07/04/10 "I'm the only MP who has built a real green home "
It was the birth of my older children that originally propelled me to want to change the world from inside Parliament. Now it is the birth of my youngest that convinces me that change has to come from elsewhere.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I came into the House 18 years ago frustrated by a Government who had sold the pass on manufacturing in favour of a dangerous flirtation with speculative and deregulated finance. So, a lot has changed in those 18 years. taken
28/03/10 - "House Magazine - Eco House"
I no longer know whether my attempt to turn a derelict shell into a house that generates 50% more energy than it consumes is a folly, a vision, an obsession…or all three. I may now more when it is finished in the summer.
This will be my last newspaper column as a Member of Parliament. It is without nostalgia that I want to look at the mess we’re in and how we get out of it. My parting speech in parliament’s debate on the Budget followed the same theme.....
16/03/10 - "The Meadows of hope and inspiration"
I no longer know whether my attempt to turn a derelict shell into a house that generates 50% more energy than it consumes is a folly, a vision, an obsession…or all three. I may now more when it is finished in the summer. To make sense of it may require a different....
Thank goodness Jeremy Leggett stepped in to correct some of the inaccuracies in George Monbiot’s ‘comment’ piece in Tuesday’s Guardian. The errors, however, are even more extensive than Jeremy highlighted.
Dear Gordon, A word of congratulations about the way you have brought the banks into public ownership. In the crisis they have dragged us into, no other lifeline was worth entertaining. Congratulations too in calling for an international conference to rewrite the...
Watching the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, I can’t help feeling that my mother would have sent them off to bed without an evening meal; two men, afraid to face the future, bickering about how much can be blamed on the past.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies cast a long shadow across Labour’s £1.3 trillion rescue plan for the British economy. Their judgment was that it will saddle every household in Britain with an annual bill of £2,840 for a decade, in debt and interest repayments.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Given the perilous state of the world economy in which the Budget has had to be presented, I wondered whether the Chancellor would open his Budget statement with reference to words used by someone else.....
The police ‘swoop’ on climate change protestors in Nottingham had an air of the surreal about it. Some 200 police officers, dozens of dogs and a cavalcade of police vans descended on a school site, in the dead of night, to conduct Britain’s largest pre-emptive....
When a relationship breaks down there are two things you can say about it with a degree of certainty. The first is that the most ferocious arguments will take place around the most marginal issues; how someone eats their cornflakes, who gets the CDs.....
When the weather stops soaking the British public the energy companies will take over. Already during 2008 average energy charges have risen by 38%. Wages, benefits and pensions have not. By the end of the year 6 million British households will officially......
15/10/08 "Greening the crisis"
My granddad used to tell us you should never waste the opportunities provided by a good crisis. The current one
presents us with opportunities in abundance. Those who are serious must begin by explaining the current crisis and its origins. Do this and we can avoid.....
When the weather stops soaking the British public the energy companies will take over. Already during 2008 average energy charges have risen by 38%. Wages, benefits and pensions have not. By the end of the year 6 million British households will officially......
The installation of insulation work through the CERT programme is very efficient with a time line of 25 working days after the doorstep assessment. This is well inside the current DECC time line of 40 days from the technical survey for insulation.....
June 2009 "Taking the poor into a low energy future"
During our time in office, the Labour Government has made some genuinely radical commitments on both the eradication of fuel poverty and our response to climate change. This makes it all the more frustrating to be confronted by two.......
At the moment, serious politics in Britain has imploded. The outrageous abuse, by some MPs, of the Parliamentary allowances system has lead to a general denunciation of everyone. Newspapers have discovered that they no longer need....
Delegates at the Labour Party conference in Manchester should be gentle with Gordon Brown. It will be his last as Labour leader and Prime Minister. Gordon is like a Damien Hirst sheep. Trapped in formaldehyde, he lacks the qualities needed for a bold.....
