It’s A Windy Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Mel

[Update at end of post]

There is one constant in the outpourings from the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, and that constant is Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips. Some pundits work one or two whoppers into their copy, but Mel can be relied upon to go totally OTT and depart from reality, whether it’s on Question Time, or in the Daily Mail.

And this supply of porkies, for Mel, is universal, whether the subject is Israel (her claims that the country is about to be overrun by its neighbours debunked HERE), the so-called “War on Drugs” (see HERE), piling in on the totally fictitious “story” about the BBC not abandoning BC and AD (see HERE), or just a rant about how the world refuses to operate in accordance with her wishes (see HERE).

So that today’s Mel rant, on the subject of wind energy (on which she is uniquely qualified to pontificate), contains a number of jaw-dropping assertions – plus having the comments closed for legal reasons – should surprise nobody. As ever, Mel starts by sounding almost rational, but as she talks of the UK’s “fanatical green energy policy” and “green ideology”, you sense she is about to lose it.

And eventually she does indeed lose it, frothing “Wind power is three times more expensive than normal-tariff electricity”. That’s magnificently dishonest (more information HERE). And, as the man said, there’s more: “[wind power] has so far added some £52 per year to the average household electricity bill”. Full Fact reckoned the total cost of all renewables was rather less.

How much less? Over the ten years since 2002, just over £103, which means around a tenner a year. But Mel is clearly not concerned with such things as facts, as she then asserts that carbon emission reduction targets, quite apart from taking Britain “back to a kind of pre-industrial peasant economy”, would “according to the Government’s own estimate ... cost £404 billion to implement”.

Poor Mel just doesn’t have time for those pesky cost benefit analyses and all that voodoo net present value stuff. Those that have already detected a strong smell of fresh bovine by-product can explore more HERE. Meanwhile, Mel is on to jobs: “a green ‘stealth tax’ of some 20 per cent and rising”. Er, what? Sorry, that one was just made up on the fly. It’s complete bunk.

But the best bit is climate change “zealotry”: “wholesale retreat from rationality”, “no scientific basis whatever”, “nothing other than a scam based on ... outright frauds” (no wonder the comments got closed). Then another whopper: “It was warmer in the middle ages” (no it wasn’t). Then we get those sixteen “scientists” lauded last week by James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole.

This is truly desperate stuff, hilarious in its sheer dishonesty. No change there, then.

[UPDATE 1830 hours: a rational and well presented argument rebutting the kinds of unsubstantiated or wildly exaggerated claims of Melanie Phillips has been made by Matthew Carrington at the Guardian. I doubt that Mel will read it - after all, it might infect her with facts - but I commend it to anyone of independent mind]