Months ago I criticised The Guardian for its disgracefully dishonest front page story about the Chancellor. Today it's their friends at The Observer. Their front page headline contains the words "Sunak split with PM over climate", and the first sentence of the item refers to "an extraordinary rift" between the two men. Goodness me, this sounds serious. But read on.

All that has happened is that Treasury officials have written a paper, as is their job, looking at the economic implications of moving to a zero-carbon economy, and it suggests that "Climate action in the UK can lead to economic activity moving abroad if it leads to costs increasing". As is well known, the Treasury objects to spending any money on anything, so their caution comes as no surprise.

But what about "the extraordinary rift" between Chancellor and PM. The only mention of the PM is to point out that he will be hosting the Cop26 meeting. And if anyone gets to the end of the article (page 13), they will read the following Treasury statement: "The government is committed to tackling climate change, and the PM has set out an ambitious 10-point plan to help us achieve that. The Treasury is playing a crucial role in this effort, etc." Some rift!

I believe Sir Humphrey referred to this as "operation Hair shirt" whilst we beat ourselves up the rest of the world signs any old climate protocol and then ignores it.

One more point

Yep agreed, if a little too left wing for me.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Whatever keeps people keyed into something at least half mainstream and connected to society rather than going completely off piste is alright with me.

To my mind GB News 'are' part of the mainstream, albeit, not an especially popular part at this time. Going off piste and out of the mainstream is fine as long as it stays within the law, and/or isn't a path leading to places populated by those who have little endlessly tricky for authorities regardless of whether it's islamic, far left or far right types under the microscope.

Edited by BlueJay (17 Oct 2021 10.06pm)

Edited by BlueJay (17 Oct 2021 10.06pm)

I'm not looking to buy into 'inevitable war' narratives really. That is a core component (weirdly along with physical training camps) of both Islamic and far right troubling detachments from society. As tough as life gets its important to try to combine sensible policies (tougher immigration policy for instance) with efforts to make the best of communities. There is little choice but to do our best as things are. We're not ever going to be removing races or religions from the country. That's the reality.