Feb 2011 10

Tell the EU Commission to stop spending our money subsidising environmentalists22

Last year the TPA released a research note looking at the amount of taxpayers’ money going to environmentalist groups.  The European Union is particularly generous, giving hundreds of thousands of pounds to groups like Friends of the Earth and the WWF specifically to lobby for policy changes.  Now they’re running a consultation on the issue, if you have time before next Tuesday, you can register your opposition to this undemocratic waste.

As our Campaign Director Emma Boon set out in a video, families pay twice.  First they pay for the grants, then they pay higher electricity bills and all the other costs of draconian regulations.

The EU is consulting on its programme, you can access the consultation here and give your comments as a “citizen”.  We aren’t under any illusion that means the bureaucrats are listening, or listening to people who won’t tell them what they want to hear, but we should take opportunities like this to dissent and remind them that opposition is out there.   If you answer “don’t know” to questions about how the programme is run, it won’t take long to tell them that spending in this area should clearly be cut and write in the comments boxes that it is undemocratic and unfair for taxpayers to be forced to subsidise political lobbying and campaigns many don’t agree with.

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Matthew is Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, author of Let Them Eat Carbon and editor of How to Cut Public Spending (and still win an election)



  • Anonymous

    It is clear that the EU is now so far from the vision of Monet, and is so corrupt that it needs to be destroyed as an entity. With a new start using people with a social conscience and at least a modicom of dignity and honesty.

  • G Heath

    The EU pays out our taxes to green pressure groups so that they can campaign against manmade climate change. Bearing in mind that, after 20 years of trying, there is still no evidence to link CO2 to dangerous climate disruption, here is just one more example of how arrogant and stupid the EU has become. Leaving the EU would have the combined advantage of ridding us of these burdensome eurocrats and their antiscience policies.

  • Ray Winter

    All Universities and friends of EU parliamentarians hop onto every next hot topic in order to obtain government funds for ‘research’ to assist the EU to justify their use of our money. It’s a self-serving merry-go-round that has gone on for far too long in the EU and every EU country. If its not climate change (what happened to that?), its political correctness, now it’s human rights, it makes one wonder what next hot topic will need billions of Euro’s so that an army of un-civil servants can throw their weight around.

    It about time we kicked the EU into touch and let’s get on with the our lives in the UK and without any quango’s, who are only there to protect MP’s from their decisions. If the decision the MP makes turns out to be ill informed, they can blame the quango, who are simply an insurance policy against the MPs losing their jobs.

  • Ray Winter

    All Universities and friends of EU parliamentarians hop onto every next hot topic in order to obtain government funds for ‘research’ to assist the EU to justify their use of our money. It’s a self-serving merry-go-round that has gone on for far too long in the EU and every EU country. If its not climate change (what happened to that?), its political correctness, now it’s human rights, it makes one wonder what next hot topic will need billions of Euro’s so that an army of un-civil servants can throw their weight around.

    It about time we kicked the EU into touch and let’s get on with the our lives in the UK and without any quango’s, who are only there to protect MP’s from their decisions. If the decision the MP makes turns out to be ill informed, they can blame the quango, who are simply an insurance policy against the MPs losing their jobs.

  • Jailhouse

    Unfortunately, until we break the bonds from the EU that we, and our country are enslaved to, we have little collective force.

    The pressure should be placed firmly at the feet of the treasonous Governments who have refused us a democratic referendum.

  • Les Kownacki

    Accurate measured data, by tree rings, ice cores and other means has proved the planet moves through a 2000 to 3000 year NATURAL Co2 cycle, sack all these green zealots for the wasteful and expensive scare mongers they are.
    Also time to give the Soviet style EU the final kick into touch it deserves, Sir Edward Heath told us in 1973 that entering the EU was a trade agreement only and there would be no significant loss of sovereignty !!, then Sir added to this in an interview on a Sunday chat show that HE LIED, to the British people, authority usurped with a lie is no authority at all!
    LK

  • Maria

    Tell the EU Commission to stop spending our money subsidising environmentalists. Families pay twice by paying for the grants by the huge amount we pay to the EU and then we pay higher electricity bills and all the other costs of draconian regulations.

    I am sick to death of this “Green” agenda constantly being used as an excuse simply to rip-off the hard working British public by imposing “Green” taxes – but where do these green taxes go? – Certainly not back into helping the environment – but into the coffers of the greedy extortionists!!

    Also, what is the point of the UK trying to make a difference when the likes of China, India and the US are pumping out the vast majority of the pollution? It’s like the UK going along to an earthquake zone with a dustpan & brush to brush up the ash at our feet!!!

  • Norman

    Shame on those politicians, scientists and green groups who use the name of green with alarming tactics to gain self-interests at the expense of taxpayers. If their green proposals are heavily subsidized, that mean they are technically and practically not feasible. This also means these proposals are against the principle of sustainability. Don’t try to insult the intelligence of the general public. Fooling people with dirty tricks and pseudo-scientiifc evidences such as climate change and global warming is like robbing money from other people’s bank accounts. The scam is not going to last long.

    • Gheath

      Norman
      I am a physcist who works in an area relad to atmospheric physics. I have been following the manmade clmamte change debate for almost 20 years. In all that time, including in debates with the likes of Sir John Houghton, not once has anyone been able to give a single piece of unequivocal empirical or observational evidence linking man’s emissions of CO2 to dangerous climate disruption, whereas several pieces of data show that CO2 cannot have this effect which the alarmists threaten. For example, earth radiation budget data.
      However, I must respectfully disagree with you. This scam will go on and on because it is different from past scams. Not only has the dreadful EU got its hands into it, (indeed is driving a good bit of it) but also now so have the money-men, with carbon possibly becoming the biggest traded commodity in about ten years. The Goldman Sacks of this world will not let this drop easily. If we are not to saddle our children with the horrendous burden of this fake science and this even more fake type of government housed in Brussels, the first step must be withdrawal from the EU.

