Confusion reigns between “indemnity” and “immunity”
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | March 12, 2024
We sporadically hear of vaccine injury cases in the UK being contemplated or even launched against covid vaccine manufacturers. We also frequently hear people say that “the covid vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued as they have an indemnity”.
It is very important that this be clarified. An indemnity is not the same as immunity.
In the USA manufacturers have immunity (which can potentially be attacked under certain circumstances – such as in the presence of fraud) imposed by a law known as “The PREP Act”. Immunity is a legal shield. The law simply provides that “these manufacturers shall not have any civil liability”.
But in the UK the manufacturers do not have such immunity. What they have – in their contracts with the UK government – is an indemnity. An indemnity is an agreement that one party shall cover the losses of the other.
In this case it provides that the UK government will pay any damages which the manufacturers are liable to pay to claimants if they are sued. But it doesn’t stop anyone actually suing the manufacturers – it just means that any damages awarded are actually paid by the government (and ultimately by the beleaguered taxpayers). In exchange for this, the government gets to control and direct the defence to any claim – as well as paying the legal bills!
This has a number of implications including these:
- If the government is “on the hook” it may well either directly or indirectly pressure the judicial system so that these cases are impeded in some way. We can hope this is not the case, but experience of other legal cases over the past few years suggests this might be naive.
- If the government sees many claims incoming they may try to “pick off” some more obvious ones and put a “line in the sand”, setting quite a high bar for claimants in an attempt to limit the size of the eventual claims.
- On the other hand, if they see a huge number of claims, they may choose to “fight to the death”.
- One other scenario is that they eventually decide they were duped and they then just tell the manufacturers they are no longer honouring the indemnity.
It is also important to recognise that in the UK Parliament makes, amends, and annuls laws at will. There is nothing – except politics – to stop them just going to the manufacturers and threatening to change the law so as to hold them responsible for claims, and that they will make them easier for claimants (perhaps by extending the “limitation period” – normally 3 years – by which a claim has to be lodged or else it become time-barred). This could, for example, be used as leverage to get the manufacturers to set up schemes of compensation.
Generally speaking, retroactive changes to laws are considered undesirable as they could make companies reluctant to do business in a particular country, since companies prefer legal certainty before committing capital; in this case however it is possible that the political imperative becomes so great that the government is effectively forced into ensuring that the injured receive proper recompense and that the manufacturer – not the taxpayer – foots the bill.
Gatwick Airport Tesla Fire Cover Up
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 14, 2024
Looks like another EV fire is being covered up:
As Geoff points out, there is very little mention of this on the internet, other than the Express. I have located a couple of photos. Fortunately the fire was containable in an outside car park, which would not have been the case in a multi-storey:
https://uknip.co.uk/news/uk/sussex/gatwick-airport-car-park-scene-of-overnight-blaze/
https://twitter.com/GeoffBuysCars/status/1768220704279773374/photo/1
It is strange by the way that Bedfordshire Fire Service don’t seem to have yet published their report into the Luton Airport fire last October, or even provided any updates since the first few days.
One wonders what they are trying to hide!
Yemen looks to add hypersonic missiles into domestic arsenal: Report
The Cradle | March 14, 2024
The Ansarallah-allied Yemeni armed forces recently tested a hypersonic missile and are preparing to introduce the technology into the country’s military arsenal, a Yemeni military source revealed to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency on 14 March.
“[Ansarallah’s] missile forces have successfully tested a missile that is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 8 and runs on solid fuel; Yemen intends to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel,” the source is quoted as saying.
The unnamed official also revealed Sanaa has, over the past three months, “upgraded its missiles and drones, modifying explosive warheads to double their destructive power.”
Last week, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said during a televised speech that Yemen has been making efforts to “produce hypersonic missiles,” saying: “Our enemies, friends, and our people will see a level of achievement of strategic importance that will put our country in the ranks of few countries with these capabilities in the world.”
