"The arms that you wield now are not such as your forefathers wielded; but they are infinitely more effective, and infinitely more irresistable" ~ Cymru Fydd leaflet, 1890

Saturday 18 July 2015

Did your MP vote against applying the Climate Change Levy to renewables?

In the UK we have a 'Climate Change Levy' which is designed to tax energy used by businesses, it is meant to promote energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions since the less energy you use the less tax you pay on it. Renewable energy was exempt from this levy, but a recent vote in parliament has seen this exemption lifted. This means it is now not beneficial for companies to switch to an energy supplier that uses mostly renewables.

I was hoping that I'd get to colour in new constituencies, oh well.
Typically, despite being the largest party in opposition, Labour are not actually opposing anything. Unsurprisingly the majority of them couldn't even be bothered to turn up for this vote. In fact just seven Labour MPs turned up for the vote which is as many as from the Lib Dems despite them now outnumbering the Lib Dems by 232-8.

It should come as no shock that none of these seven Labour MPs represent Wales. All seven are from English constituencies. Ominously one of the seven was Jeremy Corbyn who is seen by some Labour voters as being the last chance of them ever saving their party from being totally lost to the Red Tories whose sole goal is to chase the middle class voters in England whilst throwing the working class in Wales, Scotland and England under the bus, perhaps even their infamous pink bus?

Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales and manager of the Welsh branch of London Labour might be a little miffed about this as he had hoped Wales could 'lead the way' in low carbon output. Since there is now less incentive for businesses to use energy from renewables he might also be rethinking how north Wales can be a 'powerhouse for the rest of the UK in creating clean renewable energy'. Mind you, I'm probably giving him too much credit, if he does mention this then he will react in whatever way he is told to react by London Labour.

For the greens out there you will no doubt have guessed that all three Plaid Cymru MPs and Wales' sole Lib Dem voted against applying the Climate Change Levy to renewables. That will please fans of easy maths as it works out as a paltry 10% of our MPs.

In Scotland it was a different matter altogether with all but one of the SNPs 56 MPs turning up to vote against. If you add these to the Lib Dem scumbag from the islands this works out as nearly 95% of their MPs voting against.

All this happened during the week that saw plans to use Trawsfynydd as a guinea pig for a new type of small nuclear reactor that has never been used anywhere else in the world.

A special thanks to Siobhan Tolland for informing me of the vote via her brilliant post on Wings over Scotland.

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Did your MP vote against applying the 'Climate Chnage Levy' to renewables?http://www.welshnotbritish.com/2015/07/did-your-mp-vote-against-applying.html
Posted by Welsh not British on Saturday, 18 July 2015

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