Why I won't be shopping at M&S any more… – Telegraph Blogs

Monday 14 July 2014 | Blog Feed | All feeds

James Delingpole


Why I won't be shopping at M&S any more…

Says bloody who?


"We the undersigned feel very strongly that British consumers should pay more for their energy bills and give us more money – lots more money – for something they don't want and they don't need. Basically what we're after is Danegeld – you know, money to make us shut up and go away, at least for a few months, after which of course we'll come back and ask for even more. Oh, and we don't give a stuff what damage this does to the economy. Or the number of jobs it will kill. Or the destruction it will wreak on the countryside as a result of all the bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes we want to build. But just to give our rapacious cynicism a veneer of respectability and plausibility, here's a junk-economics report from a business-friendly-sounding organisation – the Confederation of Business Industry – claiming that if you stop paying us our Danegeld the economy will somehow suffer and jobs will be lost."

He'd laugh and chuck it in the bin, right?

Well at least I hope that's what George Osborne did when he got his blackmail letter yesterday from a group of businesses, orchestrated by a green activist body called Aldersgate Group, essentially demanding that foreign-owned companies like Siemens be allowed to go on enjoying their unalienable right to rape and pillage Britain's landscape and economy via the crooked mechanism of renewables subsidies.

But the truly bizarre part is that so many British companies were prepared to put their name to this nonsense.

Among the letter's signatories were:

Asda, Marks & Spencer, the Co-Op, Knight Frank, Boots, Aviva, and Sky.

Are these company's chief executives aware of this? Are their shareholders? I think it's worth finding out, don't you?

If you've a few seconds to spare, I'd urge you to write to these companies asking them why it is that they are lending their names to a campaign to

Make energy more expensive

Ruin the British countryside with more wind farms

Reject cheap, abundant, safe shale gas in favour of more expensive and environmentally damaging technologies.

Destroy British jobs.

Damage the British economy

Enrich foreign-owned companies while bringing few if any financial benefits to Britain.

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