“The Yemeni forces used new weapons in recent operations in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, which surprised the United States and Britain,” the Ansarallah leader revealed during his speech.
Hypersonic weapons fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, can strike targets thousands of miles away within minutes, and pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems. While a traditional ballistic missile travels into the atmosphere and then returns to Earth on top of the target, a hypersonic missile travels much closer to the Earth, allowing it to switch targets on the fly.
Only four countries have successfully developed and tested hypersonic missiles: Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea. The US is also developing hypersonic missiles; however, its program has trailed behind the others due to a lack of planning, technological gaps, and Washington’s belief that ballistic missiles are a better and more cost-effective bet against an adversary.
The US navy – with minimal support from the UK – has been waging its biggest battle since WWII against the Arab world’s poorest country since early January in support of Israel’s genocide campaign in Gaza. Despite launching hundreds of attacks inside Yemen, Washington has not managed to deter the country’s pro-Palestine actions.
Ansarallah leaders have vowed to continue attacking US, UK, and Israeli ships in the waters surrounding the Gulf Arab nation until Israel’s assault on Gaza ends.
Canadian, Irish, French Government-Attempted Speech Regulations Appear Like Desperate Censorship Power Plays
BY JEFFEREY JAXEN | MARCH 12, 2024
Following in the footsteps of UKs highly controversial Online Safety Act, now law, Canadian and Irish government officials are proposing legislation that would push the boundaries to further stifle online debate.
During the COVID response, the American government chose to erect a massive, top-down censorship industrial complex pulling in key White House officials, CDC heads, and the Department of Homeland Security.
In the UK, it was all-out military psychological operations using the British Army unit’s 77th Brigade and Specialist Group Military Intelligence. Both countries turned their security apparatuses, once used against foreign enemy combatants, to target its own public domestically in an aggressive move to shape public thought and neutralize independent voices.
Now, humanity is at an inflection point. A non-stop blitzkrieg of contentious issues are affecting the lives of many. The failed COVID response taught us that open conversation and investigation is critical to unwind industry talking points, government propaganda, and scientific falsehoods.
Perhaps more important, the new public square, that is the digital age of social media, serves as a steam valve to debate valid concerns surrounding charged issues like climate change and the net zero push, open migration, vaccine safety, reckless government monetary policy, election meddling, the surgical and pharmaceutical fast track of gender-affirming care for minors, intelligence agency run ‘disclosure,’ and so much more.
Meanwhile, power centers are desperate to take all the above issues and funnel vocal detractors from the dominant narrative into one category – hate.
Over the years, governments have gleefully began attaching the ‘hate’ label onto any person, topic, or explanation that runs counter to the single, myopic version of events, ideas, information, or even historical events they deem fact – despite valid evidence proving otherwise.
Socially, the ‘it’s all hateful except for our viewpoint’ worked for corporations, governments, and legacy media operations when they enjoyed narrative control.
Those days are fleeting now and major cracks have formed upon once-settled topics. Now we see the grip tightening from the legislative angle to create more bureaucracy and new powers to punish.
Canada’s Bill C-63 enacts what’s called the Online Harms Act, amends the Criminal Code, and the Canadian Human Rights Act among other things. It also attempts to define and legislate a human emotion stating:
“hatred means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike”
Meanwhile, C-63 states that an “Offense motivated by hatred… under this Act or any other Act of Parliament”…carries with a penalty of “imprisonment for life.”
Other goodies written into the bill are the creation of an extrajudicial government tribunal to rule on complaints of threats, intimidation or discrimination from people who can remain anonymous. That’s right, no need to face your accuser says Canada.
If one is accused by the government’s newly-created, extrajudicial group to be “engaging or to have engaged in the discriminatory practice,” they can be ordered, as the bill states, “to pay compensation of not more than $20,000 to any victim identified” and “to pay a penalty of not more than $50,000 to the Receiver General.”
No room for abuse here. What could go wrong?