Gordon Brown’s declaration that he is about to review New Labour’s policies sent a flutter of excitement through the parliamentary press lobby. Was this to be the distinctive political lead everyone has been waiting for? Is it to be the genuine break with the Blairite.....
25/07/08 "The dead hand of Sir Humphrey"
Receiving a lifetime achievement award is certainly better than not receiving one. The only trouble is that it has an air of something posthumous about it. You can hear the whispers in your own head… “God bless him, guv’nor… ‘e did his best”.
The Secretary of State shall make regulations within one year of the passing of this Act with the purpose of requiring designated energy suppliers to introduce a renewable energy tariff for specified producers of renewable energy.
In these days of strange associations what is the connection between Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, pop star Lily Allen and Bianca Jagger? The answer is that all three have written to Labour MPs urging them to back my amendment......
‘Events, dear boy, events.’ Alistair Darling must be reflecting ruefully upon the comments attributed to the Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, about what was most likely to
blow a Government off course. The Labour Chancellor’s intentionally dull Budget was supposed...
So, finally, Northern Rock has been brought into public ownership. Now the political fun begins. Recriminations are everywhere. I’m reminded of a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon in which Lucy offers consolation to a forlorn Charlie Brown.........
22/01/08 - Energy Bill
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): The Secretary of State will know that the Prime Minister has committed the UK to meeting the EU target of obtaining 20 per cent. of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.....
15/01/08 - "Nuclear Nonsense"
They are at it again. Politicians talking about ‘nuclear as part of a balanced energy policy’ have this amazing ability to make second hand car salesmen look like saints. Downing Street’s much leaked ‘green light’ to the nuclear industry....
I am really pleased to have the opportunity of contributing to the Committee’s enquiry into the role we can play, as individuals and local communities, in tackling climate change. I will try to do so within the sequence of headings set out by the Committee.
Sitting on the hill in front of the Ackermannbogen estate in Munich, it was easy to see how the City had been named
Germany’s ‘Energy Saving City’, only 18 months earlier. The hill wasn’t a hill at all. I was actually sitting on top of 6 million litres of water.
In every town and city across the UK the picture was the same. Queues of people snaked their way down the high street. Not since the Tories paid people to queue in their infamous ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster have we seen
anything like it.
25/07/07 - "Adrift in the deathly hollows"
After two months of torrential downpours, Britain seems mesmerised by the floods that have swept the country. As the final Harry Potter novel hits the streets at the same time the rivers do, it is as through Lord Voldemort himself had decided to create....
07/06/07 - DTI - Fuel Poverty
Mrs. Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Coop): What progress has been made in achieving the Government’s target of an end to fuel poverty for vulnerable
households by 2010.
The Minister for Science and Innovation (Malcolm Wicks): Projections indicate that about 2..
25/04/07 - "More urgent than oil (liquid gold)"
For the last 20 years the free‐market Right have dominated the global political agenda to an extent where arrogance vastly outstripped intellect. They were able to do so partly because the Left failed to address the ways in which capital was seeking to disengage....
21/03/07 - Green Budget Debate
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): It is normal on these occasions for me to follow the Chancellor’s Budget statement and fill in the conventional gaps that I feel he has overlooked. I pay tribute to the Chancellor.....
13/03/07 - "Independent Article -Climate cheating"
Political leaders of all parties may not yet understand the urgency of responding to climate change, but at least they understand that at the next general election there will be
a race to turn carbon credits into electoral credits. Bless them.
13/03/07 - Finance Trust
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Minister ask for an audit of LIFT schemes in the Leicester area and elsewhere to assess the number of projects that have been able to incorporate energy‐generating systems, rainwater harvesting....
26/01/07 "The other day upon the stair…’ – Blair’s leadership on Iraq"
Parliament’s first Iraq debate in three years, in government time, began in a fraud and ended as farce. As such, it was probably a fair summary of UK policy on the war and the occupation. The debate itself was dominated by three people who weren’t there.....
