This happened at the beginning of may, so it has taken me a while to write about it.

 Just before the local elections, Gordon Brown suffered his biggest Labour revolt- around 30 Labour MP's voted against the government and for the introduction of a feed in tariff.

 The feed in tariff was designed to give incentives for small businesses such as mills to create their own electricty and sell it back to the national grid.

Obviously, this would not had solved all our energy needs, and ultimately at the level proposed would had only prodcued around 5% of the energy we need.

However, it is the added implications for this that the Labour Whip encouraged MP's to vote against it. 

 If the government were to start increasing incentives for small businesses, and then maybe households, to start producing their own electricty and selling it back to the grid, then there would be less need for these massive national energy companies (who conintue to make profits year on year despite our energy bill going up) which obviously goes against everything New Labour stands for.

 Furthermore, this would had been a signifcant step in our battle against Climate Change. As stated, it would not had solved our problems, but at the same time it does help and creates the foundations for this measure to expand so that each house has an incentive and help to produce its own electricty that it could sell back to the grid.

 But no, the bill was defeated. 

 It was defeated because of 'following the Party line', and Gordon Brown-nosers.

So three issues i see here:

1. We all know, but it reafirms, New Labour is in the pocket of (inter)national companies.

2. New Labour's committment to helping slow down the rate of climate change is defunct.

3. Party lines, and political opportunists are hampering worthwhile (and perhaps radical) political change.