ESG – Environmental Social & Governance – is a social credit system for companies. ESG coerces companies into adopting certain Establishment narratives – eg DEI, Climate Change initiatives – in order to obtain financing.
ESG is purely political yet operates entirely outside of democratic control.
Global ESG rules are set by the International Sustainability Standards Board. Unelected, you won’t be surprised to discover.
This is what technocratic control looks like.
Governance without consent, without democratic representation, without accountability and without even oversight, or the possibility of appeal.
Degrowth Is Coming
You probably haven’t heard of ‘Degrowth’, but you will soon start to experience it.
Degrowth is the new economic movement that will nudge us into accepting lower living standards as part of Net Zero and Sustainability initiatives.
Degrowth is being promoted by all the usual Globalist organisations, thereby showing that Globalists have recognised the need to manage the regression in living standards that will accompany the delivery of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals.
Here are 4 articles on Degrowth so you can discover what to expect:
1) World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/06/what-is-degrowth-economics-climate-change/
‘Degrowth broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies, so we use less of the world’s energy and resources and put wellbeing ahead of profit.’
‘Society’s current model of economic growth is unsustainable.
‘It [Degrowth] might mean people in rich countries changing their diets, living in smaller houses and driving and travelling less.
2) Harvard Business Review:
https://hbr.org/2020/02/why-de-growth-shouldnt-scare-businesses
‘The start-up The 30 Year Sweatshirt sells high-quality, durable products that run counter to fast fashion principles.’
Patagonia — that explicitly follows an “antigrowth” strategy — is the poster child for this philosophy, offering a worn-wear store and providing free repairs for not only their own products, but also for those of other garment manufacturers.
3) Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-degrowth-planet.html
‘Degrowth is possible, desirable and necessary to halt further ecological destruction and to build socially just and ecologically sustainable societies.’ [This isn’t consumer-driven]
‘Degrowthers [i.e. Globalists] are convinced that degrowth must and will happen, either by design or by disaster.’
‘It [Degrowth] is, as Kate Soper argues, about an alternative hedonism.’ [Because nothing says ‘hedonism’ like wearing a 30 year old sweatshirt and travelling less]
4) Medium
This article contains the most detailed and realistic description of what Degrowth will entail:
‘A Degrowth transition may experience less of an unemployment problem than anticipated as it is likely to be a more labour-intensive economy.’
‘Universal access to affordable housing, public transport and food, public healthcare and education as well as access to recreational activities and public spaces — could ensure that everyone has access to the goods and services required for a good life without needing high salaries.’ [Oh, I get it. It’s Communism]
‘To offset reductions in hours of paid work it is important for work-sharing to be accompanied by other interventions such as a Universal Basic Income (UBI), living wage policy and expansion of social services.’ [Definitely Communism]
Most people have no idea what’s coming.
From Democracy to Algocracy
One of the purposes of Digital ID will be to centralise a country’s data so that it can be fed into AI LLP (Large Language Programmes) which can analyse that data and make or adjust policy based on the results.
Yes, people,we are heading for a system of ‘Algocracy’, ie rule by algorithm.
This article in Gizmodo documents Ellison calling for the centralisation of national data that can then be fed into AI systems.
https://gizmodo.com/oracle-billionaire-encourages-world-leaders-to-funnel-all-of-their-data-to-ai-and-maybe-his-data-centers-2000563769
‘Fragmented sets of data about a population’s health, agriculture, infrastructure, procurement and borders should be unified into a single, secure database that can be accessed by AI models.’ Larry Ellison
The article references the quote about AI that Ellison’s made in 2024:
“We’re going to have supervision…Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
It is no coincidence that all the Tech Bros – Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, the Palantir Boys, Mark Andreessen etc are extolling the virtues of AI at the same time that Digital IDs are being rolled out all across the Western World: they are all angling to be at the centre of the new system of technocratic control that will emerge with the exponential increase in power for Tech Bros that will come with that. Why else would Musk have accepted a job at DOGE?
If you thought governments were over-reaching their remit now, wait until you see what they seek to incorporate once they have the power of AI fed by unlimited data at their disposal. A huge centralisation of control will follow thereafter. Governments will justify this expansion of remit in the usual ways: increased safety / economic benefits / better health/ reduced costs / the greater good.
Here is YouTube link to Ellison’s interview by Tony Blair at the World Government’s Summit in Dubai earlier this year:
https://youtu.be/lIYIKpvFQOM?si=d5zeVcFPjRaqorsm
There’s another term for Tech Bros that is much more apt: Oligarchs.
