David Cameron is a cunt and so are you if you vote for him

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He is a creeping little gobshite with little connection to the society in which we live. His Etonian education, inherited wealth and staggering list of plutocratic connections brand him as a man apart from you and I. His politics, or so he constantly preaches, are genuinely those of the Common Man. This is utter bollocks, as Johann observes. His pseudo-green facade has long since been blown away in the slipstream of the jumbo jets landing at Heathrow and in the smokestacks of the coal and nuclear power stations he so earnestly tells us we must consider (a sea-change from just a few years ago). He even had the gall to try and tell us that nuclear power should:

". . . be able to compete on a level playing field with other forms of energy."

And that this meant:

". . . no taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power; no compromise on our commitment to fiscal responsibility and economic stability."

If Cameron does not realise that this proposal is utterly implausible then at least that's better than being a lying little shit. I greatly doubt that this absurd proposal is anything other than a dishonest PR smokescreen for the nuclear lobby, however, who are well aware of the unfeasible economics of wholly privately funded nuclear generation.

The latest spin to emerge from the tory party office is that Cameron would "consider" pulling the plug on the Trident replacement program. Well, that's all PR bullshit too.

You cannot trust this man to act in the interests of anyone except himself and his rich cronies. Furthermore, he wields a demonstrably absurd economic ideology which will commit the country to even deeper fuckyounomic darkness than it is presently experiencing.

Do not vote for this man and his party.


Addition 04/06/09:

Rossinisbird notes that Cameron is also intimating himself into the extreme right wing of European politics, allying himself with parties whose leading figures espouse homophobia, antisemitism, climate change denial and sky-pixie fundamentalism.


Addition 30-04-09:

In the run up to the election I am glad to be getting a few hits here. May I offer this link to Johann's awesome work on Tory sociopathy. Just don't let him persuade you to vote Labour. He's bloody smart but somehow deluded enough to want to vote that way. Mental!

most excellent pro-nuclear moron pwnage

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Ahahahahaaaaa ! ! !

Word.

nuclear generation and climate change

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I had a little epiphany on how to respond to the various eminent environmentalist voices coming out in support of new nuclear builds as a way to combat climate change. Its quite simple:

If the UK government can't organise any sort of safe, effective, efficient policies to remediate climate change, why do you imagine they will safely, efficiently and effectively manage a new program of nuclear builds?

Well, Lovelock, Lynas et al.?


Addition 19\04\09:

Just to pop a radioactive cherry on top of this argument- which I smugly consider to be irrefutable, BTW- we have this article from the Graun with the following passage:

"During the miners' strike of 1972, the nation's nuclear plants were run at full stretch in order to supply electricity to a beleaguered nation. As a result, it proved impossible to process all the waste that was being generated. Cladding and fuel were simply thrown into B38's cooling ponds and left to disintegrate."

Now, does anyone else consider this to be an acceptable way to run a nuclear power station? No? I thought not. You see, the government- any UK government, that is- is dedicated to retaining power. The only way it can do that is by demonstrating a superficial devotion to the public's wellbeing. Superficial because at face value the government's actions in ordering nuclear power stations to be run at "full-stretch . . . to a beleaguered nation" appear to be an act of common sense. I am not sure that the order to do so came direct from the cabinet, it may well have, I don't know. Ultimately, however, the government is responsible for overseeing the safe operation of the electricity generating industry and so responsibility is ultimately theirs. That this philosophy would result in incredibly dangerous practices should have been obvious, however the political expediency of being seen to be "doing something" clearly overrode any threat associated with the dangerous practice of failing to account for high-level waste that was "simply thrown into B38's cooling ponds and left to disintegrate".

And so we find ourselves, nearly 40 years down the line, facing a fantastically expensive clean-up operation that hopes- at best- merely to reorganise this incredibly dangerous material in a new storage location as there exists no "final solution" to the issue of high-level nuclear waste and no credible plans to create such a solution. The miner's strike was exactl the sort of volatile political situation is almost inevitably going to result from the financial and environmental turmoil of the coming years. The government clearly hasn't learnt anything from this episode either as they are committed to a massive and irrational expansion of our nuclear generating capacity. Therefore, expect this situation to be repeated more than once in your lifetime and don't expect any more credible solutions to emerge. This is exemplified in the closing paragraph of the article:

"The lesson of Sellafield is not so much that nuclear power is dangerous but that Britain seems incapable of implementing any long-term engineering plan that comes its way, from high-speed trains to wind turbines or rocket launchers."

Alternatively, you could just vote for a sane government. We do, after all live in an alleged democracy.

even the CBI thinks the UK's climate change and renewable generation policies are a useless sack of shit

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You know how this goes: Preditably, the CBI are not complaining about the government's failure to invest in wave and tidal power, supergrids or a Green New Deal No. Instead they are advocating completely useless action in their own "road map", putting nuclear generation and carbon capture and sequestration at the top of their list as well as calling for new coal plants to be built without carbon capture. The wankers.

