Good news - Sustainability watchdog to be axed

[FourWheelDrift]

Jonathon Porritt and the pointless carbon emissions watchdog.

Apologies for the brain dead Guardian link - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/20/...

But I think that makes it more hilarious to read their readers comments.

[turbobloke]

Excellent news.

[hornet]

Normal thinking :-

> Identify areas where you can save energy / reduce waste
> Spend some money internally to achieve said reductions
> Save money (and dolphins, aardvarks or whatever)

Labour thinking :-

> Identify areas where you can save energy / reduce waste
> Spend money setting up a quango to tell you what you already know
> Allocate a budget to said quango
> Spend money analysing the findings of the quango you've paid to set up and operate to tell you what you already know
> Spend more money putting those findings in place

That's like me paying for a commission to report back on ways to reduce the pile of unironed shirts next to me and claiming the "independent" advice of "well, you should iron your shirts" constitutes money well spent!

Unbelievable.

[turbobloke]

The loss of the commission is no loss. Its remit was to bolster junkscience, saving money was a figleaf but the only useful aspect and in the current climate it won't be necessary, as hornet rightly indicates, to set up and pay a goddam commission to tell people that.

The C666O2 bit was overplayed betraying the agenda as support for a junkscience idea rather than economising.

It's one less circular quote though, with the Carbon Trust quoting the Sustainability Commission quoting the IPCC quoting a mountain guide via a typo etc etc.

[hornet]

Interesting to relate this to my own experiences at work, as I'm on the office "Environment Committee". I even volunteered, would you believe. My opinion on all matters "green" is if you identify you're doing something inefficiently, it's a no brainer to remedy the situation. You can put any amount of green spin on it, as indeed some on the committee do (we have an ex-FoE bod), but if it boils to down using / paying less for something (be it paper, water, energy or whatever) with no negative impact to the way the business operates, you'd be an idiot not to do it. Quite why you'd need a £3m a year pseudo-independent commission to tell you to do stuff that ought to be blindingly obvious (how many PC monitors or office lights left on overnight across all of Government?) just shows how cavlier people get when they have other people's money to spend. The SDC may well have been giving sensible advice for all I know, but if it's THAT sensible, it should be blindingly obvious to start with.

[spaximus]

let's hope a few more go the same way. but you know he will still get a good gig somewhere else. After all the enviroment is the kings new clothes.

[anonymous-user]

I like this comment from "gobstar"

Where is the resistance to the Tory hijack of our country?

perhaps he could protest by camping outside the houses of parliament.

[Sticks.]

I'm not a fan of quango's or Porrit (btw he's no longer involved) or the Guardian, fwiw, but report actually says DEFRA is't saying it's going and it claims to have saved the govt more than it cost.

Good idea, axeing something which saves taxpayers money?

[mybrainhurts]

Deep joy...

[turbobloke]

Sticks. said:

...report actually says DEFRA is't saying it's going and it claims to have saved the govt more than it cost.

Good idea, axeing something which saves taxpayers money?

Grauniad article said:

The coalition government will on Thursday announce plans to axe its sustainability watchdog

That looks like a dead duck, but we must wait for Thursday to be truly happy.

'DEFRA says' is that like Simon Says but uses more tax?

[Mark Benson]

Sticks. said:

Good idea, axeing something which saves taxpayers money?

An awful lot of QUANGOs claim to be saving the taxpayer money (while simultaneously costing us in funding) - I wonder how many actually are.
It's very easy to conjure up fictitious savings if that's what you're asked to do.

[turbobloke]

It wouldn't be surprising to see, in the supposed savings, a wild guestimate for the value greens put on a policy of carbon reduction as some sort of emotional capital, alongside mythical lives saved by recycling our intestinal gases costed at gazillions per doleite taxpayer demise.

[Sticks.]

Possibly, but my understanding is that it would demonstrate savings by govt departments by the effieicnt/green use of energy ideas they've introduced or disseminated.

I'm all for saving money, and if that's what it does, it'd be a shame to bin it.

[turbobloke]

The indirect costs of supporting ecofairytales are vast.

Carbon nonsense will cost the country well in excess of £100 billion in pointless windymills alone.

The SDC was brassneck deep into this nonsense, with Porritt and his brand of anti-capitalism ecomentalism as a free extra, and as mentioned earlier the fact that vested interests say that an organisation saved money is inadequate without full financial details.

Same as recycling in that regard - recycling, oooh, great greenery, but ask any local council for a full energy audit of any of their recycling processes and you'll be sent off on a merry chase of circularly self-referencing government websites. What you won't get is a full energy audit as these don't exist (not having been compiled). The reason they haven't been compiled is that they would show up a lot of fashionable recycling to be pointless and costly.

[Sticks.]

I don't buy the whole green agenda either, but if it can show it's saving more money than it costs that can't be a bad thing. Baby, bath water etc

[turbobloke]

Sticks. said:

I don't buy the whole green agenda either, but if it can show it's saving more money than it costs that can't be a bad thing. Baby, bath water etc

And - once again - it has not been shown to save money.

If you can post up financial data from an official source, that point may be conceded but it's as likely as seeing an oaf like John Presclot getting a job as Deputy PM.

OK hold on that, but you get the drift.

[Sticks.]

turbobloke said:

And - once again - it has not been shown to save money.

If you can post up financial data from an official source, that point may be conceded but it's as likely as seeing an oaf like John Presclot getting a job as Deputy PM.

OK hold on that, but you get the drift.

It claims to have done and I don't it's been shown not to. If you've got time to check it out, fine, I haven't, let's wait and see.

Don't start me off on JP. In one way though, he's inspirational........

If he can get laid by his secretary, then the rest of us.........

[MartinM]

It's certainly a promising start.

This comment however boiled my piss

yoghurt knitter said:

Gobstar

20 Jul 2010, 7:17PM

Ah, David Cameron and his "greenest government ever".

Bullst.

The private sector will burn fossil fuels until they can burn them no more without the sticks and carrots of legislation.

If anyone wants to see the value of what the Sustainable Development Commission do, read their "The Future is Local" report on there website. It's radical, and perfectly plausible.

It won't happen, however - not because of the Sustainable Development Commission, but because of the aholes who run private business in this country, and aholes like David Cameron.

Where is the resistance to the Tory hijack of our country?

Where are the Trade Union protests?

Where are the artists and their satires?

The way we have fallen over to serve at our new feudal masters is thoroughly depressing.

40 Recommendations too. Depressing. Mind you, this is the Grauniad webste we're dealing with

Edited by MartinM on Wednesday 21st July 12:31

[mybrainhurts]

If Jonathon Porritt has got the chop, expect the Prince of Wales to be along, whining, in a moment or two...

[MartinM]

A good, typically nail-on-head blog entry about this by James Delingpole today

Here