Democracy to die for

We were thinking of writing a piece on the Iraq elections, noting how all the doomsayers and faint-hearts, like the EU’s Solana, are having to eat their words – very grudgingly. However, we cannot do it better than Diplomad.

We do note though that, despite threats of bombing and executions, the turnout was significantly higher than in the Euro-elections.

Maybe the government has got it wrong in trying to make it easier for us to vote, with its postal votes and all that. Perhaps if it threatened to execute us if we voted for the MEPs, turnout would increase.

Better still, if it promised to execute the MEPs we elected, I am sure turnout would soar.

The real reason for ignorance?

Forget the constitution. According to Mr Dudley Curtis, writing to the Financial Times today, things are pretty dismal when it comes even to general knowledge about the existing EU.

Ask your average Spaniard, German, Belgian or Pole what is meant by "the Lisbon Strategy", he writes, or ask for an explanation of the functions of the Council of the European Union, European parliament and European Commission, and the response will probably be similar to those given by members of the British public to Mori researchers recently commissioned by the BBC's governors.

This is the survey which accompanied the Wilson report on BBC bias on the EU, which is also available on the BBC site.

The fact is, he writes, most people in Europe are largely ignorant of the workings of the EU and the real impact of European legislation on their lives.

So far so good, but then Mr Curtis argues that the EU itself must shoulder part of the blame. It has an abysmal record of communicating with "Europe's citizens", he says.

And it gets worse: "No one understands this better than Margot Wallström, the Commission's vice-president responsible for sorting out the mess", he adds. In her European parliamentary hearing in September she said: "It can seem a long distance between what is decided in Brussels or Strasbourg and what actually happens in the places where most Europeans live."

Mr Curtis thinks that while the BBC, and other European public-service broadcasters, obviously have a key role to play in explaining the complexities of EU affairs in an accessible way - the job surely starts with the EU itself.

Clearly, Mr Curtis himself knows very little about the EU, otherwise he would know that the organisation is inherently incapable of communicating with ordinary mortals, while its apologists seem to spend most of their time concealing its real agenda, or denying it exists.

But, he nevertheless raises a good point about the general state of ignorance about the EU and the fact that it is Europe-wide. This, in my experience, extends to politicians from all sides, and especially includes many MEPs, who seem remarkably ignorant of the institution they serve.

But what was especially interesting about the Mori survey was that the more informed people were about the EU, the more distrustful the seemed to be, both of the BBC and the EU. Perhaps that is the real reason why neither the BBC nor the EU go out of their way to keep "citizens" informed.

The biter bit

Three days ago, China Southern Airlines Company signed an agreement with Airbus for the purchase of five A380s, marking the first commitment placed by a Chinese carrier for the recently unveiled largest aircraft in the world.

Says the China press agency, "The agreement is seen as providing a boost to Airbus in its battle with US rival Boeing for dominance in the crucial Chinese market".

But, on the same day, the same China press agency also reported that the China Aviation Supplies Import & Export Group (CASIEG) and six Chinese airlines signed a frame agreement here Friday with the Boeing Company to buy 60 new 7E7 Dreamliners (now renamed the 787) with a list price of $7.2 billion.

This, it stated, "is the biggest agreement in terms of aircraft quantity and value that Chinese airlines have ever signed."

Now, courtesy of The Business, we also hear that Boeing is going to produce an advanced version of the veteran 747 which, says the paper, will be seen as a spoiler for the new Airbus A380 superjumbo and retaliation against Airbus. Last December, the European firm unveiled plans for the A350 mid-sized aircraft to go head to head with the Boeing 787.

All’s fair in love and war, I suppose. Who said anything about business?

European Week

Kings College in London is this week hosting a "European Week" covering a range of subjects from "European Identity" (tonight) through enlargement (tomorrow) to "the transatlantic relationship" on Friday.

The programme starts at 5pm each day and your two editors are well represented. Helen is speaking tonight and I am set for tomorrow.

Full details of the programme and the venue can be seen here. All are welcome.

Undermining national sovereignty

It has to be one of the central tenets of sovereignty that citizens, or subjects, of a nation state are bound only by the laws of that nation. They should hold no fear of being rooted out of their beds by the boys in blue for any action on their part which is not specified as an offence in their own country.

It is, therefore, profoundly disturbing to read the report in The Daily Telegraph today which tells us that "ministers have been criticised for backing EU plans to allow police to raid the homes of people not suspected of breaking British law."

It appears that a "Labour-dominated committee of MPs" – i.e., a House of Commons select committee (why can’t they say so, instead of adopting these childish circumlocutions?) - has described the proposal for a European evidence warrant as "deeply disturbing".

It says the warrant could be used against a person accused of committing an offence in another EU country even if no British law was broken.

We are told that the proposal is still being negotiated in the EU and is not expected to become law for some time. But, says the Telegraph, the Home Office has angered the Commons European scrutiny committee by disclosing that it is not opposed to the principle of the police executing a search warrant in connection with conduct that would be legal in Britain.

The European evidence warrant follows the principle of the European arrest warrant, which came into force last January.

One of the most controversial aspects of the arrest warrant was that it generally abolished the principle of "dual criminality" - the rule that someone could be extradited only for conduct against the law in the country seeking extradition and against British law.

Now, we find that the European evidence warrant would also abolish dual criminality. Nevertheless, we understand that the proposal as it now stands would allow Britain a five-year exemption before that safeguard would be removed – as if that made it any better.

In a report last week, the committee said: "We found it disturbing that a person's home might be entered and searched at the request of a foreign authority for the purpose of obtaining evidence to prosecute conduct which is not criminal in this country."

The MPs raised the issue with Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister dealing with European evidence warrants. In a letter sent before Christmas she conceded that she was not opposed to the abolition of dual criminality.

According to the DT, she told the committee: "The application of the principle of mutual recognition to orders to obtain evidence is fundamental to improving the existing mutual legal assistance procedures, without resorting to extensive harmonisation of procedure." She also said dual criminality was not necessary in relation to search warrants "because mutual recognition is founded on the principles of equivalence and trust in each other's judicial systems".

It was left to Bill Cash, a Tory member of the committee, to say how the plan illustrated very clearly how British law was being undermined by Brussels. But it does more than that. It undermines the very basis of national sovereignty.

REACH for your passport

Responding to the fragrant Margot’s latest Blog, in which she mentions the proposed REACH directive, which will impose draconian new controls on the production of chemicals, Tim Worstall writes:

…there are only so many tens of thousands of pages of regulations and directives that a three man company can read through before we decide to flee the Continent.

He gives a personal example of how damaging this legislation would be to his innovative three-man firm and concludes that this directive is one of the reasons why the EU will never move closer to the goals of the Lisbon Agenda.

Worth a read.

An interesting thought

Obviously, we, on this blog, do not know how many of our readers bother with Sunday newspapers and to what extent. There is even a split in our own ranks as to what constitutes the most interesting part.

My colleague devours the news sections, reads the business reports and discards the rest. I concentrate on the reviews, then the business sections and glance perfunctorily through the main part, having already read any interesting news on the internet. And, at times, like yesterday, realize that what Sunday journalists consider news had been blogged a week or ten days previously. (The British media has not yet woken up to the possibilities of the internet and the blogosphere.)

Thus it came about that I read Lord Lawson’s review of Sir Samuel Brittan’s collection of essays, Against the Flow: Reflections of an Individualist. Some wag of a sub-editor entitled Lawson’s piece Brittan stays in Europe.

Lawson is largely positive but cannot understand how a clever economic and political writer, who, moreover, sees clearly the disadvantages of Britain joining the euro, can possibly go on supporting the project.

“Why Brittan should ssume that any future European Federation would be likely,let alone guaranteed, to be based on limited government and effectively functioning markets is baffling.”

After all, points out Lawson, the nation state and the market economy grew almost simultaneously, and that is not an accident, though, wisely, he does not apportion cause and effect.

Lawson’s explanation is that for some reason Brittan considers the alternative to a European Federation, “separate self-governing nation states” as unenlightened. If true, and there is no reason to disagree with this analysis, Sir Samuel has clearly fallen into the structures are more important than content trap.

There is another problem with Brittan’s analysis of the wider political situation. He writes robustly on the need to stand up to the terrorist threat but does not face up to what has been described as “Americans from Mars, Europeans are from Venus” attitude.

Lord Lawson writes trenchantly:

“… the real reason is surely that ‘Europe’ is doomed to be Venusian, for while people can be persuaded to fight and die for their country, they will never do so for Europe.”

It is entirely possible to think that it is quite a good idea not to try to persuade people to fight and die for anything particular. That would be a rational though unrealistic point of view.

However, that is not the “European” attitude. It is part of the project to build up a defence and, indeed, attack structure that will rival and, if needs be, oppose the Americans. This they want to do sans money, sans proper equipment, sans any kind of emotional support. It is, as Lord Lawson rightly points out, doomed to a costly and dangerous failure.

Making the Revenue shiver

One of the more egregious lies uttered by Denis MacShame in his letter to the Telegraph on Saturday, extolling the virtues of the EU constitution was that "it would also shut the door on tax, welfare and economic harmonisation."

Taking on board the specific claim on tax harmonisation, this Blog has reported many times on how the commission, in conjunction with the ECJ, has been pushing the tax agenda and how it has been using existing treaty provisions, without needing the constitution.

And my colleague has drawn attention to the speech of Baroness Noakes who outlined in her House of Lords speech just how far the process of tax harmonisation had gone.

Now, in two separate articles, one in the Financial Times and the other in The Times today, we see further confirmation of how far the tax sovereignty of the UK (and other EU member states) is being eroded.

The immediate causus belli is a case taken by the retail conglomerate Marks and Spencers which goes to the ECJ tomorrow, starting what is considered to be one of the most important tax cases for years – so much so that the FT story is headed: "Taxing problem assumes colossal importance".

The case concerns the government's denial of tax relief for business failures in other parts of the EU and it has the potential to cost the government hundreds of millions of pounds in tax revenues and have a ripple effect throughout the EU.

The FT believes – as do we – that it could also trigger far-reaching changes in the tax laws of most European countries, which could be forced to harmonise their tax treatment of the losses from domestic and foreign subsidiaries. Many businesses are concerned that governments may remove tax privileges from companies operating in their home market as a short-term move to protect their tax revenues.

As an indicator of just how important this case is, the High Court judge, Mr Justice Park, the Chancery division's acknowledged tax expert, who referred it to the ECJ, declared: "It is to me self-evident that the issue in this case is hugely more important than a multitude of issues which I have seen referred to the European Court."

He added: "I don't know how many other companies are queuing up behind M&S.; But the amounts involved make me shiver, and I'm sure they make the Revenue shiver also."

And indeed "the Revenue" is shivering, witness the times report which has it that "worries" treasury officials are in secret talks with leading multinationals over the issue, and have been make confidential soundings among tax chiefs at Britain’s biggest companies about potential remedies if the ECJ goes with Marks and Spencers.

Says The Times, an almost unbroken series of successful taxpayer challenges in the European Court of Justice suggests M&S is likely to win its argument. It is claiming just £30 million but some 60 UK and foreign multinationals are preparing a class action to follow M&S;, claiming reimbursement of billions of pounds because they were denied group relief for losses incurred in other EU states.

We learn that confidential discussions with FTSE 100 finance directors suggest that civil servants are even looking at radical steps, such as scrapping group relief, in order to defend the UK tax system from what some tax experts call "tax harmonisation by the back door".

However, it may be six months or more before we get a result from the ECJ – which could put it bang in the middle of the EU referendum campaign, but already the Treasury is having to reassess corporation tax and prepare for a Finance Bill in 2006.

The head of taxation at a leading energy company is saying that nothing less than a complete rethink was necessary and that the Treasury will have to restructure the entire corporate tax system. But such wholesale "reforms" as might prove necessary could damage the UK at a time when the covernment’s ability to raise funds from company profits is being questioned.

Bill Dodwell, a tax partner at Deloitte & Touche, reckons Britain has a lot to lose if it gets it wrong. "The UK raises more proportionately from taxing company profits than other EU countries," he says.

And there we have little MacShame bleating from the sidelines that the constitution would "shut the door on tax… harmonisation." It will do no such thing.

Security woes put £2bn at risk

A British investment of £2 billion in the US-built joint strike fighter - is being put at risk owing to American reluctance to share key technology which will make it operable.

First flagged up by the Blog last June, British defence officials are increasingly worried by the difficulty in getting access to the vital "source codes" which control the software which enable the complex JSF to operate.

With the aircraft now set to move into the production phase, with the UK having committed over £2 billion to its development and production, dealings with the US over this issue are getting "thornier".

Lord Bach, Britain's defence procurement minister, stresses that the UK is "looking forward" to the technology transfer that will be need to support and operate the aircraft and has admitted that this will "test the boundaries of the US national disclosure policy."

This is disclosed by the Financial Times this morning, which identifies the core of the problem as US arms export laws, that mean the US will only disclose technologies only once Britain needs them.

During the development phase of the JSF, this has not been an important problem but, next year, however, the British government has to decide whether to buy the aircraft, putting as much as £2.6bn ($4.9bn) for 150 aircraft at risk.

Since the aircraft will not go into service until early next decade, Britain will not know for years whether the US will eventually grant it access to the core software codes it says it needs.

British officers are worried. "With any airplane in my inventory, I need the capability rapidly to modify for different circumstances, whether it be its software or hardware," says Air Chief Marshall Sir Brian Burridge, head of the RAF's fighter force. "We need the intellectual understanding close at hand so we can do that."

Bruce George, an MP and head of the British parliament's defence committee, says: "It seems to me truly absurd for a country like the UK, which has proved itself to be by far and away the most loyal ally to the US, to be in the position of almost grovelling to the US and saying, 'Please will you give us the information we require'."

The JSF’s builder, US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, is equally concerned. Its programme manager, Tom Burbage, knows that the US wants the British to commit to buy the aircraft, and concedes that "the US is going to have to give some reasonable guarantees that the countries that buy the airplanes are going to be able to maintain them." "Right now," he adds, "that's not in the agreement."

And of course, the crunch point is here is China - as my colleague points out in her posting below - and the potential lifting of the EU arms embargo and the US concern over the security of defence technology once it is passed to Britain.

If the UK goes along with the French and German ambitions, negotiations may be much more than "thorny" and there is a very real possibility that the current problems that the UK is experiencing over technology transfer will seem minor by comparison.

Since the JSF is central to Britain’s future defence strategy – not least because it will equip the two planned aircraft carriers – once again Britain is putting its national interest at risk – to say nothing of the "special relationship" – all to keep in with our European "partners".

With over £2 billion of investment at stake, this is not a good bargain.

The problem of China will not go away

If there is one subject in international politics that is likely to bring about a rupture between the United States and what is losely described as Europe but is really the EU, it will be China and relations with it. It is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that it is almost impossible for Europeans to take the moral high ground on it, much as they like to. So, they resort to weasel arguments.

Jack Straw, as we know, has announced that the EU arms embargo on China is likely to be lifted this summer. It is true that similar announcements have been made in the past by other European politicians and nothing happened as a number of member states opposed it out of a mixture of political and humanitarian principles. One of those countries in the past was Britain, but this is about to change, apparently.

I shall leave it to my colleague to deal with the arms sales to China that are already going on, despite the supposed embargo. To me these are all boxes on wheels or wings with guns attached to them. He, on the other hand, knows and loves the subject.

The politics of it, however, I can cope with. And there is no doubt at all, that China remains a live topic for political discussion in the United States for various reasons. There is the question of Taiwan, a country to which the United States is committed, no thanks to previous administrations as it is pointed out in the latest and previous editions of Commentary magazine.

In addition, Taiwan is a country that has moved a long way towards genuine democracy and support for it sits well with President Bush’s pronounced aim of spreading freedom and democracy. China, on the other hand, despite vague pronouncements by European worthies, retains the reputation of being one of the most oppressive states in the modern world, despite some economic freedom being allowed in the cities.

Here is an interesting little summary from John J. Tkacik, one of the leading experts in the United States on the present situation in China:

“EU leaders tried to persuade their Chinese counterparts at the Brussels summit to ease up on political and religious repression. They pointed to the “importance of concrete steps in the field of human rights and reaffirmed their commitment to further enhance co-operation and exchanges in this field on the basis of equality and mutual respect” and hinted that “concrete steps” were needed to help justify easing the arms ban.

Frustrated Chinese leaders quickly followed up with a series of "concrete steps." Two days later, Beijing ordered the arrest of a well-known Protestant “house-church” pastor in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. Four days later, police detained three well-known dissident writers. After their release, the writers told American friends, police were stationed outside their doors and followed them and their families wherever they went, "walking just two or three steps behind."

On December 20, The New York Times reported that Li Boguang, a prominent human rights activist who has aided farmers in lawsuits against the government, had been arrested. The same day, Chen Ming, editor of the underground samizdat magazine China Reform, was taken away by police.

On Christmas Eve, Chinese police detained another veteran dissident writer, Yang Tianshui, in what had clearly become a post-summit crackdown on independent intellectuals. On January 6, police arrested 69-year old Roman Catholic bishop Jia Zhiguo, who at least was grateful that he had been able to spend Christmas with his flock. And these were only the cases that were reported in the Western press.”

There is the question also of strategic balance in the Far East, which would be upset rather badly by China's further arming herself, though, to be fair, that is happening anyway. A ferociously armed China, aided and abetted by the EU is a danger to a number of countries in the region, who are supposed to be our allies in general terms and, more specifically, in the fight against terrorism.

That the debate is not about trading links with China in general but about selling arms and, parenthetically, involving China with the Galileo satellite navigation system, is best exemplified by an editorial that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe last Thursday (January 27).

Under the heading Make PCs, Not War, it argued simultaneously against the foolish, short-sighted and potentially dangerous plan to lift the arms embargo and in favour of the sale of International Busness Machines' personal computer business to Lenovo Group, China's largest computer maker.

The latter is being opposed on spurious defence and security but really protectionist grounds by various politicians and lobby groups. But as the editorial concludes:

"It's a shame that commercial protectionism is muddying the waters of serious discussion about the sale of militarily sensitive Western technology to China."

The wrongness of that sale and the ridiculousness of the European assurances that they will get the Chinese government to sign ever stiffer agreements about the use of those arms (they must be laughing their heads off in Beijing) is highlighted by John Tkacik in his most recent Heritage Foundation WebMemo. As is the wont with the researchers of Heritage, he ends by suggesting a course of action for the new administration.

(One must admit, it is never quite clear how many of these courses of action are actually taken up by the Bush administration. On the other hand, more attention is paid to this kind of political research and, mostly, in-depth briefing by politicians in Washington DC than in Westminster or Whitehall. More’s the pity, from our point of view.)

Tkacik suggests that American diplomats should, if they "truly want to derail the EU's efforts to lift the embargo" should:

- ignore the Commission and concentrate on trying to persuade various member states, particularly the new ones, as these still remember what a totalitarian regime is like;
- focus on the fact that the arms embargo was put into place in response to massive human rights abuses in 1989 and the situation has become, if anything worse;
- highlight China’s record of conventional arms transfer (well, sale, actually) to Third World countries with dubious records;
- insist on a dialogue on China as part of all Atlantic Alliance strategic consultations.

None of this sounds precisely oppressive or radical, though, no doubt it will be take as such by the few europhile organizations that bother to read American output. The problem is that there is a misunderstanding of the mentality that pushes the EU and its cheerleaders towards this potentially very dangerous act, the lifting of the arms embargo.

The idea of trying to influence individual member states is often brought up by Heritage and other like-minded American organizations. It is rather well-meaning but quaintly out of date, in that it does not acknowledge the many powers that individual member states have handed over to the EU.

In this case, however, it does make some sense. Decision will be taken by consensus and united opposition from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and the East Europeans can stop it in its track.

The rest of it, alas, will not work. The truth is that the EU and its large member states do not care all that much about China's human rights record or the sale of arms to Third World countries with similar problems. The latter, they think, is really America’s problem or something they can wring their hands over impotently.

The former? Well, they really do not want to know and resort to euphemisms and assurances that there is good evidence (unspecified) for Chinese desire to improve that record.

As far as France, Germany and the UK are concerned, the motivation is straightforward: lucrative contracts. Unfortunately, that sort of motivation sits ill with the supposedly ethical foreign policy of the EU, whose avowed purpose it is to spread freedom, democracy and human rights.

In fact, this selfishness is decried by Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform, once upon a time the leading perestroika europhile organization, but now simply a cheerleader for the EU and European integration.

In her paper The EU and China she decries the selfishness of the big three in not giving unstinted support to the Commission and in “disregarding pre-agreed EU positions”, which, by offering the carrot of the market economy status could achieve a great deal more in bilateral negotiations. What the great deal more, Ms Barysch does not specify, probably just as well. Perhaps lucrative contracts for the companies of some other member states.

I would strongly recommend that American commentators read what Ms Barysch has to say. Past experience suggests that there is a symbiotic relationship between the CER’s papers and British government statements on the European Union.

Here is the key paragraph:

“Looking forward, the EU and China should be able to build a stronger partnership on their many common interests and attitudes. Both are suspicious of the US's untrammelled power and strongly support a multilateralism that is based on the United Nations and international law.

Both stress the need for sustainable economic growth. Both believe that 'soft' power, the ability to persuade, can be a more effective means of achieving foreign policy objectives than armed force. Both tend to be too busy with their own internal problems to expend much energy on global politics. But both know that they need to become more pro-active in resolving explosive conflicts, for example in the Middle East, not least because both the EU and China depend on imported energy.

In contrast to the US-China relationship, the tricky question of Taiwan does not loom large in EU-China relations, at least for now.”

Human rights? Well, the "Nordic countries claim that China has not done enough to improve its human rights situations". Silly them.

While one is, of course, delighted that the tricky question of Taiwan (how tricky exactly?) does not raise its ugly head, one wonders whether Ms Barysch has been watching the same country as the rest of us.

China believes in international law and the UN? Really? Since when? And it does not believe in force? My, my. I wonder what all that armoury that is pointing at Taiwan is.

She certainly believes in getting the best possible deal in the Middle East and pays little attention on what the various states it deals with get up to otherwise. That, of course, may change as China has reported a discovery of large oil deposits and is, in any case, as my colleague has reported some time ago, working hard on the nuclear alternative.

So what does that leave us of the "many common interests and attitudes"? Alack and alas, only one: an opposition to the United States. Is this really what we want to be part of – a foreign policy that desperately seeks an alliance with some of the worst dictators in the world in order to oppose the largest democracy and our closest ally for some time? Apart from the moral side, can we honestly say that this is in our interest?

Better late than never

Picked up by the invaluable Diplomad Blog on 21 January and posted by this Blog on the same day was a link from a serving naval officer aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, under the pen name of Ed Stanton, complaining about UN and aid agency personnel and their interference in the tsunami aid effort.

It is fascinating to see, therefore, a full nine days later, the same story appearing in The Sunday Telegraph, this time under the heading: "US Navy officer attacks 'travelling circus of aid workers' for impeding the tsunami relief effort in Indonesia". We also note that it took two correspondents, Philip Sherwell in Washington and Inigo Gilmore in Banda Aceh, to write the story.

We will not re-tell the tale, as readers can pick up either the original or the Telegraph version (which is heavily edited) from the links provided above, but will note that, according to the Telegraph, "the attack was rejected by UN officials in Banda Aceh". Now there is a surprise.

But we are also told that, "on the ground", some aid workers also complained about UN bureaucracy, while Acehnese told of inefficiencies in the aid operation.

It also seems that Stanton's views were not welcomed by the military. In stiff official prose, Lt David Benham, a Pacific Fleet spokesman, said: "The comments do not reflect the position of the US government. We are working closely with the governments and organisations out there. They want us there and we want to be there."

Interestingly, though, Benham does not deny – or even attempt to deny – Stanton’s account of events. On the other hand, Heather Hill, the World Food Programme's spokesman in Banda Aceh, did try, rejecting suggestions that UN officials had hampered operations.

She said that it had taken time to get to positions "in country" but they had now reached remote places. "No one is living off caviar. Conditions are hard but people are motivated by the idea of being part of this historic mission."

A Spanish aid agency worker in Banda Aceh, however, said that some UN officials had appeared arrogant, and suggested that the UN was hindered by bureaucracy. "It is a huge machine and it moves very slowly," he said. "It takes 50 pages of bureaucratic work just to move one nail. This can be a problem and that is why some Americans are probably upset. They like to just get on with it."

Nevertheless, some bloggers have come to the defence of the UN and, in the interests of balance, a link to one of the better ones is here. Our readers, as always, can draw their own conclusions.

More grief than the enemy

It is not very often that two newspapers from the opposite sides of the political divide come together with virtually identical stories, but such is the grip of fringe party politics on the so-called mainstream that each was able to see in one story a way of advancing its own agenda.

First though, to illustrate the symmetry in reporting, compare the following pieces. In one newspaper we have:

"The trouble is, some are serious and some are nutters. And you get the lot – is this one serious? Or is this another nutter? I mean, I didn't know what I joined. What's been irritating is that I've been defending some of these bloody Right-wing fascist nutters."

And in the second, we read:

"The trouble is, some are serious and some are nutters," he said. "And you get the lot. Is this one serious? Or is this another nutter? I didn't know what I joined. What's been irritating is that I've been defending some of these bloody right-wing fascist nutters."

The first is an extract from a report in the "right-wing" Sunday Telegraph and the second is from the left-of-centre Independent on Sunday. Both trail a BBC broadcast to be shown tomorrow – by an organisation with its own agenda – featuring the one-time star of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), none other than Robert Kilroy Silk.

In the Telegraph, the story is labelled: "'Right-wing fascist nutters' – Kilroy-Silk turns on his former friends in Ukip", while the Independent chooses: "Ukip is party of 'fascist nutters' says Kilroy-Silk" – not a smidgin of difference between them.

To our bemused American readers, who have probably just about grasped the difference between the "right-wing" Conservative Party and Blair's left-right of centre "New" Labour party – and the "anywhere you want us to be" Lib-Dims, the existent of this additional "right-wing" party must be confusing.

And it is going to get even more confusing when Mr Kilroy-Silk – more often referred to as plain "Kilroy" - starts up yet another party. This may be called "Veritas", which the media are quick to remind us is the Latin for "truth". No one has yet announced the formation of the obvious counter-party, "In vino", but I am told that several people are having serious discussions about the appropriate vintage.

As an aside, I suppose we can blame the Americans for Kilroy anyway – since we blame them for just about everything else – as I am reliably informed he first made an appearance in Tunisia in 1943 at the close of the North African campaign, when the graffiti "Kilroy was here" was seen painted on walls in the American-held sector.

Anyhow, now that we've got him, and he has fallen out of love with UKIP, he has launched a bitter attack on his former colleagues, describing some of them as "bloody Right-wing fascist nutters." His outspoken comments, we are told, were made only days after he angrily quit UKIP, describing it as a joke, and announced the formation his new political party.

But what is possibly more interesting is why the left and right wings of the mainstream should be so interested in what is fast becoming a sideshow – not so much the fringe, as the fringe of the fringe.

And here, as always, the explanation is the European Union. With the left-wing now in favour of "Europe" and its "social model", it is anxious to show that opponents of the "project" are all "stark-raving, right-wing, fascist nutters", while the supposed right-of-centre Conservatives, concerned at losing ground to the anti-EU "extremists", are similarly anxious to tarnish the breed.

The problem is, for once, that they are both at least partially right – as in "correct". Kilroy, in the film, explains to the producer why he sometimes stopped the filming of UKIP meetings. "I was embarrassed at their behaviour, their naivety and their immaturity and their stupidity and I didn't want you to see them behaving that way," he says.

We know exactly how he feels and, in many ways, the formal anti-EU parties are now becoming more of a problem than a solution – something which the pro-EU BBC will be quick to capitalise on, taking every opportunity to give them publicity (after years of ignoring them) as a means of showing ordinary people that only "nutters" - and right-wing, fascist ones at that - oppose the project.

It has been considerably helped in this endeavour by UKIP deputy leader, Mike Nattrass, who in tomorrow’s programme, is filmed telling a party rally:

"The Germans are the big losers here but they don't care because to them the [European Union] project is worthwhile. It's like an empire for them, spreading in all directions… into what they called the Sudetenland… It's cheaper for them really to do it this way rather than roll the tanks in."

The cause of Euroscepticism is not best served by this ranting as it presents us with the added difficulty of having to overcome the "loony-fringe" label before we are even able to get the message across.

But then, in politics, it is very often your "own side" that give you more grief than the enemy.

A rogue poll?

In stark contrast to yesterday's Daily Telegraph poll, which showed a 2:1 majority against the EU constitution, an ICM poll published in the Sunday Telegraph today suggests that the public is "evenly split".

This is an ICM survey which, like the DT's YouGov survey, asked voters the exact question to be posed in the referendum. But this survey shows 39 percent in favour of signing up to the constitution, just two percent behind the "noes" at 41 percent.

The result is clearly anomalous, suggesting a far narrower gap than all other polls published to date which have, almost without exception, shown the “noes” in the lead.

While the "yes" campaigners will take heart from this result, it presents more sanguine observers with a problem as to which poll to believe. Even causal observers of the "poll scene" are aware that there are considerable problems in interpreting polls and here there is also a methodological issue to consider.

YouGov uses online polling and, recently, has come up with good results, making it one of the most respected of the internet polling companies. While there are errors associated with this type of polling, ICM uses telephone interviews, which also have their own errors. Furthermore, as we have found, responses can depend very much on the context in which the questions are asked.

On the basis of previous polls, however, the odds are that ICM is a rogue poll. All the other pollsters, including the EU's own Eurobarometer, are saying differently, and the likelihood is that there is strong opposition to the constitution throughout the country.

However, if a week is a long time in politics, a year is an eternity and anything can happen in the next 12 months. Complacency is not an option. The referendum is not in the bag.

Booker

It is relatively rare that Booker revisits the same story on consecutive weeks, much less giving them lead "picture story" status. But such has been the utterly vile and vindictive treatment of two Hastings fishermen, Paul Joy and Graeme Bosom, who featured in last week’s column, that Booker felt impelled to return to the case in his column this week.

As we left is last week, the two fishermen had been up in Lewes Crown Court being prosecuted by Defra for the alleged crime of breaking licence conditions by catching more cod in the month of September than was allowed under EU quota rules.

Paul Joy had been astonished because the quota rules do not apply to small inshore boats such as those launched off Hastings beach. These have yearly "allocations" from the ministry – and at that time only 53 per cent of the allocation had been caught. But Defra had decided the annual allocation could be subdivided into 12 monthly shares. Without warning, Joy was told that he had broken this new rule.

Last Tuesday, however, in the same Lewes Crown Court, judge Simon Coltart imposed a fine and costs of £7,500 on Paul Joy, more than the value of his small wooden fishing boat. When his colleague Graeme Bossom, ordered to pay £6,500, said he would have difficulty in raising the money, the judge advised him to get a second mortgage on his house. If the two men did not pay in full within a year they would be sentenced to three months in prison.

As a result, a furore has blown up in Hastings, with the local papers taking up the case where the judge is claiming to be upholding EU law in finding the men guilty, supporting fisheries inspectors of the Defra in creating a law which conflicts with rulings from the EU commission and which exists nowhere else in Europe.

The specific offence with which the two men were charged in October 2003 was that in the previous month they had illegally landed £2,570-worth of cod, in excess of their "monthly allocation". There was every reason for this coming as a complete surprise since the commission confirms that, "under 10 metre" boats are not given individual quotas and EC law does not recognise monthly allocations. There may be "yearly allocations" for certain species, and when that limit is reached a fishery may be closed. But until then, under EU law, there is no restriction.

Since, in September 2003, the small Hastings boats had only landed 53 percent of their yearly allocation, Mr Joy and Mr Bossom were therefore wholly unaware that they might be about to fall foul of the law. A local Defra inspector, Paul Johnson, was aware how much they were landing but said nothing, until, to their astonishment, he charged them with having gone over a putative monthly limit.

As a highly experienced fisherman who sits on the local Sea Fisheries committee, Mr Joy is in regular contact with Defra, and has often made the point that any system of monthly allocations for small inshore boats could not possibly be enforced, since unlike larger vessels they are not required under EC law to keep log books of their catches.

One odd feature of the trial was that Judge Coltart did not seem to grasp the distinction made in EC law between under 10 metre boats and larger vessels, which are subject to quotas and many more rules.He several times cited EC regulations which apply only to larger boats, and said he saw no reason why the under 10 metre boats should not carry log books, even though this is not a legal requirement.

Another unusual feature of the trial was that, although Defra’s barristers were permitted to report statements alleged to have been made by Mr Joy, and which he strongly contests, neither Mr Joy nor Mr Bossom were allowed to give evidence that they were being misrepresented.

Denied any chance to speak in their own defence, the two men were advised, when the judge ruled in favour of Defra's arguments, to change their plea to guilty. Even so, they were horrified when, after Defra was given a week to investigate their financial affairs, the judge ordered swingeing fines, comparing their conduct to that of drunk drivers, in that they had gone over the legal limit and should be punished accordingly.

The chief Hastings fisheries inspector Angus Radford has publicly proclaimed his "delight" at the judgement, and claimed on local radio that Mr Joy’s £5,000 fine amounted to only a quarter of his monthly earnings. In fact in September 2003 Mr Joy only grossed £5,000, and this was by far his highest monthly income of the year.

So great are the implications of this controversial case that it is being taken up by both Hastings's Labour MP Michael Foster and the Tories’ front-bench fisheries spokesman Owen Paterson MP. A local fund has been launched to support Mr Joy and Mr Bossom while they consider an appeal. It seems the case of the "Hastings Two" still has some way to run.

One seriously wonders about judges sometimes. At the height of the Edwina Currie-inspired egg scare in 1989, I took a case to the High Court, contesting the power of the then Ministry of Agriculture to slaughter hens claimed to be infected with salmonella, farmed by an order of nuns from their Daventry monastry.

To be more specific, we did acknowledge that the ministry had power to slaughter, but such was the haste with which a new, panic law had been drafted, they had forgotten to include power of entry for the purpose of slaughter. We presented examples dozens of acts and regulations where executive actions was permitted by officials and, in every single case, the powers given were accompanied by specific entry powers. We thus argued that, in the absence of a specified power of entry, there was no such power.

The judge, however, disagreed, stating that, without a power of entry, the ministry could not exercise its powers and, therefore, a power of entry must be "implied" – thus creating a law that did not exist.

In this Hastings case, the judge seems to have taken the view that, unless monthly quotas existed, he could not see how EU fishing rules could be enforced and therefore, despite there being no regulations which set monthly quota amounts for inshore boats, allowed Defra the case – once more creating law that did not exist.

Since 1989, I have never trusted judges and this case is yet another of many that cast serious doubts on the adequacy of our judiciary.

From such weighty matter, Booker then takes us to this week's report on the BBC, noting that while the Daily Telegraph’s headline was "BBC cleared of bias", the Daily Mail’s version was "BBC's pro-EU bias".

Over the past 12 years, Booker has regularly reported on the BBC’s partisan and unprofessional coverage of this issue, unlike the Wilson committee citing scores of specific examples to make the general point. However, he writes, the BBC's performance is no longer so shameless as it was in the 1990s, when it seemed to be in the forefront of the campaign to get Britain into the euro.

In 1999, he published a dossier of six occasions when the BBC had accepted stories fed them by pro-euro propagandists, leading its news broadcasts with claims that multi-national companies were threatening to leave Britain unless we joined the euro. On each occasion the companies named, including Toyota, Sony and Ford, had issued trenchant denials. Not once did the BBC publish any correction.

But, says Booker, even if they are now slightly less gullible in falling for the propaganda spin, there is plenty of evidence that the BBC is still hopelessly failing its audience by its inability to engage with this issue in any informed, professional fashion. One revealing trick was exemplified on Friday morning by John Humphrys’s interview on the EU constitution with Corbett and O’Brien.

Instead of presenters doing their homework and establishing the facts for themselves, so they can interview with real knowledge and authority, Booker observes, the game here – as Humphrys demonstrated - is simply to allow two talking heads to shout past each other, making contradictory points, until the presenter can say "that's all we've got time for, the debate will doubtless continue".

The listeners are left wholly bemused (and bored) because they are not given enough information to know who is telling the truth. Therein lies the real problem, and there is scant evidence that it is even understood, let alone being addressed.

In his third and last story, Booker takes on the decision of the Commons scrutiny committee to choose last week, on the casting vote of its Labour chairman Jimmy Hood, that in future its proceedings will be in secret. It was not exactly tactful, he says.

Furthermore the timing was immaculate in that it came hard on the heels of the European Commission pointing out that Michael Howard was in no position to implement new proposals on immigration, because the power to decide immigration policy has been handed over to Brussels.

Booker notes that the immediate response of commentators was to claim that this might bring home to people just how much of our power to govern ourselves has been ceded to Brussels without anyone realising it. But just as significant was the response of Mr Howard himself. He immediately said that a future Conservative government would take those powers back.

He thus adds immigration policy to fishing as one of the major policy areas he is now pledged to return to national control. He might not want it to be shouted about too loudly, for fear of upsetting Ken Clarke, David Curry an the rump of Tory Europhiles.

But these pledges strike right at the heart of the most sacred principle of the "European project", the acquis communautaire, which lays down that once powers to legislate and decide policy are surrendered to the EU they can never be returned.

Throw in the Tories' implacable opposition to the EU constitution (which includes all the existing treaties), plus the likelihood that this will be rejected by the British people in next year's referendum, and it seems a very interesting situation is in the making.

Mr Howard may be ultra-diplomatic in his strategy but, concludes Booker, unless he is prepared to make a humiliating retreat, he is setting us up for a showdown with our European partners on a scale unprecedented in the EU's history.

The really fascinating thing, though, is that there has been no backlash from the Europhiles in the Tory Party – of the type that plagued Hague. Kenneth Clarke has stayed silent in his lair and none of the other "usual suspects" have uttered a word in public.

The only reaction, in fact, has come not from the Europhiles but from the public – which have heavily endorsed Howard’s stance, and given him his first boost in the polls for a long time.

This could have profound consequences. Howard has decided on a direct challenged to the EU over a mainstream policy, and the sky has not fallen in – quite the reverse. He might now begin to realise that taking on the EU is quite popular. Who knows, he might even acquire a liking for it.

A spanner in the works?

Several random thoughts occur at the news that the Anglo-Italian designed AgustaWestland US101 has been selected by US Navy for the presidential helicopter replacement programme.

The first is why the US president should need 23 helicopters, at a cost of $1.7 billion. The second – at the risk of being accused of that heinous crime, pro-Americanism - is approval of the US for selecting a foreign helicopter design for their presidential fleet. One wonders if l’escroc Chirac would ever buy an American helicopter for his personal transport.

On a more serious note, this is something of a turn round for the EH101 project. It was approved in 1984 by Heseltine as the Navy’s tactical anti-submarine helicopter, replacing the ageing Sea Kings. But it soon ran into trouble and ended up setting the record as the most expensive helicopter ever built, at £100 million each, for what became the Merlin.

In the end, the project had to be bailed out by the US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, which carried out the final systems development. After some teething troubles, the aircraft has emerged as a successful medium-lift helicopter in service with the armed forces of the UK, Italy Portugal, Denmark and Canada.

Although 65 percent of the construction work will be carried out in the US and additional systems will be added by US contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, this still represents a considerable boost for the British and Italian designers. It has considerably annoyed United Technology’s Sikorsky Aircraft unit, which has built and maintained the Marine One helicopters that have flown the president since 1957.

In awarding the contract for the helicopter, the navy rejected Sikorsky's argument that the president should fly in a helicopter, call-signed "Marine One", that was 100 percent US-made.
It is, in fact, the first time the US defence market has been open to a foreign helicopter, and all the more remarkable that is should involve such a prestige project. It may also have spin-offs into other US military fields.

British government officials were delighted by the decision. They said it would help Blair show that his close relationship with Bush can bring dividends.

As for the Americans, John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said: "This decision truly reflects the best value and capability for the American taxpayer who is funding it, the Marines who will operate it and the future presidents who will fly in it."

Quite what the long-term implications of the deal are is uncertain at this stage but the sales competition was seen as a litmus test as to whether European firms could compete successfully in the US defence market.

However, given that the EU commission is anxious to develop a European defence market, buoyed by the difficulty experienced by European defence contractors in breaking into the US market, there is a possibility here that the US – intentionally or otherwise – has delayed or even sabotaged EU attempts to pursue its programme of defence integration.

Marine One, therefore, could represent a significant spanner in the works.

Apathy rules in Eire

The ratification process in Eire is not going as smoothly as the government might have hoped.

According to The Irish Independent, the recent Eurobaromter poll shows that just 27 percent of the public have declared a willingness to vote "yes", indicating that Irish enthusiasm for the proposed constitution is amongst the lowest in the EU.

However, the findings offer little comfort to anti-constitution campaigners either. The "no" vote is also amongst the lowest in the EU, standing at 5 percent.

The vast majority of respondents, 67 percent, fell into the "don’t know" category. When asked about their knowledge of the Constitution's contents, 45 percent pleaded ignorance, compared with an EU average of 33 percent.

Although no date has been set yet for the Irish referendum, Irish Labour MEP, Proinsias de Rossa is calling for the government to launch a major campaign to explain the contents to the public. Perhaps she should be appealing to the commission for help.

Is there no end to her talents?

The fragrant Margot has been at it again, with another Blog posting this time recounting how she went to the "European Parliament" with President Barroso to present the strategic political objectives "for our 5-year mandate."

Now, dear reader, please bear in mind that our Margot is in charge of communicating – the human face of the commission, "engaging" with the people. And what does she regard as the highlights of Barroso's agenda? Er…

Prosperity, Solidarity, Security. Key words in the plenary debate: balance, sustainability, delivery, social agenda, citizens, Lisbon agenda, competitiveness, focus…

Is it any wonder that the "citizens of Europe" increasingly believe that these creatures have descended from another planet (Zog?) and gaze upon them with utter incomprehension?

Boring us all to death

Responding to the analysis piece on the EU referendum question, written by George Jones for the Telegraph on Thursday, Denis MacShame sidles into the Telegraph letters today with a missive headed "support the treaty".

MacShame is pleased the newspaper acknowledges that the wording of the referendum question in the Government's EU Bill is neutral, but he takes exception to the paper claiming the constitutional treaty codifies a "permanent revolution" of everyday decisions being "bedevilled by European laws, regulations and directives".

Retorts MacShame, "It does no such thing." "In bringing together all the existing EU treaties into one document," he argues, "it would enshrine the British vision of a flexible, wider EU." He goes on:

It would allow the new Europe of 25 members to work more effectively, with a bigger role for national parliaments and national governments, simpler decision-making, more efficient and streamlined institutions and greater accountability. It would also shut the door on tax, welfare and economic harmonisation.

Once again, the same mantra dribbles out. What is fascinating is that he is able to aver, without even a blush, that the constitution will enable the "new Europe" (notice, he never uses the terms European Union) to work "more effectively". Since when, however, has his darling EU ever worked effectively?

As always, he runs the now standard line that it allows a bigger role for "national parliaments" when, as we have demonstrated in this Blog, it does not such thing. Strangely though, even the "Yes" campaign seems to object to this line, noting that, in the absence of ideology,

...the government has to fall back on the historical concepts of the nation and the state as a way to sell the Constitution. These are the only notions that they dare use when it comes to EU politics. The EU offering concrete advantages to the citizen, or the value of supranational democracy are not concepts that the government can get to grip with…

MacShame makes the same claim for "national governments" but again, as we have pointed out, it does not such thing. It extends the responsibilities of the Council – which involves mainly approving more powers for the commission – which is not the same thing as giving national governments a "bigger role".

As for "efficiency" and "streamlining", this is yet another – and constant evasion by MacShame. Not only does he seem incapable of pronouncing the words "European Union", he also seems to fight shy of using the term: "qualified majority voting" or "abandoning the veto". But that is what he means.

Once again, we call in aid Winston Churchill who said

No-one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst sort of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

The point here is that democracy is inefficient, in terms of decision-making. You have to discuss, argue and, eventually, gain consent to what you propose. How much more "streamlined" and "efficient" it is simply to over-ride objections and impose your will on objectors. And that is, in effect, what MacShame wants from his constitution – the ability to dispense with the veto in 63 additional policy areas.

Rejecting this, says MacShame, "could only weaken Britain's influence in Europe and squander our opportunity to be a leading nation in the new Europe."

So, we "weaken our influence" by giving yet more power to the EU, allowing ourselves to be outvoted on even more issues, and to have even more policy areas dictated by the commission? We have seen the effect of that in our immigration policy, in our fishing, and in countless other areas. And MacShame wants more?

So, he concludes, "this is why this Government believes that the British people, when provided with the facts about the constitutional treaty, will support it in the referendum ahead."

Nothing new here. We’ve read it all before, and heard it all before. But what is emerging is that the government is adopting a Goebells-like approach to the campaign, concentrating on a very limited number of slogans and repeating them endlessly in the hope that, if continually repeated, enough people will believe them to make the difference.

However, I suspect there is a greater risk of boring us all to death.

Beware the "helpful" commission

Being ever so helpful, the EU commission is offering to help individual governments with "public information campaigns" on the proposed constitution. So writes Rory Watson in Brussels, for The Times.

This, apparently is the brainchild of the fragrant Margot Wallström, commissioner for truth and reconciliation. She wants the commission to be "an active partner in informing European citizens about the content of the constitution and its advantages in relation to the present treaties".

Apparently unaware of what she is saying, she pledges that the commission will "do all it can to ensure the entry into force of the constitution", and is ready to help member states with "the development of national strategies".

The very fact that is has an "agenda" – as if we didn’t know – surely rules out any serious idea that the commission can provide "information", which implies neutrality, rather than propaganda, but from inside the Brussels "bubble" no doubt Wallström thinks she is being entirely reasonable.

The "assistance" on offer includes "opinion surveys and media monitoring, initiatives to stimulate debates, the development of websites and videos, the production of brochures and the definitive version of the constitution in 20 languages."

Perhaps, if the commission is so interested in developing websites, this Blog should apply for some EU money - just kidding!

However, the initiative otherwise seems well advanced. It is responding to requests from foreign ministers of the EU member states, which apparently asked it last November to consider what role it could play in the ratification process.

It claims it has no intention of becoming involved in domestic political battles and thus, amazingly, argues that its sole function would be "to provide factual information in order to foster an informed debate."

Nevertheless, a British "government spokesman" is expressing caution. "Clearly, it would be wrong for substantial Commission or European money to be spent in support of either side", he says. "The referendum is a matter entirely for the British people."

The UK Independence Party, in a rare digression from its internal squabbling, managed to tell The Times that it would "be disgraceful if taxpayers’ money were to be used to pay for the yes campaign".

Predictably, the egregious Richard Corbett disagrees. The commission has a legitimate role, he says: "Provided it sticks to information and does not campaign, it can contribute to a better informed debate," he said. "If the anti-Europeans do not want that, it shows what they are up to."

However, like it or not, the commission is going to do its best to swing the vote. Not least of its activities is to fund a series of training seminars organised by the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht, instructing journalists on how to cover the constitution.

Helpfully, the Centre, which proudly boasts of its "financial support from the European Commission" also offers a series of handbooks on how to report EU issues, including a source book from which journalists may obtain information.

As an indication of where it is coming from, it helpful tells aspirant hacks that the BBC website is an "excellent, regularly updated, free source of news". Beware, as they say, of helpful commissions.

No means no… maybe!

Under the header, "No! No! No!", redolent of Thatcher’s famous Commons speech when she denounced Delors’ megalomania, the Telegraph leader rejoices at the results of its YouGov poll showing that the voters would say no to EU constitution by two to one.

The poll details are worth reading, not least because the questioning is quite sophisticated, and shows that – on balance – the "no" vote is firmer than the "yes".

For the Telegraph, it sees good news in that "British voters have lost none of their common sense." With the poll replicating the question that will appear on the ballot paper, it confirms the trend of every recent survey.

The paper accepts that not everyone who expressed a view will be entirely au fait with the details of the constitution, but it argues – rightly in our view – that most people have a fair grasp of what the constitution is about.

They know, for instance, that it transfers more powers to Brussels. They understand that it entrenches many of the things that they already dislike about the EU. And they feel in their bones that they would rather be governed by their own elected representatives, whom they are periodically invited to turf out, than by an unaccountable apparat.

The Telegraph also counters the wishful thinking of the Europhiles – and the commission - who consistently argue that greater familiarity with the constitution will diminish the hostility towards it.

Says the Telegraph, to the extent that people read the document, their disquiet will be vindicated. It notes that, two pages in, they find that "this constitution shall have primacy over the laws of the member states" (Articles I-6). A few lines later, they learn that "member states shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union ceases to exercise, or chooses no longer to exercise, its competence" (I-12).

Next comes an enormous list of areas where Brussels is to have jurisdiction: transport, energy, public health, employment, social policy, immigration, asylum, justice, home affairs, trade, competition, agriculture, fisheries, foreign affairs and defence (I-13 to I-16). Having read thus far - still no more than four pages into the text - people will doubtless be asking themselves what is left for the nations.

If people will have their fears allayed by reading the document, the Telegraph suggests that there is a simple way to settle the matter: distribute a copy to every household in the land. The Spanish government, to its credit, is sending out copies in advance of its referendum next month. If Tony Blair refuses to do the same, people will draw their own conclusions.

With that, the Telegraph now turns to the "bad news". A "no" vote, it says, will not kill the project. It notes – as we have been saying consistently on this Blog – that large parts of the constitution are already being implemented, before the first ballot has been cast.

The Telegraph identifies the fields of criminal justice and foreign policy, but we would also add defence – which is galloping ahead, and space policy, which has significant ramifications.

And, as we are all now noticing, there is no legal basis for these things, but that does not trouble our Euro-masters in the least. They have never let referendums stand in their way before, and they do not intend to start now.

Tony Blair, the Telegraph concludes, has described the vote as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to settle Britain's relationship with Europe. For once, that is no exaggeration. "If, as we hope," it says, "our poll is eventually borne out, it will not do to make a couple of cosmetic changes and then carry on as before. No means no."

With that, though, there is a growing problem for the "Yes-no" campaign – which is in favour of the European Union but against the constitution. As more and more people look at the constitution, they will see in it things they do not like, but will then be told or learn that they were in the existing treaties.

The problem for the "Yes-nos" is to distinguish between the new and the old, and then to explain why, if the new is so objectionable, why the existing is acceptable. Unless they can answer that, "no" will not mean "no" because, with or without the constitution, the political integration will continue apace, as indeed it is doing at the moment.

They're at it again

Despite the honeyed words which regularly emanate from the EU about reducing – or even eliminating – export subsidies, it has once again shown its true colours.

Faced with a surplus of grain on the world market, with production expected to reach a record 621 million tons in 2004-2005, 13 million tons more than forecast consumption, the EU has reintroduced export subsidies on grain, in anticipation of a price slump on the world market.

Australia, which is the world's second-largest wheat exporter, has registered its "serious concern'' with EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson in Davros. And prime minister John Howard has lashed out at the EU, saying the subsidies runs counter to all the rhetoric at the World Economic Forum of more open trade. "If this is their idea of more open trade then Australia is deeply disappointed," he said.

The subsidies do in fact go against the EU’s commitment to eliminate export subsidies, introduced because EU and U.S. exporters are facing more competition from cheaper grain from Argentina and former Soviet Union countries. Their larger harvests have swelled global output to a record, causing wheat prices to fall 24 percent on the world market.

The fear is now that the US might retaliate with its own subsidies, which could send prices into free-fall.

David Ginns, chief operating officer of the Australian Grains Council, a lobby representing the country's 30,000 grain farmers, summed up his members’ feelings: "These export subsidies are a sop to the European farm lobby,'' he said. They show that the EU has yet to be genuine "about its often-stated desire to control its massive domestic and international market corrupting subsidy program."

Nevertheless, the EU commission – as might be expected – is unrepentant. Says Claude Veron-Reville, the Mandelson’s spokeswoman for trade: "The alternative would have involved the EU buying the grain and then stocking it in public warehouses… this would have been unsustainable for the EU budget."

So that’s all right then. Let’s see how Mandelson spins this one.

Synthetic indignation

Both The Scotsman and The Sun have been waxing indignant about the decision of the Commons European scrutiny committee to close its doors to the public.

The Sun is particularly incensed, its headline blaring: “Laws are passed in secret”, the text proclaiming that “MPs are rubber-stamping over 1,000 new EU laws and regulations every year in SECRET...” .

But then, as the story continues, a different picture emerges: "The Labour-dominated European Scrutiny Committee meets behind closed doors to assess new Brussels documents," the paper says. "They comb through new rules on key issues including jobs, terrorism and the environment to decide which should be debated in the Commons."

And that puts it in perspective. The committee does not pass laws. It simply assesses the torrent of EU legislative proposals coming through the system and makes decisions on which are "politically significant" and, therefore, whether they should be debated.

If the committee decides that the document is significant, it puts a “scrutiny reserve” on it, supposedly preventing ministers agreeing the law in the EU Council until the House has had a chance of debating it. Then, at the end of a session, the committee produces a report, which is published, setting out what it has been doing and the problems it has faced.

As for The Sun, its indignation would be more credible if it – or any other newspaper or media organ - showed any interest whatsoever in the scrutiny process. But even where ministers quite outrageously ignore the scrutiny rules – as recorded in this Blog - not a blind bit of notice is taken.

Furthermore, the process of sorting out the politically significant documents is as dull as ditchwater, so it is unlikely than anyone would really be interested in attending.

But the "killer point" is that those documents which are selected for debate are referred to one of the three European Standing Committees, where the proceedings are in public and are recorded in public.

But, again as we have recorded on this Blog, no one takes the blindest bit of notice of these committees – even though some of the issues discussed are important. It is hard enough even getting a quorum of MPs to attend, members of the public are very rarely there, and the media ignores them.

So, while in theory, closing the committee to the public is theoretically a blow against more openness, or "transparency" if you prefer, in practice it makes not one whit of difference. The indignation is synthetic.

The more subtle defence agenda

Entirely by coincidence – I would have written about this anyway – comes a story which links rather well with the previous post on the defence issue – i.e., the common defence policy, which Neil O’Brien claimed was being introduced in the draft constitution.

The trouble is, as we see, that the overt move towards a common defence policy stems from Maastricht, but the bigger problem is that defence integration, in addition to being driven politically, is also proceeding apace outside the aegis of the treaty structures altogether.

This is brought home in an article in the current edition of DefenseNews, headed: "EU threatens to build own defence market". The headline is actually wrong, because the story actually refers to EU member states – and defence contractors acting outside the formal institutional structure of the EU, but the effect is the same.

This gist of the story is that, frustrated by US restrictions on the transfer of defence technology, European defence manufacturers are pushing for the creation of an independent European industry, servicing the EU member states with common equipment.

This came up at a conference held on 17 January in Brussels, attended by EU and Nato officials, industry executives and defence policy experts. There, a representative of the European aerospace giant EADS complained that: "US technology restrictions on foreign defence firms [operating in the US market] have reached the absurd." He continued:

Dual-use technology, such as ordinary internet communications protocols that are freely used in civil products, cannot be exploited by us commercially if we're involved in a DoD project using the same protocols. It's ridiculous.

Other European companies express the same concerns and, while they are anxious to exploit the $445.6 billion US defence budget, they are also anxious to get a grip on the defence budgets of the 25 EU member states, collectively worth $180 billion a year.

But, to exploit that fully, says Bill Giles, director-general Europe for BAE Systems, "something does have to be done to put in place a [rationalised cross-border] defence market in Europe."

Several issues arise from this. Firstly, with the expense of modern military hardware, its complexity and the limited numbers bought by any single European state, it makes absolute sense for the market to undergo rationalisation, which would have happened with or without the EU – and is happening already, independently of the commission initiatives.

But the other issue is that European manufacturers would much rather have access to the US market, which is much more valuable. But, while $65 billion was awarded to in contracts US firms in 2003, foreign firms only gained $1 billion.

Some of this is straightforward protectionalism, some relates to the need for the US to ensure security of supply, but a significant factor is the increasing reluctance on the part of the US to share technology that could end up in the wrong hands. And it is easy to see why.

The net effect, however, is that commercial as much as political pressures are driving defence integration. But, as far as the UK goes, that integration could be – and historically has been – as much with the US as with Europe.

With the evolution of a European Defence Policy though - of which the UK will be an integral part if the full provisions of the constitution are implemented - the UK could find itself frozen out of the US market on political grounds. That could have considerable economic and security implications.

That defence question

In the Corbett versus O'Brien interview this morning, both parties made claims about the status of defence in the proposed constitutional treaty.

O' Brien claims that: "there’s a commitment in the new constitution, for the first time, that the EU will move to a common defence." Corbett, on the other hand, claims: that "it’s been in the treaty since the Maastricht Treaty, signed up by John Major in the early 1990s", whence O’Brien counters: "This new commitment to move to a common defence is completely new. The phrase 'we'll move to a common defence' is new."

The problem with this type of interview is typified by that extract. Claims and counter-claims are made, and the issue is left unresolved. Who is right? Who do you believe? Well, technically, Corbett is correct.

Maastricht (Art. J.4 (1)) actually states:

The common foreign and security policy shall include all questions related to the security of the Union, including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence.

In other words, is sets up a commitment, albeit vague, to move towards a common defence. This is then modified by the Amsterdam treaty, renumbered to become Article 17 (1). This reads:

The common foreign and security policy shall include all questions related to the security of the Union, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might… (deleted: in time) lead to a common defence.

The "eventual framing" now becomes the "progressive framing" – a little bit firmer, made stronger by the deletion of "in time". The elision, incidentally, relates to a reference on the WEU, making it an integral part of the Union.

By the Nice Treaty, again Article 17 (1), the passage remains the same, with the removal of the reference to the WEU. That brings us to the proposed constitutional treaty, where the original passage now transmutes into Article I-41 (2), which reads:

The common foreign and security policy shall include the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy. This will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides.

From the very vague provision in Maastricht, this has firmed up substantially: "might" has become "will", but it does need a unanimous decision of the European Council.

Nevertheless, Corbett is right that the commitment to move to a common defence is in Maastricht. It is simply firmed up by the constitution.

Had O'Brien cited Article I-41 (7), he would have been on stronger ground. As outlined in our earlier posting, this imposes on all member states mutual obligations of "aid and assistance" by all means within their power, should any member state be the "victim of armed aggression". This, for the first time, turns the EU into a fully-fledged military alliance.

Corbett versus O’ Brien

Jon Humphrys interviews Richard Corbett MEP and Neil O’Brien, campaign director of the "Vote-No" campaign on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning.

JH: How much do you know about the European constitution? Enough to have a clear view on whether it’s a good thing for this country? Well a poll is about to be published that shows we’re pretty ignorant, not just here but around Europe for that matter.

And what about the level of the debate here? This was Tony Blair speaking in the Commons last April when he announced that there would be a referendum on the EU constitution.

TB (recording): Let the Eurosceptics, whose true agenda we will expose, make their case. Let those of us who believe in Britain in Europe, not because of Europe alone, but because we believe in Britain and our national interest lying in Europe, let us make out case too. Let the issue be put and let the battle be joined.

(Loud cheers)

JH: Well, has battle been joined? Not according to the Labour MEP Richard Corbett, whose worried about it all. He’s on the line and so is Neil O’Brien, campaign director of the "no" campaign. Worried in what sense Mr Corbett?

RC: We’ve all been focusing on more immediate issues because the referendum is still over a year away, presumably. But it is time I think to start discussing this because, if we’re going to have a proper national discussion, people really need to know what’s in this new treaty. And my experience is that the more people actually find out what it says, the more favourable they become.

JH: I take it you wouldn’t agree with that Mr O’Brien?

NO: No, I wouldn’t at all. The reality is that the government are running away from a debate because they know that the constitution is extremely unpopular and there’s a general election in four months time. I mean., 60 percent of businesses are against the constitution and 69 percent of voters are against it . And I think that just because its fundamentally not what they want. It means a further transfer of powers to Brussels and that means more decisions will be taken by people who aren’t elected, aren’t accountable and who we can’t even kick out.

JH: But are they against it because they know what it’s about or because they have bought the propaganda, or some of us have bought the propaganda of some of you?

NO: I don’t think it’s propaganda. I think their fundamental view is, at the moment, that Europe is doing too much and doing it badly. What Europe needs to do is reform properly and sort out some of its problems like, for example, the CAP which costs every household in this country £800 a year. That’s what Europe needs to be doing but instead we’re going ahead with a constitution which transfers even more power to Brussels and that’s completely the wrong direction to be going in.

JH: Isn’t that a very fair point Mr Corbett that, erm, not everybody believes that the EU has been an unrelieved good thing in every single respect and they’re worried they’ll get more of the bad bits?

RC: What is true is that the "no" campaign makes all sorts of unfounded allegations about this treaty. We just heard some of them. It does not transfer more powers to "quote" Brussels "unquote". On the contrary, it makes the European institutions more accountable, more subject to democratic control.

JH: Right, let’s just take.. let me stop you for a second. Let me just take that single issue if I may, because the problem with these discussions is that you have counter-claims and people left at the end of it undecided as to who to believe. So, deal with that single thing would you Mr O’Brien, that what you’ve just said about handing more power to Brussels is simply not true. It becomes more accountable not less.

NO: I glad we can get into the detail here because it’s very important. For example, the constitution would mean that we would give up our right of veto, our right to say "no" in 63 new areas.

JH: Right. Is that true or is it not true, Mr Corbett?

RC: We make sure other countries give up their rights to veto what we want…

JH: So it’s true?

RC: …in 63 areas. Yes, and that’s a good thing. It increases our say in the European Union.

JH: Well, right. OK, Mr O’ Brien. Give us another example.

NO: Another example might, for example. be the new powers that the European Union gets over our economy. The Charter of fundamental rights will be inserted in the treaty despite the fact that the government said it would be no more legally binding that the Beano and that will have a huge impact on our economy. It’ll mean that European judges will be able to impose new regulations on our businesses.

JH: True, Mr Corbett?

RC: Absolutely false. The charter of rights is a restriction on the actions of the European Union. EU laws and decisions that violate those rights can be struck down by the courts. It’s a protection for us, for our people.

JH: Another one, Mr O’Brien?

NO: Let’s just go back to that one. It’s interesting that your saying that it doesn’t increase the European Union’s powers. That’s not what.. interruption…

RC: Its in the constitution by the way. It actually says nothing in this charter can be construed as increasing the powers of the European Union.

