- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
My goodness, but since he was put in post I’m struggling to get my head around Michael Gove’s endless flow of policy/consultation announcements. They seem to be daily at the minute.
I’ve already mentioned his complex and slightly…er…contradictory plans to reform agriculture post Brexit, improving our environmental credentials and animal welfare standards, while simultaneously producing ever more, and notably cheaper food.
And you might well have heard something about ‘banning woodburners’ a couple of weeks ago, and the creation of new National Parks over the weekend. What might’ve passed you by, hidden in other stuff, was a consultation on ammonia- which implies he’s going to massively clamp down on how farmers spread slurry. I’m beginning to fear I might be missing others, with their coming so thick and fast.
To deal with some of the latest plethora then. Most of it comes from the ‘Clean Air Strategy 2018’, and to get beneath the skin of it you need to backtrack. For some time we’ve been sailing toward a litigious mire, with urban authorities becoming increasingly aware of how many lives are foreshortened by what might be taken as failures to control air pollution…and it won’t just be town halls that are aware of this. London mayor Sadiq Khan has been making noises about it, and pressing for ways to improve the capitals air quality, for some time. Included are his blank assertions that all diesel engines should be banned. And now Mr Gove is giving him the tools with which to bring this to pass.
Using clever new software, the two of them are going to calculate when air quality falls below a certain point, and to then locally implement a ban on, amongst other things, anything burning coal, wood burning stoves –although whether this includes all of the recently installed heavily subsidised woodchip boilers is unclear- and, of course, diesel engines.
This might sound superficially very sensible, but it’s a pretty big bit of news when you look around. Never mind all the taxis, delivery trucks, and most of the buses, pretty much every single barge/ferry/tug plying the Thames chugs along with an oil burner in its guts turning the prop. And all of the excavators and cranes busily building all those shiny new buildings? Yup, all powered by diesel Sadiq old chap. Low lying communities- such as most of London- also inevitably have issues making water and sewage run where they need to, and you can probably guess what drives many of the pumps that do this unseen but rather important service.
It gets better. Move out of London, and venture up the East coast. It is eminently possible that a smoggy day in Leeds or Wakefield, might prompt those municipal authorities to demand the enormous ‘co-fired’ Drax power station is shut down, should an easterly breeze off the Humber carry the smitch upstream. And anyway, back to the capital, where do the exhaust fumes from all those planes taking off from an increased Heathrow go? Or don’t they count? The bureaucracy this will invoke is going to be immense, as will be the upheaval.
On balance, a few suburban logburners aren’t going to make much difference, and given their very short carbon loop I would’ve thought they’d be exempt.
Oh, and in an especially sweet bit of irony, while reading about tractor engines –as farmers are won't- I noted that one highly lauded flagship British manufacturing company still makes big ole 6 cylinder diesel engines which are, presumably, ‘non-compliant’. But it’s OK, as they only go to ‘less regulated markets’ overseas.
Anyway, Mr Gove doubtless thinks he’s a fabulously forrard thinking little bunny, but at some point he’ll get reined in - although you’ve got to wonder if the PM is giving him some space to occupy himself to keep him out of her face while she’s grappling with Brexit. And as he announces ever more radical policies, he’s finding they increasingly contradict each other. I daresay his version of that Yes Minister character ‘Sir Humphrey’ must have his work cut out.
It does bother me that the real problems are being left unaddressed. It’s all very well plotting an exciting vibrant new course, but the ship is already run aground. He needs to sort out the unbelievable Departmental mess in hand before he re-invents the wheel. I’ve previously tried to illustrate how bad it is, so we’ll try some empathy. Ask how many of his frontline staff are struggling with work related stress? I bet it’s an embarrassingly large percentage….I mean, how can they face going to work each morning when it’s such a shambles?
Then, if you still want to make Britain greener Mike, you need to start working on the root cause….the human population explosion problem.
