So Mili neither gets the Treasury, nor keeps his manic mission at energy. Safely dispatched to places over the horizon. (What must David M be thinking?) Please don't put him in charge of another COP.
I feel his first mission should be to China, to investigate Uighur slave labour in the open-pit neodymium mines and solar PV factories; to deliver a lecture on dumping tactics with special reference to 'green' manufactured products; and to initiate a detailed study of the carbon content of said 'green' goods.
I stand ready to join the Labour Party and enter the House of Commons to take up the reins at DESNZ. With the new government being such accomplished masters of the snap by-election this shouldn't be a problem. A peerage will do, if needs be. But I fancy Rosebank and Jackdaw will already have been approved, while they await my arrival for some more complex decisions that require attention.
ND
9 comments:
"How youse, Ed?" asked St Andy. Then he said F.O.
*applause*
I think the reshuffle shows the Northern Messiah might actually be part of the reality based community. He's put a safe pair of hands in as Chancellor, who isn't going to have his own economic agenda contrary to No 10 (wherever that is these days), he's exiled the eco-loon to spending his time in airport lounges across the world, and he's kept Mahmood at the Home Office to try and head Reform off at the immigration pass. It shows some understanding of what is needed, more than I expected TBH.
He's done as best as he can with what he's got. It'll be interesting to see what his MPs make of all this - if AB starts moving in the directions needed to actually improve things in this country, albeit very slowly and in tiny increments (ie edging away from NZ, reducing immigration, and capping the welfare budget somehow, reducing costs on businesses, lowering taxes even) then his own party are going to be caught between the Scylla of liking improving poll ratings (and increased likelihood of MPs retaining their seats) and the Charybdis of hating their own party's policies and wanting more Lefty red meat. My guess is the MPs will vote with their wallets, and the rank and file party members will vote with their feet and move to the Greens. The big question will then be 'Does Labour gain more centrist voters than it loses blue haired nutter ones?'
I see it's not been 24 hours and Darren Jones is already at it.
The pub plotting must have been savage last night.
CH
Agreed. The 5% off electricity is a good start. VAT at 5% is also levied on heating oil, but I bet that stays, as a quasi-nudge and a signal to the greenies.
Didn't he also say over the weekend that he wanted Britain to be an industrial nation again? I would love it - love it - if that were true. But he'll discover I imagine that it's a lot easier to destroy an industrial base a la Thatcher/Blair/Brown/Camoron than to rebuild it.
Dear God, not more rubbish about politicians destroying "our industrial base"! It was the trade unions that did it largely, aided by the sort of incompetent managers who were the only sort of managers prepared to work in union-dominated firms.
I remember as a fresher asking my new mechanical engineering chums whether they planned to work in the motor industry. To a man they said "no", usually followed by something like "Have you seen those buggers on the News? Who on earth would want to spend a career with them?"
At least it meant that the oil industry, for example, got a good choice of mechanical engineering graduates to hire.
Anon @ 11:18
One of the great imponderables (to me) is: what would have happened if instead of importing cheap Commonwealth labour to undermine the "I'm All Right Jack" era of union dominance, we'd gone down the route of a high-wage economy.
Part of the answer would obviously have been much more investment in automation. It would have necessarily been on the Murdoch / Wapping model, i.e. giving up on the old plant and secretively going green-field.
Enron did this on Teesside. It crept up on that very traditional, ultra-unionised industrial belt with plans nobody thought could work, quietly hired the best local staff (who were open to new ways & despised the unions), on high wages (which helped, too), and put in large-scale new infrastructure that transformed the area with cheap(er) electricity and gas and high-quality steam.
That effect was in fact just a by-product because the main aim was to build an entirely new worldscale energy hub. Didn't half put the cat among the local union pigeons, though, when they'd finally woken up and noticed it worked . Disturbed a lot of the local management, too.
That's a very truncated version of a complex piece of history. Because it started almost a decade after Thatcher first came to power / post Miners Strike, so the unions were already somewhat on the back foot. But their local stranglehold was pretty much still intact.
So, the village idiot is to be unleashed onto the international stage. I wonder what will be his first imbecilic act.
I remember his slightly less stupid brother, David, being ridiculed by President Putin, when he had the job. Sergei Lavrov will have the village idiot for breakfast.
Anon 11.18 - you don't have to tell me how crap the motor unions were in the 70s - read "Working For Ford" by Huw Beynon and be stunned that Halewood of all places is still going. And as an NUR shop steward in those days I saved a couple of people from being sacked who probably should have been (guy with no HGV licence takes a company HGV cab to the local cafe for lunch?).
But we've done a 180 from those days.
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