Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

In England alone we have 15,000 storm overflows. They were designed for a smaller population, whose front gardens were not paved, whose back gardens did not have impermeable plastic grass and whose storms were not made worse by climate change.

This bit perks my attention.
Oh please can we ban/license astro turf and set up some kind of law to stop people just paving over their whole garden.

[Sheilbh]

Oh please can we ban license astro turf and set up some kind of law to stop people just paving over their whole garden.

Really bad for drainage, urban heat islands and biodiversity - I would ban them for sure.

I think you could say the same for 80% of bands that had their heyday in the 1980s    - hardly a stick to use against them. I found their Covid-19 stance pretty disappointing, though.

I just never, ever look into an artist's politics. They are very often, in the nicest way possible, mental

[Sheilbh]

Seems like net zero and Ukraine are the two big issues Johnson is trying to position as his legacy. Also I've been prett impressed with the Conservative Environment Network's lobbying in this leadership race - they had one of the big hustings for MPs and got all of the leadership candidates to sign up to their agenda.

At the start of the race - as reported by the Guardian - there were fears that Tory leadership candidates might pull back from net zero commitments, which didn't happen (it didn't change the Guardian's reporting really - which is a bit of an issue - I think it's another of those issues where the left in this country are desperate to be fighting the Republican party ). It shouldn't have been a surprise given the last decade of fairly sustained cuts in carbon emissions, but also just given that the CEN have more members than the more net zero sceptical/cautious groups.

Now having said that I think given the current context and for the next few years I don't really have an issue with extraction of oil and gas in the UK. But more broadly I'm not sure how we quite get to meeting out net zero commitments given all the things Sunak and Truss have ruled out - which is basically the story of British policy for the last few decades

Green Tories back Johnson's call for successor to invest in renewables
Outgoing PM to warn against focusing on short-term energy solutions in one of his final speeches
Peter Walker Political correspondent
@peterwalker99
Mon 29 Aug 2022 16.47 BST

Leading green Conservatives have backed Boris Johnson's call for his successor to invest in renewable energy, amid concern that the Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss could rely more on fossil fuels to combat soaring prices.

In one of his final speeches as prime minister, Johnson is set to warn against focusing on short-term solutions and neglecting both renewables and a wider shift towards net zero.

While officials say details of the speech are still to be worked out, they say Johnson will stress that growth in sources such as wind power, as well as new nuclear power stations, would protect the UK from future energy crises.

Truss and her rival in the Conservative leadership race, Rishi Sunak, have both called for more nuclear energy. However, they have been notably sceptical at times in their comments and planned policies on renewable sources.

Sunak has pledged to make it even harder to get permission for onshore windfarms, while Truss spoke out vehemently against solar panels being installed on agricultural land.

The foreign secretary will reportedly issue dozens of oil and gas drilling licences if she is elected prime minister next week. She will invite applications for licences to explore new fields and up to 130 are set to be issued, sources told the Times.

The most recent figures from Offshore Energies UK estimate that there are 15bn barrels of oil and gas still under the North Sea.

Truss has faced criticism for delaying her announcement on addressing soaring energy prices until after the leadership election concludes on Monday.

Chris Skidmore, a Conservative former minister who set up the Net Zero Support Group within the parliamentary party and has become a leading Tory voice on green issues, said he was keen for Truss and Sunak to understand the need to invest in renewables.

"The reason why I wanted to ensure every candidate in the leadership contest committed to net zero was not just to ensure that the UK maintained its international leadership on climate change – it was precisely because net zero isn't just about reducing emissions but determining our future energy security and economic growth," the MP for Kingswood told the Guardian.

"The private sector and international markets already understand that investing in the energy transition is the way forward for future growth.

"Net zero is now our way out of this cost of gas crisis. We have reached a tipping point where renewables are now far cheaper than fossil fuels and I genuinely believe that 2022 will be viewed by historians as the year that we recognised from this crisis that the world woke up to the need to deliver energy sovereignty through renewable and clean power."

Sam Hall, the director of the Conservative Environment Network, which has the support of 133 Tory MPs, half the parliamentary party backbench, said a commitment to net zero was "essential if we're to tackle our dependency on dubious regimes for energy".

He said: "Boris Johnson is right that delivering net zero goes hand-in-hand with tackling the root causes of the energy crisis. Putin is weaponising Europe's reliance on international gas markets for his illegal invasion of Ukraine, hoping that sky-high energy bills will weaken our resolve.

"By rolling out more clean energy such as offshore wind and insulating Britain's draughty housing stock, we will become less dependent on expensive gas which is putting up people's energy bills.

"Boris Johnson deserves a lot of credit for turbocharging the UK's clean energy sector during his time in office. Because of these policies we're buying less expensive gas than we would have been otherwise.

"The next prime minister must make good on their pledges to expand cheap renewables and boost energy efficiency, as well as providing direct support to households and businesses to help them get through this winter. Doubling down on net zero is essential if we're to tackle our dependency on dubious regimes for energy."