    • Gheath

      Norman
      I am a physcist who works in an area relad to atmospheric physics. I have been following the manmade clmamte change debate for almost 20 years. In all that time, including in debates with the likes of Sir John Houghton, not once has anyone been able to give a single piece of unequivocal empirical or observational evidence linking man’s emissions of CO2 to dangerous climate disruption, whereas several pieces of data show that CO2 cannot have this effect which the alarmists threaten. For example, earth radiation budget data.
      However, I must respectfully disagree with you. This scam will go on and on because it is different from past scams. Not only has the dreadful EU got its hands into it, (indeed is driving a good bit of it) but also now so have the money-men, with carbon possibly becoming the biggest traded commodity in about ten years. The Goldman Sacks of this world will not let this drop easily. If we are not to saddle our children with the horrendous burden of this fake science and this even more fake type of government housed in Brussels, the first step must be withdrawal from the EU.

  • Mr Realist

    We need deregulation
    The shackles of the environmental industry must be cast aside so we breath life into our economy.

  • Mister Sar

    I would really like to know what drives you environmentalists to waste billions of the taxpayers money on useless wind farms without the mandate to do so. There is no shortage of evidence to prove that they are useless. You only have to watch them to see that they are standing idle more than they are operational. Remove the prefix environ and you are left with mentalist, a word that describes your illogical and wasteful over zealous doctrine perfectly. Not only are Wind Turbines inefficient and expensive, they are also extremely ugly and ruin our beautiful landscapes and seascapes. Grow up, stop being selfish, stop wasting our money and please stop destroying our environment with ugly useless monstrosities that we do not want.

  • Mister Sar

    I would really like to know what drives you environmentalists to waste billions of the taxpayers money on useless wind farms without the mandate to do so. There is no shortage of evidence to prove that they are useless. You only have to watch them to see that they are standing idle more than they are operational. Remove the prefix environ and you are left with mentalist, a word that describes your illogical and wasteful over zealous doctrine perfectly. Not only are Wind Turbines inefficient and expensive, they are also extremely ugly and ruin our beautiful landscapes and seascapes. Grow up, stop being selfish, stop wasting our money and please stop destroying our environment with ugly useless monstrosities that we do not want.

  • Mick Addison

    Environmental groups should finance themselves through donations of there supporters not from the hard earned money of tax payers.

    YOU HAVE NO MANDATE TO SPEND MY MONEY ON FUNDING SUCH GROUPS.

    • G Heath

      Mick
      The EU never said it would seek your mandate for this or anything else. It is a post-democratic construct, based on the notion that such things are far to complex for you or me to understand, so our unelected/self-appointed commissioners do the thinking for us.
      My only answers to this are to campaign actively to withdraw from EU, vote only for a party which offers this, and to raise awareness of what a hoax the climate change scare is. There’s plenty of good science out there to show that CO2, at current relative concentration increases or those possible from fossil fuel combustion, has no possibility to increase temperature very much because climactic feedbacks tend to be negative and thus act as a limiter. The Earth has a thermostat, God/nature made it that way, and if it didn’t work that way, we would probably not be here.

  • Outoftheeu

    Citizens of the EU member countries, the North Africans in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Albania and other countries are giving us an example to get rid of their dictators.

    The people of the European Union member countries should follow their example and rise up against the EU petty dictators to scrap the EU and for every country to get back its Independence and Freedom from the EU dictatorship and its petty dictators DIKTAT.

    Rise up people of Europe. Now is the time to get rid of the EU colonialist dictatorship and its petty dictators.

    RISE UP AND REVOLT.

  • tonii888

    Isn’t it funny how they have already closed the survey?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_U76FSQDBIMQGOAJA7US4F2HYPQ pjluzvim

    Here we go again with the usual collection of comments from the ‘usual suspects’ who have nothing better to do than rant their tory euro sceptism on the ‘sensible and moderate British and European public’. A public who are tired of their little englander nonsense. ear-ache and vomit bags all round pls. Ah yes the limeys-the British, allways the dicks of Europe, are getting off lightly with their EU contributions. Extrapolate their contributions with the population size.
    They want to be in the club, but stuff the rules. Sounds like the hoolies at the 3pm kick-off.

    • Mister Sar

      I don`t know what planet you are on, but as this is a British forum it would be nice if you could express your views in comprehensible English, instead of your incomprehensible rant. May I be so bold as to suggest that if anybody is sounding like a dick it is you.

  • Dinnydonald

    The EU seems to forget who won the two wars and why it was so important. We are being subjected to a dictatorship of non elected people with a seeming hatred of the UK. I wonder why ! We are the second highest contributor and it needs to stop. The books have never been signed off and we should have a say on how every penny is spent. No to all these quangos; let’s back off to the Common Market and leave it at that.

  • Badgerandphilip

    Corrupt governments and greedy businessman run the world and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s why my wife and I don’t bother to vote anymore. That’s why my wife and I don’t donate to charity. Example, NSPCC Chief executive paid 110/120,000 2009.
    83% of all donations to this so-called charity goes to the business. 17% for the beneficiary.

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