Don't give money to them, give the cash to us, to us!

We're in the run up to the Autumn Statement so everyone and their grandmother is urging that our cash be spent on their pet projects. This always brings out the worst in people, of course:

Ahead of the autumn statement next week (Report, 18 November), we urge the chancellor not to answer calls from oil producers in the North Sea for another round of government subsidies. Instead, Philip Hammond should put an end to the taxpayer-funded bonus for oil and gas companies and set the UK on a pathway to a more prosperous, clean energy future. If the world is to deliver on the Paris agreement on climate change, most of the known oil, gas and coal reserves must remain untapped. Yet in spite of warnings about risks of stranded assets from the governor of the Bank of England, the UK continues to promote the production of yet more oil and gas.

Those people over there are blue meanies who shouldn't get any sweeties.

 the government must acknowledge that the transition to a low-carbon future offers a much larger benefit to the UK

But our ideas are perfectly formed and we should have all the sweeties there are.

There's an intellectual consistency to our position, which is that no taxpayer pockets should get picked for any of these varied desires and proposals. There's also such consistency is stating that government should just do everything - we obviously don't agree with that position but it is at least consistent.

But these cries that those pockets must be picked to spend upon the desires and incomes of those crying for pockets to be picked we find, well, repellent actually.

Shelagh Whitley Head of climate and energy, Overseas Development Institute,Stephen Kretzmann Executive director, Oil Change International, Mika Minio-Paluello Programme coordinator, Platform UK, Marc Stears Chief executive, New Economics Foundation, Dylan Tanner Executive director, InfluenceMap, Peter Wooders Group director, energy, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Mike Barrett Acting executive director, global programmes, World Wildlife Fund UK, Simon Bullock Senior campaigner, climate change and energy, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Richard Dixon Director, Friends of the Earth Scotland

Something of a list of shame there really, don't you think? A list of people who insist that you must pay for their desires.