While Truss and Sunak are seeking to appeal to Conservative members, who will select Johnson's successor, Tory voters appear less dogmatic on energy measures. Almost half of them now support the nationalisation of UK energy firms, according to a YouGov poll for the Times.

Truss has pledged to suspend green levies, which fund energy efficiency schemes, placed on energy bills, and has said she backs fracking for shale gas if it has local support.

She is also resistant to new onshore wind projects, and during one leadership hustings event said that seeing solar farms on what was farmland was "one of the most depressing sights" of the modern UK.

A source in Truss's campaign said she was "absolutely committed to green energy", and had been vocal about the need to increase the supply from sources including wind and tidal power.

Not sure about the energy sovereignty positioning - I think the West desperately needs to build up renewables manufacturing capacity so we don't just shift our from energy dependency from Russia to China. But I don't think anyone in Europe really has the raw materials/metals necessary for decarbonisation so we'll still be reliant generally.

[Josquius]

I do get the logic that it's better to mine coal and drill oil in the UK than just import it from overseas.

But I really don't trust the companies pushing for this stuff and using this logic as a weapon to get their profits.

I get a real sense of once they get their foot in the door then they aren't going to be taking it back out.

For truss and net zero... Has she promised outright to stick to this? That she hasn't said she's tossing it as expected isn't something I'd get too optimistic about.

I do like the logic however of framing a push for renewables in a way to fit in with the tory dreams of North Korea.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't expect them to do it for free either.

[Sheilbh]

For truss and net zero... Has she promised outright to stick to this? That she hasn't said she's tossing it as expected isn't something I'd get too optimistic about.

I think all of them committed to keeping and meeting the UK's legal net zero targets.

I do like the logic however of framing a push for renewables in a way to fit in with the tory dreams of North Korea.

I think it reflects reality - thin global supply chains, interdependence (especially in energy and other essentials) etc only work in predictable peacetime. I don't think they work when there is either a hot war (as is the case with Russia - one of the world's biggest energy suppliers) or an economic war (as I think is emerging with China).

It may not be full UK autarky, but we will be in the US bloc and I think more generally we are moving to an age of "friend-shoring". In the current situation I think first question about energy probably should be whether it's secure or not. As I say I think for Europe the economics, security, and moral points on energy policy all point in the same direction which is to renewables and intensifying energy transition - I think it's a bit different if you're a big fossil fuel producer like the US or Canada, but you're also not exposed to the European gas market.

[Josquius]

I don't expect them to do it for free either.

There's other options than doing something purely altruisticly expecting to lose money and lying that they care about something just so they can profit for opposite reasons.

[Sheilbh]

WTF Absolutely mind-blowing story - also relevant for the Canadians:

Shamima Begum 'was smuggled into Syria by western spy'
Britain conspired with Canada to cover up role in girls' disappearance, book claims
Fiona Hamilton, Crime and Security Editor |
Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor
Tuesday August 30 2022, 7.15pm, The Times

A spy working for Canadian intelligence smuggled Shamima Begum and her two friends from Bethnal Green into Syria and Britain later conspired with Canada to cover up its role, an explosive new book has claimed.

Scotland Yard was told that the teenagers were trafficked into Syria by a people-smuggler who was a double agent working for both Islamic State and Canadian intelligence.

An inquiry was demanded tonight as it emerged that Canada knew about the teenagers' fate but kept silent while the Metropolitan Police ran a frantic, international search for the trio.

Canada privately admitted its involvement only when it feared being exposed, and then successfully asked the British to cover up its role, the book claimed.

The scandal reopens the debate over stripping Begum of her nationality as it shows that an asset of western intelligence gave practical help for her journey to become a jihadi bride, even organising her bus tickets.

There was no mention that the British authorities knew how she was smuggled into Syria in last year's Supreme Court judgment upholding the decision to bar her from returning to the UK.

Begum, now 23, remains in a camp in northern Syria. She is due to renew her case at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in November.

The alleged cover-up was detailed in The Secret History of the Five Eyes, by Richard Kerbaj, a former security correspondent of The Sunday Times. It is published on Thursday and is based on interviews with world leaders and more than 100 intelligence officials. Five Eyes is the intelligence-sharing alliance between Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Begum was 15 when she travelled to Syria with Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, fellow pupils at Bethnal Green Academy in east London, in 2015.

She said she had "no regrets" when she was found by The Times in a refugee camp in Syria in 2019 as the Islamic State's self-styled caliphate was collapsing. She has since expressed regret and said she was groomed. She was stripped of her British citizenship by Sajid Javid, then home secretary, as a threat to national security. Sultana was killed in a Russian air raid and Abase is missing.

The three schoolgirls were at the centre of an unprecedented public appeal to trace them before they crossed the border from Turkey into Islamic State's territory in Syria. The alarm was raised after it was discovered that they had flown from Gatwick to Istanbul.

Canada, which was worried about its own young people being urged to join Islamic State, had recruited as an agent Mohammed al-Rashed, a human trafficker for the terrorists, when he applied for asylum at the Canadian embassy in Jordan. He was hoping for a new life outside Syria.