——————————————————
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine and the NFU
He has published two books; the second "The Complete Bullocks" is still in print
http://www.anton-coaker.co.uk/book.htm
I’ve already mentioned his complex and slightly…er…contradictory plans to reform agriculture post Brexit, improving our environmental credentials and animal welfare standards, while simultaneously producing ever more, and notably cheaper food.
And you might well have heard something about ‘banning woodburners’ a couple of weeks ago, and the creation of new National Parks over the weekend. What might’ve passed you by, hidden in other stuff, was a consultation on ammonia- which implies he’s going to massively clamp down on how farmers spread slurry. I’m beginning to fear I might be missing others, with their coming so thick and fast.
To deal with some of the latest plethora then. Most of it comes from the ‘Clean Air Strategy 2018’, and to get beneath the skin of it you need to backtrack. For some time we’ve been sailing toward a litigious mire, with urban authorities becoming increasingly aware of how many lives are foreshortened by what might be taken as failures to control air pollution…and it won’t just be town halls that are aware of this. London mayor Sadiq Khan has been making noises about it, and pressing for ways to improve the capitals air quality, for some time. Included are his blank assertions that all diesel engines should be banned. And now Mr Gove is giving him the tools with which to bring this to pass.
Using clever new software, the two of them are going to calculate when air quality falls below a certain point, and to then locally implement a ban on, amongst other things, anything burning coal, wood burning stoves –although whether this includes all of the recently installed heavily subsidised woodchip boilers is unclear- and, of course, diesel engines.
This might sound superficially very sensible, but it’s a pretty big bit of news when you look around. Never mind all the taxis, delivery trucks, and most of the buses, pretty much every single barge/ferry/tug plying the Thames chugs along with an oil burner in its guts turning the prop. And all of the excavators and cranes busily building all those shiny new buildings? Yup, all powered by diesel Sadiq old chap. Low lying communities- such as most of London- also inevitably have issues making water and sewage run where they need to, and you can probably guess what drives many of the pumps that do this unseen but rather important service.
It gets better. Move out of London, and venture up the East coast. It is eminently possible that a smoggy day in Leeds or Wakefield, might prompt those municipal authorities to demand the enormous ‘co-fired’ Drax power station is shut down, should an easterly breeze off the Humber carry the smitch upstream. And anyway, back to the capital, where do the exhaust fumes from all those planes taking off from an increased Heathrow go? Or don’t they count? The bureaucracy this will invoke is going to be immense, as will be the upheaval.
On balance, a few suburban logburners aren’t going to make much difference, and given their very short carbon loop I would’ve thought they’d be exempt.
Oh, and in an especially sweet bit of irony, while reading about tractor engines –as farmers are won't- I noted that one highly lauded flagship British manufacturing company still makes big ole 6 cylinder diesel engines which are, presumably, ‘non-compliant’. But it’s OK, as they only go to ‘less regulated markets’ overseas.
Anyway, Mr Gove doubtless thinks he’s a fabulously forrard thinking little bunny, but at some point he’ll get reined in - although you’ve got to wonder if the PM is giving him some space to occupy himself to keep him out of her face while she’s grappling with Brexit. And as he announces ever more radical policies, he’s finding they increasingly contradict each other. I daresay his version of that Yes Minister character ‘Sir Humphrey’ must have his work cut out.
It does bother me that the real problems are being left unaddressed. It’s all very well plotting an exciting vibrant new course, but the ship is already run aground. He needs to sort out the unbelievable Departmental mess in hand before he re-invents the wheel. I’ve previously tried to illustrate how bad it is, so we’ll try some empathy. Ask how many of his frontline staff are struggling with work related stress? I bet it’s an embarrassingly large percentage….I mean, how can they face going to work each morning when it’s such a shambles?
Then, if you still want to make Britain greener Mike, you need to start working on the root cause….the human population explosion problem.
——————————————————
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine and the NFU
He has published two books; the second "The Complete Bullocks" is still in print
http://www.anton-coaker.co.uk/book.htm
as to how to spread fym from its covered heaps (or sheds as I call them) onto grassland without being required to wreck said sward by ploughing it under and releasing Nitrogenous compounds into the atmosphere in so doing.