At least there's some choice words in there from the director general of the UK Renewable Energy Association:

"Given all the rhetoric on the Green New Deal and Green Tech, it is astonishing that the renewables industry has received no dedicated support - even in areas that don't cost extra money . . . . As so little has been done, the last opportunity comes in this month's budget. Other countries have already committed huge stimulus monies to their renewables industries while we have nothing, so the UK industry is now at a serious competitive disadvantage."

There's also some nice words in Alan Rusbridger's editorial that sum the consequences of the fuckyounomic crisis for climate change and sustainable development neatly:

"Markets do not ever do the long term especially well, but they get particularly myopic during a crisis."

He's got another nice, punchy line on the outcome of the G20:

"[A] summit that was supposed to define the terms on which the world economy is to be rebuilt has ducked the toughest challenge - how to reconcile prosperity with environmental security."

This is, plainly and simply, another call for the UK government to pull its head out of its arse and engage in a Green New Deal. The conservative wankers and corporate whores out there whining and bitching about how this will elevate our national debt to astronomical levels should be slapped firmly around the head and reminded that it will also see the chances of our society surviving without massive hardship in the coming decades increase also. Denying the inevitable consequences of climate change should be a crime. As Rusbridger implies, Gidden's paradox is a bitch and the only way around it is via state-sanctioned and supported action. The private sector has no role to play in planning for the future security of our society.

punkscience: Enemy of the people

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Or so Sir Bernard Ingham, former civil servant, would have you believe.

I'm proud.

I got it from a book by David MacKay called "Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air" that's currently being deconstructed on Open Democracy. Its awesome. Here's a question:

"If climate change is “a greater threat than terrorism,” should governments criminalize “the glorification of travel” and pass laws against“advocating acts of consumption”?"

Well?

civil servants and nuclear administrators colluded to circumvent democratic oversight

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In another damning failure of democracy in the UK we have a report from the Indy on Sundy reporting the contents of documents procured through Freedom of Information requests that show that the bureaucrats in question circumvented legitimate democratic procedures that would have seen the bill in question face scrutiny in the House. This would have would have revealed the utter unacceptability of writing a blank check to the corporations taking over the running of Sellafield in the incident of a nuclear accident. This is something the government unreservedly promised would not happen as recently as January 2008.

Nuclear generation is just another product of the FSIB.


Addition:

ChickYog picks it up.

as previously observed, nuclear generation sucks big, floppy donkey dicks

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Merrick rules:

"No British nuclear power station has ever been built to budget. The last one, Sizewell B, cost more than twice the estimate. The first of the new generation stations, Olkiluoto in Finland, found itself more than a billion pounds over budget and two years behind schedule at only two and a half years into construction.

Even with the taxpayer coughing up for a load of British Energy's debts, it couldn't stay afloat on its own. In 2002, just six years after privatisation, the government bailed it out with over £5bn of taxpayer's money.

These days, our government assures us that the owners will pay for all the decommissioning. They are lying. In order to get the industry and investors to sign up, the government agrees a set maximum price for waste disposal and decommissioning when it gives approval for the station. Any over-runs in cost (and when has the nuclear industry not delivered those?) will be paid for by the taxpayer."

government fixed nuclear consultation with leading questions

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What a fucking surprise. The government suck goat cocks.

There is always a better way:

nuclear power stations are shit

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More evidence to add to the mountain.

for the third time in the past few weeks I want to point out that nuclear generation is not sustainable and will not help against climate change

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The Lazy Environmentalist lays it down (in three parts).

PS The beach was awesome this weekend. I am proper de-stressed and ready to save the world again from scum like David Duff.

once again, in case anyone missed it, both 'safe nuclear generation' and 'the hydrogen economy' suck goat cock

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The nuclear bit.

The hydrogen bit.

do you want a new nuclear power station at Hinkley?

You can register your opinion with the Western Daily News.

. . . . . . . you what?

John Hutton has dealt the government's attempts to limit climate change a significant blow by announcing his intention to make nuclear produce significantly greater proportion of the country's electricity than at present. Despite there being little to gain, in terms of carbon emissions from an expansion of nuclear, despite the clear and damning ethical reasons not to expand nuclear, despite the utterly unfeasible economics of nuclear generation that will leave the tax payer footing £billion clean-up bills, despite the absurdity of pushing this technology over truly renewable ones that will generate for millenia- not just for a few decades, despite the shortage of uranium reserves and despite the fact that new plants likely won't be generating for a decade- leaving us with continued rising fossil fuel generation for another ten years to add to the existing carbon emissions . . . . . there's so many more reasons not to do this.

So, so wrong.

new light shed on the nuclear debacle

Another North-Eastern blogger to give props to.