Rashed is thought to have helped dozens more Britons and organised the travel of jihadists and their brides into Syria. He photographed their passports on the pretext that he needed proof of identity to buy domestic transport tickets but then forwarded the images to his handler with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) at the Jordan embassy.

Kerbaj's book claims that the Canadians were silent as the Met issued an urgent appeal — the first of its kind in London — asking anyone who had seen the teenagers after they went to Gatwick to come forward. It is claimed that Ottawa realised that its cover could be blown when Turkey arrested Rashed in 2015 and found him in possession of travel documents including bus tickets belonging to the British schoolgirls.

A Five Eyes source is quoted as saying: "The CSIS officers knew that Scotland Yard had a live investigation into the three schoolgirls and also knew that sooner or later the finger would point at them."

Within weeks of Rashed's arrest, CSIS officers organised to meet Commander Richard Walton, then the Met's head of counterterrorism, to admit their agent's involvement.

The Canadians could not have stopped the girl's travel because by the time Rashed's handler was told, they had already crossed the border, the book claims.

However, it adds that Walton felt the Canadians' visit to him was self-serving — that they were not meeting him to offer an apology but in the hope that any further inquiries into the schoolgirls' journey to Syria would not result in the CSIS being questioned or held accountable.

He is quoted as saying: "If you are running agents, you are acquiescing to what they are doing. You are turning a blind eye to their actions because it is being trumped by a rich vein of intelligence."

Nonetheless, the Met never publicly acknowledged the involvement of CSIS, and when lawyers for Begum's family asked for information about Rashed they claimed they were stonewalled.

A Met spokesman declined to respond to specific questions saying that "we do not comment on matters relating to intelligence".

The book quotes intelligence officials who say it made no operational sense for the police to publicise Canada's involvement because it would have reinforced Islamic State's paranoia and compromised any chances of infiltrating it through new informants.

Turkey went on to announce that it had arrested Rashed and that he claimed he worked for the Canadians.

"CSIS remained silent about the explosive allegations, taking refuge in the one thing that protects all intelligence agencies, including those within the Five Eyes, against potential embarrassment: secrecy," the new book claimed.

"The notion of saying nothing and hoping for the scandal to go away worked in Canada's favour with regards to keeping the lid on how an agent for CSIS had smuggled western children and young adult volunteers into Syria while their British allies struggled to contain the flow of aspiring jihadists fleeing the UK to join Isis.

"CSIS largely succeeded in covering up the role it had played in the recruitment and running of Rashed, and the agency's deputy director was deployed to Ankara to beg forgiveness for failing to inform the Turkish authorities that they had been running a counterintelligence operation in their territory."

Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer for the Begum family, called for an inquiry into what police and intelligence services knew about the activities of the Canadians.

He said: "Britain has lauded its efforts to stop Isis and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent programme and online monitoring. However, at the very same time we have been co-operating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them whilst they have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to Isis all in the name of intelligence-gathering.

"The calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk our western allies have taken."

He said the revelations were of "crucial importance", given that Begum had argued she was trafficked into Syria and that, at the time, senior officials at the Met had said the girls should be treated as victims not terrorists.

A CSIS spokesman said the service could not publicly comment on or confirm or deny the specifics of its investigations, operational interests, methodologies and activities.

A British government spokesman said: "It is our longstanding policy that we do not comment on operational intelligence or security matters."

[Tamas]

So what's the angle? Drum up support back home by the stories of these girls and the other jihadists? I don't get it.

[Sheilbh]

So what's the angle? Drum up support back home by the stories of these girls and the other jihadists? I don't get it.

What? Not sure I get the question.

[Tamas]

So what's the angle? Drum up support back home by the stories of these girls and the other jihadists? I don't get it.

What? Not sure I get the question.

Why would Canadian and UK intelligence work on getting would-be ISIS fighters and brides to Syria?

[Sheilbh]

Why would Canadian and UK intelligence work on getting would-be ISIS fighters and brides to Syria?

From that story it sounds like the guy who was doing the trafficking was providing the(m?) with intel on who was going and providing a route into/human intelligence into ISIS networks in Europe.

It sounds like turning a terrorist financier.

[HVC]

Meh it's not like canada or the uk were actively trolling to recruit jihadi brides. Canadian intelligence was just getting info on who were being transported.

[Admiral Yi]

There's other options than doing something purely altruisticly expecting to lose money and lying that they care about something just so they can profit for opposite reasons.

Are they lying right now?  I just skimmed Shelf's article so I might have missed something.  We are talking about oil and gas companies fracking aren't we?

More importantly, why does it matter if they want to hug whales and save turtles or not?  If fracking is a good policy and they frack, what's the difference?

[Josquius]

There's other options than doing something purely altruisticly expecting to lose money and lying that they care about something just so they can profit for opposite reasons.

Are they lying right now?  I just skimmed Shelf's article so I might have missed something.  We are talking about oil and gas companies fracking aren't we?

More importantly, why does it matter if they want to hug whales and save turtles or not?  If fracking is a good policy and they frack, what's the difference?

If they're lying about giving a shit about the current temporary situation then they're likely to push how much they do to the max and fight against stopping when the situation eases.