One would think this would be a one-off piece of speech-chilling legislation from a country that has lost its way under poor leadership. Yet Ireland is also attempting a similar move with mirrored legislative language.
Ireland’s Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill is currently before the upper house of the Irish legislature. The Critic writes the law, if enacted, “…would usher in a dangerous new standard for state-driven censorship. The expression or possession of content or even ideas deemed “hateful” would be illegal under the law, with serious implications for everyday people…”
An opinion piece published in The Hill writes:
“As per the tentative legislation, people with “protected characteristics” which includes, inter alia, race, color, and nationality are afforded new legal protections against psychical and mentally inflicted harms, in which offenders are motivated by “hatred.””
It continues by stating:
“As such, Ireland’s police force, An Garda Síochána, will have the authority under the bill to raid the home of the possessor of such material, demand their password and seize their devices. Failure to comply could result in a year-long prison sentence.”
The reason for the sudden Orwellian about face given by Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar was that Ireland needed to “… modernise our laws against incitement to hatred and hatred in general.”
Despite the weak cover stories governments are using to capture speech and attempt to regain narrative control, a clear pattern is being seen – open debate is dangerous to the dwindling control of power centers.
The fun doesn’t stop there.
Article 18 of the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty also stipulates that all countries signed on to the power-centralizing agreement are mandated to “… combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” and “inform policies on factors that hinder adherence to public health and social measures in a pandemic and trust in science and public health institutions.”
Finally, a bill in the works in France appears to be a special gift for pharmaceutical companies. Article 4 of the bill specifically states:
Provocation, by means of repeated pressure or maneuvers, of any person suffering from a pathology to abandon or abstain from following medical treatment is punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. therapeutic or prophylactic, when this abandonment or abstention is presented as beneficial for the health of the person concerned whereas it is, in the state of medical knowledge, clearly likely to cause for them, taking into account the pathology of which they is affected, particularly serious consequences for their physical or psychological health.
As written, it appears that any criticism of vaccine products, SSRIs, statins, opioids, drugs and procedures used to transition children, or just about any other product or medical practice that has debatable concerns and unsettled science surrounding it – if currently accepted in ‘medical knowledge’ – is a protected class not to be spoken ill about.
“When the provocation provided for in the first two paragraphs has been followed by effects, the penalties are increased to three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.” states the proposed French law.
The coincidental timing over the past few years of several pieces of legislation whose effect will be to essentially chill freedom of speech in the end equation must be taken seriously. The good news is that individuals at all levels of society are sounding the alarm to critically analyze and reject all attempts at overarching control over basic human rights – no matter how well packaged and intentioned they may initially seem.
UK’s National Health Service to stop prescribing puberty blockers to gender-confused children
LifeSiteNews | March 12, 2024
The British National Health Service (NHS) is formally ending the prescribing of puberty blockers to children with gender confusion, in a major policy shift representing a victory against transgender ideology.
The i Paper reports that the change follows the recommendation of a multi-year independent review led by consultant pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass. The underage use of puberty blockers will now be limited to clinical research trials. The change does not apply to Scotland, whose government says blockers will only be considered for minors “after close psychological and endocrine assessment,” per the report.
“We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS,” said Health Minister Maria Caufield. “Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”
Reconsideration of NHS’s standards for chemically “transitioning” young people was bolstered by years of concern over the lax standards at the scandal-ridden Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. In January, it was revealed that the facility had seen almost 400 children younger than six years old and more than 70 aged four or younger over the past decade.
The GIDS had long been a source of controversy, from its backing of a discredited study used to justify giving puberty blockers to 11-year-olds, to a case last August in which it approved a “sex-change” procedure for a 22-year-old suffering from over a dozen mental health disorders.
Cass’s report found that the GIDS had failed to consistently collect follow-up data on the long-term outcomes for children who received puberty blockers, “which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.”
Puberty blockers, which are used to chemically castrate sex offenders, have been shown to devastate bone density in children, putting them at risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and other injuries. Other side effects associated with the drugs include emotional disorders, pseudotumor cerebri, paralysis, renal impairment, sudden cardiac death, and stroke in men, as LifeSiteNews has reported.