NO: Well if you look at what European judges are saying, and the European judges are the ones who are going to have to interpret the treaty, they’re saying that it’s "quotes" nonsense that it doesn’t increase their powers.. The president of the court of justice has said that it will give him huge new powers in new areas...

RC: … to strike down bits of EU decisions…

NO: … and our national laws…

RC: No, no, certainly not national laws. It explicitly says that in the constitution…

JH: (Interrupts) All right, all right, I suspect we can have half an hour on each of these…
(Unintelligible … Corbett keeps talking)

RC: Reforms the Union and wreckers… those who want to wreck the European Union in the "no" campaign…

JH: Hang on now, we’re back to rhetoric so let’s just see if we can fit in another illustration, Neil O’Brien, of your case if you have one there.

NO: Of course we don’t want to wreck the European Union. We want to make it work. I mean, I think pro-Europeans should be against the constitution. Another example would be, say, there’s a commitment in the new constitution, for the first time, that the EU will move to a common defence. Now the government said that should be taken out during the negotiations. But it wasn’t taken out and they signed up anyway.

JH: Right. Mr Corbett?

RC: That’s been in the treaty since the Maastricht Treaty, signed up by John Major in the early 1990s…

JH: So why did the government want it taken out then?

RC: … It can only be done if everybody agrees. What the government wanted was to keep the veto on that, we have a veto on that. It can only be done if everyone agrees. Now, how about putting points to me about what are the good things in the constitution…

JH: Go on, go on then…

RC: …and letting him rebut it?

JH: All Right, all right. We’ve not got very long for it, I’m afraid. I thought it was much easier to do it the other way because... It’s fair, either way. It’s fair isn’t it…

RC: That’s the problem with the debate in Britain. They come up with all sorts of myths and lies and the "yes" people have to simply rebut it. Why not let us say what’s good about this constitution…

JH: Go on, quickly… give us one.

RC: It, it sets out the limits of EU powers. It defines it very clearly and the powers that it does exercise are made more accountable by improving the role of national parliaments and the European parliaments in checking and cross-checking every single EU decision. So no EU law could be adopted without approval…

JH: OK…

RC: …both of national governments and of the elected European parliament.

JH: Your chance very quickly to rebut that if you wish, Mr O’Brien.

NO: That’s just vague nonsense. And he’s completely failed to… I’m stunned by his ignorance of what’s in the constitution…

JH: Well…

NO: This new commitment to move to a common defence is completely new. The phrase "we’ll move to a common defence" is new.

JH: All right.. laughs. We can’t do this, obviously, in five or six minutes. This is a very long discussion. We shall do it.. we shall continue to do it between now and whenever we have the vote, if we have the vote in the end. Mr Corbett, Mr O’ Brien, thank you both.

ends.

"Ignorant and hostile"

First you were too stupid to understand the constitution. Now you're "ignorant and hostile" as well.

In their battle to win the "heart and minds", the Europhiles certainly seem to be going out of their way to charm the electorate and, with such skill and tact, it is hard to see how they can possibly lose.

Anyhow, that is the opinion of the EU commission which, according to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph labels voters in Britain as the most "ignorant" about the European Union's prospective constitution.

Based on an opinion poll of nearly 25,000 "EU citizens" - actually, citzens of the EU member states - the commission describes British voters as not only the most hostile to the constitution - with Britain the only country where opponents of the treaty outnumber supporters - but also as among, as it puts it, the most "ignorant".

Just 20 percent of Britons, we are told, support the treaty, a figure matched only by Cyprus, where 23 percent are in favour. Opposition is highest in Britain, at 30 percent - making it the only country at this stage to have more "no" voters than "yes"

The commission, it appears, describes the finding as a "remarkable exception" to the EU average, in which 49 percent of citizens are in favour of the constitution, and 16 percent against. Predictably, the most supportive nations are Italy and Belgium, with more than 70 percent of their voters in favour of the draft treaty.

The commission believes that increased knowledge of the constitution will be matched by increased support for it, saying: "One can see a strong correlation between level of knowledge and support for the text."

On the other hand, Christopher Heaton-Harris, a Conservative MEP, says: "Can you imagine how much worse the figures will look when the British public knows more, and realises the constitution will suck powers away from Britain?"

Didn’t we all know that already? The constitution sucks!

Meanwhile Blithering Bunny has some interesting observations on the EU's opinion poll.

It's not what you do that counts

Jacques Chirac is at it again. He has announced at Davos that a much higher aid to the developing world should be financed from global taxes on aviation fuel, financial transactions or capital flows. Seeing that a number of developing countries are doing well out of international financial transactions and capital flows, this is rather an odd idea.

But then, if President Chirac really wanted to help the developing world, he and his country would not stand in the way of all attempts to make trade in agricultural goods free. Nor would France support every EU anti-dumping regulation. He would also support lifting all duty that is now placed in quite disproportionate degree on imports from developing countries.

President Chirac’s ideas were discarded by South African President Thado Mbeki, not because they are ridiculous but because such proposals have never before been put into place. There is some justice in that. Why keep posturing?

In parenthesis it ought to be noted that South Africa is potentially one of the richest countries in the world. What does it need to develop? Surely not indiscriminate aid. It should also be noted that one of the biggest problems in that country is AIDS and dealing with it has been impossible largely for political reasons with President Mbeki refusing to accept that it is a disease that needs medical attention. There have been cases of doctors and nurses harassed and persecuted because they tried to give medication to AIDS patients.

Prime Minister Blair has done what he always does and set up a Commission on Africa. It is once again to be central to the programme of the British presidency of G-8. Stop me if you have heard this before.

And who do you think was attacked for being rather mean? Yes, the United States. This time, the Americans fought back. Bill Frist, leader of the Senate, pointed in no uncertain terms to what happened after the tsunami and the fact that the US supplied the most aid most quickly when it was needed. Furthermore, the United States provides 40 per cent of the world’s disaster aid, arguably the only aid that is needed.

But hey, what does that matter? The story is President Chirac and his suggestions that he knows will never be put into effect.

We have found no evidence of deliberate bias…

So says the Independent Panel in its report to the BBC on "BBC news coverage of the European Union".

Having expressed considerable reservations about the make-up of this Panel, we cannot express any great surprise at this finding. All we can say of it is that the Panel cannot have looked very far, or very thoroughly. Even on this Blog – which is not dedicated systematically to monitoring the BBC – we have been able to come up with some very clear instances.

Not least, we have reported on Nick Clarke, the interviewer for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, and his expression of sadness that public sentiment was against the EU constitution. Then there was that extraordinary episode when the "You and Yours" programme quite deliberately ignored the EU involvement in the ruinous "Part P" amendments to the building regulations, requiring registration of electricians.

However, the Panel is not a total whitewash – more like a "greywash" - as it does "a widespread perception that it suffers from certain forms of cultural and unintentional bias." The problem is complex, it says.

In essence it seems to be the result of a combination of factors including an institutional mindset, a tendency to polarise and over-simplify issues, a measure of ignorance of the EU on the part of some journalists and a failure to report issues which ought to be reported, perhaps out of a belief that they are not sufficiently entertaining. Whatever the cause in particular cases, the effect is the same for the outside world and feels like bias.

We take issue with this. Intended or not, it does not feel like bias. It is bias and there is no comfort in knowing that some of it might be "mindset" – which we have long suspected. This would be best represented by the "rave" uncritical reporting of the recent Airbus A380 unveiling.

As did the MacPherson Report in 1999 find the Metropolitan Police "institutionally racist", in effect what this Panel is reporting is that the BBC is "institutionally biased" when it comes to EU coverage.

But it is not only bias that the Panel finds, and for that it has to be commended. It notes that senior managers "appear insufficiently self-critical about standards of impartiality."

They seem to take it as a given, with little serious thought as to how it applies in practice. This attitude appears to have filtered through to producers, reporters and presenters in the front line. There is no evidence of any systematic monitoring to ensure that all shades of significant opinion are fairly represented and there is a resistance to accepting external evidence. Leaving decisions to individual programme editors means that if there is bias in the coverage overall, no-one in the BBC would know about it.

Furthermore, the Panel continues:

Nor would BBC managers be in a position to accept or reject external allegations of bias and act accordingly. For example the written evidence from the Conservative Party says: "Conservative MEPs are under-represented. Packages from Brussels predominantly contain Labour and Liberal Democrat MEPs but no Conservative. Given that the Conservatives are the largest party within the European Parliament, this cannot be justified." Without a reliable monitoring system the BBC has no way of knowing whether such allegations are justified.

And then…

In the absence of such a system, the BBC finds it hard to defend itself against charges of bias. For instance we struggled to gain comprehensive information about complaints received, upheld or rejected. Such evidence as there was overwhelmingly found in favour of complaints from eurocritics. That evidence was also supported by admittedly imperfect evidence from external monitoring, although in the absence of any other sources that is all that was available to us.

In other words, after all these years of the BBC blandly denying that anything so vulgar as bias could taint its holy portals, we find that no systems are in place either to measure bias or prevent it occurring.

This is evidence of gross unprofessionalism – of which my colleague reported recently - and, of the BBC’s arrogance. They think they are soo perfect, so there is no need actually to check anything.

Much is also made of the coverage being focused through the "Westminster prism", with the EU issues predominantly being expressed in domestic terms, an issue which the Telegraph picked up in its recent report, based on leaked material.

But what is also stunning – if not unexpected - is the finding that "ignorance" plays a large part in the dreadful performance of the BBC. Says the Panel:

Journalists are unlikely to be able to explain the issues clearly unless they understand them themselves. There is much evidence that the public do not get the clear and accurate explanations they need because there is a lack of knowledge of the EU at every stage of the process from the selection of an item to the conduct of the interview. Presenters often appear to be ill-briefed and insufficiently armed with the facts necessary to challenge assertions made by interviewees in live interviews, reflecting not just pressure on them but a lack of understanding by programme researchers and producers.

This is something Lord Pearson noted and it is a very serious indictment of the BBC - that an organisation which parades its own "professionalism" is so dismally inadequate.

In the long list of failings, there is also the sin of omission, of which there is no end of examples, affirmed by the Panel which states that: "All external witnesses pointed out that the BBC News agenda understates the importance and relevance of the EU in the political and daily life of the UK."

"A stated aspiration of BBC journalism" the Panel says, is to "make the important interesting" but there is a danger that instead that "they make the interesting important."

The Panel then goes on to make detailed recommendations, the thrust of which is that there needs to be better and more impartial coverage of the EU to explain major issues to a wider audience.

Therein lies the problem. Having failed to identify deliberate bias, the strategy for dealing with that problem is different from dealing with "institutional bias". There will be no strategy for the former. And, in any event, as we have observed, the central issue is the BBC culture which will take more than a simple strategy to address.

Much will rely on the goodwill and capability of the BBC's new director of news, Helen Boaden. Her leadership in the dire coverage of the tsunami (and here) is hardly encouraging, and her response to even the limited criticism was complacent and arrogant.

Yet this is the official who has been charged by the BBC governors with formulating a response to the Panel, to be presented to the BBC's journalism board and the board of governors next month. With Boaden at the helm, the signs do not look good.

Perles of wisdom

Courtesy of Medienkritik Blog, and a tip from our reader, we have a copy of a superb interview of Richard Perle in today's Die Welt, with a translation by Harmut Lau. That is blogging at its best.

Perle is being interviewed on Europe's "soft power" in relation to the Bush second term and, as you might expect from a man styled as an "arch neo-con", he is deliciously robust.

The essence of the interview is that Bush will not change the thrust of his policies, but the interview starts with Perle being asked if he has any private doubts about the decision to go to war in Iraq?

Perle has no doubts. "Given the circumstances at the time," he says, "doing what we did was the right thing. At the end of the day we’ll look back on this effort and see it not only as successful and very much necessary, but also as the beginning of comprehensive change in the region.

Then comes the first "crunch" question: "Will President Bush continue on the same course in his second term or will he listen to people who advise him to rely more on soft power than on military force?"

Perle’s answer both typifies the US attitude and shows not a little contempt for the "European" position. "We don’t want to emulate the Europeans", he says. "The Europeans employ soft power day and night. They cannot get enough of it. That isn’t our role. Our role is not to pretend – as the Europeans pretend – that soft power can change North Korea’s Kim Jong Il or the mullahs."

A primary European criticism of the America, he is told, concerns its behaviour with respect to international law. Europeans regret that the US deliberately undermines the world order created by Roosevelt and its institutions, such as the UN.

"What world order?", retorts Perle. "The UN passed 17 resolutions against Saddam Hussein and did nothing to enforce them. It was weak and ineffective." Ouch!

But, says the interviewer, "the Europeans especially deplore the doctrine of preventive war. Can any country now justify a war-like attack with the claim that it pre-empted a threat?"

On the day that the world remembers the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the answer is priceless, and instructive: "The Europeans have learned nothing from their own history," Perle says. "Would a preventive war against Nazi Germany have been a mistake?"

Our interviewer answers back, saying: "It would not have been a pre-emptive war if Europeans had attacked after Hitler’s march into the Rhineland in 1936. They would have been punishing a violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The Iraq war is, as Kofi Annan and most Europeans see it, a violation of international law."

"Nonsense," is Perle’s robust response. "Claiming that there was a world order, in accordance with international law, upon which we could rely, is nonsense. There was no such order." He adds, "Who is Kofi Annan to say what is legal and what is illegal?" He then continues:

Every country has the right to defend itself. This right is not granted by the UN Charter, but is mentioned in Article 51. This right existed longbefore there was a UN Charter. At the time the Charter was written, there was no terrorism that could pose a danger such as that which we now face. Theconcern was tank divisions advancing across borders. Today’s concern is people who conduct terrorist attacks. Do we have to wait until the attacks have been carried out before we move against the terrorists?

The interviewer comes back on that, stating that in Europe, "people resent that the US has moved away from multilateralism." Again Perle give no quarter:

We will not allow our fate to be determined by a majority vote in the UN when there are dictatorships casting a vote. The world in which we live is not a world that we can trust with our fate. We cannot depend on Zimbabwe’s vote to assure our safety. We will not subject ourselves to this sort of multilateralism.

He is then asked whether he sees parallels between Bush and another underestimated president, Harry Truman?

Perle does. And he sees parallels with Ronald Reagan. "Bush is straightforward, honest and says what he thinks. When he visits Europe in February he’ll say some reconciliatory things but he won’t change the thrust of his policies – policies with which he is completely comfortable."

That’s it. It will not please Solana and his merry crew and – if this interview is a reliable guide - the "Europeans" are going to get very little from Bush when he visits Brussels in February.

You’re too stupid!

At two different levels, addressed to two different audiences, the same message from two different commentators – you’re too stupid to understand.

The first is addressed to the Americans, and in particular George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, from that oh so superior Financial Times commentator, Quentin Peel.

His message is that the European Union is so complicated to outsiders that they will have difficulty understanding it. He feels that trying to explain it is like trying to describe an elephant to a man from Mars. You can describe what it looks like, but it is still well nigh impossible to demonstrate how it works, or quite what it is for.

Thus, poor little Americans like George W. and Condoleezza "do not know how much attention to pay the EU institutions, and how much the member states themselves". They blunder into bilateral relations, therefore, get accused of "divide and rule" and irritate the far superior and more sophisticated EU states.

So George W. and Condoleezza Rice, when they come to Brussels in February, are going to be terribly confused and will find everything very strange, so they will start talking to the "wrong people".

This is all because US administrations look at the EU through a "distorting prism". Translated roughly, this means they talk too much to those nasty Anglo-Saxons in Britain, instead of listening to those more sophisticated Continentals.

The cure is simple, of course. All George W. and Condoleezza need to do is realise that renegades like Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, plus a few of the new member states, are not representative of the mainstream of European thinking. Instead, they should listen to those great sages, Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac who are so keen to restore the relative harmony in transatlantic relations. Then absolutely everything will be all right.

At the same level of patronising condescension, addressing that different audience comes Labour peer Lord Haskins, who has told the Yorkshire Post that the EU Constitution it is too complicated an issue to be left to voters. Put another way, we’re too stupid to understand it. He fears that, mired by our own stupidity, we will vote at the referendum against Tony Blair rather than for his darling European Union.

He believes that Blair's decision last April to concede to a vote was the result of "panic" over mounting calls for a referendum from the Tories. TB, therefore, is stupid as well because he "just didn't think it through". Another reason, of course, why George W. and Condoleezza shouldn’t talk to him.

Haskin’s point is that referendums are notoriously difficult to use as an instrument of government. "You're always afraid people won't answer the question," he says. "We've got to remind people that the question is specific, it's not 'is Europe a good idea or a bad idea?'."

The unofficial question though is quite simple: "Do you want to give the unelected government of the European Union more powers?" And that is simple enough – perhaps that is what worries Haskins.

Anyhow, Tory MEP leader, Timothy Kirkhope, dismisses Haskins’s argument, saying that he represents all that is worst in New Labour. "He makes patronising assertions about how they know far better than the people".

But that, dear Kirkhope, is what they all do. We are all far too stupid for them and have to be told what to do. In that, it seems, the British people, George W. and Condoleezza have a great deal in common.

No difference between us

The recent pronouncement on the part of the Commission about the Conservatives’ proposal for an immigration policy has been rather useful to those of us not over-enamoured with the project.

David Rennie asked in the Daily Telegraph:

“How did Britain end up binding its immigration policy to the European Union, so tightly that - to hear the European Commission talk - it is already too late for Michael Howard to throw the process into reverse, even if he is elected prime minister?”

Well, how, indeed. It all started in 1999 with the Tampere Summit at which various maters of justice and security were agreed to and the media paid not attention. When eurosceptics tried to raise the subject, their comments were dismissed and jeered at.

All of a sudden, it is turning out to be true. Just as the fact that the duly elected Chancellor of the Exchequer in a duly elected government with the largest majority in the House of Commons in modern history, had to go begging to the Commission in 1997 to be allowed to lower VAT on fuel, that is, too fulfil a manifesto obligation. His plea was refused. Nobody much noticed.

And has anyone noticed much the various agreements of Tampere II, that is the Hague Programme agreed to in the autumn of 2004? Well, no, not really. This document, too, concerns a far-reaching plan for various policing, justice and security matters, including the final transformation of Europol into an operational force. It is one of those ten-year plans that will go on unrolling, regardless of any election or referendum in Britain, any other member states or the European Union.

Even a directly elected Commission, for some reason a panacea proposed by some misguided individuals would not alter the fact that the governance of the EU is managerial not political, or that it is not a project that cares much about democracy or accountability.

Yes, we find it all rather frustrating. But there is another organization out there that is just as frustrated, and that is the Commission. They, too, would like to have the role of the European Union acknowledged in various ways and find themselves thwarted in this laudable exercise by national politicians. They cannot understand why this should be so.

The answer is very simple – politicians have elections to win, even if their real power is reduced with every month, every year, every European Council. They still like the trappings and kid themselves that maybe this is all a bad dream. Any minute now they will wake up and the whole European mess will simply melt away.

The Commission and its denizens, on the other hand, have no such problems. They do not stand for elections and do not consider that to be a good way of running anything. Accountability? Who needs it?

They do, however, believe fervently in the project and its essential goodness. Therefore, they want to publicize it. They want the people of Europe to know that the benign EU is looking after them and stopping the national politicians from making a muck of things. Hence the apparently crass intervention in British domestic politics over immigration.

In other words, they are like us – the opposites converge. We, eurosceptics, want to highlight the role of the European Union in domestic matters, and so does the European Union, particularly the Commission. It is the rather woolly-minded individuals in between that annoys us both.

The propaganda flows

To coincide with the publication of the EU constitution ratification Bill, Jack Straw yesterday issued a written statement to the House of Commons, announcing that he was making available a commentary on the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe.

This commentary is to be distributed to "the media and key opinion formers, including academics, think tanks and business organisations", and will be distributed to central libraries across the UK. It is also available on the FCO website.

In 493 pages, the document is a comprehensive analysis of the EU constitution, although it is in fact less comprehensive than the British Management Data Foundation (BMDF) version.

Nevertheless, it includes the full text of the constitution, including protocols and declarations. It purports to explain "what each article does where this is not obvious from the text... where the treaty provision derives from if it is not new, and... where legislative procedures have changed."

As one has come to expect expect, this is a highly partisan document, no more so than the foreword by Jack Straw himself, which repeats the myths that the government intends to promote during the course of the referendum campaign.

What is particularly objectionable, amongst many things, is the claim by Straw that the constitution "for the first time… gives national parliaments the power to scrutinise proposed EU legislation at the draft stage and to sent it back if they are not satisfied the Union needs to act."

Two points arise here. Firstly, our parliament already has that power and can scrutinise anything it wishes. It is an impertinence on the part of the member states of the European Union that they feel they can bestow on a sovereign parliament a power that it already possesses. But, in so doing, of course, they take "ownership" of that power – and what can be bestowed can be withdrawn.

The second point is that the "power" is illusory. Scrutiny is not power, unless you are then able to impose the views derived from that scrutiny. But all that is on offer in the constitution is "permission" to the national parliaments to send to the EU institutions – including the commission - a "reasoned opinion" on "whether a draft European legislative act complies with the principle of subsidiarity".

This is set out in a protocol to the constitution (page 127 in the BMDF version) and a further protocol (p. 129) requires the institutions to "take account" of the reasoned opinions. In this context, parliaments are allocated "votes" and if the reasoned opinions represent at least one third of the votes allocated, the commission is obliged to “review” the draft.

That is it. The commission is not obliged to withdraw the draft, or change it and, if it decides to re-issue the draft unchanged, there is nothing whatsoever any national parliament can do about it. When it comes from the EU as fully fledged law, each will be required to approve it.

That is the nature of the propaganda stemming from the pen (or word processor) of Jack Straw Esq – more likely, from his officials, although he has put his name to it. There is little point in protesting, although ritual protests have already been made about public money being spent on promoting the government's view.

As far as Straw is concerned, he is telling the "truth" and, as does larva pour from an active volcano, so will the propaganda continue to flow.

Well, he’s repeated it!

In today’s Telegraph, Boris Johnson gives up his column in favour of his leader Michael Howard – a distinct improvement by any account.

And Michael Howard, confounding this Blog’s expectations, takes on the EU dimension of EU immigration policy – although it takes him until the penultimate paragraph to mention it – and commits again to taking back powers from Brussels.

"If we are to restore order," he writes, "we need to ensure that policy is decided in accordance with the needs of the British people – something Labour refuses to do." He continues:

The Prime Minister will not withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees even though he has conceded that "It was drawn up for a vastly different world in which people did not routinely travel huge distances across multiple borders."

And he cannot set a limit on the number of asylum seekers Britain should accept, because his Government has ceded control of huge swaths of immigration policy to Brussels. Despite the Prime Minister's claim in the House of Commons that he has not given up the power to set our asylum laws, he has signed up to every directive on immigration that has come from the European Commission. He has surrendered the powers necessary to police our borders.

A Conservative government would take back these powers and say no to the further loss of control which the European Constitution would bring.

It can't get much clearer than that, but Howard’s statement does beg several questions, the main one being, how does he intend to take back powers from Brussels? Is this a question of "negotiation" or is Howard, as with fishing, prepared to put a Bill before the House, unilaterally withdrawing from the EU's immigration policy?

One also notes that "claw-back" commitments in the Conservative Party are beginning to add up. So far, the Party has committed to withdrawing from the CFP, to repatriating foreign aid and to securing an "opt-out" from the social chapter.

Additionally – although not widely publicised - the Party is promising to promote "British produced" labelling for food, which would put it at odds with EU law, and some of the proposals in the James report – cutting government expenditure – would also put a Conservative government in breach of treaty obligations.

Now that Howard is committing to withdrawing from the EU's immigration policy, how long is it before commentators wake up to the fact that the Conservatives are now well down the road towards complete withdrawal from the EU?

All over the place

Predictably, the papers are full of the news on the EU referendum question, and generally the comment on the wording is favourable. By general consent, it seems to be agreed that Blair has gone for a neutral option which is acceptable to all the players. Not that he really had a choice.

Beyond that, sentiment and reaction to the announcement is varied and incoherent. Several papers also offer leaders, not least The Daily Telegraph, which heads its piece "Europe's point of no return".

It is this, perversely, that offers the most muddled analysis, arguing that the impending referendum ought not to be seen as a distraction from the real business of the country. Its result is as crucial as any election. "This is Europe's point of no return," it says, echoing its headline:

Our referendum will determine the future not only of Britain, but also of Europe. If we wish to preserve Europe as a free association of nation states, then the constitution belongs in the dustbin of history. If it achieves that end, this referendum could become a British declaration of independence.

This is dangerous nonsense. Should we not endorse the constitution, the status quo ante prevails, with all the existing treaties in force and the march of integration unchecked. Nor can it be argued that "Europe" is "a free association of nation states" – something which the foreign secretary is apt to claim.

The Independent, on the other hand is moaning that the government’s campaign is "tentative", saying that while it launched the campaign yesterday, it shelved its real campaign until after a general election.

It also draws attention to "a surprise provision in the Bill" that would allow ministers to call a "double referendum" on both the new EU treaty and joining the euro, "an option favoured by some pro-Europeans but which Downing Street has dismissed." This is one to watch.

The clause would also allow the referendum on the constitution to be held on the same day as local authority elections, although the Electoral Commission has warned that might confuse voters.

Yesterday, the Financial Times ran a piece by Jacek Rostowski, professor of economics at the Central European University, Budapest, and trustee of the Case Institute, Warsaw. He wrote about “The real dangers of Britain quitting the Union”, noting that the aim of the government campaign on the constitution is to present rejecting the constitution as more fraught with uncertainty than accepting it.

This was very much the line take by Peter Mandelson yesterday on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, when he claimed the rejection of the treaty would be a leap into the unknown, "a situation from which we could not tell the consequences".

Yet that position is full of contradictions, says Rostowski for, if Blair really does wants Britain to decide about Europe once and for all, why did he commit himself to a referendum only when it became clear that Poland and Spain were not going to sink the constitution for him?

Why, he asks, is the referendum scheduled as late as possible, in the hope that others will scupper the project before Britain has to choose? Finally, if indeed it is the case that Britain could be forced to leave the EU if voters reject the constitution, was it not culpable of Mr Blair to have signed it, unnecessarily confronting voters with such a choice, when he could simply have vetoed it?

In fact, he concludes, failure to ratify the constitution means only that the Nice treaty will continue to govern the EU. The real danger is an attempt by “europhobes” and possibly some on the continent to convince British voters that, since others want to go ahead and Britain does not, the UK should leave the Union voluntarily. The electorate might well be susceptible to such suggestions in the wake of a No vote.

According to Rostowski, the unwillingness of the main parties in Britain to face the issues means that the country is sleepwalking towards a decision.

The Guardian, on the other hand, applauds Blair's "straight question" but questions ministers' decision not to promote the European issue unduly before polling day. "This is a dangerous game," it says.

By sidelining the argument until after the election, they cede the issue to the Tory and media obsession with Brussels in the meantime, as the latest furore over asylum policy so clearly illustrates. Until battle really is joined, Labour's approach is making the task of the yes campaign all the harder.

The Times foregoes comment and restricts itself to a simple news report, deciding that the EU referendum question is "made easy on the eye", but noted that the Government was attacked by its own Labour MPs for mounting a diversion from the forthcoming general election campaign, articulated by Ian Davidson, Labour MP for Glasgow Pollok, who said: "This is a regrettable diversion from Labour’s general election campaign."

Meanwhile, Chris Davies, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the EU parliament, on the basis of opinion polls on the constitution has told the government that there was "not a cat in hell's chance" of winning the referendum. A "yes" vote is "a no-hoper", he says, accusing the government yesterday of trying to "frighten people" into voting for it. He believes scare tactics play into the hands of "europhobes".

Over term, the debate will no doubt settle down as the main issues become clearer, but for the moment sentiment is all over the place.

Well, what are we to do with Ukraine?

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on. The excitement of the Ukrainian election is over, Yushchenko is President, his colleague Yuliya Timoshenko will probably be Prime Minister. Now what?

What is the EU to do about this? As we have pointed out before on occasions too numerous to mention, the real problem with the EU common foreign policy is that it does not exist but has to pretend to do so. In the process a great deal of damage can be done. A non-existent foreign policy will be pro-active just for the sake of it to appear to be doing something.

Alternatively, as in the case with the former Soviet republics it will do nothing. We shall have many calls for stability but the EU, that has taken no real part in the whole drama, has no real idea of what to do next.

President Yushchenko has addressed the Council for Europe and announced that he is going to introduce government reforms in Ukraine that will bring it closer to the EU, membership of which organization remains his aim.

Can’t imagine why he should bother to introduce reforms. Apart from the unfortunate events that culminated in a journalist losing his head (literally) for criticising former President Kuchma, there is little in the Ukrainian economic, political and social structure that could not be accommodated in the European Union. Well, there is the poverty, but surely the EU’s “soft power”, i.e. throwing money at a problem could deal with that. Oh dear, no, I forget. The money has already been earmarked for Spain, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and some for the new member states.

In fact, Ukraine has been told that they cannot have association status because they will not be ready for membership by 2007, supposedly the next expansion date that will see Romania, Bulgaria and, possibly, Croatia entering. How they will be accommodated is anybody’s guess.

In the meantime there will be further developments in the famed Neighbourhood Policy, that will include free-trade agreements (this I must see), visa agreements and various kinds of aid for the building of infrastructure. Unfortunately, under French pressure the Neighbourhood Policy was extended to include the North African countries as well as the former Soviet ones. They will probably demand equal treatment.

Then there is Russia. It is not the EU’s policy to say boo to a goose (except the United States, who is not a particularly threatening goose) and certainly not to the Russian bear. As M Barnier, the French Foreign Minister has explained, Poland, Ukraine and all other former Communist states must learn to respect Russia. Presumably, M Barnier and his boss, l’empereur Jacques rather regret taking those pesky East Europeans into the Union.

The non-election manifesto

In any other political context, this would be an election manifesto, but in the "democratic" European Union we do things differently. First we appoint (actually, the governments appoint) the commission and then, afterwards, it issues its manifesto. Only in the EU, it is called the "work programme".

And so it has come to pass that Barroso has issued his "non-election manifesto", which the Financial Times has diplomatically called "pragmatic". For that read lacking any "big ideas", for which we can at least be thankful – except that this is a pre-constitution ratification programme, so the commission has decided to lie doggo in case it frightens the horses

Inevitably, Barroso could not resist using the word "reform" – something Prodi was rather found of, all those years ago, but the "mission statement" (yes, mission statement) is putting the emphasis on stronger growth and job creation.

Somebody should tell Barroso that governments, and still less the EU commission, do not create jobs – these only get made when governments but out and let people get on with it. But then that would be a waste of time. Barroso is a socialist, after all – even if he is a "centre-right" one.

Anyhow, in place of the "dreamy European visions" of Romano Prodi, we are told, Barroso makes "a blunt admission" that "feelings of indifference to the European idea are widespread". So glad he has noticed.

So what are we going to get? Well, our man at the commission is thinks the citizens are waiting for the EU to "release Europe's enormous untapped potential". His priority, therefore, is to bring to fruition the grand projects that have been launched.

That's what he says in his document: Europe 2010: a Partnership for European Renewal, which does not seem to have been released yet, so we have to make do with his press statement.

There we find that José Manuel Barroso's aim is "to deliver Prosperity, Solidarity and Security for all Europeans." Note the capitals, incidentally – all from the original.

For the first time, says José Manuel, the EU commission proposes a joint programme of strategic objectives in partnership with the EU parliament and council. The commission, he says, believes it is important that the European institutions "share the ownership of their priorities" and work together to achieve the Union's key objectives from the outset.

I wish I could stop sniggering when I read this guff, but the urge becomes overwhelming when you read on and learn that the commission had adopted a work programme for 2005 "which includes a first series of concrete initiatives to turn the Strategic Objectives into action." (Note caps again).

It is so hard to stop thinking about the maffiosa when they start talking about "concrete initiatives". One imagines all sorts of nefarious deeds.

So chaps (and chapesses), we’re going to have a "business friendly environment" by ensuring that companies can operate "with a stable macro-economic framework inside a genuinely Europe-wide regime."

The "top priority" is the restoration of sustainable dynamic growth and jobs in Europe in accordance with the Lisbon strategy; and – for afters – we get to "sustain and reinforce Europe's commitment to solidarity and social justice, to strengthen the cohesion of the enlarged Union and environmental protection."

Who writes this stuff – can they really be serious, or is this an elaborate send-up? Unfortunately, the hacks seem to take it seriously and some of this is going to be translated into action, so I suppose we have to as well.

But more to the point, José Manuel is going hard after an increased budget, warning countries such as Germany and Britain that want tight curbs on the next budget: "One cannot have more Europe for less money," he says. No indeed, one cannot.

Even then, he comes in for criticism from Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists – the left of centre type. "The Barroso Commission's five-year work programme amounts to little more than a thinly disguised neo-Conservative agenda. This is not the European way," says Poul. One wonders what he means.

However, star of the show was an unnamed EU prime minister, reacting to the Barroso manifesto. "We know what has to be done - the only problem is that we don't know how to win elections after we've done it," he says. Well, at least that is one problem José Manuel Barroso doesn’t have.

Unprofessionalism rather than conspiracy

It is the contention of this blog that the dear old Beeb, the solace of our childhood and the standard bearer of British supremacy in broadcasting quality, is actually a bloated bureaucracy with its own agenda, that just happens to be seriously anti-American, anti-western, pro-EU and, generally soggy left.

Added to that is the undeniable fact that the BBC is an anomaly. It lives off public money, to wit a poll tax on TV ownership and using that money advances its own ideological agenda and “competes” in the world of broadcasting on completely unfair conditions.

There is, however, another indictment: it has become completely unprofessional. Let me relate an interesting tale.

Yesterday morning I received a phone call from BBC 24 hours, asking if I would agree to be interviewed as the Bill to implement the constitutional treaty has been published together with the proposed question for the referendum. I was invited in my guise as the Research Director of the Bruges Group, a reasonably well known organization even in BBC circles.

As usual I was asked a few questions about my precise opinions about the referendum, the constitution and the EU itself and was told that my interview will follow immediately after Mark (surname unfamiliar and therefore unmemorable to me) from the Forum for Social Europe.

As the pleasant young man who was talking to me admitted that he had never seen a copy of the Constitution for Europe, I offered to bring one and took with me the invaluable British Management Data Foundation edition.

When I arrived at Television Centre, I was rushed in to the studio, barely pausing to discard my coat and bag. I was placed next to the man who was to interview me and discuss the particular item. He turned to me and said somewhat accusingly: “You are not Mark.”

“Um, no,” – I admitted. It was useless to deny this. The fact that I was not Mark was entirely obvious. “Well, who are you?” – he continued, feverishly looking through his briefing notes on the laptop. It seems that paper and pencil no longer figure in the average BBC interviewer’s life.

I explained who I was and had to repeat so often and so loudly that I was from the BRUGES GROUP that my chap’s colleague had to glance at us reproachfully. We were, indeed, interfering with her feed.

Any reasonably experienced political journalist should have heard of the Bruges Group, whether they agreed with its euroscepticisim or not. This one had not, and introduced me eventually as being from that group of eurosceptic MPs. We do have the odd MP as a member and a few have addressed meetings. But it is not primarily a group for parliamentarians.

Furthermore, I had to explain hastily and in whispers that no, I was not in favour of Europe, whatever that might be. My interviewer had the hazy notion that the other chap, Mark, who was, in any case, in the Westminster studio, may have been against the constitution and in favour of Europe. So I must have been in favour of both. The idea that anybody might not be all that keen on either clearly had not occurred to him.

He was not interested in my copy of the constitution, having only the word referendum in his mind and not really knowing what he was talking about. Eventually I was asked whether I thought the proposed question was fair, and when I said that it was inaccurate but reasonably fair, I was allowed to explain why we had certain problems and worries about the way the referendum would be run.

Then I sat back, waiting for the questions on the constitution itself to follow. They did not. I was thanked politely and Mark was brought up on the screen. Presumably, he, too, was somewhat bewildered about this emphasis on the referendum.

As far as I could tell he was not given much time to present his case whatever it may have been either, since the only thing the particular news programme was interested in was the return of the Guantanamo four, who had quite unjustly been imprisoned for taking a walking holiday in the mountains of Afghanistan heavily armed with AK-47s, handgrenades and other suchlike hikers’ luggage.

Well, there we are. A conspiracy to keep an important subject under wraps or a completely shambolic inefficiency, unprofessionalism and ignorance?

EU dirty little Belgium

Don't you just love the Chinese new agency Xinhuanet. An organ of the totalitarian Peoples’ Republic, it is a model of tranparency when it comes to reporting the affairs of the EU, and puts the commission to shame (there's a moral in there somewhere).

It its latest report, it tells us that Belgium is the biggest polluter of all EU member states.

The Flanders International Radio station quoted figures from the Environment Sustainability Index for 2005 jointly produced by environment centres of Yale and Columbia universities - being presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - indicating that Belgium places 112th out of 146 countries surveyed in the report.

The Index, based on 21 different indicators relating to environmental pollution, death rates and fertility problems, is designed to show how each country will be able to protect the environment in the next 10 years, the report said.

Belgium has already improved its Index ranking this year, climbing from 127th place last year, but is still the lowest ranked country in the EU.

The country's poor performance in the Index comes just hours after the international environment organisation Greenpeace attacked Belgium for having an incoherent environment policy and of funding polluting energy projects in other countries.

No there’s something for Margot Wallström, erstwhile environment commissioner, to look into when she goes for her jolly little walks with her husband each morning. Perhaps she'll do a Blog on it.

And while we're about it, let's not hear any more of this "dirty man of Europe" nonsense about Britain shall we?

The Beeb strikes again

Ever so helpful the Beeb is offering on its website a jolly little Q&A guide on the EU referendum. At pains to be neutral, it still manages to make a something of a "Horlicks" of the answers.

For instance, it poses the question, "What is the European Union constitution?", to which it offers the anodyne answer: "It is essentially a rule book setting out what the EU can and cannot do. It sets down in writing the EU's values and political objectives."

Sounds fluffy enough, except a constitution is a document which sets out the powers and structures of an organisation. This one defines inter alia the powers and responsibilities of the institutions of the European Union, those of the member states and even of "citizens". That is much more than a "rule book", especially as it adds substantially to the powers of the EU.

Asking, "What is it for?", the Beeb then offers the answer:

The constitution is designed to streamline decision-making in the enlarged EU of 25 states. For example, it lowers the size of the majority needed for most decisions in the European Council, and cuts the number of areas where a unanimous vote is required. But it also opens the way to deeper EU integration and greater centralisation of decision-making. Opponents argue it will effectively turn the Union into a country in all but name, with is own flag, parliament, civil service, anthem, supreme court and president.

That, actually, is fair enough, except I could always take exception to the word "streamline". There is nothing streamlined about the EU. It has the aerodynamic qualities of a brick.

We then get: "Who supports it?" It would be too much to hope for a nice robust answer like "the self-serving political élites of Europe", but one can always live in hope. What the Beeb actually says is:

Tony Blair will lead the campaign for a yes vote, with the rest of the Labour front bench playing a prominent role. Mr Blair is a relatively recent convert to the idea of a constitution, previously preferring to talk about a "charter of competencies". He now argues the constitution is in Britain's interest and claims to have secured a good deal in treaty negotiations, protecting the UK's vetoes on economic policy, defence and foreign affairs.

Mr Blair is likely to share a platform with Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy and his front bench team - all passionate advocates of closer EU integration. Britain in Europe, the pro-EU lobby group backed by some of Britain's biggest companies including BT, Unilever and Ford, is also likely to be involved. Newspapers including The Daily Mirror, The Independent and The Guardian, are also expected to back a yes vote.

To get the balance, there is then the question: "Who is against it?" The "fors" get 145 words, and the "against" get 131 – close enough I guess. We are told:

The Conservatives want to see limits set to the EU's power, and are not in favour of a constitution. Instead they want a new treaty that would shift some powers back to nation states. The UK Independence Party, which wants British withdrawal from the EU, the Green Party and the anti-war Respect coalition, also back a no vote.

Up to 70 backbench Labour MPs, under the banner Labour against a Super State, are also likely join the no campaign. Vote No, a group backed by business leaders including Wetherspoons pub boss Tim Martin, Dixons chairman Lord Kalms and Sir Anthony Bamford, of engineering group JCB, will also be a leading voice. The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are among the newspapers expected to throw their weight behind a no vote.

And what happens if the UK votes no? Aahh…

The constitution can only be adopted by the EU if it is ratified by every member country. Tony Blair has said he would respect a no vote - and he has ruled out holding repeated referendums until he gets the answer he wants. But he has also argued that a no vote would amount to British withdrawal from the EU.

The Tories say there is nothing to prevent the EU continuing without a constitution. The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said a UK no vote would not exclude Britain from the "European family".

Not a totally abysmal resumé. If it could get anywhere near that degree of objectivity in its broadcast output, we might be less included to curse every time we hear the initials BBC mentioned. As it was, the PM programme took the opportunity of the announcement of the referendum question to award Peter Mandelson a huge party political broadcast this evening, with not a contrary voice to be heard.

Well done the Beeb.

The patriotic case for the EU constitution

We were told by The Times this morning that a "year-long" campaign opens today on the merits of the proposed European constitution with Jack Straw declaring that it is time for "pro-Europeans" to reclaim the Union Flag from the sceptics.

This coincides with foreign secretary publishing the Bill setting out the terms of the constitution and providing for a referendum and is accompanied by an "article released to newspapers today". That article has now been posted on the FCO website under the title "the patriotic case for the EU constitution".

I wish I could say otherwise, but the article starts with a lie and continues in that vein. It is painful in that context to report that your own foreign secretary is a liar, but that he is.That his first lie is commonplace, familiar even, makes no difference – it is still a lie, a lie of Goebellesque proportions. "Anti-Europeans," says our foreign secretary…

...have a habit of wrapping themselves in the union flag in order to paint Europe as a threat to Britain's national sovereignty and way of life. But the real patriotic case is overwhelmingly in favour of Britain's engagement in the European Union. It is time pro-Europeans claimed this argument. At stake is nothing less than the very nature of Britain's power in the world.

And where is that lie? It is in the framing – the contest between the "anti-Europeans" and the "pro-Europeans". The lie is that we are not talking about Europe. Europe is a continent. You cannot be for it or against it – it exists, like the sea, like the sky, like Africa. You accept them because they are there.

No, what is under discussion is a government of Europe – to be precise, a government of part of Europe. That is the argument. Do we want more of a government of a political construct called the European Union? Are you pro-European government or are you anti-European government?

Of course, couched in those terms, the framing would be less "user friendly", more likely to invoke a response, "whaddayamean government?", which would rather give the game away. Which is why the foreign secretary lies, and continues to lie.

He next lies when he defines "being a patriot" which, à la Straw is "wanting Britain to be prosperous at home and strong and influential abroad." I have read many long essays, and even books, on the nature of patriotism, and nowhere else could I say that I have seen patriotism so narrowly defined.

Suffice to say that, under certain circumstances, the pursuit of patriotism is the antithesis of prosperity. Did we fight Hitler to get rich?

Another lie follows in quick succession: "Our role as a leading member of the EU is a crucial part of securing that." He attempts to justify that lie by telling us that:

Britain is well-placed to gain from the global economy, as a strong trading nation and home to the world's most successful language. But to maximise those gains we also need to shape the global economy's framework and rules. We are at a far greater advantage in being able to do so as part of a powerful EU voice in organisations such as the WTO.

He continues:

Few would argue that the European single market – the world's largest with a population of 450 million – helps creates thousands of jobs, and makes our economy stronger in the world. There is a need, of course, to make Europe more competitive and more prosperous. I am pleased we have got a European Commission which has made deregulation and economic reform its first priority.

This is not the time or place for a long essay on the WTO, but how does help us if we submerge our voice and our influence in the "common position" of 25 member states – so often dominated by France – in order to talk to other countries about trade, in the forum of the WTO? The "advantage" is illusory.

As for the "European single market", the lie her is so obvious that one wonders why Straw keeps repeating it. Firstly, the market may be open to us, but our market is also open to "them". Before we joined the ten "common market" we had a trading surplus with the EU countries. Since we joined, we have sustained a massive and continuing deficit arising from that infamous "unlevel playing field".

That alone has cost us jobs but those which survive would continue with or without the EU. Would they stop selling us Mercedes if we were not in the EU, and would they stop buying our whiskey?

But says Straw, "our active membership of the EU brings power and influence beyond the economic sphere too." Britain, he says, "could not be playing the important role it is on issues like Iran's nuclear programme or the Middle East Peace Process if we had been outside the EU mainstream."

Er… excuse me? Iran? Does he not know what is happening there, and of the latest failure of the EU3 negotiations? But, undeterred, as they say, Straw adds:

And, on issues such as the recent flawed elections in Ukraine, the reconstruction of the Balkans or on human rights across the world, we carry greater weight if the 25 EU countries can agree on a common position.

A key point both for our membership of the EU and any other multilateral organisations is that you only get out of alliances what you put in. Ten years ago, with the same set of alliances and friends, Britain was powerless in the face of war and genocide in Bosnia, and marginalised and weakened in Europe.

Today, we are leading European work on counter-proliferation, tackling terrorism and illegal immigration, and on reducing poverty in Africa. And in the EU itself, we have achieved Britain's long-term goal of taking in the former communist countries of the East, and opening membership negotiations with Turkey.

Contentious is perhaps the best description of that passage. I am not sure out being in the EU made any difference to the Ukraine. The Balkans? Nato and, especially, the US intervention, sorted that mess out then. Would the EU of today, or with the constitution do any better? How effective is the EU in tackling terrorism? We know it is funding it. Is it really tackling it? And is poverty in Africa being reduced?

Significantly though, Straw does not mention certain things. Where is the mention of Iraq? Were we more powerful there because of our membership of the EU? And what about the tsunami relief effort? Where were the EU ships and helicopters?

From there, however, Straw moves on. "This confident and engaged British approach also worked well on negotiations for the new EU Constitutional Treaty. It was not a Government Minister but France's Le Monde newspaper which said last summer that 'Whatever people say, this text remains a British victory'."

Spin. How many amendments did the UK table at the convention? And how many were accepted? Someone remind me please. Nevertheless, this is a Treaty "which certainly reflects a British vision for Europe," asserts Straw. Perhaps the vision of a blind man with dark glasses at night time. What more can one say? The man does not know his history.

And oh dear, can we be serious? "Agreed by 25 freely-cooperating, independent nations," says Straw. Freely co-operating, they might be, but only in the sense that they are co-operating in giving the EU more power.

And so on it goes. This constitution "limits and fixes the EU's powers". Yes it does, but at a higher level than previously. It makes it "a more flexible and more efficient organisation." I don’t know about "flexible" but we are going to have to deal with this "efficiency" issue at length. It was Churchill who said

No-one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst sort of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Another way of putting that is to say that democracy is inherently inefficient. The "efficiency" that Straw lauds is the euphemism for more qualified majority voting – the antithesis of democracy. Is that an advantage?

"It gives national governments in Europe a stronger grip". No, actually, it does not. It brings the previous independent European Council into the EU maw as a fully-fledged EU institution, making it subject to treaty rules."

It streamlines the European Commission". Wow! That means Britain will not have its own commissioner. That's another advantage?

"It allows for better scrutiny by national parliaments of EU legislation." It doesn’t.

"Crucially, it gives greater coherence to Europe's dealings with the rest of the world on those issues where all its members states are of the same mind." Chance would be a fine thing. When, on any really serious issues, have all the member states been "of the same mind", and what happens when they are not of the same mind?

Hilariously, Straw them pledges to "continue to expose the myths and fabrications created by those who would see Britain isolated from the rest of Europe." Yes. That’s enough myths, ed. But Straw leave the best until last.

For too long, those who seek to isolate Britain from the rest of Europe have laid claim to all the best patriotic tunes. But the consequences of what they advocate should be every patriot's nightmare: a weaker and isolated Britain whose future prosperity and security is put at risk. Pro-Europeans should reclaim the flag and put the patriotic case for the Constitutional Treaty. British power depends on it.

What was that about patriotism being the last resort of the scoundrel? "Pro-Europeans" do not need the Union Flag. They have their own: it is blue with a ring of stars. They can keep it, and keep their hands off ours.

Are we engaged?

The government has officially popped the question for the EU constitution referendum.

As correctly forecast by the Financial Times and others, the country is to be asked: "Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?''

The question is to be included the question in the European Union Bill, which provides for the UK to ratify the treaty subject to the referendum. Chancellor Gordon Brown told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I believe people will see the question as a simple, straightforward question about whether people support the new EU constitution.''

The Tories and Liberal Democrats said the wording of the question seemed straightforward. But, having popped the question, we need to know the answer.. and for that we will have to wait.

The invisible Americans

We’ve heard of the ugly Americans. We’ve heard of the quiet Americans. Now, courtesy of the BBC, we have the invisible Americans.

Correspondent Rachel Harvey on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning gave an update on the situation in Banda Aceh, one month after the tsunami. Over the sound of a low-flying helicopter, she describes the relief effort, saying that:

It was the arrival of foreign military hardware in Aceh which really made the difference. Helicopters fly desperately needed supplies to areas which are still inaccessible by any other means. But there’s been much talk about how long the foreign military presence should remain here.

She then goes on to interview Brigadier David Chalmers, "commander in charge of Australian, New Zealand and British forces involved in the relief effort," before driving down the road which leads to the south west coast, the area that was closest to the epicentre of the earthquake.

And that's it. The Americans – they’re invisible, lumped in as part of the "foreign military presence". Now read the posting on Diplomad. We've said it before: these Beebies are sick.

The penny is finally dropping?

So says Daniel Hannan in the op-ed in The Daily Telegraph today, referring to the commission’s statement that Michael Howard’s immigration policy would breach EU rules.

"Thirty-two years after we joined, we are at last waking up to the nature of our subjection before Brussels," he says. "It was always going to take a big issue to jolt us from our narcolepsy, and immigration is that issue."

I am not so sure. It is after all only the Telegraph and the Mail that is running with the issue. The BBC has dropped the subject as fast as it decently could and is now running wall-to-wall Guantanamo Bay. There was not one mention of immigration on the BBC's "agenda-setting" Today programme and none of the other broadsheets have covered it, or even The Times.

Even if he is preaching to the converted though, Hannan makes some good points. "It comes as a bit of a shock to find out that the common immigration policy already exists," he writes – even though it should not be a shock at all. He and his colleagues, after all, are paid to keep an eye on the legislation going through the EU system. That is what MEPs are supposed to do.

Never mind – he didn’t notice, and neither, it seems did anyone else in the Conservative Party hierarchy. After all, immigration was one of those "red lines" that Tony Blair kept swanking about. Hadn't the home affairs spokesmen of all parties - even the Lib Dems - made a big issue of keeping our border controls? Yet it now turns out that, although we may indeed keep our physical frontier checks, we have ceded the right to decide who is entitled to cross them.

Hannan nevertheless reminds us that "this is a pattern that one sees again and again in the EU." New initiatives go from being unthinkable to being inevitable without any intervening stage. It happened with the euro and the social chapter. It is happening again with the European army, he writes:

You hadn't heard about the European army? It is small, to be sure, but it certainly exists. Uniformed EU troops have been deployed in Macedonia, the Congo and, most recently, Bosnia. They are answerable, not to any national capital or combination of national capitals, but to the EU's own politico-military structures. Yet politicians continue to speak, rather touchingly, of "the need to oppose a common EU defence policy".

I am so glad he has mentioned the European army. Our regular reader will know that this Blog has been banging on about the subject of defence integration, virtually since we started up, most recently on Monday.

But when was the last opposition debate on the steady march of European defence integration? When, if ever? There has, in fact, been total silence on this issue from the Conservative ranks. Anyhow, so it goes on, says Hannan:

We are making a big fuss about the EU proposal to have its own diplomatic service, but it's already up and running. I recently visited the EU embassy in Lima (or the "European Delegation" as it is still coyly known). It employed many more staff than any of the member state embassies, and with good reason: it has assumed almost all their functions.

When I asked the Euro-diplomats what was left for the national missions to do, they grinned at each other and mumbled something about promoting tourism. Yet I'll bet that, when the EU formally calls its delegations embassies, there will be howls of outrage.

The same goes for the European police force ("Europol"), the EU prosecuting magistracy ("Eurojust"), tax harmonisation, human rights questions. In each case, Euro-integrationists pursue a well-tried four-stage strategy. Stage One is mock-incredulity: "No one is proposing any such thing. It just shows what loons these sceptics are that they could even imagine it." Stage two is bravado: "Well all right, it's being proposed, but don't worry: we have a veto and we'll use it." Stage Three is denial: "Look, we may have signed this, but it doesn't really mean what the critics are claiming." Stage Four is resignation: "No point complaining now, old man: it's all been agreed."

Part of the problem, says Hannan, is that, 32 years on, we still have not grasped the nature of EU power. Because the Treaty of Rome is called a treaty, we imagine that it simply binds its signatory states under international law. In reality, though – he tells us - the Treaty of Rome created a new legal order, directly applicable within the jurisdictions of the member nations.

Another part of the problem, I would venture, is the wilful refusal of the Conservatives to discuss the issue, the paranoid fear of even whispering the "E-word", the rigour with which EU issues are excised from policy documents by a hierarchy that is terrified about creating "another Euro-row".

Protest as you may about my being unkind to the Conservatives, but that is what happens, is happening. They are running scared, frightened of their own shadows. The "E-word" hangs over them like an albatross, and they shuffle about their tasks, casting fearful glances over their shoulders, lest the spectre might alight.

Anyhow, writes Hannan – on cue - to return to the case in point. "Let us ponder," he says, "what would happen if a future Tory government implemented the policy that Mr Howard adumbrated on Monday."

Let us imagine that someone entered the country illegally and that, several months later, he was discovered by the immigration service and ordered to leave. Let us further conjecture that he, like many sans papiers in this situation, suddenly claimed to be the victim of political persecution in his home country.

David Davis, as home secretary, would order his repatriation on the ground that we accepted as refugees only those who had been so identified by the UNHCR. The illicit entrant would at this stage take his case to judicial review and the judge, as things stand, would uphold EU law and order that he remain in Britain pending the assessment of his case.

The judge would act in this way, not simply because judges enjoy overturning deportation orders (although they do), but because he would be obliged, under Sections 2 and 3 of the 1972 European Communities Act, to give precedent to EU rules over our own parliamentary statutes. That is why, for example, the Metric Martyrs lost their case. Although a 1985 Act of Parliament explicitly allowed traders to use either metric or imperial units, an EU directive said otherwise, and our appeal court was obliged to give precedence to the latter.

"Mr Howard," says Hannan, "understands this very well. Not only is he a lawyer himself but, as home secretary, he clashed almost weekly with our judges - not least on immigration cases. He must have known that the EU would react as it did to his proposals: indeed, I suspect he was banking on it."

That is not what I heard – nor indeed was it the impression given in the Telegraph yesterday. By all accounts, Howard did not know – he genuinely did not realise quite how much had been ceded to Brussels. The commission’s statement came as a shock to him and his team. Had he known that his immigration policy was going to precipitate a "Euro-row" he would have run a mile.

Hannan, however, knows different – thinks he does, or perhaps is pretending he does. “He (Howard) has said before that he wants to take powers back from Brussels…”. Yes… reluctantly, grudging, dragged every inch of the way, and then only as long as the policy is kept in the cupboard and not talked about. Did you hear Howard talk about the new fishing policy?

Says Hannan, the issue on which he was planning to go into battle - the recovery of our fishing grounds - seemed rather marginal to most inland voters. Not exactly. Most people, inland or otherwise, care deeply about the fishing industry. It is, in a sense, a "litmus" issue. It is marginal in the Conservative Party only because it has been marginalised by the Conservative Party. But now, Hannan avers, Howard has found a casus belli where the country will be behind him.

Yea, right. For sure, that's what the words say on the front page of the Telegraph. Howard is quoted as saying:

A Conservative government will bring back control over asylum from Brussels to Britain, where it belongs. We will negotiate opt-outs from any directives which conflict with our asylum and immigration policy. The British government should control Britain's borders - and with the Conservatives it will. People will have a clear choice at the next election: unlimited immigration with Mr Blair or limited, controlled immigration with the Conservatives.

If that was true, it would indeed be a cause for rejoicing but, in the context, it is a back-foot response. What else could Howard have said, having been so comprehensively caught out?

Hannan is more optimistic - or mischevious? "It has been a besetting British vice that we ignore what is happening on the Continent until almost too late," he concludes. "But, when we finally rouse ourselves, our resolve can be an awesome thing. I sense that this may be such a moment," he says.

I wish he was right. I hope he is right. But I am not so sure...

An independent inquiry (not!)

There are several congressional inquiries into the oil for food scandal and, in particular, into the UN’s part in it. There is now one particular minnow who has been found guilty, is facing anything up to 28 years in gaol and is (if I may mix my metaphors) singing like a canary.

Then there is the UN’s own Committee of Inquiry, described as independent and chaired by Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a paid up member of the great and the good, holder of various positions in the Institute of International Economics, the American Assembly and the American Council on Germany. The man, in short, who will bring the tortuous and secretive UN structure into the light of day, make it transparent and accountable, and restore its reputation. (One may ask when precisely it had such a very high reputation, but that, as they say, is another story.)

There is just one snag. Mr Volcker lists a number of his positions on the Independent Inquiry’s website but he seems to have forgotten one: his directorship on the United Nations Association of the United States of America, which was current in the 2003-4 report.

The UNA-USA is, not to put too fine a point on it, a cheerleader for the United Nations in America. Kofi Annan spoke in it praise on May 8, 2002:

“There are United Nations Associations in many other countries, but this one is unique – both in the challenges it faces and in the energy and resources it devotes to tackling them. From our perspective, it is hard to think of any work more valuable than what you do to improve the understanding of United Nations issues in our host country.”

Good of him to remember that the US is the host country. Mr Annan and his assistants have been known to forget how much it contributes to the UN’s existence.

On the other hand, the achievements of the UNA-USA have not been conspicuous. The UN is seriously unpopular among most Americans and the food for oil scandal together with the slowness with which Volcker’s committee has been working, as well as Volcker’s preliminary announcement that his report will not produce a “smoking gun” are not going to be helpful in changing that attitude.

According to Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation

“UNA-USA has played a lead role in defending the UN’s response to the Oil-for-Food scandal and the embattled leadership of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It has also prominently defended the reputation of the Oil-for-Food Independent Inquiry Committee. To a great degreee, UNA-USA has acted as the UN’s and the Volcker’s Committee’s chief cheerleader with regard to the Oil-for-Food controversy.”

Well, that’s just fine and dandy. But can a director of such an organization be said to be an independent person? And can he, therefore, be said to be chairing an Independent Committee of Inquiry? Answers on the back of a stamp, please.

We got there first

Just every now and gain – but not too often, we like to preen ourselves at being ahead of the game. Thus it was last Sunday that we ran a piece on the spat between Poland and Spain over the share-out of the eagerly awaited EU budget settlement.

Here we are now on the Wednesday and the same story is being carried by the Financial Times, a newspaper which, itself, is often in front of the pack.

The additional detail, however, makes the story worth revisiting, but the essence remains the same. Friction between Poland and Spain, says the FT – trailing in our wake - is jeopardising the efforts of poorer EU members to fight for a larger EU budget, to the delight of the six countries that pay more to Brussels than they get back.

Both Spain and Poland are big net beneficiaries from the EU's €100bn annual budget, and were working together to fight for a big regional aid programme in the next budget, which runs from 2007-13. But when it became clear that the net contributers to the EU budget, including Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, wanted to divert development aid away from the so-called Club Med countries of southern Europe to the new members in the east, the alliance between Spain and Poland became strained.

What is interesting is the attempt to paper over the cracks, with Jaroslaw Pietras, Poland's European affairs minister, insisting that Warsaw and Madrid remain close, if abrasive, allies, but if the EU's aid budget shrinks, Poland will fight hard to protect its share of the money. "The Spanish have to recognise that without satisfying our interests they won't have our support," he says. That’s fighting talk, if ever I heard it.

In 2003, says the FT, the emerging Madrid-Warsaw axis, was the talk of Brussels diplomats. But the election of José Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in Spain last year was followed by a bust-up with Poland as he sought to rebuild ties with France and Germany and fight for Spain's interests in the face of impending cuts in its EU funding.

Spain's new foreign policy, we are told, spelled the end of the alliance with Poland over the EU constitution, where the two middleweight countries (both have populations of about 40m) had fought to protect preferential voting weights that gave them a disproportionate influence in EU decision-making. Tensions came to a head before Christmas when attempts to rekindle the alliance - this time in negotiations over the next seven-year EU budget - collapsed.

The flashpoint ahead of the EU December summit occurred when the Dutch EU presidency drafted a communiqué saying that most of the EU's regional aid should be concentrated on new member states, mainly from central and eastern Europe. Spain, predictably, fought the proposal.

"The least you can expect is a degree of loyalty," fumed a Polish diplomat, pointing out that Spain was much wealthier than eastern Europe and had enjoyed high levels of EU support for nearly 20 years.

The FT cites José Ignacio Torreblanca, a senior analyst at the Real Instituto Elcano, Spain's leading foreign policy institute, saying that frictions were almost inevitable over the budget negotiations. "If the contribution of member states is capped at 1 per cent of gross domestic product, as Germany wants, the battle for the spoils will become a zero-sum game. "What Poland wins in structural funds will be Spain's loss. If the budget is increased, there will be more money for all," he said.

The FT thinks that officials in Warsaw may now strike a deal with the net payers: agreeing to a smaller EU budget capped at 1 per cent of GDP in exchange for an agreement not to cut aid to the poorest regions of the Union from the level they would receive if budget contributions were set at 1.14 per cent of GDP.

The split between Poland and Spain over the budget is a gift to the net contributors, which want to drive a wedge between net recipients of EU funding in the new member states and the Club Med.

And there it rests for the moment. The chief Spanish EU negotiator on budgetary matters is a former ambassador to Poland and has good relations with his counterparts. But Warsaw remains sulky in spite of attempts by Spanish diplomats in Brussels to patch up the relationship. What fun!

Down to the Yanks!

According to a recently issued Associated Press report, EU talks with Iran over the issue of nuclear enrichment are now totally deadlocked.

Iran is refusing to consider scrapping its enrichment programme, even though it acknowledges that the programme makes no economic sense.

