EU forces British government to increase VAT on solar panels and home insulation to 20%

Over the past few years the EU has issued countless directives requiring all sorts of energy efficiency measures in new buildings and setting targets that require governments to promote and subsidise solar panels, windmills, biomass boilers and other "renewable" energy sources.

Knowing how the EU works, it's therefore no surprise to learn that they have forced the British government to increase the 5% VAT rate on energy efficiency products to 20%.

VAT is an EU-mandated tax with the EU setting the rates and taking a cut of the proceeds. The money the EU raises from VAT doesn't go into its budget to cut the cost to the taxpayer, it goes into it's propaganda slush fund called "EU own resources". So you can imagine how keen they are to abolish any exemptions or discounts such as on children's clothes, books, fresh food and - of course - all these energy efficiency products they've forced builders to use.

So, having created a market for energy efficiency products with new laws and big fines for missing targets the EU is now quadrupling the tax on those products with the proceeds going straight into their slush fund.

The lights are off, nobody's home

Ofgem has finally admitted that the EU and British government have put us in serious danger of electricity rationing and blackouts thanks to their regressive, ill-thought-out policies requiring power stations to be closed in favour of windmills.

UKIP has been warning for some time that we are approaching the point of no return where too many power stations are being decommissioned without adequate replacements being brought online to keep the lights on.  Windmills will only produce a fraction of the electricity we need and at many times the cost of coal and gas power stations.

The deliberate undermining of the UK's energy security, making us reliant on imported gas from countries that really aren't very friendly towards us - giving aid and comfort to our enemies - isn't incompetence, it's an act of treason.

Windmill subsidies to be reduced by 10%

The British government is knocking 10% off the taxpayer subsidy for windmills, citing increased efficiency with the technology as a major reason for doing so.

In 2008 the windmill industry was forced to admit that they had overstated the efficiency of their cash cows by about 100% but the subsidies continued regardless and nobody was prosecuted for their misleading adverts or obtaining taxpayers' money by deception.

UKIP MEP, Paul Nuttall, says that the 10% cut is laughable and that subsidies for windmills should be scrapped altogether. I can't find fault with that argument.  The subsidies are paid (in part) by a "green" tax applied to every gas and electricity bill.  Whether you're a millionaire or one of the thousands of elderly and vulnerable people who die every winter as a result of fuel poverty, we all pay the windmill tax so that multi-national corporations and rich landowners can blight the landscape with their inefficient, ineffective windmills. It's immoral.

Windmills have a place in micro-generation where householders and companies erect very small windmills in their gardens or at their premises to produce a small amount of electricity for their own consumption.  For community groups or organisations like the Scouts who have buildings that are empty for days on end, producing and storing a small amount of electricity for personal consumption makes sense provided that the necessary equipment can be purchased and maintained at a low enough cost not to require a taxpayer subsidy to pay for it.

Where windmills don't have a place is the national grid.  They are hugely expensive to make, they are hugely expensive to erect, they are hugely expensive to connect to the national grid and they are hugely expensive to maintain.  The huge expense wouldn't be a problem if they produced enough electricity to cover these costs, let alone make a profit, but they are a financial black hole that will swallow up taxpayers' money from the day they are made to the day they are decommissioned.  I was in Abergele at the weekend and saw the multitude of windmills that have been thrown up in the bay at Pensarn - every single one of them motionless, producing zero electricity but burning taxpayers money.  This is the future of electricity production in the UK unless the global warming scam is stopped in its tracks.

Conservation and common sense environmentalism make perfect sense but the organisations that used to lead in that field have willingly allowed the global warming con merchants to take over their cause.  When the global warming gravy train is finally derailed they will all suffer long term pain for their short term gain.

Windmills

Thanet Wind Farm

The opening of the world's largest wind farm off the Kent coast today has been described as "the environmentalists greatest con to date" by Nigel Farage the local UKIP MEP.

Windy Miller is going to be very rich

"The figures being pumped out by the Government and the BBC are utter fiction", he said.

"They claim that this £780 million chimera is expected to generate enough electricity to power 240,000 homes. Well it is expected only by the dishonest," he said.

"Looking at Vattenfall (the operator's) own figures give a lie to this. Wind Farms operate on average at about 26% capacity, at best, which in their own world would provide energy for maybe about 130,000 houses. But even this doesn't take into account night usage where the production goes to waste."

"Happily for the company though it will be picking up enormous subsidies for the production, of £40 million up front and approximately £60 million annually in Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs), taken direct from our bills as an undisclosed tax. Given that they claim (though the impact of sea salt on the precision machinery is not yet factored in), that these bird-slicers will stand for 20 years, they stand to make £1.2 billion. Enough to build a small nuclear plant," he went on.

The great scam continues, the press lap it up, and nobody seems to care that the taxpayer is short-changed, the climate is unaffected and Britain will not have the energy generation capacity vital for our future prosperity and welfare".

"21 so called Green jobs have been created. Possibly the most expensive jobs since Niel Armstrong stood on the Moon," said Farage.

Not to mention the fact that wind power is the most inefficient and expensive form of energy production there is and the windmills will never make enough money to cover the cost of building and operating them.