I understand the desire for politicians to take every opportunity to talk about their achievements in order to persuade voters that they are worth voting for. But politicians have a reputation for being careless with the truth, and too many modern politicians are taking their carelessness to the extreme. It starts with exaggeration and can quickly descend into downright lies. Lies told with a straight face, and repeated over and again even when challenged.
It says something about our political system that you won’t be turfed out of the House of Commons for lying, but you will be ejected if you point out that someone has just lied.
During his recent budget speech, the Chancellor attempted to take the credit for 90 per cent of the UK’s solar power having been installed in the last 13 years. He said: ‘It’s this government who fix the roof while the sun is shining’ – to loud cheers from the Tory backbenches.
Total greenwash tosh.
The truth is that solar power infrastructure has progressed in spite of the government, rather than because of it. And it is still just a fraction of where it would have been with proper support. After all – 90 per cent of Too Little is still Too Little. The Tories pulled the rug out from under the expanding domestic solar panel industry just as it was taking off. They trashed the zero carbon house-building regulations in 2015 before they could come into effect. They’ve failed to reduce the UK’s energy demand by, for example, insulating our notoriously outdated and leaky housing stock.
Since 2015 they’ve given £20bn more in support to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables. They’ve blocked onshore wind projects, and instead announced more than 100 new oil and gas licences.
They’ve even approved the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, claiming that the coal will be used by the UK’s steel industry when the truth is it’s too high in sulphur and 90 per cent of it will have to be exported.
As the climate and environmental crisis grows ever worse, we need honesty and integrity to address it, not greenwash.
Ken Huggins, North Dorset Green Party

In March, tackling climate change was added to the bonfire of Tory failures. And just like Brexit, migration and the economy, this is no trivial matter.
They were forced to publish their Powering Up Britain strategy after a High Court ruling that their previous plans for reaching net zero by 2050 were the policy equivalent of a scribble on the back of a fag packet. But they once again failed to demonstrate that they had a sufficient grasp on the key issues of renewable energy and de-carbonisation. Meanwhile, a report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC*) sub-committee on adaptation has indicated that the government has failed to meet any of their targets on adaptation.
Indeed, the CCC claimed that the Tories were not taking the matter seriously enough to prevent avoidable loss of life.
Barring a few cranks and NIMBYS, the need to adequately address the climate crisis and to invest in adaptation strategies has become something that, in recent years at least, unites most people across the political spectrum. Most sensible people can also see the potential benefits that renewables offer for reducing the cost of energy and our dependence on foreign powers as providers.
The need to provide a clear roadmap for change is obvious to most of us. The need to do so quickly, not least to harness the opportunity of private investment but ultimately to reduce the impacts of climate catastrophe, is equally obvious. And I’ve yet to meet a right-minded Tory who would disagree.
The real issue here is not that there is no consensus on climate change, it is that we have a Tory government that is showing time and time again that it lacks the capability and competence to deliver for the people of this country.
And the longer it remains in power, the more damage it will do.
Pat Osborne, North Dorset Labour Party
*an independent group of experts set up to provide the government with advice on the climate crisis.

On the doorstep I repeatedly hear support for more pay for doctors, nurses, teachers and public sector worker … for more investment in clean water, in our decaying roads, for social care and in new hospitals. This is almost always swiftly followed by an equally passionate demand for less tax, both local and national.
They say a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Is the answer to the balance between taxation and spending one of strong leadership, backing one particular approach to avoid the compromises that create camels?
It is a sad truth that economic theories are only ever right in retrospect and even then only in their explanation of errors and omissions. It feels a bit like football referees and VAR – and how unpopular is the killjoy that disallows the goal at the height of its passionate acclaim. How often would we prefer the exciting dream over the prosaic truth?
The trouble is, that is how charismatic scoundrels can rise to the top – ‘never mind the truth, never mind your best interests and follow me for the ride of a lifetime.’ The inevitable outcome? Disappointment, disillusion and a hefty hangover.
As we head into the election season that will be with us for the next 12 to 18 months, both here and across the Atlantic, we should look deeply into what is said and the people saying it. We need to think long and hard about our experience of the last 13 years.

Political VAR
It has been said of those who run large organisations that once at the top, they need to lose the mindset and behaviours that got them there. Looking around the world at dictators and monomaniacs, they all seem to build on the ruthlessness that elevated them, believing they can have their position in perpetuity and ride roughshod over humanity, decency, fairness and truth in the pursuit of their personal visions and vanities.
Fortunately, we do have checks and balances. For every power-mad political ref, we have VAR in the shape of a regulator or quality commission. The only “buts”, perhaps, are that sometimes it appears a regulator has too little power (I give you sewage spills, internet, energy bills) while others can seem to have too much, or use their powers in too simplistic a way.
Our ultimate recourse is to the independence of the judiciary and the humanity, knowledge and understanding of our elected policymakers, both local and national. However, if we give one faction too much credence for too long, then we start to undermine the inherent strengths of the system. They start believing they – and only they – are right.
What matters most, then, is the quality and capability of our chosen representatives.
Let’s pick the best.
Mike Chapman, North Dorset Liberal Democrats