The Tavistock clinic is closing at the end of the month, and on Cass’s recommendation, NHS will be opening a pair of regional clinics in April, which it says will employ a more “holistic approach to care,” including neurodiversity, pediatrics, and mental health.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Some physicians heavily involved in transitioning minors have been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an exposé last year about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health in the United States, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
UK-made tank mired during Ukrainian demo for media
RT | March 11, 2024
A Ukrainian tank crew got their UK-donated Challenger 2 stuck in a bog during a special demonstration for a British tabloid, the newspaper has reported.
The incident happened during an exercise The Sun described as being “close to the front line” and within view of plumes of smoke emanating from Russian airstrikes. With its crew atop the turret, the British-made tank attempted to drive through a gully, only becoming stuck at its deepest point.
Images shared by the newspaper showed the vehicle stuck in mud deep enough to fully cover its tracks. The incident confirmed that the British tank’s weight is an issue, The Sun said. An experienced squadron commander “blasted the rookie crew for going too slowly through the gully.”
The newspaper added that the tank team leader “turned the mishap into a training exercise” by calling in a second tank to haul the first one out of the mud.
The report noted Ukrainian praise for the tank’s main gun, but added that the conflict had not given the British military hardware a chance to demonstrate its ability in a classic tank-on-tank battle. Ukraine has been using the armor to target bunkers from a long distance and for charges on Russian trenches.
The maneuvers are a bluff, according to the tabloid, because the tanks “did not have the right type of ammunition for attacking infantry.”
While the British tank is superior to Soviet-made T-80s in many respects, Ukrainian crews told the outlet that they weigh some 20 tons more and have a 30% lower power-to-weight ratio, which limits their maneuverability.
German-made Leopard 2 tanks, which have a similar weight, have also reportedly become stuck in soft ground, according to images shared online.
The Challenger 2s are not only being bogged down, but are breaking down. Five of the 14 tanks donated by the UK are not operational because spare parts can take months to arrive, and Kiev lacks skilled mechanics to maintain them. With battle-damaged tanks accounted for, only half of the UK-donated squadron remain fit for battle.
The British tabloid also reported manpower shortages on the conflict frontline, meaning trained tank crews are forced to dig trenches. Nevertheless, the Ukrainians expressed gratitude to the British government for the tanks and, via the tabloid, asked London to “send more.”
German FM Open to UK’s Taurus Swap Proposal as ‘Option’
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.03.2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly opposed the idea of supplying Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory. However, recently UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron expressed London’s readiness to assist Berlin in overcoming any obstacles preventing the delivery of Taurus long-range missiles to the Kiev regime.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is open to her British colleague David Cameron’s suggestion of a swap of long-range cruise missiles for their further transfer to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.
In particular, Germany could supply Taurus cruise missiles to the United Kingdom, and in return the British side would transfer Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Thus, Berlin would formally be relieved of responsibility for providing cruise missiles to the Kiev regime, the outlet stated.
“That would be an option,” Baerbock was quoted as saying regarding the proposed exchange on ARD’s program Caren Miosga.
The German minister on Sunday pointed out that exchanges of a similar nature had already taken place with respect to other material. This, according to the outlet, was a nod at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s previous use of indirect military aid to Ukraine, when he was reluctant to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to the conflict zone. In January, 2023, Berlin announced it would send its Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine, also agreeing to provide re-export licenses for other countries wanting to supply these German-made armored vehicles. Within weeks of their arrival on the battlefield, Russian forces began hunting the tanks down with missiles and kamikaze drones.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron recently came up with a potential way to persuade Germany to supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles. During a recent interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he stated that London was ready to help Berlin solve problems preventing the delivery of the cruise missiles to Kiev, or consider the option of buying German missiles and then transferring British Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Cameron did not discount the possibility of imposing certain restrictions before supplying the weaponry to Kiev.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly dismissed the idea of providing Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory, as such support would come dangerously close to direct German participation in the conflict.