This is gleaned from a confidential document obtained by AP, which summarises the last meeting between representatives of France, Britain, Germany and Iran. It states that Tehran intends to maintain its enrichment program, whereas the European powers continue to insist on its "cessation" or "dismantlement."

Iran has publicly insisted it only seeks to make low-grade enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, but the summary of the last meeting on 17 January in Geneva appears to blur that assertion. It says that Iran privately acknowledged what Washington and its allies have argued all along - that as an oil rich country it does not need nuclear energy.

"Iran recognises explicitly that its fuel cycle program cannot be justified on economic grounds," the document says. Nevertheless, the government has insisted that it will only suspend its programme until talks end, either with or without an agreement. No progress whatsoever has been made on the Europeans' insistence that the temporary suspension be turned into a pledge to permanently mothball all enrichment plans and activities.

"The two positions cannot coexist," said a diplomats from a West European nation. "If the impasse cannot be resolved, then there will be no solution."

No solution as far as the EU three go, that is. It looks like it's now down to the Yanks.

A European fantasy

With approval having been given for construction of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system, two consortia are now vying for a contract to deploy and operate the equipment They both submitted final bids today in a tight contest expected to be decided next month.

The two bidders are iNavSat, made up of European aerospace giant EADS, France's Thales, and Britain's Inmarsat, and Eurely, made up of France's Alcatel, Italy's Finmeccanica, and Spain's AENA and Hispasat. A decision on which group would awarded the contract will be taken in mid-February and likely made public in early March.

Amazingly, both bidders list the US Aerospace giant Boeing as one of their non-European partners, a bizarre twist, especially in the case of EADS, Europe’s largest aircraft manufacturer and the biggest shareholder in aircraft maker Airbus Industries.

Only recently, these two giants have been at loggerheads over a subsidy dispute, involving the EU and the US government in WTO proceedings, which is now to be negotiated bilaterally.

The iNavSat company is backed by about 40 companies that are expected to provide equipment and services, and they include Boeing and Lockheed Martin of the US, and CASC of China.

It is a measure of the fantasy world in which this project exists that either contractor believes that Boeing could – or would be allowed to – participate in a project which has serious military and strategic implications for the US.

Already the US Congress has expressed serious reservations about the transfer of military technology to European countries and has even blocked transfers to the UK because of fears of "leakage" to other European countries, and thence to China.

With China an active participant in the Galileo project, it seems inconceivable that Boeing can be an active partner – unless, of course, the idea is that the US company should furnish "self-destruct" micro-chips to shut the system down when it starts threatening US interests. Now there's a thought.

Groundhog ministers

We are going to have to re-evaluate Michael Gove, never this Blog’s favourite columnist, but for once he has written an intelligent and thoughtful piece in The Times today - this one about the situation in Iran and the European obsession about demonising George W. Bush.

Gove starts off by mentioning my collegue Christopher Booker’s new book which he describes as "his new masterpiece." This is The Seven Basic Plots, Why We Tell Stories and, for that, Gove can do no wrong.

But the point Gove makes is valid. Every year, he writes, more than a million books are published, thousands of films are released and hundreds of new television series are aired. But behind all this creativity lies a wonderful simplicity. Apparently every story we tell can be classified as one of just seven archetypes. Christopher Booker painstakingly but compellingly explains why the power of the human imagination invariably finds its expression in variants of these templates.

Seven plots may seem a limited bank on which to draw, Gove continues, but today’s commentators on foreign affairs don’t need to stretch themselves even that far. In a world grown ever more complex and insecure, there’s still only one basic plot that they like to run. The Madness of George W:

Whatever the crisis, whichever part of the world our attention is grabbed by, whatever the range of options available, the same horror story is churned out. A peaceful world waits in fear for the next terrible attack perpetrated by the monster in the West Wing.

One does get terribly weary of this, watching day after day the tedious, stilted commentary, all directed towards that one theme, and Gove is right to draw attention to it. But he then links it with Iran. In the past week, he writes, attention has focused once more on Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weaponry. He continues:

In a saner climate, sober questions would now be asked about the danger posed by a state that already invests a hundred million dollars a year supporting the terrorists of Hezbollah getting its hands on nuclear devices. There would be a relentless focus on the requirement to ensure muscular action which could prevent the men who have put a price on Salman Rushdie’s head acquiring the means to terrorise millions more.

And there would an urgent analysis of the dynamics within Iran that allow a clique of Islamist hardliners to pursue their nuclear ambitions while the majority of their countrymen face increasing economic hardship and political oppression.

But instead of looking nervously towards Tehran, the leaders of Western opinion appear far more worried that America has noticed there is a problem. And may actually do something about it.The prevailing attitude among opinion formers is evident in the reporting of Jack Straw's visit to Washington, where it is apparently hoped that he will "exercise a restraining hand" on the US Administration.

The wishful thinking which attends the Foreign Secretary’s trip reflects the lack of sophistication in European thinking on international security matters.

On this Blog, we have questioned Straw’s drift towards the European camp, and the word in informed circles in Westminster is that Straw is not indulging in "wishful thinking". He is deliberately taking an anti-American line on this and on China to distance himself from the UK's support of Bush in Iraq.

This is a purely tactical - i.e., unprincipled - ploy to assuage the anti-war wing of his own Party, and to earn brownie points with anti-war campaigners out in the country. There is a general election to fight, after all.

Gove, however, notes that, "among Europeans it is a commonplace to assert that the Bush Administration is a crude beast, incapable of approaching any problem without either reaching for its Bible or its gun."

But, in truth, he says, "it is the Europeans who respond to every situation in clichéd fashion, while the American Government exercises both intellectual freshness and tactical flexibility. Europe’s principal negotiators, Mr Straw, Joschka Fischer and Michel Barnier are Groundhog Ministers, repeating the same policy of appeasing oppressors which has got us nowhere in the past, either with Tehran or with other tyrannies."

I do like that – "groundhog ministers". It fits so well.

"By contrast," writes our Gove, "in and around the US Administration there is a preparedness to appreciate both the urgency of the threat and the requirement to think imaginatively."

The energy with which oil and gas-rich Iran has pursued a uranium enrichment programme, as well as the persistence it has deployed towards evading scrutiny, not to mention the nature of the technology it has acquired, all point inescapably towards Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

But the automatic assumption that the lumbering Americans are now bound to react by crude military means reflects European prejudice more than global reality. America has to retain the capacity to act militarily, in extremis, but a far more promising route is the political path. Not the European option of political elite coddling political elite, but the more radical and hopeful course of encouraging democracy. Within Iran discontent with the mullahs is growing.

He points out that the Iranian people have been living with an Islamic revolution for the past 25 years and all it has brought is poverty, oppression and the crushing of the human spirit.

Yet, among the Iranian people there is a yearning to break free, expressed in surprisingly pro-American ways. There were spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity with the victims of 9/11 which were brutally put down by the ruling elite. But agitation for democratic change continues in the face of imprisonment and execution.

The advent of free elections in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the prospect that fellow Shias across the border, such as the moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, can enjoy the fruits of democracy is profoundly encouraging for the Iranian opposition. And what is so profoundly depressing for them is the continued indulgence of their oppressors by the West.

That is why President Bush's inspirational inaugural address matters so much. Just as Ronald Reagan’s condemnation of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire gave Soviet dissidents hope that they were not alone, and thus the courage to fight on, so America's delineation of Iran as an "outpost of tyranny" gives hope to the democratic opposition in that country. And we can give much more.

Broadcasters such as Radio Free Europe and trade union movements such as Solidarity, backed by the West, were instrumental in the fall of communism 20 years ago. In the past few years the West has directly encouraged nascent democratic movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine.

There are many routes we can follow to give hope to the people of Iran, remove the oppression they labour under and reduce the threat we face. Provided we remember the single most important story of our time. The same story we saw enacted in the shipyards of Gdansk and Wenceslas Square. The story which ended before it could even begin in Tiananmen Square. And the story which, after President Bush’s words last Thursday, has never been more relevant than now.

So says Gove and so say we all. A little less prejudice and a little more intelligence is called for and, as my colleague (Szamuley) has noted, it is about time we recognised who our friends really are.

Another day, another agency

From the European Maritime Safety Agency, to the European Medicines Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Defence Agency, there are now seventeen European agencies (give or take a few) under the aegis of the EU commission, all charged with implementing specific aspects of community policy.

Their increasing proliferation symbolises the growing status of the EU as a fully-fledged government and now there is to be another one. A new EU "Fundamental Rights Agency" will be up and running by 1 January 2007, justice commissioner Franco Frattini has pledged. Proposals to set up the new agency are to be published by the EU commission in May, to be overseen by the Luxembourg and UK EU presidencies this year.

The new body will emerge from an "extended mandate" to the already existing European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia. Styled as "Europe’s rights watchdogs" it will use provisions written into the EU constitution – the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights – as EU justice powers are expected to expand.

Therein lies the rub. This agency is very much a child of the EU constitution yet, unless you know differently, the constitution hasn’t exactly been ratified yet. But here we are with the commission already making plans, as if it is a done deal. But then, what is a little thing like ratification between friends?

So who are the masters now?

Proclaims the main front-page headline of The Daily Telegraph: "Brussels: We’ll halt Howard’s curb on migrants". How gratifying it is to have confirmed on the front page of the Telegraph today who is really in charge of this country.

The EU commission, we are told, has "threatened" to block Michael Howard’s "tough immigration controls" if the Tories win the election. This really brings home the realities of power in this our former independent nation state.

"Brussels" has declared that a raft of directives already signed commit the UK to conforming with EU policy and, in particular, prevent it from withdrawing from the 1951 United Nations Convention on refugees.

What is specially significant is the comment that, "Europe’s intervention in what has become a major issue in the election campaign took Westminster aback. MPs and officials were unaware of how much national sovereignty on immigration and asylum had been transferred to Brussels".

That is a staggering statement and it takes David Rennie in a page 9 "analysis" to explain what has happened. "How did Britain end up binding its immigration policy to the European Union, so tightly that - to hear the European Commission talk – it is already too late for Michael Howard to throw the process into reverse, even if he is elected prime minister?", Rennie asks.

The chilling response to his own rhetorical question is: "…bit by bit, without great public controversy and with the full agreement of British officials led largely by David Blunkett".

That is the way the system works, right across the board… bit by bit. A steady stream of measures, each of them complex and obscure, building incrementally. The final destination is never declared openly and each measure is treated separately, until the project is complete, and the trap springs shut.

Apologists for the EU will claim that the member states have approved the measures, so this is not "Brussels" imposing the measures. It is simply "sovereign nation states co-operating together".

But what this demonstrates is that a group of officials and one minister can effectively work together to take over the agenda without the bulk of MPs or officials being aware of what is going on.

This, in part, has to be a reflection of the reluctance of the Conservative Party to confront the dreaded "E" word, which means that the issues have gone largely undiscussed. Now, to coin a phrase, chickens are coming home to roost.

But what is really going to set the political agenda on fire is that simple statement by Rennie: "…it is already too late for Michael Howard to throw the process into reverse, even if he is elected prime minister". The commission is making it very clear that it is now the master – the general election is an irrelevance.

Cut red tape or suffer decline

Latest of the long line of critics, the government’s own "red-tape czar" is calling on the EU to improve its business regulation or face long-term economic decline, according to The Times today.

This was from David Arculus, the chairman of the Better Regulation Task Force, speaking at a conference organised by the Institute for Economic Affairs in London. He then spoiled it all by saying that the new EU commission represented "the best chance of change that Europe has ever had".

Descending even further into unreality, he then declared that the policies that the government had pursued to lower the burden on business should be spread across the EU. Strange how no one happens to have noticed the burden diminishing.

To achieve this stupendous feat, Arculus suggested that more bureaucrats might need to be hired, to carry out "high-quality impact assessments" on all EU proposals. New EU legislation should be easier to amend and there should be mandatory consideration of alternatives to legislation, he said.

He then called for an independent organisation to monitor and audit red tape and said: "There need to be sufficient commission civil servants (sic) to carry out these functions and to progress the simplification agenda."

Asked what would happen if red tape continued to grow, Mr Arculus said: "I think the consequences for Europe are extremely serious." Europe’s economy could decline to half the size of the US over the next 20 years if the tide of regulation was not stemmed, he said.

That, of course, it the way it is going to be – if the EU lasts that long. Regulation is not primarily a matter of procedures but of attitude and culture. The EU commission regulates in the way it does because that is the only way it knows. It is incapable of doing it any other way.

Attempts at a new Franco-Russian amity

Michel Barnier, French Foreign Minister, was in Moscow the other day, having talks with various people and opening a new building for a French high school. There was much talk of the ancient Franco-Russian amity, Diderot in Catherine the Great’s court (where the unfortunate man caught cold and died), Russophile French writers, Francophile Russian writers and so on.

Curiously, there was no mention of a particularly important episode in Franco-Russian relations, the first Great Patriotic War of which Russians still speak with justified pride. In the late autumn of 1812 Napoleon, after a series of swift victories (and a series of treaties and alliances beforehand) took Moscow as the Russian army retreated.

While the French army occupied the deserted city, a still unexplained fire started and the place burned down. Napoleon found that his army was over-extended and started a painful retreat back to western Europe. Harassed by the Russian peasants who formed themselves into guerrilla bands, pursued by the regrouped Russian army, the Grande Armée suffered grievous losses.

The Russian army, on the other hand, pursued the French across Europe. By spring 1814, with Tsar Alexander I at the head, it was entering Paris. No mean achievement that. (Of course, it must be noted that it then went back and spent thirty years fighting the Chechen leader Shamil in the mountains of the Caucasus. Plus ça change …)

Anyway, none of this was mentioned. Instead, M Barnier talked much of the future Franco-Russian amity. It is, apparently, part of the French world view that there should be many centres of power, not one. Fair enough, but somehow, when it comes to real negotiations, European foreign policy gets forgotten and it all becomes French foreign policy.

M Barnier is very anxious that certain East European states do not get too uppity with Russia any more than they do with France. He intends to go to Kiïv later this week to tell the newly sworn-in President Yuschenko this.

“We want to tell the Ukrainians what I already told Poland last week: you have to respoect Russia. We can’t have tensions between Ukraine and Russia, because we need Russia.”

Who we are, is not clear, but presumably the knowledge that Russia possesses a great deal of gas and oil, cannot be too far from M Barnier’s mind. It is good to know that countries fighting for freedom and democracy will always have a stauch ally in France.

Actually, President Yuschenko or President Kwasniewski do not need lessons from French politicians on Russia and how to deal with it. Yuschenko is going to Moscow immediately to discuss various problems. What M Barnier proposes to do, should either of those countries, or any other post-communist state does not respect Russia, is rather a mystery.

Still, this is all of a piece with west European attitudes to that much-vaunted European concept of freedom. President Putin’s policy is ever more autocratic and his interference in Ukraine, as we have pointed out before, was the first, so far unsuccessful, step in a new power game that he intends to play in the former Soviet Union. It would, perhaps, be more sensible and more ethical, to wait a little before rushing in there and trying to force various countries to submit to this.

Another problem is that as between the two, Putin, seems to be leaning towards Germany. There are stronger economic ties there; Germany buys far more of the gas and oil; and Putin speaks German, having learnt it as a serving KGB officer and is a personal friend of Chancellor Schröder’s.

The French government is trying hard to create various structures and links but as one expert at the French Institute for International Relations said, “they don’t have that much to talk about”.

On the other hand, Ivan Safranchuk at the Moscow-based Centre for Defence Information (guess who they are reporting to), thinks that

“Germans are regarded as hard-working and efficient. But the French have strategic vision in the same way that Russians do.”

Largely, it is a vision that involves close relations with some very nasty dictators and selling arms to them. These dictators usually happen to be anti-western, which may suit the Russians. Does it really suit the French?

Ratification roundup

Two disparate sources, reporting about two adjoining countries, on separate days, end up telling basically the same story about the EU constitution ratification.

Firstly, our old friend Xinhuanet tells us that the majority of Czechs are not interested in it. The Hospodárske noviny daily, in Slovakia, meanwhile says that the public know little about the constitutional treaty and discussion about it is insufficient.

In the first instance, a survey carried out by the Czech Social Research and Study Center suggests that the 86 percent of the population had no interest in the constitution, two thirds said they had heard of it but knew nothing more than that; one in five had never heard of it and only 17 percent had limited knowledge of it.

As for the Czech Republic's entry into the EU last year, three quarters said their lives had not changed at all, nearly one fifth said their lives became worse, and only 5 percent said their lives had improved.

In Slovakia, though, the situation is subtly different. Politicians themselves are saying that there is no need to explain the treaty to the population, as it will be ratified by parliament.

But public opinion polls suggest that public interest in a referendum is growing. There is also comment that, while accession to the EU was accompanied by a massive information campaign in Slovakia, very little is being said about the new treaty.

Martin Urmanič, spokesman for Pál Csáky, the deputy prime minister for European Affairs, is saying that the government will not allocate extra financial resources for an explanatory campaign, leaving the EU commission a clear field to pursue its own "information campaign" on the issue.

Csáky's spokesman thinks the text of the constitution is too complicated and it will be difficult to explain its core messages. However he offers a solution to the public: "Whoever is interested and has some time can read the text on the Internet at the website of the Government Office".

At the opposite side of the Union, Spain's referendum campaign is in full flow, although anti-constitutional campaigners have managed to prevail on the country’s electoral commission to force the government to change its aggressively pro-constitution slogan.

Undeterred, socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is actively defending the constitution, arguing that it was good for the European economy and civil liberties. Working with the leader of Portugal's opposition Socialist Party, Jose Socrates, the pair is jointly pushing out supportive opinion pieces in popular newspapers.

Socrates is fulsome in his praise for the constitution, declaring that: "It is much more than a simple legal text… It is the result of much effort, of a long historical process and, above all, of the will of the European people to advance together towards a common project."

Spanish finance minister Pedro Solbes is also getting in on the laudatory act, telling his own party: "We are entering a new phase in Europe, (introducing) elements of greater efficiency but which are also more humane," adding that the constitution would create a "more fraternal Europe".

At the heart of the evil empire though, in darkest Brussels, Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has backed away from a referendum, having lost the majority he needs to get it through parliament.

Over the weekend, his social-liberal coalition partner, the Spirit party, made a political U-turn and decided to drop its previous support for the referendum, claiming that it was concerned that it would be hijacked by the "far-right" Vlaams Belang party campaigning against Turkish membership of the EU.

More likely, they are concerned that, with the VB part opposing the constitution, there might be a chance of the referendum going the wrong way, leaving the ruling parties to adopt the standard “European” solution of never having a referendum unless the result is already assured.

In Brussels also, the EU parliament is also doing its best to conform with European democratic "norms", with DUP MEP Jim Allister complaining that anti-constitution voices are being discriminated against.

The toy parliament's constitutional affairs committee is sending a delegation of MEPs to Westminster today and no one who opposed the constitution has been included.

The delegation is to hold discussions with the House of Commons select committee on Europe and the corresponding House of Lords committee. Allister claims that the delegation has been deliberately gerrymandered to suppress the voice of dissent on the committee.

He says: "I'd like the Westminster MP’s to know that they are only being permitted to hear the voice of Europhiles. So much for the era of equality, democracy and rights which supporters of the Constitution claim it will guarantee."

To add to the confusion, we have another pro-constitution campaign. After the "no", the "yes" and the "yes-no" groups setting up, we now have the "Yes-buts".

They are fronted by an organisation which calls itself the "Newropeans" and boast for their patrons a galaxy of European political figures, including Chirac and Prodi.

They have written an "open letter to civil society leaders of the European Union", asking for support in launching a "large trans-European campaign" entitled "Yes to the EU Constitution But with Democratization next on the EU Agenda". More simply said, it claims, the slogan is: "YES to Europe, BUT with Democracy on top!".

Its aim would be to "convince voters to support the EU constitution by showing them that a sufficient mobilisation, around this motto and concrete actions, can force the EU leadership to be serious about an EU democratisation starting now."

With all that democracy flowing around, it is hard to see how the constitution can fail to succeed.

Cut to the chase

When confronted with mounds of paperwork that has to be read in a hurry, one of the tricks of the trade is to read the first paragraph and the last of the piece you have to review. That will often give you the sense of what you are dealing with.

Never more so is this true that a puff for trade secretary Patricia Hewitt in the Guardian today. She is sounding off about how the EU must end world poverty to win respect. The first paragraph reads:

The EU should win over critics by abandoning protectionism and taking the side of campaigners fighting to secure justice for the developing world, the trade and industry secretary has told the Guardian.

Now cut to the last paragraph, which reads:

It may be a tough battle. Last June the EU agreed to begin scrapping export subsidies as part of the Doha round. But, she admits, "we have not yet named one".

QED… hope springs eternal, maybe, but with the EU, the reality is always somewhat different. You really don't need to read the rest.

What a shame

On the BBC World Service I espied the following headline: Mars launches Europe-wide review. And why not, thought I. There have been plenty of Mars probes sent from earth. Clearly, those clever little Martians noticed the fact that there is a peculiar new political constellation on earth and thought they would have a look-see, probably in order to avoid making the same mistakes.

Alas, no little green men to be seen anywhere. It is merely the large confectioner Mars re-examining its European, particularly British operations. As things stand, there may well be rather large cut-backs. But no Martians.

By the way, would it not be good idea to rename the Field of Marathon, so nearly flooded by the Greeks in the pre-Olympic eagerness, to the Field of Snickers? I am told one confectionery has now replaced the other.

No plan B

There is a flurry of articles in the Financial Times today on the EU constitution, with the paper speculating – probably correctly – that it will not be endorsed by parliament until early next year in a new signal that Tony Blair wants to delay confronting public scepticism.

"Whitehall insiders," we are told, are saying that the Bill to ratify the treaty is not now expected to become law until December or January, as the Tories gear up to challenge the government in parliament.

The Bill is to be published this week or next although Foreign Office officials had originally been pressing for it to have its first reading before Christmas so it would reach the statute book before the general election expected in May.

They had wanted to avoid a parliamentary clash overshadowing Britain's EU presidency in the second half of the year. Now it looks as if the debate will be running through the course of the presidency, giving the opposition plenty of opportunity to air its objections, at exactly the time Blair was hoping to make his pitch for the benefits of the EU.

Ian Taylor, a pro-EU Tory MP, is clearly not happy. As befits his ilk, he has condemned Blair for agreeing to a referendum in the first place. "Because Blair's not been robust enough, because he's been dilatory and because he's held back, he's got this curse hanging over him," he says.

Accompanying this news piece, Cathy Newman writes that the "Stakes high for Blair as he looks for place in history," reminding us that it is less than 18 months to go until the referendum.
Yet, despite the scale of the challenge ahead, she writes, Blair appears to be in no rush to make good his oft- repeated promise to make the case for Britain's place in Europe.

Despite the delay in progressing the ratification Bill, the prescient Newman observes, "this time the prime minister cannot run away from the issue. The referendum will be held in May or June next year, and if the public votes against, Britain's relationship with Europe would be plunged into crisis."

Says Labour peer, Lord Radice, "Majority opinion is very shallow and clearly could be turned around by a very strong campaign. But we will need an absolutely terrific campaign. "Blair will have to put his life and soul into this issue as he hasn't really done on Europe."

The government's attack will be three-pronged, focusing on how the new treaty is vital for an enlarged EU, how the anti-Europeans have been peddling misinformation about what it entails", and how ratification is essential to safeguard Britain's place in Europe.

And never fear. Denis MacShame says the government has got a secret weapon up its sleeve. "These are the facts on Europe. For years people have just had the myths, propaganda and the anti-European arguments from the isolationists. For the next 18 months the facts about Europe will be put to people and I am confident they will not want to isolate Britain from Europe."

That brings us to the third FT article, this one by George Parker, headlined: "Seeking positives from a negative". It tells us that "There is no Plan B if Britain says ‘No’ to the European Union constitution, at least not officially."

But across Europe thoughts are turning to how the EU would manage a separation - or divorce - from its most truculent big member state. For the EU to have a fully formed Plan B before national referendums would be "political suicide", according to one senior EU official, an insult to voters and evidence of Brussels arrogance.

But behind the scenes, lawyers and politicians are conjuring up their own contingency plans. On one thing they agree: a British No would create a political crisis for the EU. The constitutional treaty must be ratified by all 25 member states for it to come into force, a process that must be completed by the autumn of 2006. Ten countries, including Britain, are to ratify by referendum.

Not only is Britain the most likely country to say No, according to opinion polls, but its size and political climate make it a particularly difficult case to deal with. In the event that other countries vote No, EU diplomats can usually agree on what happens next.

If France or the Netherlands voted No this spring the constitution would be "dead" in the words of one diplomat from Luxembourg, holder of the EU presidency. Both countries are founding members of the club; a No by either would force a big rethink of the treaty.

If a small, non-founding member said 'No' - such as Denmark or the Czech Republic - the voters would simply be asked the question again in the hope they change their minds, possibly after a few tweaks to address national concerns. However, the chances of British voters being asked the same question a second time seem slim, given the deeply Eurosceptic political and media climate.

If by the spring of 2006 most other EU members have ratified the treaty, diplomats in Brussels say the pressure on the UK would be intense. Legally the situation is clear: without unanimous ratification, the treaty would not come into force. But politically Britain would come under intense pressure to let other members press ahead under the new constitution.

In the end the answer to the British question would be political, not legal. The most likely scenario would be a deal under which the others forged ahead under the constitution, while the UK negotiated a working arrangement with the new EU.

It would be messy and uncertain, not least because it would be unclear exactly which part of the new treaty British voters had rejected. But, says Parker, any deal would be unlikely to be preferential to Britain.

The UK would find itself on the outer fringes of the club, in self-imposed exile from not just the euro and the Schengen passport-free travel area, but opposed to the founding rules of the club itself.

That is the FT view. It also happens to be the government's view. We will be hearing a lot more of this.

A short shelf-life?

It may be a sign of desperation – or something – that the UK Independence Party has started selling membership on the e-bay internet auction site. Interestingly, at the time of viewing, the sale had only 2 days 22 hours to go.

This has to be the first time in history that a political party has attracted such a clear sell-by date. It makes you wonder whether e-bay know something we don’t. Perhaps it has been in touch with Kilroy-Silk.

Now this is important

If the Sun really wants to get worked up about the EU, its journalists could do no better than look at page 13 of The Daily Telegraph.

Tucked into the gutter is a single column story labelled "EU arms chief aims to end local deals", which has phenomenal importance to the defence of this country, the survival of the defence industry – with all the jobs entailed – and, to a certain extent, the continuance of the "special relationship" with the United States.

All of this might seem rather alarmist if the text of the story is taken at face value, for it recounts simply that "The new arms chief of the European Union" – how many people know we have an arms chief? – "has issued a blunt warning that the days of governments favouring domestic companies when buying tanks or other major military hardware are over."

This is Nick Witney, a former senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, talking, now the chief executive of the European Defence Agency. The Telegraph accurately describes this as "the EU's fledgling arms procurement group".

He is saying that there must be more "collective decision-making" over what goes into Europe's armouries now that military units under EU command are a reality on the ground. "There is a broad consensus," he says, "that we can't have all procurement programs formulated on a solely national basis anymore."

The man says it is mission to halt what he called "business as usual", in which defence ministries draw up weapons plans then hand contracts to favoured local firms. He said he was talking to defence ministries about a code of conduct in which, in certain areas of defence spending, "competition would generally be the norm even if not required by the treaty".

Exceptions should be allowed, and national governments respected, said Mr Witney. But he added: "If an exception on project X or Y was made by a government, they should offer an explanation to a central monitoring point to provide transparency to see who follows and who is not following the code."

Therein lies the core of the EU strategy towards defence integration, which we have pointed up in previous posting.

Based on the Monnet method, the EU is looking to technical harmonisation of military hardware, common procurement standards, and eventually centralised European manufacturers, bringing to fruition Monnet’s dream of integrating the war-making resources of nation states to the extent that none has the independent capability of arming its own forces. The worst of it all is that this is integration by stealth, without any real debate in parliament or elsewhere.

Such talk, says the Telegraph, will send shivers down spines in Paris, Rome and other capitals where, for all the lip-service paid to European unity money is still channelled, time and again, towards cherished "national champions".

But what is alarming is how willingly the British government seems to be following this route, notable in its recent decision to provide German trucks for the army, despite home-built models being available, with superior specifications. To this day, it still amazes me how little press comment there was on the decision (i.e., none).

Concern over this issue, however, is no harking for self-sufficiency or a protectionist cry. There are very real issues of national security here, where over-reliance on non-domestic suppliers can prejudice policy decisions, if for instance – as happened in the first Gulf War – foreign-based suppliers refuse to deliver equipment, spares or, in that particular case, ammunition.

Furthermore, there is the issue of "interoperablilty", the ability of different equipment to work together and, as the EU develops its own technical standards, the likelihood of our forces being able to fight alongside the US, with its different standards, progressively diminishes. We face the prospect at some time in the future of not being able to ally ourselves with the Americans, simply because it is technically impossible - with dangerous implications for the "special relationship".

What we are dealing with, therefore, is a further dilution of national sovereignty, for largely political reasons the nature of which, as we pointed out in our most recent posting, has barely begun to be perceived. Now that is something the Sun could really get excited about.

The Bigger picture

A week or so ago, we heard that the Sun was despatching a reporter to Brussels. At the heart of the evil empire, he was going to root out the fraud and corruption, telling the readers back home like it is.

And so, after not a little silence, the mighty elephant has roared… and produced a mouse.
In today’s edition, we get a piece form Michael Lea, the European Correspondent – there's glory for you – under the title "Fill Eur boots with cash".

From this we learn that – nay "The Sun can reveal" – that "the monthly take-home pay of fatcat eurocrats is regularly MORE than their gross salary."

As for the ghastly detail, "Wage packets of EU "Sir Humphreys" — on up to £140,000 a year — are swelled by generous tax-free perks worth thousands. Those who work directly for EU institutions pay no national taxes — only a levy to Brussels of around 16 per cent of their BASIC salary.

And, horror of horrors: "But this is outweighed by a 16 per cent bonus on the ENTIRE package for expats — just for working abroad."

Terrible, one might say, and there is a good case for sacking the whole damn lot of them BUT (the Sun is not the only one that can use capitals), there are several points that emerge from the Sun's "scoop".

Firstly, all the details are in the staff manual, and can be read off the internet. There is nothing new at all in the story, which could have been written from the London office.

Secondly, while the "fat cat" commissioners get the big salaries, many staff are relatively poorly paid and have difficulty making ends meet.

Thirdly, being an expat is expensive. Many workers have to run two homes, and commute between the two, while the disruption of moving can be extremely costly.

Finally, compared with the financial packages given to other expat workers, in the private sector, in other international organisations, and even for civil servants working for the Foreign Office, what the EU offers is in fact fairly modest.

Basically, if you want workers to "up sticks" and work abroad, you have to pay them to do it. No tears for them – they chose to do it. And you can always argue that the jobs should not exist – as indeed we do. But to run this sort of story is pathetic, compared with the bigger picture. If that is all the Sun's Brussels correspondent can manage, they might as well bring him home.

And, by the way, can we have details of the Sun's pay and expenses package for their expat workers?

More co-ordination

It is good to know that some of our elected (by a minute proportion of the population) representatives in the Toy Parliament in Strasbourg do try to earn their massive salaries and expenses. (Any sign of that promised reform, by the way, Señor Borrell?)

Word reaches us that Nirj Deva, the MEP for the South-Eastern Region, has been exerting himself. He has hosted a conference on the post-tsunami relief and reconstruction. Well, to be quite precise, the co-ordination of the post-tsunami relief and reconstruction. Never let it be said that our boys and girls are backward about coming forward.

So much money was donated across the European Union (in excess of £750 million by the general public) that something had to be done about it, and Mr Deva was the man to do it.

He called together ambassadors of the various countries involved and those bordering on the area and representatives of the larger NGOs to discuss, no doubt, with suitable refreshments provided, what is to be done.

While there is a great deal of self-congratulation (as one would expect) in his press release, and as much praise for various “European” institutions and the wonderful NGOs, who are all co-ordinating something or other as well as keeping an eye on the bundle of money to ensure they get a goodly share of it, a few things are missing.

For instance, there is no mention of the efforts of the American and Australian military in rendering prompt and efficient assistance. No mention of the core group of nation states, swiftly formed, swiftly put into action and just as swiftly disbanded whne no longer needed.

There is precious little discussion of how the countries in question, as opposed to their highly paid ambassadors, are faring in reality and whether overwhelming aid might not undermine their economy.

Nor has Mr Deva, despite being a Conservative and supposedly moderately sceptical MEP, sees fit to refer to the iniquitous trade barriers that prevent these countries from expanding their economy, and whose removal would probably do more to help in the long run than all that co-ordinated aid, that has to pass ever more layers of bureaucracy will.

Still, he managed to get in on the act, and that is what matters.

Everybody's doing it

Things have come to a pretty pass. Here we have John Bercow, the ultra-bouncy Conservative MP, currently, I believe, out of the Shadow Cabinet but in the past spokesman on aid and international development, attacking, yes, actually attacking the UN. Blimey. What have we started?

Well, no, I suppose, we did not exactly start this but this blog has been in the forefront of the attacks on the UN and all other unaccountable and self-perpetuating, self-satisfied transnational organization (the dreaded tranzis, as they were named by David Carr, the libertarian lawyer and prolific contributor to Samizdata).

The Spectator article is particularly apposite, not because of the recently announced plans for the reform of the UN, which is its theme, but because another piece of news in the Sunday Telegraph tells us that a second UN official – so far unnamed publicly – is being accused of taking money from Saddam Hussein in the food for oil scandal. The minnow, Iraqi born American businessman, Samir Vincent, is out to get the perches.

Mr Bercow writes more in sorrow than in anger, as befits a statesman in training, but he does make some very good points. Starting with the clear inadequacies of the UN in the post-tsunami period, he shakes his head metaphorically over the fall of this “once great body”.

To prove this rather peculiar description he refers back to the UN Millennium Declaration, which called it “the indispensable common house of the entire human family”. I suppose somebody out there might know what that means but even they might query the word indispensable.

Let us not forget, furthermore, that the declaration was written post-Rwanda, post-Bosnia, post-numerous other appalling failures, some of which Mr Bercow lists in his article.

To be fair, he does, after giving a list of sins of omission, points to those of commission, namely the ridiculousness of an organization proclaiming itself as the conscience of the world, having the sort of members that it does have.

“The report laments the fact that the UN General Assembly ‘has lost vitality and often fails to focus effectively on the most compelling issues of the day’.That’s all well and good, but it is hardly the stuff to make tyrants quake in their boots. Surely the priority should be to enforce the Charter and kick out those states which repeatedly flout it? Article 4 of the Charter refers to the
need for a ‘common standard of achievement of human rights by all peoples’. Article 6 makes it clear that a state which persistently violates the principles of the Charter may be expelled from the organisation. In the 1970s South Africa was expelled. In the 1990s Liberia, Haiti, Cambodia and Sierra Leone were shown the door. In 2005 Burma, Sudan, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Uzbekistan, to name but five bestial oppressors, are still full members of the club. If the UN seeks respect from the world, it must show respect for itself. It must stop appeasing rogue states and start confronting them. If that means parting company with a large number of its members which are either not democracies in the Western sense of the term, or are not democracies in any sense at all, so be it.”

The report also, apparently, finds that the UN’s Human Rights Commission does not command sufficient respect in the world. Indeed not, one might think, chaired by Libya and having members like Sudan or Zimbabwe. That, it seems, is not the problem. Well, we do not quite know what is the problem, but, whatever it is, it will be solved by putting all the UN members on the Commission. A discussion between the representatives of North Korea and Zimbabwe on the finer points of human rights legislation would be well worth hearing.

In the meantime Kofi Annan (father of Kojo, of food for oil scandal fame) has done what the leader of every bemired international organization does to clean the Augean stables: he has appointed a British civil servant, Mark Malloch Brown, currenly head of the UN Development Programme, to be his chief of staff. I suppose this tendency could be seen as a compliment to the British civil service.

Mr Malloch Brown has been making various rather chatty statements about how he sees the UN developing:

“It’s a trade-off between security and development. A legitimate international security system has to address poor people’s security threat, not just rich people’s. While the US and some of its European allies may see terrorism and rogue states as the principal threat, for poor people it’s poverty and AIDS. Unless you can show a total system that addresses that constituency’s needs as well as rich people’s, you will continue to have a Security Council whose legitimacy is not accepted, whose authority is compromised.”

Well, well, well. Now we know why British civil servants are so highly valued. They can use language that is clear and specific and still obfuscate everything; they can make pronouncements that sound wise and politic and mean absolutely nothing.

To start with, what kind of legitimacy does the Security Council have in most parts of the world and how does it enforce its authority? And while we are on the subject, the word “constituency” is a tad misleading. No election or process of accountability is involved, as I understand it.

It seems, the UN is to be a kind of universal Santa Claus, bringing peace and happiness, love and healing to all, according to their needs and desires. How, precisely, is it going to solve poverty and AIDS? I know there is that paper, demanding that aid to Africa be doubled, but does anybody really believe that is going to solve anything?

Then again, there is this question of the different fears and worries. I don’t know where Mr Malloch Brown has been all this time, but most of us have noted that terrorists do not discriminate between rich and poor – all are grist to their mill. And rogue states are usually severely oppressive ones, which make the poor suffer and poverty increase. What makes him think, these are not problems for the poor?

Mr Brown points to three areas that will require his and Mr Annan’s attention in 2005:

Management reivtalization and personnel change that has already started; changing the cultural and business outlook, adding accountability to the UN’s management system; and thirdly, there is the “vision thing”.

So far, the “vision thing” seems to be changes in the management and the running of the organization on a somewhat larger scale: enlarging the Security Council, calling on industrialized countries to increase financial support, i.e. give more aid, to the tyrants of the developing countries … woops … sorry to the developing countries and …. errm …. that seems to be it.

Mr Malloch Brown seems reluctant to tackle the main problem, touched on by Mr Bercow in his article: just precisely how is the UN to implement any of its supposed principles when the majority of its members do not acknowledge them or, even, understand them.

Michael Howard's desperation

The Scotsman today is rather scathing of the advertisement taken in the Sunday Telegraph by the Tory leader, Michael Howard, to announce plans for a limit on immigration. It is proof, says the paper, that the general election campaign has begun and also proof that Mr Howard is steady under fire.

But it believes Mr Howard’s choice of battleground smacks a little of Tory desperation and that, on the immigration issue itself, Mr Howard is being misleading.

Firstly, the paper says, with the population of many parts of the UK in free fall (including Scotland), and with the UK population living longer, there is a strong economic case for encouraging skilled or entrepreneurial young people from abroad to settle in the UK.

In that light it would be more appropriate if the Tories hammered away at the need for a proper and transparent Green Card system of quotas, covering the skills and country groups who could come legally to the UK, rather than concentrate on the artificial - and border-line racist - issue of absolute numbers.

But the killer point made reveals the famous "elephant in the room" about which this Blog is often so voluble. Mr Howard, says the Scotsman, might also own up to the fact that EU citizens have an automatic right to work in the UK, which rather undermines his claim to being able to cut immigrant numbers to only 15,000 per year.

Is Mr Howard going to own up, or is he going to pretend that the UK still has control over which people, and how many, the British government can admit to the UK?

Waxing indignant

Daniel Hannan, part time MEP and journalist, is waxing lyrical – actually, more like indignant – in his monthly column in the Sunday Telegraph today, proclaiming at the "bloody cheek" of the Lithuanian budget commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaite.

"They've only been here two minutes", complains Hannan, and the very first act of this ingrate Lithuanian is to demand that Britain give up its budget rebate.

For years we refused to recognise the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, storms the indignant Hannan, we held on to their gold reserves until there was an independent government to take them back, we were one of the first countries to support their application to join the EU. And what do they do the moment they are in?

Only later does Hannan try to be "fair" to Mrs Grybauskaite, noting recovering the rebate is in fact commission policy, and our own – well, British - Peter Mandelson is toeing the commission line.

Hannan does concede that an expanded EU needs an expanded budget and Mrs Grybauskaite wants an extra trillion euros – an almost unbelievable sum – to fund her various projects. And the only way she can get it is if Britain increases its contribution.

Grudgingly he also concedes that Mrs Grybauskaite has a point. When the new countries joined the EU, writes Hannan, they submitted to the whole panoply of Euro-corporatism: the social chapter, the 48-hour week, the CAP. Having lost their ability to export cheaply, it is natural that they should look to Brussels for compensation.

Now comes the brain wave. Hannan brightly suggests that "perhaps the greatest favour we could do them would be to withhold our payments. They would then have to price themselves into the market by opting out of EU regulations, which might prompt an unravelling of the EU social model.

The Euro-sophists, Hannan says, will tell you that it is unfeasible. But many things that are said to be unfeasible are later feased. Just ask Margaret Thatcher. Yea, right, Hannan – don’t call us. We’ll call you.

Had he spent more time on the subject for which he is so highly paid, both from the coffers of the taxpayer and the Telegraph, he might have noticed that there is an interesting spat going on between Poland and Spain which could very well sideline the whole rebate argument.

This stems from the precise reason as to why Mrs Grybauskaite needs so much money. It is not only the need to fund various projects but also because the EU has to fund all those hand-outs by way of structural funds to the relatively less well countries of the Union, like Ireland… but particularly Spain, Poland and the rest of the enlargement countries.

These countries, together with Greece, had formed a loose alliance, alongside the commission, with Poland taking the role of spokesman (spokescountry?) for the other former communist satellites. But all the accession countries are conscious that, in order for the EU to fund them, Spain, as the largest beneficiary of EU handouts, must put some money in the kitty.

However, Spain being Spain, has decided it wants to keep the money flowing, leaving only the scraps for the new entrants. And this, according to the Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, is not acceptable to the Polish government.

From being a central member of the "more money" alliance, it has now told Spain it "is not ruling out the possibility of changing its strategy completely in negotiating the European Union's 2007-2013 budget, and joining the coalition of countries opting for a reduction in EU spending."

"We will have no difficulty leaving the Spaniards alone with their problems, if we find out that their financial needs are to be satisfied at our cost," says Jaroslaw Pietras, the minister of European affairs.

With Spain out in the cold, the Polish government is then prepared to support the EU budget's net contributors (Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Austria and Holland), in exchange for a guarantee that subsidies for the EU's new member states will be left untouched.

Should this happen, Mrs Gazeta Wyborcza may not need that money after all and can leave the Brtish rebate alone. Hannan can then pick on something else to wax indignant about.

Wimps past and present #2

Having looked at the extraordinary transformation of the former President of the Toy Parliament in Strasbourg, Pat Cox, into a roaring lion of a freedom fighter (well, roaring quietly but roaring nevertheless), let us turn our attention to the somewhat less edifying spectacle of his successor.

As our readers will recall, the Spanish socialist and recently elected MEP, Josep Borrell, was chosen to be the President in a particularly unpleasant bit of pork barrel politics between the two main groups: the Socialists and the European People’s Party, to which our own dear Conservative MEPs are attached.

(Incidentally, what happened to his intention to reform the Toy Parliament, especially with regards to the payment and expenses system? A toy it may be, but it is a very expensive toy and we seem to have no right to to take it back to the shop and demand a refund.)

Here is an interesting little story, written up by Jan Winiecki, a very eminent Polish economist, a professor and chair of International Economics and European Studies at the Rzeszow School of Computer Science and Management and president of the Adam Smith Centre in Poland, in the Wall Street Journal Europe. It was not, so far as I know, mentioned in any of the British media. What would we sophisticated Europeans do without the crude, naïve and narrow-minded Yanks, who do insist on producing good newspapers?

As our readers may recall, the two countries that became closely involved with attempts to sort out the Ukrainian problems after the first, rather dubious presidential election, were Poland and Lithuania. This was not surprising, as they are countries, whose history has been closely intertwined with that of Ukraine. Furthermore, like the other post-Communist states and unlike the older members of the European Union, they are well aware of the need for a transparent and accountable political system and a free media.

The EU itself, on the other hand, played a somewhat ambiguous part. Javier Solana did run around from one important actor in the drama to another, but his aim was to achieve stability. Not the same thing as freedom, democracy and accountability at all. Above all, he and Chancellor Schröder did not want to upset President Putin who was trying to use the Ukrainian election as a stepping stone in his own ambitious power game.

It all reminded some of us with longer memories of the EU’s insistence in the early nineties that no matter what and no matter how but Yugoslavia must stay together, thus, in effect, giving Slobodan Milosevic a go-ahead for some of his most unpleasant policies.

Well, we know what happened in Ukraine and are now waiting eagerly to see what will happen next. Not all of us, it seems. Mr Borrell made some rather curious remarks to the leading Warsaw newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

The outcome in Ukraine, according to Mr Borrell, was “a great success for the EU in avoiding a crisis”. Presumably, had Yanukovich managed to push through a fraudulent vote, that, too would have been a success in avoiding a crisis. Nothing could be worse than a crisis for the structure-obsessed EU politicos, not tyranny, not oppression, not cheating in elections.

This success, unnoticed by most people in Ukraine, was achieved despite the intervention by the uppity new members who were clearly acting “under US influence”. Gasp! Hiss! At least, he did not repeat President Chirac’s bêtise about the new members losing a good opportunity to keep quiet.

It seems that one cannot possibly be in favour of free and fair elections. Anyone who says that must be an American agent. And what could be worse than that? Reminds one of the dear dead days of the old Pravda newspaper.

Alas, those uppity new members refused to be lectured to in this way and Mr Borrell, who could not blame his advisers, blamed the translators. It’s a set-up Youronner, he said, I was mistranslated. In return he heard the Polish equivalent of yeah, right.

Professor Winiecki, however, has gone beyond blowing a raspberry in the direction of the tired old socialist at the head of an expensive toy parliament. He sees this rather silly story as the epitome of what is wrong with the whole EU mentality.

“No matter the exact wording, Mr Borrell expressed an obsessive anti-Americanism common in today’s Europe. And that, in turn, reflects the metal state of the Continent whose main characteristic is fear. Fear of nearly everything.”

Pat Cox had written something similar:

“If the EU is to prosper, my dear President Barroso, this is not the time for you to be the conservative leader of a cautious continent.”

Mr Cox was talking largely about economic and social matters; Professor Winiecki sees larger issues. His article enumerates the many things “Europe” is now afraid of to the point of paralysis.

It is afraid of getting involved in and helping the countries that lie between the EU and Russia and would not even have uttered a squeak of protest but for the new members, who know a thing or two about what goes on behind those borders.

It is afraid of the market. It is against

“… a work ethic, competition, and all the paraphernalia of the market regime”.

It is afraid of Islam and tries “to make a virtue of its fear”.

“On the bigger international stage, the obsessive invocation of ‘rule of law’,of ‘multilateralism’ as opposed to ‘unilateralism’, comes down to a search for an excuse not to act.”

Nor is he, unlike certain American commentators, well-protected by that uncouth American power, impressed by what is now more and more often described as the “soft power” of Europe or, rather, the European Union.

“Europe’s invocation of ‘soft power’, i.e. the preference for economic assistance as the solution to violent conflicts, raises psychologically interesting questions. How much does that reflect socialist mythology that throwing money at the problem will overcome obvious obstacles to success? And how much, simply, is it an aversion to risk, a fear of engagement in the world’s problems. The EU’s reluctance to act anywhere, and its instinct to fall back on the least imaginative approach, was most recently on view in its response to the masssacre in Darfur.”

(Oh yes, what did happen to all that money the EU kept sending to Sudan and, specifically, Darfur? Has there been any proper accounting done?)

Europe, in particular “old Europe”, says Professor Winiecki, is trying to ignore reality inside its own structures, which are tied to outdated and disastrous economic ideas, and on the wider international scene.

All this can be summed up in a very simple phrase: Europe is afraid of freedom. The continent that invented the concept has abandoned it and rails against anyone who tries to invoke it. In so far as there is a European identity, the EU and its wimps (that word being the title of Professor Winiecki’s article) are busy destroying it.

Another blow for big business

The Independent on Sunday today gives details of the last-minute bid by a wide range of consumer groups to stop the application of the EU’s food supplements directive, which will ban thousands of commercial brands of vitamins and mineral supplements.

The story is also carried by the Scotsman, with a clearer account of how British lawyers are set to go to the ECJ on Tuesday in a bid to overturn the directive, arguing that it could cripple scores of small firms in the £335-million food supplements sector.

The problem is that the law limits the sale of vitamins and supplements to those included on what is termed a "positive list", reversing the century-old tradition in British law that prohibits the sale of such product only if they can be shown to be unsafe.

In the directive, the burden of proof is reversed and before an estimated 5,000 common products – which are not on the EU’s list - can be sold, manufacturers must submit detailed scientific dossiers proving their ingredients are safe.

The costs of so doing, especially as many of the products have very limited sales, are prohibitive. Hence the British Health Food Manufacturers Association (HFMA), the National Association of Health Stores (NAHS) and Alliance for Natural Health, respectively representing small-scale suppliers and consumers, are challenging the ruling.

Andrew Lockley, head of public law at Irwin Mitchell, legal adviser to the HFMA and NAHS, said: "This argument really reflects a culture clash between Britain, where a third of women and a quarter of men take health-food supplements... where these products are traditionally treated like medicines.

This same story was actually visited by our Christopher Booker in November 2002, in the Sunday Telegraph when he illustrated it with the fate of a small but fast-growing Daventry company, which had recently won a Government-sponsored award for making "a positive impact on society". It was among thousands of firms likely to be put out of business by the directive which, Booker argued, marked a remarkable victory for the power of lobbying by big business.

But the specially relevant point that Booker made was that the pharmaceutical industry had been lobbying for years to place all herbal medicines and vitamin and mineral supplements on the same regulatory basis as mass-market drugs produced by the giant manufacturers. The advantages to them were obvious: they hoped to mop up the market with the mass-produced vitamin and mineral products they alone could afford to license.

In a related directive, herbal remedies are given the same treatment, leaving only synthetic drugs as substitutes – again to the advantage of the major pharmaceutical companies. And, to convince the regulators to move, wrote Booker, the commercial lobby has been in overdrive, with wild claims that vitamins such as B-6 and herbal remedies can be blamed for thousands of "adverse reactions", even deaths.

Meanwhile, the regulators, the Medicines Control Agency and the EU's new Medicines Evaluation Agency - which are almost entirely funded by licensing fees from the pharmaceutical companies - had remained (and still remain) strangely quiet about the thousands of deaths caused each year by synthetic drugs they themselves have licensed as safe to use.

"Now," he concluded in the piece back in November 2002, "the commercial giants are on the brink of victory."

Fast forward to the Independent piece, published today, and this is what we read:

Some large chains, such as Boots, have already reformulated their products to meet the new EU rules and say their customers will see no difference when the directive comes into force… "Consumers won't see a huge change," a spokeswoman said. "We fully support this EU directive."

Well done the EU: another blow for big business.

Moving further into the European camp?

It is interesting to see that Iran is moving up the news agenda, although the coverage today seems to be concentrated in what might be called the "right wing" press – the Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. As far as I can see, neither the Observer nor the Independent are looking in detail at the issue today.

Centre-stage is The Sunday Times, which runs a front page story, running over into page, with the headline "Straw snubs US hawks on Iran".

Written by Bavid Cracknell, and Tony Allen-Mills in Washington, these two reporters reveal that Jack Straw has "drawn up a dossier putting the case against a military attack on Iran amid fears that President George W Bush’s administration may seek Britain’s backing for a new conflict."

Straw and his officials, we are told, fear that hawks in Washington will talk the American president into a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, just as they persuaded him to go to war in Iraq.

The foreign secretary has thus produced a 200-page dossier that rules out military action and makes the case for a "negotiated solution" to curbing the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions amid increasingly bellicose noises from Washington.

Apparently pursuing the line consistently taken by the UK, the document says a peaceful solution led by Britain, France and Germany is "in the best interests of Iran and the international community". It refers to "safeguarding Iran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology".

Yet, in his preface to the dossier, Straw admits that Iran’s compliance with international inspectors is "mixed and incomplete". He writes, in what must be one of the understatements of the century: "There are a number of issues which have still to be fully resolved. The dossier continues:

A negotiated solution, in which both sides have a feeling of ownership, is in the best interests of Iran and of the international community. It gives stronger guarantees of future behaviour than an imposed solution and is more likely to build the long-term confidence and trust which can enable the broader relationship to develop positively.

We have worked hard to achieve agreement with Iran on the way in which this issue is handled, to give the international community the reassurance we seek while safeguarding Iran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology."

Taking a broader perspective is Edward Luttwak, senior fellow in the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington. He writes an op-ed in The Sunday Telegraph headed: "The scariest prospect of all: Iran with the bomb".

That is essentially the issue. Straw can prance and posture with the best of them, but the concerns we all have to face is whether Iran is really set on building a nuclear arsenal. Few doubt that this is the case and for a better analysis of the situation I have yet to see a better piece than that written by Amir Taheri for Arab News.

Luttwak brings us up to date, suggesting that there "are certainly good reasons for believing that the Bush administration is considering the possibility of air strikes."

Iran, he writes, is ruled by fiercely reactionary clerics under the "supreme guide" Ayatollah Khameini. Between them, they have reduced the elected civilian government of President Khatami to almost total impotence. Khameini is pushing Iran down a more radically fundamentalist path than even Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the Islamic revolution in Iran, ever contemplated.

None of this would matter, adds Luttwak, if Ayatollah Khameini wasn't also determined to acquire a nuclear arsenal. Some members of the government have even boasted how they would use them: to destroy Israel. "Islam could survive the retaliation," they insist, "but Israel would be gone forever." The thought of ayatollahs with nuclear bombs should terrify everyone – especially in Europe, because the Iranians could soon put those bombs on the top of rockets that could reach European capitals. He continues:

The French, the Germans and the British have been trying to use diplomacy to persuade the Iranians to stop their nuclear programme. They have offered Iran technological help (building non-nuclear power plants, for example) if only it will abandon its project to build a bomb and agree to unannounced, on-site inspections from the IAEA. Khameini's men have indignantly responded that it would be "against our principles" to acquire a nuclear bomb – but refuse to agree to unannounced inspections or to allow the IAEA to enter their "research reactor" at Parchim near Teheran.

In fact, the Iranians already have a plant which will produce weapons-grade uranium under construction at Natanz. They have a heavy water facility, a large "nuclear technology centre" at Isfahan, and another at Parchim. The mullahs are still negotiating a deal with the Europeans to end their nuclear programme, but the bellicose rhetoric from America is probably all that keeps them talking.

If Iran is to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, effective diplomatic or military action will have to come soon. Production facilities can be bombed but once actual weapons are assembled, locating and destroying them will become next to impossible. And Iran will then be in a position to threaten not just Israel, but all of our oil-producing Arab allies.

When the Israelis bombed Saddam Hussein's nuclear research centre at Osirak in 1981, they were universally condemned. The Americans showed their displeasure by cancelling arms sales. But the raid on Osirak prevented Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, a fact that the Americans and the world fully recognised when weapons inspectors went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war. If Saddam had had nuclear weapons in 1991, it would have been impossible to dislodge him from Kuwait. Able to intimidate Saudi Arabia, he would have had decisive power over Middle East oil. That propsect persuaded America, and most of the world, that Israel had done the right thing in bombing Osirak in 1981.

Unless European diplomacy obtains real guarantees from Iran, Luttwak concludes, Bush will soon have to decide to do to Iran what the Israelis did to Iraq. He adds that which we have observed in one of our previous Blogs, that nuclear- armed ayatollahs are unacceptable in Europe, America and Israel. Even the clerics, in their calmer and more rational moments, must know that accepting rewards for freezing Iran's nuclear programme is a better deal than getting bombed.

It was The Daily Telegraph back in November, however, that observed that there "has always been something suspect about European mediation over Iran's nuclear programme." The newspaper did not deny that the EU trio (Britain, France and Germany) was sincere in wishing to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear arms but, as are many of us, it was concerned about the ineffectiveness of the initiative.

Now with Straw seeking actively to distance himself from the US over the issue – and not forgetting Straw's enthusiasm for lifting the arms embargo on China, which is in turn arming Iran - we are perhaps seeing a new stage in this drama that could lead to an even greater divide between the US and the UK, with Blair's government moving still further into the "European camp".

Booker

With two Blogs yesterday on fishing, it is rather appropriate that the main story in the Booker column today is on the same subject.

This one, entitled "Two faces of Ben Bradshaw", is a horror, with Booker recounting two contrasting episodes which occurred last week that highlight the shambles Britain is making of the EU's common fisheries policy.

In Cornwall, Booker writes, our fisheries minister, Ben Bradshaw, was so badly caught out by a blunder he had made just before Christmas that, to save his embarrassment, he proposed that Britain should turn a blind eye to the breaking of EC law. Yet in Sussex two Hastings fishermen were prosecuted by Mr Bradshaw's officials and convicted for unwittingly contravening an EC fisheries regulation that no one had ever heard of before.

We reported the Cornish mess in our Blog last week, where Cornish fishermen were shocked to learn that for the first three months of this year, under a deal agreed by Mr Bradshaw in December to save cod stocks, they would be barred from their normal fishing grounds off the north Cornish coast, putting their livelihoods at risk. Yet Belgian trawlers had been exempted from the ban.

Mr Bradshaw's initial reply was to say: "You sometimes get details like this which slip through unnoticed." Such was the furore when Padstow fishermen had to stay in port, while Belgian trawlers hauled in huge quantities of fish, including cod, that Mr Bradshaw agreed to meet local MPs and fishermen's representatives.

Although those present at the meeting, including the Lib Dem MPs Paul Tyler and Andrew George, and Labour MP Candy Atherton, were told they must not reveal details of what was discussed, Mr Bradshaw's solution was that the Cornish fishermen should be permitted to continue fishing, while Brussels was asked for "clarification". According to Cornwall's chief fisheries officer, this is an "established strategy" used before, as for instance by France when it refused to lift the EC's ban on British beef exports.

Thus we have the scene set with Bradshaw quite willing to break – or bend – the law, in stark contrast with the case heard in Lewes Crown Court last week against two Hastings fishermen, Paul Joy and Graeme Bosom.

In October 2003 Joy had been told by a local ministry official that he had broken his licence conditions by catching more cod in the month of September than was allowed under EC quota rules.

He was astonished because the quota rules do not apply to small inshore boats such as those launched off Hastings beach. These have yearly "allocations" from the ministry – and at that time only 53 per cent of the allocation had been caught. But Defra had decided the annual allocation could be subdivided into 12 monthly shares. Without warning, Joy was told that he had broken this new rule.

Last week the judge, Simon Coltart, ruled that Defra was entitled to interpret EC law in this way, and Joy and his colleague were advised by their barristers to plead guilty. I cannot say why the judge came to this conclusion because he barred reporting until he passes sentence this week.

Joy and Bosom face the possibility of fines of up to £50,000. In court they could not say a word in their own defence. That they have been found guilty of breaking EC law is no doubt just as convenient to Defra as Mr Bradshaw's decision that he should allow the law in the seas off Cornwall to be ignored.

That, dear reader, is modern Britain.

Booker’s second story takes up the theme so dear to the heart of this Blog, the lack of balance on the BBC. He picks up the story we did on Friday, the leak which suggests that the BBC may be compelled under its new charter to present news in a way which is "balanced and fair".

Booker reminds us of the BBC's coverage of responses to the tsunami disaster when the BBC, while constantly puffing the ineffectual vapourings of the UN, managed almost wholly to ignore the dramatically effective intervention of the US Navy, which in Sumatra helped to save many thousands of lives.

For his main example, though, he picks up the BBC going overboard in puffing the launch of the A380 airbus, "a triumph of European co-operation".

Yet, records Booker, when the EU insisted that it would only lift its crippling tariffs on Thai prawn exports if Thailand paid out £1.3 billion to buy six of these aircraft, this was ignored by the BBC. Equally unreported was the plea of Thailand's prime minister that his country did not want money from the outside world. What it wants is an end to the EU's discriminatory tariff against the country's main export, which since 1997 has cost its economy £3 billion, twice as much as all the disaster aid offered to the region.

The problem in getting the BBC to report fairly, says Booker, is that its employees are so enthralled by their collective mindset that they cannot see how unprofessional they have become.

Predictably, Booker also found Margot Wallström’s new Blog irresistible, retailing how Eurosceptics are flocking to read her attempts to give the Commission a "human face", as she gives her hilarious account of how a friend brought her back a present from India.

As the former environment commissioner, responsible for a swathe of draconian environmental directives, Wallström was so excited by the bag made from recycled newspaper that her friend eventually had to point out that the present was not the paper but the shawl inside it.

Most fascinating of Miss Wallstrom's revelations, says Booker, in a blog entry on the tsunami disaster, is that she and her colleagues are kept so busy that they must transact most of their business over dinners and lunches, which can last "three or four or even more hours".

Five days a week of four-hour lunches and dinners must surely put them in danger of breaking the 48-hour week laid down by their working time directive? But, Booker concludes, if this is how the commission hopes to win over the "people of Europe" to the constitution, how can they lose?

For the final story, we get an update on the plight of a Cornish company which for 30 years has been dredging off Falmouth for the dead remains of maerl, or calcified seaweed, which it sells as a much-prized organic fertiliser.

To meet its targets under the EC habitats directive, English Nature (EN) had decided this practice must stop, putting the eight employees of Cornish Calcified Seaweed out of work.

In a pained letter, EN's director of communications, Philip Newby, claims that Booker was mistaken as to why the maerl deposits were diminishing. Nor had EN threatened legal action against Falmouth's harbour board. He suggested that in future he should consult his senior press officer to ensure that my articles were accurate.

In reply, Booker cited the consultants' report which made clear that much of the removal of maerl could be ascribed to storm and wave action. He also quoted EN's letter of November 2004 to the harbour authorities stating that, unless they withdrew the dredging licence, they would be "vulnerable to legal challenge". He hoped, in conclusion, that Mr Newby could appreciate why he prefers "to rely on primary documentary support rather than on the 'guidance' given by press officers."

We get a lot of this, with subjects of criticsm coming back asking why they haven't been allowed to give their comments. In the Booker column though, there is a simple response: "Ye shall be judged by your actions".

Drawing in the net will save our fisheries

By Owen Paterson MP, shadow fisheries minister. Reproduced from the Yorkshire Post, published earlier this week.

