Roger Helmer called me an idiot.
Well, I did misinterpret his tweet, quite deliberately, but
only in the same way that he posted his tweet – giving the impression that
Prince Charles endorsed UKIP’s education policy.
I also prefaced it with ‘The Mysterious Mind of Roger Helmer’,
a continuation to series of tweets posted in the run-up to his failed
by-election attempt in Newark.
All the quotes I posted are real.
They came from either Helmer’s blog or
from this marvellous document
which I noticed has been updated since I last saw it. The
juicy quotes are still there - like CO2 isn’t a pollutant as it ‘greens the
planet’; global warming doesn’t exist, and other such terrifyingly stupid
nonsense. He’s also added some new graphics.
It wasn’t made by ‘Josh aged 13’ – it was made by this guy (I’m sure UKIP obtained permission, as it seems they are all
under copyright to the author, though he does give fair use permission with a
credit on non-commercial blogs).
The very nice cartoon is a little misleading however. This
is what a fracking pad looks like.
And this is what a fracking does to a forest.
And the thing about fracking – you need THOUSANDS of them –
at eight per square mile.
What has Roger updated in the new document?
He removed the misleading temperature diagram and references
to the discredited Channel 4 ‘documentary' The Great Global Warming Swindle and replaced it with the strange, unsubstantiated claim that
“there are increasing doubts about the theory of man-made climate change”.
And this
UKIP believes that the small changes we have seen in global temperatures in the last
century (+0.7oC) are entirely consistent with well-understood, long-term, natural climate
cycles.
This is all kinds of stupid and I’m not going to give it any attention
- if you like, you can start by having a look here and here.
His section blaming fuel poverty on green policies now has a new
picture from Shutterstock. Here is another picture from the same set, of the
same model.
He references a select committee report from 2013, but curiously
not the actual report but an article in the Daily Mail!
He quotes this:
...energy and climate
change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK
households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.
Aha! Nasty green
policies! Hang on – the very next sentence…
The Department
maintains, however, that household bills will be lower than they would
otherwise be in the absence of policies.
Oh so, hang on, the policies will actually make the bills
cheaper…
Nevertheless – I’d agree (WITH THE COMMITTEE) that green
subsidies would be better coming from direct taxation than levies.
He dropped the UKIP support for tidal power research. I wonder
why?
Ah – he’s added more about Fracking – or what he now refers to
as Shale Gas.
The low levels of risk that may be associated with fracking are
outweighed by the benefits
that cheaper and abundant energy can create, and by
the risks that are associated by rising energy prices and a growing energy gap.
And nuclear -
Anti-nuclear lobbyists love to argue that the waste will remain
dangerous for tens of
thousands of years. But our descendants in a few hundred years
will have made vast
technical strides that we cannot even imagine today. They may be
mining our waste
deposits, safely, to reuse in new ways.
Nuclear is OK because, you know, Science Fiction?
Coal is nice too.
We do not however regard CO2 as a pollutant. It is a
natural trace gas in the atmosphere
which is essential to plant growth and life on earth.
Higher CO2 levels increase agricultural crop yields and “green”
the planet.
I just love that bit!
The report also has a new contributor - Ben Pile, Energy Consultant.
Meet Ben Pile, BA in Politics and Philosophy (PPE?), Climate Change Denier – and he doesn’t have much time for
academics or environmentalists.
But he's actually been around for a while - he was part of Bloom's posse.
So as far as environmental policy goes, it looks like that we won't have to wait for the new manifesto - it's all here. Climate change denial, a fracking free-for-all, where we can suck down that lovely CO2 that makes our croquet lawns so green. Who needs science when we have the combination of the Mysterious Mind of Roger Helmer and a guy with a degree in PPE? We have stock photo models pretending to freeze, for goodness sake! And Nuclear is safe because...Space 1999!
Or maybe that's not such a good example...