Some in Government and the City profess to see some green shoots of recovery but even if they're right unemployment is set on its relentless upward march for the rest of the year: this morning the latest figures show it rose a record 281,000 in the three months to May to 2.38m. At this rate it could be just shy of 3m by year-end.

The government in general - and Energy & Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband in particular - are pressing on with their "green" agenda, always more difficult in terms of public opinion when times are bad.

But the government has taken the novel line of claiming that the green agenda will actually help us get out of recession by creating new jobs. I appreciate you don't have to be a global warming sceptic to be sceptical of this.

Ed Miliband on BBC Radio Four's Today

Mr Miliband forecasts there will be 400,000 "green" jobs by 2015, though such figures are never more than guesstimates and should always be treated with suspicion. No more so than this one because, as the Energy Secretary places ever more faith in wind power -- promising 15% of our energy needs will come from renewable resources by 2020 -- and as he pledges to make Britain a world leader in low-carbon technology, the country's only significant maker of wind turbines (the Vestas factory in the Isle of Wight) has announced it's closing, with a loss of over 600 jobs.

Vestas currently supplies the US market and couldn't get government help to convert its facilities to the requirements of the British market. So all 7,000 of the wind turbines that the government will say today it intends to install over the next decade look like they will be made in Germany, Denmark and China. Not quite when Mr Miliband had in mind, I'm sure, when he said we'd be a leader in low-carbon technology.

There are serious questions, too rarely asked, about wind power anyway. We've already spent several billion on building just over 2,000 wind turbines but they contribute barely 1% of our electricity; their combined output is only about 700 megawatts, less than the electricity generated by a single, medium-sized conventional power station. So even 7,000 more turbines won't necessarily make a huge contribution.

Nor do they come cheap. Electricity generated by turbines is about twice as expensive as that coming from conventional fossil-fuel generators. We're already paying, in effect, a turbine "supplement" in our electricity bills, though the extra cost isn't immediately clear on the statements. That extra cost will rise as turbines sprout.

There are also questions about the logistics: 7,000 on and offshore turbines between now and 2010 means, allowing for bad winter weather, installing two of them every week for the next 11 years ... each one roughly the size of the Blackpool Tower. Not sure we have the capability to do that -- but we'll see.

Finally an heretical question that is rarely asked at all in the mainstream media: are we right to continue to place so much emphasis on expensive anti-global warming policies when average temperatures have been lower than the 1998 peak for every one of the 10 years since then (and this year is forecast to be lower too)? It's the sort of question a growing band of sceptics are asking ever more loudly and we'll have one on this morning's Daily Politics. Oh yes, you get every opinion on good old DP!!

Anita Anand spoke to government chief scientific adviser Professor John Beddington on the calls for climate change action on last Friday's show

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The government is on the back foot over Afghanistan as casualties soar -- and suddenly it is Gordon Brown himself who is in the firing line.

Yesterday on the show we talked about how Chancellor Brown had cut the budget for new troop-carrying Chinooks -- the kind we're currently short of in Helmand -- by £1.5bn way back in 2004.

Tory shadow defence spokesman Liam Fox says the decision has had "disastrous consequences" for the British Army's ability to move troops in relative safety. When I spoke to defence minister Bill Rammell yesterday he did not deny the budget for helicopters had been cut five years ago -- and at a time when spending everywhere else in the public sector was soaring.

Andrew Neil and Bill Rammell on Monday's Daily Politics:

This morning The Times has more questions for the PM to answer: it claims that Mr Brown rejected requests from the top brass for 2,000 more troops, settling for sending only 700 -- and only on a temporary basis until the Afghan elections are over. The Times says this was "the cheapest of four options" put to the PM by military chiefs in March. The "temporary" nature of the 700 extra who were deployed will be reviewed in October. I suspect it has become politically impossible for the government to reduce our Afghan commitment, unless it is part of an overall withdrawal (which is not on the cards).

These are serious developments for the PM because the Tories and some in the military are trying to build the case that, as Chancellor, Mr Brown was always short-changing the military, despite the government's propensity to get involved in wars. "He simply resented have to stump up for Tony Blair's wars," one senior military figure said to me.

So the PM faces two potentially damaging accusations, which his critics say are costing lives in Helmand. First, that he cut spending on Chinooks, even though at the time the National Audit Office said that the military was desperately short of them. Our troops are paying the price for that now, say critics.

Also that Mr Brown took the "cheapest" option when it came to reinforcements. Indeed The Times in an editorial makes an even blunter claim: "Mr Brown and the Treasury overruled advice from the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force as well as his defence secretary and insisted that no more than 700 extra men would be sent out -- and then only for the duration of the Afghan election campaign."

I know some of this was aired in the Commons yesterday between Mr Brown and David Cameron. But I can't help but feel it will be discussed again during the final PMQs of the summer tomorrow.

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Nobody comes well out the Guardian's revelations this morning (bar the Guardian, which seems to have a great investigative scoop on its hands).

Not the News of the World, whose newsroom seems to have spun out of control with its use -- on a massive scale -- of potentially criminal methods to get stories.

Not News International, the paper's owner, which, says the Guardian, has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds in out of court settlements to sweep the whole matter under the carpet.

Not the rest of Fleet Street, much of which may have relied on the same private investigators as the News of the World. Just look at how some papers this morning could barely bring themselves to touch this story.

Not the police who, apparently presented with evidence of widespread criminal activity, took very little action. Indeed it is possible that, despite evidence that the then Deputy Prime Minister might have had his phone compromised, they didn't even inform him.

Not the Crown Prosecution Service, which seems to have gone along with News International version of events that there was no systemic invasion of privacy involving scores of journalists, just a rogue journalist and a dodgy private investigator.

Not the court system, which, according to the Guardian, has been complicit in making sure the details did not become public by agreeing to the facts being locked away in sealed files.

Not the Press Complaints Commission, which is meant to regulate the press, but which found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Not Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News International, who claims, extraordinarily, that he knows nothing of £1m out of court settlements. (Hard to believe he's "allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum", as one former Murdoch editor put it to me this morning).

Not for Andy Coulson, now David Cameron's spin doctor in chief but the deputy editor and editor when what the Guardian calls "his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories" took place.

Mr Coulson says he knew nothing of illegal activities though he did resign in the wake of the jailing of his royal correspondent.

Many will find it hard to believe the editor knew nothing if the malpractice was as wide and systemic as the Guardian claims. Others will say if he didn't know, he should have. Some might think he was either incompetent or complicit. Either way, Mr Cameron has a problem on his hands, though not as big as the one Mr Murdoch is holding.

If, as the Guardian claims, between 2,000 and 3,000 people were targeted and had their privacy breached in various ways, then some of the names already mentioned could get together to mount a multi-million pound class action against the Murdoch company. Just starting that process would almost certainly unseal the documents. Then more than the cat would be out of the bag ... and the potential damages unlimited.

As they used to say in Fleet Street, this story will run and run and run ....

Andrew Neil, BBC political editor Nick Robinson and Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke on BBC Radio Four's Today show:

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