking the ABD's opinions on road safety is like consulting the BNP on racial harmony.

Fog lamps

It seems odd that so many folk driving around don't seem to know that fog lamps are for when the weather is foggy. Are they ignorant of the fact that fog lamps burn the retinas of oncoming drivers, or is a sport amongst the more stupid of our road users? Perhaps the poor souls don't know how to switch their fog lamps off, like BMW drivers who don't seem to know where the indicator stalk is.