They are businessmen with immense wealth and close links to the heads of government. They are Oligarchs.
Covid – A Thought Experiment
I thought I should document my current understanding of the Covid19 ‘situation’.
I’ll take you through the evidence and let’s see if we reach the same conclusions.
Is it technically possible for a government to employ psychological manipulation to scare the population into believing that a non-existant new pathogen is killing people in large numbers?
This isn’t a question about motives, just a question about the power of propaganda.
To do so, I suggest that the following steps would need to be taken:
• Restrict assembly so that people cannot easily share their own experiences about the new pathogen.
• Engineer a high initial death rate to scare the population.
• Blame the new pathogen for the high death rate.
• Remove certain checks and balances to encourage deaths to be attributed to the new pathogen.
• Report that hospitals are overloaded with patients suffering from the new pathogen.
• Make available a test kit for the new pathogen that records a high rate of false positives.
• Declare that recipients of false positive tests are ‘asymptomatic carriers / transmitters’.
• Silence / censor experts who have alternative explanations for what is going on and how it is being handled.
• Instigate round-the-clock fear propaganda via nudge units and media
Entirely by accident, the UK government took all of the steps described above.
Restrict assembly: lockdowns
High initial death rate:
The mortality rate for 2020 was unexceptional. The only mortality spike occurred in March / April which coincided with elderly and vulnerable people with complex health issues people being denied hospital care while in care homes:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/30/nhs-made-secret-pandemic-plan-deny-care-elderly/
We also know that there was excessive over-use of ‘Do Not Resuccitate’ notices at this time:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-matt-hancock-do-not-resuscitate-judicial-threat-kate-masters-nhs-a9612451.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55163009
Plus, the NHS was using midazolam like it was going out of fashion:
https://expose-news.com/2024/02/18/midazolam-murders-nhs-document/
As a result of these factors, deaths in care homes were 195% higher in April 2020 compared to the previous 5 year average.
Plus, doctors were encouraged to add c19 to the death certificate if there was any suspicion that c19 could have been a factor. This would have artificially boosted the c19 death toll.
Remove checks and balances:
The process for death certificatation was relaxed so that only 1 doctor needed to sign death certificate and, as long as the notes had been read, the doctor did not need to have seen the patient.
Also, jury inquests into deaths were suspended:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/7/part/1/crossheading/inquests/enacted
Hospitals are overloaded:
Contrary to what we were told, figures show that hospitals were the quietest in living memory.
In the 3 months of April to June, hospital bed occupancy was 63% (34,140 empty beds)
Hence, all those TikTok videos of dancing medical staff.
Pathogen test kit:
The PCR test is not a diagnostic tool. It can find a gene sequence it is looking for but it cannot determine whether the sequence is active nor inactive. Nor can it determine if the viral sequence exists in sufficient quantities to make you ill. Plus, countries were accused of turning up the PCR amplication up to over 40 cycles which makes the test highly sensitive. Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, said:
“with PCR you can find anything in anything”.
https://youtu.be/ZmZft4fXhQQ?si=hWvKZ6DU28gJ1Wh4
Using PCR tests with a high amplication rate is guaranteed to produce high numbers of positive cases which led to the interpretation of ‘asymptomatic transmission’.
Asymptomatic Transmission:
How can you transmit a disease if you are asymptomatic? If you are carrying a high enough load of a virus to be able to transmit that virus to others, then you will have symptoms as your body will be fighting that high viral load.
I’m not saying that is what happened. I’m merely asking, as an exercise in Critical Thinking, if a government could fake a pandemic.
I suspect it is technically possible and we must always be alert to that possibility.
The UK Govt Loves Corporatism
The burdensome administrative task of recruiting members of the British Armed Forces has been outsourced to external companies, led by Serco (who appear to be the favoured partner of the UK Govt in every endeavour these days).
I can’t help but feel that the best organisations to recruit members of the British Armed Forces would be the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.
The UK government’s eagerness to embrace Public-Private-Partnerships reminds me of Mussolini’s famous observation:
‘Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.’
There should be a healthy distance between govts and multinational corporations. That is no longer the case.
As we learnt with the Horizon Post Office scandal, govts are inclined to cover up corporate scandals that might cause embarrassment to themselves and their Preferred Partners (Fujitsu in this case)
See also Grenfell scandal (Alcoa, Kingspan), NHS tainted blood scandal (Alpha, Armour, Battery, Bayer and others)
Govts are there to keep multinationals honest, not become embroiled in corporate malfeasance.