2007 "A Really Green Budget"
A) New Golden Rules
Henceforth HM government should ensure that in line with the Stern Report recommendations, the government will seek to direct a minimum of 1% of....
21/11/2006 "Bush, Blair, and the end of an Empire"
As George W Bush looks down at the ruins of his presidency he must be wondering if there is anything more he could have screwed up. The answer is ‘yes’. And, reassuringly for most of us, he will almost certainly go on to do so........
26/10/06 "Markets, myths, and the climate change muddle"
In the early part of next week a pillar of the establishment, Sir Nicholas Stern, is set to drop a bombshell into the corridors of the Treasury. Its implications are far more
devastating than anything al Qaida threatens. Stern, who was a former chief economist.... read more | back to top
21/10/06 "The game"
Don’t be too hard on David Miliband. The new Secretary of State for the Environment is a bright cookie, with a mind that is at least open to the big challenges we have to address on climate change. At Labour’s annual conference in Manchester he received....
As Al Gore’s film on climate change begins to fill cinema seats all round the country, the Labour Party is confronted with an inconvenient truth of its own. This does not revolve around Tony Blair, whose premiership is already dead in the water.
Hey, sucker. Try this on for size. Climate Change is good for
you. The world’s scientists may be screaming at us that never before has the way we live so threatened the prospects of life itself, but reassurance is at hand.
I suppose I grew up with John, Paul, George, Ringo and ‘Resurgence’. It just took me a while to catch up with the seeds of exciting irreverence that Resurgence was to plant in my life. The magazine’s explorations turned conventional ideas......
22/03/06 - Budget Debate Speech 2006
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Budget debates are
often conducted within a strange sense of time. The short term is
about whether the Budget will survive the press headlines and analysis tomorrow.
17/05/06 - "Why nuclear is nonsense"
Ever heard the story of Chicken Licken? One day, whilst walking in the woods, an acorn fell on Chicken Licken’s head. “Oh no!” Cried Chicken Licken “the sky is falling in. We’re all doomed.” In a state of panic, Chicken‐Licken ran off to warn his friends.
01/01/06 - "A different Commonwealth"
On January 6th each year La Befana, a magical character in Italian folklore, brings children one of two gifts. If they have been good in the previous year, she leaves them sweets. If not, they get charcoal. Looking out across the hills to Siena.......
09/12/05 - "When the chat show ends"
It would be easy to caricature the
change in Conservative Party
leadership in slapstick terms. The
arrival of David Cameron at the
Despatch Box was more of a love-in
than a clash of convictions it was
Punch and Judy being replaced by
Richard and Judy....
22/11/05 - Climate Change
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I join other Members who have expressed a preference for the House not to divide on these issues tonight. I feel that it would put us all in a strange position if we were asked to choose between voting.....
27/10/05 - The burning fuse of sustainability
It is very British that a revolution that will change our lives profoundly over the coming years actually began its course almost 200 years ago. This is a revolution in energy policy, and it will leave the nuclear debate looking like a discussion between sad......
23/09/05 - "Goodbye Mr Blair"
Be nice to him. This will be Tony Blair's last Labour.
Conference as undisputed Leader. It will be full of bluff and bravado: grandiose claims about an unfinished agenda of New Labour reforms; resolute statements about work still to be done.....
16/09/05 - "When New Labour runs out of fuel"
The biggest legacy of the Blair‐Bush era is fear and insecurity. One hint of a trucker’s protest about fuel prices and the British public laid siege to petrol stations all around the country. True, it had none of the carnage of social collapse in New Orleans...
Jean Charles de Menezes. The name lived in relative obscurity and will slip away, in similar terms, over the coming weeks. It does, however, sum up the futility of much
that comes to be symbolised by 'the war on terror'
16/07/05 - Food & Energy Security: Local systems, global solidarity
It’s the strange nature of our times that’s defining a quite different politics. The defining difference now is between those who want to address, with a degree of urgency, the challenges of climate change and the way it is going to rewrite.....
