Tuesday 5 January, 2010

UK
Politics
Science/Nature

The Right Honourable David Cameron MP, Leader of the Opposition

By Charles Gardner

Britain’s Conservative leader David Cameron appears to be wobbling, if not backtracking, over his marriage vow – not with his wife, but with the electorate as he launches his campaign to wrest power from New Labour.

He has previously made clear that he plans to introduce tax incentives for married couples – a vitally important gesture at a time when the social structure of our nation is crumbling all around us.

In this regard it was disappointing to hear that he saw the National Health Service as his No 1 priority – not because the NHS isn’t a key institution, but because family life – even more crucial to our future – is in terminal decline and in need of urgent cure.

If he fails to see that, he is not only risking the ire of a significant minority of millions of potential supporters who see the threat to traditional family values as the most important issue to be addressed, but he is also seen to be merely pandering to voters on a matter which must affect all of us at some stage of life.

And if the NHS is No 1, where does the security of the country come at a time when we are threatened on all sides by terrorism, and even world war? As I write we hear of plans by a radical Islamic group to hold a march at Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, where victims of the war in Afghanistan are honoured as they are taken to their last resting place. Significantly named ‘UK for Islam’, the group oppose the war in the way one preacher regards our heroes as having died in vain because ‘hell-fire’ awaits all who do not subscribe to the Muslim faith.

I appreciate that Mr Cameron raised the issue of government support for radical Islamic groups in a recent Prime Minister’s question time, which had ministers and civil servants scurrying to and fro to dampen down the fire. He must stick to his guns because this issue isn’t going away without a fight. The Islamisation of Britain is still a very real ambition of radical Muslims in our midst – and it’s no use saying they don’t represent the mainstream. No doubt they said the same about Hitler, but he soon mesmerized the German nation with his diabolical rhetoric. The Conservatives must confront this threat head-on, or they will do a grave disservice to future generations who may well come under the jackboot of Islamic fundamentalists as a result.

And whatever happened to what has been trailed by many politicians as the greatest threat to the planet – Global Warming? I recall Mr Cameron shortly after taking up his post being photographed with huskies in the Arctic Circle emphasising the dire consequences of climate change. But he would do well to challenge the so-called ‘settled science’ on this issue which, far from being a threat to the world’s poor, could see proposed ‘remedial’ policies leaving them in a far worse state.

As I travelled to work this week in temperatures of –6C, it was heart-warming to discover that a group of evangelical Christians had come to a ‘cooling’ consensus over climate change.

In a document released at a press conference in Washington DC, they challenged “global warming alarmism” whose policies would destroy jobs, cost trillions of dollars with no net benefits, dangerously expand government control over private life and in fact condemn the poor to premature death.

This of course is a complete contradiction of the claims of some leading Christian groups that climate change will adversely affect the world’s poor.

The document warns that the ‘science’ of climate change “fails the tests of theology, science and economics”. The alarmism “fails to recognise that the slowed economic development resulting from its own policies will cost many times more human lives than would the warming it is meant to avert.”

The document’s authors went further than previously when they said that natural causes might account for a major part, perhaps a majority, of recent climate change. “Now we’re convinced they’re the overwhelming cause and human activities are at most a minor contributor,” said E Calvin Beisner. “New economic studies also make clear the enormous costs of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, while atmospheric studies show that such reductions would have little if any impact on future temperatures. That makes us all the more sure that such policies are wrongheaded, destructive and detrimental to the poor.”

For further information see cornwallalliance.org – the website of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Supporters can also endorse the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming on the site.

Meanwhile the UK’s Meteorological Office is blaming the current big freeze (already the worst in nearly 30 years) on “a dramatic change in Britain’s weather patterns”. You don’t say! I notice no-one seems to be mentioning the ‘GW’ word, especially with China, Korea and elsewhere also experiencing bitter conditions.

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