Tony Juniper? Are you ringing any bells? I thought so. I didn’t. I did wonder if he was the brother of Donovan’s Jennifer Juniper, who lives upon a hill.
Evidently not. Until yesterday, I’d never heard of him. Turns out he’s the chairman (sorry, ‘chair’) of something called Natural England, which pays him the thick end of £175,000 a year. We do. Nice work if you can get it. You can also get it by subscribing to the Guardianista quangocracy’s superstitions, shibboleths and other self-regarding claptrap.
Tony used to be a Director of Friends of the Earth before becoming the most powerful fromage at the taxpayer-funded organization set up for protecting the countryside.
Tony Juniper (pictured) is the chair of Natural England, which pays him the thick end of £175,000 a year
He was. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to discover his CV didn’t include open-cast coal mining, fracking or seal-clubbing. His definition of protection the country doesn’t include pheasant shooting, fox hunting, or hare-coursing.
Or taking out a lifetime’s subscription to Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph, spiritual home of Sir Bufton Tufton and Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.
It was therefore curious that Juniper granted an interview to the Torygraph. This was just in time to coincide with Cop26’s end.
Guess what? He proposes a solution to saving the planet that involves higher taxes, greater fines, and more expensive food. You don’t say.
Like the vast majority of the self-righteous, gas-guzzling junketeers in Glasgow, Tone is convinced that the greatest threat to the planet is, er, us — the mug punters who pay his inflated wages.
The Scum of the Earth, that’s how they see us.
We’re responsible for ‘the mass extinction of plants and animals, principally driven by our food system’. So we must be punished, through higher bills for everything from basic utilities to steak and chips, what Tony calls euphemistically ‘ecological taxation’.
All we’ve heard over the past couple of weeks is a torrent of abuse about how we — not them, obviously — are responsible for genocide, starvation, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis, boils, etc.
It is the same answer: Tax, tax and tax. It is becoming colder, poorer, more poverty. Or, as Juniper puts it: ‘There is a deficiency in the way we do economics, insofar as we can’t see the downsides of things which are basically hidden from the numbers that appear in the prices.’
‘Look at climate minister Alok Sharma (pictured) ‘holding back the tears’ because India and China wouldn’t sign up to his pie-in-the-sky plans to make them scrap coal-fired power stations. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN writes that he should be embarrassed of himself.
I’m sorry, I’ll just read that again. Do you know anyone else who talks like that? It’s Flob-a-Dob.
The technocratic class thinks that by promoting pure Flowerpot Man undiluted, they can make us feel guilty. Sorry, guv, but I’m not buying any of it. It will not be until self-proclaimed planet savers start to make the same sacrifices as the rest of us.
The ocean-going, ozone-busting hypocrisy of the Cop26 delegates has already been well documented — everything from Joe Biden’s Mad Max-style motorcade to Boris’s private jet back to London, and Jeff Bezos’s ridiculous space rocket.
They are not aware of their surroundings and do not know how to dispose of it.
We pay Tony Juniper 175 Grand a Year, Natural England’s boss, just to name a few. And, I’m guessing, a company car and all the usual ‘emoluments’, including business class air fares, as basis for negotiation. Clarkson’s tractor driver Kaleb would have done it for a fifth of that — and he’d be better qualified.
‘There is a deficiency in the way we do economics, insofar as we can’t see the downsides of things which are basically hidden from the numbers that appear in the prices.’
Precisely. It is a simple question.
Still, that’s the way of the world. After eleven years of Tory-style government, the country continues to be run by Guardianistas that no one voted for.
Even Tories are now natives, accepting the Leftist ideology that is deemed to be public policy. Here’s a selection of stories from the weekend papers, apropos of nothing.
Free sanitary towels in gents’ toilets in Scotland. (That’s another one of those sentences I thought I’d never read, let alone write.) A review of the rights of ‘trans rapists’ to be housed in female prisons. The Home Office ordering staff to celebrate ‘Trans Parents’ Day’. Durham University offering training in how to be a ‘sex worker’.
I’m old-fashioned. . .
Most of you have been reading this column long enough to know I’m intrinsically libertarian. Let’s live and let it all.
But there’s nothing libertarian about the new, rigorously-enforced orthodoxy of woke bigotry. Get with the programme, or it’s game over. Some politicians, even so-called Conservative politicians, are trying to catch up.
Look at climate minister Alok Sharma ‘holding back the tears’ because India and China wouldn’t sign up to his pie-in-the-sky plans to make them scrap coal-fired power stations. He ought to be ashamed.
We’re not talking Levi Stubbs here.
Sharma is 54 years old, for heaven’s sake, university educated, a high-flying accountant before he went into politics. Do you really believe that his behavior of glaring at the world in public would be considered acceptable?
Nurse!
Of course he doesn’t. However, this is how to move on in these times. Bogus emoting wins over rationality. Gesture politics reigns supreme, no matter how it means screwing the royalties of those you were paid to represent.
And by the way, guys. As Rab C. Nesbitt always says, we may be scum to you, but we’re the creme de la scum.
And don’t you forget it, boy!
TThe Church of England is losing its fundament. Yesterday, the Archbishopof Canterbury was forced to make an apology for his comparison of climate change with the Holocaust.
What the hell, if you’ll pardon the expression, was he thinking? It’s a mystery to them why so few people bother going to church on Sunday mornings.
Trendy vicars used Casio organs to get the kidz down in an attempt to stay afloat a few years ago.
It was the end of Dear Lord and Father Of Mankind. In came Morning Hates Broken, Pass The Duchy from The Left Hand Side. To try and attract punters, Rochester Cathedral, Kent was built in the middle of the cathedral.
This is a great idea! You can join us at Rochester Open. Rory just took four vestries. . .
The same cathedral launched its home-made brand now, out of desperation. It beats holy water by a long shot, I suppose.
But somehow I don’t see Regent’s Park mosque following suit.
It’s treble’s all round for Keithy
The rise of social media has made it impossible to avoid apocalypses. Keith Waterhouse (later of the parish) would be horrified.
Keithy was the inventor of the AAAA, the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe. It is based out of Clogthorpe.
Keith Waterhouse (pictured, died September 4, 2009).
It targeted, especially, the greengrocer’s apostrophe. (Or should that be the greengrocers’ apostrophe? It was hard to know.
This aberration was responsible for displays of tomatoe’s, potatoe’s and plum’s on market stalls the length and breadth of Britain.
Waterho, who died in 2009, had no time for the internet but would have turned up to the apostrophe’s funeral, provided it was held at St Bride’s (with appropriate apostrophe) in Fleet Street, followed by a thirsty wake at El Vino wine bar — not El Vino’s, as commonly misconstrued.
It’s what he would have wanted!