Virgin Enterprise quits Britain « The Daily Bayonet

The nice thing about being rich and clueless is that when your silly green ideas raise the cost of living above your comfort level, you just up and move to a place where you can keep more of your money. Never mind the poor saps who don’t enjoy that luxury. Sorry about your luck granny, throw another lottery ticket on the fire and you might make it through the winter.

Branson is just the latest rich activist to flee high taxes. Bono and U2 quit Ireland without a backward glance at the revenue hole the move left for their countrymen. It turns out that rich activists are rich first, activists second.

Conservative, white men more likely to be climate change sceptics, study shows | Environment | guardian.co.uk

"The intersection of 'conservative,' 'white,' and 'male' does matter for explaining the distribution of climate change denial in the American public," the authors conclude. But "denialism is sufficiently diffuse within the American public that it obviously cannot be attributed solely to conservative white males," they note. "What is most sobering, especially for the scientific community and climate change communicators, is that climate change denial has actually increased in the U.S. general public between 2001 and 2010, although primarily due to a significant increase in the past two years which may prove abnormal in the long run." – David Malakoff

Beware of rogue traders - Telegraph

A Solar water heating and solar PV (photovoltaic electricity) are being described as “the new double glazing”, because of the disreputable sales tactics used to sell them. Just like PVC-U double-glazed windows, solar panels are cheap to manufacture and easy to fit. A slick salesman can make a markup of several thousand pounds on a single deal.

The salesman’s pitch is made easier by high energy prices and the current hysteria surrounding alleged “man-made climate change”. In the first place, solar panels appear to offer something for nothing – i.e. free heat; secondly, they are apparently subsidised by various “grants”; thirdly, they appeal to householders’ wishes to be “green”; and fourthly, they are sanctioned by our own government. The last factor at least is true, but the first three are debatable.