Wednesday 15 September 2010

Speaking (Coded) Truth to Power

For our first lordly comment we turn to Turnbull, who glibly tells us what our Civil Service has been brought to, after decades of Thatcher, Blair and Brown:

It was too difficult for civil servants to call for public spending to be reigned (sic) in until after the financial crisis hit ... they were scared to. “Yes, maybe Whitehall should have,” he said. “But it’s quite difficult when your minister is proclaiming that we have transformed the prospects of the UK economy"

The thanks of a grateful nation, Lord Turn(1): you certainly earned that peerage.

And so to Turn(2), Lord Turner of That Ilk, who is doing an ever so slightly better job, as chairman of the Committee on Climate Change ('the government's climate watchdog'). He has had the balls to tell Chris 'Crapper' Huhne - who fancies raising the already infeasible 30% renewables target to 40% by 2020:

the government is already at risk of missing its existing [renewables] targets. Lord Turner also warns that raising the ambition of the targets "could involve rapidly escalating costs." He urged the coalition to focus on hitting the UK's renewable energy targets rather than raising them higher.

Translating from mandarin, this means: 'it's infeasible anyway, you eejit'. I suppose we must be glad that someone is at least willing to say these things, even if encrypted. Though it never did Lord Butler much good...

ND

2 comments:

Steven_L said...

You trying to say we're governed by spineless morons or something BQ?

Government's not supposed to work anyway, Hitler proved the consquences of that.

Anonymous said...

I still can't believe the Sir Humphreys pulled off a £1.3b pension heist and got clean away....while MPs got roasted for stealing 3/6d.
This and being crap too...it beggars belief.
I fancy all this may be dwarfed in the coming days by the Currency Wars...
http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/2010/09/analysis-world-war-iii-gets-under-way.html