Hubris Huhne

He lied to his colleagues and constituents; he lied to the police, the papers and the Courts. His former wife is left defending her case on grounds of marital coercion to lie on his behalf when he was caught speeding and she took the blame. His son's texts to him came to light today during the preliminaries to his trial, including one where he told his father "you are the most ghastly man I have ever known." 

And it was only when Chris Huhne, former Energy Secretary, failed to have this evidence excluded from his upcoming trial that, finally, he realised the game was up and changed his plea to guilty, declaring he will shortly resign his seat as an MP - we now face a curious by-election in his Eastleigh constituency where the two Coalition parties are at least the notional main contenders, though time may tell another story.

Huhne has form on changing his story - and not just on speeding fines. Just look at how he changed his tack on nuclear power from when he was in Opposition to Government - it didn't need a court case to alert us to this man's exceedingly dodgy character and the damage he was willing to inflict to further his career.

BEFORE 2010 General Election:

AFTER 2010 General Election, i.e., once he was Energy Secretary:

What a work is he! Hubris Huhne, a man who thought he could get away with anything at all - he just had to be sufficiently brazen. Unique? Certainly not. Among our utterly arrogant political class, his only real crime is that he got caught.

Nuclear Nonsense - do you trust them?

The British Government is extending the life of our existing 16 nuclear reactors. This in part helps them fudge the divisions within the Coalition on nuclear as a component of future energy production; but the prospect of even older reactors continuing to produce more and more radioactive waste is concerning. All the more so when you consider the repeated assurances by Government Ministers and industry "experts" that the systems used are safe - and yet, time and again, everything from technical failure to human error raises new concerns.

We have the potential to develop the most powerful offshore wind and wave energy production in Europe; this would be clean, risk-free in terms of waste and safety. Yet one of the first acts of the Coalition Government was to drop plans for manufacturing and installing offshore wind farms in the North Sea that would have created thousands of jobs, made Britain a contender in the alternative energy market (where we are far behind the likes of Germany) and given a massive boost to clean energy.

This was done in the name of austerity; but the extension of the life cycles of ageing nuclear power stations means that the Government will find billions of extra pounds to subsidise this inefficient, dirty and dangerous technology. The public support wind farms by a margin of over 2 to 1, contrary to the claims put up by the right wing press - and if the concentration is on offshore, this would be even higher. Wind alone is not the answer - no green campaigners have even claimed that; but it is a vital part of the mix, and one that Britain could readily harness.

Isn't it time we demanded the Government's investment goes there instead of continuing the massive subsidy of nearly £4 billion per year to run and, eventually, decommission nuclear reactors (let alone store and protect the waste for several thousand years)?