When the woes of the fishing industry are aired, almost always someone will suggest that "overfishing" is the reason why British waters – the most productive in Europe – seem to be suffering from terminal collapse.

But blaming fishermen for that is like blaming car workers for producing too many cars. In the final analysis, the responsibility lies at the doors of the managers.

In the case of the fishing industry, the managers neither live nor work in this country. They are the officials of the European Union and they are based in Brussels, currently headed by a Maltese politician who has no experience whatsoever of fisheries management.

Collectively, they work to a rigid bible called the European Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). With that, they develop equally rigid, one-size-fits-all management rules, revised in a great hurry at the end of each year and imposed on the fishermen without consultation.

By their own admission, none of these people have any expertise in fishing, and, by common consent, the policy they administer has been a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster.

Furthermore, it is beyond reform. It is a system that forces fishermen to throw back more fish dead into the sea than they land, it has caused substantial degradation of the marine environment, it has destroyed much of the fishing industry, with compulsory scrapping of modern vessels and has devastated fishing communities.

That is why the Conservative Party is implacably opposed to the CFP: not specifically because it is a "European" policy but because it is a bad policy. It does not work. We have looked at reforming it and, with that in mind, I have visited fisheries in the Falklands, in Norway, the Faeroes, Iceland, Canada and the USA.

There, I have seen numerous examples of successful fisheries – in stark contrast to the sad, ailing enterprises in British ports – and have been impressed at how profitable and sustainable modern fisheries can be when they are run on good management principles, using the best science.

What I found startling though was that there was no one perfect system, no single way of running a fishery. Everyone had their own ways of doing things and their own systems. The only thing they all had in common was National control – they were run by national authorities with a strong element of local management.

This experience convinced me that fisheries cannot be managed successfully on a continental scale, as they are with the CFP. They need local control. That is the reason why Michael Howard stated that the Conservatives will return our fisheries to National and Local control.

That is also why I set about producing a "Green Paper" which was launched last Monday, setting out the principles by which we would manage our fisheries, once they were returned to that National and Local Control.

Although we mean what we say – that we will repatriate our fisheries – our critics claim we cannot do this as we need the permission of all our other 24 EU partners – and they will not give it. That is nonsense. Although we are members of the EU, Parliament is still sovereign and if it decides that we should leave the CFP, then all we need is an Act of Parliament.

Others claim we would be forced to leave the EU if we did that, but that also is nonsense. No one took action against either France or Germany when they failed to keep to the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact, much less attempted to drum them out of the EU.

Even then, there are fears that we would then have to invest in large numbers of gunboats to keep the ravening hoards of foreign fishing boats out of our waters, but that again will not be the case. We have no intention of excluding foreign fleets, many of which have historic rights to our waters which pre-date the CFP.

We take our cue from the Faeroe Islands which after a near collapse of their industry, instituted new management regimes and then enjoyed consistently increasing catches, including cod catches up 38 percent, increased fish stocks and a prospering industry, ending up with more fish in the sea, not less. We intend to repeat this experience, on which basis there are more than enough fish to go round.

Finally though, we are told that "fish know no boundaries" and therefore it would be folly to manage British waters by ourselves. Here, we actually agree. But, actually, fish do observe some boundaries, those set by the natural ecosystems in which they live. Those ecosystems – especially in the Atlantic – transcend the artificial, political borders set by the EU and the CFP.

The health of our fish stocks depend on us working with Norway, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and even Canada and the USA. None of these countries are in the EU and we will be able to co-operate with them far more freely than we can do now, shackled by the CFP of "little Europe".

Only then, we believe, can we give fishermen in Britain and the rest of Europe the prosperity and stability, the same time, protecting the marine environment. They – and this proud nation – deserves no less.

They can’t all be wrong

The management of the fisheries in EU member state waters has long been known as disastrous, and recent world fisheries data now confirms this. While world production of fish increased between 1995 and 2002 by 17 percent, production in the EU fell by the same amount – 17 percent.

Nearly all member states reported falls in production during that period – the largest by Denmark at 28 percent, reflecting the collapse of the North Sea sandeel fishery due to overfishing.

Within the European Economic Area, Norway recorded and increase in production of 490,000 tons, or 17 percent, while Iceland managed a 520,000 ton increase, or 32 percent.

For sure, some of the world’s fisheries are under stress, but despite the messages of doom and gloom from the greenies, there are plenty of examples of healthy, sustainable fisheries, not least in Norway and Iceland.

Elsewhere in the world, fisheries off the east coast of the United States, on the Canadian Grand Banks, and in places as far distant as Namibia, New Zealand and the Falklands, are all being managed sustainably.

Given that these fisheries are all delivering health increases in fish production, they cannot all be wrong. Once more, therefore, when it is possible to measure the performance of the EU, it is found wanting.

Error message

For the last word on the BBC (until the next one) click here.

Courtesy of USS Neverdock, with thanks.

The noose is tightening

European defence integration took another lurch forward this week when it "became known" without any formal announcement that the EU commission had finalised plans to inaugurate "a permanent group of government and defence industry officials" to advise it on the EU’s future defence research projects.

This is to be the European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB), which will consist of approximately 50 experts from government research institutes and European defence companies.

Participants will come from all 25 EU member states, some countries will get more representatives than others. Britain, France and Germany are expected to get four representatives each, with Italy getting perhaps three, said the industry executive. Those four nations contain the bulk of the EU defence sector.

Their purpose is to identify security-oriented projects for funding in the union’s rolling five-year research budget, known as the Framework program. This will run from 2007-2011 and is expected to set aside at least €1 billion ($1.3 billion) per year for security and defence-related research projects.

It is described as "an unprecedented step in the ever-growing EU involvement in defence policy," and will include considerable private sector participation, at the highest level.
This means that much of the defence research effort in EU member states will now be dictated by – or at least co-ordinated by – an EU institution.

Slowly, insidiously, therefore an EU defence policy is gradually taking shape, adding to the steps reported on earlier by this Blog. And all of this is leading up to the ratification of the EU constitution which – unrecognised by many pundits– will turn the European Union into a fully-fledged military alliance.

This is set out clearly in Art. I-41 of the proposed treaty, which states that a common security and defence policy "shall be an integral part of the common foreign and security polity" and that:
If a member state is a victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power…

This is, in fact, a much stronger obligation than is set out in the Nato Treaty, the operative article (Art. 5) merely stating that the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.

That treaty merely states that: "If such an armed attack occurs, each of them… will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

It is all very well, therefore, for Blair to argue that the position of Britain is safeguarded by retaining a veto over defence matters, but the fact is that he has signed up to a rigid text that binds the UK into a defence alliance with the rest of the EU. There is no veto involved here – we are in that alliance the day the treaty is ratified by all member states.

Furthermore, according to Art. I-41 (3), member states "shall make civilian and military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy" – another provision that specifies a straight obligation.

And tucked into that section is another little provision, that has a significant impact. Member states, the article states, "shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities". Again, this is not optional. It is a treaty obligation.

Crucially though, this is give effect in the treaty by the establishment of a European Defence Agency (EDA), which is charged, inter alia, with identifying operational requirements and, promoting measures to satisfy those requirements.

Despite the constitution not having been ratified, this agency is now in place, and this week we have also seen another piece of the jigsaw puzzle locked into place: the European Security Research Advisory Board, which will assist the EDA in its work. The noose is tightening.

The path to salvation

We first heard in November that the BBC set up an "independent" panel to investigate allegations of pro-EU bias in its coverage, which we reported in a piece entitled "Foxes to investigate chicken coop". Some discerning readers might detect a trace of our own bias in that title.

From the Daily Telegraph today, we now learn that the panel has duly reported and, while it has come up with some criticisms, it has not accused the BBC of either pro- or anti-EU bias. Our case rests.

The panel instead stays on safe ground, accusing the BBC of "peddling stereotypes" about the EU and often telling stories only "through the prism of British politics".

Strangely, those are very similar to the criticisms which appear in a report commissioned by the EU itself, so one assumes that the Europhiles will not be too unhappy with the tenor of the BBC’s report when it finally appears.

As for our view of the report, we are and will remain entirely indifferent to it. The idea that anything produced or sponsored by the BBC was ever going to find any serious defects in the BBC’s coverage is entirely facile.

The way forward is not to rely on these self-serving panels but to create an alternative media that can rehearse the issues that the establishment media prefers to ignore. That is what is happening successfully in the USA, where the Blogosphere is successfully taking on the networks.

Unless anyone has any better ideas, that, we feel, is also where our salvation lies.

Three bags full, sir!

The EU commission has ordered (note the word, "ordered") the UK government to end tax breaks for companies with offshore operations in Gibraltar.

It has sent a formal letter to the UK government instructing it to end the Exempt Company tax regime by the end of 2010 because the scheme violates EU competition rules by giving certain companies a financial advantage.

Jonathan Todd, spokesman for competition at the commission, said: "We have had discussions with the British on this subject. We are very optimistic that this measure will be eliminated."

Too right: there will be only one response of the British government to this "order"? Yes sir…! Is there anyone out there who still believes we are an independent nation?

Wimps past and present #1

Who said this?

“This [Lisbon] overloaded agenda has suffered from conflicting priorities, inadequate political will at the member-state level, poor co-ordination and inadequate delivery. Each spring the European Council, with a marked improvement in content this year, has produced excessive and flatulent conclusions by way of annual review that said so much as to amount to saying virtually nothing of substance”

Bet you could not guess, even though, we on this blog could have put that paragraph together (apart from the peculiar reference to the “marked improvement in content this year”). It was Pat Cox, past president of the European Parliament, writing in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Europe.

He then went on:

“Meanwhile, in spite of twin budget and trade deficits, the American eagle continues to soar. The Chinese dragon behaves as if performance enhanced. India is finding its economic feet and Japan is turning the corner. But Europe’s stars are failing to shine, marking a relative economic decline. It would be tempting to ascribe Europe’s economic problems solely to forces beyond its control – a global slowdown, the weak dollar, higher oil prices or even the unique challenge posed by the low-wage, high tech countries in Asia. Tempting but wrong, that. Europe should not blind itself to the fact that its economic problems are very much of its own making.”

Mr Cox’s article calls for greater freedom in economic and social terms: less regulation, greater tax cuts. He points to his own country, Ireland, as the great example of a successful low-tax economy but, as we have said before on numerous occasions, a country that has such a high inflow of subsidy cannot be used as a text book case of the Laffer curve.

Still, one cannot argue too much with the following conclusion:

“I believe that the root cause of Europe’s lack of dynamism lies not in its procedures, although these can and should be greatly reformed, but rather in its core beliefs. More specifically, it lies in our unwillingness to acknowledge the contemporary failure of the postwar experiment in high-tax, regulation-intensive, dependency-inducing welfarism and the success of free-market liberal reforms in the US in the 1980s and elsewhere in the 1990s.”

You go man! One thing puzzles me about all this outspokenness. I may be suffering from a memory failure but I do not remember similar pronouncements from Mr Cox in his days of glory, that is his presidency of the European Parliament.

In those days he seemed to support the “postwar experiment” and derided all attempts to free up economic and social activity. In fact, he presided over a Parliament that did its best to tighten even further the various detailed and inappropriate regulations, proposed by the Commission and negotiated by the Council of Ministers.

In those days, Mr Cox could have been described in the succinct way of the noted Polish economist Jan Winiecki, as a wimp. Still, as far as Mr Cox is concerned, the light has been seen, the truth sighted and salvation glimpsed. Much in his future pronouncements, one assumes, will depend on what he will do now that he is no longer presiding over that toy parliament in Strasbourg.

We have a cultural problem…

So, according to The Daily Telegraph, the BBC is to be made to sign up to a specific commitment to broadcast news that is "balanced and fair" as part of its new royal charter.

This clause, we are told, will be the first time the corporation's editorial obligations in news have been explicitly included in the charter and will inevitably raise concerns of government interference following the David Kelly affair.

On the face of it, this appears to be good news, but the initiative is doomed to failure. No least, it again represents the lamentable tendency of politicians – on all sides of the House – to believe that problems can simply be legislated away.

Even this week I came up against a graphic illustration of the scale – and nature – of the problem, which demonstrates quite simply why this approach simply will not work.

The event arose on Monday when I was contacted by a researcher from the BBC Radio 4 "You and Yours" programme. They planned, I was told, a feature on recycling and she (the researcher) had seen my website. From this, she had concluded that I was against recycling – would I like to come on to the programme and explain why?

My response was that, far from being against it, I actively supported recycling. It was just, I felt, under the malign influence of the EU, we were going about it the wrong way. Recycling, I said, should be demand-led.

The way to make it work was through fiscal incentives (tax-breaks) which encouraged the collection and – especially – the use of recycled material. Create that framework and the market would sort the problem out.

As an example, I told her about the US "Car donation program" which gave tax breaks to car owners who donated their old cars to "qualified organisations". Driven by this incentive, charities throughout America have set up car collection systems and will collect you car – running or not – from the door. There is no charge and the charities are making a fortune out of selling cars, and savaging wrecks.

Not a few years back, you could read in the local US papers, stories of streets littered with abandoned wrecks. With scheme, they have largely solved the problem, unlike the UK where it is a growing and increasingly expensive problem.

To cut a long story short, it then turned out that there was a case of mistaken identity. The researcher had not looked at my website – where I had waxed lyrical about the failure of the UK/EU recycling programme – but at the site of my namesake, Richard D. North. He indeed was "against" recycling.

The researcher said she would come back to me, and she did – to say I was not wanted. The programme shape had already been set up. They wanted to give a touchy-feely puff for recycling and, in the way they so often do – wanted it to set it up with a "nutter" (sorry Richard) arguing the proposition.

My pitch simply did not fit the narrative, and therefore could not be entertained. The story had already been written – all they wanted was the "talking head" to say the right words for the slot that had already been pre-determined.

As a result, the listeners were presented with a cut-and-dried situation. You were either for or against recycling and the arguments against it were so preposterous (or inadequately expressed, given the time allowed) that it would have been irrational to be against the proposition.

The BBC deals with EU issues in exactly the same way. For the EU, we have speakers of stature and gravitas, who are allowed to expound their propositions, with minimal and reverential intervention from the interviewers. Then they let on the licensed "nutter" - the Eurosceptic - to speak against the proposition. And they will use this technique freely during the referendum campaign.

It is this type of bias – where it is not so much what is said, but what (and who) is left out – which is, as we have remarked in an earlier Blog, so difficult to detect and counter. A "fair reporting" clause in the charter is not going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Once again I resort to Lord Pearson and his comment that: "We are up against a large, self-satisfied and introspective culture". We have a cultural problem, and dealing with that is going to need something altogether much more radical.

That darned question

We’ve heard rumours before and there has been considerable (well, some) speculation on the government’s precise intentions viz-à-viz the Referendum Bill and the text of that darned question.

Now, according to the Evening Standard, the government is to kick off its campaign for the EU constitution next week by publishing that very question

And, according to that self-same source, the ballot papers will ask: "Should the United Kingdom approve the Treaty establishing a Constitution for the European Union?".

Details, we are told, will be formally announced next week at the first reading of the European Treaty Bill.

A reminder

The invaluable Diplomad has returned to the theme of the uselessness of the United Nations, tied in with their propensity to claim the credit for work that they have not undertaken.

This has special significance as the UN is to hold a press conference on 26 January, listing all the great work they have done. On the day, Diplomad invites us to compare their claims with the reality.

His invitation is made all the more pertinent by a link which he provides us to a Blog posted by a serving officer aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln – the first major US ship to reach the disaster scene.

His first-hand account tells how his ship was taken over by "disaster tourists" – aka relief workers – one of whom had the nerve to complain that their food was being served on paper plates rather than china (because the crew was saving water so that more could be taken ashore for the tsunami survivors).

"It was all I could do to keep from jerking him off his feet and choking him…" writes our man. We know how he feels.

As we pointed out in our earlier Blog, as time passes and memories fade, we will get a great deal from those "heroic" organisations like the UN and the European Union, about how much they contributed to the disaster relief, and what a better place the world is for their existence – and how much better it would be if we gave them more powers and more money.

This Blog, therefore, is to remind readers that, at the sharp end, the tranzies contributed nothing and, if anything hampered relief efforts. Their ex post facto rhetoric should be treated – like most of their claims – with the contempt it deserves.

Political calculation

According to an early edition of The Guardian (no link yet), Blair has brokered a deal with "European leaders" to postpone negotiations on Britain's £3.2bn budget rebate until after the general election.

Amid fears that Labour's campaign could be distracted by rows over the "cheque Britannique", says the Guardian, he has persuaded his EU counterparts to start discussions in early May. This will give Mr Blair, who hopes to win re-election in the expected May 5 poll, a mere six weeks to defend Margaret Thatcher's rebate, which will come under fire at the European summit in mid-June.

Blair is said to be determined to pull off a deal by then because Britain's hand will weaken over the summer, after the UK has taken over the EU presidency – when it will be more difficult for ministers to fight their corner while they are in the chair.

Securing a deal by the end of June would allow No 10 to cast Mr Blair in the "battling for Britain" mould of Lady Thatcher when he launches the "yes" campaign for next year's referendum on the EU constitution. Delaying the negotiations into 2006 would strengthen the "no" camp.

New Labour, it seems, hasn’t lost any of its news management skills and, as always, issues which should otherwise be driven by the national interest are now a matter of political calculation. Is it any wonder people are sick of politicians?

The perils of irresponsibility

It won't be Iraq, or Iran, or even the Middle East. It won't even be the broader issue of unilateralism versus multilateralism. The next crunch point in relations between the EU and the United States is going to be China.

So says Richard Bernstein, the veteran journalist who served as Time magazine's first Beijing bureau chief, writing in the International Herald Tribune today.

And, as long as EU is seeking to recruit China as a "strategic partner," ignoring growing Chinese-American rivalry, the outcome does not look good.

Bernstein selects two events from the past few days to illustrate the European-American divide on this question.

The first, he says, was the decision of China's government to make a non-event of the death of Zhao Ziyang, the former party chief and prime minister, who fell out of favour in 1989 when he opposed the use of military force to quell the student-led democracy protests of that year, and remained under house arrest until his death this week.

His second was a recent decision by the United States to penalise eight Chinese companies, including some of the country's biggest military contractors, for supplying missile technology to Iran.

According to Bernstein, the relegation of Zhao to non-personhood shows that China is still very much a Communist dictatorship, a factor which tends to have considerably more weight in US policy-making on China than it has in Europe.

As to arms transfers to Iran, this related to the biggest area of trans-Atlantic disagreement, the avowed intention of EU member states (or most of them) to lift the arms embargo on China.

European diplomats claim that any lifting of the arms embargo would not be followed by actual arms sales to China, but what Bernstein picks up is a series of revealing comments made by Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.

Gallach refers to China’s participation in Galileo, the EU's proposed rival to the US GPS system, "This does not match with an arms embargo," Gallach says. "There is a total incongruity, and the Chinese in particular are keen to remove this incongruity."

Read into that what you will but the most obvious inference is that there is no point in making available a satellite guidance system to the Chinese if you then do not allow her to purchase the weapons which can exploit the sophisticated guidance afforded by that system

Bernstein poses the question: Could that lead to conflict with the United States, the country that would face China militarily if it ever came to war with Taiwan?

"We look at the Chinese as a strategic partner," Gallach says. "Some Americans might have the temptation to look at China as a strategic competitor in the long term, so we have to start by analysing the situation in a sober manner, and to try to work together with the Americans."

The next source Bernstein enlists is David Shambaugh, a China specialist at George Washington University. Writing in a recent issue of Current History, he observes that China and the EU constitute "an emerging axis in world affairs," one of whose common points is "a convergence of views about the United States, its foreign policy and its global behaviour."

In Bernstein's words, China and the EU agree that the United States has to be constrained. "Strategic partners indeed", he adds. Spelt out more plainly, the EU is chosing to be more closely aligned to China – against the United States.

In all this, Bernstein sees a paradox. Countries that are not superpowers and have no global strategic interests find it easier to act without constraints than does the sole superpower. Whereas the superpower has to bear the consequences of its actions, middle-size powers do not.

Thus, says Bernstein, it is easier in this sense for Europe than the United States to relinquish its human rights rhetoric when it conflicts with other interests, such as economic advantage. He continues:

China can sell missile technology to Iran in part because it has no strategic interests in the Middle East - only the narrow national interest of ensuring oil supplies. And Europe can lift its arms embargo against China because the EU, however it might want to play a big role in a multipolar world, has no strategic interests in Asia - only the narrow interest of benefiting from the China trade.

So, for example, Europe has essentially eliminated Taiwan - a territory bigger than more than half of the EU member states - from its frame of reference. It won't be Europe's concern if a democratic Taiwan is forced, under Chinese diplomatic and military pressure, to give up its de facto independence.

There is also no sense of shared responsibility for the fate of a small island under pressure from a giant and ever more powerful neighbor. The Europeans know and can count on the fact that whatever the consequences of its decision on arms to China, the responsibility to deal with them will be America's alone.

That really sums it us. The EU – or its member states - can enjoy a glorious sense of irresponsibility, acting in their own interests, without having to clean up the mess. But this is only in the short term.

Already, it has been made clear to Jack Straw that, as far as the Americans are concerned, lifting the arms embargo is more than a presentational problem.

Yesterday he was in Japan where he met foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura. He told Straw, unequivocally, that Japan was opposed to the lifting of the embargo. "It is extremely worrying as this issue concerns peace and security environments not only in Japan but also in East Asia as a whole," he later told a joint news conference, adding that the issue was of great concern to the United States.

Therein lie the consequences. The EU member states – and the UK with them – can play fast and loose with American sensitivities, but they cannot expect the US not to react. And an emboldened Bush, in his second term in the White House, will not be in a forgiving mood.

Who is using whom?

We watched with interest the brave attempts of the BBC to put Robert Kilroy-Silk's resignation from UKIP on a par with the US presidential inauguration, in terms of coverage, and noted their throbbing anticipation at the prospect of RK-S forming a new party.

For those who wish to follow the intricate twist and turns of this sad little episode, the Ukipuncovered Blog provides all the material you could ever want to read.

What is interesting from the longer perspective, though, is how two rival "outer" groups will affect not so much the general election – where it is rumoured that UKIP will be hard put to it to raise of fraction of the candidates that it did in the last general – but how it will play out in the EU referendum.

Clearly, the "Yes-no" campaign has some difficulty with UKIP, being opposed to its strident "outer" position, and is doing its best to ignore it. That difficulty may increase with rival groups slugging it out, as the "outer" campaign will have two voices rather than one, increasing the profile of the "out" argument.

This, perhaps, is why the BBC is so keen to cover the rift, as it is very much in the interests of the "yes" campaign – for which the BBC will be the principal cheerleader – to have the prospect of leaving the EU very much to the fore.

Kilroy-Silk, therefore, may think that he is using the media – at which he is highly skilled – but one seriously wonders just who is using whom.

Quote of the day

On the introduction today of metric speed measurement in the Republic of Eire:

They can list these speeds in watts or grams or - whaddya call 'em? - megabytes; I still won't get a ticket.

Pat Cullinane, a Dublin taxi driver who, like almost all drivers in Ireland, has a car with a speedometer principally in miles per hour.

What’s the big deal?

The BBC seems to be rather taken with the precautions taken during the US presidential inauguration, highlighting the fact that there are "snipers on the roofs" and "manhole covers have been welded shut."

Passing by the thought that, in the PC world of the BBC, they should surely have been referring to "person-hole covers", what is the big deal about "snipers on the roofs"?

From our vantage point on the 11th floor of the EU parliament, we always knew when dignitaries were about to arrive – especially l'escroc Chirac. A group of gendarmes would position themselves up on the roof of the building, setting up their "snipers' rifles".

What point is the BBC trying to make?

When the going gets tough…

...the "yes" campaign puts up a web site.

This is to complement the launch of the official campaign which – true to form – lurched into action in the heart of Euroland: Brussels, where else.

It was lunched, sorry, launched, by the president of the Young European Federalists Jon Worth, who claim to be out to counter eurosceptic attacks on the constitution, particularly in the UK. He was joined by Labour MEP Richard Corbett and Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff.

These two will be front runners in what the EU parliament is calling their "rapid reaction force", aimed at countering the dreaded lies put out by these Eurosceptics in 15 nanoseconds – provided it isn't lunch or dinner time (which takes eight hours out of the day).

The "yes" campaign is being run together with the European Movement International with "networks of activists" taking to the streets over the next 18 months. "Our message is a simple one: to secure prosperity, peace and a democratic future for the European Union, this constitution must be ratified," says Jon Worth. That's simple?

Nevertheless, the web site tells us that, "Resulting from a coordination of NGOs and civil society groups from across Europe," the "yes" campaign "is the first truly supranational referendum campaign, showing that Europe's citizens all care about a democratic future for the European Union".

After a little hunting around the site, it finally yields five reasons for voting "yes", amongst them being that: "A positive vote on the Constitution is a vote for a better EU." There's another catchy slogan for you.

We are then told that:

The Constitution represents the biggest institutional improvement of the EU's decision-making structures and introduces certain new elements that will make the EU more democratic and accountable. The citizens and the civil society have been long waiting for the opportunity to improve the way the EU functions. The Constitution anwsers (sic) most of their concerns and offers the chance for a significant step forward.

"Vote 'yes' for a significant step forward," I hear them cry. That will really have Sun readers rushing to the polls.

Most of all though, we are informed that: "the first European Constitution is a historic achievement" and there are "plenty of reasons why every European citizen should support its ratification". To make it easy for you lame-brains, though, the campaign is only going to tell you five of them. Frankly, though, they are so boring that I could not bring myself to edit them.

Leave it instead to arch-Europhile Richard Lamming, who neatly sums it all up, telling us that: "The campaign to overcome national sovereignty is the modern-day equivalent of the campaign against slavery or the campaign for the vote for women. The whole point is to extend democratic rights" (by abolishing them).

There we have it from the horse's mouth (I think it was the mouth). This is a "campaign to overcome (i.e., abolish) national sovereignty". Do we need to know more?

Bad losers or what?

As preparations are made for the inauguration of President Bush for his second term (note to various rather hysterical politicians in Europe: it is also his last term as he is forbidden by constitutional arrangements from running again, so there is no need to hyperventilate and, yes, that means you, Prime Minister of Norway), several media organizations have decided to re-run the election. This time they will not have that pesky electorate to worry about.

Results have been somewhat mixed, depending rather on what the questions were and who was being asked. Thus the poll run jointly by the New York Times (generally a Democrat-leaning paper, though somewhat more balanced than, say, the BBC) and CBS (of Blathergate fame) produced responses that you would expect, though the two organizations seem a little disappointed and running the story as Americans conflicted on 2nd term.

Basically, says the NYT story through gritted teeth, Americans are optimistic about the future, which just shows that they are optimistic people. Well, of course. It is what distinguishes them from rather frightened and pessimistic Europeans and makes it possible for them to achieve things while the EU blathers on about “soft power”, i.e. no power. Time was, the British were like that, too.

There are also certain pessimistic responses. The majority thinks that the Social Security system needs to be overhauled but people remain dubious that Bush’s announced proposals will do the trick. No surprises there.

There is also a certain pessimism about Iraq in that the majority thinks that American troops will still be there at the end of the four-year term. Clearly, they were not asked whether they thought anything was being achieved, as those responses might have been too varied for two media companies’ taste.

In the meantime the BBC World Service conducted its own world-wide survey in 21 countries, a number of whom, like China, Lebanon and, increasingly, Russia have very little say in the choice of their own government. Nevertheless, the international polling firm GlobeScan asked 1,000 or so people in these 21 countries, all disparate in population, political culture and attitude towards questionnaires.

The majority in 16 countries (and after all, 1,000 or so people counts for a lot in a country like China or, even, Indonesia) said that President Bush was a negative phenomenon for global peace and security. In a BBC-commissioned poll? There’s a surprise.

It is quite clear what all these media companies would prefer: a system like that of the European Union, where the legislative and executive powers are vested in an unelected body and where politics goes on as a managerial process, regardless of troublesome electorates and where, therefore, exaggerated attention is paid to ridiculous opinion polls.

Nemesis?

After the hubris attendant on the unveiling of the Airbus A380 when chancellor Gerhard Schröder boasted that, "There is the tradition of good old Europe that has made this possible", one wonders if he will be at the quayside to greet the Aurora when it is towed back to Germany.

Built at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, this 76,152 ton super cruise ship embarrassed its owners P&O; when its maiden voyage in 2000 had to be cancelled after mechanical troubles. Now engineers have been unable to cure problems with her propulsion system that have led to the humiliating cancellation of her latest world tour.

Go on, say it Schröder: "There is the tradition of good old Europe that has made this possible".

How not to answer the questions

UK correspondent for that strangely Europhile news agency UPI, Hannah K. Strange, has been granted an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with the egregious minister for Europe, Denis MacShame.

Unsurprisingly, the copy has not been used by any of the national media, leaving UPI to find an outlet only in the somewhat obscure periodical, World Herald where – but for this Blog – it would have languished unread in any number of dentists' waiting rooms.

We have resuscitated it for one purpose – to demonstrate how MacShame, like his colleagues, have elevated the practice of not answering questions to a higher art form.

In the interview, UPI asked him about US-EU relations, the future of the EU, and British political controversies. We reproduce the sequence relating to the lifting of the EU arms embargo on China, and another short sequence on how MacShame is going to win the referendum on the EU constitution. Firstly, China:

UPI: Concerning Britain's agreement to support a lifting of the EU arms embargo despite intense pressure from the United States ...

MacShane: There is no agreement. ... There's a discussion going on between individual governments in Europe ... and with the United States. There's no agreement at the moment, it's there as an issue that a lot of people are talking about.

Q. Will the U.S. feelings have an important impact on any final decision?

A. Well, the United States is a vital ally of the United Kingdom and other European Union member states, so, of course, talking to America is something that all European governments do daily. Mr. (Javier) Solana was there in Washington a couple of weeks ago just watching the current installation of (the State Department's) Condoleeza Rice and (Robert) Zoellick and Nick Burns. All three of them know Europe intimately.

Nicolas Burns has been the U.S. ambassador to NATO, and is one of the world's great experts on Europe. Zoellick has got 25 years experience of working closely with European countries and Miss Rice -- fluent Russian, fluent French -- plus the president visiting here next month, I think the dialogue ... has never been deeper. ... There's a new sense the partnership between the United States and Europe is coming back into being after the period of difficulty (with) ... the initiation of the Iraq conflict.

Q. But Britain is supporting at the moment the move towards lifting the embargo.

A. We have made three points: firstly, the embargo was imposed in 1989, two decades ago in response to Tiananmen Square. Secondly, China has moved on very considerably since then, they'll be organizing the Olympic Games shortly, and China's got a legitimate right to ask for normal trade relations.

Other countries have been selling arms to China very strongly in recent years, some of which are very close to the United States. What we want to ensure is that any lift(ing) of the embargo is within the framework of the EU norms on exporting arms, which place important strictures on human rights. They don't contribute to increasing any tension in the Straits of Taiwan, and don't involve allowing the exporting of any relevant technology.

I think the big question that has to be asked is: Who's been exporting arms to China in the last decade. But it's a continuing discussion, no final decision has been made, and I think it's one that has been handled in a very open and transparent way and with full respect for the very strict rules that certainly Britain applies for any of its arms exports.

Q. If Britain does go ahead with its support of the lifting of the arms embargo, does it mean that Britain is following EU strategic preferences rather than those of the United States?

A. No, we are following British strategic preferences.

And now for the referendum:

Q. How do you intend to win the referendum on the EU Constitution?

A. By putting the facts on front of the British people - that this is a treaty that limits the powers of the European Union, strengthens the powers of national governments, strengthens the powers of national parliaments, preserves unanimity - or the word veto if you prefer - in all the key areas that matter, so nobody in Brussels can decide Britain's tax policy, Britain's foreign policy, Britain's military policy, Britain's crime and security policy without the consent of the British government and the British parliament. And we think that the union of 25 sovereign states, soon to grow larger, in which over half a trillion people will trade freely and do so within a framework of law, is an extraordinary historic achievement.

And it's been Britain's strategic goal for 500 years to ensure that this kind of Europe develops, not the Europe of my father and grandfather of division, rivalry, trade wars, cultural, political barriers, the denial of human rights - the old Europe that was a disaster for many of its citizens. Britain is a leading player in this (new) Europe, and we'll take on the isolationists and defeat them.

Don’t you love it… "over half a trillion people…"? Mr MacShame, shurly shum exaggeration?

And as for "Old Europe", wasn't that what Schröder was boasting about the other day? It is interesting to learn from MacShame that it was a "disaster". I believe that Rumsfeld expressed a similar view.

Beyond parody

The bag lady is at it again.

She tells us: "It is six o'clock in the morning. It is also dark, wet and cold. The only living creatures we can see are a fox, two cats and the newspaperman. Me and my husband are out for a regular 45-minutes walk or slow jog."

ME AND MY HUSBAND… ???? Queenie would have a blue fit. "My husband and I..", please – but then, what do you expect from a bag lady?

Nevertheless, plough on dear reader, plough on…

This is the only time I can find for exercising although I am sometimes (often!) dead tired and wonder if we are insane to do such a thing (Not to mention that my husband feels embarrassed over my ski-poles that I use because its good for the neck and shoulders and you use more energy when walking with those.)

Mr Wallström... We know exactly how you feel.

Insult to injury

The Financial Times has come up with a scoop. The government, using taxpayers' (i.e., our) money, is hiring a PR agency to extol the virtues of EU membership and explain why the European constitution is a "success for Britain".

A Foreign Office memo, obtained by the FT, reveals that the government is embarking this month on an "extensive communications campaign" on the EU referendum.

As part of the offensive, the FT tells us, it has hired Geronimo PR, a London-based firm which has handled previous government campaigns to increase awareness about the "benefits" of EU membership and the "facts" about the constitutional treaty.

Outlining the brief for the agency, which has been given a £40,000 budget, the Foreign Office asserts that it is to inform the public rather than "persuade" people to vote for the constitution.

The memo goes on to reel off a list of the constitution's merits, calling the treaty a "success for Britain" which will "confirm" the UK's "position of strength in Europe" and enable the enlarged Europe to "work more effectively". Rejecting the constitution, it says, would "jeopardise our position in the EU… weaken Britain's influence in Europe. It would marginalise and isolate us".

Clearly, if the government is under the impression that the EU constitution will enable the enlarged EU to "work more efficiently", (presupposing it has ever worked efficiently) then it has a rather skewed understanding of the word "efficiency" and an even more slender grasp of the meaning of the word "fact".

However, given the general lack of imagination and flair in governmental pro-EU propaganda to date, the greatest risk to which we are exposed – apart from being that little bit poorer – is of being bored to death.

That notwithstanding, £40,000 is actually a relatively modest amount for a government to spend on an "information" campaign. The "Five-a-day Keeps the Doctor Away" nutrition project in Somerset alone was allocated a budget of £106,400.

With it already committed to spending £80 million on administering the referendum, though, this additional spending on pure propaganda is rather adding insult to injury.

Ahem, what happened to the Lisbon agenda?

Well you may ask. The Lisbon agenda was adopted at the Lisbon summit in 2000, its purpose being to make the European economy the most competitive and knowledge based by 2010.

We are half-way there and the mid-term review is due on February 2. Still, we are nowhere near that aim and are, indeed, slipping back in the world-wide competition. The new President of the Commission, Barroso, announced that reviving the Lisbon process (beware of that word) will be the main aim of his term.

Mr Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, that now holds the presidency of the EU, confirmed the importance of the Lisbon agenda, though he seems more interested in ensuring that he gets a bigger budget through for the period starting from 2007.

What do we find now? An internal and poorly publicized Commission paper drops the Lisbon targets and suggests instead that the economic goals should be simplified.

The paper sets out as top three priorities: creating more and better jobs, boosting knowledge and innovation, and ensuring the EU is an attractive location for business.

Simplified that may be but, frankly, comprehensive it is not. What does any of this mean and how can it be achieved through government or political diktats? Ah yes, our readers have, no doubt, guessed the answer: a co-ordinator of the national activity a "Mr Lisbon" or, perhaps, a "Ms Lisbon" will be appointed. I expect the Americans, the Indians and the Chinese are shaking in their shoes.

Written by Helen Szamuely

A new class of parasite

Not so very long ago, stuck in Frankfurt Hahn airport, waiting once again for a delayed Ryanair flight, we got chatting with a businessman who was also waiting for the same aircraft.

We were on our way back from the EU parliament in Strasbourg and, inevitably, the talk drifted into a discussion on EU laws and "red tape", at which point our man brightened up and told us, with some animation, how much he favoured it.

The man had not struck us as a raving Europhile. In fact, up to that point he had seemed quite normal so we were curious to hear the reasons for his enthusiasm. It turned out, they were quite straightforward. He owned a company that made rubber stamps.

Very much into that category comes an obscure manufacturing company which has attracted the attention of The Daily Telegraph business section today.

It has run a story entitled: "Brussels lays golden eggs for Domino", which give you little clue as to what it is all about but, reading the details, it soon becomes clear.

Domino – or Domino Printing Sciences – to give it its full name – is a specialist printer manufacturer, which producing machines designed specifically to print messages on eggs.

Fortunately for Domino – but unfortunately for the egg industry and everybody else (who will have to pay the bill, one way or another) – on 1 January 2004, EU Council Regulation EC 5/2001 came into force, requiring all Class A eggs sold at retail level within the EU to be marked (stamped) with a code identifying the establishment (production site), country of origin and method of production (i.e organic, free range, barn or cage).

This led to a rush of business which helped deliver a 22 percent increase in pre-tax profits at Domino, with profits jumping to £24.7m for the year ending 31 October 2004, with an eight percent turnover increase, to £178.3m.

And the business has been very profitable, with gross profit margin rising to 50 percent, up from 48.9 percent in 2003, despite the company spending 5 percent of sales on research and development.

It's an ill wind, you might say. But I won't. Domino makes its living off the growing regulatory culture. Furthermore, it is not just the rubber stamp and egg printer-makers who are living off the fat of the land. There are also the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lobbyists, consultants, and hangers on, all of whom depend for their wealth and status on EU activities.

Not least of these are the trade organisations and representatives, typified by the Federation of Small Business, which has bought into the EU and now acts as a mouthpiece for it (see here and here).

These are a new class of parasite, amoral and opportunistic - and dangerous with it: they form a bedrock core of support for the project, for as long as they can benefit from it.

Is he working for the Commission's propaganda section?

If I said it once, I said it a hundred times. If the Commission is serious about spreading propaganda and winning the hearts and minds of the European people (or, at least, instilling the notion that there is one true path to knowledge and no-one is allowed to diverge), they should take lessons from the masters: the Soviet Union.

Well, it seems they have finally heeded my advice. Of course, the Soviet Union is no longer with us but a perfectly adequate substitute is emerging in Putin’s Russia, what with his attempt to create a single economic and security area on the territory of the old USSR and reuniting the various energy providers under state control.

At the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Budapest ghetto, the Russian ambassador read out a statement from the Foreign Ministry. Clearly he could not formulate one himself. Among other things he informed the collected and, no doubt, somewhat bemused audience that the defeat of Fascism with Soviet help was the first step towards "a unified, democratic and flourishing Europe".

So now we know. Eat your heart out Jean Monnet.

They are getting the minnows

The first conviction in the oil-for-food scandal has been announced. No, it is not that of a high UN official or an important European politician. Quelle idée!

An Iraqi-American businessman, Samir Vincent, who has run a Northern Virginia energy trading company called Phoenix International LLC, has pleaded guilty in Manhattan to illegally lobbying US government officials on Saddam’s behalf and getting paid in millions of dollars of cash payment and oil allocations under the now infamous scheme.

Mr Vincent could get as much as twenty-eight years in gaol for acting as an unregistered foreign agent, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by doing business with Iraq and making false statements in his tax returns, but Attorney-General John Ashcroft announced that the accused was co-operating to the hilt with all the various investigations into the scandal. Singing like a canary is the way it used to be described in old thrillers and nothing wrong with that.

It is, of course, important to be able to trace the exact operation of the gigantic fraud and the way it was used to campaign against UN sanctions and to secure various extremely advantages for Saddam, his psychopathic family and other friends and relations.

Still, some of us are looking forward to other court appearances: that of UN officials who, at best, looked the other way and, at worst, took a rake-off themselves; that of high-and-mighty politicians and political lobbyists who wrung their hands at the plight of the Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions while happily pocketing money that should have been used to help them; that of journalists and other Saddam supporters who wrote stories about the heroism of the Iraqi people in the face of western aggression, while enjoying the goodies that had been intended to help those people.

Well, one can dream.

Musing on flags

Flags are important symbols of group identity, whether we speak of the flag flown by a particular organization, those embroidered standards carried by trade unions that symbolize their history and development from small associations, flags of a particular area such as the Isle of Man or national flags.

As it happens, the national flag has not been of great significance to the British. Whether it is because they have had no uncertainty about their national identity, have not had to fight for it or because, as the song has it, “… every war we’ve fought we’ve won”, is hard to tell.

Ostentatious display of the Union Flag, except on official buildings at certain clearly defined times, has been frowned upon. There is a telling episode in Kipling’s Stalky and Co, in which an unctuous politician (are there any others in Kipling’s works?) comes to the school, based on the writer’s own Dartmouth College, that aims to produce empire builders and administrators, and embarrasses the boys by a tacky, trite talk about patriotism. The most embarrassing moment comes when the politician to his audience’s horror, produces and flourishes a Union Flag. The boys feel as if their souls have been besmirched.

Noticeably, Saki (H. H. Munro), one of the best of the Edwardian writers and journalists, takes a very different attitude in his little known 1913 novel When William came. An attempt to alert his countrymen both to the external dangers of German aggressiveness and the internal decay of the society, the novel describes England under a German occupation and the behaviour of various individuals in those circumstances. It is a short work that is well worth reading.

One scene takes place in an outpost of the former British Empire, somewhere in Africa, where a few families have taken refuge and live in difficult conditions, because, as one of them explains, they can run up the Union Flag every morning and that is enough for them. There is a solemn description of a solitary young rider, who stops and bares his head as the flag rises above the harsh African terrain.

Saki’s point is clear. When the nation and its identity are in danger, the flag becomes an important symbol to be cherished and venerated.

Indeed so, I hear our readers mutter, musing is one thing, total waffle is something else. What is she going on about? Apart from keeping the high level of literariness of this blog, that is?

Flags have always been more important on the Continent and in countries where nationality was forged out of disparate units, such as the United States. The Stars and Stripes flies everywhere, the states are jealous of their own flags, when they can be. The ever-recurring row about the flags of the Confederate states shows that the issue is still alive.

The EU knows very well the importance of flags. It grew out of the Continental tradition, where nations cling to their symbols, one of which is the national flag. So, goes the argument, if the Union creates its own national symbol, the national reality will follow. This has not proved to be correct so far, but there is much to play for.

Hungary, the country I have just visited, in case anybody missed that, has always taken its tricolour very seriously. The red, white and green led soldiers into battle in 1848-9, it flew again after the Agreement that created the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867, it flew in the First World War and during the collapse of that Monarchy. It did not fly briefly (133 days) during the Soviet Republic of 1919 but was raised again proudly afterwards.

Once the Nazis invaded in March 1944, the flag with the swastika became the emblem of Hungary’s subservient position. Briefly, after its liberation, the tricolour was restored but then, after the Communist take-over there was an addition: into the centre of the flag was inserted the socialist emblem.

During the revolution of 1956 that emblem was cut out or burnt out by the people who had risen spontaneously to overthrow the foreign and totalitarian regime. Many of our readers would have seen the pictures of the Hungarian flags with the hole in the centre flying on buildings, on burnt-out Soviet tanks, in the hands of youngsters.

The socialist emblem was not restored but neither was the old Hungarian emblem. The national flag remained and flew more proudly in 1991 after what the Hungarians refer to as their regime change.

On my first visit since the country’s accession to the blessed European Union (erroneously perceived by some of the political class as a return to Europe) I was expecting to see some blue flags with the ring of gold stars on various official buildings, and so there were: dual flag use is, of course, de rigeur in some, though not all EU member states. (Not France, for instance, outside of Strasbourg.)

The ring of stars did fly over ministries and other suchlike unimportant establishments, though only in the very centre of the city. But, to my astonishment I noted dual flag use on three very fine buildings that are the very epitome of Hungarian nationhood.

Two blue and gold flags flew beside the tricolour over the Hungarian Parliament, a fine end of the nineteenth century building; the Opera House, designed by the finest Hungarian architect, Miklós Ybl, where many a patriotic opera has been performed; and, above all, the Hungarian Academy, a splendid neo-Renaissance building, opened in 1865, two years before the great Agreement but housing an institution that had been founded in 1825 by the “greatest Hungarian” Count István Széchenyi and other patriotic noblemen (magnates, as they were known) for the promotion of the study of Hungarian language, literature and history, as well as other subjects.

This ostentatious and unnecessary display of European righteousness raises interesting questions. Just what are the Hungarian authorities playing at? They must know that this is not required and may well antagonize the population as soon as the money dries up and it is perceived that promised benefits have not materialized.

Tentatively, I can advance two explanations, culled from historical parallels. One is that those authorities are doing what Hungary has been accused of doing in the past: being the most faithful follower, showing subservience beyond any call of requirement.

The other is that this may be a subtle message to the populace through a method, well-rehearsed in the past. Look, they are saying, we are not allowed to tell you what we really think, we are supposed to rejoice at our return to our European heritage, but, actually, we have once again surrendered our independence and our national symbol is in submission.

As they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice. There may be other explanations (no doubt some will be advanced by our readers). But if either of the above is anywhere near the truth, the long-term consequences are likely to be difficult.

Hardly a "presentational problem"

You can half see see Jack Straw's point when, on BBC Radio 4's World at One today, he spoke on the China arms embargo, saying that it was currently "very tightly drawn", so lifting it would not make any significant different.

What he did not say – and, course the BBC did not ask him – was that arms sales from EU member states almost doubled its arms sales to China between 2002 and 2003, totalling €416m ($544m) in 2003 against €210m for 2002. In effect, the embargo has ceased to have any meaningful effect, as it is largely being ignored.

Here, Blair might not have his hands clean. It turns out that the UK is also a major arms supplier to China, with sales of €112m in 2003, coming third after France, which granted €171m of licences and Italy at €127m, all significantly up on the previous year. This might explain why he is so willing to go along with his EU "partners" (see previous posting) and support the lifting of the embargo.

However, Jack Straw is wholly wrong if he sees the lifting of the embargo, viz-à-viz the United States, as a “presentational problem”, thinking that as long as he can explain it to the Americans they will fall in behind the UK.

The Washington Times, yesterday ran a long piece by Bill Gertz, headed: "China builds up strategic sea lanes", detailing how China is building up military forces and setting up bases along sea lanes from the Middle East to project its power overseas and protect its oil shipments.

This is according to a previously undisclosed internal report prepared for defence secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, which states that "China is building strategic relationships along the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea in ways that suggest defensive and offensive positioning to protect China's energy interests, but also to serve broad security objectives."

This is known as the "string of pearls" strategy, with China setting up bases and diplomatic ties stretching from the Middle East to southern China that includes a new naval base under construction at the Pakistani port of Gwadar.

Beijing already has set up electronic eavesdropping posts at Gwadar in the country's southwest corner, the part nearest the Persian Gulf. The post is monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea, the report said.

China also is building up its military forces in the region to be able to "project air and sea power" from the mainland and Hainan Island. China recently upgraded a military airstrip on Woody Island and increased its presence through oil drilling platforms and ocean survey ships.

What must really worry the Americans is the report's findings that: "China... is looking not only to build a blue-water navy to control the sea lanes, but also to develop undersea mines and missile capabilities to deter the potential disruption of its energy supplies from potential threats, including the US Navy, especially in the case of a conflict with Taiwan."

This requires developing weapons for sea-lane control, building new warships equipped with long-range cruise missiles, submarines and undersea mines. China also is buying aircraft and long-range target acquisition systems, including optical satellites and maritime unmanned aerial vehicles – much of which it hopes to get from EU suppliers, tied in with the Galileo satellite navigation programme, which it will use for the guidance systems.

Crucially, this focus on the naval build-up is a departure from China's past focus on ground forces, and directly challenges US Naval supremacy in the region.

No matter how hard Jack Staw tries, a move by the EU to make arms sales to China even easier than it is already is not going to be viewed by Washington as a "presentational problem".

Right on cue…

Following neatly in the wake of the A380 launch, the Scotsman has published the story: "Tsunami-hit Thais told: Buy six planes or face EU tariffs".

Actually, the tariffs are already in place, as we recorded in our posting of 8 January and we had noted yesterday how the EU was using its trade policy as leverage to "encourage" countries to purchase Airbus aircraft.

The Scotsman, however, adds more detail, revealing that the Thai government has been told directly by EU commission – presumably from Peter Mandeson’s office - that "it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry."

The aircraft will cost Thailand some £1.3 billion – nearly the amount that all 25 EU members states have pledged in tsunami aid to the whole affected region.

Says the Scotsman, "The demand will come as a deep embarrassment to Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, whose officials started the negotiation before the disaster struck Thailand - killing tens of thousands of people and damaging its economy."

But that is the EU, naked in tooth and claw. While workers from across world are on the ground, helping to rebuild the Thai economy, EU officials are also right in there - undermining the basis of any recovery.

I wonder if the "bag lady" will do a Blog on that? One thing for sure, you won't hear anything about it from the BBC.

Tory's EU hitlist

From The Times today, in the "People with Andrew Pierce" section:

The Tory peer Tristan Garel-Jones, who was John Major’s Deputy Chief Whip, still ventures into the MPs’ dining rooms to stir up trouble on the euro.

His latest declaration: "When we win the referendum on the constitution, leading Tory Eurosceptics will be rounded up, tried and shot for their disloyalty to the European Union."

High on Lord Garel-Jones’s hitlist are the Thatcherite Eric Forth, Owen Paterson, who was Iain Duncan Smith’s bag carrier, and John Redwood, high priest of Euroscepticism.

Garel-Jones would exclude fellow Eurosceptics David Heathcoat-Amory and Lord Cranborne. They would be allowed to board a plane to a safe country outside the Union... because they're "toffs".

Hilarious, isn't he?

The price of rejection - not

Publicised by the BBC website, a written parliamentary answer from the constitutional affairs minister Chris Leslie has revealed that the administration of the EU referendum is likely to cost the same as a general election – about £80 million.

Labour MP John Cryer, whose question revealed the price estimate, said the cost surprised him but was not a central factor as it was important people had their say. But he said it would have been better to have rejected the constitution so avoiding the need for a referendum.

He has a good point. If we assume that the poll does deliver a "no" vote – a dangerous but plausible assumption – then Blair’s ambition will have wasted that amount of money. Small beer as a proportion of total government expenditure, it is still real money, paid by real people - and would pay for about 10,000 hip replacement operations.

"Old Europe" takes to the skies - almost

It is virtually open season for farmers, with their elaborate CAP subsidies, but what price the aviation industry – specifically Airbus? For the one project, the "super-jumbo" A380, the launch costs are estimated at €10.7 billion, which has to be stumped up by the participating countries – or their taxpayers - before the first aircraft leaves its hanger.

And, in a deal that would have any businessman drooling, if Airbus Industries is unable to make back the money from selling its product, what are nominally loans do not have to be paid back. This is a business in name only – it is entirely risk-free. No wonder the Americans are complaining. Anyone can take a risk when their money is not on the line.

It is doubtful, however, that it is this "ramp" to which Gerhard Schröder was referring when he boasted at the ceremonial unveiling today of the first aircraft that, "There is the tradition of good old Europe that has made this possible".

But "old Europe" it certainly is: subsidy-ridden and protectionist, with sales reliant as much on government purchases and international pressure (for instance, Thailand is effectively being blackmailed into buying Airbus airliners in return for a favourable EU deal on tariffs).

However, in another sense, it is hardly "Europe" at all. Only four nations are involved, the UK, Germany, France and Spain, working together on a co-operative basis.

Once again, though, in its reporting of the events, the BBC excelled - somehow managing to avoid any mention of start-up costs.

Highlighting the claim that the aircraft was a testimony to "old Europe", business reported Jorn Madslien instead gushed about the A380's attributes, describing the unveiling ceremony as "reminiscent of opening ceremonies for Olympic Games, complete with dancers resembling angels, floating through blue smoke clouds; towering over them a tall, god-like figure, exhorting the audience to 'remind yourself that everything is possible'."

He cites l'escroc Chirac, saying it is "truly magnificent human endeavour," and has Tony Blair burbling: "Now we see this final product and we are amazed." For Noel Forgeard, Airbus chief executive, however, is reserved the most inane comment: "Under the name Airbus, Europe has written one of its most beautiful pages of its history."

For all that, the A380 is an aircraft that has never left the runway and its first flight is not due to take place until this spring. Commercial service is expected in 2006.

Interestingly, compared with Boeing's alternative, the 7E7 "Dreamliner", there is another "old Europe" aspect to this project. Boeing is going for a smaller aircraft, capable of servicing regional airports, transporting people directly from place to place. The idea is to give passengers a greater choice of starting points, routes and destinations, enabling them to avoid the inconvience of travelling to the congested, high density "hubs".

Airbus, on the other hand, is going for massive centralisation, putting even more pressure on the central hubs, as its operating carriers will be forced to increase passenger traffic to meet their costs. That rather epitomises the very nature of "old Europe" – an inflexible, centralising construct, divorced from the needs of the people.

As well as the hardware, therefore, we are also seeing an ideological battle and competition between two opposing commercial concepts. My money is on the New World.

Figures to juggle with

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe there is an article by Supatchai Panitchpakdi, Director General of the WTO. Normally the words director general, secretary general, chief negotiator, co-ordinator in chief, what-have-you, send me screaming away from the article. However, I did glance at it, since its title, Trade Relief was of some interest.

Most of it was the usual rather turgid, official stuff about what the various international organizations, in this case a relatively useful one, can do. The emphasis on trade rather than even more aid, as suggested by the UN, Gordon Brown, Nelson Mandela, Bono and, alas Martin Wolf of the Financial Times was sensible but it was still turgid.

What attracted my interest was Mr Panitchpakdi’s figures.

“Consider that Sri Lanka, in 2002, paid import duties to rich countries in excess of $315 million, Indonesia paid $850 million, Thailand more than $1 billion. Taken together those duties constitute 50% of the funds pledged so far for disaster relief. The magnitude of these duties is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that Norway ($125.9 million) and Switzerland ($245 million)paid far less in duties to other rich countries while exporting considerably more.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it.

Puffed up with self-importance

I cannot resist this one. In today’s Daily Telegraph article by Mark Steyn, otherwise not entirely relevant to the blog, he quotes from one of my favourite authors, P. G. Wodehouse.

Why Nazism or Fascism, Steyn says (with rather more optimism than I would display, but let that pass) was impossible in Britain or any other English-speaking country because it seemed inherently ridiculous. The whole attitude could be summed up in Bertie Wooster’s famous attack on the preposterous Sir Roderick Spode, clearly based on the egregious Sir Oswald Mosley:

"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting, 'Heil, Spode!'and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.

"That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?'"

Substitute the name of any politician, would-be politician, official, would-be official, regulator, would-be regulator for Spode and you will not be too far off the mark.

Unfortunately, as Steyn himself points out, all this goes for the upfront, uniform-wearing, salute-exchanging, slogan-shouting type of tyranny. They can be made to look and sound ridiculous. But there is a more insidious form of political oppression, what Steyn describes as

“… the soft, supple, creeping totalitarian inclination of our present-day rulers”.

This, as he rightly says, is much harder to mock, resist or even to identify and define. But we must do so or we cannot win the battle.

Are they trying to tell us something?

Type in "swivel eyed loons" (complete with inverted commas) into the Google search engine, and what comes up as lead item in the results?

Er.. The UK Independence Party official website.

Does Google know something we don’t know? Silly question that!

And while we're on this subject, if Kilroy-Silk is thinking about starting a new political party called Veritas, shouldn't somebody be thinking about setting up one called "In vino..."?

Just a thought.

She's dun a Blog…

The fragrant Margot Wallström, commissioner for truth and reconciliation, has done another Blog.

We really should not mock… but we’re going to anyway. Her contribution to the great debate so far has been to gush about how terrible was the Asian tsunami – as if we did not know already – and to tell us how all those lunches and dinners in the commission are causing her to put on weight.

Now we learn this incredible news:

A friend brought me a present from India. I admired very much the bag made out of recycled newspaper. With a simple folding technique this recycled newspaper pages had been turned into a practical bag! The handles were also from recycled material and I started to show this nice bag to people around in the office until my friend said: 'sorry, but it's what's inside the bag that is your present' - and I found a beautiful shawl!

Is this woman really that stupid? Do they really let people like this out on her own? Is there life on Mars?

Anyway, this little revelation becomes a homily for recycling, with the commissioner for truth telling us that she is convinced:

…that it is those people that know how to reuse and recycle for example old newspapers that will stand a chance in the kind of development that we see in the world today.

On, p-please. I can't take any more of this. Read it for yourself, if you dare. Better still, read North Sea Diaries. I wish I could write like that.

"Our purpose is to ensure there is an informed debate"

It really is quite remarkable how obsessed the Euro-scum have become with "bendy banana" type Euro-myths. Hence we learn from The Times today that, "frustrated by the 'twisted facts' and 'lies' about Europe", the EU commission has begun (another) counter-offensive against the British media.

As part of its campaign "to improve flagging confidence in the EU", it has set up a website giving "detailed rebuttals" of stories that it complains leaves readers with a "picture of the EU as a bunch of mad ‘eurocrats’".

The Times story is headed: "We're not banning corgis – check your facts, sighs EU" and the scope of the commission’s concern extends to rebutting stories that alleged EU plans to ban advertising slogans such as "Guinness is good for you", the one about the EU wanting to reduce lottery prizes to a maximum of £60,000 and alleged EU plans to ban corgis and 100 other breeds of dog.

The commission is free with its criticism, claiming that: "The British press is quite prepared to report fantasy, and they have a habit of deliberately distorting stuff…", although it does concede that "many of them are very funny".

What is not funny is the commission’s website, called "Get Your Facts Straight", where selective reporting is the rule. For instance, one of its "rebuttals" relates the "myth": "Model Railways under threat from EU", citing from the Mail on Sunday, 19 May 2002. The problem, à la commission, is that:

Thousands of model railway fans are facing a threat to their innocent hobby – from Brussels bureaucrats. EU rules will come into force at the end of this month aimed at improving the safety of industrial boilers.. The European Pressure Equipment Regulations, which are backed by Whitehall, will hit the handful of manufacturers who make the copper boilers for model steam engines and larger ride-on engines at theme parks. The makers claim the extra red tape will cost them thousands of pounds and will put them out of business.

The kindly commission then gives us the "facts", to put us straight:

The Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) improves the system of safety checks on a range of items such as fire extinguishers and diving bottles, not just on boilers in steam trains. It also applies to power plants, air conditioning and refrigeration systems and oil refineries to name but a few example.

The directive, says the commission:

…actually cuts red tape because products will need to be inspected by only one national body, reflecting the fact that such products are sold in more than one EU country. There is a strong case for the stringent verification provided for by the PED. Faulty pressure equipment can indeed kill. Under the new directive miniature railway fans are safeguarded via boiler checks, factory workers are better protected and manufacturers now have genuine access to the market, properly regulated to ensure safety.

But what the commission does not do is cite Christopher Booker’s column, published in February 2003, which gave the detailed background to the problem being caused by the directive. "A world-leading British industry", he wrote then, "is about to be wiped out by an EU directive simply because Brussels officials had never heard of them, and therefore drafted a law in a way that makes it impossible for them to comply." He continues:

Although the six men and one woman who make copper boilers for model steam engines supply them to customers all over the world, and build them to a British safety standard twice as exacting as that imposed by the EU's Pressure Equipment Directive (PED), the Brussels law (certainly as interpreted by our own Department of Trade and Industry) makes no provision for such a tiny industry. It must therefore go out of business.

Britain's seven self-employed copper boilermakers - including Trevor Tremblen who worked in Swindon's engine sheds and on North Sea oil rigs; Pete Carr who worked for Westlands and Rolls Royce; John Ellis, who also worked for Rolls-Royce and Lucas Aerospace; Ian Stock, a retired farmer; and Helen Verrall from Somerset, the world's only woman boilermaker - have no rivals. They have customers lining up for their products from Japan to Oregon, USA. But so specialised is their craft that when Brussels drew up its directive to set EU-wide safety standards for pressure vessels, no one thought to consult them.

When the boilermakers finally learned about the new directive, which they were told would allow them to trade freely throughout the EU's single market (something they have been doing for years), they realised that it gave them no way to meet its requirements. What made their situation even more bizarre is that, although the EU has given exemptions to amateur boilermakers and those who build "heritage" steam engines, the professional craftsmen who make them more expertly than anyone else are being forced into extinction.

The PED is one of a phalanx of directives that require a wide range of products to be given a "CE" mark (for Communaute Europeen), to certify that they meet EU safety standards. These are granted by what are called "notified bodies", commercial organisations which, in return for an accreditation fee, buy the right to supervise the testing and voluminous paperwork needed to win a CE mark, charging £700 a day for their services.

The problem for the copper boilermakers was twofold. First, they had to provide certificates guaranteeing the content of each piece of copper they use. But because copper is a "base material", these certificates do not exist. It is too expensive for manufacturers to supply them. The only alternative is to have each component separately analysed at £80 per item, adding prohibitively to the cost…

Recently the net around the seven has been tightening. Customers not only in Europe but all over the world have told them that, unless each boiler has a CE mark and the mass of documentation which goes with it, orders must be cancelled. Insurance companies are free to insure boilers made to a lower standard by amateurs, because these are exempted. But professional products without a CE mark are uninsurable.

Short of miraculous intervention by a politician who can see just how insane is the situation that these decent, desperate people are faced with, it seems a world-beating British industry is about to be wiped out, for no reason whatever.

Small wonder that the fragrant Margot Wallström, the new communications commissioner, wants to promote the website to the public, rather than have them learn what really is going on. And her spokesman has the nerve to say: "It is useful to remind people of the truth. Our purpose is to ensure there is an informed debate, and this is part of that."

Yea, right!

Resentment of America starts at home

A week ago the Wall Street Journal Europe published a letter from an American in Frankfurt am Main.

