Apr
2023
Heroes: Where Will it all End?
DIY Investor
7 April 2023
“Senseless years thunder by
Millions are willing to give their lives for you
Does nothing live on?”
Drippy Rishi appears to be a persona from the past. Now, fresh from his double triumph of sorting out the mess that was the NI Protocol and side-lining Johnson, he more resembles “The Terminator”.
His recently unveiled antisocial behaviour plan, which was unveiled last week, includes a raft of proposals to replace the act with new powers for local authorities and the police to move on homeless people “causing nuisance” by obstructing shop doorways and begging beside cashpoint machines.
More than 1,000 homeless people have been arrested for sleeping rough or begging since the government pledged to scrap the nearly 200-year-old Vagrancy Act, new figures show.
Freedom of information responses from 29 police forces across England and Wales show officers have arrested 1,173 people since 2021 for offences under the archaic 19th-century act including “vagrant being found in or upon enclosed premises” and “begging and wandering around”.
Matt Downie, the CEO of The Crisis charity said, “It’s abhorrent that an archaic and punitive piece of legislation is still being used to punish the poorest in society when the UK government has committed, and passed legalisation, to repeal it.”
He called on the government to build genuinely affordable homes, invest in proper support services and ensure that housing benefit covers people’s rents to end homelessness. “We have the solutions to this at our disposal.”
Rishi needs to learn that talking tough and picking on those who can’t defend themselves, is just being a bully.
‘talking tough and picking on those who can’t defend themselves, is just being a bully’
Clearly helping people less fortunate than himself isn’t on Rishi’s agenda, and with his predilection for private jets he won’t stumble across too many homeless people. He loves private jets so much that he took trips costing almost £500,000 in just over a week last year. And, there is the carbon footprint to consider.
Not that he cares about that. After all, this is a man who spent just under £108,000 on private jet travel to and from the Cop27 summit in Egypt, flying in on 6 November and returning the next day.
‘He loves private jets so much that he took trips costing almost £500,000 in just over a week last year’
A week after, he set off to the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, coming back on 17 November, a round trip that cost more than £340,000. In December, a day trip to Latvia and Estonia to visit troops cost more than £62,000.
Last Thursday was supposed to be “green day”, when the government unveiled their new plan for achieving net zero emissions. Instead, the occasion was been rebranded “energy security day”, which turned out to be a bonanza for the fossil fuel industry from its competitors. Instead of meaningful new green targets, we will be pumping money into false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage (“CCS”). This technology justifies the continued need for fossil fuel extraction on the grounds that “one day” the carbon emissions could be buried.
CCS has only been tried on a small scale. Last year, an analysis of 13 CCS projects, undertaken by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), revealed that one was mothballed, two failed and seven underperformed. To have any chance of reaching net zero carbon in 2050, circa 1.6bn tonnes of CO2 would have to be sequestered worldwide every year by 2030. The reality is that the technology isn’t there to achieve this. (1)
‘pumping money into false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage’
But, all is not lost, Sunak is promoting “sustainable aviation fuel”. I mean, c’mon!
We have a new oilfield, Rosebank, being developed by Equinor, the Norwegian state company, which will be subsidised by the UK’s tax relief for new oil and gas development. In return for our generosity, instead of helping secure our future energy supplies, 80% of the oil the field produces is likely to be exported.
The tax relief is, in itself, a scandal; the government hands back 91p out of every pound it receives from the energy profits levy, to fund oil and gas investments, creating a major incentive for fossil fuel companies to open new wells.
This shows that the government has zero commitment to any of this. It has been made abundantly clear numerous times, that if we are not to push global heating past 1.5°C, there can be no new fossil fuel development. To achieve this, C.60% of oil and fossil gas reserves must be left in the ground to permit just a 50% chance of preventing this degree of heating.
