So. Let me get it right. The idea of a second Kyoto Treaty – a binding agreement about a lowering of CO2 emissions over a set time frame – is dead. France, Russia, Japan and Canada have declared that they won’t be signing up to any such deal for a second time.
Their reasoning is fair enough: The US and China are fair farting CO2 like they’ve been gorging themselves on an especially malodorous vegetarian chilli, some Aldi lager and partially defrosted Quorn burgers for 46 solid hours straight. Meanwhile, France, Japan, Russia and Canada can barely summon a pleasantly meaty and easily despatched guff between them.
So who would be stupid enough to consign themselves to another decade of higher energy prices, restrictive planning laws and a raft of moves that seem tailor made to make them less and less competitive in the face of a sluggish global economy and the cut-throat realities of lower cost bases overseas?
Oh. That’d be us then. Great.
Meanwhile, out there in the real world, our remaining industrial capacity is being steadily eroded: at least part of Tata’s decision to mothball some of its UK steel production is down to the suspicion that it will soon be too expensive and restrictive to produce steel in this country in comparison to others. Expect others to follow suit over the next year as the mental extent of our energy “policy” (if you can ascribe that word to the vague idea that “make energy more expensive” is a rational system of governance) becomes clear.
On the one hand, that’s great if you want to see falling UK carbon emissions – if our steel is being made in China or Bolivia or Whereveristan then by crikey we’ve done it! Emissions are down! Pats on the back all round. Better still if you’re trousering a fat subsidy for your piece-of-shit windmills. Never mind that the global companies will just shrug and move their operations somewhere less pious. The important thing is that our shit won’t stink. How grand!
On the other hand, if you’re one of the 1,500 steelworkers suddenly looking at spending the rest of your life trying to get a footing in the service industries in what is already one of Britain’s most economically deprived areas, or among the quarter of people who expect to be rationing their heating next winter, then maybe not so good, eh?
All immaterial if you’re a colossal, copper-bottomed shitbucket with radar-shaped ears that are apparently only tuned to Radio bastard 4 and what they’re saying about you. A mean intellect concerned only with bounds as prescribed by a chosen claque of simpering tarts-with-hearts who write for The Independent (which is nothing more than the Daily Mail for hippies) and backed with all the low cunning of the ten pence gypsy-fair braggart. A hollow, thin-skinned comedy dirigible inflated by pomposity and wafted into the upper reaches of power by his own hot air, a tight sphincter and nothing more grand and noble than the ‘realities of coalition government.’ In any rational world, Huhne would be a middle ranking manager of a carpet warehouse in Croydon where the damage he could wrought would be limited to pinning passive-aggressive notes on the fridge about milk use.
As it is, we are stuck with this unutterable cunt not just for the next four years, but by his devices for decades to come.
Chris Huhne does, I suspect, see for himself a note in the history books. Anyone with a national plan stretching into the decades has to. At least Stalin looked the fucking part and not like an off-duty clown browsing glumly through the shelves of ASDA looking for pile ointment.
As well as killing lots of old people and hammering the final nail into the coffins of the communities he claims to ‘represent’ on the basis of his 8% of the national vote, Huhne will be remembered as the man who authored a bill of such staggering and preposterous vanity that he claimed primacy over not just the people who elected him in 201o, but the children of those people and the parliaments they elect.
Ironically, as he will have returned us to the Stone Age, all that future generations will actually know of him will be crude daubings of a big-eared simpleton on cave walls and the word “cunt” (which in 2311 is a charming term of endearment for big-eared simpletons. Meanwhile, ladies refer to their front bottoms as their ‘Huhnes’).
And there he is. Cheered to the rafters! Well done, Britain! Well done Nick and Dave and Ed and all the boys down the golf club. 2000 years of civilisation to arrive at the point where a total dumbass can kill your grandma because he likes windmills and smoke and gears confuse him and once this mister said that carbon is toxic and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all live in Taunton …and … and … please, Sir, I need a poo.
I’d say that ‘words fail me’, but heaven forfend I be accused of hypocrisy.