The one-word secret of Hunt’s success:

NEPOTISM

His relationship to Virginia Bottomley…..his dealings with the British Council….his inheritance of the SW Surrey constituency….his father’s history in UK Health provision….the Health interests for whom Bottomley now works….his capture of the Health portfolio in the recent reshuffle.

♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣  ♣

Throughout his career, Jeremy Hunt’s advancement somehow always seemed to involve his path crossing that of the former Virginia Bottomley, known since 2005 as Baroness Nettlestone. Now – with the help of some initial sleuthing by regular Slogger Jackie – I can offer readers a big clue: they are cousins. Laid out below (for anyone with any feeling for the importance of meritocracy) is how still, in 2012, career progress of the type admired by David Cameron – “the leg up” – is alive and well. One where the right tie, who you know, and above all a…

This post is by Adam Bell, Green Alliance’s policy adviser on low carbon energy.

The next ten years must see a revolution in the way we heat our homes. A third of the UK’s carbon emissions come from heat, and we will need to both reduce the amount of heat we use in homes, and change the way we produce it, if we are to have any chance of meeting our carbon targets.

Heat exchange
The Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is intended to help achieve this by providing financial incentives to homes and businesses to replace their current heating with a renewable system, such as a heat pump, a solar thermal installation, or a biomass boiler.

This post is by Dustin Benton, who leads Green Alliance’s Resource Stewardship theme. A version first appeared on businessgreen.com.

To find out more about how to fix ecodesign, see Green Alliance’s new report: Cutting Britain’s Energy Bill.

President Obama had a hard time selling the US’s ‘weatherization program’ to a sceptical Congress: insulation is a lot less attractive than visible clean tech like solar panels. So he relied on his charm, declaring memorably that insulation was, in fact, sexy. “Here’s what’s sexy about it — saving money,” he said, to laughter and applause.

My wife is a staff nurse at a large NHS hospital, on a ward where pretty much every patient is seriously ill or is able to do very little for themselves and so requires ‘full care’. To protect patient confidentiality, I won’t say which hospital or what type of ward, and I’ll use ‘them’ instead of him/her.

I’ve written before about the government’s plans to reduce public-sector wages in lower-paid parts of the country – which are usually Labour strongholds, and so can be ‘punished’ with minimal negative consequences for Tory electoral performance – and why these are economically stupid. At the same time, the government wants to reduce pensions for doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers in all parts of the country, while increasing their retirement age and raising pension contributions – even though the claim that public pensions are unaffordable is a lie.

And then, of course…