They Blog For You

                The week-end press had started to wake up to the private sector squeeze which we have been talking about on this website  for the last year, the squeeze which was even heralded by the Bank of England itself. The high rate of inflation coupled with a low rate of wage [...]

Well I think it was European Committee "B". These are interesting committees that debate reports of the European Commission.For example this week I raised the issue of peak oil and energy prices in a debate about European Growth. [...]

  How much can the Lib-Dems take? Can the anti-nuclear Lib-Dem MPs continue to back a doomed policy? They were clear in their denunciations before the General Election. Simon Hughes never changed his mind. Now Nick Clegg appears to have cracked. The Deputy Prime Minister cast doubt on the future for nuclear [...]

                 I have been looking into high speed trains. I have made three day  return journeys to Manchester and Leeds recently and decided to take the train.  I have been hoping to win some green plaudits!                On each occasion I have wished to be in those cities in time for [...]

But no more. Today's budget was a drama-drained drone of yesterday's press releases. In his day Gordon Brown was apocalyptic with a Heathcliff booming voice and contrived surprises. Nothing of any significance can be delivered in Osborne's squeaking falsetto. Today I had a choice. Attend my 24th budget speech or chair the [...]

THE BUDGET 2011: An MP today welcomed the announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Norwich Research Park will share in £100 million of investment in science and research facilities. The Park includes the John Innes Centre, one of the world’s leading centres for [...]

  Former pal and MP Gordon Prentice reports from Canada:  "Michael Thompson, an inventive councillor in Toronto, has claimed $300 expenses to cover the cost of a pastor  “blessing his workplace” at City Hall. His office is blessed at the start of every new Council term. Even Westminster’s most ingenious and resourceful [...]

The energy market is one of Britain’s biggest scandals.   A report out today finds the Big Six energy companies are ‘greedy’ and ‘bad’, according to the industry regulator Ofgem which says they profiteer and ruthlessly exploit the vulnerable.   As a result a fifth of all households are now in fuel poverty [...]

              The government has a target to cut the administrative overhead by 30% over the life of this Parliament. This is a demanding target, but one that can be hit. It will be easiest to do so, if full use is made of people leaving public service to retire or [...]

Angela Merkel rightly called Fukushima “a turning point for the world”.   It is.   This was no glitch in an unsophisticated backwater of a State that could be explained away by poor design or low operating standards; this happened in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world with [...]

It's a long time since I've written a letter to the Guardian. Their untrue reports yesterday has prompted dozens of requests for interviews from the media. They lose interest when they hear what my opinion is. The letter reads:-   "Having never expressed an opinion, privately or publicly, on the subject, I [...]

Japan makes seven times as many cars as the UK.  China produces fifty seven times more steel than the UK. Neither China nor Japan have a carbon tax or price for carbon in their energy costs. The UK used to be the workshop of the world. It was famed for its ships [...]

Nobody is forecasting another Chernobyl – yet.   But there two deeply disturbing scenarios at the Fukushima Daiichi plant which could yet prove apocalyptic.   The lesser, but still very frightening, risk is that cooling via water-hosing and helicopter water-bombing will not prevent the nuclear cores at one or more of the [...]

  Mayor Boris appears to be getting his way in wiping Brian Haw's peace protest from the face of Parliament Square. He has been there for ten years.  On many winter nights I have admired his fortitude as I went home to a warm bed while he continued his protest regardless [...]

   Where are the consoling voices of Friday?  It was ‘nuclear expert’ Malcolm Grimsom who cooed that nuclear safety was proved because only one reactor had problems in Japan. The following day he said that the first explosion may have been a good thing in some ways. Today the Army tried to dump water [...]

The government’s pro-nuclear chief scientist, John Beddington, immediately leapt in with assurances that Fukushima is very different from Chernobyl (which it is, but that’s not the point: Fukushima is highly dangerous in its own right) and not spewing out radioactivity because the Japanese had taken the right precautionary measures (so why did 180,000 [...]

It was a bracing interview this morning with someone named Ian. A pal from campaigning days in the early 80s contacted me with the message ‘Just like old times’. In 1980 a small group of us met in Aberystwyth to establish the Welsh Anti-nuclear Alliance (WANA). This morning’s interviews on Radio [...]

                  Mr Huhne has brought out a publication entitled  “Carbon Plan”. In it he says: “Climate change is one of the greatest threats to both UK and global security and prosperity…..without action to curb emissions there is a very high risk of global warming well beyond 2 degress relative to pre-industrial [...]

  Tomorrow will the day from hell for the coalition.There are likely to be statements on Japan and Libya. The indefensible Prince Andrew may again come under critical attack. The world is traumatised by the nightmare images we are witnessing from Japan. I am sure the Government and charities will do all [...]

                     Money has been easy for the UK public sector. The 0.5% interest rate is the one that applies only to government. Government has enjoyed using it to the full, borrowing collosal sums on the back of it.                   Money has been much tighter in the non bank  private sector. Effective [...]