Good work, that man!

main hope for safe nuclear fuel disposal fails test of time

I have been looking for this for months now as its particularly pertinent to the current climate. I read it when it was published but forgot where I read it and have only just come across it again. Anyway, vitrification as a technique for immobilising nuclear waste for the hundreds of thousands of years necessary for its radiation to fade to safe levels is actually more likely to release its lethal radioactive burden after a mere millennium and a half.


Addition: Sellafield clean up will cost tax payer £34 billion!!!!

In another cheery bit of news from nukesville we have the revelation today that the British Nuclear Group, a subsidiary of BNFL, stands to contribute only ~£8 billion to the clean up operation that will cost a total of ~£42 billion. Why a public listed company should be allowed to simply hand its liabilities over to the government without being held to account eludes me. Apparently BNFL is desperately trying to shed the group to avoid this liability falling back onto them. No-one seems to have factored in any long-term costs for storing the several tonnes of high-level plutonium which the site currently holds and seeing as the proposed solution for safely disposing of this material has just gone down the pan I really do struggle to comprehend why this government is proposing that more of this material should be produced.

of nukes and bonuses

Two CiF articles to mention today, one on the abhorrence of escalating executive pay and another calling for abandonment of the government's nuclear fetish.

kicking the pro-nuke brigade in the nuts

I mentioned this before but its turned into such a righteous ding-dong that I had to draw further attention to my awesomeness. I'm commenting as thesimpletruth, check out my manly handling of the nuke-lovers and ecocidal maniacs.

I rule. Totally.

nuclear and coal generation is shit, renewables rule

Jeremy Leggett, the solar legend, has a CiF piece on why the nuclear lobby suck big, floppy donkey dicks. I gave a few reasons previously but he has a couple more good ones. Check the comments from me (thesimpletruth) and Adam1.

I also caught some conservative fuckwit called Tony Lodge defending the new coal fired power station in Medway on the BBC news. This rodent appears to crop up everywhere new coal capacity is appearing calling for subsidies, advocating non-renewable generation and generally sucking dirty, black, carbon cock by writing for the right-wing think-tank, The Centre for Policy Studies. His appearance on the BBC comprised of pointing out that the new power station could be retro fitted with carbon capture technology (that hasn't been developed yet and won't be for another decade at the earliest) and also that a load of pensioners suffered from fuel poverty (as a result of various UK governments' refusal to embrace renewables once the true impacts of climate change and emissions reduction became clear nearly two decades ago). The rest of the time the head of Greenpeace UK, John Sauven, was talking in opposition to it and making a crap job of it too.

3 Simple reasons why coal generation is stupid:

1. Even 'new build' emits a fuck load of carbon- way more than gas. (Burning coal in older plants emits a fuck load of sulphurous and nitric oxides too- causing acid rain. Such plants also emit a fuck load of particulates causing asthma. I really hope that this new plant, if it gets built, is not one of these.)
2. Like it or not, the UK currently holds power over the rest of the world by its powerful economy and position on the security council and we set an example for the world to follow. New coal builds would make it impossible for us to criticise India and China for following suit. (Same goes for nuclear).
3. Coal may appear to be economic now but excavating it requires the input of liquid fuels such as oil to fuel the extraction process. Plus, every penny invested in coal generation is a penny not invested in renewables.
   

Addition:

It seems I am amongst friends when publically damning nuclear generation.

UK nuclear consultancy

The Lazy Environmentalist blogged about this and has several excellent points to make. I also tried to take part in the consultancy, being similarly concerned that this bullshit technology was being pushed on us without reason (surprise, surprise!). The consultancy was an opportunity to make a serious contribution to government policy. However, I started filling in boxes on the website with well-crafted and researched arguments and got as far as the 3rd page before I ran out of time to research and write my response. My point is that it shouldn't be up tot he public to do the research on these matters. If the government's research can't be trusted (which it can't because they're cockweasel's; Q.E.D.) then an independent reviewer should have been assigned to the task, as Sir Nicholas Stern was for the economic impact of climate change.

This is all superfluous to the fact that renewable generation programs, both wind and solar, have been demonstrated to be vastly cheaper alternatives.

green groups brand Labour's nuclear consultation "a sham"

Yes, your government is engaged in yet more nefarious subterfuge and pseudo-democracy. Not only is this delaying the generation of policy that will be vital to the fight against climate change but it is the SECOND time the government's consultation scheme has been damned by these groups. They are threatening to take the government to the High Court yet again to force it it engage in the "fullest public consultation" that it is obliged to.

Yes, these are the people who were voted in by you, the electorate. You made that decision and now the rest of us are having to live with the consequences of your fucking ignorance. When you are being flodoed out of your homes and having your roof blown off and the nation is swamped with eco-refugees I will be laughing my arse off.


Cnuts.