Thursday, May 18, 2006
Blair's dodgy nuclear dossier
Below is the view of Tony Juniper, Director of environmentalist pressure group Friends of the Earth, which I received in an email today from The Backbencher.
What makes me think that's going to be one hell of a long wait?"Many people believed the energy review to be a sham: a cosmetic exercise setup to frame the PM's personal preference for new nuclear stations as a respectable and carefully thought through choice. This impression would be conveyed, the cynics suggested, by going through the motions of analysing information from different stake holders and giving the impression of having engaged in an open and fair discussion with all the different interests and
issues."The theory that the energy review was an elaborate and expensive sham has just been proved correct.
"Before the analysis is complete, Tony Blair has announced its conclusion. And guess what? It's the answer the cynics said he would come up with: that we need a new generation of nuclear power stations. The PM claims to have seen a draft of the energy review - though no one else has - and apparently made up his mind on the strength of it.
"If the draft he has seen is the same rather sparse graphics published with his carefully worded statement on the Downing Street website, then the conclusion must be that the review is not finished, not by a long way. The graphics show what we new before the review started: that we have some serious challenges in relation to energy supply and climate change, and that we need to do something about it.
"The point of the review was to find a real answer to the question of what to do, not simply to ask the question again and then come up with the answer the PM first thought of. If Blair has had some other briefing from ministers leading him to pre-empt his own review, then he must publish that information immediately."
