We’re being hammered about our wicked ways with plastic, dairy farming, cars etc, the latest fashionable sin being our evilness in flying in jet planes.
Last week, the current whipping boy for some British newspapers, namely Prince Harry plus his wife Meaghan, were given a roasting for a short trip in Elton John’s jet as his guests for a stay with him. So why don’t they hammer Elton John and the hundreds of others owning private jets.
Well get this.
Currently, the United Nations is organising a climate change conference for next year, which is expected to attract 30,000 international delegates, including world leaders. That’s not a misprint. Thirty bloody thousand flying in from all points of the globe, including doubtless New Zealand.
Boris is pressing the UNO to host it in Glasgow, a deeply unattractive prospect for Glaswegians notwithstanding nonsense assertions by diverse British spokespersons.
Claire Perry, a former Energy Minister and the British Government’s nominee (some hope!) as the Conference Chair, came out with this tosh.
“As one of the UK’s most sustainable cities, with a record for hosting high-profile international events, Glasgow is the right choice to show-case the UK’s most sustainable city and with a record for hosting high-profile international events, Glasgow is also the right choice to show-case the UK’s commitment to the environment.”
Lang Banks, director of the Scottish World Wildlife Fund delivered this nonsense.
“This will be a vital milestone in the global response to the growing climate crisis. The fossil fuel era began in Scotland and in 2020 the global community must come to Glasgow and say that this will be the last fossil fuel generation and that we’re ready to take on the climate and nature emergencies we face.”
Yeah, right! That’s why 30,000 are going to burn fossil fuel to complain about burning fossil fuel.
So what exactly will these 30,000 do when at this conference? We know the answer, as with all such large-scale conferences There will be no conferring, just earbashing speeches telling those present what they already know.
I’ll pay $1,000 for any delegate who actually pays his or her own air-fare and hotel costs in return for $10 for everyone with their snout in a public trough. That should net me $300,000, assuming there’s any takers.
If these parasites on the public purse were sincere they’d stay at home and receive the addresses by email to read at their leisure, not that the speeches will say anything we don’t know.
Of course that’s true of all conferences, now a massive tax-deductible holiday excuse but otherwise in 90% of the cases, utterly valueless.
In 1999 The Australian Tax Office said as much, noting how international conferences timing and location invariably co-incided with major sporting events.
So to open the batting as it were, they first targeted a law conference in Britain, co-inciding with the rugby World Cup being hosted by Wales and advised they would not allow tax deductibility for the travel costs. All hell broke out resulting in then Prime Minister John Howard intervening with the ATO and having this decision reversed.
That same year, fishing the Tongariro I ran across an amiable Aussie angler there alone, this resulting in me inviting him back for dinner with us.
It transpired he was the boss of the ATO’s investigation unit and he told me some highly amusing tales. When I suggested that the best tax advice one could give is never to declare it he became hugely excited.
“By God, never a truer word,” he cried, adding, “But I’ll deny I ever said it.”
Mind you, it was a sensitive topic for him given the revelation a few months earlier that a bevy of Melbourne QCs had never paid any tax by simply ensuring they didn’t exist on Australian tax records.
The quid pro-quo for the conference costs deductibility tax rort is conferences are now big business, generating jobs and incomes for host cities. But The United Nations 30,000 attendee climate conference is another matter and surely the most hypocritical mass action in human history. Furthermore, readers will be partly paying for it as you can be sure our Greens will be there on the public purse. If they had any integrity they’d refuse.
And if the Conference is staged in Glasgow it’s odds on it will co-incide with the 2 months long Edinburgh Festival, a 40 minute commuter train ride. Put that down to an amazing co-incidence.