Loony Huhnes

"New green economy will counter oil prices" reads the headline of an article in Public Service on Huhne's unveiling of a new "Carbon Plan", by which Britain will confirm its world leadership in the race to the bottom of the international competitiveness league.

Houyhnhnm never disappoints. Just when you think he cannot get more detached from reality, he fires the boosters and reaches new heights of folly. Greensturbatory rhetoric aside, the imbecile announced the following tasks for government departments:

HM Treasury will have to legislate to create a floor in the carbon price by April 2011. The Department for the Environment and Climate Change (DECC) will have to award the contract for the first UK carbon capture and storage demonstration by end of this year and identify more demonstration projects by May 2012. The Department for Business must get the Green Investment Bank operational by September 2012 with the first annual data released on the funds in and size of investments made by the bank by May 2013. And the Department for Transport must "develop a nationwide strategy" to push ahead with more use of electric cars and other transport.

Houyhnhnm appears to be unaware that the Treasury cannot legislate. It's an easy mistake for an EU fanboy to make, as of course there's none of that democratic nonsense about the pronouncements of the unelected European Commission. But even if the Treasury could legislate, precisely how would it "set a floor in the carbon price"?

What he means, of course, is that the Treasury must come up with a figure for what carbon is supposedly costing the planet in order to make the rest of his initiatives seem cost-effective. So, it's failed in Europe, been abandoned in Chicago, but - sound of trumpets - it's going to work in Britain, because it's so well run by brilliant politicians and officials who are the wonder of the world.

The asylum has been taken over by the lunatics. Because greenery is the only thing binding the Coalition together, Houyhnhnm and Co. are going to be permitted to make Gordon Brown seem like the wise and prudent steward of the nation's economy he always believed himself to be.

Suite of Tools

Hat-tip to EU Referendum for alerting me to the above phrase, uttered by Home Office Minister James Brokenshire (how apposite) with reference to the government in which he labours, and acerbly highlighted by Quentin Letts.

So we have a Suite of Tools at the helm of the Ship of Fools. That's got to be a best-selling title.

Not thinking things through

The following chart from the Mail may help to explain that "broken society" the Boy Wonder used to talk about, and which his administration is doing nothing to mend. The article highlights a study by CARE, the Christian social policy charity, which rebuts the declared intentions of Work and Pensions Secretary Duncan Smith on the subject of married couple families. 

The changes made by the Coalition Government will materially worsen the position of one-earner couples on an average wage, although they will improve the position of some other families. In 2009, a one-earner married couple with children on a wage of £33,745 paid over a third more in tax in the UK than in the average developed country, and a fifth more than in the average EU country.




The study concludes that under changes introduced by the Coalition, one-earner families on an average wage will pay even more tax, because although their tax threshold will rise by £1,000, the gain will be cancelled out by loss of tax credits and an increase in national insurance contributions.

Damn. I thought IDS was the sole member of this government who had actually thought things through. I should have known better. The alternative - that he has thought it through - would presuppose that he is making a premeditated attack on the principles he claims to uphold. I think he is a well-intentioned bear of little brain doing the best he can, but unfortunately the results are the same as if he were a Machiavellian genius.

Quote of the day - The Last Ditch

Hat-tip to Anna Raccoon for linking to this great post.

That the State could replace - or even do a better job than - a loving family is the most barbarous of the fallacies by which the 1946 generation has lived. They were so hung up on this fantasy that they systematically undermined the very concept of family at every opportunity. They actively encouraged people to depend on a burgeoning state that would nurture them "from cradle to grave." Not only was that wrong, it was corrosively wrong. In fairness to the hapless wimp, that is what the boy David is trying to signal to the nation behind the backs of the Guardianisti with his "Big Society" schtick. The blank incredulity on the faces of the Polly Toynbees of this world is quite genuine. Their confusion between "society" and "state" is as total as their confusion between "the economy" and "the Treasury". But then Polly is wealthy enough never to sit in her own piss in her dotage as most of the nation's grannies - thanks to idiots like her - have good reason to fear.

From the same site, another "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed" paragraph on why we should put in the boot on the Coalition without regard to improving the Labour pukes' standings in the polls:

It's therefore time for all men and women of goodwill to give the ruling coalition's members the kicking they richly deserve; unpleasant though it is to find ourselves alongside the unreformable statists of the Labour Party in the political melee. Conservatives and Liberals can be honest politicians again one day. The Labour Party is what it must be ideologically; a body of people convinced (despite rich historical evidence to the contrary) that they know better how to live our lives than we do.

St John the Divine's comment on the Coalition government

From the Message to Laodicea, verses 15-16.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold or hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.

My sentiments exactly.