Complete rubbish about energy from David Davies

I've spoken to David TC Davies on a few occasions, and I have to say that he's a rather pleasant and affable person face to face ... the problem is that quite a lot of what he says in public is stark raving bonkers.

He's just provided us with another example in this article in the Western Mail:

Scrap the climate change levy, says Tory MP David Davies
as Wales exceeds renewables target

Apparently, we are being asked to believe that:

Official statistics show that by August 2013, the amount of renewable energy produced in Wales was already running at 9.7 TWh.

The official figures for electricity generation are published by DECC, and are available from this page.

The figure for the whole of 2013 was in fact 2.664 TWh ... less than a third of what David Davies quotes.

Now it might just be that he is thinking of the total energy, rather than just electricity, produced from renewable sources. But he probably isn't, for two reasons. First, the figure of 7 TWh/y he quotes comes from paragraph 1.4 of TAN 8, and is specifically for renewable electricity. And second, because the DECC tends to measure total energy in TOE (tonnes of oil equivalent) and as we can see from table 6.6 of these figures, over 70% of energy from renewable sources is used to generate electricity. Therefore even if he tried to claim that he was talking about total energy, rather than just electricity, he'd still be talking complete rubbish.

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So, to be clear, we in Wales have definitely not "exceeded" our renewable targets. Paragraph 1.4 of TAN 8 sets two of them: 4 TWh/y of electricity from renewables by 2010, and 7 TWh/y of electricity from renewables by 2020. In 2013 we produced less than 2.7 TWh, in other words we were still a long way short of the 2010 target.

In fact, the picture is quite bleak, because the two large offshore windfarms that would have significantly boosted the amount of renewable electricity generated in Wales—the Atlantic Array in the Bristol Channel and the Celtic Array in the Irish Sea—have both been cancelled.

I agree with David Davies

It's not often I find myself agreeing with David TC Davies; but I do agree with one thing he said in this diatribe in the House of Commons yesterday:

     

"But it was the fruitcakes who warned against the euro ten years ago. We were all accused of being fruitcakes then, but the fruitcakes were right. Fruitcake is a cheap and reliable source of energy. I am for the fruitcakes. I am proud to be a fruitcake. Long may fruitcakes continue."

Hansard, 14 May 2013, Column 555

David Davies is definitely cheap.

Forbrydelsen

I watched the first two episodes of the Danish drama Forbrydelsen – called The Killing in English, though perhaps it would be more accurate to call it The Crime – on BBC Four last night. It was very impressive, and anybody who missed it can catch it on iPlayer.

     

Now this isn't exactly going to be mainstream viewing, nothing on BBC Four is. But it provides a perfect example of the sort of programme that I think could and should be shown on S4C, but with subtitles available in Welsh as well as English. The cost would be minimal, but the principle of international material not invariably being offered through the medium of English is vitally important.

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Strangely enough David TC Davies, the chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, made exactly the same point when the committee questioned Ed Vaizey on 18 January:

Q477 Chair: Have you looked at encouraging S4C to buy in films from non English speaking countries – some very good films are produced in places like Germany and France – and putting in Welsh subtitles? I personally don't see that as being such a bad idea. It is standard practice in many European countries, including Germany and France.

Mr Vaizey: I know that you had an extensive discussion on this subject when you took evidence. I would expect the Committee's report to reflect your views.

Evidence to WASC, 18 January 2011

As someone who doesn't agree with Mr Davies on many things, it is a very pleasant surprise to find myself agreeing with him on this. Though I should make it clear that I don't think this is a substitute for commissioned drama in Welsh, but as a supplement to it.

We'll have to see whether this proposal is reflected In the WASC's report. But if I might make one suggestion to Committee members, it would be to widen the scope of that proposal beyond S4C. In this instance the BBC has bought the rights to show the series in the UK. But what is to stop the BBC from subtitling this and similar programmes ... not only in Welsh but also in Gaelic? It would be a significant step in making much more material available in Welsh and Gaelic (at least to read, if not to hear). The same would be true for the Italian or German opera that sometimes even makes it onto BBC2.

So yes, I think it would be a good idea for S4C to show foreign language programmes subtitled in Welsh. But if we are to see a much closer relationship between S4C and the BBC, similar to the way that BBC Alba works in Scotland, then there can be no excuse for the BBC not to do its share for each of the languages of Britain.

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The more sharped-eyed will have noticed that the picture I've shown is actually for the second series of Forbrydelsen. It's quite likely that the BBC will acquire, or has acquired, the rights to show that as well. It might now be too late to subtitle the first series in Welsh and Gaelic, but with the right pressure from the right people, they could easily do it for the second. In fact, we could make it a requirement that our public service broadcasters should make all their subtitled foreign language programmes available in each language of Britain via the red button.

Davies, Straw, Woolas ... playing the same card

It was at about this time last year that David Davies showed the more unpleasant side of his character when he said that the case of a Muslim teenager convicted of rape was linked to "barbaric and medieval" views towards women that had been "imported into this country". It was a deliberately inflammatory outburst which should have resulted in disciplinary action by the Conservative Party ... though of course they did nothing, showing that they are quite content to condone an anti-Muslim agenda if they think there is political advantage to be gained from it.