He suggested that the revered German Marshall Fund, in its own words, "an American public policy and grant-making institution dedicated to promoting greater co-operation and understanding between the United States and Europe", should turn its attention away from the endless tut-tutting as to why Americans do not seem to present themselves more favourably to Europeans and what they should do about it.

Instead, he felt that it should look at "why the US is systematically portrayed in the German media as irrationally naïve, hegemonic and even foolishly stupid". (I take it this is the same German media that gets rightly upset or bitterly ironic at the British TV's tendency to protray the Germans as stupid and obsessed with power, i.e. hegemonic.)

What made me laugh out loud was the title the sub-editor put above the letter: Please Shed Some Light on Der Bushbashismus.

The subject of Der Bushbashismus or just plain old resentment of the United States fascinates American commentators for obvious reasons. (It also fascinates European commentators who simply love pointing out how well-deserved all this America-bashing is and how unpleasant all Americans are, what with being so stupid and naïve and so rich and so successful and so determined to foist their ideas on the world and so reluctant to look outside their own country and so… well you put in your own favourite anti-Americanism.)

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune had an article from one of their regular columnists, Thomas L. Friedman. Entitled Give young Muslims the luxury to ignore America, it deals with the problem Americans have to face: they have been generous beyond belief towards the victims of the tsunami, many of them Muslim; their soldiers have risked their lives “to save the Muslims of Bosnia, the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Somalia, the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq” (plus a few more). Yet all they get for their pains is accusations of being anti-Muslim.

There is nothing the Americans can do about this, says Friedman, adding:

I believe the tensions between America and the Muslim world stem primarily from the conditions under which many Muslims live, not what America does. I believe free people living under freely elected governments, with a free press and with economies and education systems that enable their young people to achieve their full potential, don't spend a lot of time thinking about whom to hate, whom to blame, and whom to lash out at. Free countries don't have leaders who use their meda and state-owned "intellectuals" to deflect all of their people’s anger from
them and onto America.

To prove his point Mr Friedman explains that "young people in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Poland and India" may have views on America but these are not an obsession, because those young people are more anxious to get on with their lives and make them better. Besides, they can express any opinion they want, "pro-American, anti-American or neutral".

That leaves western Europe or the older part of the EU. They, too, according to Mr Friedman, are free-market democracies but still they hate America. But it is merely a hobby, says Mr Friedman, whereas for far too many Muslims it is a career.

Having agreed with the rest of the article, I must take an issue here. Anti-Americanism has become an obsession, a career for far too many Europeans and this, too, can be put down to domestic matters.

We do not live under the sort of oppressive, tyrannical and kleptocratic regimes most Muslims do but a feeling of frustration is seeping through European life (and yes, I do include Britain as well).

The frustration is to do with the fact that, while nominally democracies, all members of the EU are in fact, part of a vast managerial, dirigiste political structure and there is nothing we the people, the voters can do about it.

The frustration is to do with the fact that slowly but surely Europe is losing economic advantages and there seems to be no way of dealing with this, while those in charge continue to weave their thick web of rules and regulations, committees and co-ordinations.

Finally, and especially in Britain, the frustration is to do with the hidden knowledge that so much of what is good and and admirable has been lost and given away. All that is left is a mindless repetition of an obviously false belief that at least, we are all more intelligent, more subtle, more sophisticated than the Americans.

For many it is an obsession; for all our "public intellectuals", of whom Europeans are so proud and of whom many are, indeed, state sponsored or EU sponsored, it is a career. For the moment it pays well. But is it really a good idea in the long term to devote quite so much creative energy to the blame game?

Hear! Hear!

Just one of the many comments on the Diplomad site, linked to our piece.

USA:

1. We need you.

2. We appreciate what you do even if certain muppet-like creatures with a liberal education do not.

3. Can you please change your current non-Empiricial policy and invade Europe again but take all the politicians away with you when you leave? Many thanks.

BBC? Thank God for the Internet and the ability to watch Fox News etc!

To which we would add: while you are about it, could you please flatten the "European quarter" in Brussels?

And thank you to all those Bloggerswho linked to us yesterday. You helped push us to a record (for us) total of "hits" - just over 4,000 on the day.

Heavyweights line up against Schröder

Despite Schröder’s assertive stance on the "reform" of the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact, he is not escaping without challenge.

According to The Times business section today, tensions were rising over his proposals, with a number of the smaller member states lined up with central bankers to oppose the German chancellor’s calls for a watering down of its strictures.

In the lead was Karl-Heinz Grasser, the Austrian finance minister and, according to The Times, a "hardline fiscal conservative". And he has heavyweight support from both the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank. Both these institutions are warning against any dilution of the pact’s rules.

The Bundesbank is particularly dismissive of Schröder’s proposals. The Pact would not be strengthened by them, it says, but "decisively weakened". No longer is the Bundesbank the giant it was, but few chancellors in the past have taken it on and survived to tell the tale.

The BBC "has no regrets"

There is no limit to the smug, self satisfaction of the BBC, even despite its lamentable coverage
of the tsunami. In fact, according to The Independent today, the BBC has "no regrets" over its approach to the disaster.

But this is not what you might think. It is merely an empty little spat between rival broadcasters as to why the BBC "failed to fully appreciate the significance of the story by not sending its best-known reporters", including its world affairs editor, John Simpson, to affected Indian Ocean countries.

Needless to say, the BBC's new director of news, Helen Boaden, has rejected these attacks, accusing in turn rival broadcasters of trying to make "heroes" out of their reporters.

Ms Boaden said: "There is always going to be criticism of the BBC, particularly in big stories and particularly from our commercial competitors. We were the first there and the coverage was excellent." The BBC was not as reliant as its rivals on big-name journalists and valued the reporters in its 40 overseas bureaux, she said. "We invest in that because we want that kind of expertise." Yea, right!

That is the nature of the problem – that the BBC is not even aware it has a problem. As Lord Pearson said, "We are up against a large, self-satisfied and introspective culture".

Back from Mitteleuropa

My colleague tells me that he has entertained our readers with tales of my comings and goings but I suspect that is an exaggeration. Nobody was entertained at all.

The original purpose of the trip was to take part in a debate during a conference organized by Euromoney plc on the next ten years for Central and Eastern Europe, now that the countries have joined the great European project. More of the conference later on, but it is worth noting that the theme as outlined in the various section headings was not quite as upbeat as one would have expected it all to be. The grey dawn of reality is beginning to seep in.

This, however, is my first report from one of the new member states, one that I know well and have seen at various stages of its development, Hungary. It is, of course, good to know that that quintessentially Central European country is now back where it belongs and is not languishing in that artificial political section: Eastern Europe.

Hungarians and Austrians have resumed their mutual visiting habits and the trains between the two countries are full. Border checks have for some time been friendly and perfunctory (though, for some reason, my passport was examined at great length by the Hungarian guard on my way in). All this has happened long before the EU membership, for what Hungary and the other East European countries wanted was to be back in Europe. They were back in Europe the day they opened their borders (Hungary signalling the end of the Soviet empire by doing so in no uncertain terms in 1989), removed controls from property ownership, media and the formation of political parties and organizations.

All that happened a while ago, but the EU in its wisdom decided that only one relationship was possible and these countries had to become members, whether it was the right thing for them or not. To this end a promising idea, the Central European Free Trade Area (CEFRA) was destroyed before it could achieve anything and new border controls are being put up between the new members and the countries further east, whose development will be stifled in this way.

The main problem, as we have written before on numerous occasions and as I mentioned during my debate with a Research Fellow of the Centre for European Reform (the main perestroika europhile organization in this country), is that the EU, despite all that noisy talk about common foreign and security policy, has no real idea of a policy because there is no such animal as a common European interest.

This becomes even clearer as one goes further east. For the agenda of the former communist countries is very different from that of the core members. It is not an accident that they have shown themselves to be more pro-American than pro-French. They are not Atlanticist – how could they be, stuck in the middle of the continent – but they are pro-western. What is not yet clear to the people, including the more political classes (more easily defined in Central European circumstances than, say, in Britain) that the EU is not necessarily pro-western, in the sense, that it has eschewed many of the ideas that we call western or genuinely European and has set itself to undermine the western alliance.

Curiously enough, now that Hungary is part of the EU, its media seems to have become a great deal more inward looking, as have the political debates and discussions. It is as if a certain stage had been reached and it no longer mattered that this was a small inward looking country, obsessed with its own small and large problems. (Though I have to add that the main obsessions do not seem to be quite so petty as some of the ones in this country – Big Brother and I am a Celebrity … did not appear to be discussed with the same amount of gusto and detailed attention.)

The political divide in Hungary, I was told and I suspect this applies to the other new members as well, has not changed for a couple of centuries. On the one side are those who are nationalistic, often truly xenophobic, obsessed with past history, inward looking, suspicious of outsiders and of modern ideas. Sadly, FIDESZ, the main opposition party that had started with high hopes of becoming a more liberal, libertarian, British-style right-wing, conservative party, appears to have abandoned that idea and now appeals to the cruder nationalism of many people. While the leader of the party Viktor Orbán tries to give the impression in the West that, by and large, the original ideals are still there, his reputation inside the country is the opposite.

On the other side are lined up those who are pro-European, pro-Western, more open-minded in their political and economic thinking. For the moment, this trend of thinking is represented by the present Socialist government and those who had supported entry into the European Union. The referendum in Hungary had a very low turn-out, largely because despite misgiving, people did not vote “no”. That would have been a vote for the old-style communists or nationalists, the old agenda.

There are two problems here. One is that this political motif will not fit in well with the EU’s, whose divisions and definitions are very different. The other is that the East Europeans are bound to realize that membership of the EU is a dead end if what you believe in is an open, liberal, pro-Western structure.

I understand the CIA has given the EU 15 years. The CIA has been wrong before a few times (though it was not as wrong on Iraq as some people pretend). At present I give the project 5 years, though the death throes may take longer.

Aiding and abetting the enemy

In a posting yesterday on the CIA’s prediction that the EU might break-up in 15 years, I ventured the opinion that the European élites had "lost the plot", and were going to collapse under the weight of their ever-larger number of "independent and multi-stakeholder monitoring mechanisms", established to review their ever expanding "proceedings".

Then, I suggested, the people will rise up and do the decent thing. They will put them out of their misery.

My optimistic prognostication was, however, quickly countered by our reader who, in the "comments" section, dismissed my naïvity, stating that the people will not rise up. "They don't even know anything is wrong, thanks to the BBC and the papers."

Our reader may be right, although I hope not, but he has put his finger on a worrying and dangerous phenomenon, particularly in respect of the BBC – a new kind of bias which is much more difficult to detect.

The more obvious kind of bias, which the likes of Biased BBC and Last Night’s BBC News have been diligently reporting, is hard enough to spot, but the "new" technique used by the BBC is simply not to report a subject at all when there is favourable news. Instead, it will only cover unfavourable aspects when they arise.

No more so was this evident than on Saturday 8 January when the BBC managed to do a round-up of all the tsunami disaster area relief efforts, without mentioning the US efforts once, despite a longish piece shot in Banda Aceh where US activities were particularly visible.

That was the day that the USS Bonhomme Richard group, started work in earnest, yet the BBC found time to do a long "puff" on the British frigate HMS Chatham, showing endless footage of matelots clearing rubble.

Not only was this not mentioned but the BBC also omitted the fact that helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group had their biggest aid delivery day, bringing 125,000 pounds of food, water and other supplies to Aceh aboard 15 helicopters.

But this was also the day when, unfortunately, US forces in Iraq accidentally bombed the wrong target in Mosul, killing up to 14 citizens. No reticence here: a gloating BBC could hardly wait to rush in the story, running it as its number two item, pontificating with scarce-concealed glee that this would "reinforce anti-American feeling".

Later, on 14 January, we the saw BBC's Newsnight reporter, Peter Marshall, state, with not a hint of a blush, that:

The Asian tsunami has provided a perfect example of the need for an effective UN under an activist Secretary General. This time Kofi Annan was quick off the mark and America's independent efforts soon looked superfluous.

In perpetrating this lie, however, he was not out on his own. Only on the back of weeks of BBC coverage of the tsunami, ignoring the US efforts and giving endless puffs to the UN, could Marshall have got away with such an outrageous statement. Had the previous coverage been fair and balanced, Marshall would have been laughed out of court.

One of the other more egregious lies perpetrated by the BBC – and also by sections of the print media - is the canard that the extraordinarily generous US response was somehow in response to UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland’s claim that the US was being "stingy" but, as we pointed out in this piece, and later the US response was rapid, massive and unconditional, and in fact was set in train within six hours of reports of the tsunami being received.

Our coverage of these events, an in particular the Newsnight report, led to us being linked by a number of sites, not least Tim Blair, National Review and Kim du Toit, and by our new and highly respected friend Diplomad.

This has led to an explosion of "hits" on our site but, even more pleasing, Diplomad has done a coruscating piece on the BBC, bringing in many more aspects than I have mentioned of the dire performance of the BBC.

As my colleague Christopher Booker recently remarked, the BBC has now beome a national disgrace. In many ways, it is more dangerous and more dishonourable than Goebbels’ "Germany calling", the war-time propaganda radio station from Nazi Germany.

At least then it was known to be propaganda whereas the BBC, relying on its past reputation for objectivity and impartiality, is still able to fool many people into thinking that it is still a respectable broadcaster. It is no longer that. Instead, to use the words of Lt Col. Tim Ryan, currently stationed in Iraq, it is "aiding and abetting the enemy" (see also our post on Fallujah).

We are grateful to all the sites which have been pointing this out for so long, to say nothing of Lord Pearson and Global Britain, and for those currently helping us to do likewise. And we apologise to our American friends whom we trust now realise that the BBC does not represent anything other than itself.

Update: Also linked: USS Neverdock.

An exercise in insanity

In mid-October last year, I wrote on this Blog of my experience of spending a night on a Fleetwood trawler out in the Irish Sea, watching the indiscriminate slaughter of immature fish, brought about by the grotesque rules of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.

One thing we learned was that, while British trawlers were tightly controlled on the nets they could use – and were penalised if they used "environmentally friendly" mesh sizes – not such restrictions applied to the fleet of Belgian beam trawlers which exploited the same waters.

Chasing the lucrative sole stocks, these fast, powerful trawlers drag two 15-foot beams along the sea floor, over which their nets are constructed, ploughing up the sea bed in order to gouge out the buried fish. They are wholly indiscriminate in what they catch, it being estimated that some 15lb of fish of all species must be caught for each one pound of sole landed.

No one on the Fleetwood fishery could understand why the Belgians are given such preferential treatment, nor even why the EU commission is so keen to turn a blind eye to the destruction caused.
But if that example was bad enough, the commission is at it again with a decision that even the Europhile Guardian calls "bizarre".

Covered also by the Daily Telegraph, although rather oddly printed on the "Court and Social" page, with no on-line version, the essence of the story is that small Cornish fishing boats are being banned from their own local waters in order to conserve cod stocks, while Belgian beamers, five times their size, are being allowed to continue fishing in the same waters.

Perversely, it was the Cornish fishermen themselves who suggested to the EU a ban in their waters, but asked for it to apply only to boats over 30 feet long, these being the most damaging to the fishery. However, the EU went one stage further and banned all vessels for the first three months of the year, in order to protect spawing cod.

Then, in a mirror of the Irish Sea situation, the Belgians were allowed a "derogation", which meant that the EU commission was allowing the most damaging vessels into the area – and only those vessels - keeping out the under-30 ft boats which have a negligible effect on the cod fishery.

The Belgians argue that, as they are targeting sole and plaice, they can operate without affecting the cod but, as any experienced fisherman will know, these high-speed vessels hoover up everything in their path. Says Paul Trebilcock, chief executive of the Cornish Fish Producers Association, "I know from past experience that [Belgian trawlers] throw away more dead cod in a month than I would catch in a year".

British fisheries minister, Ben "Rear Admiral" Bradshaw – who, together with other fisheries ministers approved the scheme at the December fisheries council, has already apologised for the debaçle. He told the BBC:

You sometimes get details like this that slip through unnoticed… This was an industry idea which we supported and I am sorry that there has been this unforeseen consequence, but let's see if we can get it ironed out.

That is easier said than done. By the time Bradshaw goes scuttling back to Brussels to discuss the issue with his masters, and they have had time to consider the matter and bring our new regulations, the three months will be up, the ban will be over and the damage will have been done.

Today, the "Rear Admiral" is in Exeter, where he is having to explain his "slip" to very angry fishermen. He might also try and tell them – and the rest of us – why he supports a system such as the CFP which is quite obviously insane.

Update

While he was in Exeter, Bradshaw had more than just the fishermen to contend with. A pro-hunting protester managed to throw offal at him. Altogether, about 70 demonstrators assembled outside County Hall to show their opposition to the Hunting Act.They shouted slogans when Mr Bradshaw arrived and one protester threw a piece of hollowed-out fruit containing entrails at him, police said.The minister was hit in the face and received a slight cut near his right eye. (Scotsman)

Schröder draws a line in the sand

With a major meeting of the finance ministers of EU member states scheduled this week in Athens, in yet another attempt to sort out the mess that is the Growth and Stability Pact, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has given an interview to the Financial Times, expressing his views on how the pact should be "reformed".

Reform of the "excessive deficit procedure", he says, will be the cornerstone. Furthermore, any strategies for reform must reflect the fact that it is not just a stability pact, but also a growth pact.

With that in mind, Schröder argues that fiscal policy cannot be judged simply on the basis of compliance with the 3 percent GDP limit. As an indicator, he says, this is inadequate to deal with the complex realities of fiscal policy. "We must recognise," he says:

…that the goal of consolidating public budgets may well conflict in the short term with the goal of enhancing the potential for economic growth. A reformed pact must take this conflict into account, as well as the need to bring improved growth and employment opportunities into line in the long term with sound public budgets.

The chancellor reminds us that in assessing the performance of member states, the commission must also "take into account all other relevant factors, including the medium-term economic and budgetary position of the member state". This, for Schröder, is the "starting point for reform", a concept developed by Hans Eichel, Germany's finance minister.

The most significant criterion for judgement would be pursuit of a sound policy for growth and employment, for which the country must be given leeway, allowing three separate factors to be considered.

Firstly, reforms, such as Germany's tax and social security measures, can in the short term damp growth or increase deficits. But in the medium term their impact on growth, employment and public budgets is clearly positive. Expenditure on education, innovation, research and development can also have a positive effect. These factors, he says, must be considered when assessing the deficit.

Macroeconomic criteria form a second group. Member states must be given sufficient leeway to provide cyclical incentives. At present a deficit of more than 3 percent is only tolerated during a severe economic downturn.

Finally, specific burdens borne by member states should be taken into consideration. For instance, "countries that finance substantial payments promoting solidarity among peoples within and between EU nations must be given leeway to use fiscal policy to improve their potential for growth and employment." Germany's burdens include the still immense costs of unification and high net transfer payments to the EU.

Thus Schröder wants some very specific exemptions from the pact, which would, effectively, make it a dead letter. Any country, and particularly Germany, could run up a massive deficit, and still come within the terms of the pact if Schröder has his way.

And gone are the days of Helmut Kohl, when "Europe" came first, above German domestic policy. Schröder is very much more assertive, stating – with remarkable bluntness – that: "The pact will work better if intervention by European institutions in the budgetary sovereignty of national parliaments is only permitted under very limited conditions."

This is indeed remarkable. He is planting a huge "hands off" sign on the lawn outside the Berlaymont – a direct challenge to the commission. "Excessive deficit procedures should not be instigated against EU members if they fulfil most of the above criteria", he adds. "Instead, a country should itself submit a programme setting out how to bring its deficit ratio below 3 percent."

Schröder reigns in the commission so tightly that it will only be able to act, "if it is shown that there are serious deficiencies in its programme or if the country, through its own fault, deviates from the consolidation obligations therein should an excessive deficit procedure be initiated."

To ram this home, he adds: "We must not apply the treaty provisions on imposing mandatory requirements and sanctions too mechanically". That's telling 'em. And boy, does he tell them, concluding:

Only if their competence is respected will countries be willing to align their policies more consistently with the economic goals agreed by the EU as part of the Lisbon strategy to improve competitiveness.

That may be a veiled threat, but the veil is so transparent that the vice-squad is taking an interest. "Either you give me what I want, or Lisbon gets it", he is saying. Without Lisbon, the EU is nowhere (although it is probably nowhere with Lisbon, but that's not the point). Schröder has drawn a line in the sand.

These things, I do not believe

I suppose we should have rushed into print this morning, gleefully retailing the latest "revelations" in Robert Peston's "sensational biography" of Gordon Brown – as set out in the Sunday Telegraph.

The gist of the story is that Tony Blair was so keen to get the UK into the €uro that he actually sent three cabinet ministers in 2002 to tell Gordon Brown that he would stand down as prime minister if the chancellor agreed to help.

If we are to believe what he are told, Brown "consistently refused to negotiate" and refused to put pressure on the Treasury to come up with a positive answer to their assessment of whether the so-called economic tests for joining the single currency had been passed.

This paints Brown in a staunchly Eurosceptic mould, standing up for the pound even at the risk of losing his job. The trouble is that I do not believe it.

I have no reason to dispute Robert Peston's accounts of the events, or his analysis. He is a senior journalist - The Sunday Telegraph's City Editor – and has a reputation to protect in what is a very contentious arena. Nor do I believe he could be totally wrong, or that his sources – all of them – have deliberately misled him.

But the account does not ring true. Brown is not a Eurosceptic and I simply cannot accept that he would put his job and his ambitions on the line to protect the pound. There must be something more to this, something that Peston has not been able to identify.

Nor do I believe that the timing of the defection of Europhile MP, Robert Jackson, is as innocent as he makes out. His story is just too pat. In my view this was done with a view to maximising the damage to his former party.

But what is particularly fascinating about his reasons for leaving the Tory Party are his comments on the EU, with him saying:

The Conservative Party has developed an increasingly hostile attitude to Europe, which I believe would be damaging to our national interest if pursued in government. Michael Howard has already indicated that he would act unilaterally to denounce at least two of our treaty commitments.

There is a real and dangerous momentum building in the party to take Britain out of the EU. If the Conservative Party were to form the next government it would actively work to provoke an unnecessary and wholly undesirable crisis in our relations with Europe.

Given that the Tory fishing policy - which commits to leaving the EU's CFP – was launched last week, there is a strong possibility that this was one of the factors that precipitated Jackson's decision to depart. I suspect his other concerns about tuition fees, and the comments about Howard’s leadership abilities, are simply a smokescreen.

Anyhow, as a Europhile and supporter Kenneth Clarke – the Party is well rid of him. Mind you, Ed Vaizey, his replacement who is standing for Wantage at the general election, is according to some not much better.

What has apparently infuriated the Tory high command, however, is that very timing which Jackson claims to be accidental, as it follows yesterday's announcement of its flagship review into government waste.

This – once again if we are to believe what we are told - identified £35 billion of public expenditure which could be trimmed from the government budget. This would, according to another story in the Sunday Telegraph, enable the Tories to "cull 235,000 jobs from civil service".

These claims arise in the David James Review, a report into government efficiency for the Tories conducted by the company doctor best known for his work at the Millennium Dome.

Once again, though, the trouble is that I do not believe it. Not that I swallow Labour spin that the exercise would mean a cut in public services. From what I have seen of the Review, and the similar exercise by John Redwood, both are cutting out major departments which exist only to implement EU law.

Without these, a new Tory government would very quickly be in trouble with the EU commission, and find itself referred to the ECJ on innumerable accounts. I do not believe that Howard is prepared for this, or even understands the implications of his reviews. In power, I suspect he would very quickly scale back the grandiose plans.

Altogether, therefore, I suppose I am in a pretty sceptical mood. There's a surprise for you.

EU break-up in 15 years?

Only the Scotsman, it seems, carries the CIA's "grim warning" that the EU will break-up within 15 years. Its only salvation, the CIA believes, is if the Union radically reforms its ailing welfare systems.

This is part of a longer report by the intelligence agency (actually, by the National Intelligence Council - see here - 123 pages .pdf), which forecasts how the world will look in 2020, in which it warns that Europe could be dragged into economic decline by its ageing population. In a "devastating indictment" of EU economic prospects, the report warns:

The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU, undermining its ambitions to play a heavyweight international role.

It adds that the EU's economic growth rate is dragged down by Germany and its restrictive labour laws. Reforms there - and in France and Italy to lesser extents - remain key to whether the EU as a whole can break out of its "slow-growth pattern".

Personally, I take the view that the only thing with is "grim" about the warning is that it will take 15 years for the break-up to happen. I hope five years is closer to the mark.

Furthermore, I no not believe that the unreformed welfare system will bring the evil empire down. What will destroy it is amply illustrated in our posting below.

Any political élite that can churn out such dire, leaden, mind-numbing jargon has, quite simply, lost it. The European élites have reached this point.

As they sink into the morass of their own making, bickering about establishing an ever-larger number of "independent and multi-stakeholder monitoring mechanisms", to review their ever expanding "proceedings", the people will rise up and do the decent thing. They will put them out of their misery.

Aarrrgggghhhhh

The Sri Lankan Sunday Observer has come up with a gem.

Under the title: "EU wants no politics" – yea right! – we learn that the EU Heads of Missions in Sri Lanka have urged the government, all political parties and the LTTE "to actively promote a fair distribution of relief assistance to the victims of the Tsunami disaster, irrespective of their political affiliations, religious and ethnic background."

Apart from the split infinitive (which should, of course, be a capital offence), so far so good, except when we hear the alternative proposal. The Royal Netherlands Embassy, in its capacity as local representative of the EU presidency, has issued a declaration calling, inter alia, for:

…the establishment of an independent and multi-stakeholder monitoring mechanism to review proceedings...

There is only one word for that: Aarrrgggghhhhh.

Diplomad, you have toiled in vain. I'd sooner have the politics.

The Booker column

The "picture story" that Booker offers this morning in is column in The Sunday Telegraph is surreal. The great scribe himself calls it "a nightmare which symbolises the horror of what is today being done to vast areas of rural Scotland in the name of an environmentalism running out of control."

This is a nightmare that the fragrant Margot Wallström should be having, for it is partly a result of insane EU environmental policies, many of which were signed off during her watch as environmental commissioner.

The story concerns Jerry Mulders, a Dutch businessman, and his Scottish wife Anita, a physics teacher. Six years ago, the moved to a remote farmhouse in the Ayrshire hills, they thought they had found the home of their dreams. Booker takes up the tale:

In a few years time, however, within ten miles of where they live there could be 307 wind turbines, many of them monsters more than 400 feet high. One proposed windfarm alone would cover the hills with 103 giant turbines, less than a mile from the farmhouse from which Mr Mulders runs his business.

As if this was not enough, last summer up to ten trucks a day began dumping 33,000 tons of foul-smelling, highly toxic human and industrial sewage sludge only a quarter of a mile from their home, some of it brought from Barrow-in-Furness 100 miles away. This was exempted from normal planning and environmental rules because, according to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa), it is helping to restore land which can in future be used for forestry.

The plight of Mr and Mrs Mulders and thousands of others in the rural community around the village of Dalmellington highlights the scale of the crisis now facing Scotland, thanks to environmental policies which appear to be completely off the rails.

Yesterday Mr Mulders was in Perth at a conference organised by Views of Scotland, following the publication last week of s new study which for the first time shows just how much of Scotland’s unique landscape is now threatened by monster windfarms, through the Scottish Executive’s policy that, within 15 years, Scotland will be more than meeting EU targets by generating 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

The gazetteer produced by the Scottish Wind Assessment Project (SWAP) lists what will amount to by far the greatest concentration of wind turbines in Europe. The 6,472 currently proposed turbines include 543 in South Lanarkshire, 403 in Argyll and 502 in the Western Isles, such as those making up a 234 turbine proposal on Lewis already arousing island-wide anger.

The scale of all this is so immense it is hard to grasp. But in the case of Mr and Mrs Mulders it equally seems barely credible that Sepa, supported by Ross Finnie of the Scottish Executive, should also encourage the dumping of live sewage only a few hundred yards from their home.

What makes this even more bizarre, however, is that only last month Sepa won a case in Edinburgh to prohibit Scottish Power from turning half the country’s human sewage into fuel pellets, used since 2001 by Longannet power station. Sepa argued that under EC environmental law this sewage was ‘waste’ and could therefore not be used for any other purpose.

It is thus illegal, under EU law, to burn the sewage as fuel. But it is legal to dump it outside Mr and Mrs Mulder’s home in such a potentially dangerous state that, last month, they and their neighbours obtained a temporary stop on further dumping, pending further tests. On 1 February, they will be at Holyrood for a conference on Scotland’s sewage crisis, supported by all parties except Labour.

As Mr Mulder says "when my Dutch friends come to Ayrshire they are amazed by the beauty of our unspoiled hills. When they hear we are soon to lose it to hundreds of wind turbines and extensions of open-cast coal mining, not to mention our sewage problem, they cannot believe such things could be allowed".

I have not tried to edit this. It has to be taken undiluted. Now that Margot Wallström has started up her own Blog, perhaps she would like to use the space to explain to Mr and Mrs Mulder – and the rest of us, while she is about it – how this insanity came about.

For Booker’s next story, he picks up the tsunami situation and the news, almost wholly unreported in Europe (except in this Blog), the Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra told the world that his country did not want financial aid. Instead, Thailand wants the EU to lift the punitive tariffs on shrimp exports which in recent years have inflicted more damage on its economy than the tsunami itself.

The story is given added topicality by a report (actually a press release) from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation which revealed last week that no industry had been harder hit by the tsunami than fishing. Thousands of boats and fishing communities were destroyed, the cost in Thailand alone being estimated at $16 million.

Yet, as recorded on this Blog and now by Booker, EU-imposed tariffs have cost the Thai economy £3 billion, double the £1.5 billion in aid now promised to the entire region.

Booker then picks up on the report that our new Brussels trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, stung by accusations that the EU's protectionism is doing immense damage to the third world, last week announced "I want to find ways to assist people and businesses hit by the tsunami".

He would "consider" moves towards trade concessions worth "tens of millions of euros". This compares with the Thais' own estimate that the shrimp tariff alone is now costing them £400 million a year.

Booker adds a delightful barb to this: "The EU is thus happy to promise money, which Mr Shinawatra says his country does not want," he writes. "But when he says he would prefer the right to earn that money through exports, all he gets is another press release from Mr Mandelson. As the British people could tell him, this is par for the course."

His two other stories cover domestic issues, one on the continuing crisis caused to contractors who are being cheated out of their fees by Defra, and the other that poses the question: How many public bodies does it take to change a light bulb?

You can see the answer on this link to the Booker column.

Setting the record straight

Underlining just how low grade the claim made by Newsnight about the role of the US viz-à-viz the UN, which we recorded in our Blog this morning, comes an article in The Weekend Australian, brought to our attention by our reader.

Entitled, "How Blair was left on sidelines" and written by Greg Sheridan, a visiting fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, it tells the story of the early hours and days of the response to the tsunami disaster.

The initial thrust of the story is how, in the very early days, Tony Blair was left out of the loop, when four countries immediately mobilised their resources. These were the so-called "core group", which consisted of the US, Australia, Japan and India, leaving Blair on the outside and, we are told, "unhappy".

But the more interesting part is the hitherto untold inside story of the short life of that core group which, writes Sheridan, reveals one of the most elegant exercises in foreign policy in recent times. Its formation, he says, tells us much about the Bush administration, its ability to react quickly when necessary, its geostrategic priorities and its intimate relationship with Australia.

The crucial point here is that the US response to the tsunamis was far from slow, as some critics have alleged. When the earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a series of powerful tsunamis on the morning of Sunday, 26 December, it was mid-evening on Christmas night in Washington. Continues Sheridan:

Yet within six hours, the US Agency for International Development was moving relief funds to US embassies in the region. According to senior US officials, it was natural and automatic that Australia was the first and most important interlocutor on this crisis.

The US Pacific Command, based in Hawaii, was in touch with its Australian counterparts straight away. Pacific commander Admiral Thomas Fargo was quickly on the phone to Australia's General Peter Cosgrove.

In Washington, senior staff of the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council, who had not taken Christmas leave, were called back to their offices.

There followed a series of telephone conferences to discuss the immediate response as the proposal for the core group, credited to Under-Secretary of State for political affairs Marc Grossman, took shape. Grossman would in due course become the US convenor of the group.

As these staff discussions were going on, we are told, US officials periodically kept key Australian diplomats informed with an "ease and familiarity" that enabled the "core-group" concept quickly to be formalised in a phone call between national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell.

It was Tony Blair, coming onto the scene, who then spoke to Bush and told him that that co-ordination should go through the UN and the G8. But, as the US and other core-group members had already found, the UN had no capacity to do anything or to make any difference in the short term.

It was not until 31 December that the UN had got itself sufficiently together for there to be a video-conference, involving Powell and the UN's Kofi Annan and various senior UN officials. After that, core group meetings routinely included UN representatives.

A senior US official says that, "This was an opportunity for the US and the UN to kiss and make up," but another core- group official had a more blunt view: "All this talk about UN capability is crap. The core-group countries had forces steaming to the crisis while the UN was still on holidays."

So, the "core group" concept was a classic example of focused, regional multilateralism, not initially involving the UN, centred on a real task. The US made tsunami relief an exceptionally high priority, even to the extent of deploying units that were meant to be heading for Iraq, according to some sources. In total, the US, Australian and Japanese military forces committed the greatest concentration of military power in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War.

Australia's contribution has received exceptional coverage in the US. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran front page photos of Australian soldiers helping tsunami victims while an unofficial internet site run by US diplomats sang the praises of the Australians. Countless newspapers and television news programs ran graphics showing Australia as the outstanding contributor of tsunami aid.

The tsunami relief effort reached a political climax with the summit in Jakarta on 6 January. For that meeting, the Australian Government urged the Bush administration to consider having the President attend himself.

But, while it would have been an enormous gesture for Bush to go personally to Jakarta, it would have been a massive logistical exercise, diverting Indonesian security and military resources from the relief effort. So, instead, Bush sent Powell, the most internationally popular member of his cabinet, and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush. This personalised Bush's response in a way that was well understood in Asia.

By then, with its work done, the core group was wound up and the UN was allowed to take over the nominal role of co-ordinating a relief effort that was already well-under way. And all BBC’s Newsnight could offer was:

The Asian tsunami has provided a perfect example of the need for an effective UN under an activist Secretary General. This time Kofi Annan was quick off the mark and America's independent efforts soon looked superfluous.

"Unprofessional" does not even begin to describe it. These Beebies are sick.

Even in their core functions, they still cannot get it right

As if Peter Mandelson did not have enough problems with dealing with the long-running Airbus dispute, we learn from the Daily Telegraph business section today that he is headed for another mega-row.

This one, according to the Telegraph, has been triggered by the US administration, which "wants the WTO to investigate EU customs tariffs, which it claims are inconsistent."

Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, is cited as complaining that, "Although the EU is a customs union, there is no single EU customs administration. Lack of uniformity, coupled with lack of procedures for prompt EU-wide review can hinder US exports, especially for small to mid-size business."

Typically, the EU has dismissed the complaint, a spokesman airily declaring: “We think the US case is very weak."

But Zoellick is deadly serious. According to a statement posted on the US Trade Representative's website and repeated on the US Mission to the EU's site, with explanatory notes, the US has already tried to sort out the matter, having filed a request for consultations with the EU on 21 September 2004.

Representatives then met with EU officials in Geneva in mid-November 2004, but the meeting failed to resolve the dispute.

Nor is the US alone with its grievance. Six other WTO Members - Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan and Taiwan – have also asked to join the consultations as third parties, demonstrating the level of concern about the EU system.

Looking at the detail, WTO rules require all WTO members to administer their customs laws in a uniform, impartial and reasonable manner. They also require members to provide tribunals for prompt review and correction of administrative action relating to customs matters. The US considers that the EU fails to meet either of these requirements. It now states:

EU institutions - including the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the Parliament – "have routinely noted the lack of uniformity in the administration of EU customs law." For example, in its comments on a March 2001 report by the EU Court of Auditors, the Commission stated, "The objective that for all trade in goods the Community should operate as a real customs union with uniform treatment of imported goods can be fully obtained only if the customs union is operating on the basis of a single customs administration, which is not the case." The United States fully agrees.

Variations in the way that goods are treated by the different EU member States can cause problems that burden all traders. These problems are compounded by an inability to obtain prompt EU-wide review of national administrative decisions. An importer or other interested party has to wend its way through national administrative and/or judicial appeals before obtaining an authoritative determination from an EU-level tribunal.

The case presented by the US appears to be damning. The lack of uniform customs administration by the EU, it says, affects its producers, farmers, and exporters in a number of important ways:

For example, goods may be classified differently and thus be subject to different tariffs depending on the EU member State through which they are imported. Similarly, a U.S. exporter may be able to obtain binding guidance in one member State on how its goods will be valued for tariff calculation purposes. But the exporter may not be able to rely on that guidance in anothermember State; indeed, in some member States the exporter may not be able to obtain binding valuation guidance at all.

These problems, it adds, fall particularly hard on small and mid-size businesses, which often lack the resources to work their way through member State and EU bureaucracies in order to reconcile inconsistencies in classification or valuation in different States.

There is clearly a sense of exasperation driving the complaint, which even penetrates the dry bureaucratic language of the Trade Department statement.

"Officials have tried to work with the EU commission to address the concerns of US exporters," it complains. "Indeed," it continues: "this was the culmination of efforts over the past seven years to address such concerns in various WTO fora." But… "Although the Commission has tried to help with individual problems, it has become clear that the allocation of authorities within the EU and even the Commission has precluded achieving the necessary systemic solutions."

The most damning thing about all this thought is it confronts the very core function of the EU and its central (or so we are told) rationale – the administration of its customs union. The whole point of having a central administration and institutions like the EU commission is to manage the system and to make sure it works efficiently.

Yet, even after nearly fifty years since the Treaty of Rome, after thousands of laws, and millions of man hours, it seems that, even in their core functions, they still cannot get it right.

He has turned in the wrong direction

So says The Daily Telegraph leader in a trenchant comment on Blair’s decision to support France and Germany in its efforts to lift the arms embargo on China.

It is backed by a front page story announcing: "US fury over EU weapons for China", telling of how America is waging an intense behind-the-scenes battle to stop the EU lifting the embargo, warning Britain that it will not tolerate the prospect of European military technology being used to threaten its soldiers in the Far East.

The leader is headed: "Britain sells out for the sake of China's market", and picks up on an issue that has been closely watched by this Blog since January this year. (For those who are interested, we have posted links to our coverage at the end of this piece.)

To be fair, the Guardian has also covered the issue, most recently in a story yesterday, but the Telegraph goes right to the heart of the matter.

Lifting the EU arms embargo on China, it says, has been on the cards for a while. European leaders considered it 13 months ago and in December, at a summit with China, declared their "political will" to remove it.

On Wednesday, it reports, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who will visit Beijing next week, said he expected that decision to be taken by the middle of the year. A sanction that China claims is a "product of the Cold War" appears in EU eyes to have outlived its usefulness.

What the Telegraph then says, really sums it all up:

In conjunction with their declaration on the embargo, the Europeans stressed that China must respect human rights and ensure regional stability. Yet these are both areas in which Beijing has hardly moved an inch. The peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations in the heart of the capital 15 years ago are still described as a "counter-revolutionary rebellion".

Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party chief who lost out to the hardliners in 1989, remains under house arrest. China is constantly criticising Japan for failing to accept proper responsibility for the behaviour of the militarists in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet it persists in treating Tiananmen as a taboo subject.

In a report issued yesterday, Human Rights Watch said that China had made some progress in recent years, but that it was still a "highly repressive state". Amnesty International believes that lifting the arms embargo is not justified by any improvement in the country's human rights record.

That really does put the matter in context for there has been no real movement that would justify the lifting of the ban, but the "Europeans" are determined to do it anyway – and we all know why. And the effects, as the Telegraph recounts, could be disastrous:

As for regional stability, the Taiwan Strait remains one of the world's flashpoints because of Beijing's outrageous claim that the island is part of China and its refusal to rule out the use of force to make that fiction reality. Indeed, the National People's Congress has upped the propaganda war against Taiwan by placing an "anti-secession law" on the agenda for its next session.

The Americans are naturally worried that European arms could be used by Beijing to invade the island, which they have pledged to defend. Such a conflict could also draw in Japan, where most American forces in East Asia are based. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy representative, has said he expects Washington "will be able to live with" the lifting of the ban. Mr Straw claims that a revised code of conduct for arms exports will mean that the change will have little practical effect. That code, however, will be interpreted by each country individually and the Americans rightly suspect that it will enable the Chinese to acquire advanced battlefield technology not available from Russia.

Thus, concludes the paper:

Human rights and regional stability have been sacrificed to the draw of China's huge market and the desire to weaken American hegemony by creating a multipolar world. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder have long pushed for such a decision. But for Tony Blair to follow them is to put at risk both political ties and commercial contracts with our closest ally. The Prime Minister has found himself pulled one way by Britain's special transatlantic relationship, another by Europe and the China market. He has turned in the wrong direction.

This really is a serious development, and the Telegraph is right to give it the full coverage today. Dare one hope that a certain opposition party might take it up and raise the political temperature?

Blog links

Back to the ethical policy (or not)
Global repositioning
Schröder once again calls for embargo to be lifted
Compulsory reading
The EU and the arms ban on China
China – does our government know what it is doing?
The special relationship
China worries
We don’t like your friends
One down
These principled continentals
China – the ratchet tightens
How the Chinese see us
Into the arms of the tiger
It’s the arms sales stupid
China turns the screw
Schröder under pressure on China
Beyond comprehension
They are going to do it
China still in the waiting room
The gloves are off
Loyalty under strain
Playing with fire

BBC Europhile Bias

Indefatigable campaigner, the Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has recently written to "opinion formers" (we are flattered to be included in the circulation), updating us on his campaign against BBC Europhile Bias. His letter makes interesting reading, extracts from which are reproduced below (I particularly like the fourth paragraph):

During the first five years of our monitoring the BBC, its chairman sent our reports to management, who naturally found them groundless and he wrote back accordingly.

The whole exercise is on www.globalbritain.org, but highlights include a 2:1 bias in favour of Europhile speakers; not a single Labour Eurosceptic being allowed on air in 250 hours monitored during the 1999 European elections; and Gerry Adams being the only "no" campaigner interviewed during the re-run of the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty.

Hutton changed all this and the new chairman, Michael Grade, has not sent us any brush-off letters. Instead he arranged for us to meet most of BBC’s news and news-related editors. Their main problem is that they and their researchers know very little about the detail of our relationship with “Brussels”.

At least one senior editor thought that the Council of Ministers had the monopoly to propose and execute EU legislation, rather than the Commission. This ignorance is inspired by the blind PC belief, held almost universally throughout the Corporation, that the EU is an inevitably good thing, responsible for peace, etc. We are up against a large, self-satisfied and introspective culture.

"So," writes Lord Pearson, "we have decided to fight on one limited by vital front."

Pearson is challenging the soundbite "millions of jobs depend on (or are linked to) our membership of the EU", which has been largely responsible for making the British people fear leaving the EU.

He asks that everyone keeps the pressure on the BBC and makes the effort to complain whenever there is an example of its continuing bias – especially "millions of jobs".

We wish Lord Pearson well in his campaign, and commend our reader to the Global Britain web site (link above).

Beneath contempt

Seen on BBC’s Newsnight programme yesterday, a report on the UN "Oil for Food" scandal. In what was supposed to be a critical piece, we heard Peter Marshall, the Beebie reporter state, with not a hint of a blush:

The Asian tsunami has provided a perfect example of the need for an effective UN under an activist Secretary General. This time Kofi Annan was quick off the mark and America's independent efforts soon looked superfluous.

Tell that to the Marines.

Meanwhile, in the Yorkshire Post letters yesterday, from Ged Robinson in Leeds, this incredible contribution:

EU puts quake cash up front

As many letters on this page criticise the EU and our membership of it, I thought I would give some details of the EU's role in the response to the humanitarian disaster in Asia.

The European Commission's Humanitarian Office (Echo) committed funds – not just pledged – immediately to the Red Cross and the UN.

The European Civil Protection Mechanism has been coordinating efforts across the affected areas, and Echo staff have worked around the clock since the disaster occurred. Assessment and evaluation continue to take place in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives and Somalia.

The UN remains the global coordinator, but the EU has a clear and defined role supporting its efforts. The Commission will be funding the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to strengthen its work.

Up until now, the European Commission and member states have committed 240m euros, and this figure is certain to increase after the UN's final assessment, and the global appeal is launched this month in Geneva. Without doubt, future funding will require additional resources from the EU's emergency reserve which stands at 200m euros.

Yet again, in response to an international catastrophe, we see why we are members of a pan-European partnership such as the EU. We can achieve more together than we can alone.

Although he does not identify his position, Ged Robinson is a Labour Councillor for Farnley, in Leeds, and a leading light in the Leeds branch of the European Movement.

We did predict, on this Blog, that this is what would happen. These people are totally shameless when it comes to promoting the cause. As for the Beeb, they are beneath contempt.

They don’t even own the name!

So much for the EU’s controversial GPS satellite system.

According to AFP, an information technology firm based in Barbados has secured a victory in a legal battle in Germany regarding the rights to the name Galileo, which the EU has adopted.

The court of appeal in Munich ruled that EADS Astrium GmbH, a German unit of the eponymous European company that builds the system, was not allowed to use the name Galileo for its products. Instead, the court ruled in favour of Barbados-based IT firm Galileo International Technologies, whose claim to the name was older, the judges said.

"In concrete terms, that means EADS will have to find a new name for its satellite navigation system," which is being developed as a rival to the United States' GPS navigation system, court spokeswoman Sybille Fey told AFP. The Munich court also ruled EADS Astrium could not appeal the ruling.

However, legal experts said it was unlikely that the EU would change the name of such a high profile project such as the Galileo project. An out-of-court settlement could be reached.

In other words, the commission lawyers did not even check ownership of the rights to the name before the EU started using it. Now they expect to be able to drop a bung – of our money – to the injured company in the hope that they can keep the title for their star project.

What sad creatures they are. Still, at least Wallström will get a Blog out of it. Not.

The price of "Europe"

UK trawlers have been given an "entitlement" to extra days at sea over the basic EU allowance in recognition of the cuts made in recent years. However, the price paid for those days has been huge. In today’s Fishing News, David Linkie spells out how big a sacrifice has been made to gain this concession from our government in Brussels. We reproduce his article here:

Tangible evidence of the benefits of successive decommissioning schemes was again seen by the UK when the Fisheries Council acknowledged that the large-scale reduction of the fleet is having a far-reaching impact on restricting fishing effort and conserving stocks.

Despite 268 boats being broken up at a cost of £78 million in 2002 and 2003, resulting in the loss of almost 1500 jobs at sea, and plenty more ashore, UK skippers have seen little proof that the medium to long-term benefits of such devastating cuts were being recognised by EU officials.

The fact that the EU’s proposed cuts in fishing days for 2005 were reduced from two to one (except on the west coast of Scotland) because of the much reduced number of white fish boats left on the grounds is a welcome sign that stability is gradually being returned to the much leaner fleet.

Anyone seeking further evidence of the reduction of the UK fleet just needed to walk around the quays of Peterhead harbour in the days preceding Christmas. Even allowing for visiting Irish midwater trawlers and a number of Scottish pelagic vessels, there were just 50 vessels berthed at the Blue Toon with almost as many empty berths empty as taken.

Apart from some 30 vessels berthed at Fraserburgh, Aberdeen, Wick and Eyemouth and a few boats at sea on oil jobs, in reality the boats berthed at Peterhead represented a large part of what remains of the traditional Scottish white fish fleet.

This is in stark contrast to the situation just four years ago when the port was crowded over the Christmas break with more than 200 vessels shoehorned in when lying four and five boats off the quay despite the repeated please of harbour officials for skippers to tie up at the likes of Buckie and Macduff.

Is it any wonder that skippers now regularly comment that they have completed 8/9 day trips to the North Sea grounds without ever seeing another fishing boat and that this must have been beneficial for stock levels?

The harsh facts of decommissioning show that from January 2000 to January 2004 the number of vessels in the UK fleet that rely on the traditional white fish stocks of cod, haddock and whiting has dropped 65 percent from 351 boats to 123.

Closer study of the fleet composition during the four years reveals a 60 percent cut in the number of seine netters, dropping 58 to 27; a 62 percent reduction in the number of pair-seiners, down from 66 to 26; 72 percent fewer white fish trawlers, cut from 127 to 33; the number of twin-rig white fish trawlers has fallen from 48 to 21, a reduction of 54 percent, while the number of pair trawlers is down to 14 from 40, a 65 percent decrease.

The gross tonnage and engine power of vessels targeting traditional white fish stocks now stand at 21,345 tonnes compared to 47,827 tonnes and 127,674kW respectively – reductions of 55 percent and 65 percent respectively.

In this four year period the Scottish white fish fleet has declined by 62 percent to 100 vessels, compared to 264 at the start of 2000.

The overall UK fleet has fallen from 1894 vessels, 243,508 tonnes and 699,337kW to stand at 1446 vessels, 198,354 tonnes and 554,189kW as of January 2004.

Given that the other main catching sector, whicn includes 350 prawn trawlers, 200 potters, 140 beamers, 100 scallopers, 46 mussel dredgers and 43 pelagic vessels have remained comparatively stable, this again shows that the traditional white fish industry has borne the brunt of recent capacity reductions.

That, dear reader, is the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy for you - the price of "Europe".

It sucks!

The Margot Wallström Blog, trailed on this Blog yesterday, is up but not exactly running. For those who want to look at it, the URL is here. (No "hit" counter, of course, so you don't know how popular the site is, but I suspect that we will be told that it has attracted "zillions" of visitors, even if they only came to mock.)

At the moment, there is one, presumably test, post but we are told that "The interactive functions of this weblog are under construction and will be available soon!" Bit like the "project" really – always "under construction".

The worst of it is that, in order to read the text, we have to gaze upon a giant-sized photo of the carefully manicured and artfully posed commissioner (talk about the cult of personality!). And where did she get that pen? She holds a chewed Bic biro, no doubt from the commission stationery stores. You would think that, on her salary, you could afford a decent writing instrument. Has the woman no style?

As to the text, the style is of the Royal "we" genre, which rather cuts across the personal style that we were promised, although it would be naïve to believe that the posts will be anything but highly refined extrusions, checked and double-checked by the Brussels PR machine.

Clearly, this machine has decided on the "touchy-feely" approach, with the Wallström gushing about the terrible events of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the fact that one of her collaborators was in Sri Lanka. "They ran immediately as they saw the fifteen metres high green wall of water rise above them," she tells us.

So now she dreams of Sri Lanka at night. Funny, I dream at night of how the hell I am going to pay my bills – not least the massively inflated water bill, made that much larger by the imposts of the fragrant Wallström in her previous incarnation as environment commissioner.

She also treats us to the news that the temporary president of the EU, is Jean-Claude Junker, "the chain-smoking, colourful prime minister" of Luxembourg. He had better not go to Ireland then. And, of course, the little plug: "The Barroso Commission is eager to get to work." Pity about the transport council. M. "Wheel" Barrot must be affolé.

We also get a contrived, yukky "personal note" – presumably to show that she is really a hooman being like the rest of us. She writes (or, at least, the PR men write): "Have you put on weight during the Christmas holidays? I have!", she gushes, continuing on:

And I see a big problem for the future because one neglected aspect of the fact that the council works in a open and transparent way is that the really important compromises and discussions are referred to lunches or dinners or the meals that the ministers have together. So we will put on weight! The official meetings don't last that long but the lunches are three or four or even more hours from now on.

P-lease…

She concludes:"Personally I am glad to leave 2004 – start a new year. 2004 sucked!". Personally, I am glad to leave the Wallström site. It sucks!

This is news?

Both the Independent and the Guardian today run a story on a "Brussels" admission that the EU constitution may have to be re-written to accommodate Turkey’s entry to the EU.

This, according to the Guardian, threw a "spanner into Downing Street's preparations", to the irritation of the government, "which wants to portray the constitution as definitive".

We are told that the disclosure "will undermine Tony Blair's attempts to portray next year's referendum as a once-in-a-generation chance for Britain to decide whether to be at the heart of Europe". Turkey could be admitted to the EU by 2015, meaning that the rewriting could take place in around 2013.

The Independent tells us that the issue is the question of the voting system in the constitution which is based on the populations of member states. Projections show Turkey will be the EU's most populous county within decades, so giving it greater decision-making weight than Germany, the UK or France.

In the French daily, Le Figaro, commission president José Manuel Barroso has sought to reassure French opinion by trying to separate the constitution from the question of Turkish membership. He said: "If there is a need to change the rules later we will do it. But that is not the issue today."

Critics of the constitution, the Independent maintains, will seize on the comments as an admission that it does not equip the EU with the decision-making machinery it needs for the foreseeable future.

What is quite remarkable, however, is the apparent level of surprise. Even a passing thought about the position of Turkey viz-à-viz the existing members shows that it is blindly obvious that the voting structure will have to be altered.

But what is even more remarkable is that anyone can believe – or believe Blair – that the proposed constitution is the last word on European integration. Before the ink was dry on the final draft, the "colleagues" were already working on a successor treaty.

Should the EU constitution be ratified, it is only a matter of time before new, formal proposals for another treaty emerge, ratcheting up the integration process even further.

He’s at it again

Not content with dragging the UK through the merde over its lack of conformity with EU environmental laws, environment commissioner Stavros Dimas has added another seven countries to his black-list, with Ireland at the head, on account of its "sheer number of environmental offences".

The other six are: Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

Dimis says these seven government would be taken before the ECJ "to answer charges they had broken or not properly applied European environment laws."

"I am determined", he says, "to ensure that member states implement the environmental initiatives they have agreed to properly and on time. Missing deadlines or implementing legislation poorly delays our efforts to reduce pollution and improve the environment - a vital task that a large majority of Europe's citizens look to us to carry out effectively."

Has he talked to his own government recently?

The elephant in the elephant in the room

In numerous postings on the Blog we have referred to the "elephant in the room", describing that strange phenomenon whereby the media, politicians and others comment on events, usually the announcement of legislation or some such, without mentioning the provenance – the European Union.

So much of what the EU does, or is responsible for, passes without comment simply because people are unaware of it, and have not been told.

Recently, however, I have enjoyed – if that is the right word – reading a series of correspondence in the Yorkshire Post on the "democratic nature" of the EU, with the egregious Richard Corbett MEP making the running.

More recently, he has been joined by his press officer, who goes under the name Toby Harman, writing on his own Blog, Straight Banana. In two of his more recent posts, here and here, our Toby seeks to rebut the claim that the EU is "fundamentally undemocratic".

As an aside, it is interesting to note that our Toby uses the familiar "straw man" technique, succinctly analysed on the Eurealist Blog, citing no less an authority as Godfrey Bloom as the spokesman for the Eurosceptic argument. He does not attempt, for instance, to tackle the arguments raised in our Blog here and here.

Howsoever, the point at issue is that, in making their claims for the democratic credentials of the EU – servant and master speak with one voice – both exhibit an amazing enthusiasm to discount the role of the EU commission. Both focus on the parliament and the council, with our Toby stating that, "the Commission has no legislative powers". "It can only propose legislation," we are told. It cannot pass it.

The intent here, clearly, is divert attention from the core institution of the EU, its supranational government and guardian of the treaties. Thus, while Corbett & Co are prepared to acknowledge the role of the EU in our lives, they are keen to conceal the dominant role of the commission. Rather like a set of Russian dolls, this is in effect, the elephant in the elephant in the room.

But to deny that the commission has no legislative role is, to say the very least, obtuse. No-one would deny that the US president does have a legislative role, yet the relationship between the president and congress if very similar to that between the EU commission and the other two institutions, the parliament and the council.

As with the commission, the president can only propose legislation. The president requires the assent of congress before his legislation is passed. The commission requires the assent of the council and the parliament (for some legislation).

The major difference is, of course, that the US president is elected while the commission is not. I do not think anyone would assert that the United States woudl qualify as a democracy is its president was appointed, yet the Crobetts of this world seem happy with the prospect of an unelected commission dictating the legislative agenda, and want to beleive that this is democratic.

Some might suggest here that the antidote is to have an elected commission but that would not make it democratic. There is the minor problem of the lack of a European demos. Either way, the commission is a fuindamentally undemocratic institution.

In arguing the case for democracy in the EU, therefore, the Corbett faction have to play down the role of the commission, or the game is lost. But, to do so, they have to conceal the enormous power of any institution which has the right to propose legislation. In the commission’s case, that power is absolute as it has a monopoly bound within the treaties. Only the commission may propose legislation.

Furthermore, in the trade of political science, this power known as "conditional agenda setting", and the theorists have no doubts whatsoever about its strength.

That power can be used in several ways – some obvious and some more subtle. Firstly, it can propose new legislation. That means it can define the subject, scope and content. For sure, that proposal may be blocked but the commission has another weapon – it can withdraw its proposal.

Thus, it can (and does) present the council and parliament with a "take-it-or-leave-it" choice. Where there is pressure for legislation, the other institutions have to accept the commission’s version or none at all.

Thirdly, the commission can use its power to block change. Once a law is in place – however achieved – only the commission can change or repeal it. The reason is obvious. Either to change or repeal requires a new law, and neither the council not the parliament can consider such a law unless the commission first proposes it – and there is no means of compelling to do so.

By this means, the commission is able to protect its body of law – the so-called acquis communautaire – exercising the "ratchet effect". Powers only go one way, from the nation state to the commission, never the other way.

Finally, the commission can use this power of proposal with persistence and stealth. Being unelected, and working to a long-term agenda which extends beyond the span – and memory – of elected governments and parliaments, it can take a step-by-step approach, offering incremental proposals, each relatively inoffensive, their nature only becoming apparent when the full initiative is complete.

If it is blocked, it can always come back a few years later, for as many times as it takes, until it gets what it wants. As long as it sets the agenda, it holds the power.

All this, of course, is deliberate. It makes the legislative process "politician proof". Its creator, Jean Monnet, was fully aware of what he was doing. He wanted a government of Europe that did not depend on elected politicians. That is the commission, the core of the system - the rest is fluff. The result is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic.

Amendments and corrections added.

The billion €uro Babel

The EU is looking at an massive increase in its translation costs, which are set to soar by nearly 60 percent to over €1 billion a year, following the latest round of enlargement.

This is from the EU commission which is predicting that the annual cost of translation will increase to €807 million in the next few years from €549 million in 2003, when Brussels institutions already translated a staggering 1.3 million pages.

Interpreter services for the 50-60 meetings held each day in Brussels is forecast to increase to €238 million, from €105 million, once the EU's expansion to 25 has been fully completed. This brings the total annual cost of language services to over the €1 billion-mark.

And that is without the Basque separatists declaring UDI, which would add yet another language to the mix. Then there is Turkey looming over the horizon, to say nothing of Ireland, which still wants Irish to be declared an official language.

Do we really, really, want to be part of this madness?

News from the front

The Szamuely is alive and well, ensconced in Budapest, close to the Danube and not very far from the parliament which, to her horror, is sporting an EU flag. Even worse, the Hungarian Academy – which embodies the national identity - is similarly polluted.

She conveys her regrets that she has not been able to post on the Blog. The creaking, post-communist telephone system has defeated her, and her "letters" will have to wait until after she returns, on Sunday. We are, however, promised some reet gud stuff – as they don't say 'ere in Yorkshire. Yer ken keep yer Budapest - I'm not jealus... like 'eck.

This I gotta see…

Courtesy of EU Observer, we learn that the fragrant Margot Wallström, the EU "communications commissioner" (otherwise known the MECRFIRACS), is to start up her own Blog, effective from tomorrow.

This I gotta see… at least once.

Is she going to post it in all twenty of the official EU languages, I wonder?

You would never have guessed it…

…but yesterday was the English launch of the Tories new fishing policy (Monday was Scotland), with shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson in Cornwall meeting local fishermen, anglers and community groups.

Ignored entirely by the national (English) media (except Booker in the Sunday Telegraph), there is some justice in the Conservative’s claim that the media are not interested in policies and are only looking for the soap opera. Small wonder that politicians play to the gallery, if that is the only way they can get publicity.

However, it was covered in the regional dailies, not least the Yorkshire Post, and it was also covered by the Scotsman. It even made the Merco Press, in Uruguay of all places.

But pride of place goes to the Western Morning News which ran a major story and an editorial, neither of which, unfortunately, seem to be on line.

The editorial, headed "Tory hopes for fishing industry" was everything the Conservatives could have wished. Amongst the gems was the following paragraph:

But there might well be a debate about whether or not Shadow Fisheries Minister Owen Paterson has got all the answers in his Tory Party Green Paper on fisheries management, which had its English launch in the port of Looe today. That, though, is less important that the fact that in taking the issue seriously and compiling a comprehensive report after many months of investigation, the current Conservative front bench is treating the fishing industry with the respect it deserves.

The piece concludes by saying that "there is still a great deal of talking to be done, not least with the fishing industry itself, before a fully workable and sustainable fishery policy can be produced. But, with the Green Paper, the Conservatives have made an excellent start."

After launching the Paper in Looe, Owen Paterson went on to Newlyn where, in a public meeting, he was confronted by two UKIP stalwarts. After a sometime heated exchange, I am told by that one of them, a well-known local fisherman, told Paterson, "I agree with everything in your paper". Praise indeed.

Lest we forget…

Although, it seem by common consent, the media have decided to scale back their coverage of the tsunami, the propaganda goes on.

A piece sent out by Associated Press today retails the claim: "UN feeding over 1 Million Tsunami survivors”, which is happily reproduced by the Guardian but also, unfortunately, by Fox News, which should know better.

Those better informed know that it is not the UN but mainly national aid efforts, backed by a number of charities that are doing the feeding, but that has not stopped the UN World Food Programme claiming in its latest report on "its aid efforts" that it has delivered 10,741 tons of food to 1,069,000 people since the the tsunami struck.

By any account, that is a lie, and it is even written by a "lie" – Yeoh en Lai, in fact, the Associated Press staff writer who filed the story.

However, if one is to read between the lines of a piece published by The Times today, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Headed "Warring groups of Sri Lanka vie for relief work credit", by Catherine Philp, it describes how conflict is brewing over who gains from helping victims.

Says ,Suren Pillai, the leader of the team from the Tamil Relief Organisation, in Sri Lanka, of foreign aid groups, "They shouldn’t be here. We can look after our people ourselves. They are only here to try and pretend they are helping."

