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Bishop Hill
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Reader Comments (21)
"hooning" along Josh.
What's that old saying..can't see the wood for the trees!
You are a chip off the old block.
Some people are "BARKing" mad... making "SAPs" of us all...
But we will "ROOT" them out...
Maybe then they will Leaf us alone.
Peter
I should have clarified the word "Hoon" above.
This is a New Zealand and Australian slang word for a HOOLIGAN.
So to Huhne, oops, I meant HOON is to act like a lout or an idiot.
Peter
This business with burning wood seems insane. It also seems in conflict with the CO2 nonsense. If you think you have a CO2 problem why would you destroy CO2 absorbers. Is there some logic to this idea that your elected sorts are susceptible to? But not the rest of us?
Subsidies can and do focus the mind - on claiming them. They don't seem to do much for general clear thinking.
Josh, thanks as ever for saving the thousand words.
And Martin Brumby, 'BuffHuhne' was a new one for me. Thanks. The closest I had got was 'the Huhne's a buffoon' (with apologies to the late Mr Niven).
@BBD
Geoff Hoon was previously honoured with that title, back when he was Defence Secretary.
Chris Hune quote (15 September 2010 Oral evidence taken before the Energy and Climate Change Committee)
(on the Green Deal)
...'That is designed to make sure that every household can have a reasonable assurance-we cannot give a guarantee, for reasons that I will explain-that if they install the Green Deal, they will have lower energy bills, so that it is clearly in their interest to install the Green Deal.
The reason why we cannot give an absolute guarantee is because if you, for example, or somebody goes and marries a Brazilian who wants to turn up the temperature in the winter and you decide to run your thermostat four degrees higher than you were previously running it, I cannot guarantee that your energy bill is going to be lower, even with the Green Deal. So, obviously, behavioural issues come into this. But if your behaviour does not change, then the Green Deal will reduce your energy bills and that is a key part of our thinking in doing it. We want to make sure that anybody who opts for the Green Deal is going to be able to get an advantage out of it.'
Chair: I should have thought if you had married a Brazilian you would have your temperature lower rather than higher.
Pharos: oh dear, it's worse than we thought.
anonym: thanks. I really should keep up, I know...
@anonym
So many buffoons; so little time...
Urbandictionary.com has some apposite definitions for "hoon"
Take your pick...
I tried to bring my vice like intellect to bear on this issue but all I came up with was Josh = good and Huhne = very bad.
This is one cartoon I find very funny: such acute satire. Sad that something so obvious needs to be pointed out though. Thanks Josh!
Come on, there's nothing wrong with burning trees. I have about three years supply of wood stored away for a snowy day (wood has to be dried for about 2 years or so to ensure it burns efficiently and cleanly). I spend a lot of time in winter cutting and stacking wood. Mind you it is all sustainably produced by coppicing etc; it is necessary to keep trees from getting out of hand. I can't wait to claim all that money from the rest of you under the "renewable heat" scam.
But seriously, there's nothing wrong with these sensible and appropriate micro-schemes; it's the industrial scale schemes involving wholesale landscape destruction and huge transport costs that are complete hoonacy.
Well, "Buff" Hoon's services were eventually dispensed with. One can only hope that "Buff" Huhne goes the same way, and is eventually mashed in the blades of one of his own turbines.
I burn wood - a lot of wood - in the winter months. Our woodburning range is now going 224/7, and the woodburner will be, too, once the frosts set in around here. Our oil-fired central heating is consigned to back-up duties this year, because it's so expensive. Our gas is in bottles, and the current one has been going for 18 months, and cost about 30 Euros. So it's swings and roundabouts, but I hope no-one tries to curtail wood-burning, as that is as much a part of human life as anything else, since we inhabited the earth. For some absurd reason, this last decade appears to be the era of "hate humanity", and seem to be blamed for just about every ill that the earth experiences, even though it's been chuntering on for billennia. personally, I don't relish the style of Nirvana that the eco-greenies would inflict upon us, given half the chance...
Obviously, "224/7" should have been "24/7"....
Natsman: I haven't lit my woodburner yet here in Devon, but the oil tank is full to the brim. You have to watch what you're doing with fires in the open though in case some bureaucrat is watching you via satellite.
This is a great example of how the AGW movement creates a mix of public policy, profiteering at public expense and a thin veneer of science that in fact accomplishes negatives for the environmental reality in the name of helping the climate.
This ranks down with using food crops for fuel as marginal ideas blown up into massively subsidized wasteful programs.
I rather prefer my "Donegal" Irish knit sweaters -- not the wimpy thin ones sold to tourists, but the thick ones knitted by farm wives in west for their families. They are expensive but worth it.
More furore over the huhnecy of subsidised wood burning at http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/1785-green-subsidies-will-kill-industry-says-egger-plant-chief.html
Construction timber products such as roof trusses, joists and floor panels enjoy that position for two reasons: tradition (tried & tested) and cost effectiveness. There is an alternative based on cement products. Pricing timber out of construction by burning it under subsidy releases CO2 to atmosphere at the same time as does the production of cement.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.energy.26.1.303
Joined-up thinking is sadly lacking in the 'Race to Save the Planet'.