The Brits are in Cork. This morning, Sir Keir Starmer, First Lord of the Admiralty, arrived in Cork to meet the Taoiseach Micheál Martin for the second UK-Ireland Summit. Haven’t we suffered enough?
Now as any reader should know I actually like Britain and British people but the last thing, the very last thing we need is the Taoiseach swapping notes with this bunch. The British delegation are as follows, Prime Minister (Sir) Keir Starmer; Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband; Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn; Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Emma Reynolds; and Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Peter Kyle.
It is not yet known whether Starmer will call in on the family homestead of ‘Cork Man’ Morgan McSweeney his chief of staff until McSweeney had to resign over the entire Peter Mandelson fandango. Funny enough McSweeney seemed to understand the concerns of working class traditional Labour voters much better than the human rights lawyers from North London, Islington. (They are always from North London, trust me on that.)
Where was I? Ah yes making up this bunch schlepping over to Cork is a one Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband. Another Net Zero nut. He also once called Cork’s favourite son Roy Keane ‘awful’ when Keane told the English maybe they shouldn’t have been planning the parades before the football match was played.
(‘Awful’ Roy Keane serves it cold. We are all cold now.)
Now, I’m all for co-operation, I’m all for building bridges with the British and what have you, why my husband is English. But what this lot want is to build a big fat bridge to the globalists and the ‘international lawyers’ that seem to prioritise the rights of everyone else over the natives. This lot seem to want to turn both Ireland and Britain into some sort of economic zone where diversity is always and at all times ‘our strength.’
Last week the Irish government said increases in energy prices were not just due to the war in Iran but ‘price gouging at the pumps.’ And would you know it, Minister Miliband was running a similar line this week in the UK. “The government “will not tolerate” energy firms profiteering from the rising price of oil and the competition watchdog is primed to step in to prevent petrol price “rip-offs”, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC.”
Minister Miliband also told parliament on March 6, “the events of recent days are yet another reminder that the only route to energy security and sovereignty for the UK is to get off our dependence on fossil-fuel markets whose prices we do not control, and on to clean, homegrown power that we do control.”
This is suspiciously like what the Tánaiste Simon Harris said a few days ago, the effects of the conflict in the Middle East has to be a “wake up call” for the EU on its dependency on fossil fuels. So according to the likes of Harris and Miliband it is all our fault – we are simply too reliant on fossil fuels for our energy needs. Never mind that this has been the case since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but now the politicians would have us believe that energy is a luxury. It isn’t.
Like the Irish government Ed Miliband is big into the Impossible Dream of Net Zero. If this means freezing Winston Smith in his council house to death in Newcastle, then so be it. There are also quite a few Irish pensioners who live in the UK who also might be feeling the chill.
Britain has both nuclear energy (although now very degraded) and North Sea oil. But one of the first things Minister Miliband did was to severely restrict further oil and gas exploration in the North Sea cecause Sun God Angry, or whatever.
“The government has ruled out new North Sea oil and gas exploration or lower taxes for fossil fuel companies as it struggles to protect workers from the industry’s collapse.”
Indeed “North Sea gas production has been declining for years and these days it supplies only about a third of Britain’s needs. A combination of a moratorium on new exploration licences (ordered by Miliband) and the energy profits levy, which pushes the tax on companies’ profits up to 78%, means that, in ten years’ time, production is expected to be about a quarter of its current level.”
Ireland has no significant indigenous oil production and imports 100% of its oil requirements, with 76% coming from the UK.
Just like the Irish government Starmer and Miliband think the energy needs of Britain can be met by the wind turbines and solar energy. The wind and sun fairies will come to our rescue.
As Emma Duncan in the Times explains: “It would be reassuring to think that the government’s commitment to clean power generation was indeed making us more secure as a country. Unfortunately, though, it is making us more vulnerable.
Miliband often points out, correctly, that the cost of wind and solar power has fallen dramatically in recent years, and by some calculations is cheaper to generate than any other sort. If we lived in the middle of the Sahara, or were permanently windswept, we’d be laughing. But on an island over which the skies often darken and where calm days are as frequent as windy ones, renewable energy is intermittent, so we need power from a more reliable source.”
This is very similar to Ireland, which is so windy the turbines must be shut off and has less sun. In the Irish Times Cliff Taylor explains “In the meantime the Holy Grail of “clean and cheap” renewable energy – cutting exposure to international markets – moves further away. Ireland’s offshore wind programme is, experts say, unlikely to be a factor in supply until 2032 or 2033.” Indeed, “household energy bills have fallen back since the big increases after the start of the Ukraine war, but they still remain on average more than 40% higher than at the end of 2021, before prices began to rise. And they are among the highest in the EU.”
Among the highest in the EU. Tell me something I don’t know. And if the Irish government is getting any advice from Net Zero Nut Miliband who has already severely restricted oil production from the North Sea that impacts both the UK and Ireland then things are only going to get worse.
It just baffles me. It really does. Why do Martin and Starmer hate their own voters so much? Both governments have sought to push their countries as ‘global leaders’ on climate. They do this, push their own economies off a cliff, believing that the men in charge of the world’s biggest emitters, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will follow them. That’s not going to happen.
Britain is responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Ireland’s much less. But the Irish government is coming after their key industry such as agriculture for instance, while the British government runs down their own heavy industries. It’s a type of self-delusional madness but we are the ones that pay the price.
Haven’t we suffered enough?