‘the government has zero commitment to any of this’
Unsurprisingly there is no such support for the development of new renewables. They have to fend for themselves in the Tory’s beloved free markets, whilst the ones causing all the issues play in a rigged market. There is no equivalent investment relief from the electricity generator levy that renewable power must pay when prices are high, which is levied at 45%, in contrast to the 35% levy on oil and gas.
In addition, almost nothing is done to reduce energy demand. The general funds for improving the energy efficiency of our homes, the green deal loan scheme and the green homes grant scheme, were still born.
‘almost nothing is done to reduce energy demand’
Even new housing will need to be expensively retrofitted to meet the government’s net zero obligations. If they were built right, properly insulated, with heat pumps instead of gas boilers, the extra cost would amount to an average of £4,800. Instead the has given in to the housebuilders, allowing them to save money, and leaving the taxpayer bearing the C. £26,000 cost of the refit.
Our European are streets ahead of us, with heat pumps becoming standard. In Norway, two-thirds of households use them, and gas fitting is almost extinct. In Poland, sales more than doubled last year, to over 200,000. In Italy, 500,000 were sold in 2022. Yet in the UK, we bought only 60,000. The reason is simple there are no incentives, they are all given to the oil and gas companies.
In the US, President Biden announced a $370bn green plan for the US last autumn to lower energy costs while accelerating private investment in clean energy solutions as part of his Inflation Reduction Act.
Josh Burke, a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, said, “Instead of grasping this historic moment the government has been left trailing behind the Inflation Reduction Act and is currently failing to capitalise on the opportunities a green transition will provide. Companies are making investment decisions now and in six months’ time the UK will be even further behind.”
And staying with the US, last week we joined a trade deal so contentious that it united Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in opposition to US membership.
In signing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Britain has ditched environmental standards, signed up to terms that will undermine British farmers, and left us open to being sued by multinational corporations in secretive courts.
‘Britain has ditched environmental standards’
The deal aims to lock participating countries into rules that prioritise pro-market, corporate interests. The corporate power grab was then sold to a sceptical public as a way of containing China’s economic power, by surrounding that country in a sea of neoliberal trade.
In the US, the last thing the public wanted was more outsourced jobs, longer and more fragile supply chains, and further power vested in the hands of big business.
One immediate issue is that we have been forced to lower environmental standards as a condition for entry to the deal. Palm oil plantations in Malaysia are a driver of deforestation, threatening biodiversity including the survival of orangutan populations. European tariffs on palm oil aim to stop deforestation, but the UK is understood to have agreed to scrap the tariffs as a condition for entry into the Pacific deal, reneging on deforestation pledges made at the UN climate conference in Glasgow.
‘we have been forced to lower environmental standards as a condition for entry to the deal’
One of the key tenets of the CPTPP is countries recognising standards as equivalent to each other, and accepting imports even where there are real differences in standards.
Britain still endorses the precautionary principle, which places the burden of proof on the producer of a product to demonstrate that it is safe. Most signatories to the Pacific trade deal do not. There is a heavy bias towards big business interests than the corporate court system at the heart of the CPTPP; an international arbitration system that will allow corporations to sue the British government for treating them “unfairly”.
An example of what can happen is this; a Canadian corporation is suing Biden’s administration for $15bn for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried environmentally devastating tar sands oil from Alberta to the US. Canada is a signatory to the CPTPP.
Even our own government find it hard to justify joining, their estimates show that doing so will add a mere 0.08% of GDP after running for about 10 years.
This is no more than Brexiters showing that Brexit could work, it is “proof” that they can do things, however detrimental those things might be to the people they are governing. For Brexiters there is another benefit to joining the Pacific deal; the rules being foisted on us diverge from EU rules, providing an added impediment to a future government negotiating closer relations with our neighbours.
“Your dreams will open the door (open up the door)
It makes no difference if you’re black or white
If you’re a boy or a girl”
Notes:
An environmental focus this week, and of all the damage this government has done, it seems inevitable that its refusal to take its legal obligation to address climate change seriously, will cause the most long term harm.
