I thank the letters correspondent J L Mulley from Sherborne – New Blackmore Vale, March 3 – who responded to my previous column regarding climate protests. Great to receive feedback raising important points worthy of debate.
The first Insulate Britain protest on the M25 in Sept’21 provoked outrage in some quarters of the press over the possibility of ambulances being held up by protesters blocking roads. Oddly, the following month there was no such outrage at the actual death of a patient in an ambulance stuck in a lengthy queue outside A&E at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, with not a climate protest in sight.
Last Friday’s simultaneous front pages of two national newspapers further illustrates the point. The Daily Mail fulminated about Gary Lineker’s tweet describing the language used by government ministers about asylum seekers as ‘not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’. A factually correct statement, but it resulted in Lineker being ‘stood down’ by the BBC from his role as a sports presenter.
The Guardian front page, however, focussed on a report that in England last year at least 511 people died before they could get treatment in hospital, because of delays in ambulances reaching them and discharging them to A&E departments. That figure was more than double the 220 deaths in similar circumstances the year before, and the delays were the result of our crumbling NHS, not road blocks.
Calling protesters ‘naïve’ and ‘selfish’ is somewhat puzzling. Naïve perhaps in hoping to persuade the Tory government to save lives and reduce energy demand by insulating Britain’s notoriously leaky homes, especially social housing. However, hardly selfish in seeking to improve the lives of others, and risking imprisonment as a consequence.
The issue of present renewable energy sources being insufficient perfectly highlights the failed policies of successive Tory governments. The rug was pulled out from under the domestic PV installation industry just as it was getting into its stride, resulting in businesses collapsing and jobs being lost.
The zero-carbon house building regulations were scrapped before they could come into effect, since when more than a million new homes have been built that consume excessive energy and now require retrofitting. Leaky older homes have not been properly insulated.
The development of energy storage systems has been inadequate, so we can’t save enough of the excess renewable energy generated when supply exceeds demand. The installation of onshore wind was effectively blocked, and here in Dorset the planning application for an offshore wind farm was blocked. These were all the result of political decisions.
Finally, the debate on population all too often focusses on the overall number of people, rather than consumption of resources. It’s a complex topic, with some surprises. We’ll look at it another time.
I read this article in your magazine and I am afraid that Ken Higgins is a good example of why I will never vote for the Green Party and why I think Ken is a bit of a twit.
First of all, deaths as a result of long queues in A&E were reported about in the news.
And yes, the climate change activists are stupid and naive. Why don’t they go and glue themselves to a road in Saudi where a lot of the oil comes from? Oh I know, because they would either be arrested or just run over as idiots.
Secondly, to say that Lineker’s statement was factually correct is disgusting and shows how poorly informed and how little this man knows his history. All the Government wants to do is deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda. What the Nazis would have done is ship them to concentration camps, starve them and then either gas them or send them to work until they died as slave labour. Which isn’t really the same.
I’m sorry Ken, but you are a wet lettuce and out of touch with reality.
I would say that Mr Higgins is indeed a little, if not a lot naive and foolish.
First of all, he says that news of deaths as a result of A&E waiting times, didn’t make it onto the news. Yes they did and yes, the climate protesters are naive and selfish and to damage buildings and works of art is beyond stupidity and all it achieves is hatred.
Secondly, he states that what Lineker said about the Governments illegal immigration policy being the same as Germany in the 1930s is factually correct is really uneducated. In the 1930s and onwards, Germany was incarcerating the Jews and other ethnic people. Disabled people were put to death, the Jews were first imprisoned in Ghettos where thousands starved and died in the streets. Those that survived were rounded up and crammed into cattle trucks on trains and sent to death camps all over Europe. If they survived the train journey and thousands didn’t, from there they were either gassed, tortured, experimented on or sent to work as slave labour. Many died of starvation, the cold or diseases in the death camps and while working. All the Government want to do is send ILLEGAL immigrants to Rwanda or back to France. I don’t see a comparison unless Mr Higgins knows something I don’t?
Either way, it’s because of uneducated and misinformed people like Mr Higgins that I could never vote for the Green party, although most of them really are green in so many ways.