Two birds, one stone

Miliband and mendacity. Lovely.

Early signs of a different management style under Brown aren’t good. This time it seems the electorate and the environment are getting shafted.

It’s almost become a running joke at Ministry Towers – as soon as someone comments or e-mails us with a dare to produce an example of a cover up/lies/duplicity/mendacity we have to wait no more than 3 days before a fresh one lands in our lap. Last time it was the Treasury under the current PM – this time, having only posted about David Miliband last week, turns out we may have discovered another reason for his accepting the Foreign Office post and putting the environmental brief behind him.

A leaked internal briefing paper for ministers from the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform asked what options there are for “statistical interpretations” (pronounced "misleading the electorate") of the EU renewable energy target which would make the target easier to achieve.

Blair signed GB plc up to relying on 20% of our energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020. We’re currently at 2% and the dep’t reckons the best we could possibly hope for is 9% but under current policies only 5% would be achievable (2% below the EU average and 8% behind Germany).

Under Miliband’s watch the Agency for Environmental etc. affairs signed us up to the disastrous Carbon Trading Scheme and evidently wasn’t talking to TB at the time the ex-PM signed us up to the 20% goal (either that or TB didn't give a shit/was lied to by the dep't in a "45 minute to launch" kind of way - Ed)

Now the civil servants are trying to figure out if there’s a “statistical interpretation” (as opposed to a factual interpretation) to get our elected representatives off the hook.

We wonder if a company attempting to comply with the Carbon Trading Scheme could use “statistical interpretations” to establish it had met regulatory targets ?

Needless to say, We’ll be attempting to file a “statistical interpretation” of our tax returns.

And by the way - any new reader sceptics out there, don't hesitate to e-mail us asking us for examples of government mendacity - it generally only takes a few days for something bright, shiny and new to rear its head.