---

Wintonsweek
Climate Policy Shows Paucity, Naivety of Cameron Regime
Leaning Left Failed To Attract LibDems At Chislehurst
 Hoodies Remark Demonstrates His Tin Ear
Cameron Takes Easy, Media-Friendly, Wrong Climate Change Line
Will Cameron Morph Into The New Prescott?  

The evidence is now overwhelming that David Cameron is an over-promoted snake oil salesman out of touch with mainstream thought who will do the Tory party perhaps fatal damage if he carries on as leader much longer.

The by-election in Chislehurst showed the value of moving Conservative policies to the left to attract Liberal Democrats; great idea Dave, the Lib Dems almost won this rock-solid Tory seat.

This weekend Cameron secured more ridicule by his hopelessly insouciant remark that we should love teenage yobs. Sure, nobody would argue against being compassionate to people in straitened circumstances, but the best thing to cure anti-social behaviour starts with responsibility and the certainty of punishment. There is plenty of room for love when discipline has been established.  

Last week Cameron unveiled his first concrete ideas on policy with a speech on energy and the environment. The ideas were so sophomoric that they would have shamed the 6^th form debating society with their superficiality and sentimentality.

Speaking to the Local Government Association in Bournemouth, Cameron showed he is an intellectual lightweight by embracing all the doom and gloom ideas of the global warming maniacs of the left. Or perhaps he has been listening too much to Zac Goldsmith, the poor little rich boy who was ejected from Eton under a cloud, and never got around to getting any higher education at all. This smooth talking ignoramus has bought himself a platform with daddies money for his silly ideas about the environment by “editing” The Ecologist magazine; at least he has the title of editor.

Cameron thinks climate change is the biggest threat facing the human race. That’s right, the climate. Cameron thinks he can change the climate. If he bothered to do the smallest amount of research, Cameron would soon discover that the mainstream media, the BBC, and left-wing politicians’ claims that human activity is radically changing the climate is not the universal truth he seems to think.

Wrong on climate
Climate scientists, as opposed to chemists, or biologists or Royal Society bureaucrats anxious to curry favour with the Labour Party, doubt that human activity is having any impact on the world’s climate. An excess of carbon dioxide, CO2, from power generation and transport is not warming up the climate. Some highly qualified climate experts believe it is the other way round – because the climate is warming naturally, more CO2 is being released from natural storage areas like oceans. They say CO2 is not having any impact on climate at all.

But Cameron is convinced, and he claims to have a powerful testament, the evidence of his own eyes.

Dave’s seen the evidence
“Today, in the twenty first century, the greatest long term threat this planet faces is climate change. I’ve seen the evidence for myself. Earlier this year, I went to the Arctic. That’s where temperatures are rising faster, and where the effects of climate change are more pronounced,” Cameron said in his speech.

This simply isn’t true, but isn’t it amazing that Cameron would decide on this flimsy evidence – remember, that when he visited the melting glacier in Norway, he almost made the mistake of visiting the wrong one which is actually expanding and is a couple of miles away from the one that is melting.

By becoming beholden to ill-educated buffoons like Zac Goldsmith, Cameron is asking the wrong questions, and committing the Tory party to energy policies which will prove to be a cul de sac.

He asked some rhetorical questions during his speech in Bournemouth which included –

“How can we change the way we do things to reduce our carbon emissions? How can we use less energy?” he said.

The questions he should be asking are – How can we use energy more efficiently? How can we prepare for the day when fossil fuels run out; which is more or less the line the Americans are taking. By falling for this political line on global warming, Cameron is in danger of falling for the Kyoto Treaty consensus where the West is expected to reverse economic growth in the name of the environment. This will bankrupt us, destroy any progress the 3^rd world has been making to rid itself of poverty, and have no noticeable impact on the climate.

Serious misconceptions
As Cameron was making this speech, Tory Central Office published its Strategic Objectives for energy. It starts off with a few lines on climate change which shows that the policy review is working under some serious misconceptions, which all seem to stem from a zealot’s view of the state of the climate.

“Global temperatures rose by 0.6 degrees in the 20th century”.

So what? That’s what world temperature does, it moves up or down slowly. It never remains the same.

“The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990.”

If you go back to the Medieval period, temperatures were at least as warm. Earlier they were much warmer. The Romans grew red wine in the south of England. 1,000 years ago migrants moved to Greenland because its mild climate promised a good life.

“Arctic sea ice has already reduced by 15%.”

Where did they get that bit of data from?

Absurd
The policy review then goes through a mishmash of absurd claims about micro–climates and ecosystems being damaged. “Extreme weather conditions are increasingly commonplace (not true, but many new homes have been built in coastal areas prone to hurricanes. New Orleans fell victim to badly managed sea defences from a corrupt local government). Storm and flood losses in Britain cost between £6.2 billion 1998 and 2003, double the amount in the previous 5 years (Many new houses have been built on flood plains).”

The climate change section concludes with this gem.

“In May last year, the national science academies of each G8 nation, together with those from Brazil, China and India (my italics)

Signed a joint statement on the need for a global response to climate change……… It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Forgetting the fact that the Russian and U.S. national science academies had to later withdraw their signatures because of political shenanigans designed to pretend there was acceptance of human’s impact on the climate when there wasn’t, it is a bit silly to proclaim Brazil, China and India’s commitment to cutting CO2, when these nations, like the U.S. have declined to sign up to Kyoto.

So Cameron has now made a start on his policy initiatives and if those of you who hadn’t seen the man for what he really is, maybe the scales will start to fall from your eyes.

And just remember Cameron’s record since he first bicycled on to the scene with the limo following just behind.  

Happiness
“So I want the Conservative Party to lead a great national debate on happiness.”

That was a recent eye-wateringly embarrassing speech about how we are all working too hard and must concentrate on being happy, with the help of the new, caring Tories who will move faster, wider, deeper to reform themselves.

Remember his campaign for the leadership last year? If he had run an honest campaign for policies that junked grammar schools, was disinterested in lower tax or reform of the National Health Service, and wanted state action to limit our personal carbon use, he would never have reached the starting line. Since then we’ve had the outrageous so-called “A” list, which goes against the basic Tory principle of seeking out the talented, not trying to gerrymander flawed candidates who couldn’t make it on their own.

Hey William!
Cameron’s achievements in life before seeking the Tory leadership were unimpressive. He has the thinnest CV, with his only job a two-bit PR man for a TV company. Once, he carried Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont’s bags, and got himself photographed standing behind him, looking guilty, on Black Wednesday.

Cameron doesn’t think that tax cuts are very important, even though the imposition of harsh taxes by neo-Labour has forced millions into the kind of long-hours regime Cameron says we should dump for the sake of our happiness.

Believe me, this man is bad news. But when John Prescott is forced to leave office in the next weeks, perhaps the media spotlight will then settle on Call Me Dave. It won’t take much to make clear that we are talking about an empty vessel here. Come to think of it, even though his pedigree is different, he does look a big like a younger 2 Jags. With a bit of press pressure I can see him morphing into the new John Prescott.

   Hey William Hague, will you be ready then?

 Neil Winton – July 10, 2006

Top