Net Zero Price Hike Story UNTRUE

It is not only those trying to smear anyone that incurs the displeasure of our free and fearless press who practice bad faith journalism which verges on flat-out lying and rank propaganda: today’s main headline from the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph shows that the yellow press tendency has spread to bad mouthing the move to cleaner energy.

“Net Zero drive will add £120 to energy bills … Commons backlash over £3.5 billion scheme backing hydrogen production” tells the paper. We do not get to find out what kind of “backing” the Government is giving to hydrogen production. But we soon see the certainty of that headline diluted, as the “will add” is toned down. Because the Tel can’t stand up that claim.

“Household energy bills are set to rise by nearly £120 a year to fund the development of hydrogen gas, under the Government’s net zero plans”. So it’s now “set to rise” and “nearly” £120 a year. Do go on. “Costs could be added on to household bills from 2025 on top of subsidies for other green energy such as wind farms, under provisions in the new Energy Bill”.

Now these costs, whatever they turn out to be, “could” be added. But then again, they could not. Have another go. “The extra levy could add £118 to annual household bills - a 10 per cent increase on dual fuel bills, according to new analysis from centre-Right think tank Onward”. “Could add”. But perhaps it couldn’t. And then we see a “centre-right think tank” called Onward.

What the Tel appears to have missed in all this excitement is that Onward’s “founders state that Onward would operate in the mainstream of conservative politics, and is a reaction to the ‘lack of energy on the centre right’. It is explicitly aligned to the Conservative Party and is not a charity” as Wikipedia explains. It is chaired by Danny Finkelstein, who is a Tory peer.

Let’s have more from that explainer: “According to the Financial Times, Onward was launched in May 2018 at an event in which then Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson and then environment secretary Michael Gove gave speeches, and Onward’s stated mission is to generate a ‘new wave of modernising ideas’ and ‘a fresh kind of politics that reaches out to new groups of people’”. New wave of Tory propaganda, more like.

So we have a dishonestly slanted article citing a partial lobby group. Can the Tel make it three bad faith strikes in a row? It certainly can. “Conservative backbenchers are expected to table amendments to the Energy Bill in a bid to force Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, into a U-turn”. Which back benchers?

“Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said many Tory MPs were opposed to No 10’s ‘socialist energy agenda’”. Ah, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. The group of climate change denialists that uses alleged “research” from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group that, to no surprise at all, specialises in climate change denial and misinformation.

So what else does blowhard Mackinlay have to tell us? “The thought of more levies to try and pick winners that are unproven and in my view unsound just continues what we’ve seen in the whole field of energy policy, which seems more reminiscent of the 1950s Soviet Union that we used to laugh at”. More levies that the Tel just invented in this circle jerk of a climate denial article.

What else does this fellow have to tell us? “We need markets back in control of energy policy because governments are making a complete mess of it. I sense there is concern about all these kinds of policies among colleagues”. So, as the market price of, for instance, gas has fallen far from its peak last year, is he going to lobby for a cut in household energy bills? As if.

Did anyone else speak? John Redwood (no, don’t laugh) declared “The last thing we want is another government-imposed hike in the price of energy. UK households are suffering a hit to their living standards and business is being driven out of Britain. We need a rollback of taxes and subsidies on energy and we need a big expansion of domestic capacity”. Doesn’t make sense.

Domestic capacity of what? And why is he unwittingly talking about Brexit? But enough: these bad faith claims get worked into “stories” with headlines that the article cannot back up, with comments from partisan lobby groups and reality averse here today and gone tomorrow politicians. Then (for instance) the magpies at Mail Online give the spurious claims more reach.

Climate change is real. Net Zero will happen, sooner or later. That is all.

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