First Myleene Klass, now Bill Oddie:

I hereby confess that I am one of the Mansion owning North London set that are apparently staunch Labour. Not this time. I shall vote GREEN.

— Bill Oddie Official (@BillOddie) November 24, 2014

Guido hates to break it to Bill that his new preferred party are no friend of mansion owners either. In addition to their “wealth tax“ on people worth over £3 million, and their so-called “backdoor mansion tax“ whacking up rates for wealthier home-owners, the Greens also propose a draconian Land Value Tax. This is from their website:

“Land, the primary source of all real wealth, is the common heritage. We acknowledge that land is held in trust by human society on behalf of other species and future generations, and that land should not be treated as a capital investment nor traded for speculative profit. We therefore assert the principle that no person and no body should have absolute control of land, but only particular rights over the use of it.

The Green Party proposes introducing LVT as a tax payable on the annual value of land… The level at which the tax would be levied would be based on the full value of the current permitted use of the land… Where a property rockets in value, LVT would seek to tax that windfall increase in property value to be re-invested back into the community.”

What’s a mansion owning North Londoner to do?

Guido is off to see Owen Paterson deliver his speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation tonight. But is it really his speech?

Viscount Ridley’s sister is O-Patz’s other half…

Via Edward King.

To be fair to the Greens, and this blog rarely is, Guido cannot think of a single reason why they should not be allowed to take part in at least one of the leaders’ debates next year. They have an MP, won a considerable proportion of the vote last time round, and poll at a not dissimilar level from the LibDems. They have as much right to be in at least one of the debates as UKIP. 30,000 people have already signed a petition calling on the broadcasters to invite the Greens too. You can join them here…

Today is an inconvenient anniversary for greenies: as of 1 October there have been 18 years with no global warming. Weather satellite data collected by the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama shows the earth’s temperature has “plateaued” since this day in 1996. Its director Dr John Christy says:

“The fact that no one predicted what’s happened in the past 18 years indicates we have a long way to go to understand the climate system. And that the way the predictions were wrong were all to one direction, which means the predictions or the science is biased in one direction, toward overcooking the atmosphere… Our ignorance is simply enormous when it comes to the climate system, and our understanding is certainly not strong and solid enough to make policy about climate because we don’t even know what it’s going to do”

The same climate activists who don’t want to talk about this data are moaning that Dave cut the green crap from his conference speech today…

Germany will miss its 2022 climate targets for greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants as the country’s use of coal surges. Last year the coal-generated share of electricity hit the highest in 24 years.

The country also opened more new coal-fired power plants in 2013 than any other time in the past 20 years as it moves to stop the lights going out and shut down all nuclear power stations by 2022. Germany’s “Energiewende” green revolution has so far cost over €100 billion for consumers. “Despite the massive expansion of renewable energies, achieving key targets for the energy transition and climate protection by 2020 is no longer realistic,” Thomas Vahlenkamp, a wonk at McKinsey admitted to Bloomberg.

The whole green climate change racket is falling apart – global warming has stopped and now the hippies are coming up with new theories to justify global cooling. At the UN Climate Summit yesterday the Chinese and Indian’s basically called the West’s bluff and said sod it, we want prosperity. UKIP campaigns against windmill subsidies and years after the daft hug-a-husky days, Populus found this month that 71% of Conservative MPs think “it has not yet been conclusively proved that climate change is man made”. Green crap – nein danke…

Brooks Newmark is feeling the sharp end of the needle after commenting that charities should “stick to their knitting” and stay out of politics. Below Guido unravels details of a plot to stitch Newmark up coordinated by Friends of the Earth, spinning a yarn by organising a group letter to be printed in the national press. A conspiracy by left-wing charities to fight the idea that there’s a conspiracy by left-wing charities.

Dear Minister/ Dear editor

It was very ill-considered for you/the Minister for Civil Society to tell charities to “stick to their knitting”.

We are pleased that you have/ he has clarified your/his view that “charities absolutely have the right to campaign but should stay out of the realm of party politics”.

Charities, by law, cannot and do not take part in party politics and it is misleading to suggest this is a problem that needs to be tackled. We are proud to be party politically independent and to speak truth to power – even if that is uncomfortable for politicians.

The Lobbying Act, coming in to force on 19 September, was opposed by over 150 charities and campaign groups – from Cancer UK to the Quakers, Water Aid to WWF. We are concerned that it contains provisions that may well limit the ability of charities and other organisations to speak out on some of the most important policy issues facing the country and the planet.

From women’s suffrage to stopping the sell-off of our forests, campaigning on politically contentious issues is vital to democracy and to Governments making the right decisions. No ill-considered new laws or comments by ministers should stop charities and campaign groups from this important work.

Signed lots of NGOs..

The seamless plan also aims to buttonhole Newmark on social media, in what the charities minister will be hoping is a vain attempt to make him reap what he has sewn:

If you can take a photo of yourself knitting that would be great. (We actually have a box of knitting in the Edinburgh office. It turns out charities really do like knitting!) If you can’t get hold of any knitting a text tweet will do! Just remember the hashtag! Some examples:

In between knitting, I like to help solve youth unemployment in Scotland. #stickingtomyknitting

After a hard day’s knitting, I like nothing better than to help get disempowered people get online #stickingtomyknitting

European Funding Policy is fun and all, but I’d rather be knitting! #stickingtomyknitting

The email has been sent out to left-wing charities by Liz Hutchins, a former CND agitator who describes herself as a “senior political campaigner” and currently works for the Friends of the Earth “Political and Legal Unit”. Somewhat giving the game away. Other proposals of direct action suggested by Liz include turning up at Newmark’s constituency office in Braintree and making him undergo re-education in a meeting at the Cabinet Office. You can read the email in full here and have your say in the thread below…