‘…As members of ‘Team Serco’, Adecco and Akkodis will join a consortium of partners led by Serco, the international provider of critical government services and prime contractor for the contract. Together, they will deliver a comprehensive, end-to-end recruitment service, covering everything from candidate attraction and assessment to enlistment and onboarding onto initial training. The initiative will involve a blended workforce, including military personnel…’
The Economics of Renewable Energy pt 2 – Solar
Ed Miliband has stated many times that renewable energy is cheaper than gas and will bring down household energy bills. We all instinctively knew that Ed was lying but I’m going to present the evidence that he was lying. I will present the economics of solar in this post, having already presented wind energy in a recent post.
1) Ed is proud that the UK is leading the way on renewable energy yet the UK has the highest energy costs in the G20. The UK’s energy costs are 4 times those of US.
2) A report commissioned in 2020 by the World Bank ranked the UK’s suitability for solar energy production at 229th out of 230 countries (Ireland came last). .
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/466331592817725242/global-photovoltaic-power-potential-by-country
3) The UK currently spends approx. £8bn on natural gas per year. Ed wants to spend £260-£290bn by 2030 on his Clean Power plan – £43bn to £48bn per year. Much of this spending is to connect remote windfarms. Prices cannot come down when costs are skyrocketing.
https://www.neso.energy/publications/clean-power-2030
4) The UK paid over £12bn on subsidies for renewal energy in 2024. Plus £2.5bn for grid balancing and £1bn for the capacity market. Solar energy’s share of these costs is aporox. £3bn. Yet Ed wants to increase solar energy capacity from 15GW to 47GW by 2030. More capacity equals more subsidies.
5) In 2023, according to energy trends data, the UK generated 135.8TWh from all renewables, mostly wind, solar and biomass. The subsidies and extra costs for this electricity cost us around £113 per MWh. Adding the market price of electricity would mean the total cost of renewables is around £180 per MWh. The market price of gas is around £60 per MWh
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables
6) The govt applies a carbon tax to gas of approx. £60 per MWh, thereby almost doubling the price paid by consumers. When Ed tells you that renewables are cheaper than gas, he is referring to the market price of renewables without subsidies (£180 – £113 = £67 per MWh) compared to the retail price of natural gas, inclusive of carbon tax (£60 + £60 = £120 per MWh.
Whereas the economic cost of renewables is £180 per MWh compared to £60 per MWh for gas.
7) A commitment to increase total solar capacity from 15GW to 47GW within a decade implies a minimum level of subsidies of £6 billion per year at 2023 prices.
8) After 3 years, the efficacy of solar panels reduces by 1% to 2% per year.
As such, useful economic life of solar panels is 20 years. However, the payback period for solar plants – the overnight capital cost divided by the annual operating margin – is 35 years based on the average prices from 2017 to 2023 (cf. usual commercial average of payback period of 10 years). This confirms that solar plants will always require subsidies to attract private investment.
9) The breakeven price of electricity for new investment in solar plants is about £150 per MWh at 2023 prices over a 25-year life. (Cf. £60 per MWh for natural gas). Another reason that UK energy prices will be staying high.
10) NESO has confirmed that all existing gas power stations will need to be retained as backup for when renewable energy isn’t sufficient. NESO predict 5% of energy will continue to come from gas. This means all the fixed costs of gas stations will remain. Also, gas stations are less efficient when not running at full capacity meaning much higher per unit gas prices.
11) Ed’s predictions for ‘saved’ carbon emissions from Renewables do not include the emissions from manufacturing solar panels in China nor the emissions from shipping the panels to the UK.
12) Energy from renewables cannot be effectively stored. The battery plants that are being proposed will be hugely expensive and will not be able to provide energy at a national scale for more than a couple of minutes. Plus, they are highly inefficient meaning much of the stored energy is lost.
Conclusion – The combination of limited solar resources plus high capital and operating costs imply that solar plants are and will continue to be a poor investment in purely commercial terms, requiring huge subsidies and associated infrastructure costs. Very high energy prices are here to stay. Ed may well choose to bury the true costs of renewables in the public finances, but, one way or the other, UK taxpayers will still be paying to run 2 energy systems in parallel, one of which is loss-making.
The Economics of Renewable Energy pt. 1 – Wind
Here’s why everything Miliband says about Renewable energy is false.
Firstly, everyone needs to recognise that Renewable energy infrastructure is a second energy system that will operate in parallel with the existing energy system.
