Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

From the BBC and Telegraph:
The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after receiving criticism over its repeated failures to predict long-term weather prospects. The national weather service has until now published an outlook for the country’s weather three months in advance. But after predicting a “barbecue summer”, before a wet July, and a [...]

“Met Office staff are eligible to receive performance-related pay based on achievements against specific targets agreed and monitored by the Met Office Board, which are linked to the success of the Met Office at either individual, team or organisational level.”
- the excuse given by Kevan Jones, the Defence Minister, as it emerged that staff at [...]

“[There is] great cynicism now as a result of questions in popular culture and regarding credibility of IPCC data.”
- Russ Lidstone, chief executive of the advertising agency Euro RSCG, which commissioned an Ipsos Mori survey that found the proportion of adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality has dropped from 44% to 31%.  Overall [...]

“Instead of giving up chocolate for Lent, why not fast for justice … to help those suffering from the effects of climate change?”
- the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, who is among those calling for a ‘carbon fast’ for Lent which begins today.  As well as spending a day without using technology such as mobile [...]

From the Daily Mail:
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information. Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost [...]

From the BBC:
There has been an increase in the number of British people who are sceptical about climate change, a poll commissioned by BBC News has suggested. It showed that 25% of those questioned did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November. The percentage [...]

Dear readers,
I can barely keep up with the number of humiliating incidents for the IPCC at the moment.  As if Climategate and the revelations about manipulated data, destroying data and ‘losing’ data wasn’t bad enough, Rajendra Pachauri’s position as Head of the IPCC now appears untenable after it was found that yet more of their [...]

Dear environmental campaigners,
Apparently you are feeling hard done by this morning after you were labelled as ‘extremists’ and listed alongside al-Qaeda inspired terrorists and dissident Irish republican groups by the Government.  The new guidance on extremism, produced by the Ministry of Justice, was sent to probation staff in charge of writing court reports or supervising a range [...]

“We are trying to do our best …but to guarantee a zero fault product is probably not possible for any human enterprise.”
- Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC, who says that climate scientists are “only humans” who can make mistakes like everyone else when writing their reports.  His comments come as the UN’s [...]

“They can’t attack the science so they attack the chairman. But they won’t sink me. I am the unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, I will float much higher.”
- Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, speaking yesterday in response to criticism of his leadership following the revelation that the IPCC’s claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt [...]

Dear Gordon Brown,
It wasn’t long after Kraft’s audacious takeover bid for Cadbury got the green light that the unions starting stomping their feet about potential job losses.  The deal ends more than more than 150 years of independence for the maker of Dairy Milk, which will now be subsumed within the world’s second-biggest food company.  [...]

…well, it was if you believe this man (pictured centre):

Meet Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aling from Sudan, head of the G-77 group of developing countries.  In response to the epic fail that was the Copenhagen climate summit, he had this to say:
“[The draft text of the summit deal] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration [...]

From the Telegraph:
Cobble stones were thrown through the windows of the former stock exchange building and foreign office buildings in the city, but police made a large number of pre-emptive arrests under a controversial anti-hooligan law.  Suspected troublemakers were herded into a closed-off street, made to sit down and then tied up with plastic cuffs. [...]

Take, for example, the BBC website from Tuesday afternoon:

Sure, they’re talking about the dodgy dossier, Tiger Woods shagging porn stars, Baby P, George Michael and swine flu – but what happened to Copenhagen?  The press release on the high temperatures in the last decade squeezed into the top stories on the right hand side but [...]

“Be sustainable: Don’t buy sex.”
- the message on postcards distributed in Copenhagen as part of an anti-prostitution initiative undertaken by Copenhagen city hall during the UN climate summit.  However, the prostitutes - whose work is not illegal in Denmark – have fought back and members of a Danish sex workers association will now be offering their services for free [...]

THOSE WHO DESERVE SOME CREDIT:
The Guardian, Thursday: A senior civil servant has been appointed to conduct an independent review by next spring into emails hackers stole and published from the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit (CRU). The announcement that Sir Muir Russell will investigate allegations of wrongdoing on the behalf of the CRU [...]

“climate saboteurs”
- how Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, described Lord Lawson, David Davis and other politicians who have the nerve to cast doubt on the science of global warming in advance of next week’s Copenhagen climate conference.

Dear David Cameron,
One of Gordon Brown’s failings that surely cannot have escaped your attention is his inability to lead with conviction and strength.  Climategate has provided a real test of both Brown’s leadership and yours, and as far as I can see you have both performed dismally when the public were crying out for someone [...]

Meet David Holland.  He describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus on climate change, and is now seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws.  He complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last week after the [...]

“If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. [...]

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better. I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating. …They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their [...]

“upsetting and scaremongering”
- how one of the 357 complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) described the government’s £6 million climate change TV campaign, in which they stated for the first time that scientific evidence has confirmed that climate change is man-made earlier this month.  Some of the complaints argued that there is no scientific evidence of [...]

Dear moronic protestors,
Yet again I find myself compelled to write to you on the basis of your climate change demonstrations.  Not only has your behaviour annoyed me intensely, the excuses that you put forward to justify your actions just compound my irritation.
More than 1,000 demonstrators converged on the coal-powered Ratcliffe-on-Soar site in Nottinghamshire over the weekend under the [...]

Dear climate activists,
Goodness me.  I honestly thought that I had reached the point where I could ignore you without any difficulty.  Sadly, this morning you have discovered new and even more ridiculous ways to make idiots out of yourselves with your new week-long protest against climate change in London.
The Climate Camp is a loose affiliation [...]

“They were giving people the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40ft of water.”
- Sammy Wilson, Northern Ireland Environment Minister, explaining why blocked a government advertisement campaign on climate change.  He said that he was not prepared to [...]