If the swap scheme of Britain procuring Taurus missiles from Germany in exchange for supplying Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine comes to pass, Kiev would likely get the long-range missiles eventually, pundits told Sputnik.
The issue of Taurus transfers made the headlines in the wake of a leaked conversation between German military officials discussing a potential attack on the Crimea Bridge.
On March 1, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, published the text of a conversation involving four Bundeswehr representatives discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles. The talk, which took place on February 19, involved Inspector of the German Air Force Ingo Gerhartz, Brig. Gen. Frank Graefe, head of the Operations and Exercises Department at the Air Force Command in Berlin, and two employees of the air operations center of the Bundeswehr Space Command.
After the intercepted war talk, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again ruled out supplying the missiles to Ukraine since it could require the presence of German troops on the ground to help deploy them. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that long-range Taurus missiles would not be decisive for the conflict in Ukraine and would only help in certain areas, but that Germany does not intend to cross this line.
“We have always emphasized that such long-range missiles will not solve this [crisis],” Pistorius said at a joint press conference with Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen.
The Kremlin reiterated that the contents of leaked conversations between German officials proved “the direct involvement of the collective West in the conflict in Ukraine.”
In the wake of Ukraine’s bungled counteroffensive, the Zelensky regime has been pressing Germany for the delivery of the missiles, which have a range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) and could strike deep inside Russian territory.
Moscow has repeatedly underscored that Western arms shipments to Kiev and the training of Ukrainian servicemen only prolong the conflict and will be unable to alter the situation at the battlefield.
New calls for inquiry into Climate Change Committee
Net Zero Watch | March 11, 2024
Campaign group Net Zero Watch is again calling for an inquiry into the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Government’s official advisers on decarbonisation. The move follows revelations at the weekend that the organisation’s chief executive, Chris Stark, had tried to use obfuscation to “kill” questions over the adequacy of its energy system model, rather than addressing them directly. This behaviour put Stark in direct breach of the Nolan standards for public officeholders.
The scandal, published in the Sunday Telegraph, is just the latest of a series of controversies that have dogged the CCC since its inception.
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In 2013, it was revealed that CCC chairman Lord Deben had a conflict of interest, retaining his position as chairman of a company involved in windfarm installations after his appointment. He had told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that he would divest himself of all such interests if appointed.
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In 2019, it was revealed that Lord Deben’s family company was still taking large sums of money from businesses working in the environmental sphere.
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In 2023, it was revealed that those payments to Lord Deben’s company were not properly disclosed in the Register of Interests.
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In 2021, it was revealed that the CCC had used spurious weather data in their modelling, thus enabling them to reduce the capacity of electricity generation and storage equipment apparently required.
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It was also revealed that the CCC used spurious figures for the cost of electric vehicles, thus reducing the apparent costs.
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The CCC tried to hide its model from public scrutiny, spending tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money fighting a lawful Freedom of Information request.
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More recently, the CCC admitted that its electricity system modelling is inadequate. The resulting understatement of costs is as much as tens of billions of pounds per year.
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It has also been revealed that the CCC “waves away” most of the cost problem, simply by assuming extraordinary cost reductions in future. With current technology, the cost of Net Zero will be hundreds of billions of pounds higher.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
The list of scandals at the Climate Change Committee seems to be endless, but Parliamentarians seem to want to let them get away with it. If the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee again fails to launch an inquiry into the governance of the CCC, and in particular Chris Stark’s management and the adequacy of the modelling that underpinned the 2019 Net Zero report, it will look very bad.
The UK Government Is Considering a New, Looser Definition of “Extremism”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 9, 2024
The authorities in the UK are continuing with attempts to broaden the definition of “extremism” and behavior deemed as “undermining/overturning” British values.
Critics say the whole wiggly thing is the road to authoritarianism.
