The other issue is that none of the equipment is made in the UK and hence we are subsidising imports. Solar panels are almost exclusively made in China and wind turbines in Denmark, Germany, China and Spain.
BOTH parties are totally unfit to govern and present a clear and present existential danger to the economy and to the social fabric of the nation. They both want to deindustrialise the economy and industrialise the natural landscape in their mad, malign pursuit of an unachievable and utterly pointless 'Green' utopia which assures that only that a nightmarish Green dystopia will be delivered to order as a direct result of the attempt to get to imaginary 'Net Zero'.
Is it really too much to expect the majority of voters to be aware of this, as well as being aware of the many other nation-destroying policies which Labour and the Cons stubbornly cling to and intend to implement to the detriment of us all? It's not staring us all in the face now, it's slapping us hard around the chops, daily and repeatedly. If you want to save your country the choice is obvious: do NOT vote for ANY of the major parties, which are all 100% captured by outside interests, but DO vote - for independents, for Reform even, for any other minor globalist opposition candidates who might be standing OR, most importantly, SPOIL your ballot paper by writing 'None of the above' or 'I do not consent'. Spoiled ballots ARE counted.
If the MAJORITY use their vote to give the Uniparty a well deserved kick in the goolies, it will be the first step in a much needed political and cultural revolution in this country. If the majority vote Labour in order to kick the Cons in the goolies, traitorous politicians from both parties will be laughing their socks off as they quickly finish the job which they started in earnest in 1992, of destroying our once great nation. GB will NOT recover from 5 years of Starmer, Milliband, Reeves et al.
Unfortunately, the polls suggest the brain dead electorate WILL vote Labour in a landslide. When that happens, I'll be giving up the ghost and concentrating solely on self-preservation as the ensuing Chaos engulfs the country. Very depressing.
David - The sad thing is that it has been known for well over a decade that the "green jobs" vision is nonsense. I wrote about it back in 2011, summarising a whole lot of data and academic evidence. Nothing significant has changed since then and it is good to see your take on the matter. But, there are none so blind as will not see.
If you step away from the particular claims about green jobs, one encounters all kinds of variants from the arts and culture to sport and infant industries. Many of them are underpinned by incompetent and (occasionally) dishonest economists who are happy to act as shills for their clients.
A bigger issue, especially among politicians, is the complete failure to understand that things have to add up. You can fund all kinds of investment in renewable energy or whatever and that money will create visible employment. However, the claims ignore the fact that the money has to come from somewhere - either current taxes or future taxes via borrowing. Diverting money reduces expenditures and employment in the rest of the economy and that may have very high costs but ones that are less visible.
In your calculations it is simple to show that we would all be better off by paying £50,000 per job to do nothing and forgetting the rest. A classic version of digging holes and filling them in again. Of course, even better to do nothing, but I think that it is best just to describe Milliband's delusions as an exercise in hole-digging.
I spoke to the contractors building a solar farm near me. Everyone I spoke to was foreign. Are green jobs on the shortage skills list? On that site, the green jobs were for migrant workers.
The jobs are either replacing existing jobs, in which case no net jobs are being created. Or they are additional jobs, in which case more jobs are required for the same benefit, the jobs are less efficient and by implication more expensive than the replaced jobs.
Greenfoolery is high on the globalist agenda, low on data & facts honesty - imagine, from a national security point of view, letting your enemy build & supply your critical infrastructure!
Thank you for your research and illumination. I seem to remember a similar analysis years ago of jobs in the defence sector.
If we can briefly set aside for the sake of discussion, the crucial issue of what taxpayers money is spent on, and accept that subsidies may be useful in nudging behaviour or getting something going, it still leaves the monster of permanence. To quote Milton Friedman, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program".
Measured by government expenditure as a proportion of national income, we've had rather a lot of government for some time, with no prospect of anything other than an increase, and to my eyes, the results don't provide a glowing endorsement. Yet from time to time I read "the government must do more" - like asking a builder who's just trashed your house to come back and build an extension.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2024/02/23/how-many-green-jobs-can-we-afford/
The other issue is that none of the equipment is made in the UK and hence we are subsidising imports. Solar panels are almost exclusively made in China and wind turbines in Denmark, Germany, China and Spain.
