The CBI was largely positive about the Coalitions actions over the past year, particularly congratulating government on decisive actions taken to reduce the national deficit. Four points were however, considered to have been overlooked or to have received unsatisfactory levels of attention from government.
These four points, pertain to energy infrastructure and strategy, public sector reform, a measured approach to balancing the economic reliance of the UK on financial services and industry and finally, labour market reform – a subject very much at the forefront of the public psyche following Business Minister, Vince Cable’s comment this morning on this likelihood of further regulation to prevent strike action in response to trade union threats.
'EU climate policies are driving smelters out of Europe'
By Karel Beckman,
European Energy Review
The EU's climate and energy policies are threatening the survival of the European producers of non-ferrous metals like aluminium, copper, zinc and nickel, says Robert Jan Jeekel, Director Energy & Climate Change of Eurometaux, the European Metals Association.
According to Jeekel, the models the European Commission uses to calculate the effects of climate policies on the industry are deeply flawed. The EU's 'unilateral policies' are driving up electricity prices for European producers compared to their international competitors, he says. 'As a result, factories are closing.
This could spell the end of the production of aluminum and other non-ferrous metals in the EU.'
Wind farms aren't just a blight, they're a folly
By Philip Johnston,
UK Telegraph
For the thousands of holidaymakers who visit Cornwall each year, there is a particular vista that lifts the spirits after the long and arduous drive. Just south of Bude on the A39, provided the weather is fair (a rarity, it is true), the twin peaks of Brown Willy and Rough Tor rise out of Bodmin Moor.
For those of us who have travelled to this corner of England since childhood, it is a view that has changed little. However, if developers get their way, in a year or so there will be 16 wind turbines, each of them 415 feet high – taller than St Paul's Cathedral – right across this wild and wonderful landscape. They won't be the first, either. As I saw when I visited last week, wind turbines have sprung up all along the route into Cornwall, like mushrooms on an autumn morning.
True, many of them are relatively small; and alone or in pairs they can possess a certain elegance. They are less of an eyesore than coalmines and their attendant slag-heaps. And, let's face it, our countryside has seen worse. The arrival of the steam train was greeted with horror, as the railways snaked their way across pristine meadows, and tunnels were blasted out of the hillsides. The speed of construction left contemporaries bewildered. In Middlemarch, alarmed villagers worry that the railway will tear apart the very economic and social structure of daily life. Dickens, in Dombey and Son, likens its impact on north London to an earthquake.