A new step said to be in that direction is a proposal presented by Communities Secretary Michael Gove, who is reportedly using previous initiatives to usher in a new definition of extremism.
Likely to cover all political and ideological bases, Gove is mentioning both “Islamists” and “far Right” organizations and their harmful activities that slip under the radar as the reason the current understanding of extremism is “too narrow.”
But there doesn’t seem to be consensus on this in the cabinet, with some ministers voicing fears that a lot of groups taking a stance on several issues – such as those opposed to lockdowns, religious organizations that are anti-abortion, gay marriage, trans-gender women in places designated as same-sex, “radical” student groups, etc. – could get caught up in this widened “definition dragnet.”
The problem with that is that these groups are now operating lawfully, according to the Equality Act 2010.
And if the definition is also made enforceable, even political parties, such as the Scottish National Party, could end up on the wrong side of the new rules, reports say.
Right now, extremism in the UK is defined (since 2011) as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”
This definition is not statutory, which means it effectively prevents only the government and other administrative bodies from working with or funding such groups.
But Gove wants to “fix” this by making the broader definition statutory.
To achieve this, the current paragraph would get this addition:
“The promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values; or threaten the rights of individuals or create a permissive environment for radicalization, hate crime and terrorism.”
Rather than just “broader,” this reads as straight-up and worrisomely vague.
And when some political representatives, MPs among them, try to wrap their heads around the very concept of “British values,” it becomes clear that the conundrum of defining such things in a way acceptable to everyone becomes mission impossible.
“What does it even mean to undermine British values’ when there is no consensus – and certainly no legal definition – of what those values are?,” MP Miriam Cates summed it up.
Public is Not Being Told the True Cost of Net Zero, Warns Former World Bank Economist
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 6, 2024
Bankrupt, blackout Britain where the ever-expanding ranks of the poor get clobbered, open borders place intolerable burdens on public spending and services, the rich spivs get richer backing heavily-subsidised energy white elephants – and those of a certain age look back to the good old days of the 1970s. That isn’t quite how Professor Gordon Hughes spells it out in his excellent new report that crunches the energy transition numbers of the collectivist Net Zero project, but it might be considered a fair summation of reading between the lines.
The insanity of Net Zero becomes clearer by the day. The idea that hydrocarbons – a natural resource whose use from medicines to reliable energy is ubiquitous in modern industrial society – can be removed within less than 30 years is ridiculous. In his report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Hughes concerns himself with the transition from hydrocarbons to ‘green’ technologies such as wind and solar. Forget all the politically-inspired low-ball figures of transition, he is suggesting. Looking at you, Climate Change Committee. It is likely that the amount of new investment needed for the transition will be a minimum of 5% of gross domestic product for the next 20 years, and might exceed 7.5%. Gordon Hughes is a former World Bank economist, and is Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.
There is no chance of borrowing such an “astronomical” amount, notes Hughes, and the only viable way to raise the cash for new capital expenditure would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10%. “Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war, and even then never for more than a decade,” he notes.
Recent polling in the U.S. has shown that the desire of a majority of citizens to pay for Net Zero barely stretches to more than the ‘chump’ change in their back pockets. “Commitment to the energy transition is a classic ‘luxury belief’ held most strongly by those who are sufficiently well-off not to worry about the costs… Indeed at least some of those who promote the transition most strongly are among those who expect to gain from the business opportunities.” On this latter point, Hughes was possibly recalling the recent activities of rising media star Dale Vince (£110 million in wind subsidies to date, and counting).
Politicians sometimes blather about the pioneering role taken by European countries in Net Zero. Hughes points out that leaders in China and India are not fools. “Posturing about targets that are patently not achievable and might be economically ruinous is unlikely to convince anyone, although most will be too polite to point this out,” he observed.
Writing a foreword, Lord Frost identified a make-believe world inhabited by Net Zero proponents where it is claimed costs will magically come down, new technologies will somehow be invented and promised green growth will pay for everything. “But they never give any evidence for believing this – and, where we can check what they say, for example in the real costs of wind power, we can see that these cost reductions are simply not happening,” he said.
