An article from the Times this week ...
British 'green jobs’ claim a sham
Government claims that Britain already supports nearly one million “green-collar” jobs have been exposed as a sham after the figures were found to include North Sea gas industry workers as well as some petrol station attendants and skylight manufacturers.
Britain’s Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, outlined yesterday by Lord Mandelson, claimed that the economy already supported 880,000 “low-carbon jobs” — a figure that he said was poised to grow by up to 400,000 by 2015 to more than 1.28 million. But a detailed breakdown of the figures obtained by The Times shows that they include an extraordinarily loose definition of the term.
About a third of the jobs (266,000), comprises workers in “alternative fuels” — a category that includes the production and supply of natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), as well as nuclear power and conventional “green” fuels such as biodiesel, bioethanol and hydrogen.
John Sharp, of Innovas, a consultancy in Winsford, Cheshire, which was paid by the Government to produce the figures earlier this year, confirmed that this included thousands of workers on gas production platforms in the North Sea as well as petrol station attendants on forecourts where liquefied petroleum is dispensed and employees at gas-fired power stations. The list also includes manufacturers of a bizarre array of products — from skylights to wooden pallets and noise insulation materials, on the basis that they use recycled materials. Figures supplied by Innovas showed that the total included 207 jobs in the supply and manufacture of animal bedding, 90 providing equestrian surfaces and 164 in the recycling of footwear, “slippers and other carpet wear”. Mr Sharp acknowledged that there were some “weird and wonderful” categories. “We try to capture as much of the supply chain as possible,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change claimed that Innovas had defined the methodology used in the report. “They are looking at the whole low-carbon supply chain, not just at the end-energy production,” she said.
Robin Oakley, climate change campaigner for Greenpeace, said that the definition used by the Government seemed unfeasibly broad and that there was “no need for the Government to massage the figures” because it was unquestionable that the economic future opportunity in the low-carbon sector would be huge (of course it will be. They intend it to be, because it's yet another way of making money out of us - GOS).
Yesterday Lord Mandelson said: “The Government is determined to ensure the economic and employment opportunities that this transition [to a low-carbon economy] offers to us.” Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said that the low-carbon economy presented “big potential” for economic growth and job creation.
But The Times revealed yesterday that a factory in Newport, Isle of Wight, which is Britain’s only significant manufacturer of wind turbines, will produce its last batch of seven-tonne blades this week. More than 600 people employed at the plant and a related facility in Southampton, will be made redundant at the end of the month. All 7,000 turbines that the Government committed itself yesterday to installing over the next decade will be manufactured overseas.
By 2020, renewable energy sources will provide 31 per cent of Britain’s electricity, up from 6 per cent today, while nuclear’s share will fall to 8 per cent from current levels of between15 per cent and nearly a quarter, depending on the variable output of nuclear plants.
The GOS says: So our government (note the word "our" - meaning the government that we supposedly put into power and which supposedly works for us) continues to lie and bully us to stop emitting carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, in case you had forgotten, is a gas that (a) we breathe out all day every day, (b) is not poisonous and is completely natural, and (c) is a food essential to plant life. Oh, and can we also point out that the government and so-called environmental campaigners are also guilty of gross deception when they insist of talking of "low-carbon industry" or "carbon neutral" or other expressions including the word "carbon". Carbon is not the same thing as carbon dioxide, which is a gas. Carbon is what we're all made of. They might as well talk about "low-human industry" or "meat neutral".
Bastards.
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