28/05/05 - "Eco House"
I no longer know whether my attempt to turn a derelict shell into a house that generates 50% more energy than it consumes is a folly, a vision, an obsession…or all three. I may now more when it is finished in the summer. To make sense of it may require a different....
23/05/05 - "Microgeneration meeting invite"
Just a reminder about the reception we are sponsoring on microgeneration. As you will be aware micropower (the production of sustainable heat or power by individual or small groups of consumers) has many benefits.
11/05/05 - "Leading Labour"
I no longer know whether my attempt to turn a derelict shell into a house that generates 50% more energy than it consumes is a folly, a vision, an obsession…or all three. I may now more when it is finished in the summer. To make sense of it may require a different....
25/03/05 - Future Energy Markets
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I am extremely grateful to you for choosing this subject for debate this afternoon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, particularly as it follows the Chancellor's announcements in his Budget speech about the
intention......
15/03/05 - Budget Debate 2005
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): At the end of every Budget debate, Members stream out of the Chamber and are greeted by those in the press, who want to know whether or not we thought it a good Budget. Usually.....
25/02/05 - "My vision for Nottingham"
Nottingham 2020 could be a visionary place to live in or it could be just another urban mess. Ever since I came here and fell in love with the City, I have wanted Nottingham to be bolder than it was willing to be; to think and dream on a bigger scale. By 2020.....
Our whole understanding of fuel poverty is being squeezed in 3 ways. Weather patterns are becoming increasingly erratic. We have to deal with health risks both from the cold in winter and heat in summer. Fuel poverty will become as much to do with staying......
08/02/05 - Climate Change
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I shall try to be as brisk as possible, partly to allow other Members into the debate, but also because I want to make several points that I hope will upset the applecart in relation to the consensus of......
26/11/04 - "Gordon and the Gekko fallacy"
There was a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a firebrand of Labour radicalism. Gordon Brown, then, was unafraid to make the case for economic interventionism, universal entitlements, and an internationalism rooted....
We should not kid ourselves about Iraq. In has an army of occupation, in charge of transitional administration. Military t seek to deliver pacification but not peace. We should
not kid ourselves about Iraq......
08/11/04 - Carbon Emissions
Alan Simpson: We need to put the debate in the context of the best aspects of the Government's record. For the first time in history, the Labour Government gave a statutory undertaking to eradicate fuel poverty in this country by 2016.
It is Tony Blair's anniversary. Ten years ago he took over as leader of the Labour Party. Shortly afterwards he and I set off on a round Britain tour. He was championing the case for modernising' the Labour Party by abandoning its‘
commitments to common ownership.
10/06/04 - "The day we all lost"
I am going to give today a miss. News coverage will no doubt be dominated by makeover explanations of the EU election results in Britain and the Reagan funeral in America . I can already feel the nausea of organised dishonesty beginning to
overwhelm me.
Forget the tussle between the BBC and Downing Street over who was responsible for hounding David Kelly to his death. Forget the manoeuvring between Blair and Brown over who will lead Labour after the next general election. Consider, for one moment....
Long after the street celebrations in Baghdad have ended a more awkward reality will dawn upon the international community. 'Victory' over Iraq will not bring an end to war. It will just move the conflict on to different terrain.
Parliament’s debate on Iraq will be caught between two cynical extremes. Saddam Hussain will do whatever it takes to avoid a war. George Bush is no less determined to do
whatever it takes to avoid a peace.
The latest opinion polls show that British people oppose a war on Iraq by a ratio of 4:1. The government’s media campaigners have failed to make a case for war and Downing St’s ‘dossier on Saddam’ has been seen for what it as.....
May 2002 "Energy Conservation"
Friday is 'D' day. Des Turner's Energy Conservation Bill comes back to the Commons for its Report Stage with overwhelming parliamentary support, but only a 50‐50
chance of getting through.
