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Every prime minister has the right to choose his team to take Britain into the general election and I am confident that my able successor at Defra, Liz Truss, will do an excellent job. It has been a privilege to take on the challenges of the rural economy and environment. However, I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of – to coin a phrase – the Green Blob.
By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.
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(Greenpeace says that the effigy wasn't burnt and is a warehouse.)
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And he was particularly scathing about the Green party and Friends of the Earth. "It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups, most of whose leaders could not tell a snake's head fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary," he said.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/20/owen-paterson-sacked-cabinet-appease-green-lobby