There should be no way to ignore the science that says that unless there is major structural and behavioural change PDQ we are heading into the abyss; the later it is left, the more dramatic the action required, yet still this government favours big business over the wellbeing of its people.
Aviation is just one area where the government refuses to prevent ever-increasng emissions; never mind not even trying to manage demand – unlike your granny’s fuel bill, there is no VAT on flights, or fuel duty on kerosense – the government’s ‘Jet Zero’ policy allows for 70% growth in the vain hope that fantasy fuels, sham carbon offsets and totally unrealistic levels of carbon capture will somehow save the day.
Massive airport expansion is being nodded through, and Grant ‘Two Planes’ Shapps recently overturned a decision to allow Manston to be reopened as a freight hub for the most knackered old crates.
It is stark, staring bonkers and being challenged by Good Law Project, but it is current policy of a government that claims ‘world leadership’ in tackling climate change, when actually going backwards at a rate of knots.
Sunak’s predilection for the private jet just about sums it up.
So what was Philip thinking?
‘Our attempts at “green” and net zero are just pathetic. Compared to the US, in fact compared to just about everyone, it’s just token gestures. We seem so in thrall to fossil fuel providers that we positively encourage them.
Our latest trade deal is awful, it adds virtually nothing to GDP, and negative implications abound. The EU and US simply look on in bewilderment.
Elsewhere, Tory policy shows how they will fight a forthcoming election. It will be anti-everything, regressive, and downright nasty, picking on any minority that can’t hit back.
Is the tail wagging the dog? The hard-right is still the most vocal and organised of the factions within the party. For example, last week rebel backbenchers warned that they expected Sunak’s pledge to stop small boat crossings to be fulfilled by the end of the year, a timetable rejected by Downing Street and one that could potentially lead to an internal split.
This week the Tory’s announced an initiative to deal with child abuse. Whilst this is to be applauded, when it was announced Suella Braverman, the home secretary, claimed that the men in grooming gangs are mostly British-Pakistani. Whilst Sunak refused to back Baverman’s divisive comments, he did claim that “political correctness” had played a role in part in protecting these gangs because the police were worried about being accused of being racist if they acted against the perpetrators. The NSPCC and experts on grooming gangs have warned ministers against framing the issue as one based on ethnicity, warning that this could hamper efforts to tackle a crime that a Home Office report said was carried out predominantly by white men.
Lastly, we have the trial of Donald Trump. What’s to be said? He’s guilty of so many things I have lost count. That it will become a media circus is a given. What concerns me is that he will turn it into his re-election campaign. In true fascist style, he will be the victim fighting against the system, the “criminals” will be President Biden, the Democrats, the Prosecutors, anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
In the UK the electorate grew tired of the lies and posturing of Johnson. The Tory’s are now realising that he is an electoral liability rather than an asset, as such his support is declining. In the US Trump’s followers, which seem to consistently number around 40% of the electorate, show no signs of seeing through him. I really worry that he could run for President again; this time the campaign and aftermath could be much worse.
Musically, we mourn two little known greats.
We start with Ryuichi Sakamoto the avant-garde Japanese musician and composer. Perhaps his best-known work was with David Sylvian (of the band, Japan) and the film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, which starred David Bowie. The opening lyric is from the song “Forbidden Colours” from the film’s soundtrack.
To finish we honour Seymour Stein, a true giant of the music industry. My son was lucky enough to work alongside him a few years ago, and described him as a really nice guy who lived for music.
Seymour co-founded Sire Records, a label that nurtured talents spanning pop to punk to new wave, including Madonna, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, the Ramones, the Pretenders, the Smiths, the Cure, the Replacements, Aphex Twin and many more. Stein came to be known as the king of 80s pop, and continued to fly around the world hunting for new talent well into his 70s.
Need I say anymore?
We play out with Madonna’s “Vogue” , a personal favourite of mine. You just have to love a song that opens with the lyrics “What are you looking at? Strike a pose”. Enjoy!
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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