A Buddhist monk, Sooriyagoda Piyananda, who had his relief supplies taken from him by a rival group had told local newspapers: "These people are trying to boost their image and are not interested in real relief work. What we brought here, too, has been spirited away by outside elements in our very presence."

And it seems that our own politicians cannot escape accusations of grandstanding. Sailors of HMS Chatham, the frigate sent to the east coast to assist in the relief operation, complained that their mission was delayed by a visit by Hilary Benn, the development minister, who came the day after they got there.

All of this will be important to remember in the future for, as time passes and memories dim, we will see self-interested groups strengthen their rhetoric and their claims about what a wonderful job they did. Pre-eminent amongst these will be the EU, which already is and will continue to exploit the disaster for its own ends.

We should be ready to remind them of the truth.

Spain in twain

It looks like regionalisation might be going a bit too far in Spain as talks are convened in Madrid today aimed at averting a constitutional crisis, amid fears that a plan by Basques to achieve greater autonomy could precipitate the break-up of Spain.

This, according to a report in The Times today, arises from a proposal by Juan José Ibarretxe, the Basque leader, to give his region a "status of free association" with Spain. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, is attempting to head this off.

Interestingly, the proposal, which was unexpectedly endorsed by the Basque parliament, denies Spanish national sovereignty and fixes any future relationship upon two partners. It calls for full judicial powers, with a Basque supreme court of appeal outside the Spanish system, and seeks an independent voice in the EU council of ministers.

The so-called Plan Ibarretxe has rocked Señor Zapatero’s minority Socialist Government, which depends on the support of regional MPs in the Spanish Parliament in Madrid. It has been repudiated by Señor Zapatero and the Opposition Popular Party, and is certain to be rejected when it is presented to parliament tomorrow.

But Ibarretxe has said that he will ignore the national parliament and put the plan to a referendum in the Basque Country, probably in May. If that gets a resounding "Yes", we could be seeing the Basques declaring UDI, leading to partition – Spain in twain, so to speak.

Technically, the ceded region would then drop out of the EU altogether and have to negotiate entry on its own account, for which there is absolutely no precedent. The EU would be in a position of having to decide whether to recognise a new "state", to the disadvantage of one of its own members.

Arguably, the Eurocrats should be in favour of this move, as their core religion rests on the break-up of the nation state. Perhaps, also, we will also see UN missions in place – Land Cruisers and all - to supervise the elections. But then, they could always send for Neil Herron (and he already has his own Land Cruiser).

The cheque is in the post

In the list of the "top ten" lies, the old saw, "the cheque is in the post" is one that invariably features highly but, according to the latest German budget figures, this will soon be displace by another – "We will meet the Growth and Stability Pact criteria".

Despite continual protestations that the situation will improve, Germany's budget deficit has now swelled to the highest in almost a quarter of a century in 2004, exceeding the EU Growth and Stability Pact limit for a third straight year. It rose to 3.9 percent of GDP last year, from 3.8 percent in 2003.

Sylvain Broyer, an economist at IXIS CIB in Frankfurt, says that the German economy's export-led recovery has failed to benefit employment and has not been strong enough to bring down the cyclical deficit. "Public finances look worrisome," she adds.

The budget shortfall is in fact at its highest since 1981. Schröder's tax cuts, to the tune of €15 billion, failed to boost household spending, which fell 0.3 percent, while costs for unemployment, which rose to a seven-year high in December, also weighed on the budget.

Nevertheless, finance minister Hans Eichel is saying that it is his government's firm intention to comply with the deficit limit of 3 percent. Yea… and the cheque is in the post.

"Europe" cancelled through lack of interest

Well not exactly, but some of it. In an almost unprecedented move, the EU transport council meeting due to be held in February has been postponed "due to lack of work".

The Luxembourg government, currently holding the EU presidency, believes the pending agenda in the field of transport does not justify a formal meeting of ministers from the 25 member states.

Luxembourg spokeswoman Danielle Bistoff tried to make light of the light workload. "Yes," she said, "this does happen." The next transport council is now scheduled to take place in April.

That means that the new transport commissioner, M. Jacques "Wheel" Barrot, gets a little rest from his travails, but he still has plenty to do.

According to the joint work programme submitted by Luxembourg and the UK, which takes over the presidency this summer, there is the third package of EU railway legislation; the extension of the scope of the European Aviation Safety Agency; adoption of mandates for negotiations with non-EU states in the field of aviation; "Erika 3" maritime safety legislation; the controversial access to port services directive; "intermodal security" – whatever that means; and, of course, the development of the Galileo satellite navigation system;

However, the sudden cancellation of the council seems to have caught a few of the national delegations by surprise. The UK permanent representation in Brussels was yesterday confused about its. 'It seems to be on some calendars but not on others,' said one diplomat.

Lobbyists were still under the impression that the February Council was going ahead, but then they would be wouldn't they. How else would they claim their expenses?

Greeks bearing (down on) sh*t

According to the ever-faithful – and reliable – Reuters news agency, Britain is facing legal action from the EU commission for failing to fully comply with rules that require biological testing of urban sewage before it is released into rivers and bodies of water.

This is the Urban Waste Water Directive, which requires that waste water from areas with populations of more than 15,000 be subject to secondary-level or biological testing before discharge. Treatment plant should also have been up and running by December 2000, which was not done for 14 areas in the UK, 10 of them in Northern Ireland, the Commission claims.

Now the commission has announced that it has sent a final written warning to Britain - the last step before going to the ECJ – instructing it to implement the law.

So far so good but then we have to listen to a lecture from Greek Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, who declared: "By not fully complying with this EU law, the UK is not delivering the level of protection against pollution from waste water that it signed up to and that British citizens deserve."

Call me Xenophobic if you like, but it is a bit rich taking sanctimonious denunciations like that from a Greek. His country has one of the worse, and consistently worst, environment records in the EU.

One of the most notorious examples came in August 2000, when Greece was ordered by the ECJ to pay a daily fine of €20,000 for failing to shut down a waste disposal plant. It had been spewing toxic waste into a ravine 200 yards from the Mediterranean Sea on the island of Crete for thirteen years, and the Greek government had failed to comply with a judgement since 1992.

That year, the Greek government had already been referred to the ECJ for failure to comply with the Nitrates Directive, having not adopted codes of good agricultural practices and action programme required by the Directive. In addition, their monitoring programme for fresh waters was considered insufficient.

The commission also took action against Greece for failure to implement EU legislation on CO2, air quality and airborne emissions and for not providing data for the year 2000 on emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases and the removal of CO2 by sinks, plus various other infringements.

And the ECJ also ruled against Greece on another issue that year, its failure to adopt and communicate pollution-reduction programmes for 99 dangerous substances under the Dangerous Substances in Water Directive. The Greeks then prepared a "comprehensive national pollution-reduction programme" for the substances concerned, but did not enact any legislation.

In 2003, Greece was cited by the commission as one of the worst offenders in its annual survey on the implementation and enforcement of EU environmental law and, by January 2004 it was again incurring the wrath of the commission for failing to supply reports on implementation of EU law on integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC).

The then environment commissioner, Margot Wallström offered her version of the sanctimonious lecture, saying: "It is important that member states fulfil their reporting commitments in relation to this directive, which is crucial for the protection of the environment and for public health in the union."

Greece clearly did not listen for, shortly afterwards, the commission was taking legal action against her for non-compliance with EU laws on water quality. Margot Wallström was moved to: "urge member states to improve their compliance with EU water legislation. This will help ensure the necessary safeguards for the environment and human health."

Not long after that, Greece was yet again referred to the ECJ, this time for failing to properly protect the lagoon of Messolonghi-Aitolikon, in the Prefecture of Aitoloakarnania. This is a wetland that is internationally recognised as an important habitat for wild birds.

Later that same year, the Commission also sent Greece a final written warning for failing to properly protect another internationally recognised wetland, Lake Koronia, in the Prefecture of Thessaloniki. The lake was affected by heavy water abstraction for irrigation purposes and by discharges of nutrients, heavy metals and other pollutants from industries in the surrounding area.

The commission accused Greece of failing to establish an appropriate legal protection framework and of failing to take adequate measures to avoid the degradation of the lake.

Yet, despite that record, we now have Greeks bearing down on sh*t. We don't need it.

"We cannot have politics in the European parliament"

Protests galore against the EU constitution were afoot in the EU parliament at Strasbourg today, with demonstrators spoiling the photo opportunity for Corbett, Mendez de Vigo, Barroso, Duff, Borrell. and Kathy Sinnott MEP, having the temerity to wave "not in my name" banners behind the grinning group.

If we are to believe Daniel Hannan (and who could possibly disbelieve him?), the demo was led by one Daniel Hannan – now there’s a coincidence - with Daniel objecting to the parliament spending hundreds of thousands of euros to promote the constitution in advance of the national referendums.

As the result of the vote was announced, some sixty Euro-sceptic MEPs – led by Daniel - unfurled banners in the chamber proclaiming "Not in my name", a reference, Daniel tells us, to the fact that, while the constitution enjoys overwhelming support among Brussels elites, this does not reflect public opinion across Europe.

And just in case we were in any doubt, Daniel tells us that the protest was organised by the Referendum Group, an alliance of Euro-MPs opposed to the constitution, of which Daniel is chairman. The group, led by Daniel, also released balloons with "Vote No" in their respective languages, while their supporters hung banners from the windows with the same message.

Daniel also tells us that "two female assistants" were injured when security staff snatched their placards, but what Daniel doesn't tell us is that these were UKIP staff, Annabell Fuller and Nikki Sinclair. They were manhandled/kicked to the ground by parliament security officers for unfurling a "No" banner next to the "Yes" banners put up by the Euro-scum.

When one of the security officers was asked on what authority he took this somewhat violent action, he replied: "My Authority, I am head of security". When asked why he was doing it, he replied: "We cannot have politics in the European parliament".

Per ardua ad Land Cruiser

The latest post on Diplomad points out how happy UN operations are making Land Cruiser dealers around the world.

But we also find out where that the RAF has been unwittingly recruited in the provision of these luxury vehicles to the UN. Although we see from the MoD web site that "Royal Air Force aircraft continue to deliver humanitarian aid and support equipment to Indonesia," and that "hundreds of tonnes of equipment and aid has now been flown into the disaster area by the RAF C-17", pictures of the loads (here and here) show that this is not the whole story.

Pride of place, amongst urgently needed relief equipment, is given to "United Nations vehicles" - er… luxury Land Cruisers.

Playing with fire

Hot on the heels of the Guardian story this morning, on the lifting of the EU's arms embargo on China, the willingness of the UK to conform with the Luxembourg presidency's plans has been confirmed today by foreign secretary.

Jack Straw has told a House of Commons scrutiny committee that he expects the ban to be lifted during the Luxembourg presidency, claiming that an end to the ban would have "little practical effect".

He is relying on a strengthened Code of Conduct on arms exports which, he argues, would block the vast majority of weapons deals with China.

This, as we recorded in our last post, is hotly disputed by Amnesty International and, given that the Code is voluntary, few rational observers believe that it will have anything but a marginal effect on sales exports which France, in particular, is so anxious to provide.

It was the December European Council which ducked the issue and left the issue hanging, which led to an exceptionally sharp response from China. Now Straw is saying that "subject to satisfaction of the issues laid out by the European Council in December, we will support a lifting of the arms embargo."

That leaves Straw and the UK government siding with the EU, against US interests, in a situation where the US Congress is so concerned about transfer of military technology to potential enemies that it is already blocking arms permits (see here).

Straw, however, seems unconcerned. He takes the view that things will work out, saying: "The crucial issue is not to ask the US 'Are you going to vote for this?' but to say 'We hope, as close allies, we can provide you with an explanation and reassurance of why we are agreeing to do this and why it won't have the consequences you expect'."

Even if the US government goes along with this line – and that cannot be counted on – the recent indications are that Congress will not. Straw is playing with fire, and, if he persists, the thing that will go up in flames is the already strained special relationship.

Wot, no Szamuely?

Keen readers of the Blog will have noticed a certain dearth of postings from my co-editor, Helen Szamuely.

No, we haven't fallen out. She is off on an all-expenses-paid jolly to Vienna, to take part in a debate on the "future of the EU" or some such. (She gets Vienna and I get the prison cell… hmmm.)

Whilst there, she is taking the opportunity to dart over the border to visit friends and relatives in Hungary, from whence, she promises me, she will post a "letter from Vienna". This may have to wait until she returns, and I for one will be mightily relieved when she does.

Sledgehammer to miss the nut?

In another letter in today' Telegraph (sometimes it seems that the only interesting bits are in the letters column – which does not say much for the "professional" journalists) we have a contribution from Bernard Seward, Bristol, questioning the wisdom of the "Part P" amendments to the Building Regulations, requiring certification of electricians and/or electrical work.

We have addressed this issue three times in this Blog (here, here, and here), where we unequivocally identify it as an EU impost, but such has been the failure of the media to do its homework that is fact has clearly eluded many people, including the Telegraph’s current contributor.

Nevertheless, Mr Seward makes some good points. He starts by saying that: "it is unquestionably a good move to squeeze out cowboy workmen, but the new wiring regulations are likely to cause many competent sole-trader electricians to give up in despair."

The letter continues:

Even an electrical tradesman who can prove a near-lifetime of experience backed by a City & Guilds qualification and/or an NVQ, plus retraining where appropriate, is barred from carrying on his (or her) trade without official certification.

This requires yearly assessment and surveillance fees. An official of Building Research Establishment Certification Ltd can charge £634.50 incl VAT for a one-day assessment including two site visits. This is the initial assessment - and that's just the start.

Periodic surveillance visits, reckoned on half-day attendance, run at £376 with a further £282 for additional half days, or £499 for whole days where these are considered necessary.

Rigorous documentation is needed to meet the new standards, and a minimum of two installations will be visited and assessed (at the obligatory rates, of course), for their compliance with the Building Regulations, in particular BS7671.

It is difficult enough for the average homeowner to find competent tradesmen willing to undertake one-off domestic jobs. Most are either working abroad or on long-term contracts associated with John Prescott's house-building bonanza.

The Part P Regulations will almost certainly exacerbate the situation, while multiplying the risks likely to be taken by those citizens priced out of the market: exactly the opposite of what was intended.

It seems quite extraordinary that in the absence of any kind of sliding scale, the sole trader is obliged to pick up the tab on the provisions of these regulations. Was this really thought out before it was imposed on the industry?

Christopher Booker and I have noted many times this propensity of regulations to achieve exactly the opposite of what was intended, and we labelled the phenomenon "the sledgehammer to miss the nut" syndrome.

However, this may not apply in to these regulations. While Mr Seward asked whether the regulations were "really thought out" before they were imposed on the industry, the answer may be yes. There is a dark rumour going round that the regulations were pushed by the German craft guilds – who are a very powerful force – who see in them a means of seeing off the cheap competition from the enlargement countries.

In this case, therefore, the regulations may be having precisely the effect intended – cementing in a craft monopoly and seeing off cheaper competition. The downside, of course, is that the public – as ever – has to pay the price. Ain't the EU wunnerful.

Quelle surprise

In a vote this morning in Strasbourg - to the surprise of absolutely no one - the EU parliament has given its "overwhelming endorsement" to the EU constitution. It urges member governments quickly to follow suit.

The vote was 500 to 137, with 40 abstentions. Now the Euro-scum can get down to their celebrations, making whoopee at the taxpayers' expense. Jolly good day's work, chaps.

Loyalty under strain

The Europhile Guardian must be having real problems with its faith as it reports today on EU plans to lift its arms embargo on China. Torn between its concern for "human rights" and its love for the "project", it loyalties are now under serious strain – poor dears.

The proximate cause of its distress is a disclosure by "senior sources" in the Luxembourg government – which, as we all know is now leading the EU for the next six months – have indicated that the arms embargo could be lifted by the summer. A "senior Luxembourg ministerial source", cited by the Guardian, says: "We have a mandate to resolve this problem. "We have an obligation to find a solution by the end of the presidency."

This, says the Guardian, means that "European leaders" are heading for a confrontation with human rights groups. Amnesty International has warned that "meaningless" conditions will be imposed on Beijing because of Europe's determination to tap into China's booming economy.

This is almost certainly the case as the EU will issue a revised "code of conduct" on arms sales, a voluntary code which will be nothing more than a fig leaf.

As always, the agenda is being pushed by France, with the support of Germany, both of which are eyeing the lucrative arms trading opportunities in China. Beijing. The Guardian's Luxembourg source indicates that France and Germany, are winning the argument within the EU.

We are also told that Britain is said to have accepted the change – so much for NuLab's ethical foreign policy. But such is the air of unreality shrouding this whole business that "Luxembourg" is claiming to be "confident" that Washington will be won round by "tough restrictions" which will be imposed on the export of arms in place of the ban.

What is really going to be interesting though, is how the Guardian is going to square its love for the "project" with this squalid example of EU realpolitik.

Feeding off disaster

In today's Telegraph letters, Tarquin Desoutter of Battle, E. Sussex, writes under the heading, "Feeding off disaster and at public expense":

Sir - Having survived the tsunami in Sri Lanka, I have one abiding memory of the aftermath.

On New Year's Eve, I was returning to my evacuee relief centre, when I passed one of Colombo's finest restaurants. It was with surprise and dismay that I saw it was filled with freshly suited UN officials, their finely polished official cars and dutiful drivers parked ostentatiously outside.

I went to bed early, on the floor of a sports hall along with 500 other displaced tourists. I couldn't get into a hotel; they were full of aid officials.

That just about says it all, except that Mr Desoutter is possibly wrong about the hotels being full of aid officials. Not a few of the rooms would have been taken up with journalists and camera crews. However, the point is well made, amplified by this syndicated cartoon published in the US print media.

Shameless

US military relief efforts continue apace in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster zone. Water-production facilities have been established in Indonesia in coordination with host government officials and five C-130 Hercules have arrived at Banda Aceh with an Air Force mobility support team to organize an airport ramp area

The US Navy pre-positioning ship MV Pless, with the capability to offload fresh water, arrived off the coast of Sumatra. The USS Duluth also arrived in the area and was ferrying supplies to shore via amphibious landing craft.

Teams had begun clearing debris from affected areas in Sri Lanka. At least 150 tons of debris was cleared from the roads. Some debris was deposited to reconstruct the sea wall and some was taken to a Sri Lankan landfill.

Pulau Simeule, a small island about 60 miles off the coast of Indonesia, was getting new attention. Sailors on the USS Bonhomme Richard were delivering supplies to the 1,000-person island.

In all, 850 sorties have been flown since the beginning of operations, moving 46,000 gallons of fresh water, 4,009 pounds of food and 775,000 pounds of supplies. Additionally, 153 injured people have been moved.

Meanwhile the big-wigs were in Geneva holding yet another donors' conference, with Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian relief coordinator, boasting that the UN had secured "concrete aid" of $717 million dollars toward its emergency relief appeal.

The other half of the tranzi team, EU president José Manuel Barroso, was in Strasbourg, but while the US military were delivering, all he could do was promise "swift delivery" of the up to €450 million his commission had pledged in aid. Without a trace of embarrassment, he then went on to claim that: "the European Union already exceeds any other single donor in terms of total aid pledged."

According to a commission press release, his commission also agreed a package of measures related "to providing continued relief in disaster affected area".

One of those measures, however, was to beef up the EU's "civil protection assistance" which, incredibly, according to another press release, "worked smoothly" in the tsunami crisis. "The investment made in recent years in training/exercises and in developing co-ordination procedures helped ensure an effective mobilisation and allowed a clear expression of EU solidarity," it claims.

In terms of "concrete achievements" readers will be pleased to learn that the commission is also working on improving its "Civil Protection Mechanism", which was first established in 2001 to "facilitate the mobilisation of support and assistance from Member States in the event of major emergencies." DG Environment "has just completed a first scenario-based inventory which has identified a number of gaps."

But the biggest gap that needs plugging is in the lack of a visible EU presence. This remains very dear to the heart of the EU, as set out in its communication of last year (COM (2004) 200 final) which sets out the key priorities.

"The EU", this document says, "should be able to respond effectively as a Union to calls for assistance from third countries and have a visible, distinctive EU presence on the ground, complementing other Community policies."

To that effect, it proposes to provide "EU co-ordinated rescue teams with common insignia and equipment in order to allow for easy identification on site of members of EU co-ordinated teams as part of an ad hoc European Civil Protection Force drawn from existing national units".

That is what it is really all about: "visibility". These people are shameless.

French government humiliated

In stark contrast to the BBC, French television has for days been giving favourable coverage to the US Military response to the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. This is all the more surprising as the French media is extraordinarily biased and generally gives the US short-shrift, especially over Iraq.

But, according to this Blog, the US action has publicly embarrassed the French government — on live television. Says the Blog author: "Yet another reason to thank the US Armed Forces."

Look at the full posting, from the link above. It makes absolutely fascinating reading and shows up, once more, how dire the BBC has been in its coverage of the disaster. Many thanks to our reader, John, who gave us the link.

The MECRFIRACS speaks

If the commission ever wanted to know why they have such difficulty communicating with the "citizens" of Europe, they need look no further than their former environment commissioner Margot Wallström.

Now the "voice of the commission", responsible for the commission’s communication strategy, her formal title is: "Member of the European Commission responsible for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy". The very idea of a title so long tells you that the officials who devised it are not of this world.

Nevertheless, the "Member of the European Commission responsible for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy" (MECRFIRACS for short? – we all know how much the EU likes acronyms) is important to us Euro-nerds as it is she, as her title suggests (it doesn’t always) that she is commissioner-in-charge of communications, charged with the responsibility of convincing us plebs that “Europe” is soft and cuddly and we should vote for its constitution.

Today MECRFIRACS was very much on the job, filling in the time for bored MEPs in Strasbourg until it was time for their £262,000 extravaganza – their party to toast the new European Union constitution in Strasbourg.

Addressing the plenary session of the EU parliament, she gave a stirring speech to the converted, telling the MEPs how wonderful they all were and how the EU constitution would not have been possible without them

But her task was to speak to the 132-page Corbett/Mendez de Vigo report (after its authors, Richard Corbett and Iñigo Mendez de Vigo) on the EU constitution.

"This excellent report", says the lovely MECRFIRACS, "conveys a clear message (in 132 pages?) about the benefits of the Constitution and the need for its ratification." So taken with it is she that she gushes her wholehearted congratulations, making the MEPs feel all warm inside.

Surprisingly enough, the commission fully supports the reports it firmly believes that the Constitution allows the Union to make significant improvements.

And here comes the soft and cuddly bits. In "simple terms" declares the MECRFIRACS, "for the first time, the powers, competences, rights and duties of the Union are set in a single Constitution. The Constitution consolidates and simplifies half a century of Treaty changes allowing us to move from 12 basic treaty acts to a single text: it makes the Union more open and simpler to understand."

The constitution, she says, modernises the institutional structure, increases the powers of the European Parliament and provides for citizens to actively participate in the decision-making process by an initiative of one million signatures: we have more democracy.

It sets out in 54 concise articles the fundamental rights we will guarantee to our citizens. The Union will also for the first time accede to the European Convention on Human Rights: more rights for our citizens.

And now fro the message from your sponsors: In these three simple concepts: more rights, more democracy and more openness we can explain why this constitution should be ratified.

That's the pitch folks – all warm and cuddly: more rights, more democracy and more openness. Beat that! The MECRFIRACS has spoken.

Spinning for Mandelson

Clearly stung by the reports (here and here)of the devastating effect of protectionist EU tariffs on tsunami-affected countries,Peter Mandelson, our trade commissioner, has rushed out a statement telling us that the EU is “actively considering” ways to use EU trade policy to provide relief for affected regions and businesses.

Says Mandelson, "I want to find ways to assist people and businesses hit by the tsunami. The localised nature of the damage poses real challenges in ensuring that relief hits the target, but there are trade measures we can use to assist rebuilding in the countries affected by the disaster, notably by speeding up measures to improve their access to our markets."

Reading the small print of the statement, however – always a good idea with commission documents – this activity is ringed with caveats.

One finds that the immediate action consists only of "working to identify businesses that are affected by EU trade defence measures" – as if the commission did not already know – which "could be reviewed" with the "possibility of suspending them".

We then find that the commission will only "consider" ways of "re-orienting its trade related assistance" to affected countries but, "in the medium term" all this amounts to is the commission stating that it will "consider ways to fast-track the adoption and implementation of its new Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) scheme".

Then, in a nasty little aside, which is the ultimate get-out, the statement adds, "Whilst the EU cannot make tariff concession for individual countries without contravening WTO rules, the European Commission is ready to support WTO-wide initiatives to agree on tariff concessions for the affected countries."

Of course the EU can remove tariffs globally without contravening WTO rules, and it can also make regional agreements, but it is not about to, so the WTO reference is a sign that the EU is stalling. What Mandelson is offering does not add up to a row of beans.

What is illuminating though is the Independent's report of the statement

"EU set to reduce trade tariffs to aid rebuilding", the newspaper reports, with Stephen Castle, its Brussels correspondent declaring that "special EU trade concessions worth tens of millions of euros may be given to countries struck by the tsunami in a matter of weeks."

Peter Mandelson, Castle adds, "wants to rush through a reduction in tariffs affecting four Asian countries. The measure is due to come into effect in July, but could now be speeded up by several months."

What we know, of course, is that the cumulative effect of the tariffs amounts to not tens of millions of euros, but hundreds, so even by the Independent’s measure, the commission is only playing at the margins.

Nevertheless, the Independent makes for an unusual reversal. Instead of the trade commissioner doing his own spinning, the paper is spinning for Mandelson.

Institutionally corrupt

It is good to see that, at last, the US Marines have got some coverage, with the Daily Telegraph today, featuring the efforts of the Bonhomme Richard in delivering aid to the tsunami-stricken town of Meulaboh.

Even then, the Telegraph reporter could not resist a jibe, noting that a team of journalists was on board the hovercraft that delivered supplies, a television cameraman was in the cockpit and more journalists were waiting on the beach.

Public relations, says the Telegraph, is playing an important role in the mission at a time when the US armed forces' global popularity is at a low ebb because of the conflict in Iraq.

The comments are less than charitable when one considers that the Bonhomme Richard was dispatched from its base in Guam before most of the international community had woken up to the scale of the disaster. The generosity can be seen from the Telegraph’s own report that

The mission began when marines went into Ace Hardware - an American do-it-yourself chain - near the US naval base on the Pacific island of Guam and bought more than £50,000 worth of timber, plastic sheeting and other supplies on a credit card.

A similar tale of generosity is reported on the Diplomad Blog which recounts how sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln also put together their own money to buy toys and stuffed animals from the ship's store, which they brought to the USAID/IOM tent. They were given to children who were brought in.

At least there was no danger of BBC journalists cluttering up the beaches, giving publicity to the Marines, and neither would they have spent any time on the page coverage given by the Telegraph, here,here, here and here, to the dire carryings-on of the United Nations.

One story reports how Kofi Annan, described by some as the "secular Pope" is now more vulnerable than ever, because of growing scandal over his organisation's mismanagement of sanctions and humanitarian aid to Iraq.

Another records how vital core functions were ignored: the performance of UN headquarters was not audited, and there were no checks of Iraq's contracts to sell oil and buy humanitarian supplies. It is from these contracts that Iraq was able to skim off hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of illegal funds.

Yet another reports how the UN suffered one of the most far-reaching indictments in its history yesterday after investigators found it guilty of systematic mismanagement and incompetence in running the $56 billion (£30 billion) oil-for-food programme in Iraq. And then there is the story of how UN peacekeeping troops guarding refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo sexually abused girls as young as 13, giving out scraps of food or money in return for favours.

In this latter context, you can bet that, if US troops had been involved, the BBC would have been right on the case, with maximum, lead story coverage.

Anyhow, springing to the defence of the UN is David Hannay, the former British ambassador to the UN, co-author of a report calling for widespread reform of the UN, and a rabid Europhile. It is highly instructive to see how the tranzis all stick together and support each other, the UN and the EU all gorging from the same trough.

Said Hannay, "much of the criticism of Mr Annan was unfair or misinformed," which is exactly what his ilk say of criticism of the EU. Therein lies the parallel for, divorced from even nominal democratic accountability, these trans-national organisations are institutionally corrupt. It is no surprise that their apologists stick together.

What are we to make, therefore, of the Telegraph's last story on this subject, which has the UN vowing not to squander the disaster aid that has so generously but rather rashly been entrusted to it? That is rather like the EU saying its is going to bring an end to its corruption. All one can do is rely on that splendid, all-purpose phrase – Yea, right.

A hundred grand

A significant landmark was achieved by this Blog last night. With the help of our treasured readers, we clocked up 100,000 hits, just over eight months after we started operations on 23 April, following Tony Blair's announcement of a referendum on the EU constitution.

All right, by comparison with the circulation of the print media and their own websites, the meg-sites like the BBC, this is small beer. It is also tiny compared with some of the US Blogs, which are achieving hit rates in excess of 100,000 a day.

Nevertheless, political blogging in the UK is a relatively new phenomenon and, for a British site, this is a respectable performance. Furthermore, reaching our hundred grand was not the only landmark. Yesterday, for the first time, we took over 1000 "hits" on the day, unaided – this is without being linked to a bigger site.

This was no flash in the pan as the hit rate has been climbing steadily since we started, a slow, unspectacular, week-on-week increase that has brought us to the present position. Having invested in a sophisticated statistics package, we can see that, if the current trend continues, we will be well past half a million hits by the end of this year.

What is particularly encouraging is that we are not alone. The past year has seen an explosion of Eurosceptic sites, ranging from the admirable EU Serf, to Eurealist and Jonathan Lockhart to the more general and highly entertaining Blithering Bunny, and many, many more.

There is, in fact, a publishing revolution out there and it is encouraging to note that the Eurosceptic sites are dominating the high ground, displaying wit, humour and depth of coverage that is not matched by the Europhiles. And, with over eight million active internet users in the UK, there is plenty of scope for expansion.

We have said it before, but it bears repetition, that the coming EU referendum campaign will be the first internet campaign in our history and I remain convinced that the material on the net will have a decisive impact on the course of the campaign.

For some time now we have been considering whether to set up a “peoples’ campaign” to take a higher profile line against the constitution but gradually it has dawned on us that we already have one, in the proliferation of anti-constitution blogs on the net.

This is what I was getting at in my blog yesterday when I wrote that this Blog and others like it are showing, neither the Tories nor "Vote No" will have the monopoly when it comes to campaigning against the referendum. Independently of whatever becomes the official "No" campaign, the blogosphere will be fighting its own campaign in its own, anarchic way.

For this Blog in particular, this still costs money and I and my co-editor Helen are definitely putting our own "day jobs" at risk and the current situation cannot continue indefinitely. We have resisted the lure of advertising as a means of raising funds but, in the near future, will be looking for serious sponsorship to keep the Blog going.

That apart, what makes this Blog a success is its readers, many of whom enliven the site with often penetrating and valuable comments. They come from the UK, throughout Europe, Canada, the USA, Africa, Asia - with a number of Japanese "fans" - Australia and New Zealand and points beyond.

We thank you all and look forward to our half-million.

Manipulating the media

It would be easy to dismiss the EU commission as a bunch of blundering Eurocrats, who do not know what they are doing. That would be a mistake. There are some extremely smart cookies in Brussels and it is very dangerous to underestimate the enemy.

And that enemy has been active in analysing the state and structure of the media – how it works, what motivates it and how it reports on EU affairs. The report on the British media has just come to the attention of this Blog and although it was actually published in May 2004, its information is fresh and relevant and makes fascinating reading.

Available from "Europub" (and therefore not on the regular Europa site), the study goes under the leaden title of "The Transformation of Political Mobilisation and Communication in European Public Spheres" which probably explains why no one has picked it up.

Funded by the commission under the 5th Framework programme (the so-called research budget) it is a classic example of how research funding is used by the EU for political purposes as there is only one use for the information as far as the commission is concerned. That is to help in the manipulation of the media to convey better and more favourable the “pro-Europe” message.

We will do a full review of this publication, which will probably take a series of articles but, in the interim, we would commend it to our readers (76 pages in Word format) as being well worth the study.

Stuffing the system...

The EU commission, having spent the best part of its existence making laws which put small businesses out of business, announced yesterday that it is planning to set up a €36 million financial programme to help small businesses throughout the 10-new member states.

Quick off the mark, the Washington Times, courtesy of UPI – which seems to be a singularly Europhile press agency – is running a long puff extolling the virtues of this initiative, informing us that the programme was "one of many designed to help small to mid-size businesses increase their financial standing".

The commission is offering financial incentive programmes to local banks and credit institutions to increase the number of loans provided to small businesses, allowing the WT to cite Gunter Verheugen, EU commissioner for enterprise and industry, formerly enlargement commission.

He tells us that, "From my experience of EU enlargement…". And with the great experience of being sucked-up to by the great and the good in ten nations, he just knows that "small businesses in new member states are often struggling to obtain financing,"

The commission has already handed out $7.8 million (€6 million) to credit institutions and local banks in order to help fund "technical assistance programmes and capacity building" in countries with low levels of bank lending and now it is doing more of the same.

All of this sounds terribly good until you read on. For the most part, we are told, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have difficulty obtaining information to bid for contracts. Says the WT:

When they can, they usually end up not having the capacity to take on large-size contracts. Additionally, the cost of preparing proposals usually comes as a disadvantage because costs are often already fixed, which SMEs can rarely afford. They also are bound to have financial guarantees to ensure that projects can be completed without any risk of debt or insufficient funds.

In other words, small businesses have enormous difficulty dealing with the red tape needed to attract paying work. Furthermore, in relative terms, the burden is much great for small businesses than it is the corporate giants, which puts them at a trading disadvantage.

So what does the commission propose? Ah, it is going to make it easy for small businesses to borrow money to pay for the red tape so that it can get the work which will cost them more to do than it should otherwise. Nice one Gunter! Who thought that one up for you?

In any case, from my experience in running a small business, "getting the finance" – i.e., borrowing money – was never the problem. It was paying it back that created the difficulties. That was made a lot easier when we could keep the overheads down, give competitive quotes and make a healthy profit.

On those issues, of course, the commission is silent. That would require it to get rid of some of its 97,000 plus pages of regulations, and that would never do. It is much easier to stuff the system with other peoples' money.

Aid where it is needed

"I think we have to show public opinion we can effectively manage the affairs of Europe," says Jean-Claude Juncker in Luxembourg, now nominal president of the EU for six months.

He was speaking following a meeting with José Manuel Barroso's EU commission, after telling the "colleagues" that the most immediate priority was preparing a crucial EU economic summit in March, which will attempt to reinvigorate Europe's creaking economic reform programme.

"Attempt" is probably the operative word and, after the debacle over the tsunami crisis, the EU would have a job showing public opinion that it could manage a sweet shop outside an obesity clinic.

If any demonstration were needed, just read the press release from the "emergency" General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting held last Friday to discuss the tsunami aid programme.

From this we find that the only substantive decision taken by the Council was that on 31 January, the Foreign Ministers will review the current status of planned measures with a view to formulating an “operational EU action plan." I wonder how many calories that will have.

Meanwhile, the "European Development Commissioner" – who is not responsible for developing "Europe" but other parts of the world – our egregious Belgian, Louis Michel, has told all the EU member states that they should cough up 0.7 percent of their GDP to development aid.

Of course, with many cash-strapped EU member states having difficulty staying within the 3 percent limit for budget deficit required by the Growth and Stability Pact – and some failing completely – the commission is considering whether it can exclude payments of aid to the tsunami affected countries from the deficit calculations.

A commission spokeswoman said: "All spending by members goes towards calculating their public deficit, but the Stability and Growth Pact has a clause saying members can plead exceptional circumstances."

Members have the opportunity to claim their aid to Asia after the recent disaster is just such an exception and "the Commission will verify whether it can be counted" as such, she added.

However, there is possibly a better solution in the offing. Thailand has just declined an offer from Japan of US$20 million (€15.1 million) in emergency relief, saying the aid should be directed to countries more in need. Perhaps the money should go to France and Germany to help them balance their budgets.

The EU must be obeyed

Considering how enthusiastically the Irish political élites have embraced the EU "project", they sure are having difficulty coming to terms with what it means. Even now, they still seem to be under the impression the EU directives are optional.

Thus, in a situation that is developing into high farce, the Irish government is once again incurring the wrath of the EU commission, this time for failing to implement the notorious EU nitrates directive, having been slammed by the ECJ in a judgment of 11 March 2004.

Already in trouble for it deliberate refusal to implement Council Directive 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on "rental right and lending rights and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property" (see earlier posting), the Irish government had thought it could unilaterally change the standards set by the nitrate directive, which sets limits on the amount of nitrates farmers can apply to their land.

The EU had been demanding a cut in the usage of nitrates to 170kg/ha and, in response, the Irish government came up with an alternative "interim organic nitrogen limit" of 250kg/ha (roughly 200 lb per acre, in real money).

The commission rather predictably rejected this, stating that the proposed "Nitrates Action Programme" did not represent a compliant response to the ECJ judgment.

Now the Irish government is facing the prospect of fines totalling several million euros, and all the minister of state of the Department of Agriculture, John Browne, seems to be able to do is express "disappointment" at the commission's response.

He and his colleagues need to wise up. They should know by now that the EU commission is the master and must be obeyed.

The Marines have landed!

Further to our disturbing story posted in the small hours of this morning, about the Indonesians blocking the US Marines in their bid to deliver aid, just for once a bit of good news.

According to Channel News Asia, the US marines from the USS Bonhomme Richard have actually been allowed to land at Meulaboh, bringing water, rice and timber to the remote Indonesian town where more than 28,000 people were killed in the tsunami disaster.

"This is the first time we are landing here. We are bringing the items to assist in the humanitarian effort," Lieutenant Colonel Jay Hatton of the 15th Marine Expedition Unit said as his men unloaded goods on the beach at Pasir village.

A triumph from the “men from Mars” while Venus sleeps – and, needless to say, absolutely nothing of this on the BBC.

Tory fishing policy launched

As flagged up by Booker yesterday, the Conservatives have launched what they describe as a "radical new Fishing Policy".

It is based on lessons learned from successful policies pursued by countries like Canada, the United States, Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, stemming directly from visits by Owen Paterson, shadow fisheries minister.

At the core of the proposals is a scheme for national and local management and control of the industry, with national government setting a strategic framework with priorities focused on restoring the marine environment and rebuilding the fishing industry, while new local bodies would take day-to-day responsibility for managing their fisheries.

The policy is based on the following principles: effort control based on "days at sea" instead of fixed quotas; a ban on discarding commercial species; permanent closed areas for conservation; provision for temporary closures of fisheries; promotion of selective gear and technical controls; rigorous definition of minimum commercial sizes; a ban on industrial fishing; a prohibition of production subsidies; zoning of fisheries; registration of fishing vessels, skippers and senior crew members; measures to promote profitability rather than volume; and fair and effective enforcement.

Unveiling the policy, its author, Owen Paterson said: "The CFP has been a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster. It forces fishermen to throw back more fish dead into the sea than they land, it has caused substantial degradation of the marine environment, it has destroyed much of the fishing industry, with compulsory scrapping of modern vessels, and has devastated fishing communities."

Stressing that any national solution must be accompanied by a local management system, which commands the confidence and trust of the nation and its fishermen, he added: "Only local people understand the context of their local marine environment and are best placed to guarantee sustainable local fish stocks."

The full document, at 33 pages, can be downloaded from the Conservative Party site here.

Although it is primarily a consultation document, this represents a major shift in the Conservative Party – a genuine step towards repatriating an unpopular and failed EU policy.

With Michael Howard having committed to bringing this about by national legislation if necessary, this also represents a major challenge to UKIP. For all their rhetoric, UKIP have not been able to come up with any credible (or any) proposals for managing British fisheries, leaving Owen Paterson to remark that, if the fishermen and the nation wants to restore our fisheries to national and local control, there is only one option at the ballot box.

Taking us to victory

George Trefgarne writes a thoughtful opinion piece in today’s Daily Telegraph, suggesting that: "Unless the Tories find themselves, Blair could win the EU referendum".

To start his piece, he challenges what he calls the "received view", that the next election will be a mere side show to the big political production of the next 18 months: a referendum on the European Constitution – a view expressed by Peter Riddell of The Times and a view with which this Blog very much agreed.

Trefgarne sketches out the Riddell scenario and admits he agreed with it until recently but now he is slowly coming to the view that the condition of Conservative Britain - that ancient combination of individuals, business, the media and the Conservative Party itself - is now so dire that the referendum could be lost. The poor performance of the Tory party for more than a decade, he writes, is creating a poison that pollutes the whole enterprise.

When it comes to the European Constitution campaign, therefore, Trefgarne sees a narrative goes something like this.

February 2005: Spain votes yes to ratifying the constitution (the polls are currently 57 per cent to eight per cent in favour), to be followed by Holland, Portugal and France.

May: Labour wins another big election victory. Tony Blair, with Gordon Brown at his side, announces a historic mission to ratify the constitution.

June: on cue, the Conservative Party erupts into a vicious and prolonged leadership contest. Labour stands back and watches another implosion in the largest political organisation at the heart of the No campaign, which is attempting to launch itself.

July: Luxembourg votes Yes and Britain takes over the presidency of the EU. Brown, hitherto sceptical about European economic performance, announces that "real progress" is being made and that reform in Germany and France is working.

By November, things look pretty serious for the No campaign as it becomes infected with the splits within the Tory party. This referendum is about Europe in or out, says Blair (lying through his teeth). Quite right, replies the Euro-sceptic Right, let's pull out altogether. At this point more than half the FTSE 100 chief executives, the CBI and Blair's new friends at the Institute of
Directors announce that it would be against Britain's economic interest to withdraw from the EU.

As the polls start to switch, other arguments are deployed by the pro-constitution lobby, of which the most potent is that the real choice is between ratifying the constitution, with all its disadvantages, or being reduced to a colonial outpost of George W Bush's America. Scare stories are spread that withdrawing would also mean the end to cheap flights to France and Spain.

Then, in March 2006, a referendum results in a Yes vote, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent - and Teflon Tony will have done it again.

There are those, he admits, who will scoff at this scenario but he is also struck that even though those on what might roughly be called small "c" conservative wing of British politics are seemingly incapable of effective political action, their complacency about winning the referendum is rising.

They fail to recognise, Trefgarne writes, the potential impact of 24 of the other 25 EU members saying yes; they are dismissive of previous referendum upsets, such as the surprising loss by the anti-monarchists in Australia five years ago; and they forget how critical Brown's role was in keeping us out of the euro. This time round he may not be so reliable. Above all, if the Conservatives are smashed in a third general election, it could be the end of British politics as we know it.

The man may be right. But I suspect public sentiment is not going to be so easily swayed by something which is now clearly seen by "the man-in-the-street" as something belonging to the political élites. The very fact that Blair will be so keen to win the referendum will, in itself, be good enough reason to vote against it – as indeed the North East voters rose up against Prescott and his regional assembly.

But what Trafgarne does put his finger on is the dangerous closeness between the Tory Party and the "Vote No" campaign – which the "Yes" campaign will seek to accentuate. If one goes down, as seems likely, the other might follow.

However, as this Blog and others like it are showing, neither the Tories nor "Vote No" will have the monopoly when it comes to campaigning against the referendum. That campaign will be bigger than either of these players. As they fall apart, they may simply become another sideshow while others take us on to victory.

The squalidity of the UN (and the new world order)

Well, dear me. How can they be so mean? Calling that fine and wonderful organization, the United Nations, the cornerstone of the new world order that will be run by saintly characters like Kofi Annan (father of Kojo of the food-for-oil scandal fame) squalid. Whatever next? Well, I’ll tell you whatever next. A little hard-headed truth-telling that’s what and not just on this and other like-minded blogs. Well, one can hope, can’t one.

The signs are appearing. Two articles in yesterday’s Sunday press dealt with the UN in no uncertain terms. So uncertain, dear readers, that they made this blog look like the epitome of balanced “on-the-one hand, on-the-other-hand” type of writing. You know the sort I mean. Something like openDemocracy, which is oh so brahmin and de haut en bas, above the political fray, looks on every side of every question yet somehow, who knows how, always finds that their position is left of centre, anti-American and certainly anti-Bush, pro-EU.

Let us look at David Frum’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph. Frum is a former speech writer to President Bush and present resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the largest and most powerful of the think-tanks in Washington. Mr Frum advances an interesting hypothesis. After analyzing both the UN’s achievements (negligible), adherence to democratic values (laughable) and authority in the world (pathetic), he tries to understand what makes the bien pensants or plain left-wing cuckoos like Clare Short, so enamoured of this squalid, inefficient, corrupt and completely illogical institution.

“The UN's authority is instead one of those ineffable mystical mysteries. The authority's existence cannot be perceived by the senses and exerts no influence on the events of this world. Even the authority's most devout hierophants retain the right to disavow that authority at whim, as Ms Short herself disavowed its resolutions on Iraq. And yet at other times those same hierophants praise this same imperceptible, inconsequential, and intermittently binding authority as the best hope for a just and peaceful world. An early church father is supposed to have said of the story of the resurrection: "I believe it because it is absurd." The same could much more justly be said of the doctrine of the UN's moral authority.”

Its main attraction to various left-wing (of the hard, soft and sloshy variety) thinkers and politicos is that it is consistently anti-American. (And this, as he does not add, despite squatting on prime American real estate and getting 40 per cent of its legitimate income from the United States).

The dislike, according to Mr Frum is mutual. Americans, he thinks, of different political persuasion are getting a little tired of the UN’s behaviour.

“Unlike many on the European Left, however, Americans seem able to remember that the UN is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Americans see the UN not as an ineffable mystery, but as an institution invented six decades ago by human beings no wiser than their modern successors to respond to the problems of their time - which were not the same as the problems of ours.”

That sort of attitude makes Americans the “can do nation” par excellence. Europeans used to be like that, too, but seem to have lost their ability.

There is one more interesting piece of information in Frum’s article:

“Nor finally is the UN really quite so hugely popular as supporters such as Ms Short would wish it believed. The Pew Charitable Trusts – the same group that conducts those surveys on anti-Americanism worldwide – reports that the UN carries much more weight in Europe than it does in, say, the Muslim world. Only 35 per cent of Pakistanis express a positive attitude to the UN,as do just 25 per cent of Moroccans, and but 21 per cent of Jordanians.”

There is a reason for this synergie between the “Europeans” and the UN. The EU and the UN are part of the same network of transnational oligarchic organizations (tranzis), who are anxious to dispose of nation states, particularly if these have democratic legitimacy and set up international rules, devised and administered by themselves, as the ad has it “because they are worth it”.

The same theme was taken up even more ferociously by Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday. In an article entitled New World Disorder Mr Warner lambasted the UN and its various allies in the struggle for power in the “new world order”.

“…knee-jerk reaction is to babble about the United Nations, international development, the European Union, NGOs and all the usual suspects whose kleptomaniac instincts dwarf their philanthropic grandstanding. Only mal-pensant commentators, such as you are currently reading, are prepared to proclaim that the enduring motor of world diplomacy is realpolitik and that all institutions of a supranational character are either tyrannical or effete.”

And, as he rightly points out, conservatives of all kinds in America have noticed this development and are anxious to put a stop to it. According to Mr Warner, even the forthcoming G8 meeting will “cut the UN down to size, perhaps even to emasculate it completely”. I think he is being over-optimistic here, but the signs that the UN and its various acolytes are not perhaps flavour of the month are there. After all, you cannot expect countries that have responded promptly and efficiently to the tsunami disaster, to sit back and happily watch as the UN co-ordinates and surveys the situation, criticizes those who act and, finally, takes credit for all the work done by others.

Other matters have not been forgotten. The oil-for-food scandal is still being investigated; more and more information is becoming available about the behaviour of UN troops in various African countries and the Balkans; the domestic record of numerous members of the General Assembly and even of the Security Council remains a badly hidden scandal.

Mr Warner draws and inescapable connection between the UN and our own beloved EU:

“Nor can we look to the European Union - the UN’s twin kleptocracy - as the foundation of a New World Order. When Jacques Chirac praised Kofi Annan last week as "a man of integrity", it was like the Artful Dodger acting as a character witness in a pick-pocketing case. The EU is a sclerotic, dirigiste,anti-free market cartel that increasingly threatens to subvert Europe’s ability to catch up with America. The G8 nations, too, are a cartel; but their union is pragmatic, rather than institutionalised, and they represent real power.”

Gosh, couldn’t have put it better myself. And I really cannot resist quoting the last angry paragraph from this extremely angry article:

“The Dianafication of disaster has been Europe’s contribution, typified by the three-minute silence ordered by Brussels, calculatedly more than is accorded our dead soldiers who liberated the EU kleptocracies. Now Blair and Brown have adopted Africa as the tear-jerker motif for the general election. Grubby politicians kiss babies; but these two cynical opportunists have chosen to exploit emaciated infants with distended bellies as the visual soundbite for 2005. At the same time, trusting people to ignore fiscal bureaucracy when donating to tsunami victims, Gordon is raking in extra tax from the public’s generosity. A New World Order? No - just a classic scene from the brush of Hieronymus Bosch.”

The more journalists write this way, the more difficult it will be to prove the wonderful nature of the Eurocracy to the British public. I do not think that some mimsy articles about EU myths can counter sweeping denunciations of this kind. Long may they continue.

Leave it to the Marines

While the BBC devotes its time and air space to giving the United Nations undeserved publicity, a nasty little situation is developing in Indonesia which, as always, it and most of the other media are ignoring.

Hats off, therefore, to the Financial Times which is reporting that the Indonesian government has delayed US Navy plans to deploy 1,000 Marines via landing craft from the USS Bonhomme Richard on to the tsunami-stricken west coast of Indonesia's Aceh province.

Major Rick Steele of the US Navy said the US had planned to deploy the marines at the weekend to help provide water purification services, reconstruct power lines, restore hospitals, repair roads and rebuild bridges as well as providing other basic aid.

The Bonhomme Richard is positioned off Meulaboh, a town that according to the UN was 80 percent destroyed by the tsunamis, and relief is urgently needed.

The main road between the Acehnese capital of Banda Aceh and Meulaboh has been severed, slowing the aid operation. Yet Major Steele said the US was unable to proceed with the operations until it received an official request from the Indonesian military.

The reason given for delay is said to be because of Indonesian concern that it might resemble an invasion. However, aid agencies are hinting that the the military could have other motives in ensuring the area remains free of US military personnel.

Aid has been reaching Meulaboh by air, but one senior agency official said: "We've had some reports of TNI [the Indonesian army] hoarding supplies up to 30 percent in some places." Hence, the TNI are quite happy to have helicopters deliver aid, but are less willing to have US boots on the ground in case they see what really is going on.

Something of this may well have been the reason why the Bonhomme Richard was turned away from Sri Lanka earlier this week, another setback curiously unreported by the media.

One might have thought that this type of political and co-ordination issue might have been just the task for which the UN (or even the EU) was admirably suited. But no. The UN is far too busy giving self-serving press conferences to the credulous media, and working on its "assessments" to concern itself with such issues – and the EU is nowhere to be seen.

Thus, while Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian co-ordination agency, from the safety of her comfortable office in Geneva is telling everyone who will listen that: "The watchword is cash," it is being left to Colonel David Kelley, in charge of US liaison with the Indonesian military, to get the problem sorted out.

In blunt military fashion, he says: "The Indonesians have to make a call. These marines that are here are not going to be here forever."

Zut, alors, les anglais invented kitchen patriotism as well

There must be an end to this. Those dastardly Anglo-Saxes, that Albion perfide cannot claim to have invented everything. But, hélas, that is exactly what they do.

What brought this on, I hear our readers ask. Why is she getting into this maudlin mood? Hard as nails, she is, usually. (Or so my colleague tells me.)

I was reading Ben Rogers’s entertaining history Beef and Liberty, which deals largely with patriotism and nationalism in the kitchen, invented and developed by the English in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when fear of France as the outside enemy, of Catholicism as the inside enemy and, above all, rapid and disconcerting social and economic changes made many writers emphasise the virtues of English food, English meat, English puddings, as opposed to the French fripperies, sauces and kickshaws.

Rogers, a man of the soft left, but an excellent historian, draws a parallel with present-day hysterics in France and Italy over fast food versus slow food, American food versus “European”, that is domestic food.

“Much like French and Italian patriots today, eighteenth-century Englishmen identified their national culinary traditions not just as one set of tastes and techniques among others, but as the encapsulation of home and hearth, Church and nation. It bound their world together. And like modern-day French and Italian patriots, early Englishmen naturally found in the threat to their culinary tradition a ready representation of larger, more elusive threats to all these ultimately important things. Substitute France for the United States, fricassees and wine for hamburgers and Coca-Cola and the parallels are striking. In a way that is not generally recognized, eighteenth-century England more or less kicked off modern kitchen nationalism.”

Nom d’un nom d’un nom. What will they think of next?

The pain in Spain…

The Spanish group "Another Democracy Is Possible" (AnotherDem) has asked the government’s equivalent to the electoral commission to shut down the government's official web site on the EU constitution referendum.

They claim that the contents of the web site are flagrantly biased in favour of ratification, including explicit and even literal references to a "Yes" vote. Details of the extent of the government "pro" bias can be seen on the group’s web site.

AnotherDem argues that because the government web site publicly funded, "its unfair nature degrades conditions of equality of the consultation" and runs contrary to electoral law.

The group also claims that the rest of government’s campaign shows the same unfair contents and biased nature, which could destroy the democratic legitimacy of the referendum, due on 20 February.

We on this Blog are not surprised. Even though the polls in Spain show the population generally in favour of the EU constitution, there are no lengths to which these European élites will not go in order to ensure the success of their project.

Trade not aid

Two newspapers today cover aspects of the scandal of the EU taxing Thai products. The first is the Scotsman and the second the Business.

Curiously though, neither feature the message from Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has told the international community that, rather than giving financial aid, it could help Thai tsunami victims directly by giving back tax and trade concessions for Thai exports, including shrimps.

Instead, both reports focus on the self-publicising NGO, Oxfam – which is clearly much more important that the prime minister of Thailand. It has condemned the EU over Thailand trade tax, particularly the "crippling duties of £2,430 a ton for exports of cumarin". This is a herb extract widely used in perfume, and duties were imposed on Thailand five days after the tsunami struck its shores.

The temptation here to indulge in "Frog-bashing" is inescapable, as the tax is designed to protect Rhodia, a French chemicals firm and the EU’s only cumarin producer. EU officials said they wished to shut down a flourishing trade in Phuket where traders are buying and reselling cumarin from China - which is already the target of a heavy EU export tariff. It has ruled that all cumarin sent from Thailand will be treated as bootlegged Chinese imports.

To give it its due, however, Oxfam has said the ruling illustrated the EU's inconsistent approach to developing countries: giving millions of euros after a disaster, but refusing them free trade to encourage recovery. "Their response to the tsunami should be to take down tariffs, not increase them," said Michael Bayley, Oxfam's senior policy adviser. "When countries are lying prostrate before us, it is criminal to continue to tax them on what they sell."

The Business takes the story a little further, pointing out that the cumarin tariff is the latest in a long line of penalties imposed on Thailand, "which was last month told by Brussels to buy six Airbus aircraft if it wanted to escape EU duties of 12 percent on its prawns."

It seems that Thailand, the world's largest prawn exporter, had reluctantly agreed to the deal - protesting that the prawn tariff it faced was three times the 4 percent imposed on neighbouring Malaysia. The tsunami has put the deal in doubt.

But just to be even-handed, it has to be said that the US does not escape criticism. The United States imposes similar penalties on Thailand and 96% tariffs on prawns from Vietnam. These are to remain, officials said on Friday, on the grounds that East Asia's fishing infrastructure has largely survived the tsunami.

There is also the issue of the lifting of quota controls on textiles, with the end of the "Multi-fibre Agreement", but the new dawn of free trade is quickly being circumvented which officially started on 1 January, is already being circumvented under "anti-dumping" legislation where western producers claim competitors are exporting below local retail cost.

According to the Business, charities argue the anti-dumping claim is too easily accepted by protectionist governments and provides an easy way for companies such as Rhodia to shield themselves from more efficient competitors.

Both the Scotsman and The Business are pointing up the essential truth, that the EU – and to a lesser extent the US – are doing more damage to developing countries that the (little) good they are doing with aid. In fact, as my colleague argues, the aid can do more damage than good.

That much is also picked up by the Sunday Times in its leading article, headed: "Africa’s aid enigma". After 25 years of aid, Africa’s share of world trade has dropped from 5 percent to less than two percent.

Africa, says the Sunday Times, is hugely dependent on agriculture and has been particularly vulnerable to protectionist farm policies. The appalling Common Agricultural Policy, which combines discrimination against poor countries’ exports with dumping of agricultural products in their markets, has wrought havoc. African farmers have seen their livelihoods destroyed.

But, says the Times, "there is a sense of helplessness in the West about what can be done". But the answer is not rocket science. Detest mantras as we do on this Blog, the answer is "trade not aid". Stop the aid and open up our markets. It really is as simple as that but then, as the Times does observe, there is the CAP – and indeed all the other leaden, destructive polices of the EU to deal with.

There, the answer is also simple. Get rid of the EU.

Scum

There is no other word for it… those people in the EU parliament who, so filled with their own sense of importance, have seen fit to allocate £262,000 on a party to toast the new European Union constitution in Strasbourg this week.

According to The Sunday Times, £25,000 will be spent on inviting two grands penseurs (thinkers) and 20 grandes plumes (columnists) from states holding referendums on the constitution. Those invited include Adela Cortina Orts, a Spanish philosopher, and Jeremy Rifkin, the American author of The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream.

A further £70,000 will be used to bring over 100 regional journalists "to ensure maximum coverage". Participants will attend a £56,000 "round table event" and a lavish lunch in the chambers of Josep Borrell, the Spanish president of the parliament. Other expenditure includes £31,000 on internal decorations and £56,000 on external ones.

But in the same category goes Tony Blair who, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph
used the Queen's Flight for his Egyptian holiday 'freebie', costing the hard-pressed British taxpayers up to £100,000

He and his family enjoyed the use of an RAF 32 Squadron BAe 146, which is also used by the Queen and the Royal Family, to fly to Sharm el Sheikh, paying only the standard commercial air fare for the privilege.

His excuse is that the trip included a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the King of Jordan, the King of Bahrain and that he had made a "significant number of phone calls to other world leaders" during his stay.

I would remind our readers – as if they needed it – that there is no such thing as free money. All of this comes from the taxpayer and, as I am wont to observe, if you don’t pay your taxes you go to jail.

These people have no moral authority whosoever. They are worse than the shoplifters or the muggers who at least do not pretend to be anything other than what they are. Tarted up in their finery, with their airs and graces, these people think they are soo important. They are not. They are scum.

Enough aid already

As our readers know, this blog was one of the most enthusiastic chroniclers of the effort that brought immediate help to and aided more sustainable reconstruction in the areas devastated by the tsunami. We reported in detail the solid work done by the Americans, Australians, Japanese, Indians and Chinese, and the support given by some European countries. We also reported on the posturing by the EU, the NGOs (still in the process of collecting many millions of pounds, whose eventual destiny is unknown) and, most of all, the greatest tranzi of them all, the UN with its egregious SecGen, Kofi Annan (father of Kojo of the oil-for-food scandal fame).

That was then, immediately after the disaster. Now it is different. Now the countries must be left to recover, using their own resources. What the West needs to do, is to help that process by removing those appalling trade barriers that prevent development and deny the people of South-East Asia proper money for their work.

As my colleague has pointed out, these sentiments (which are not, in any case, particularly radical, except among the grandees of British media and politics) are being echoed in the stricken countries as well, in particular by the Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra.

In the meantime, the egregious Mr Annan has announced with a resounding sigh of relief, occasioned largely, one imagines by the thought that as long as he can spin the post-tsunami crisis out, his own personal position will not be under discussion, that the people of the area struck by the tsunami will not starve. Well, why should they? There is plenty of food in those countries and the farming areas were not affected.

They will be affected very badly if the UN persists in piling in free food and dumping it on the beaches for people to grab it as best they can. While there is free food, people will not pay. This will undermine the farmers, the retailers, the market stall holders, the shopkeepers or, in other words, the local economy.

This would not be the first time the UN’s activity has had this kind of result. At least part of the reason farmers in Afghanistan turned to poppy growing was because they could not sell the food with the UN and NGOs bringing free supplies in.

If the UN wants to help it could co-ordinate (please note gratuitous use of the UN's favourite word) the restoration of transport and communication, buy food from the local producers, if the villagers on the seashore really have no money, but buy it at local market prices not to destabilize the micro-economy and encourage local reconstruction as far as possible. But that is unlikely to produce big news items on the likes of the BBC. So those well-paid UN employees will continue to posture, dump huge amounts of food, dislocate local production and distribution and, eventually, withdraw, leaving a horrendous mess behind them.

The Booker column

In his column today, Booker leads on: "Tory plan to salvage Britain's fisheries". For once, on the fishing front, he is able to write good news, that the Tories - in the shape of shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson MP – have at least come up with a paper on the future of Britain's fisheries.

In the past year Paterson has visited all those countries round the Atlantic where, in striking contrast to the unrelieved disaster of the CFP, fisheries are flourishing. In the US, Canada, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and even the Falklands, he has seen how it is possible to run an effective management regime, based on sound science, that allows fishermen to prosper and fish stocks to grow.

Now, in a detailed consultation document, he sets out for the first time how the practical methods used so successfully elsewhere in the world could be applied to the waters around Britain.

The political implications of such a course, Booker writes, are enormous. But the choice is now clear. If fish stocks and what survives of our fishing industry are to be saved, here is the only policy to offer hope of a way out of that ramshackle, corrupt, unreformable system that has been arguably the EU's greatest single blunder. Let the debate begin, he concludes.

The paper is actually embargoed until tomorrow so we cannot review it yet. However, we will be looking at it in detail on Monday.

Booker’s second story is also piece if good news, in that the Prescott regional assembly machine looks finally to be heading off the rails.

A leaked report for the Association of North-East Councils (Anec) suggests the rug should now be pulled from under the existing, unelected regional assembly as well: by sacking its two most senior officials and disassociating the assembly from Anec, which has been underwriting it to the tune of £850,000 a year.

