Fears that a Labor “supermajority” could turn our parliamentary democracy into a parliamentary dictatorship are fast becoming a reality. [emphasis, links added]
Ed Miliband, the UK's energy security and net zero secretary, has run roughshod over local democracy by ignoring the advice of the Planning Inspectorate and approving the development of a massive solar 'park' that will swallow up thousands of people in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk acres of land.
Other plans across Lincolnshire have also been approved.
This could be just the beginning of Labour’s assault on the countryside, with other solar industrial complexes, battery “farms” and their connected tower scars, and onshore wind all waiting in the wings.
Looking back, we might view this as the opening act of a doctrinaire campaign to achieve unrealistic net-zero emissions targets, in particular the ridiculous target of decarbonizing the grid by 2030.
Labor used passionate rhetoric about food security to appeal to rural voters during the election. However, this decision alone could increase our import needs by the equivalent of 21 million loaves of bread a year, and there is a risk of higher food prices as we rely on unstable world markets.
Labour's old slogan of “for the many, not the few” also rings hollow to homeowners whose shabby homes may lose value without compensation and agricultural workers who may lose their jobs.
Make no mistakes, It’s a transfer of wealth from the many to the few – landowners, Chinese panel manufacturers and renewable energy investment companies.
Hysterical green arguments are used to excuse this authoritarianism, but there are many more effective and less destructive ways to achieve net zero emissions.
For example, there are over 600,000 acres of south-facing commercial roof space in the UK that could be equipped with solar energy. In any case, solar power is less efficient in cloudy Britain and considering we all live under the same atmosphere we'd be better off renting a patch of desert somewhere to use it.
Stealth electricity generation through anaerobic digestion of sewage and animal slurries (which can also significantly improve water quality in rivers and beaches) is underutilized. Then there are the small-scale cores.
This government (and indeed its Conservative predecessors) have made little effort to cherry-pick the “low-hanging fruit” – renewable energy with the least social impact.
Renewable energy offers the opportunity to rebuild infrastructure from the bottom up through a series of microgrids. Instead, they side with the interests of producers and seek Loading extra electricity into a national grid designed in the 1920s to meet vastly different supply and demand.
They planned net zero emissions from the top down.
Miliband's determination to impose relatively inefficient solar on rural communities is reminiscent of the post-war Labor government's vindictive determination to dig up mansion parks for coal extraction.
Historians may view this in the same light. To the rest of the world, our dogmatic self-mutilation must look like Enver Hoxha's Albania and its “go it alone” communism.
Miliband, who has chosen to fight rural communities, may be surprised by the intensity of the backlash.
His latest decision looks likely to be sent to judicial review, so taxpayers will now be saddled with legal costs as well as Food and energy prices will rise in the future.
Read more in The Telegraph
