MYTH 1 – “Renewables cannot heat our homes – we therefore need gas.”

Many people believe that renewables can only contribute to any significant extent towards electricity our energy needs. The Germans prove otherwise. In 2012 Germany got 11% of its heating needs from renewables and this is rising rapidly:

MYTH 2 – “Our energy needs can only be met with big infrastructure projects – which is why we are beholden to the big energy companies to provide this for us.”

Much of the heat energy above, was produced by the rapidly growing energy co-operative sector:

The good news, although this is absolutely nothing to do with our fossil fuel obsessed/deranged Government, is that there is support for similar schemes in this country – from places like the Co-operative. Their COMMUNITY ENERGY vision recognises:
“In the UK, people are currently passive consumers when it comes to energy, at the mercy…

Last year, ten thousand six hundred sick and disabled people died within weeks of losing their benefits, after Atos assessed them as ‘fit to work’.  Thierry Breton, boss of IT firm Atos, has just been awarded a £280k pay rise, bringing his total remuneration to £2.3m a year. While disabled people were hounded to death for a maximum of £131.50 Disability Living Allowance a week, the head of the business chasing them earned £44,000 a week.  This is not austerity, it is travesty.

The Bogus Case for Mr Atos

Atos didn’t just enter with the Coalition.  They have been the sole provider of medical assessments for the DWP since 1998.  While Atos is the bulldog, it is the ministers of the DWP who hold the leash – and this government have given a firm order to attack.

The government has mandated that every single person claiming…

This post first appeared on the New Statesman blog.

Among the many extravagant claims made by supporters of fracking, perhaps the most absurd is that it will lead to a renaissance in British manufacturing. George Osborne picked up this theme last week when he argued that cheap energy was leading manufacturers to return to the US and he wanted to see this happen in Britain.

Who do you believe about the Work Capability Assessment?

Not the government, obviously.

You may have missed this – because it hasn’t been reported widely in the mass media – but a quiet row has been running for several months, concerning the collection and use of medical evidence to support applications for Employment and Support Allowance, the benefit people taking the WCA have applied to receive.

The government – whose spokesman appears to be Employment Minister Mark Hoban rather than Esther McVey, the Minister who is actually responsible for Disabled People – insists that decisions are made after consideration of all medical evidence supplied by claimants, and that they can provide further evidence during the reconsideration process or appeals.

But there is a mountain of evidence that this is a load of bunkum.

Back in 2010, an ex-military claimant, ‘Mrs S’ wrote a damning report on the service at…

Israel shows signs of desperation to safeguard its self-proclaimed image as the only democracy in the Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and national student union to create covert units at universities to engage in diplomacy via social media; unit heads to receive full scholarships.

About a week ago, the outgoing deputy-director general of the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry, Daniel Seaman, sent a…

I wrote a week ago about the £3.5m loan that Circle Health had asked for, and obtained, from the government in order to fund a capital investment programme at Hinchingbrooke hospital, the first NHS hospital to be taken over by a private company.

Circle, some of whose major shareholders are substantial contributors to Tory party funds, needed additional funding to carry out their planned investment – and unlike an NHS hospital that couldn’t meet its obligations, it received the requested cash rather than being placed into administration. 

That tells its own story. But it turns out that the £3.5m was not the first funding that Circle has requested and received from the government.

In October last year, the health company received an advance of £4 million from the NHS because of ‘cash flow issues’ – on top of a £46m cash injection it asked shareholders to stump up because of its…