Thirdly, Booker takes on the BBC over its coverage of the tsunami disaster. Headed "'Don't mention the navy' is the BBC's line", his story rehearsed the litany of complaint familiar to our readers about the BBC’s biased coverage of the relief effort, studiously ignoring what was by far the most effective and dramatic response to Asia's tsunami disaster – the effort put in by the US Navy.

When even Communist China's news agency tells us more about what is really going on than the BBC, we see just how strange the world has become, writes Booker.

One real lesson of this disaster, as of others before, is that all the international aid in the world is worthless unless one has the hardware and organisational know-how to deliver it. That is what the US and Australia have been showing, as the UN and the EU are powerless to do. But because, to the BBC, it is a case of "UN and EU good, US and military bad", the story is suppressed. The BBC's performance has become a national scandal.

I can only add that the Saturday coverage by the BBC was by far the worst so far. It managed to do a round-up of all the disaster areas, without mentioning the US relief effort once, despite a longish piece shot in Banda Aceh which, courtesy of Diplomad, we know has been equipped and is being run by the Americans.

Yet, on the day that the USS Bonhomme Richard started work in earnest, the BBC found time to do a long "puff" on HMS Chatham, showing endless footage of matelots clearing rubble. Nice to see our lads in action, but the US forces deserve at least a mention. Not least, helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group had their biggest aid delivery day, bringing 125,000 pounds of food, water and other supplies to Aceh aboard 15 helicopters.

But this was also the day when, unfortunately, US forces in Iraq accidentally bombed the wrong target in Mosul, killing up to 14 citizens. No reticence here: a gloating BBC could hardly wait to rush in the story, running it as its number two item, pontificating with scarce-concealed glee that this would "reinforce anti-American feeling".

The BBC comes in for some more flak in Booker’s fourth and final story, about how this dire organisation has got the wrong end of the stick on wind turbines. As Booker says, its performance has become a national scandal.

Gender inequality

When is gender inequality made compulsory under the title "gender equality"? Silly question really. The answer is so obvious – when it’s implemented by an EU directive.

Last week, while our attention was largely elsewhere, the EU Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Council agreed a directive "implementing the principle of equal treatment between women and men in the access to and supply of goods and services".

This has achieved brief notoriety as the directive which would have prevented companies from selling cheaper car insurance policies to women drivers, purely based on gender.

The final resolution, however, removed this absurdity – in part - and was widely hailed, not least by the BBC which reported: "Women escape car insurance hike".

This led the deputy minister for women and equality, Jacqui Smith (can there really be such a creature?) to crow that: "The rights we've enjoyed in the UK for nearly 30 years will now be enshrined in this directive for the benefit of all Europeans… This achievement shows how Europe can develop solutions that are good for us all. "It's good news on insurance, but this directive covers much more than that."

And there is indeed much more than that in the directive. But behind this gut-wrenching propaganda from Mz. Smith is the small print which requires all member states to ensure that insurance costs related to pregnancy and maternity are attributed equally to both men and women. This, says the EU commission, "will lead to a much fairer distribution within society of the costs of pregnancy and parenthood."

So, in the interests of "gender equality" unattached males (and, indeed, females) must contribute in their insurance premiums to the costs incurred by insurance companies in paying out on policies to women arising from pregnancy and parenthood – while women continue to pay cheaper car insurance.

Only in the mad world of the EU could anyone even begin to believe this was anything other than stark insanity.

We don't want your money

Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has told the international community that, rather than giving financial aid, it could help Thai tsunami victims directly by giving back tax and trade concessions for Thai exports, including shrimps.

In his weekly talk to the nation on Radio Thailand yesterday, Thaksin said he had told visiting ministers it was not money that was wanted but technical assistance. Even better, he said, they could restore the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) for marine exports to the EU.

Thaksin said he told British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that suspension of tariff privileges on Thai shrimps by the EU was unfair. "I told him he should correct that unfairness rather than giving us money," he said.

The prime minister has good reason to complain. Prior to 1997, fresh shrimp and preserved shrimp from Thailand enjoyed a tariff rate of about 4.2 per cent and 7 per cent respectively. However, in 1999 tariff rates were increased to punitive levels of 12 and 20 per cent, respectively.

As a result, Thai shrimp exports to the EU have collapsed, from 33,000 tons in 1995 to 5,000 tons in 2003. Thailand's market share now stands at a meagre 0.7 percent of the EU's total shrimp imports of about 700,000 tons a year.

Even worse, the preferential status has been given to the former French colonies of Senegal, Madagascar and French Guiana, the waters of which are largely fished by heavily subsidised EU fleets, with very little of the benefit going into the local economies.

Somsak Taneetatyasai, president of the Thai Shrimp Association, said that if Thailand regained its GSP from the EU, its exports would grow to about ten percent of the EU market. This would increase production capacity by 140,000 to 150,000 tons a year from the current level of about 320,000 tons a year.

A current rates, this would be worth up to £400 million a year to the Thai economy - and has cost the economy over £3 billion since the higher rates came into force. This is considerably more than the £1.5 billion aid expected from the tsunami relief fund to cover the whole region – and the income from selling shrimps would provide real jobs for the fishermen about which so many hacks are shedding crocodile tears.

But then, giving aid to these needy third-world countries, and creating a dependency culture, makes one feel so much better, doesn't it?

A champion idea

Someone one clearly hasn't got the message on the Washington Times, its latest piece starting: "Now that the European superstate is a reality…". Don't they know they're not supposed to use the "S" word?

Anyhow, with the superstate on its way, says the Times, some Europeans are beginning to dream bold corporate dreams, American style. This is, apparently, what Gunter Verheugen, the EU industry commissioner, is telling Le Monde. And, to pave the pay, competition law must be tailored to allow the corporate giants to come into being.

Needless to say, this exercise in European corporatism is heavily disguised by yet another of those loathsome euphemisms. Corporate – us? Non. Mon Dieu – we have "European champions".

The Washington Times is a little less kind in its choice of title, labelling these wannabe corporate giants as "uber-companies", a little close to the bone perhaps, but it does suggest that they could replace the pan-European bureaucracy? Little chance of that, sport. These parasites feed off each other.

Actually, the WT agrees. The idea that the bureaucracy might go is dismissed as "an idle thought." Of course it is – the WT explains: "Monolithic European bureaucracy has become a matter of culture," it says. And don't we know it!

Still, the WT likes Verheugen's proposition. It would put Europe more in line with US antitrust regulation and increase the union's corporate competitiveness. But it misses the irony. To compete with the despised Americans, the EU must become more American. Now that's a champion idea.

The march of metric

In their rush to become fully integrated European, the Irish political élites are taking one further step into the dark – by 20 January, every mileage speed-limit sign in the country will be replaced by signs in kilometres - all 36,000 of them.

Metric units – or at least, the bastardised EU version of them - were introduced following Ireland's entry to the EU in 1973 but the public has so far failed to embrace them. According to the Irish Times: "Many of us still think in imperial measures, whether it's asking for a pint in the pub or a pound of meat at the deli counter."

The newspaper cites Rita Fagan, "spokesperson" for WeightWatchers Ireland, which has 60,000 members in the State. She has been working in the company for 27 years. "Even younger people prefer to be weighed in stones," she confirms.

"We have weighing machines where the weight comes up in both kilos and stones, but Irish people almost always look at the imperial weight, whereas other Europeans will go for metric every time. They wouldn't have an idea what a pound or a stone was. From my experience, without a shadow of a doubt, Irish people are reluctant to convert to metric. The only way they are ever going to make us is to have only one system. While there are two, we'll always go for the one we know best."

At Dunnes Stores in Dublin's St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, pre-packed food comes in metric weights. At counters such as the meat and deli areas, and the salad bar, where goods are sold loose, prices are offered in both metric and imperial units. A deli spokesperson confirms most customers ask for their meat to be weighed by the imperial method.

However, the Garda are warning this week that there will be no "honeymoon" period for motorists to use confusion over kilometres as an excuse for breaking the speed limit. The metric police will be out in force, while leaflets detailing the changes being mailed to about 1.6 million households in the Republic. Interestingly, they are being published in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Russian.

In neighbouring Northern Ireland, the British government is having to erect new speed signs on major border crossings - emphasising that the north’s signs remain in miles, not kilometres. Watch for the siren voices that start suggesting that Northern Ireland should convert as well, for the sake of "consistency", harmonisation, or some such - even "road safety".

One thing for sure, these people will never give up until we are all assimilated.

Just a thought

Perhaps the EU has taken the hint and extended its 3-minute silence indefinitely. That is one possible inference one can draw from the Luxembourg EU presidency site which is strangely uninformative about the outcome of the emergency meeting of the EU foreign ministers today.

With some reluctance, however, one has to concede that this is the least likely scenario. The more probable reason for the silence of the site is that, on Friday afternoon, all the publicity officials had gone home. After all, it wouldn't do to overtax the poor little dears.

Nevertheless, the faithful Reuters was on the case although it too had little to report. External relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner is still pushing for the EU to set up a rapid reaction group to “coordinate” (that word again) civil protection in the wake of disasters such as the Indian Ocean tsunami. I suppose that if she starts now, she should just about have written the first draft of the manual by 2007.

Ever ready to grab the main chance, ministers also discussed improving military cooperation among the 25 member states so – guess what - it could offer rapid military assistance to the United Nations in future. The tranzis stick together to the last.

Not all was sweetness and light though, as French health minister Philippe Douste-Blazy noted that, "If Europe was fast to show its solidarity, I have to admit Europe was not very efficient," adding quickly, "It's not a criticism, it's just a fact. If we can't do it after that kind of a tragedy, we can never do it."

Certainly, there is no evidence that it the EU can do it with other kinds of tragedies either. We are reminded by the Belfast Telegraph that when floods ravaged Mozambique in 2000, donors and rich countries rushed to pledge $400m to help rebuild the impoverished southern African country.

Five years later the scars remain throughout the worst-hit provinces, far less than half of the figure promised was delivered and, as far as EU involvement went, a senior official with a relief agency said that EU bureaucracy was such that "the aid didn't arrive until the next floods came in".

Meanwhile, yesterday, the first CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter from the USS Bonhomme Richard landed at the airport in the devastated city of Banda Aceh. It unloaded about 15 Marines and a small group of U.S. Navy sailors to start helping out with “the organisation of logistical flow”.

The CH-53 is a serious bit of kit. Able to carry a 16-ton external load or 38 fully-equipped troops, its hold is even big enough for an EU ministers' meeting. Just a thought...

Will he, won't he?

L’empereur Jacques has spoken. Well, sort of. He has had his New Year receptions for government officials on Monday, business and labour leaders on Tuesday, diplomats on Wednesday, top military on Thursday and the press on Friday.

In all these receptions he mused, as French politicians are wont to do, on France, its position, his own position and many other things of that nature. For some reason he gave out that France was doing reas well economically and in every other respect. Most other commentators have noted a barely-existent growth, high unemployment and a somewhat invidious position both within the EU, where France is fighting desperately to restore her erstwhile influence and outside it, where les Anglo-Saxes appear to be winning.

Unemployment, he explained grandly, was the top priority for the nation and for him. Rather cynically, one must assume that the most urgent question of unemployment is his own, particularly as it might also involve a possible appearance in court, charged with various financial peccadillos. The next President may not be so generous as to issue an all-embracing pardon in order to save Jacques Chirac, particularly if the next President is Nicolas Sarkozy.

Chirac has spoken of cutting taxes for companies and eliminating taxes on minimum-wge workers. He has promised easy access for small loans for the poor. The whole programme has infuriated some of the left and union leaders have confirmed that big strikes are due in the weeks to come: railway workers and civil servants in the third week of January, then post office workers and teachers.

The referendum on the Constitution is expected to be called in the late spring or early summer. That seemed like a good idea when the Socialist Party had voted narrowly to campaign for a yes vote. With strikes unrolling through the winter and, possibly, spring the decision may have to be changed and the vote postponed.

On other matters, l’empereur also spoke grandly. He wants to see a speedy creation of the EU Rapid Reaction Force units to deal with disasters like the tsunami, though there seems to be no need for them. Presumably, he is not going to call on EU troops to help him in the ever deepening quagmire of the Ivory Coast, where there are 5,000 French troops.

He has called again for debt cancellation but, naturellement, did not suggest any serious changes in the iniquitous CAP and trade policies. Debt cancellation, on the other hand, might help some of his rather unsavoury friends among African leaders.

However, it was his plans for the next ten years that made everybody prick their ears up. Chirac has announced that the government will promote large-scale industrial projects, an idea that has not been in political circulation since the seventies. Already €2 billion ($2.6 billion, £1.4 billion) over the next threee years have been promised in subsidy. Two things are unclear: where is the money to come from and will the Commission allow such a blatant undermining of the single market. We can disregard the notion that this money will be available to any European firm that cares to apply. That is not what Chirac means by large-scale industrial projects. And the money? With low growth and tax cuts? Can the man add up?

Then came the really important comment:

“The conditions are now fulfiled to deploy a project for France for the next 10 years.”

As a statement of political and economic intentions, this is meaningless. But its real purpose was to start a discussion that Chirac might run for another presidential term in 2007, scuppering Sarkozy’s chances.

Will this work? There has been a mixed reaction. Most commentators see the statement as a dig at Sarkozy, who is expected to respond next week. Others, such as La Libération rather bitterly complained that Chirac seems to want an endless reign, having achieved nothing so far. I must say, that is unkind and inaccurate. He has managed to stay out of prison and keep his friends out. Is that not achievement enough?

There is another consideration: Chirac is 72. By 2007 he will be 75. Will he be able to conduct another gruelling election campaign? Will people want to vote for someone of that age? And if he does win, with the socialists once more, perhaps, in disarray, will he able to carry on for the required five years? Sarkozy may yet have the last laugh.

Their self-importance knows no bounds

28 MEPs, led by the egregious Edward McMillan-Scott have arrived in the Palestine to observe what they have described as “the most important elections in the Arab world”. Some of us may consider that the Iraqi election at the end of January will be as important if not more so, but, presumably, the EU’s opportunity for interference will be severely limited.

Mr McMillan-Scott, no slouch when it comes to spending taxpayers’ money explained why this was so incredibly important:

"The election is the most important in the Arab world. This is the European Parliament's largest ever electoral observation mission. We come with open minds, but fully aware of the special circumstances under which the election takes place.

We are also here to observe the observers. The EU has committed 16.5 million euros to election assistance and observation - we will assure ourselves that it has been correctly spent."

As opposed to EU money being spent in Palestine at other times, when it was most incorrectly spent or, to be quite precise, never properly accounted for. And if the MEPs are there to observe the observers, who is going to be observing them? Some of the other EU observers who will number 260?

Of course, there are a few problems with the Palestinian elections. One is that effectively there is only one candidate, Mahmoud Abbas. Mr Abbas seems to be falling into the usual habit of politicians of saying one thing to one set of people – to Western media and politicians in English – and something completely different to others – various terrorist groups in Arabic. You might argue that this differs very little from the way other politicians behave but more is at stake in Palestine.

When the only serious candidate for the Presidency of the Palestinian Authority assures terrorist organizations that he will not crack down on them when elected and repeats all the old rhetoric of Chairman Yasser Arafat of ill memory, then we should all pay attention. Perhaps, this is all electoral guff, perhaps not. Will the self-important European Parliament observers know the difference?

Couldn't have put it better myself

Still on the Daily Telegraph: there were three letters published on what should be done to help the people of Sri Lanka and those of other countries that have suffered from the tsunami.

The most obvious thing is to make sure that their entire economy does not go over to total reliance on foreign aid, a serious danger if Kofi Annan’s hysterical calls for more and more money will be heeded.

Another problem that Sri Lanka, in particular has to contend with is political instability as witnessed by the row surrounding the Tamil Tigers’ refusal to have American or Indian help. Hard to tell how even more aid will sort that out.

Finally and most sensibly there have been suggestions that we should remove various trade barriers and help developing countries to develop by buying their goods. In particular, as Boris Johnson had written, we should abolish the present tariffs on bras produced in Sri Lanka, this being a more important part of their economy than tourism on the coast.

The Telegraph decided to present the full spectrum of opinion on the subject through its letters. One, from Simon Myers in Leeds, came up with the theory that rich countries have become rich through protectionism and, therefore, developing countries should keep their tariffs in order to increase their wealth. This is a historically inaccurate picture. Rich countries did not necessarily become rich by having barriers (it is not helping the EU much at the moment), poor countries that have put up endless protectionist hurdles have not done as well as those that have got rid of them, and, finally, developing countries can compete and trade with each other but only if they do not go down the protectionist road.

The second letter from Philip Bailey in Cheshire pleads for many unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in this country, already under threat and likely to be destroyed if we open the floodgates and let in imports from Indonesia. Mr Bailey, who admits that he is probably one of the chattering classes, seems to think that it is right and proper that countries of the Third World should stay in poverty indefinitely (though whether he likes the inevitable corollary of their people trying to get to the West at all costs is another matter) and also that certain sections of this country’s population should stay in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs for ever.

Inevitably, it is the last letter, from Richard Hook of Blackpool, that appealed to us:

Sir – In urging that tariffs on bras made in Sri Lanka should be removed to benefit that country's economy, Boris Johnson misses an essential point (Opinion, Jan 6). The income from such tariffs enables the British Government to provide overseas aid to these countries. Without these tariffs, how many civil service jobs here – counting and redirecting these funds – would be lost? Simple solutions have no place in a bureaucratic system based on creating dependence.

As I said: couldn’t have put it better myself.

Marshall Aid will not be repeated

It seems that the words “Marshall” and “plan” are the easiest to throw around in the political world, mostly by people who have not the slightest idea of what the plan consisted of, what its aim was and how it worked. Yesterday (January 6 – how appropriate, for it was on this day that the gift-bearing magi arrived in Bethlehem, according to tradition, and not December 6 as I had originally written) Gordon Brown, our own home-grown magus, who is capable of turning millions of taxpayers’ money into pure dross, once again came up with the old Marshall Plan wheeze.

According to him, now is the West’s chance to send the equivalent of the Marshall Plan to Africa by doubling the existing aid. As the thoughtful editorial in today’s Daily Telegraph points out, there are several crucial differences between what George Marshall proposed and what Gordon Brown or, for that matter, Louis Michel, Kofi Annan (father of Kojo of the oil-for-food scandal fame), Bono, Bob Geldof and other suchlike political thinkers propose.

According to Marshall, America’s objective in sending the aid over was

“… should be the revival of a working economy so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist”.

None of the crucial words appeared in Mr Brown’s speech, which merely talked of doubling the aid and halving the poverty. Since aid has been growing steadily over the last decades with poverty growing even more spectacularly, the equation seems a very unlikely one.

The Marshall Plan was a one-off loan, to be paid back, to help the war-stricken European countries to rebuild and to strengthen their political structures, as the Communists were standing behind the scenes, hoping to utilize the destruction and poverty for their own purposes.

Here is the most telling paragraph of the article:

“The Labour "Marshall Plan" for Africa has almost no resemblance to its illustrious predecessor. Once you strip away the rhetoric about a "once in a generation chance to solve world poverty", what is proposed is three initiatives. First, the writing off of Third World debts; second, the doubling of aid; third, the use of financial instruments to front-load aid, so future payments are sped up and received immediately. As so often with Labour, what these amount to is throwing public money at the problem, irrespective of the consequences. The last thing Africa needs is more aid. Already, it receives something like eight per cent of GDP in foreign aid, or 13 per cent if you strip out the big economies of South Africa and Nigeria (at its peak, the Marshall Plan amounted to three per cent of European GDP). Yet much of this money is wasted. Take but one example: the budget for the Department for International Development is growing at nine per cent a year, more than any other department, yet last year it spent £700 million on consultants.”

The fact is, that the main plank of the Marshall Plan has not materialized in the African states: free institutions. Aid that has kept bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power or helped them to gain power is inimical to “property rights, the rule of law and democracy”, without which Africa will not develop. Mr Brown seems not to understand this and neither do his "colleagues" in the EU.

Well, we know where he stands

Nick Clarke, interviewer for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, ran an outrageous puff for the EU constitution on today's programme.

But what really gave the game away was Clarke's own comment. Interviewing John Bruton, now the EU ambassador to Washington on the "positive" aspects on the constitution (which, incidentally, included to the “right” to withdraw), the egregious Clarke noted that these were the arguments that were going to have to be used by proponents of the idea.

But then he added: "…sadly, the sentiment is against that at the moment". Sadly?!

Well, at least we know where he stands.

You can listen to the whole interview from the above link. Go forward 15 minutes.

Less use than a discarded teabag...

While the foreign ministers of the EU member states – or their deputies – sit down in Brussels in order not to come to a decision on anything, life goes on.

The mighty arm of Brussels reaches out, according to The Times this morning to ban the recycling of Cardiff teabags under its notorious Animal By-products Directive.

As the Times gleefully admits, this is definitely an EU story straight of the "straight banana" variety and I am sure the EU commission will be rushing our with a defence of its Directive, blaming the silliness on over-zealous local officials.

But, as my colleague recently remarked, who cares?

What is possibly significant, however, is that the commission response will be speedier than its response to the tsunami disaster demonstrating that, when it comes to the expenditure of human energy, the EU has its own priorities.

Perhaps we could sent the discarded teabags (57.2 billion each year) to Sri Lanka. They would certainly be more use there than the EU.

How they see themselves

EU Business, that definitely Europhile site which nevertheless is a useful source of information, has sent out a summary e-mail, with a short editorial commenting on the tsunami disaster. Says the editor:

The long-standing partnership between Asia and Europe will be strengthened by the current immense wave of solidarity between Europeans and Asians. The EU should be able to be particularly helpful for organisation, coordination and prioritisation.

Yea, yea, yea…. Now read the posting below and then have a look at the latest posting from Diplomad.

Europe, the minor global player

Not my headline – this one was taken from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and I really could not put it better. In today’s editorial it writes:

Europe is not painting a very convincing picture of itself in the days that have followed the devastating tsunamis on Dec. 26. The compassion is certainly there, reflected in the mountains of donations made by the public and governments.

But that has not helped the victims in the Asian coastal regions one bit so far. They are receiving their first foreign relief from others: the Australians, the Indians and, particularly, the Americans.

That also has something to do with distances and capabilities. Hercules transport planes that take off from Sydney or Singapore land in Sumatra, Indonesia's largest island, faster than airplanes from Europe. The same applies to ships. And the governments and military staff in the region are much better networked than their partners in far away Europe.

For a while, such arguments may have been worth repeating. But, 12 days after the tsunamis hit, they have lost their power of persuasion. In places where German lives were endangered, Berlin was quick to react. But its commitment in the most devastated area, in Indonesia, was strikingly meager. When the week began, the federal government finally announced that a crisis-reaction team's medical service would send an advance party to Indonesia. The supply ship Berlin has set sail as well - but it will not reach the coast of Sumatra until the beginning of next week at the earliest.

While U.S. service members were busy dropping supplies over Indonesia and Australian doctors were treating people immediately after the disaster, the Europeans were debating - or, even worse, looking for a date to debate on. The French health minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, finally said Europe was acting badly.

That is a telling comment. One widely known fact of European life is that its well-intentioned fixation on concerted action - preferably in tandem with the United Nations - does not always produce quick and consensual results. But now Europe is revealing a weakness where it always considered itself to have a strength: in humanitarian aid.

The unexpected slip raises questions. The guiding idea of the union's foundation was to create a region of cooperation and stability after two devastating world wars. This idea has paid off in many ways. But it also produced a rejection of geo-strategic ambitions and a provincial - from today's point of view - focus on its own region. Instead of conducting politics independently, multilateralism was chosen.

Instead of defining European interests in a shrinking world, a commitment was made to do good everywhere. The price - the inability to steer global politics anymore - was accepted as long as one was respected as a generous helper. This world view has now become blurred.

Europe lacks the strength, the presence and the matériel to make a major logistical contribution to the greatest international relief mission of all times. Efficient aid is not given by the nice, but by the strong.

The kick-off for the large scale operation was not made in Brussels or Berlin, but in Washington. President George W. Bush announced that the ”core group” of the relief mission consisted of the United States, India, Japan and Australia - Europe was not on the list. Shortly afterward, 6,000 U.S. service members reached the coast of Aceh in Indonesia. By that time, India had already sent warships to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and Australia had ordered aircraft to Sumatra.

By Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was flying over the crisis area in Aceh and promising an additional 44 helicopters. The EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Louis Michel, was there, too. But he could only announce that money would arrive at some point.

This will not be the last time that Europe experiences a creeping loss of significance. The restraints it put on itself for reasons that once made sense have evolved into a form of self-righteousness that is blind to external changes. Outside the Old World, the European example is still lauded in Sunday political sermons. But during the week, the laws of balance and power are back in force as they have been for a long time. Respect and a free hand are earned by those who can make quick decisions and have the resources to carry them out.

Asia looks like a massive disaster area today. But it will triumph in the long run as a winner of globalization. Leaders in the area are learning day by day that the former colonial powers are losing ground. When this great natural disaster can be mastered almost without help from the Europeans, then they will be dispensable in other areas as well.

And, as they say, you won't get that on the BBC.

Another detailed strategy

I really did think that the BBC might cover this bizarre aspect of the relief – the news that the Sri Lankan government had turned away the splendid USS Bonhomme Richard (BHR) and its accompanying USS Duluth – as well as aid from India. One might also have thought that that the peace-loving EU, or even the UN, might intervene. Silly me!

The reason why this life-saving relief has been turned away, according to Associated Press, is that the island's Tamil Tiger rebels objected to the presence of troops from the United States or neighbouring India, saying they could be used as spies for the government. The rebels, which control a large portion of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, detest the U.S. and Indian governments because both officially list the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group.

A sense of the frustration came in the AP report, describing how, on the Bonhomme Richard, everything was ready. "There are tractors, trucks and three huge landing craft. There's water purifying equipment and plastic tarps and wood beams for building temporary shelters. And there are more than 1,300 Marines ready to take it all ashore and get to work helping tsunami survivors."

But, continued the report, in the political minefield of southern Asia, getting American boots on the ground is a delicate concept - even for a strictly humanitarian mission.

Now, only the USS Mount Rushmore, an amphibious ship carrying a smaller contingent of Marines, is going on to Sri Lanka alone and is expected to reach there by the weekend. The loss, of course, will be the civilians of Sri Lanka, in one of the countries least equipped to deal with the aftermath of the tsunami.

But hey, who cares? Certainly not the BBC, which clearly could not deal with the idea of needy countries actually rejecting aid. That does not fit the plot.

Unless I missed something, there was no mention of anything of this in BBC broadcasts and all we get from the BBC web site is that: "A dispute is growing in Sri Lanka over whether the government has given enough aid to Tamils in former conflict areas which were devastated by the tsunami."

According to this report, Tamil Tiger rebels say the government has sent very little. But the authorities say vastly more has gone to the predominantly Tamil north-east than to the island's south. The BBC's Frances Harrison says the disaster now looks likely to exacerbate ethnic grievances in Sri Lanka rather than help heal them.

And from UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan "Humperdink" Egeland, all we get is an "even handed" warning to the opposing sides in "Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Somalia" to keep the peace or risk billions of dollars in aid.

Sri Lanka’s loss, however, is Sumatra’s gain as the Bonhomme Richard is now on station and in position to provide large-scale humanitarian assistance to the island. It has been has been flying hundreds of thousands of pounds of disaster aid in its CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters from both support ships and warehouses in Sumatra in preparation to deliver it to the hardest hit areas of the island.

Oddly, part of that activity has not been bringing in aid supplies. BHR's helicopters have been taking them away. Aid has flooded into the city of Medan and the supplies had been stacked in disorganized piles near a warehouse at the city’s airport, an overwhelming amount beyond what was immediately needed in the area. Once the rains hit, with local flooding, the supplies were in danger of being spoiled and only an emergency lift by the Marines saved the day.

Again demonstrating the value of these assets. Bonhomme Richard’s CO, Capt. J Scott Jones, states that "We are self sufficient. We don't have to rely on the host country to support us while we try to help them." He adds that: "Our helicopters can cover the entire coastline of Sumatra. We're mobile and versatile. We can go anywhere they need us to go, and that’s the benefit of having a Navy."

Once again, though, the familiar litany – nothing of this from the BBC and not mention of the fact that the US military is now spending $6 million a day on its relief efforts, with $40 million having been spent so far. That does not include the latest addition to the growing fleet, the high-speed catamaran transport ship, HSV 2 Swift, which also has a helicopter flight deck. It was deployed this week to join the relief effort.

What really is puzzling though, as US relief continues to pour in is that, at the Jakarta donor conference today, US secretary of state Colin Powell agreed to disband the US-led core group of nations providing tsunami relief, and hand over the co-ordination responsibility to Kofi Annan’s UN.

After Kofi had so skilfully managing the Iraqi oil for food programme, one might have though that the Americans would have been less than happy to let Kofi near a pot of money that is fast growing to $5 billion.

The United Nations and international donors on Thursday faced an unusual problem as they sought to rally help for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami: not a shortage of money, but a surfeit - or at least far more promised cash than they can use in the coming months.

Despite reports, according to the Financial Times, that the outpouring of public donations and government pledges from around the world has created an embarrassment of riches, with the UN unable to spend what it has already collected, Kofi launched into his new role by demanding still more money.

In fact, the $5 billion so far promised amounts to about $1,000 for each of the estimated 5m people affected, much more than the typical annual income of a Sri Lankan fisherman or an Indian villager, let alone an African peasant. Needless, to say, though, UN officials do not want to stop the money flowing.

And today it is the EU's turn, as the foreign ministers of the 25 member states gather to discuss longer term development plans. Britain will be represented by Europe minister Dennis McShame and junior development minister Gareth Thomas – with Jack Straw not to be seen.

EU development commissioner, Louis Michel, we are told - who has spent the past week in the stricken region assessing needs and “liaising with international organisations to ensure a streamlined, co-ordinated relief response” – will be putting forward his proposals. However, as The Scotsman wearily observes, "Tomorrow’s meeting is unlikely to reach any firm conclusions". The ministers will "take stock and begin piecing together a detailed strategy".

By the way, if you want more detail on what the US Navy is doing, it is running its own tsunami site.

And not a tsunami in sight

The Slovene government has today prepared a Bill to ratify the EU constitution and submitted it to parliament.

In an interview on Slovene radio foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel then admitted that the constitution was not 100 percent perfect. "It was not written only by Slovenia," he said. Should it have been written just by Slovenia?

Anyhow, Rupel conceded the constitution was "not as we had imagined", but it was nevertheless "a constitution that enables the EU to function in the international environment much more firmly and more efficiently than until now." There we have that word "efficient" again. They all must be working to a prepared script.

Even more bizarrely, Rupel thinks it is "good that the inter-governmental concept prevailed over the community one." And he actually believes that Slovenia's "consensus" is also necessary for the EU Council to pass a decision. Hasn't he heard of QMV?

His one reservation, it seems, is that the EU commission "can be a dangerous thing" since each country will be able to nominate a commissioner only until 2014.

One can only stand back in amazement and wonder where they get these people from. But, with that lamentable level of ignorance of the project to which he is conjoined, it is small wonder that Rupel expects the parliament will ratify the constitution without any major problems a session in January.

However, it may not entirely be a coincidence that, in the first year of its EU membership, Slovenia was a net recipient of EU funds. Its contribution to the EU budget last year totalled €170m, while receipts amounted to €183m, giving a surplus of €13m

That relatively modest sum was actually expected to be €147m but there have been delays in setting up structural and other fund payments. But then Slovenia will be able to transfer certain unused funds from the EU budget to 2005 and 2006. That means they have coming €128m from the 2004 account, another €143m this year and €186m in 2006.

At €457 million, this is not that far short of the €500 million pledged by the commission to the whole of the Asian disaster fund, and Slovenia hasn't even had a tsunami. No wonder Rupel does not expect any problems getting the constitution ratified.

Really, one does despair

GQ Magazine, one of Britain’s leading lad mags, which, as it happens, is seriously infected with the anti-Bush bug, has conducted a survey on who are the most powerful men in Britain. Setting aside odd decisions like Wayne Rooney at number 14 (a good footballer but how powerful is the lad?), let us look at the top runners.

At the very top are Tony Blair and George W.Bush, who has, according to the magazine, “inveigled himself into British life like no other world leader”. Really? Have these people not heard of Commission President Barroso? Not a household name, perhaps (though his predecessor was, sort of) but with a great deal more power in Britain than Bush has.

Number 3 is Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary, present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (an all-purpose title), who is expected to run the Labour elections campaign and, possibly, be Blair’s successor in the sometime future. (Milburn’s appointment did raise one or two questions. After all, he has been brought back into the Cabinet and given a good salary as a Minister to do party political work.)

Number 4 is Gordon Brown, who was top last year. I doubt if Gordy is all that upset by such an inadequate survey and its results.

The Daily Telegraph quotes the reasons for GQ’s elevation of President Bush in British life:

“He now has the power to control our troops in Iraq, change the course of our foreign policy and impact upon our policing and attitudes towards terrorism, for where Bush goes, Blair surely follows.”

Which planet do these people live?

Our troops in Iraq are controlled by our own MoD (and a right mess they make of things from time to time) though, clearly, in a coalition joint decisions are taken. Incidentally, the Hoon “reforms” that will change the whole course of British defence have little to do with the United States or President Bush and a great deal to do with the building of “European defence”.

Attitudes or no attitudes, policing and security policy in Britain are steadily becoming more integrated with the EU, what with the growing and changing nature of Europol and Eurojust, the European Arrest Warrant and other suchlike delightful matters. Has all of this passed GQ and its readers by?

Putting aid in perspective

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso is now in Jakarta, Indonesia, attending what is the first of what will be a tidal wave of aid conferences.

Needless to say, after a lacklustre performance, he is now seeking to grab the headlines, claiming the glory for the generosity of EU member states. He has announced an "additional package" of aid, up to $585 million, claiming that this brings "the total support from the European Union" to around $2 billion.

Of course, this is not European Union aid, but if Barosso says it quickly enough, some gullible hacks may be fooled by it and give the commission president the headlines he so desperately craves.

Interestingly, Barroso has also announced a "proposal" for a $1.3 billion "Indian Ocean Tsunami Lending Facility," to be managed by the European Investment Bank, which will also grab the headlines – although it must be approved by the member states who underwrite the EIB. Therefore, Barosso is grabbing further headlines for a proposal for other people to spend money.

One wonders, also, how this ties in with Gordon Brown's initiative on granting debt relief to developing countries. Do we releive them of this burden so that they can go out and borrow money from the EIB?

Meanwhile, a sharp debate is being played out in German newspapers about the "selfish donation competition" on tsunami aid. The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung is complaining that "Prestige now seems to be playing a significant role in the wave of donations… "Everything now appears to be a size too big." It adds that even one minute of silence on Wednesday wasn't enough for Europeans - they needed three, adding, "Perhaps it would be a good idea to slowly direct some of the generosity back towards the Sudan, Congo or Uganda where it is no less urgently needed."

The conservative Die Welt is suggesting that the Berlin government is using its massive donation as a cynical public relations campaign. Schroeder is "skillfully using the tsunami disaster in order to portray himself as a compassionate politician and an international man of action," it writes. Even though "every other politician would do the same," the paper still finds Schroeder's reaction "disquieting."

While it is legitimate for the government to increase its aid pledge, it asks: "Do sums have to be pledged which give the impression that the nations are in a selfish donation competition?" The editorial notes that debt-strapped Germany, which has repeatedly violated EU rules for deficit spending doesn't even have the money to give. For unlike private donors, "the government is giving money it doesn't have."

The business daily Handelsblatt is asking how the German government will piece together €500 million from the state coffers, noting that making money available isn't the only challenge awaiting the international community. The region must now be rebuilt, and that will require a colossal amount of coordination.

But, expressing a sentiment that could just as well apply to US aid, the Frankfurter Rundschau, which is majority-owned by Schroeder's political party, the Social Democrats, defends the government's generosity. "The suggestion that increasing Germany's aid is pure political calculation is unfair and cynical," the editorial claims. "Millions of people who are urgently in need of aid and of a future will not be asking whether the water from their new purification plant flows along with personal or politically strategic motives."

However, just to put all the largesse in perspective, according to DefenseNews, the Indian government has this week issued a request for information to overseas defence companies for what would be the country’s largest one-time purchase of defence equipment. This is for 120 multi-role combat aircraft, at an expected package cost of $9 billion. That would certainly buy a few water purification plants.

Politics and the uses of enchantment

The rows and jockeying for position that have accompanied genuine success in speedy delivery of useful aid after the tsunami are further proof, if that were needed that next to poverty, what kills is politics. Natural disasters come a distant third. Of course, politics is not separate from poverty or from the inevitable conclusion that the worst natural disasters (and the not so bad ones) always hit poor countries with corrupt, oppressive rulers hardest. All these matters are linked.

The jockeying for position has been done largely by those wonderful transnational organizations: the UN, the EU and the many and assorted NGOs. The UN, as we know, has been busy sending out co-ordinators, setting up conferences and producing endless assessments, in between claiming credit for what individual countries have done and shrieking that more aid is needed. Actually, as anyone who has looked at the situation even at one remove can say, it is the distribution and delivery that is difficult, not least because of the patent inefficiency of the NGOs and the superfluity of international co-ordinators who commandeer the best hotels and divert resources for their own agenda.

The EU is also organizing donors’ meetings, ministers’ meetings, officials’ meetings, what have you. It is also claiming to co-ordinate all sorts of efforts that are quietly going on without the Commissars and it has added one extra twist of its own: the three-minute silence, which has annoyed a surprisingly large number of people.

Meanwhile individual countries, led by the United States and Australia are sending in frigates, helicopters, trucks and other forms of transport, laden with the required goods and accompanied as likely as not by engineers and constructors. Incidentally, individual European countries have been taking part in the effort as well. The UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands have all sent frigates or helicopters. Others have boasted about collecting money, which is still hanging around presumably, before ending up in numbered accounts. But we shall not talk of it now. Time enough for that when the scandals start erupting.

There have been some exceptions. A certain amount of soul searching is going on among the very rich Gulf states, who have not responded nearly as generously as the western ones have done. This is very surprising, as many of those who have suffered are Muslim and charity, unlike the jihad, is one of the five basic teachings of Islam. There has been some muttering that the Saudis are not sending money because they have been accused so often of helping terrorists through so-called Islamic charities. This may be an excuse but surely it cannot be a reason for very long.

Other political problems have emerged, not least in Burma, where the military rulers have effectively refused to acknowledge the scale of the country’s losses, material and human, and in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers have refused to accept help either from the Americans or the Indians. (India has, incidentally, sensibly announced that it did not need the various NGOs that were salivating at the thought of getting in there, has coped with its own problems and has provided help for other countries. Oh what it is to have a strong and genuinely developing economy.)

The Tamil Tigers explained their decision by their supposed fear that the Americans and the Indians would use aid distribution as an excuse for spying for the Sri Lankan government. Certainly, aid distributors would see the truth of what was going on in areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers and the truth is probably extremely unpleasant. So much for how the disaster brought together the warring Sri Lankan authorities and Tamils, sentimentally written up by the media. It is clear that the Tamil Tigers care very little for the people under their control and a great deal for their own political authority. If thousands more will die in order to protect the latter, well, so be it, as far as they are concerned. So many have already died in that civil war, what’s a few thousand more?

Then there are the children. Whenever heartstrings need to be wrung and wallets opened, we hear about the children. Suddenly UNICEF has become very vociferous, announcing that there were dangers that children in the stricken areas might be kidnapped. Furthermore, the same children will need counselling because of their traumas. Some people might suggest that putting them into the hands of unscrupulous counsellors is tantamount to kidnapping but it is reasonable to suppose that there will not be enough money or organization to set up hundreds and thousands of children’s couselling services.

The Indonesian and Malaysian governments have responded by saying that they will protect the orphans from potential kidnappers, which is very sensible. Undoubtedly, many children have died and many more have been left orphan, perhaps losing their entire families. It will take a little while to sort out the real situation.

Historical experience tells one that children usually get over traumatic experiences, particularly if they are not prolonged ones, better than adults. And even if they do not, it is reasonably well known that the best thing for them is to go back to as much of the family as can be found, rather than be looked after by government or international officials. Many of the areas hit by the tsunami still have functioning extended families. Before they let UNICEF in on the act, the governments in question may well decide to try and place orphaned children with distant aunts and uncles.

If UNICEF is really worried about traumatized children, it might like to take a look at the ones who have gone through extended and repeated horrific experiences in DR Congo. In particular, they might like to deal with those young girls who had been rounded up and raped by UN soldiers.

I could not help thinking about the Austrian born, American child psychiatrist, Bruno Bettelheim. Many of his theories about autism have been attacked and disproved. But he had also dealt with the subject of trauma in children.

Himself a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, he worked with children who had come out of them after the Second World War. These children had been far more extensively traumatized than the victims of the tsunami, though it may sound invidious to make comparisons. Bettelheim found that the most effective method was not endless analysis or discussion of what had happened but a sublimation through traditional fairy tales.

In his book The Uses of Enchantment Bettelheim analyzed many of the best known fairy tales and talked about the way he had used them on the children from the concentration camps, many of whom had lost their entire families having also witnessed horrors of the kind we cannot even imagine. Subsequently he used those tales with seriously disturbed adolescents in Chicago.

Alas, he himself never got rid of his demons. In 1990 he committed suicide on the anniversary of Anschluss and the Nazi take-over in Austria. But many of the children he had worked with survived and flourished. Is there not something to be learnt from that? The myths and tales of South-East Asia are intriguing and enchanting. But I doubt if self-important UNICEF officials or ideology-ridden counsellors know much about them.

The turning point

It is a little worrying when one reads something in The Times, agrees with it and then realises that it is written by Peter Riddell. Could this be an early sign of the onset of Alzheimer's disease?

Mind you, some of what Riddell writes is so blindingly obvious that it scarce needs saying, viz, "at some stage over the next two or three years the direction of British politics will change. Tony Blair will leave 10 Downing Street and Labour’s 12-year dominance will begin to end." Yea… would never have guessed that one.

However, the point Riddell is really making is that the turning point is not going to be the general election. The decisive events, he writes, are likely to be further ahead. He continues:

Mr Blair has said that he wants to serve a full third term, but not seek a fourth. This implies another three years or so in office at most. But all this could be changed by the referendum on the European constitution expected in the spring next year. This will be very hard to win unless its supporters can successfully argue both that the EU constitution does not fundamentally alter the terms of Britain’s membership and that a “no ” vote would leave Britain isolated.

The referendum offers the public a chance to vote against Mr Blair without defeating Labour. If the vote were lost, he would be under great pressure to go. By contrast, a “no” vote would boost Tory morale. Yet it could also encourage hardline Tory sceptics who want a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s membership, and even withdrawal. Perversely, a “yes” vote, which sceptics would see as a betrayal of British sovereignty, might fuel similar anti-EU demands.

However, it could allow Mr Blair to leave on his own terms, and settle the European question for at least the rest of this decade.

Says Riddell, the stakes will be very high, which is one reason why so many Blairites remain puzzled, and privately angry, about why he promised a referendum last April. Not only would defeat shatter his European hopes, but the longstanding national strategy of closer British involvement in the EU would have been undermined. After all, securing a "yes" vote is one of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s strategic priorities.

Thus, it is the referendum that could be one of those turning points in British politics. The May general election, fascinating though it will be, will be more like a preliminary skirmish.

As I said. This worries me. I entirely agree. In the grander scheme of things, the general election is an irrelevance. The real game is the EU referendum. That will indeed be the turning point.

And now for something completely different

It is time we looked, however briefly, at the incomint Luxembourg Presidency and its aims. Breaking with tradition, this Presidency does not put reform of red tape at the top of its agenda, as the Dutch did and the British are going to in July.

No, folks, it is the Lisbonization or making Europe the most developed knowledge-based economy by 2010. We are, of course, half-way there in time and nowhere near any kind of an achievement in any other terms.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister, Jean Asselborn, set out his own vision of what the Lisbon Agenda and, indeed, the Luxembourg Presidency Agenda is to be about. We can do no better than quote EurActiv:

“Mr Asselborn explictly underlined that for his country's presidency the Lisbon reforms agenda is about more than just competitiveness. The final objective of the Lisbon agenda is the sustainable well-being of the EU's citizens. Therefore, the Luxemburg Presidency will focus on all three dimension of the Lisbon strategy: competitiveness and economic growth, social cohesion and sustainable development.

The 2005 mid-term review of the EU's Lisbon agenda is likely to lead to a debate on the equality of these three dimensions. Several EU and industry leaders have recently expressed their conviction that economic growth and competitiveness are the prerequisites for social inclusion and environmental protection. Others see more synergies and opportunities between the three dimensions. The best expression of this last position came in the form of a slogan presented by the Dutch government during an informal environment council held in Maastricht in the summer: "clean, clever, competitive".”

Perhaps some of our readers can work out what all that waffle means. As far as we can tell indicates that Europe is not going to get as competitive as some other economies but will carry on producing endless regulations to protect the people and make their lives better in the rather forlorn hope that the selfsame people will be grateful. Perish the thought that people should decide for themselves how and in what way they wanted to lead their lives. They are not qualified to do so; they have no moral authority to do so.

Even the Frogs are at it

Why am I surprised? Am I even surprised? The Belgravia Despatch Blog reviews Le Monde’s coverage of the US humanitarian aid efforts in the Asian tsunami region:

Rather than commend the US, if just for a moment in the midst of this immense tragedy, Le Monde's journalists and cartoonists prefer to insinuate that the U.S. has nefarious motives in Indonesia, or make crude fun of the difficulties in Iraq having 'prepared' us for Indonesia's blight. Such sad fare isn't just wrong, tasteless, petty and rancidly provincial. It speaks of a society, like contemporary Germany, that is ailing and so needs scapegoats. It's not politically correct to look internally for them anymore. So everyone loves to beat up that favourite bogeyman - the US - out of a mixture of incomprehension, envy, fascination, stupidity and crude stereotyping. It's sad really.

He's right… It is sad, sad that these small-minded people cannot escape their own prejudices and acknowledge unconditional generosity when they see it.

Is that too much too ask?

At last the BBC television news has been forced to acknowledge that the Americans are leading the relief effort in Indonesia, albeit grudgingly. We were fifteen minutes into the main evening bulletin - dominated by the EU's 3-minute silence - before we heard that nugget.

And then all we got by way of illustration was footage of Sea Hawks delivering supplies, and others lined up at Bande Aceh airport, intercut with details of Colin Powell's visit – which was probably the reason why the BBC could no longer ignore the US involvement.

But, as before, what we did not get – and still have not had – is any sense of the scale of the US involvement, or quite how skilfully they are handling the relief mission. There still has not been, for instance, any mention of the Bonhomme Richard group, much less any hint of the extraordinary capabilities of these ships, now steaming their way to Sri Lanka.

To get a better idea of what was going on, one had to turn to Fox News where, for ten minutes there was footage of operations on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, together with interviews of helio crews, describing their missions.

I was intrigued to see on deck a C-2A Greyhound that remarkable (in fact, unique) carrier-borne cargo aircraft, which can carry 28 passengers, litter patients or 10,000 pounds of cargo. Relief stores were being unloaded by a human chain and distributed out to waiting Sea Hawks, which were then taking off, no doubt to deliver them to the needy.

At a cool $40 million each, these aircraft lend a fascinating new dimension to the relief effort. I am sure many viewers would be interested to learn that they enable bulk stores to be uplifted from Bande Aceh airport, reducing the number of air movements at that site, thus extending the reach and capability of the air operations. Their capability enables the Abraham Lincoln to act as a distribution hub, in an area where the stress on the infrastructure is near breaking-point.

But forget about learning anything of this, or anything like it, from the BBC. Auntie seems now to have reverted to its usual "soap opera" mode, detailing endless "human interest" stories. Important, these are, and very much a necessary part of any news coverage but I am sure I cannot be the only one who wishes to know more about the mechanics of the relief operation – who is doing what, and how.

Some of our readers in private e-mails, have suggested that the BBC’s lack-lustre performance is largely down to "mindset" and their general lack of professionalism, but I am not convinced. If Fox News, to a lesser extent CNN and Sky News, can show detailed footage of the US relief effort, why can't the BBC?

However, those readers may have a point. The BBC seems to be approaching this "story" in the same superficial, trivial manner that it deals with virtually every other subject, whether it is the EU or Westminister politics.

Nevertheless, I remain convinced that there is an "agenda" here – the last thing the BBC wants to show is quite how professional the US forces really are. For me, as I have said, I want the news, all the news, not just "human interest" and "soap opera". Is that too much to ask?

Doomed to failure?

From a purely selfish perspective, we have been almost yearning for EU politics to get back up and running, purely on the basis that running the Blog with a thin news agenda is much more difficult than when events are in full flow.

But now, after the Christmas break recedes into distant memories and the "colleagues" get back into the fray, we are beginning to wish we could put the clock back and send them all to sleep again.

Very much in that category is the current EU president, Luxembourg’s prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker. In full flow, he is now lecturing (or hectoring) us on the dangers of "Europe" getting bogged down as member states seek to play it safe ahead of looming national votes on a European constitution.

What Juncker is worried about is that politically contentious proposals are being shelved in the run up to the various referendums, for fear that they might remind the masses of quite how dire is the EU, and vote against it when their turn comes. So much for "transparency" and an open debate – the tactic is to keep doggo and bring the bad news out only after the constitution is safely in the bag.

But no so such concerns trouble Junker, the proud leader of one of the most Europhile countries in the EU – or so he says. Nevertheless even the gung ho Luxembourgian is fighting shy over dealing with the vexed question of the EU budget.

The scope for horse-trading, we are told, is limited by the two-year old agreement setting Europe's agriculture budgets – a Juncker is steering clear. "I do not intend to open this file, to even burn my fingers while trying to open it," he told le Monde.

But Juncker is also having to take on the discussions on the future of the EU's regional policy, facing down Spain, Portugal and Ireland which do not want to give up their share of the loot, while the Eastern and Central European countries want their share and Germany, to say nothing of the UK, are unwilling to pay any extra.

However, it is going to be enjoyable watching Juncker squirm as he confronts the reality of trying to reconcile the opposing interests. Some idea of what is facing him comes from his own cryptic comment that Spain and other countries such as Portugal, Greece or Ireland cannot be "the only ones to make substantial efforts". This, says Juncker, "is an idea which would be doomed to failure."

He may be right.

Football is once again put at the EU's disposal

Spain will be the first country to hold a referendum on the European Constitution on February 20. The vote is expected to be a resounding yes. Nobody can accuse the Spaniards of having any doubts about a system that provides the country with enormous funds and about which they, actually, know very little.

The government is a little worried about their ignorance. It seems 90 per cent have said that they know nothing about the Constitution. Why that worries the government is a mystery. Surely, the less people know about it, the more likely they are to vote yes.

In an effort to combat this deplorable (or admirable) ignorance the Spanish government has launched a concerted campaign to “sell” the Constitution. This exercise will be done mainly on TV by various celebrities, pop singers, sportsmen and other assorted luvvies. This will add a completely new dimension to the concept of ignorance being bliss.

Then there is football. There usually is. Apparently, every fan attending the Real Madrid match this week-end will be given a copy of the Constitution. What fascinating ideas that raises. Why Real Madrid only? Do other fans not vote or are they beyond the pale? Then again, will those who support the team’s opponents be given a copy of this wondrous document?

Will the footballers be expected to read it and chant various articles during their warm-up session and as they run onto the pitch? Is it, in fact, wise to hand a large group of football fans, a notoriously volatile group of people, such a heavy tome? What if they decide that the referee is as blind as a bat and should, therefore, be put out of his misery with a well-aimed 300 odd pages of the European Constitution?

Let us hope our own government will not think of anything quite so silly. Then again, maybe they should. After all, I cannot imagine a better way of alienating large sections of the population than insisting that they carry a heavy tome like the European Constitution to a football match, unless it is the prospect of listening to mindless participants of I am a celebrity… wittering away about the joys of further European integration.

Learning from the masters

Remember Jan "Humperdink" Egeland in his plush UN office in New York, standing in front of the UN flag announcing with pride that "We" now have five helicopter carriers in the region?

Now, clearly, the EU has been taking lessons from the UN about how to claim the glory from other peoples' actions.

With not even a blush, the EU commission has proudly announced that "the European Union and its member states have so far pledged a total of €436 million for the south Asian disaster."

Actually, the commission has pledged €23 million from what it calls "its own funds" (i.e., our money) while all the rest came from the 25 EU member countries.

Never mind, EU president Jose Manuel Barroso is to travel to an emergency donors' summit in Jakarta on Thursday along with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker (full expenses paid). Then they can claim they have solved the whole emergency by themselves.

A period of silence

A moment's reflection for lives so cruelly ended by the tsunami is right and proper, although there can be hardly anyone who has kept abreast with the news that has not been keenly aware of the unfolding tragedy, and empathised with those affected.

However, there is a very fine line between showing respect for the dead, acknowledging the scale of the current human disaster, and maudlin sentimentality.

Whether that line was crossed today with the Europe-wide three-minute silence at noon is a moot point, but more than a few eyebrows were raised when the period allocated was longer than that afforded to the millions of victims of two world wars.

But then, as the BBC proudly informed us, giving the event the top slot on its hourly bulletins, this was an EU initiative. It is too cynical to remark that this is the true measure of the beast?

As aid workers out in the field are still racing against time to reach the more isolated communities, the only thing of any substance that the EU has been able to offer is three minutes silence.

I really cannot resist remarking – although I really shouldn't – that, given the "success" of this event, perhaps the commission should repeat it, many times. This time, though, it sould apply it only to its own members. If they added a few thousands noughts, and made it effective from today, the world might be a better place.

We await with bated breath

Hardly any attention has been given to the necessity, in the event of a "no" vote to the EU constitution, to renegotiating the existing EU treaties embedded in the constitution.

So says Bill Cash in the Times today, who argues correctly that, already, the boundaries of these treaties are being pushed further forward and EU laws are being made, going far beyond what was anticipated.

From thereon, Cash maintains, the Conservative Party is the only party with any realistic means of reversing the march of integration but it needs to clarify and explain its position on the existing treaties.

Michael Howard, he says, has rightly called for renegotiation on the Common Fisheries Policy and publicly stated that if the other member states will not accept renegotiation, we will legislate at Westminster unilaterally.

But, as he points out, this policy of renegotiation is, however, limited to fisheries, foreign aid and the social chapter, but does not tackle the key question of the wide range of matters that need to be renegotiated, including the political structure of Europe.

And if the "colleagues" won't listen, then it is Bill Cash to the rescue with something in line with his Sovereignty of Parliament Bill which would require judges to give precedence to new British laws over the European Communities Act 1972.

Where, he then asks, does this place the Conservative Party? Well. According to Cash, the Conservatives have been faced with at least five similar situations over the past 150 years, which led to splits.

These included the Corn Laws, Home Rule, tariff reform, appeasement and the Thatcher trade union reforms. In every case, those who had been in the minority before reality set in have won the day.

Good stuff as far as it goes, and Cash goes further, saying the Conservative Party must address the EU issue. The results of the first litmus test, however, have yet to appear. We await with bated breath to see if the Party really will go ahead with its overdue Fisheries policy.

Guardian readers

Is it any wonder that the BBC – staffed heavily with natural Guardian readers - reacts as it does, if the current sample of letters on the Asian tsunami is any guide?

Mr Craig Duncan of Dresden, Germany, thinks the US should give more. He compares US and EU aid donations and argues that the EU has its own aid programmes and does not work solely through the UN or through its own individual countries.

In addition, he asserts, US aid is mostly in the form of grain and foodstuffs from the US itself, and so therefore also directly benefits itself from the aid given - basically using aid as a tax cheat. The EU, on the other hand, has a policy of trying to develop the aid infrastructure in the affected areas themselves, thereby making them stronger against future occurrences. It therefore does not benefit from the aid given.

Maria Blum of Birmingham thinks "the official US response to the earthquake disaster was selfish, arrogant, and embarrassing." The feeble attempts to wriggle out of this mistake with some shred of dignity are just as bad, she adds.

Chris Lawrence, of Seend, Wilts maintains that it is only right and proper that the US should contribute more than any other country in the form of aid relief to poorer countries since it exploits the underprivileged and helpless countries more than any other country on earth.

Furthermore, he says, the US has dragged and manipulated a number of wealthy countries into its ill-conceived Iraqi escapade, which has cost us a great deal more in the past six months than it might have cost to rebuild and reconstruct the entire coastline of south-east Asia.

Only Francis Sedgemore of London strikes a dissonant note. He argues that “bashing America is a fashionable European sport”. Our American friends, he argues, whatever one may think about the amount they spend on defence, supply more per capita on emergency relief and international aid than we do. The EU and its regional governments, however, appear to be reacting to the initiative of individual citizens and civil society, but across the pond the sums committed speak for themselves.

How did he get into the Grauniad?

Kofi is really in trouble

Poor old Kofi. Even his friends are finding him a liability. The shambolic behaviour of the UN in the post-tsunami rescue operation, coming on top of the oil-for-food scandal, stories about its troops’ atrocious behaviour in DR Congo, blatant attempts to intervene in the American elections, complete lack of credibility in Iraq and so on, and so on has not so much raised the question of its future existence, as made it rather more urgent.

There have been various calls for Secretary General Kofi Annan’s resignation as well as more urgent calls for a reform of the structure (the proposals would make it considerably more top-heavy even than it is now, and would preclude the possibility of any decision being taken).

Now comes news of a secret and urgent meeting called in Richard Holbrooke’s apartment on December 5 of last year, where Annan was given a good going over … woops, no, I mean a lot of stern and very useful advice about the need to rescue his career and with it the UN.

Holbrooke had been United States ambassador to the UN under Clinton and is a fully paid up member of the world-wide great and the good. Others who attended the meeting were of the same ilk, though less well known. In other words, these were people who were pro-UN and pro-Annan (or so they said).

Their consolidated opinion was that the SecGen (isn’t it wonderful the way these old expressions come around – Stalin was known as Gensek, short for General Secretary) had squandered the achievements of his first term by being rather cackhanded, arrogant and inflexible in the second one. Better not enquire too closely what those achievements are. The food-for-oil? Inability to sort out anything in the Balkans? Equal inability to sort out anything in DR Congo or Rwanda? I suppose, the staff did not pass formal motions of no confidence in the senior management.

Annan was told sternly that he must change his senior staff. He took that one to heart: Iqbal Riza, his long-term and somewhat incompetent chief of staff has been replaced by Mark Malloch Brown, the British head of the UN Development Programme. Other changes may follow. As an unnamed official has pointed out:

“The secretary general missed an opportunity at the end of the first term to re-energize his top team as an American president would do, for example.”

Ah, but an American president answers to the people. The SecGen of the UN answers to nobody.

The same official added that there were too many people in Annan’s inner circle

“who love to take the potshots at the US without focusing on the essentiality of the US in getting things done”.

Not to mention the essentiality of the US in getting their extremely handsome salaries paid and their very splendid offices and apartments provided.

The SecGen was also instructed to mend his relations with the US administration. He has, in fact, had meetings with Condoleeza Rice but his immediate behaviour after the tsunami, together with the unfortunate initial pronouncement by the Head of Humanitarian Affairs (is this a joke?), Jan Egeland, would indicate that the UN high panjandrums are not good at learning lessons.

The fact is that all these well-meaning people, friends of Kofi (or so they say) are in a cleft stick. They know very well that the problem is a much deeper one than the unfortunate personality of the SecGen. The problem is the UN itself, the position it is trying to arrogate itself, and the clash between its basic principles of democracy, freedom and human rights on the one hand and its membership, most of whom do not recognize any of that, on the other.

Added to which there is the top-heavy bureaucratic inefficiency and tendency to do nothing but have meetings, rush around looking important and see co-ordination of other people’s activity as an adequate reason for a well-paid, well-cushioned existence. The dishonesty and lack of discipline comes on top of all of that.

This whole structure of problems (there are a few more) has become crystallized in the hapless, less than open, arrogant figure of Kofi Annan. Almost certainly the likes of Richard Holbrooke, who cannot possibly feel anything but disdain for the little man, would like to get rid of him in order to salvage the UN. But if he were forced out, that would be tantamount to an admission that the accusations are true. The whole idea of the UN would suffer a body blow. Annan will have to be kept on.

For us, enemies of the tranzis, this is a win-win situation. A tacit admission of guilt, Annan’s resignation would give us a great victory. But if he stays on, it will be even better: Kofi Annan will go on weakening and undermining the institution he adorns. We can just sit back and watch, occasionally getting up to lend a hand with the digging of the giant hole.

Not important enough for the BBC

You would have thought it merited the top spot on the 10 o’clock Radio 4 News, but the BBC was still running its UNICEF story, which it has been running all day. This is a scare the UN children’s agency is running – fears that "criminal elements" may be trafficking in orphans.

"May be" are the operative words, with the Indonesian authorities dismissing the story, saying that there was "no evidence" of it happening and UNICEF backing off, saying it was a "possibility". But it still made the lead story on the BBC.

Oh, and the story that missed the top slot – in fact didn't make it at all into the news bulletin: the Pentagon has announced that it is to double the number of helicopters being provided for the disaster relief effort.

This was revealed by Admiral Thomas Fargo, head of the US Pacific Command in a press briefing this evening, in a bit that the BBC digital channel did not even bother to cover.

Fargo confirmed that about 45 US military helicopters currently were involved in relief efforts, and more helicopters were being sent from South Korea as well as other helicopters from Guam. The USS Fort McHenry a Whidbey Island class dock landing ship and the USNS Niagara Falls, combat stores ship, have been despatched to the region carrying the additional helicopters.

The US, we were told, had more than 1,400 military personnel on the ground in the region for the relief effort, with another 11,600 U.S. service members aboard ships in the area, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the helicopter carrier USS Bonhomme Richard.

In addition to the helicopters, the Pentagon has sent 29 airplanes for disaster relief roles, including 16 C-130 cargo planes that have been carrying tons of supplies into a military base in Thailand that the U.S. military has used as a hub as well as reconnaissance and refueling aircraft.

More than 20 U.S. ships are now deployed in the relief effort. Fargo said it cost about $2.5 million a day to operate each of the Bonhomme Richard and Abraham Lincoln groups.

None of this was important enough to get into the BBC bulletin. What the BBC did manage to tell us that the UN had put out an urgent call for more ships, helicopters and landing craft – a "call" that was put out after the US had announced it was providing just these assets.

Just remember this when the BBC covers the EU-inspired donor conference scheduled for later this week. While the EU gabs, the US is stacking up naval assets, with just two of the groups costing $5 million a day – day, after day, after day.

