Greta’s right about Cop being useless

Greta Thunberg said, in a newspaper interview, that Cop27 is a ‘scam’ for ‘greenwashing, lying and cheating’. Then she said to Jeremy Vine: ‘The fact that one of the most powerful people in the world [Rishi Sunak] doesn’t have time for this, it’s very symbolic and says that they may have other priorities.’ It is very disappointing that Mr Sunak did not listen to her words, recognising that the Cop is indeed a place of greenwashing etc and sticking to other priorities (though not ones pleasing to Greta). He has now gone back on his promise to stay away. This is a dreadful sign of weakness. His appeal lies in his sense of what matters most. There have already been 27 years of Cops, and yet global carbon emissions have continued to rise. They do not work. By giving in now, our new Prime Minister has let himself be captured by the false doctrine of climate ‘emergency’, and disabled from meeting our pressing energy needs.

At the time of writing, however, the King is still not going to Cop. He withdrew on the advice of Liz Truss. The new Environment Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, says that whether he goes is ‘up to him’. This is surprising. For a reigning monarch to go to Cop is an official act and therefore something done only on prime ministerial advice. It is not for the King to act on how he feels: it is a matter for His Majesty’s Government. If the government itself is confused about this, then the King is exposed to political risk. If he does go after all, Sharm El Sheikh will be full of people trying to trap him into embarrassing his own Prime Minister.

The new King is often referred to on television, including the BBC, as ‘King Charles’. Surely this is not right. He is ‘The King’, just as his mother, when alive, was ‘The Queen’. We normally use our monarchs’ names only when they are dead – Queen Victoria, King George VI. It is also strange that the Princess of Wales is often referred to as ‘Kate Middleton’. She deserves to be known by her new title, just as her most recent predecessor in that role soon ceased to be ‘Lady Di’.

Harry Armstrong Evans was a student at Exeter University when he killed himself. The coroner at his inquest criticised the university for not responding to his ‘cry for help’. He had sent an email about his poor state of mind after bad exam results, but no one from the university ever spoke to him about this or replied substantively to an anxious voicemail from his mother. Harry’s parents complain that universities do not have a duty of care towards their students. Troubled students fall through this gap. Since the age of majority was reduced from 21 to 18 half a century ago, universities have not been in loco parentis, so they have become careless about students. At the same time, parents have no right to know anything about their student children because they are, in law, adults. Their child could be in utter despair and yet the university (if it knew, which it often does not) could tell them nothing without the child’s consent. Many students, especially those leaving home for the first time, are much more like children than adults. For their own sake, parliament should recognise this and give all full-time students under 21 the status of children.

This week, I became an old age pensioner, but I quite recently discovered that you do not have to take your state pension as soon as you qualify. You can take a bet with the undertaker and postpone (up to the age of 75, I think). If you do this, the amount you will eventually be paid compounds. Since I am in full-time employment, I do not need the money as much now as I may later, and I might end up in my dotage being taxed at a lower rate and therefore keeping more of my pension than if I collect now. Another thing I did not know until last month is that when you reach pensionable age and are still employed, you no longer have to pay National Insurance contributions. This is, now that I think about it, logical, since NI is supposed to pay for one’s pension, though of course it doesn’t. So suddenly I am in favour of high rates of NI. The only fly in the ointment – apart from the possibility of losing money by dying prematurely – is the thought that some future government short of money will renege on the promise to pay me more later. It will probably be a Conservative government, in love with its latest device for ‘levelling up’.

Despite my sudden interest in the state pension, I cannot find much of a defence for keeping the ‘triple lock’ on it, except for the important one that it was a solemn electoral promise. The lock is a stupid idea, because one of its three elements – keeping pace with average earnings rises – makes no real sense and might not be, in some circumstances, affordable. The purchasing power of the state pension should be protected against price inflation in normal times, but why should people who no longer work automatically do as well (or as badly) as the average of those who do? So many people are now old that the triple lock is much more expensive than when first invented in 2010. The triple lock benefits not only the poor, but millions who are quite well enough off not to need such protection. When you consider that the old usually have no mortgage, are often living in valuable property on whose sale they pay no tax, get free prescriptions, cheap rail travel, bus passes and pay no inheritance tax between spouses, you might tilt the balance a bit more in favour of the young, whose property opportunities are hundreds, even thousands, of square feet worse than those of their grandparents.

Poor Matt Hancock. He simply got things the wrong way round. If he had become a celebrity first and a politician after, he might have shot to the top like Donald Trump or Volodymyr Zelensky.