Livingstone's nuclear straw man

One might think that our man at City Hall had enough to keep him occupied without venturing into energy policy, but apparently not. The front page of this month's Londoner deals with a poll on attitudes to nuclear power. The issue of nuclear is far too dull to get into at the moment, but why on earth is money being spent on polling that has a clearly ideological dimension?

Note the loaded way these sentences have been phrased: "Supporters of nuclear power argue that these could provide a third of future energy needs. Others say nuclear power will do very little to cut carbon emissions, is by far the most dangerous and expensive method of electricity generation and that its radioactive waste will be with us for 300,000 years.In the poll, 45 per cent of Londoners oppose building new nuclear power stations and believe they are not the way to tackle climate change. Only 34 per cent actually support building them.".

However, this is my 'favourite': "Unsurprisingly, three quarters of Londoners also say they do not want nuclear power stations built in their local area".. It has always been national policy to build nuclear power stations in comparatively underpopulated areas like Dounreay, Windscale, erm Sellafield and Sizewell and on the coast, so asking this question is idiotic: there is never going to be a plant built on Hampstead Heath, or come to that, in Croydon.