NESO have admitted in their Clean Power 2030 report that all existing gas power stations will need to be retained in order to provide back up. As such, all the costs of wind power documented here are in addition to existing costs of maintaining gas stations.
Prices will not be coming down.
• The UK currently spends approx. £7bn on natural gas per year. Ed wants to spend £260-£290bn by 2030 on his ‘Clean Power 2030’ plan – £43bn to £48bn per year or £1,500 to £1,650 per household. Much of this spending is to connect remote windfarms. Energy prices cannot drop when costs are skyrocketing.
• Assuming a cost of capital of 8% and operations and maintenance costs of 2% for CP2030, would give an ongoing cost of £26-29bn per year or £900-1,000 per household. Energy costs will not be falling any time soon.
• Offshore wind providers were guaranteed an average price of £153 per MWh in 2024. At an average reference – ie market – price of £67 per MWh, this meant subsidies of £86 per MWh were paid by the taxpayer, meaning that on average offshore wind farms received more of their revenue from subsidies (56%) than from selling their power on the market.
• The average retail price of onshore wind farms are guaranteed an average of £111.6 per MWh. The market price was £63.6 per MWh. The subsidy paid by the govt was £48 per MWh (43%).
• Over last 20 years there have been two major spikes in the price of gas – in 2008 and 2021-23. Omitting those years the average market price at 2024 prices was £56 and there has been no clear trend in real market prices during those 20 years.
• There is much talk that the UK’s system of ‘Marginal Cost Pricing’ keeps UK energy costs artificially high because energy prices are linked to international price of gas. The truth is if marginal cost pricing were to be scrapped, wind farms would still need to receive £111 per MWh (onshore) or £153 per MWh (offshore). A lower market price would have to be topped up with bigger subsidies.
• The cost of renewables is rising and projects like Norfolk Boreas and Hornsea Project Four have been cancelled because the developers cannot make money at the prices they agreed during contract actions.
• Onshore wind requires about ~370x the land area for the production of the equivalent amount of energy as nuclear (offshore requires ~200x the area of nuclear). Think about how many wind turbines will be required to run a single AI data centre.
• Uk has capacity factor of 29.8% for onshore wind and 25% for offshore wind. Cf refers to amount of energy generated as proportion of its technical maximun. When you hear that a new wind farm can power 600 homes, apply the CF calculation.
• The CF of wind turbines reduces with age, dropping by about 1% per year, thus increasing the backup required. The useful life of a turbine is about 20 to 25 years (less for offshore locations). Turbines need to be replaced frequently, and require extensive upkeep and maintenance. The blades are not recyclable so go to landfill.
• We can expect the total cost of subsidies of about £12bn, or the equivalent of £420 per household to continue to go up over the next few years. UK renewables are subsidised by three different schemes.
• Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) fund mostly solar power. The latest report for 2022-23 shows the scheme cost over £1.7bn and average total payment was ~£193/MWh.
• Contracts for Difference (CfDs) fund a range of technologies, but most of the subsidy goes to offshore wind. The total CfD subsidy paid for the last 12 months is over £2bn.
• By far the biggest subsidy scheme is Renewables Obligations Certificates, costing over £7bn per year.
• In addition, we pay extra for balancing the grid when the wind is not blowing (or blowing too hard) and the sun is not shining. In the year ending March 2024, these balancing services cost £2.46bn
• All wind farms are govt subsidised. The more farms, the more subsidies will be required. Also, the strike prices are index-linked throughout the life of the contract meaning that costs do not drop in real terms with each passing year. Energy costs will not be coming down
• Over the last 20 years, the proportion of the energy prices paid by businesses to cover the costs of buying electricity at wholesale prices has fallen from an average of 71% of the total energy in 2005-06 to 29% in 2023-24. For households the proportion has fallen from 41% to 24%.
These drops are explained by the costs of Renewables – taxes, subsidies, system and network charges – which have been going up over time.
Some Ukraine Context
Let’s document the context of the Russia-Ukraine war
1990: US Secretary of State, James Baker guarantees Gorbachev that NATO will not expand “one inch to the east”.
1994: Clinton administration adopts policy to isolate Russia from the Black Sea through gradual NATO expansion to the East. Policy was followed by all subsequent American presidents
1999: 3 countries join NATO – Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep
2004: US-influenced “colour revolution” in Ukraine
2004: 7 countries join NATO – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia
2008: NATO announces intention to admit Ukraine as a member. Putin makes statement at same summit that Ukraine was a ‘red line’.