On the immigration front, Hughes notes a 1% increase in the British population every year. He notes that 4% of GDP must be invested every year in new (not replacement) capital per head. Of course nothing like this is being spent and capital per head is falling rapidly. “Just maintaining the amounts of capital per head will eat up an amount of investment equivalent to that required for the energy transition,” he states.
Squeezing domestic consumption, in other words making the already squeezed poor even poorer by removing all their remaining luxuries in life (older cars, cheap foreign holidays, meat), is the only realistic way to fund the enormous sums required for the Net Zero energy transition. Possibly a glimmer of reality is creeping into political circles with the opposition Labour party having gone through “agonies” and ditched its £28 billion a year green deal. “Clearly, they concluded that it was impossible to sell an increase in the tax burden of that magnitude to a reluctant electorate,” he said. In fact, the sums involved in the Labour plan were only a fifth of the estimated cost of transition.
Any future Government wishing to travel the path of Net Zero must make the choices of reducing public services and mandating savage cuts in household expenditure. Needless to say, the general population is in almost total ignorance about these realities. Hughes notes that the electorate has given no indication that they are willing to bear the costs involved. “Indeed until now all they have been told is that there are few or no trade-offs required, and technology will somehow magically solve everything.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
UK media chiefs defend coverage of Gaza war as study exposes pro-Israel bias
Press TV – March 7, 2024
UK news chiefs have defended their biased coverage of Israel’s brutalities in Gaza even as a new report has exposed significant distortions in the Western coverage of the war.
The report, Media Bias Gaza 2023-24, by Center for Media Monitoring (CFMM) was launched on Wednesday and analyzed data from 28 UK online media websites for a period of one month starting from October 7, 2023.
The study that examined more than 200,000 articles and TV reports said the British media had failed to represent the conflict in Gaza in a fair manner.
Speaking at the event hosted by CFMM in the House of Parliament, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, said it was unlikely that there would be no mistakes made by a 24-hour news channel.
“It’s impossible not to make mistakes, we will make mistakes,” Burgess said while justifying their coverage.
The CFMM report, however, found that “many prominent media personalities, senior editors and journalists regurgitated Islamophobic tropes about Muslim belief and identity, with the aim of undermining the Palestinian cause and/or Palestinian advocates.”
The study also found “how some media outlets and commentators have framed the conflict as being between Muslims and Jews.”
“Muslim opposition to Israel has been framed as anti-Semitic by some publications and commentators,” the study said
Defending the distortion of facts while reporting the war, Jonathan Levy, managing director and executive editor at Sky News, disputed criticism of a number of points made in the report, including reducing the conflict to “Israel-Hamas” war.
The study showed Israelis were 11 times more likely to be referred to as “victims of attacks” compared to the Palestinians, while 76 percent of online articles framed the conflict as an “Israel-Hamas war.” Only 24 percent mentioned “Palestine/Palestinian,” which they said indicated a lack of context.
Marwan Yaghi, a Palestinian diplomat in the UK, described the media coverage as “appallingly biased.”
Right wing news channels and right-wing British publications were at the forefront of misrepresenting pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic, the report said.
It also mentioned that pro-Palestinian voices faced misrepresentation and vilification by media outlets, with allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism weaponized to discredit legitimate advocacy efforts.
It highlighted the lack of scrutiny around a number of stories perpetuated in the press, noting 361 mentions of the false “beheaded babies” story.
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Evidence for the German Euthanasia Program Compared to the Holocaust
NS Euthanasia Propaganda Poster, around 1938. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
By John Wear | Inconvenient History | August 31, 2017
I have been asked the question: Why do you think the German euthanasia program happened during World War II, but not the Holocaust? This article will show that the evidence for the German euthanasia program is overwhelming, while the evidence to support the Holocaust story is severely lacking. … continue
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