So how does this compare with the position here in England, where we are continually told that wind and solar are now providing ever more of our own power? The official headline figures do not separate England, where most of us live, from the rest of the UK. But thanks to some very clever detective work by Paul Homewood on his Not A Lot Of People Know That blog, we can see that the English figures are in fact strikingly similar to those for the US. The contribution of English onshore wind and solar farms to electricity used in England amounted last year to just 5.3 percent.

That intermittently generated by all the thousands of wind turbines spread across the English countryside was just 2.4 percent: rather less than that fed into the grid by a single medium-size gas-fired power station like that recently opened at Carrington outside Manchester – which, thanks to the “carbon tax” and the Climate Change Act, could be the last we ever see built. There’s another very uncomfortable fact you will never see quoted on Wikipedia.

Beware the whiplash scams

Yet again the Government is promising to “crack down” on one of the most shameless rackets in Britain – the largely bogus claims for “whiplash injury”, happily connived in by compensation lawyers and the insurance industry, which add an estimated £1 billion a year, or an average £82 each, to all our vehicle insurance premiums. Last year whiplash claims soared again to 770,971, accounting for 75 percent of all personal injury claims for accidents involving vehicles – as against only 3 percent in France.