I just read this Twitter thread by, of all people, the RSPB. It’s a scathingly outspoken criticism of the UK government’s plans to rip up environmental protection under the heading of “pesky EU laws”.
I remember when Brexiters claimed the UK outside EU wouldn’t change protection of environment laws, animal welfare, food standards, employee rights, etc…
IIRC that was Truss at the despatch box in Parliament…
Now of course, they have reneged on their manifesto promise of a moratorium on fracking which, by all current scientific evidence, will be an unmitigated disaster.
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised by tory duplicity, its always been like this.
actually, I’m old enough to have known some decent tories… sadly, they are no longer with us. 
you are possibly too young… 
IMO there have never been any decent tories ,At 21 Stella how can that be 
Because today its all self,self,self and me,me,me, feathering their own nests and not an ounce of care for those who voted them in. I am old enough to remember when the tories had quite a few decent MP’s who never lied through their teeth to the country like the present shower and they were decent upright citizens who believed in their aims,not for what they could get out of it personally although there were some. Greed,promiscuity,adultery and lying seem to be the qualifications needed today if you want to get into politics. I can remember the tory men all had that horrible side parting with greased back hair as uniform unless they were bald.
Oh, I can assure you there have been - I’ve known quite a few
The only thing I can see that will make this lot change direction is if they see that the rest of the world considers them a basket case and turns its back to the extent that they can no longer get trade deals or investment or political support. I do not know if that will happen because other countries may see political capital in being able to exploit a corrupt and vulnerable UK.
In your dreams maybe😃
This in itself is worrying for us though Sandcastle. Deregulation was always the leading, extreme brexiters’ agenda - and this was always going to mean lower environmental, employment, etc standards - but it will probably also impact on the ‘level playing field’ and NI Protocol provisions in Johnson’s brexit deal. So I foresee worsening UK - EU relations.
not at all… but in real life and at all levels of society…
don’t judge without knowing who you are judging…
Graham was a Tory many years ago Richard - and now (the zeal of the converted?) is one of the strongest anti-Tory voices on SurviveFrance. We all move about the political spectrum. When I was in the UK Labour Party in the 90s I was on the right ‘New Labour’ wing - now I see I was wrong, but I understand why: I simply did not have enough information on climate/ecological breakdown to know that centrist or capitalist solutions to it are simply not logically possible. That’s the reality, I’m afraid - and no amount of wittering on about values or beliefs makes a hap’orth of difference to it.
I was wrong - but (I maintain) still ‘decent’ - enough ultimately to resign from the Labour Party over the Iraq war anyway - and i think it’s hard to argue that politicians like Grieve or Soubry - or indeed Boris Johnson’s own brother! - are not very decent people. Just hope there are others still in the Tory Party that will rebel against this stupid leadership (as indeed they did against the last).
The RSPB are no shrinking violets. They’re a heavyweight organisation which may well give the Government pause for thought. I wonder how many of the gentile, home counties types that just voted Truss in are members? A twitchers revolt looms 
From Wiki “
“In 2020/21 the RSPB had an income of £117 million, 2,000 employees, 12,000 volunteers and 1.1 million members (including 195,000 youth members), making it one of the world’s largest wildlife conservation organisations. The RSPB has many local groups and maintains 222 nature reserves.”
Or resigned because the T party became a travesty. Dominic Grieve is one such good human. 
Not just that.
The phrase you are looking for is " a commercially ridiculous, human resource squandering unnmitigated disaster."
Oh, & add the doubts over the actual quantities of gas that can be extracted, with even the better estimates not making any real contribution the UK’s energy needs.
Speed is also of the essence. It’s a lot quicker (& cheaper) to build solar & wind farms than any form of extraction, or that pesky atom splitting malarkey.
Yep. Many of the things we should be doing are very obvious, and among these are pouring the sort of investment that has gone into fossil fuel and nuclear into reducing energy use (insulation in every building, for example) and renewables. Had we been doing this for decades - and we have known it for decades - we could be sitting pretty now. Who knows what fantastic new renewable technologies would have been developed?
So why didn’t we do it?
The problem is that what we know to be the right course is not necessarily the most profitable for investors. Neither reducing energy use nor renewables produce as good returns for investors as fossil fuel. What we do is not determined by our interests - but by theirs…
I’m going to rest this here, but it could aslo go in the Sterling Plummeting thread if one suspects the £ falling through the floor was deliberate!
The ones I knew personally… are now dead… (I can have that effect on folk, so I’ve been told 
)
Good letter in today’s Observer on the way the Tory party has changed:
In recent years, the Conservative party has become the vehicle for far-right policies and politicians who promote those policies, not least: cultural intolerance; leaving the EU; the linking of racist anti-immigration politics and Europhobia; promoting a “hostile environment” for asylum seekers and attempting to deport legal asylum seekers to Rwanda; the marginalising of experts (elites); promoting nationalism with those union flags that now drape every minister’s office; attacking democracy by illegally proroguing parliament and denigrating human rights lawyers as “lefties” and “do-gooders” and restricting freedoms to protest. The new secretary of state for health and social care has been less than supportive of abortion rights. Today’s Conservative party has adopted policies and taken positions not that dissimilar to those in Sweden, Duda’s Hungary, Orbán’s Poland and Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Dr Robin Richmond
The UK media still talk about the danger of the far right entering into government in Sweden or Italy as if it’s only a problem on the Continent - they see fascism as inherently foreign - but ignore the fact that in the UK the far right is already in government.
Well said…