As we complete the first week of our return to work and get into the swing of 2016, discussion in the office rather inevitably turned to how most of us broke at least some of our New Year resolutions within days. No biscuits went with the first cup of coffee on Monday, absolutely not binge-watching that Breaking Bad box set on Tuesday night was next, closely followed by not actually cycling to work on a Wednesday. As with much of the country each was made in good faith… if not entirely sober. Ah well, seven left.
Like many, we too, spent the final hours of 2015 reflecting on our personal and professional highs and lows of the year just past. We too, variously resolved to do better in all departments.
We too, aim to be sharper, fitter, kinder, smarter and most especially, greener.
Hopefully, the round of departmental Christmas sherry aperitifs and midnight brandies at Chequers will not have blurred the PM’s memory on those carbon reduction commitments made in Paris at the COP21 Climate Change Conference.
Doubtless our erstwhile ‘less blue, more green’ champion will have spent the Parliamentary holiday re-charging, reflecting, reviewing and one can only hope, resolving to do better like the rest of us.
So here’s 10 New Year resolutions we’ve drafted on behalf of the PM and his ministers, which we will somehow contrive to slip into his next week’s Cabinet papers. We just haven’t quite worked out how.
‘My’ 2016 New Year Resolutions by [ahem] Prime Minister David Cameron
1. I resolve to ensure that our actual post COP21 action meets our COP21 rhetoric
2. To that end, I resolve to revoke the reduction in RHI subsidies for biomass
3. I resolve to double the budget for renewables despite my friend George’s Autumn Statement announcement. I am still in charge
4. I resolve to better understand how jobs, growth and prosperity for the UK economy can be achieved through sustained investment in renewable technologies
5. I resolve to reverse the ‘dash for gas’ energy policy and make it a ‘race for renewables’ instead
6. I resolve to ask the Department for Energy and Climate Change to more vigorously explore imaginative community micro-generation initiatives like forestry for UK wood pellet production in the absolute certainty that this will create a more secure and sustainable energy source than importing gas from Mr. Putin’s pipelines
7. I resolve to plant more damn trees
8. I especially resolve to plant many of these trees on hillsides upstream, which will help reduce flood risk, and divert the £millions saved on flood recovery works into renewable energy initiatives
9. I resolve to install an ÖkoFEN biomass boiler in all Government buildings in the UK… as well as in my own home(s)
10. I resolve to keep my resolutions and never utter the words “get rid of all the green crap” ever again.*
*I refer you Honourable gentlemen to this link made some years ago: http:// www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/21/did-david-cameron-tell-aides-to-get- rid-of-all-the-green-crap