Tree hugging nonsense, election special

The election falls even further into farce today. It truly is an election special.

Labour announce they are going to plant 2 billion trees, the Lib Dems 30 million and Tories 20 million.

What is the point of all this and why have none of them thought anything through, I see Guido already had a stab at this but has got a few bits wrong, so here we go:

A) You need 45 trees to store one ton of carbon dioxide, of course this is only store so you can't go cutting them down again.

B) The UK carbon output is is 367,000,000 tons per year according to the UK Government estimates (down 38% in 10 years, which is rather impressive, almost entirely down to swtiching coal for gas power stations).

C) So you would needs 16,515,000,000 trees to make the UK carbon neutral.

So two billion trees will balance off about 12.5% of our current carbon output, at the usual density for tree planting of 2000 trees per hectare, that gives us about 1 million hectares needed - about 5 times the size of greater London or half of Wales.

The Government, including all property and building, only owns about 6 times the size of London in property.In addition, tree don't grow all over the mountains of Wales or Scotland so vast areas of wilderness you can't turn to forest. 

So for Labour, they would have to buy huge amounts of private land and return it to forest. As well as the army that would be needed to do all this planting - tens of thousands of full time people for decades. .

If you actually wanted to make the UK carbon neutral, the simpler and more realistic plan would be to buy Ireland which is quite flat, at 8.5 million hectares, and turn it all into a forest. This would make the UK carbon neutral.

For crying out loud this is so stupid. Esepcially when thanks to climate change and more CO2 more trees are going to grow anyway. Also there are actually some quite good ideas like planting billions of trees across Africa to stop the spread of the Sahara - trees are needed unlike the UK where we need arable land to feed oursleves and live in.

One step forward, three back...but to where?

What an amazing week! I can honestly say the fireworks have exceeded my expectations of sheer insanity on the part of what passes for our political elite (and media).


No wonder they are afraid of an election, by any measure we should replace 100% of MP's at the next election. None deserve to keep their jobs, if it was a corporate business unit , the unit would be shut down and abandoned with a big of a write-off to the value of the group.


However, Boris has taken a bad turn after his initial success of the Prorogation, he of course would have known the parliament and rebels were going to beat him. But to me it seems he thought Corbyn would go for an election. Instead in a really bizarre move, the opposition are content to oppose when there is no Government.


For his own side, I am less convinced of the aggression against his own MP's. He expected to lose a few MP's but through cack-handed management has now lost over 20. meaning he can't win any votes in Parliament again - after all, they are not going to vote for an election knowing that it ends their careers as they can no longer be Conservative candidates.


For Remainia, things appear to be going well. I am not so sure here either. Nobody I speak to is happy with the can-kicking and far more people were up for Boris sorting it one way or t'other. Remainia would do well to revoke Article 50 pre any election as that would make people think about having to 're-start' Brexit rather than just continue it. The idea that somehow they are being noble in hobbling the Government, demanding and extension and refusing an election is errant.


So I see both sides very badly holed at the moment, enter Farage perhaps? Predictions at the moment seem to age at lightspeed so are futile.

IFS say Vote Lib Dem for fiscal rectitude

In a rather strange turn of the events the Institute for Fiscal studies has tried today in vain to tell the public that all politicians in this election are lying and all their Manifesto's are lies.

Luckily, the public are well ahead of them on this.

However, the particularly nice trick they have turned up was to say that the Liberal Democrats were the most transparent of all the main parties! (except UKIP, handily airbrushed out of the picture altogether).

Here is what Liberal Democrat, David Laws ( how exciting if this smug idiot loses his seat in 2 weeks!) said by way of return:

"We get the tick for being more transparent clearly than the other political parties. We've set out in more detail than any other party I think in British political history what we'd do on tax, what we'd do on welfare, what we'd do on spending, which areas would be protected. I think that gives us the credibility where we are saying we would invest more on things like education and the NHS for people to know we can deliver those pledges in government."

Liberal Democrats and credibility - I seem to remember vaguely last time some sort of pledge to students or something.

If the IFS says the Lib Dems are the most trustworthy on economic plans then we should all very rushing out to Tesco to buy as much cheap alcohol as we can to keep us going for the next five years...

Gordon Brown's Scottish re-launch

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I hold few people in such low esteem as Gordon Brown. As Chancellor he over saw the biggest boom and bust for 100 years whilst trying to say he did the opposite, plus he has bequeathed us a structural deficit of such large proportions that it will be into the 2020's before it is under control. The list of sins goes on to many pages however brief one could try to keep it.

But it would be churlish of me nonetheless not to recognise his role in the Scottish Referendum. Today he is going to make a speech and has managed through his PR-enabled wife no doubt, to get this run in the Daily Telegraph. This speech will launch his role in the Referendum debate for the rest of the year.

Not for Brown this Independence - far to clean and easy for him. No better still a nice, complex devolution proposal for all four Countries of the UK including England. It's a classic more politics answer with sinecures for himself and his friends for eternity and the game of electioneering expanded to that everyone can get a prize.

If it were that alone, it would be of little interest. the two real belly laugh moments are that he has clearly been told to speak under his own banner, such is the political toxicity of his personal brand. So instead of Better Together he speaks for United for Labour. A real Popular Front of Judea moment (points awarded in the comments for knowing why the Popular front...)

Better still, is the fact that this is the same 'launch' of his independence line that he has made before. It is identical to this hot air served up last September and who could forget his 20 pub questions list of 2012? Might it be he is rather hoping we have forgotten his droning and monotonous wittering on the subject non-stop for the past 3 years - and is instead now hopeful that we have collectively a new found interest in his wisdom and counsel?

Insanity Alert: Government recommended to help Banks by Banker

The title is the summary of the treasury report into the housing market today.

James Crosby, ex-CEO of HBOS (presumably owner of lots of shares in the company) has done what was entirely predictable.

He has said that the failed Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac scheme (the failed US mortgage scheme that has likely just cost US taxpayers a sum not unadjacent to our entire national debt) would not suit the UK - Well done Dr. S. Holmes!

Then the report has gone on to say it is important that the UK government assist the banking industry in avoiding a property meltdown that will further affect their shareholders (i.e. Jim and his money) - only they said it was to protect first-time buyers, poor put upon dears of course.

What tosh - potential first-time buyers are in the purple at the moment, house prices falling, more choice of property, more rentals coming onto the market. Who wants to buy a house in this market mess?

Only the banks are really against a steep correction in house prices as to protect their wasting portfolios; And which bank is the most exposed to the UK mortgage market? Yup you guessed it, HBOS- yet 'the plan' is for our Government to step in and securitise the loans for them that the market will not do.

Utter stupidity - the market saying is 'trying to catch falling knives.' The idea is so bad that it is likely the Treasury team whom I fisked yesterday will run with it.