2009: 2 countries join NATO – Albania, Croatia
2014: Maidan coup engineered by US in which pro-Russian Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in favour of a pro-NATO candidate.
2014: Start of Ukrainian civil war between pro-Russian separatists in Donbas and Ukrainian govt.
2014: Russia annexed Crimea (to ensure continued Russian access to Black Sea).
2016: Substantial US financial and military assistance to Ukraine, totalling $1.95b plus its de facto integration into NATO structures. Meanwhile, US and other Western countries armed and trained the Ukrainian military, and reaffirmed the commitment that Kyiv would join the Western Alliance.
2017: Montenegro joins NATO.
2019: Trump administration unilaterally withdraws from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Fearing that this boosted the risk of a US first strike, Moscow sought new, mutual restrictions and moratoria on missile deployments. The US dismissed these proposals.
December 19th, 2019: Zelenskyy and Putin sign Minsk agreements. Minsk agreements aimed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and grant a measure of self-government to Donbas.
2020: North Macedonia joins NATO.
May 2020: NATO conducts a live-fire training exercise inside Estonia, 70 miles from Russia
2020: Zelensky signals that he had no intention of implementing Minsk agreements. In mid-July 2020, Zelensky proposes holding local elections throughout Ukraine, yet the plan excluded Donbas which was supposed to have new elections under Minsk
Feb 2021: Zelensky shuts down 3 television networks tied to his main political opposition, which advocated better ties with Russia. A Zelensky aide disclosed that this crackdown was “conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden administration,” which offered its endorsement of Zelensky’s effort to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”
Mar 2021: Biden administration approves $125m Ukraine military package. Ukraine’s National Security & Defense Council approves strategy to recover all of Crimea from Russian control, including by force. Military leaders also announced that they were ready to retake Donbas by force, with the help of NATO allies
2021: By end of 2021, Ukraine had Europe’s largest non-Russian standing land force, fully prepared for large-scale conflict
Feb 2022: Unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine
Dec 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel admits the Minsk agreement was merely to buy time for Ukraine’s arms build-up
‘There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.’ – Ayn Rand
#CriticalThinking
Legally Breaking The Law
Did you know that, since 2021, government agencies are legally allowed to plant evidence and produce false witness statements?
The UK Covert Human Intelligence (Criminal Conduct) Act (2021) – known as ‘CHIS’ – gives 14 government agencies the mandate to commit crimes with impunity under certain circumstances.
The government bodies covered by the protections of the Act range from the intelligence services, the police and the military to the Department of Health and Social Care, the Food Standards Agency and, ironically, the Ministry of Justice. All can commit crimes against the people if the circumstances demand it.
What are the permissible circumstances?
“in the interests of national security; for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder; or in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.
There is no express limit within the Act on the type of criminal conduct that can be authorised. In theory, agents or officers of the state could engage in torture, rape or even murder. An amendment to exclude such serious crimes from the protections of the Bill was defeated.
The Act was a response to a case where MI5 narrowly won a ruling that its undercover agents lawfully broke the law(!)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/20/mi5-informants-investigatory-powers-tribunal-lawful-serious-crimes
The CHIS Act was subsequently rushed through parliament to ensure that the law on law-breaking was clarified. The act explicitly makes authorised conduct ‘lawful for all purposes’
Furthermore, the CHIS Act gives agents of the State immunity from prosecution and so, even if you had a watertight case proving State crimes, there would be no defendant to bring it against. Of course, there’s no chance that such powers could ever be abused!
Another blow to the increasingly risible adage that no one is above the law.
Clear and Present Voltaire
Voltaire quotes are always worth having in your back pocket. Here are 5 that are particularly relevant to where we are now:
‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ – this was very evident during lockdowns. The majority, suffering from a ‘mass formation’, started to harbour violent thoughts towards the minority, prompted by the media and other epistemological organisations. And let’s not forget the atrocity of forcing people to take an experimental medical treatment for which the harms hugely outweighed the benefits.
‘It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.’ – all of the organs of The Establishment have the same views on all of the main topics of the day. Despite the mantra of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’, diversity of opinion can result in ostracism and even jail in today’s society.
‘The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.’ – the body can do amazing things when it isn’t being poisoned.
‘Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.’
– Doctors can’t possibly read all the research so they follow the guidance provided for them by Big Pharma and centralised health agencies (who are funded by Big Pharma).
‘It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.’ – fools don’t know they are in chains.
In short: be sceptical, do you own research and don’t follow the herd.
#CriticalThinking
Atticus Fox 