Now Jack Straw has shown us that the Labour Party can do exactly the same thing. He has blamed the attitude of the Pakistani community for the recent conviction of two men for rape, saying that they saw white girls as "easy meat". Though as a former Lord High Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, he has much less excuse than the more immature MP for Monmouthshire. Nor is this the first exhibition of his views, as he showed when he said he wanted Muslim women not to wear a face covering veil, and certainly not when talking to him.

In the case of both politicians, the problem is one of bigotry. By this I mean that both have singled out a particular group they are predisposed to criticize for something that applies just as much to people from other groups. They are either deliberately applying double standards, or are incapable of seeing past their prejudice.

In and of itself, rape is not an issue of nationality, race or religion. There might well be circumstances in which racial or religious prejudice is a motivating or aggravating element of rape or of other crimes, but that will be something for the courts to determine. In this particular case, the judge said that the race of both the victims and their abusers was coincidental.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that Jack Straw should take this opportunity to express anti-Muslim prejudice. This Thursday will see the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election, brought about because another Labour minister, Phil Woolas, chose to play to anti-Muslim feelings when he narrowly won the election in May. He was prominent in supporting Jack Straw in the row about veils, and a couple of years later raised the issue of inter-cousin marriage in Pakistani communities. The two could be said to be joined at the hip on this matter. Woolas might have been unceremoniously dumped by the Labour Party after the Election Court's verdict, but Labour certainly didn't criticize what he did at the time.

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What are we to make of this? To me it appears that there is seam of political opinion in which politicians think they can keep pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable, pandering to the anti-Muslim feeling they presume must exist in the minds of potential voters ... an impression it is all too easy to get by taking the more rabid utterings of some of the gutter press seriously. But are they simply trying to take political advantage of feelings that are already widespread, or is it their intention to stir up and spread those feelings? I find it hard to believe that politicians like these would make such inflammatory statements without having a very good idea of what they want to achieve by them.

What are Tories really like?

It appears that David TC Davies has taken offence at being described as on "the far right of his party". He thinks that this is the equivalent of being "smeared as a Nazi".

     Monmouth Tory candidate David Davies in Nazi smear row

The rest of us can only wonder at what sort of paranoia might be responsible for him making the connexion. He's certainly not immune from making blatant threats, as we can see in this story in December last year, when he told us that Wales had "reason to fear" voting Yes in the referendum on primary lawmaking powers because a future Tory government would apply "specific cuts" to the Welsh budget if we did so.

And he's narrow-minded, ill-informed and intolerant. We only have to look back to what he said here in January of this year for a perfect illustration of that. He claimed that imported "barbaric and medieval views towards women" were responsible for a particular rape ... completely blind to the fact that there are far too many examples of that crime being committed by people from all sections of our society.

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But do such outrageous statements put him on the far right of his party? To answer that question we only have to look at how the Tory party leadership dealt with him after his outburst. Did they deselect him? No. Did they reprimand him? No. Quite the contrary: they did absolutely nothing.

     

David Cameron has done his best to portray the Conservative Party as having changed, but underneath the airbrushed image the Tory Party has the same streak of narrow-minded intolerance that it has always had. But that doesn't mean they're Nazi ... just nasty.

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Sadly, there's probably not much chance of David Davies losing his seat on Thursday, but elsewhere in Wales—particularly in Aberconwy, where there is a knife-edge battle between Plaid and a Tory who's got one or two intolerance problems of his own—I'd advise people to be very wary of voting for the Tories.

Getting rid of Labour MPs is one thing, but we can replace them with better MPs than the Tories have to offer. In Aberconwy that means voting for Plaid's Phil Edwards rather than Guto Bebb.

     

Backward and barbaric

 
     

If a picture isn't enough, the thousand words are here.

A blatant Tory threat: Vote No ... or else!

I'm not entirely sure of the circumstances that prompted David TC Davies' statement to the BBC today, but what he said was quite unequivocal:

"... Providing of course that Wales remains a part of the United Kingdom. And it's Labour that gave us devolution and then the new Government of Wales Act without a referendum and they are now talking about trying to give the Welsh Assembly even further powers through some sort of referendum, which I suspect will be heavily rigged.

"The more powers Wales develops and the closer to independence it gets the harder it will be justify large amounts of English taxpayers' money being given to the Welsh Assembly.

"There are obviously going to be public spending cuts throughout every area of the public sector. That's going to happen whether we have a Labour or Conservative government. There's no point in shying away from that because we are borrowing at a rate of £200bn a year and we are not going to be able to get the money for much longer.

"But there's no reason to fear specific cuts in Wales providing of course we don't go any further down the route to independence."

BBC - 5 December 2009

We know from what True Wales has consistently said that TC regards any additional powers that the National Assembly gets as a move towards independence. In fact he and the movement he leads regards this referendum as a referendum on independence, and openly campaigns for a No vote on that basis.

Therefore, instead of seeing it as a simple move towards the powers already agreed with Parliament and listed in Schedule 7, he prefers to make out it is "some sort" of different referendum ... and a "heavily rigged" one at that!

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So what's his message? Simple: that if we dare to vote Yes in the referendum, the Tories will regard it as a move towards independence and a reason to cut the block grant we get from Westminster. Not just in line with the cuts that will affect the whole of the UK (which is only to be expected) ... but to make "specific cuts" for Wales.

And, to make it crystal clear, he says we have "reason to fear" these specific cuts if we vote the wrong way.

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I think that's a blatant enough threat in anyone's language. But he's more of a fool than even I thought he was if he thinks people in Wales can be bullied by such threats.