Owen Paterson

Wednesday

Owen Paterson

Owen Paterson’s speech on abandoning the 2050 climate change targets – full text

From our UK edition

Tonight former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson gave the Global Warming Policy Foundation's annual lecture. Here's how he said we should go about ‘Keeping the Lights On’: I would like to thank Lord Lawson and the Global Warming Policy Foundation for inviting me to deliver the annual lecture - an important event in the calendar. As a member of the Cabinet for four years I supported Coalition energy policy. However I have become increasingly aware from my own constituency and from widespread travel around the UK of intense public dissatisfaction with heavily subsidized renewable technologies in particular onshore wind. I have used the last three months since leaving the Cabinet to learn more about the consequences of this policy. And what I have unearthed is alarming.

Saturday

Owen Paterson

When the (fish and) chips are down

From our UK edition

There is much to commend this book. Charles Clover lays bare the depths of a neglected subject — the rape of our seas — to expose the destruction caused by modern technological fishing. This is an issue which needs populist exposure; Clover has done it admirably. I hope it will attract readers who might otherwise have shown no interest in the subject. The framework of his book is a series of visits to selected fisheries around the world and the lessons he gleaned from them. Every visit seemed to have a gruesomely early start, and to involve eating delicious fish; the author’s obvious pleasure was then mitigated by his guilt. Later he expiates this with fierce criticism of celebrity chefs who seem oblivious to the growing crisis he identifies.