TheFatBigot Opines: Oh good, the government is changing the climate

We have had a Department for Energy before. In the 1970s the Secretary of State for Energy was Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, second Viscount Stansgate, the Marxist man of principle who likes to be called Tony Benn. Being a Marxist man of principle he is adamantly opposed to nuclear weapons and has spoken widely about nuclear power being a front for the creation of depleted uranium for use in nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State for Energy he stood by his principles as every good Marxist does by commissioning more nuclear power stations than any other minister before or since. The old Department for Energy existed to deal with deficiencies in energy supply infrastructure. We have deficiencies today, so maybe that part of the new Department will be a good thing. Ah, but there is a problem. The government has already committed itself to spend £100billion on windmills. With any luck the absurdity of this measure will be noticed by the new Secretary of State and he will make proper provision for nuclear and coal power stations instead, time will tell.

But what of the climate change bit? Is it just window dressing to keep the greenies happy or is it a real element of the new Department? After eleven years of Labour government in which nothing has been what they have said it is, I can only hazard a wild guess as to its purpose. We know his party claims to be in thrall to the greenies but I have a funny feeling Gordon doesn't believe the greeny stuff. He has slipped buzzwords into speeches but that is as far as he has gone. In ten hapless years as Chancellor and fourteen disastrous months as Prime Minister he has not made a speech dedicating himself to the warmist cause. Perhaps he has not looked into it, after all we know he did not know what "short selling" was when he banned part of it because he referred to it as "short term selling", a phrase that would never be used by anyone who has spent more than a minute looking into the practice.

Perhaps there is hope. Perhaps it is just window dressing. My fear is that adding "Climate Change" to the name of a government department is just another excuse to raise taxes now that he has run out of money and the financial faeces has hit the fan. What I would prefer is a government that had the courage to look carefully at the evidence for human activity making a detrimental change to climate, look at the things the greenies tell us we have to do to change our ways, assess the effect such a change in behaviour will have on the people of this country and have the courage to say it will not happen on their watch. Gordon is not noted for courage, but you can't stop a fat man dreaming.