BOTH parties are totally unfit to govern and present a clear and present existential danger to the economy and to the social fabric of the nation. They both want to deindustrialise the economy and industrialise the natural landscape in their mad, malign pursuit of an unachievable and utterly pointless 'Green' utopia which assures that only that a nightmarish Green dystopia will be delivered to order as a direct result of the attempt to get to imaginary 'Net Zero'.
Is it really too much to expect the majority of voters to be aware of this, as well as being aware of the many other nation-destroying policies which Labour and the Cons stubbornly cling to and intend to implement to the detriment of us all? It's not staring us all in the face now, it's slapping us hard around the chops, daily and repeatedly. If you want to save your country the choice is obvious: do NOT vote for ANY of the major parties, which are all 100% captured by outside interests, but DO vote - for independents, for Reform even, for any other minor globalist opposition candidates who might be standing OR, most importantly, SPOIL your ballot paper by writing 'None of the above' or 'I do not consent'. Spoiled ballots ARE counted.
If the MAJORITY use their vote to give the Uniparty a well deserved kick in the goolies, it will be the first step in a much needed political and cultural revolution in this country. If the majority vote Labour in order to kick the Cons in the goolies, traitorous politicians from both parties will be laughing their socks off as they quickly finish the job which they started in earnest in 1992, of destroying our once great nation. GB will NOT recover from 5 years of Starmer, Milliband, Reeves et al.
Unfortunately, the polls suggest the brain dead electorate WILL vote Labour in a landslide. When that happens, I'll be giving up the ghost and concentrating solely on self-preservation as the ensuing Chaos engulfs the country. Very depressing.
David - The sad thing is that it has been known for well over a decade that the "green jobs" vision is nonsense. I wrote about it back in 2011, summarising a whole lot of data and academic evidence. Nothing significant has changed since then and it is good to see your take on the matter. But, there are none so blind as will not see.
If you step away from the particular claims about green jobs, one encounters all kinds of variants from the arts and culture to sport and infant industries. Many of them are underpinned by incompetent and (occasionally) dishonest economists who are happy to act as shills for their clients.
A bigger issue, especially among politicians, is the complete failure to understand that things have to add up. You can fund all kinds of investment in renewable energy or whatever and that money will create visible employment. However, the claims ignore the fact that the money has to come from somewhere - either current taxes or future taxes via borrowing. Diverting money reduces expenditures and employment in the rest of the economy and that may have very high costs but ones that are less visible.
In your calculations it is simple to show that we would all be better off by paying £50,000 per job to do nothing and forgetting the rest. A classic version of digging holes and filling them in again. Of course, even better to do nothing, but I think that it is best just to describe Milliband's delusions as an exercise in hole-digging.
I spoke to the contractors building a solar farm near me. Everyone I spoke to was foreign. Are green jobs on the shortage skills list? On that site, the green jobs were for migrant workers.
Great bit of research, thanks.
The figure is even more absurd than I would have guessed.
The lunatic Biden's Green New Deal is so looney that even he renamed it, falsely and ludicrously, as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The whole "job creation" concept is nonsense.
The jobs are either replacing existing jobs, in which case no net jobs are being created. Or they are additional jobs, in which case more jobs are required for the same benefit, the jobs are less efficient and by implication more expensive than the replaced jobs.
A restatement of Frederic Bastiat's theory of broken window economics, neither more nor less.
I’m sure these jobs are union jobs which make them politically necessary. Good luck eliminating the subsidies.
Extrapolating those figures, each employee of the NHS costs us a £100,000 each. I know which I prefer, and therein the importance of capitalism.
Thanks David, a great summary
Greenfoolery is high on the globalist agenda, low on data & facts honesty - imagine, from a national security point of view, letting your enemy build & supply your critical infrastructure!
Thank you for your research and illumination. I seem to remember a similar analysis years ago of jobs in the defence sector.
If we can briefly set aside for the sake of discussion, the crucial issue of what taxpayers money is spent on, and accept that subsidies may be useful in nudging behaviour or getting something going, it still leaves the monster of permanence. To quote Milton Friedman, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program".
Measured by government expenditure as a proportion of national income, we've had rather a lot of government for some time, with no prospect of anything other than an increase, and to my eyes, the results don't provide a glowing endorsement. Yet from time to time I read "the government must do more" - like asking a builder who's just trashed your house to come back and build an extension.