Is this the best they can do?

There are times when the International Herald Tribune sees itself as the cheer leader for the European Union. They do not always get it right, frequently managing to muddle Europe and the EU and describing what Europeans do or do not do as being the achievement of the Union. Then again, a lot of the time they manage to talk sense.

Today they ran a very odd article, entitled Truth, or another media Euromyth? Yes, you guessed it: here was our old friend the eurosceptic British media producing those terrible myths about the EU.

First off was the Daily Mail, which blamed the EU and its rules for the shortage of Brazil nuts. To be fair to James Marsh, the press officer interviewed by Graham Bowley, the journalist, he was not too sure whether the article was accurate or not.

Then came all the others:

“Today it is Brazil nuts; on other days the EU is accused in Britain’s tabloid press of banning fake snow, rocking horses and even children’s playtime.”

The rocking horses, as I recall, were not so much banned but made difficult and expensive to produce and impossible sell by various unnecessary health and safety rules. But why spoil a good story with facts?

The EU’s name is blackened by lies, though occasionally they are true, when it obviously has been acting on scientific evidence. All a bit muddled. But the most interesting question is: who cares? The subject of euromyths is trés passé. Few eurosceptics are interested in it, there being far more important issues to worry about.

Some years ago I was asked by a journalist to provide him with a few choice horror stories about EU lunacy. I offered the common fisheries policy. He displayed a definite coolth. Then there are other horrors: the fridge mountain, making proper waste disposal impossible, the rules and regulations imposed on electricians, the care homes that had to be shut down – the list goes on.

Still, it is not all. The EU is after bigger game: integration of defence and security, the creation of a common police force and defence force (whatever it is called at any given time); it persists in running a protectionist policy that, coupled with its aid policy, destroys whole communities. We can go on indefinitely. Euromyths? Pah. These do not even qualify as fairy tales. Why bother with them?

A hugely risky step to take

Iranian-born Financial Times journalist, Scheherazade Daneshkhu, today offers us in the pages of this his august journal a piece headed: "Counting the costs and benefits of belonging to the European Union."

It is generally believed, he (she?) writes, that Britain's membership of the EU is "a good thing" although the debate over joining the euro and fears about the consequences of EU enlargement have led to this assumption being challenged and, as Britain takes over the EU presidency and the argument over the EU constitution heats up, the benefits of membership will come under greater scrutiny.

He reminds us that there have already been challenges, including from Civitas, and from Professor Patrick Minford of Cardiff Business School. Minford identifies "unacceptably high" ongoing costs of 3.2 to 3.7 per cent of gross domestic product in a book to be published this year. Assuming the EU would impose the same trade barriers it levies on non-members, he concludes "the UK would be considerably better off" leaving the EU.

Daneshkhu also cites the study by Brian Hindley and Martin Howe in "Better Off Out?" - for the Institute of Economic Affairs – which found a net economic cost to Britain of withdrawal, albeit a small one of less than 1 percent of GDP.

Sensibly, the man then opines that “estimating the costs and benefits of EU membership is fraught with difficulty because of the need to make the comparison with Britain's economic circumstances had it not been a member,” but then leaps into the dark by saying that “While the studies attempt to do this they inevitably involve making assumptions that may not be universally shared.”

True… but, amazingly (or conveniently, depending on your point of view) Deneshkhu does not cite the EU commission’s own current competitiveness report (see here and here) which concluded that EU could raise overall GDP by 12 percent through adopting an American-style "regulatory burden", putting the cost of EU red tape in the UK at £120,000,000,000 a year - £120 billion in real money.

With that omission, and only with that, is Deneshkhu able to come up with what, in the context is a truly amazing statement: “The consensus is that Britain has gained enormously from the EU.”

This is one Giscard d'Estaing consensuses: The main political parties are united in supporting membership as are business organisations, such as the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce.

To support that "consensus" Deneshkhu calls in aid an unnamed "commission report" which held that that the EU's GDP in 2002 was 1.8 percentage points, or €164.5bn, higher than it would have been thanks to the single market. Er… yes, maybe, but 12 percent lower than it could be otherwise.

Such is the magic of selective quoting – and selective amnesia – which can be reinforced by citing the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which reckons that EU membership has raised UK GDP by 3 to 5 per cent, equivalent to about £35bn - £60bn.

And so he drivels on having, in my view, lost all credibility. "The difference of opinion about the costs and benefits of EU membership suggest that any thought of leaving the EU, in preference to stepping up the pace of internal reform, would be a hugely risky step to take," he concludes.

Yea… right. Anything you say guv.

It was to be a triumph of French diplomacy

The return of the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, at the end of last year was supposed to be a great triumph for French diplomacy. But not everything is quite what it seems, particularly in French politics.

In the first place, the kidnapping and prolonged imprisonment of the French journalists, despite daily pleas from various luvvies and bien pensants on the TV and in the press, undermined somewhat the French view of themselves as people who have a special role in the Middle East and a special relationship with all the various governments and organizations, “be they ne’er so vile”.

As we have pointed out before, playing the anti-American card may well go down well in Cannes, in the columns of the Guardian and, as Mark Steyn writes, the letters column of the Daily Telegraph. It is worth zip among Iraqi and other Islamic extremists and terrorists.

Georges Malbrunot has described his and his colleague’s ordeal in a long article in Le Figaro. In it he has had to admit that announcements that they were French journalists and, therefore, opponents of American policy, did not prove to be as helpful with their kidnappers, the so-called Islamic Army in Iraq, as they had hoped. The captors were waging a war against the West and against Christianity. As far as they were concerned, France was part of that.

The International Herald Tribune quotes Malbrunot in an article today:

“For them [Malbrunot’s and Chesnot’s captors} France is the West; it’s a global vision – it’s the infidel West against the Muslim world.”

Oh dear. And there were all these French journalists thinking that the war against terror was simply the outcome of American hysteria. To be fair, the Islamic Army in Iraq also produced words of hatred for other Arabs, explaining that their aim was

“to overthrow all the Arab rulers, and to return to the caliphate [Islamic rule]from Andalusia [Spain] to the border with China”.

M Malbrunot seems to have been rather shocked by his experience, and not just because of the brutality of his captors and the general hardship he and his colleagues had experienced. In fact, at one point they found themselves wishing that an American patrol would appear out of nowhere and rescue them as they were being transported from one extremely unpleasant prison to another. But then, they came to their senses. They realized that such a development would be dangerous for them.

This article could not have gone down very well in France, given that there have already been urgent questions as to why it had taken so long to get the journalists home and why all the efforts made by politicians and diplomats in the area had not been more effective. After all, in the first place, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier had boasted that the situation would be resolved very quickly because of France’s special position and overwhelmingly friendly relations with Middle Eastern countries.

“For his efforts, the reply Barnier got from the Islamic Army in Iraq was a statement that France’s history with the Muslims was filled ‘with hate and blood’ and that if France hadn’t joined the Americans in the Iraq war, it was ‘for its own interests and not for the good of the Iraqi people’.”

Hmmm. Maybe we should get these people to become commentators on the BBC. They will be somewhat more accurate.

Worse was to come. The two negotiators, Barnier and a right-wing Gaullist member of the National Assembly, Didier Julia, fell out with each other and indulged in mutual mud-slinging. Two of M Julia’s associates are being investigated for allegedly illegal contacts with foreign powers. He, in turn, is threatening the government with potentially embarrassing revelations. Fun and games, n’est ce pas.

When the journalists were released it was hastily announced that there had been no payment, no ransom and, naturellement, no gunfire. However, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which has a nasty habit of being right, has said that the French government paid out €15 million ($19.5 million, £11 million). If true, that would indicate that French journalists are worth far more than Italian aid workers.

Meanwhile, there has been remarkably little coverage of the fact that another French journalist has been missing since last May. For some reason there are no luvvies or bien pensants to trumpet Guy-André Kieffer’s fate, though he, too, was kidnapped while performing his duty and is likely to be held in atrocious conditions.

The thing is, he was kidnapped in the Ivory Coast, where the 5,000 strong occupying force is French. Two years ago the French paras went in there to sort out various problems without waiting for the UN Security Council approval, which they did get eventually, with American support. Since then, as we have reported, things have gone from bad to worse and President Laurent Gbagbo has accused the French of siding with the rebels.

In November France destroyed the tiny Ivorian air force in reprisal for the killing of nine French servicemen, and killed more than 20 people in subsequent anti-French riots. There are no plans for elections any time soon in Côte d’Ivoire.

It seems that M Kieffer of La Tribune was investigating corruption in the cocoa trade and picked up leads that point to men close to the President before he so conveniently disappeared. But the ever deeper French involvement in the Ivory Coast quagmire is not something the government or media likes to talk about. So poor M Kieffer may well have to suffer for a little longer.

A sick joke

Unlike the BBC, even China Daily the official news agency of the Peoples' Republic of China – and no lover of US power – is acknowledging the role of the US military in the current tsunami disaster, reporting freely on the activities of helicopter crews from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

Reports China Daily, "substantial help has finally begun reaching refugees in some of the more remote parts of Aceh and the U.S. military has arrived in force, parking a flotilla of ships off the coast." It adds, "US and Indonesian military helicopters landing in remote areas were swarmed by starving villagers as flight crews threw out boxes of bottled water and food."

An equally unlikely source is the Financial Times which today reports that a "logistic logjam" is hampering relief efforts in Aceh, referring to the temporary closure of the main airport in Aceh after a Boeing 737 carrying a cargo of relief supplies collided with a herd of water buffalo. The airport was reopened today after help from US and Indonesian military technicians

Elsewhere, many of the airports in the region affected by the tsunami are not used to the high volume of flights they have seen in the last few days. Sri Lanka's main airport in Colombo temporarily ran out of fuel supplies because of unexpected demand.

Thus, writes the FT, the Banda Aceh airport accident underscored the increased dependence on the ability of foreign military forces to deliver aid directly to the worst-hit areas using helicopters and naval ships, adding the detail that on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln were delivering aid and evacuating refugees from the devastated west coast. A Singapore fleet of helicopters and two landing ships were also involved in relief operations in the area.

US amphibious ships are loading aid via helicopters from Medan before sailing around Sumatra's northern tip and down the isolated west coast. In Sri Lanka, more than 1,200 US Marines will use helicopters, bulldozers and generators to help speed up relief efforts hindered by a lack of trucks and warehouses. Military units from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also providing logistical support to Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives.

Once again, nothing of this from the BBC which devoted its tsunami coverage in its Radio 4 evening bulletin almost exclusively to a story on child trafficking. The BBC's myopia is almost getting to be a joke – albeit a sick one.

A sideways look

We have received this commentary from a respected former Times journalist, Jim McCue, for publication on our Blog. Jim calls his piece "Wasting a Generation".

Not directly related to the EU, it nevertheless fills in the gaps in the broader social and political environment in which constructs like the EU can and do operate. In so doing, McCue points up the lack of moral "centre" and the vacuum in politics, all of which demonstrates – as indeed we have before – that the EU is only part of the problem. In some respects, it is only a symptom of the problem.

When my nephew Peter won a scholarship to Winchester, I was delighted – and a little envious – to think of the fun he would have mixing with some of the cleverest people of his generation. It is an unconventional place, after 600 years of going its own way, and likes to challenge every kind of rule, but the thing it prizes above all is brains.

Because Peter and I are close, I've been lucky enough to meet a good many of his friends from Winchester and then Cambridge, and some of them have become close friends too – greatly valued by me for their knowledge and wide reading, their spirit of adventure, their integrity and loyalty.

But now they are in trouble. In their mid-twenties, after trekking round the world and taking their double firsts studying everything from Homer to homeland security policy, they find that they don’t fit and don’t know what to do.

A former girlfriend of Peter's has just died of heroin. Three other friends have been killed, separately, in car crashes. Bad rolls of the dice, perhaps, but there is something more.

They are becoming a wasted generation, because they cannot find outlets for their talents. After all that education, they find themselves set loose in a society that doesn't care about brains – indeed despises them.

So they are working in pubs and hospitals, as tourist guides, or taking further degrees for the sake of finding a little funding. They are living virtually in squats because London accommodation is so expensive, and they don't have any plans beyond tomorrow.

Why the paralysis? Why aren’t they on the career ladder? Because, I think, they cannot face the lies they would have to tell in almost any job, and the truckling that is now involved in all walks of life.

When one of them got a job on a national newspaper, he was night-editing the foreign pages within six months, and gave me an eye-opening analysis of how the newsroom was mismanaged. He wanted things done properly, and found the cowardice and spin intolerable. Now he has gone to Jerusalem on an academic pretext, full of sympathy for the Palestinians.

Meanwhile Peter has worked in care homes and restaurants, as a chess tutor, on a farm and in nursery schools, but he won't have anything to do with conventional graduate jobs because the demands are so compromising.

Politics, more intensely and more obviously than ever before, now involves abasing oneself before ideas that any intelligent person can see are stupid and self-contradictory. Almost all journalism is the same, and so are advertising, marketing and work for any large company. The values of big businesses are contemptible, and so are most of the products. And in addition, companies are now cynically managed in a thousand ways merely in order to comply with nonsensical regulations, the constant threat of litigation and the demands of all-powerful health and safety officers.

The public services, notoriously, are worse. The police are afraid to make an arrest because it means five hours of paperwork; hospitals have more office workers than nurses; teachers are terrified of their pupils and cannot teach. And whether publicly or privately funded, the great professions, medicine, the law and education have all been corrupted by illegitimate political demands.

Political stupidity has brought the pensions and financial services industry to its knees. And regulation – largely stemming from the EU, a law-making machine that no one knows how to turn off – is about to drive out of business thousands of household electricians, just as it has bankrupted so many abattoirs, fishermen and nursing home owners. No one in his right mind would set up his own business today, or even dream of employing another person.

So what is left? My nephew is working, unpaid, for the Green Alliance. It's one of the few places he can imagine working that wouldn't make him feel grubby. Gradually, though, he is coming to the conclusion that carefully argued environmental plans cannot realistically expect to make any headway against the endless jobbery and pandering of public life, against the quangos and lobbyists, the absurd shibboleths and tokenism, and a system of political bartering which so often achieves the worst of both worlds. What is the point of scrupulous analysis, when what happens depends upon mere accidents of personality?

For all their energy and knowledge, some of the best brains of the rising generation are unable to find any place to start or anything to be loyal to. It's not just that George Bush is lying and dissembling, but that John Kerry was too, and so is everyone else. It's part of the game. You have to do things that you know are wrong to survive. Shut your mouth and hold your nose, fiddle your expenses and do as you are told, play the system and then get out.

Is that the best we can offer?

Mark Steyn on the case

I noted with interest and continued despair that the BBC chose to speak of "unremitting bad news" on its main TV news at one o’clock. It then announced that two Indian destroyers had been able to dock in Sri Lanka, and HMS Chatham had reached the area, with two Lynx helicopters.

In a token gesture, it then interviewed a US Marine Captain from an American "advance party", giving him thirty seconds to explain what the Marines would do, without mentioning what was coming behind the advance party – like USS Bonhomme Richard, with its 29 (including heavy-lift) helicopters, landing craft, water-making equipment, medical facilities, etc., etc.

Once again, it was the UN which got the lions’ share of attention, this time a puff for UNICEF and its activities in tracking down orphans, or something.

Useful, therefore, was a piece by Mark Steyn in today's Telegraph headed "American stinginess is saving lives" in which he takes on "the need to fit everything to the Great Universal Theory of the age", that whatever happens, "the real issue is the rottenness of America".

He takes to task (rightly) Jan "Humperdink" Egeland, the Norwegian bureaucrat, whom Steyn describes as "the big humanitarian honcho at the UN" and takes a swipe at Clare Short, Polly Toynbee, the Norwegians and Irish and even a Telegraph reader.

Writes Steyn "…the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it's the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore and a couple of others. The Irish can't fly in relief supplies, because they don't have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their cheque."

Crucially, he also picks up Kofi Annan, who has decided that the Aussie-American "coalition of the willing" is, in fact, a UN operation. "The core group will support the UN effort," Annan has said. "That group will be in support of the efforts that the UN is leading." Thus,

…American personnel in American planes and American ships will deliver American food and American medicine and implement an American relief plan, but it's still a "UN-led effort". That seems to be enough for Kofi. His "moral authority" is intact, and Guardian columnists and Telegraph readers can still bash the Yanks for their stinginess. Everybody's happy.

This is not the best piece Steyn has written – in fact it is slightly plodding – but it is a welcome attempt to redress the balance.

For really up-to-date stuff, though, don’t forget to look at the Diplomad Blog. Today's postings are corkers – and you won't get them on the BBC.

The steady drip of propaganda

Not content with giving free airtime to Javier Solana yesterday, BBC Radio 4's Today Programme was back on the beat today with an entirely gratuitous plug for things EU, offering a guest slot to former commission president Romano Prodi.

Why he has given the slot, heaven knows, as there was no obvious topical hook, but this did not worry the BBC, which treated him with the usual sycophantic deference which it accords EU politicians.

The first part of the interview dealt with the Asian tsunami crisis, with Prodi being asked if there was "any truth" in the claims that the EU had been caught flat-footed by events and had been shown up by the Americans.

The tenor of the questioning was such that it virtually invited Prodi to deny the charge but at least the man had the honesty to reply with a simple "Yes". The EU had been caught out. "But that doesn't mean Europe will be second to the United States in the long run," says our man.

Obviously, this was not the answer the BBC wanted. The interview moved on without in any way trying to explore why it was that the EU had been so inadequate, bringing from Prodi another admission – this one that the commission had been unable to implement its economic strategy, "because the member states did not want it".

With another failure unexplored, Prodi was then asked about the constitution, eliciting the comment that, if a country voted "No" in a referendum, then that was "a message against Europe". "Some strong political decision must be taken in this case," he added. If a country did not approve the constitution, "there must be a second decision… what will be your general relation with Europe."

If a country voted against the constitution, therefore, "they must be asked to make a decision about that."

Although not new, this firms up the scenario that the "colleagues" are considering in the (likely) event that the UK votes against the constitution. We will be invited to "consider our position". Possibly, we will be asked to consider whether we want to leave, and there remains the option that there should be a second referendum, on whether we should withdraw.

Either way, it is very clear, if it was not already, that the status quo is not an option.

The hidden agenda

One of the central political issues confronting the United Kingdom at this time is our relationship with "Europe" – more specifically the European Union – the enthusiasm for which is to be tested in due course in the referendum on the EU constitution.

Given the degree of foreign policy and defence integration involved in that constitution, closer European political integration will inevitably been a more distant relationship with the United States – even the end of the “special relationship”, which has been the subject of several postings on this Blog.

How we perceive the United States viz-à-viz the European Union, therefore, is an issue of profound political significance in which context it would make absolute sense for those in favour of greater political integration with the EU to project "Europe" in a favourable light and to denigrate the United States.

Whether that is the specific intention of the Europhile media – and especially the BBC - is open to question, but it is definitely the effect of their coverage of a whole range of issues, not least the Iraqi war where sentiment has been almost uniformly hostile to the United States.

But even in the coverage of the Asian tsunami crisis, this anti-US bias has been continued and, in the BBC, is becoming so transparent as to be alarming for what is supposed to be a public service broadcaster dedicated to impartial coverage of the news. It cannot be accidental. There must be a hidden agenda.

For instance, during yesterday, I watched closely the coverage of BBC News, and in particular the digital News 24 channel, for references to US aid activity. After endless "puffs" for Oxfam, wall-to-wall coverage of the UN and other so-called aid agencies, I paid particular attention to the 10 pm bulletin, and waited in vain.

We went four stories into the bulletin before there was any mention of helicopters and then the film cut to an ancient Sri Lanka army Huey delivering supplies. There was no mention of the heroic effort being undertaken by the Sea Hawks from the carrier Abraham Lincoln, and absolutely no mention all day that the task force headed by the USS Bonhomme Richard had arrived in the Malacca Straights and was taking on relief supplies.

What we did get from the BBC's correspondent in Washington, Nick Childs, was a weasely report referring to "criticism" that the US government had been slow to react to the disaster, which then enabled Child to claim that the announcement on Monday of an increase in US aid to $350 million "looks like another public gesture to show that Washington is responding in significant ways".

However dispassionately one might try to look at this BBC coverage, there can be absolutely no doubt that this anti-US slant is deliberate. All the agencies are carrying detailed reports of US military involvement, including Reuters, AP and even Agence France Presse. Not even the BBC could be so inept and unprofessional as not to notice what is going on – all it would have to do is read the reports that are flooding into its studios.

For instance, the Reuters report, issued on Monday, 3 January 2005 at 5:13 p.m. ET, by Deborah Zabarenko, reported that some 12,600 U.S. military personnel had joined relief efforts.

Zabarenko cited an interview of Navy Capt. Rodger Welch, a U.S. Pacific Command spokesman on relief efforts, and others, who described the efforts for her, which she retailed in her report.

Listed amongst the assets being uses were the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and helicopter carrier USS Bonhomme Richard, bringing aid to the ravaged areas with some 80 aircraft. There were 21 U.S. ships involved as of Monday.

So far, U.S. military personnel had delivered 430,000 pounds of supplies to the region, fourteen cargo planes were taking food, supplies and equipment to supply hubs in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and the hospital ship USNS Mercy was being sent from San Diego to the region to provide medical assistance.

The group of U.S. ships led by the Bonhomme Richard was sailing through the Strait of Malacca and was poised to begin dropping relief supplies at Banda Aceh by helicopter before continuing on toward Sri Lanka, Strong said. The group was carrying more than 2,000 Marines who could be deployed for relief operations on shore, part of its total complement of nearly 5,300 military personnel.

Zabarenko also reported that: "A third group of six vessels, known in Pentagon-speak as a maritime prepositioning ship squadron, is bringing hundreds of gallons of clean water to the area". Each of the ships could store up to 90,000 gallons of fresh water and can produce tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water a day per ship, she reported.

Particularly newsworthy, one might have thought, was the detail that landing craft aboard some of the three amphibious ships in the Bonhomme Richard expeditionary strike group would be used, their “unique capabilities” being employed to "bypass the devastated infrastructure" to be able to deliver to areas where the supplies are needed.

Nothing, but nothing of this reached BBC listeners or viewers, who – if they relied on this source – would be wholly unaware of the scale of US involvement.

Neither was the Europhile Independent much better. Although one of its stories did give some coverage to "American Sea Hawk helicopters" ferrying emergency supplies to the stricken coastal communities of Aceh, this information was only allowed to frame a piece on "voices were being raised in the United States for a longer-term engagement in the area to rebuild lost political goodwill".

The involvement of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was lumped in as part of "America's humanitarian response to the tragedy",

…which has been ratcheted up rapidly in recent days after an early impression was created of superpower stinginess, was already being described as something much more, a mission to repair relations with the region severely strained since the invasion of Iraq and demonstrate its willingness to use its military might as a force for good.

Even the USS Bonhomme Richard, described as "steaming from the China Sea to the area" was lumped in as part of the "first wave of the stepped-up American effort."

Nor was the Guardian any better, framing its story with the headline "Bush plea tries to rebuild US image", retailing that "Since being criticised last week for being slow to respond to the disaster, the White House has moved to play a leading role in the relief efforts."

Only in that context are we allowed to know that "US helicopters and planes have begun delivering emergency supplies to some of the most remote and badly-hit area, such as the west coast of Indonesia's Aceh province," with the addition: "One airlift at a time, they have begun to rebuild America's reputation particularly in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, whose people overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq."

This is effectively a slander on the United States as these assets were mobilised immediately the news of the tsunami came through, before even the scale of the disaster was known. Their presence in the area – the Bonhomme Richard after days of high speed steaming, with its crew having given up their leave - represents a magnificent gesture of unconditional generosity on the part of the United States, despatched well before any criticism was made of the US aid effort.

Altogether now, the value of US military assets in the region amount to nearly $10 billion, affording assistance which no other agency or organisation in the world could even dream of supplying. And all this has been done with the US not even mentioning the cost or including the figure in its own aid contribution.

And just by way of contrast, the French government has just announced that it is despatching two navy ships to Indonesia, to arrive on 10 January. These comprise the Jeanne d’Arc, a ship carrying six helicopters and two units of engineers, and the Georges Leygues, a frigate.

The betting is that the tardy arrival of these French ships will be given full coverage by the Europhile media but, whether they are or not, the coverage of the US effort has been disgraceful. And by far the worst has been the BBC which, in its deliberate, petty way, makes a mockery of the term "public service broadcaster", all for it to pursue its hidden agenda.

"Sustainable" aid giving - a higher form of "sustainable" development

I have to admit I was getting rather worried. Here we are in the middle of the largest hot-air-fest for … well, for a long time anyway, and not a squeak out of the Commissars in Brussels. Well, I can relax now. They have appeared on the scene and have been pronouncing with predictable banality. Curiously enough, while their statements have not been particularly informative, they have all tended in one direction: more European integration is needed. Well, what do you know?

My colleague has already written about Benita Ferrero-Waldner’s comments about the need for those European rapid reaction forces and how useful they will be when they are all ready to go into action in 2007. Not to those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the tsunami in 2004 they will not be useful. Besides, where is the need? Various national teams have gone in very effectively. Is anybody standing around wailing for EU Rapid Reaction Forces to come and rescue them? I think not.

Louis Michel, the Commissar for Development and Humanitarian Aid has also announced his presence. He is going to have a very exciting time. Not only is there going to be a donors’ conference in Europe, called by the EU but he is also going with President Barroso and Luxembourg Prime Minister Juncker to the big conference in Djakarta on January 6. M Michel has already gone round the stricken areas (his predecessor was always visiting areas where there had been natural and man-made disasters) to see what has happened for himself. And he will have a meeting of the relevant EU ministers this Friday. Life is very full for M Louis Michel.

Of course, one could argue that instead of all this travelling round, conferencing and, no doubt, eating and drinking, the relevant ministers should either stay out and leave the whole matter to the professionals (US navy and helicopter pilots, Australian navy, Japanese pilots, Indian drivers, Chinese pilots etc, as well as engineers, builders, construction workers local and western) or, if they must stick their noses in, have virtual conferences on the phone and by video. The money saved in that way could be used to buy, if not a helicopter, then certainly a couple of fork-lift trucks and half a dozen pontoon bridges.

Don’t bother M Louis Michel with reality. He has announced that the EU is determined that the aid giving will be sustainable. Presumably, this is a higher form of sustainable development, in itself a hard to define concept.

"There must be no gap between the initial emergency aid phase and the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase that will follow."

Ideas for a “comprehensive strategy” will be presented on Friday to be discussed by the ministers. Ten to one that “comprehensive strategy” will not mention the need for the relevant countries to acquire an accountable, transparent political system and a free economic one. Recent comments and comparisons about the way natural disasters affect rich and poor countries would not have made much of a dent in M Michel’s understanding of the situation.

Meanwhile the Commission has committed €23 million ($31 million £16 million) in aid, without explaining precisely what the money is committed to and how it will be administered.

Aan interesting article in yesterday's New York Times pointed out that, shattering though the tsunami has been to the coastal areas, its effect on the overall economy of the countries that have suffered will be small.

“Even as it has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of families in South Asia, the tsunami will shave only a few points off the region's economic growth this year. Depending on the importance of tourism in each country, the decrease is expected to range from less than 1 percent for Thailand to 2 percent for Sri Lanka and 4 percent for the Maldives, according to estimates by Standard Chartered Bank.”

Aceh in Indonesia accounts for only two per cent of the economy and even there it is not clear how much of the agricultural land has been destroyed.

“Tourism and fishing together make up less than 6 percent of Sri Lanka's gross domestic product.

Thailand's economy is expected to grow about 6 percent in 2005, about the same as in 2004. Tourism in southern Thailand around Phuket, the only part of the country affected, accounts for about 1.3 percent of the national economy.

Already, much of the Phuket tourism has been rerouted to other Thai resort towns, and the damaged beach towns could well see a construction boom as up to $2 billion is expected to be invested to rebuild beachfront hotels, homes and shops.”

The best way to revive tourism in those parts that live off it, will be for westerners to go on booking those trips. The best way to encourage the economy in all those countries to develop in a balanced fashion is to buy and sell, set up free-trading agreements and invest.

The worst possible way to deal with the situation would be to set up a scheme of indefinite aid giving, that will sidetrack funds, impose unnecessary obligations and turn the countries into perpetual beggars. Which is precisely what the EU Commissar for Development and Humanitarian Aid is advocating.

All so predictable

They'd leap into your grave while its was still warm, these people.

With the relief effort underway and the EU noticeable by its absence, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's commissioner for external relations is leaping on the bandwagon demanding that the EU should set up a 5,000-strong "crisis management corps" to deal with disasters such as the Asian tsunamis.

This is shortly to be a formal proposal from the commission, which never misses an opportunity to exploit a crisis to its own advantage. The idea is that the EU should set up "teams of experts" for tasks such as disaster relief and emergency reconstruction.

Ms Ferrero-Waldner foresees a civilian equivalent to the EU's "battlegroups" - forces of up to 1,500 soldiers that are intended to act as bridgeheads in times of crisis. Her crisis management corps could be composed of about 5,000 experts identified beforehand by national governments, who would be exercised and trained, as well as placed under central co-ordination when on call.

She thinks it "would be great" if the corps could be ready by 2007, when the battlegroups are scheduled to come on line fully. "I would like to see the EU rapidly developing the capacity to deploy experts, with rapid reaction teams in disaster relief, firefighting, emergency reconstruction, on standby," she adds.

For an organisation that brought us the Common Fisheries Policy and the notorious fridge mountain, which has yet to demonstrate that it could successfully run a bath much less a major relief operation, the arrogance of this is quite staggering, if not somewhat predictable.

The UNcredibles

I watched on TV Egeland Humperdink in his plush UN office in New York this afternoon, standing in front of the UN flag announcing with pride that "We" now have five helicopter carriers in the region.

Er… who's this "We" pale face?

For more on this incredible "tranzi" organisation, you need to read the Diplomad Blog. Here is a sample:

More on "The UNcredibles": WFP (World Food Program) has "arrived" in the capital with an assessment and coordination team". The following is no joke; no Diplomad attempt to be funny or clever: The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service. USAID folks already are cracking jokes about "The UN Sheraton." Meanwhile, our military and civilians, working with the super Aussies, continue to keep the C-130 air bridge of supplies flowing and the choppers flying, and keep on saving lives - and without 24hr catering services from any five-star hotel... The contrast grows more stark every minute.

Plenty more where that comes from.

Free propaganda

Interviewed by James Naughtie this morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana was given over four minutes free propaganda to expound his views on the EU constitution.

Treated with uncritical reverence, Solana was allowed free reign to warn that, although it would not be "the end of the world", "serious questions" would be raised about the UK's relationship with the rest of the EU if it rejected the proposed constitution,

Out trotted the usual propaganda that the constitution would "help an expanded EU operate more efficiently" and while, unfortunately, Solana took the view that a "No" vote would not mean Britain would be excluded from the "European family", he felt that it would be "a very important moment in the history of the EU and in the history of your country."

Tony Blair, he believed, would mount a "solid campaign" for a "Yes" vote. "I am sure he is going to defend the constitution as a good thing for the UK and a good thing for Europe as a whole," Solana said.

But, with the EU only able to offer a "donor’s conference" and a minuscule amount of money as an immediate response to the crisis in South East Asia, Solana was allowed to say that the constitution marked a "fundamental step" in making the EU better able to work internally and fulfil its international obligations.

It would have helped if the fawning Naughtie has asked, for instance, how the EU constitution would have helped the tsunami victims, how much more aid would have been delivered or how many more helicopters would be flying.

Just one tiny example of how the EU will be made more "efficient" would have been welcome. But then, this is the BBC. Never let it be said that it ever misses an opportunity to fail.

Russo-German friendship

It is rather interesting to watch traditional foreign policy re-emerging and disentangling itself from the rather spurious idea of a European policy. Today’s example is the growing closeness between Germany and Russia, alluded to a few times already.

Chancellor Schröder, for example, has annoyed even his own party by his refusal to criticize anything his new best friend Vladimir Putin does. In fact, references were made to President Putin’s unblemished record as a democrat.

Little has been said in Germany (or other West European countries) about the fact that one of the memorial days celebrated in Russia with ever growing magnificence is Secret Police Day. I kid you not. December 20 is the anniversary of the founding of the ChK (Chrezvychaynaya Kommissiya, since you ask), the first of the notorious and terrifying Soviet secret police organizations, run by “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinsky. The organization has gone through various names: VChK, NKVD, MGB, MVD and KGB (I may have left one or two out). These days it is known as the FSB, though most Russians still refer to it as KGB. The word Chekist has once again become a term of high approbation.

But I was talking about Germany’s involvement. For it is not only Chancellor Schröder who remains mealy-mouthed. There is the interesting saga of the German banks, led by Deutsche Bank. The Sunday Telegraph Business Section (what my colleague calls the grown-up part of the newspaper) had a short piece yesterday about Yukos calling for an investigation into the role of these banks in the ongoing destruction of the oil company.

Deutsche Bank had led a consortium that was planning to finance the state controlled Gazprom’s bid for Yuganskneftegaz in the recent, highly irregular auction. Yukos had successfully filed for bankruptcy protection in a US court and the German banks regretfully withdrew from the affair. The new owner is Rosneft, which acquired Yuganskneftegaz through an unknown bidder. In fact, Rosneft and Gazprom will probably merge, recreating the old Soviet energy empire, controlled by the state. No doubt, the German banks will gleefully pile in, put in lots of money and, also no doubt, complain when things go wrong and the money will not produce as good a return as they had expected. Just like the old days, really.

Meanwhile, as we have reported before, Gazprom is tightening its control on energy supplies in eastern Europe and is trying to expand into the western part, especially Germany. Perhaps, that is what the banks are smacking their lips over but one wonders whether any of this is in Germany’s or Europe’s long-term interests.

Just to add some spice to the story, an interesting little tit-bit is reported in the Boston Globe by Masha Gessen, a Russian journalist and author. Describing the frightening and ever growing control of the media by the state in Russia, which is now beginning to extend to websites and small publications as well, as well as the imprisonment of teenagers for holding the wrong political opinions and "insulting" President Putin, she goes on to the following chilling story:

“Earlier this year, I reported a story that I found both ridiculous and very, very sad. The Russian edition of GQ, the men's magazine, had run its traditional "Man of the Year" contest. Some 26,000 readers had voted, and the winner was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon, philanthropist, and political activist whose Yukos oil empire has been expropriated and who has been in jail for over a year on charges of tax evasion that are widely seen as politically driven. His well-publicized trial has sent a message to all Russian entrepreneurs, warning them that they will suffer gravely if they ever happen to displease the Kremlin. The publisher of Russian GQ banned the publication of Khodorkovsky's name in connection with the contest, forcing his editorial staff to falsify the results. According to staff members, someone actually had to fly to Italy, where the magazine is prepared for printing, to replace the offending page.

One remarkable aspect of this story is that the magazine's publisher, Bernd Runge, is a German national who has little to fear personally from the authorities: He doesn't even spend much time in Russia, since his turf includes other Condé Nast publications in Germany and Africa as well. But Runge has an intimate understanding of how the new Russia works. He hails from East Germany, and he went to college in the Soviet Union. Earlier this year, two major German magazines published multi-part exposes showing that Runge served as a Stasi (the East German secret police) agent during the Soviet period. Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, issued a statement affirming his confidence in Runge and calling the revelations "irrelevant" to today's realities.”

It seems that Lenin’s term: “useful idiots” has not yet outlived its own usefulness.

The letters that count

UN relief operations co-ordinator in Indonesia, Michael Elmquist, is "absolutely thrilled" at the US presence in his region. "It's absolutely life-saving," he said, "They are the only ones who have the capacity to reach those parts of the population right now."

That was the response to the arrival of the five-ship carrier group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln and the deployment of its fleet of 17 Sea Hawk helicopters.

Now, the US presence has been heavily reinforced with the arrival in the Malacca Straights of the three-ship Marine expeditionary task force, comprising USS Bonhomme Richard (see here and here), the USS Duluth and the USS Rushmore (see here and here).

Together, these ships are able immediately to deploy a further 29 helicopters, in addition to their landing craft and other assets, plus a detachment of over 2,000 marines that includes a combat engineering unit. They will be going into action in Sri Lanka later this week.

"We've been racing across the ocean," says Rear Admiral Chris Ames, commander of the strike force, acknowledging that the situation in Sri Lanka remained unclear and that the mission for his Marines was still developing.

Ames said the Marines' primary responsibilities would include ferrying food and medical supplies to villages in need. He also stressed that having "boots on the ground" would bring badly needed manpower for constructing temporary shelters, clearing roads and operating water purification equipment. "We know a lot more today than we did yesterday," he said. "But we're not waiting for a perfect picture. There's so much to be done."

The Bonhomme Richard, which looks something like a mini aircraft carrier, has dozens of helicopters on board, along with three landing craft capable of launching groups of 100 Marines - or a load of anything from tractors to trucks - ashore on virtually any kind of beach.

On its way in to the disaster zone, the group has airlifted supplies from Singapore, relieving the pressure on local facilities, making it an entirely self-contained force that is able to deliver aid without in any way imposing any stress on the creaking infrastructures of the affected areas.

This is an example of real power, and the value one of the richest nations on earth can bring to humanitarian relief. The ships alone cost $1371 million and the helicopters cost at least another $200 million, financial muscle which dwarfs the efforts of all the other donor countries

Rear Admiral Ames summed up the value of the group, saying "We have capabilities across the strike group that is quite unique and particularly well suited for this type of humanitarian assistance disaster relief operation."

"We have about 29 helicopters that are heavy- and medium-lift capable and they can provide the reach to take the disaster food, water that are piling up across the region and distribute them into the remote sections where they are most devastated by the tsunami."

Colonel Thomas Greenwood, commanding officer, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, added: "We come with a lot of trucks, a lot of equipment which can make water, a lot of food and engineering gear when we go ashore in Sri Lanka. We cover the spectrum of not just delivering food and water, medical supplies but we can also remove debris from the roads and provide limited medical support and infrastructure improvements."

The USS Bonhomme Richard also has a 60-plus strong medical staff manning four operating rooms. Its hospital ward is also capable of taking in nearly 60 patients.

Interestingly, in its one o’clock news bulletin, BBC Radio 4 did not see fit to mention the arrival of this force – one of the most significant developments yet in the battle to bring aid to the region.

Thus, as the days and weeks pass, and the alphabet soup of agencies continue blathering about how much they have contributed, it will be important to remember the role played by those two little letters – US - and the utter uselessness of those other two - EU - or any other two you can think of.

Taking a rain-czech?

Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel has spoken out against a referendum on the EU constitution in his country, even though he disagrees with the constitution.

He considers it to be "a very complicated technical text" and therefore it would be "pointless" to hold a referendum on it. People, in his view, do not understand it enough to be able to hold a vote on it.

In an interview, broadcast on Czech TV, he did add that, to his "disappointment", the constitution changed little in the EU, and thought that a rejection of the constitution by one country might lead to its exclusion from the EU's political integration.

Interestingly, opposition parties are also playing the "isolation card", claiming that Havel is splitting the public on the EU issue and that there is a danger that Czechoslovakia will find itself among two or three countries on the margins of Europe.

Concluding his interview, he went on to urge the Czechs that: "The year of 2005 must not become a year without a name and without a content. This must not be a year about which we will admit to ourselves after 365 days that it simply passed"

I’ll drink to that.

Normal service

There have been great natural disasters before, pace the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps the numbers of dead are higher now than in many others, perhaps not. There have also been natural disasters caused entirely by misguided or criminal political decisions (just think of what the truth behind that Ethiopian famine was or how many millions died as a result of collectivization in various communist countries).

There is, as I have said before, a certain sameness about disasters and an equal sameness about response. Of course, people generously donate money, alas, preferring not to find out how and on what that money is used for. Some sense is shown by those who give to small, named charities, that can and probably will be held to account.

Chaos at the receiving end, with little ability to organize transport and distribution, no possibility of ensuring that the food and other supplies flown in actually get to the right recipients. The aid that is pouring out of the rich west seems to be reducing itself to a “trickle” to those who have suffered. Supplies lying around, rotting away, as usual in these cases.

Naturally, the newspapers are full of stories, mass and individual. That will not last, but it is good to see that occasionally something is more interesting than the private lives of footballers and TV personalities. It is also a relief not to watch the appalling hunt that the journalists conduct on their, usually very young and often helpless, prey for the entertainment of the great British public. Why the destruction of a marriage or the reduction of a human being to a gibbering wreck, even if those involved are footballers or pop singers, should be acceptable entertainment is beyond me.

Then there are the journalists. On present count, at least six have claimed to have been the ones who fearlessly revealed the true extent of the tragedy and inspired charitable giving on a scale, unprecedented since, well, since the last time something like this happened. I expect the numbers will grow.

The politicians are making their stand. Hilary Benn, son of Tony, is fully expected to make his mark in NuLab politics by the generous and fearless way he is shelling out taxpayers’ money to international organizations. In a rare display of political intelligence, Tony Blair has defended his continuing holiday. What could he do if he returned that he cannot deal with wherever he happens to be with his family? Let Gordon Brown take the plaudits for the moment. His erstwhile friend will deal with him when he does return.

Kofi Annan has announced that the effects of the tsuname will be felt for decades. Not a particularly illuminating statement but at least he has refrained from blaming the United States, globalization and western capitalism. Early days yet, I expect. And talking of Kofi Annan, where is the man? It seems that he, too, declined to interrupt his very pleasant holiday in Wyoming with James Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank. In fact, his first statements, three days after the disaster and well into the aid-giving frenzy, were made by telephone. There were to be no pictures of Mr Annan enjoying himself.

His colleague, Jan Egeland, Head of Humanitarian Affairs, has had to retract, though not explicitly, as my colleague has written. From accusing the wealthy nations of being stingy (for wealthy nations read the United States) he has moved to praising one of the few programmes that has been successful: aid being delivered directly to the people in need of it by the US Sea Hawk helicopters.

Who knows? Mr Egeland may yet accept that the only useful aid giving effort has been that organized and delivered by individual nations, such as the United States, India, Australia and Japan, who have immediately started organizing and co-ordinating their activity.

Interesting to note the presence of India among the Big Four. For decades that country remained the poorest of the poor, subject to every natural disaster and the recipient of large amounts of aid. Some time ago it began shaking that burden off, opened its economy up to the world, began to develop it seriously (refusing to sign the wretched Kyoto Protocol) and is now in a position to help provide aid.

In the meantime, the sheer inability of the large international organizations, who are supposed to deal with disasters, such as the UN and the big NGOs, to deal with the situation has been breathtaking. They have had to deal with such situations before. Why have they not learnt anything?

What is the point of taking plane-load of blankets, a week after the event, into tiny airports, with no unloading facility and no possibility of distributing anything? The same applies to food and medical aid. Unless you know how to take it to the people, there is no point in bringing it in.

Some of what is needed, helicopters, fork lift trucks, bridge building equipment and so on, is already there and much more is being provided by the US and Australia, with additional help from Japan, China, India, Israel and, possibly, soon the other G8 countries. The military is moving in, to organize transport and distribution. Clearly, an operation of this size needs military discipline and control (not to mention guns to protect the actual aid). In the coming days we shall see more of that.

And again, one comes back to the same question: what is the point of the vast international and transnational apparatus of the UN, the Red Cross, Oxfam, various other organizations with initials? What have they been collecting all this money for? Why have they been strutting the stage? Is this not to be their finest hour? Alas, no. It seems that these organizations, whose aim is to deal with problems of this kind, cannot really do so.

What they can do is play at politics, make huge statements, mostly of the anti-Western kind, build up bureaucracies and support idiotic events like the recent European Social Forum in London. Practical help? Forget it. Apart from the large scale equipment and disciplined organization provided by individual countries, the only organizations that might be able to distinguish themselves, will be the small charities, who can be held directly accountable by the donors. Oxfam, as it keeps proclaiming, will be there. But what it will be doing there will remain shadowed in mystery.

The UN has so far not even managed to get there. The EU, as we know, is planning to have a donors’ conference next week, an opportunity for the Luxembourg Presidency to show its mettle. The food and various arrangements will be good, I expect. As to practical outcome? Well, what exactly is a donors’ conference for? Presumably, to ensure that the member states who have already given directly, should now also give to the EU for it to produce its vast and useless projects, probably never to be finished if past experience is anything to go by, but crowned by the blue flag with the ring of stars.

There is more ridiculous nonsense to come. The rent-a-mob pop singers are organizing a concert, hoping to raise vast amounts of money. Whether that will succeed remains questionable. After all, people have already given and done so with great generosity. As more and more news of chaos and inefficiency comes in, the same people will not want to buy tickets or records as well. Perhaps, the whole concert can be performed to an audience of UN and EU officials.

Finally,we come to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has publicly announced that this sort of thing makes him doubt the existence of God. Really, he is supposed to be a brainy, intellectual sort of cove. Like all those aid agencies, he has spent too much time politicking, instead of which he ought to have read some of those many works of religion and theology, starting with the Book of Job, that discuss the very issue of natural calamity and God,. If, on the other hand, he finds it hard to maintain his faith, then he should resign or whatever an Archbishop does and become a Sociology lecturer with a regular column in the Guardian.

Not all is gloom and doom, however. As my colleague has pointed out, the voices that say it is poverty that is the problem are getting stronger. The voices that add: we should stop worrying about global warming and start paying attention to how the developing world should actually develop rather than live on endless hand-outs, are beginning to sound across the western political spectrum. The tranzis may think this is their hour of glory. But it is beginning to look like their nemesis.

Myth of the week

The EU is good for the environment

In "feel-good" terms, the "environment" often comes up number one in the approval ratings for EU action, where the majority of those responding believe that, overall, the EU is beneficial to the environment. This reflects in part the assiduous propaganda campaign undertaken by the EU so, in this new "myth", we look at the EU’s actual contribution to improving our environment, but also take a look at how their propaganda machine works.

Produce a pamphlet called "Choices for a greener future", decorate it with a colour photograph of a butterfly against a backdrop of glorious flowers and, by magic, the EU is in the environment business. Go for the EU and get better butterflies!

If ever there was an example of the subtle way the EU harnesses propaganda to the cause, this is it. Everyone is in favour of the "environment" in the same way that no-one could or would speak our against motherhood and apple pie. So, if the EU is in favour of the environment, we should all be in favour of the EU. Such is the underlying message that the EU wishes to convey.

The technique is indeed subtle: "As European citizens, we all share an interest in protecting and improving the environment around us, because it will make our lives better", goes the legend on the very first page of the pamphlet. You have to do a double-take to understand there game they are playing.

First they set up the "European citizen" and then they link this to a worthy and entirely uncontentious common cause – "protecting and improving the environment" – and you are hooked. European citizens are concerned… you are concerned because you are a European citizen… take it any which way you please.

The inference is, of course, that you are concerned because you are a European citizen. There is no allowance for the fact that non-European citizens are just as much concerned, or even that the reader might reject the very notion of European citizenship. The linkage is irrevocable.

Then they go for the H L Mencken "ploy", the American writer who explained that: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Thus we get: "Over recent decades, it became clear that our global environment is under serious threat as a result of human activities…". The pamphlet then lards the case with reference to the "menace" of climate change and, once the softening up is done, in comes the honey: "The way we in Europe respond to these challenges influences our own happiness and well-being, as well as dictating what sort of world our children live in".

Note the use of the word "we" – inviting a sense of involvement, of solidarity, of common purpose. Again we see the linkage, this time with "happiness and well-being", and the future of our "children". Who but the black-hearted could possible be against such sentiments and such laudable objectives?

From thereon, the rest is easy: "So what can the European Union, in particular, do to protect and nurture the environment?", the pamphlet asks. In the context set, such a question is so logical that it follows as night follows day – the EU will "protect and nurture". How could you answer that the EU can and should do nothing, in response to such a question?

In case you are tempted to answer in the negatives, however, the pamphlet states the case more firmly: "We are entering a new era," it states boldly, "in which countries will have to work together in order to safeguard our environment, for the air we breathe and the waters we drink are not restricted by national frontiers."

Then for the punchline: "As European citizens (again!) we know the sort of world we want to live in and the EU is playing a dynamic role in pursuing that vision with energy and determination".
That is the "case" so far. Firstly, "protecting and improving the environment" is a "good thing". Secondly, as "European citizens" we all share an interest in pursuing the protection and improvement of the environment. Thirdly, countries have to work together to that end and, fourthly, we have a "single vision" of the world we want to live in (doubtless a "European vision") the EU is playing a "dynamic role" in pursuing that vision.

Goebbels would have been proud of the case put, conflating truth and lies in a subtle mix, so carefully stitched together that it is difficult to separate the two. But here goes.

Looking at the issues, in general terms, it is self-evidently true that "protecting and improving the environment" is a "good thing" – but only as a generality. But it begs several questions. But to turn this into practicalities, you have to state what you understand by the "environment?

Then, want do you understand by "protection" and "improvement"? And to what extent then does protection and improvement of the environment take precedence over other human, and in particular, economic activities?

Once you ask these questions, a whole new vista opens up. The "environment", as we know it, is what surrounds us. It is varied, different, and encompasses everything from houses, gardens, roads, factory sites to farmland and virgin wilderness – together with air and water. Who decides what is to be protected and improved, to what standard and at what cost? What is the mix to be and what are the priorities?

This alone destroys the argument for a "common vision" of the environment. In each nation state, we have different problems, different priorities, different needs, different standards, different expectations, and – crucially – different priorities for the expenditure of limited resources. Reconciling the problems, the spending priorities and the standards is a matter for government.

The question is whether a supra-national government should dictate those priorities and here the essential issue is one of government spending. Should the EU be able to decide to elevate, say, a requirement for ultra-purity in drinking water over and above that of the need for hospitals or schools over and above the need to repair leaky water pipes and the renewal of ageing sewers?

As to the "European citizens", therein is the lie. The term is an artificial construct which has no real meaning and only by relying on this artefact is the EU able to project the idea of an otherwise non-existent "common vision". Take it away and we have citizens (and subjects) of the nation state. Their visions (plural) are from a national perspective, and need – by and large – national solutions.

There is, however, validity in the mantra "countries must work together". But the lie creeps in with the inference that the only way they can work together is through the supranational construct of the EU. Yet, one of the most immediate trans-national pollution controversies affecting the EU was acid rain and the supposed effect of British power station emissions on Norwegian forests. Crucially, Norway was not a member of the EU yet mechanisms for dealing with the problem still existed.

Intergovernmental agreements were concluded under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), starting with the 1979 Geneva Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, which Britain ratified in 1982. This convention, which was legally binding, was further extended by no less than eight additional protocols.

In order for countries to work together, therefore, not only is the EU not essential but, inasmuch as "pollution knows no frontiers", the borders of EU member states are in fact too restrictive. Dealing with the wider problem needs larger groupings of countries than merely EU members.

And now for the biggest lie of all – that the EU is playing a "dynamic role" in protecting and improving the environment. Long before the EU was in being, the individual nation states had their own environmental programmes. In the case of the UK, we had strong legislation and programmes stemming from the Public Health Act of 1875, before even some member states of the EU were even nations. In that respect, the EU is simply "hijacking" member state activities and taking the credit for them.

Without the EU, progress on the environment would have continued and indeed so would trans-boundary agreements. One test, therefore, is whether the EU provides "added value", i.e., either improvements over and above those that would have been achieved anyway, in terms of outcome, efficiency and/or cost.

Here, the record of the EU is dire. One of the earlier examples is the "batteries directive" 91/157/EEC, aimed at promoting the recovery and recycling of lead-acid batteries used in motor cars. Prior to that directive, in the UK we had an excellent system which accounted for 95 percent of all batteries disposed of, comprising a profitable business for a number of scrap merchants. The EU scheme, however, imposed a costly, rigid bureaucracy which destroyed the profitability of the collection system, as a result of which costs to end users increased and the percentage of batteries recovered fell to less than 60 percent.

Then we have the famous fridge mountain created by EU regulation 2000/2037 which turned old fridges into "hazardous waste", prohibiting their recycling and turning a perfectly adequate – self-funding - collection and disposal into absolute chaos, ending up with thousands of fridges in huge dumps, costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands to dispose of them.

This is on the back of the infamous "landfill directive", which is causing no end of problems, not least a rash of fly tipping, massively increased costs and a network of expensive incinerators which no one wants at a cost to the UK estimated at £6.9 billion.

So incoherent is the EU waste policy that even the experts have trouble making sense of it, with massive confusion between what is waste disposal and what is recycling. This has led to the absurd situation where it has become virtually impossible to recycle waste oil and where Scottish Power are no longer allowed to use processed sewage to make electricity.

Soon we will have to deal with the End of Life Vehicle directive, the introductory pjase of which is already causing our streets to littered with car wrecks, while the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive will do for personal computers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines exactly what the EU did for fridges.

Yet the propaganda element is still very much alive, as we noted with reaction to the "Reach" directive by the Independent newspaper, which called this bureaucratic monstrosity as "anti-pollution drive". This is the proposed law that will create so many obstacles to the usage of a wide range of chemicals that it will drive businesses abroad, where there are fewer controls of pollution than there are now. The net effect may well be to increase rather than reduce global pollution.

Then there is the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) which the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds happily chirps "could cost billions of pounds" in achieve the EU targets", which have to be met by 2015. This is on top of the estimated £16 bn needed to upgrade water and sewerage pipes which is already leading to massively increased water bills.

All this, at a very rough estimate, looks like costing the British economy something like £40-50 billion over the next ten years or so, or between £4-5 billion a year – all to create more problems than are solved

But that reckons without the grand-daddy of them all, the Kyoto agreement, which according to the environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg could costs between $150 to $300 billion a year without having any long-term effect on global warming, massively retarding developed economies and limiting their ability to assist developing countries.

That itself has spawned the EU’s ultimate bureaucratic dream, the Emissions Trading Scheme, which adds a further £25 billion a year to the costs of the productive economy.

This is the EU’s idea of a "greener future". For any normal person it is a vision of chaos and disaster. Apart from anything else, the fact that the EU even thinks it is doing good for the environment – and the likes of Margaret Beckett believe is a reason why we should vote for the EU constitution – more than adequately demonstrates how far detached from reality supporters of the "project" really are.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

In a progress report this afternoon, delivered from his United Nations office, head of humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland spoke of the recently arrived US Sea Hawk helicopters as "worth their weight in gold".

And well he might. This is the man who earlier complained of the "stinginess" of wealthy nations, a jibe clearly aimed at the United States. But, even as he spoke, the USS Abraham Lincoln was being despatched to the disaster area.

Having now arrived, it is germane to note that helicopters that Egeland now so fulsomely praises cost the US taxpayer some $100 million – more than the entire amount donated by the British government (without taking into account the cost of the aircraft carrier that brought them to the scene) . And, unlike the UK’s effort, the American assistance is there, on the ground, helping save real people.

Crucially, the utility of the US Sea Hawk helicopters owes much to the foresight of the much-despised US military planners, in that they included in the aircraft specification a humanitarian relief capability, a function which they are now so admirably performing.

The twelve aircraft on station will be joined in a few days by a similar number of helicopters from Expeditionary Strike Group 5, with its three-ship force, comprising the amphibious assault ships, USS Bonhomme Richard, USS Duluth and USS Rushmore. Together with their landing craft and other assets, they will provide a real boost to the humanitarian aid effort under way.

All of this again emphasises the role of the nation state, and the generosity of the much maligned United States, but it also points up the utter uselessness of the European Union when it comes to doing something useful in a crisis situation.

But, if the EU is useless now, that at least is a neutral attribute in that it is not actually, at the moment, doing any damage to the relief effort. That will come later when, as before, it continues with its blind obsession with global warming and the Kyoto agreement, stunting developed world economies and retarding development in the third world.

That point was made admirably by Ross Clark in an op-ed in the Sunday Telegraph today, in a piece entitled: "Disasters don't kill people: poverty does", by the paper’s leader and also in an authored piece by Bjorn Lomberg in the Sunday Times. That latter piece is echoed in this Blog and by my colleague in a more recent posting.

The one thing we can guarantee, however, is that all the practical lessons of the tsunami disaster, and all the sentiments rehearsed here will wash over the heads of the sanctimonious fools that gather at the EU’s donor conference next week.

Instead, my guess is that we will hear self-congratulatory messages, and "firm commitments" to action which in, in the passage of time, do more harm than good. The one thing I would like to do therefore, if I had the opportunity, is emblazon the conference hall with banners in the 20 official languages of the EU, each stating "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

The European disease

In the Sunday Telegraph Mandrake column (which does not appear to be published on-line) is a story which seems to encapsulate modern Britain and which, more importantly, suggests that European public administration mores have spread over here.

The story itself relates to official in charge of building the plush UK parliamentary offices at Portcullis House. Mandrake author, Tim Walker picks up the story:

As the official overseeing the £250 million construction of Portcullis House, Andrew Makepeace landed the House of Commons in the High Court for breaching both UK and European law, It cost the taxpayers around £10 million when the case was lost and the House was forced to pay substantial compensation to a construction company that, the court rules, had been discriminated unlawfully in 1996.

The trial judge said that Makepeace was not only dishonest in the way he had handled this company’s tender on Portcullis House, but that he had then "falsified the reasons" for his action "to cover his tracks" by writing a letter which he "plainly knew did not set out the true reasons" for awarding the contract.

So what happened to Makepeace? Was he dismissed or demoted? Not in Blair’s Britain. He retained his job and his gold-plated pension.

And now this publicly disgraced official has been given the OBE in the New Year honours. He is described in the citation as the "Project sponsor, Parliamentary Estates Directorate, House of Commons".

Tim Walker challenges Makepeace to have the decency not to turn up at Buckingham Palace to accept the award but, as we so often say, don’t hold your breath.

If, of course, this had been an EU commission official, the Eurosceptic press would have been all over the case but, as it is, it only gets a mention on the back page of the Sunday Telegraph.

However, this is straight out of the book of European administration, where Eurostat officials go unpunished, despite "a vast enterprise of looting", where l’escroc Barrot gets made transport commissioner and the biggest thief of them all, Jacques Chirac, gets made president of France.

Giving Makepeace an award somehow rather confirms Blair's "European credentials". His lack of concern for accountability and probity in public life would certainly meet with the approval of his European colleagues and marks the spread of the "European disease" into the British administration.

How Americans see it

Catching up on the somewhat thin media of the week between Christmas and the New Year (apart from the responses to the tsunami, which have shown up the inadequacy of the various international organizations and to which we shall return), I came across two articles. One was in the International Herald Tribune and was entitled Europe drops out of the picture and the other in the Wall Street Journal Europe. This was an editorial published immediately after the Ukrainian election results were finally declared and accepted.

Entitled The Miracle on Independence Square, it dealt with the astonishing events of the previous few weeks in Ukraine and on possible future developments. Very sensibly the article did raise the subject of the gap between western and eastern Ukraine and the difficulties this will present to the newly elected President Yuschenko.

Inevitably, the subject of relationship with the European Union came up. On the whole, the EU, as we have pointed out before, has not distinguished itself in its policy towards Ukraine (or any other post-Soviet state). As we have said before, the reason for this is that it has no real policy, not having any obvious interests.

The WSJE put it in a way that makes it clear that while their writers can see the immediate problems, they are not that well aware of the underlying ones:

“But this revolution will force the West to rethink its policies toward Ukraine.Ukrainians made their moral case for eventual membership in the European Union,which now groups the country alongside Libya and Lebanon as part of its ‘neighbourhood’ non-policy, by fighting for their democracy. With Turkey about to start accession talks, why not Ukraine? The EU can use the best foreign-policy tool at its disposal – the carrot of membership – to help guide the reform process in Ukraine. Now isn’t the time to fret over details, but stay true to a vision of united Continent of democracies.”

Whoever wrote that paragraph is hereby awarded the membership of the not-so-select group of perestroika europhiles, whose general discussion of the EU tends to run along the lines of: good idea but needs reform. Unfortunately, the only way that can be substantiated is by deliberately misreading what the EU is really about and what its various actions are likely to lead to.

First of all, the West had rather varied attitudes to developments in Ukraine. While the US immediately proclaimed its support for transparent democratic processes in that country, followed by several European countries, namely the Baltic ones and Poland, the EU itself, hummed and ha-ed, with Foreign Affairs Supremo Javier Solana running around, trying to set up negotiations and preserve stability.

Secondly, the reason Ukraine is classed with Libya and other North African countries is an obvious one: the EU as such has no specific interests or foreign policy. (Yes, I know I have said it before, but it needs to be repeated a few hundred times, before general understanding dawns.)

That famous common foreign and security policy has no purpose but to exist. Therefore, it functions in two ways: as a convoluted compromise between various countries, such as the well-described “neighbourhood non-policy”, and as a rolling programme of unnecessary and potentially destabilizing activity.

We have seen quite a lot of the latter and shall see more as the military units will be sent off into badly understood situations that are of little concern and where solutions are hard to come by. Those 800 soldiers in DR Congo, who were, understandably, too worried to leave their compound are an obvious example.

The neighbourhood non-policy was created in its cackhanded fashion because France and other Mediterranean members of the EU could not allow the organization to concentrate on the former Soviet states and relationship with them. Though this is clearly of importance – they are, after all, the EU’s backyard – it shifts emphasis even more away from most of the core members and their interests, particularly France. So the non-policy had to be expanded to include countries that are of interest to the latter: those around the Mediterranean and in North Africa.

To this one may add the fact that Solana is a Spaniard. Therefore, he is unlikely to have the sort of intrinsic understanding of eastern Europe that the Balts and Poles do. A Finn in the same position, for example, would not be able to deal easily with problems around the Mediterranean. Which goes back to the same point: there is no such beast as European interests.

So we come to what the WSJE calls the EU’s “best foreign-policy tool”. Actually, it is the only one, as we have pointed out before on numerous occasions. Since the EU, especially Germany, wants to be on very good terms with Russia (a small matter of gas and oil supplies), that tool is not going to be used on Ukraine. President Putin is unlikely to be happy with the idea of accession negotiations, however long they may take (ten years, at least, are predicted for Turkey) and President Putin’s happiness is of paramount importance.

The rest of the paragraph would be of remarkable silliness, were it not for the dangerous misinformation contained in it. It is time writers on the WSJE and other publications grasped that the EU is not a democratic entity and, therefore, membership of it does not strengthen democracy. Au contraire. It undermines the existing accountable, constitutional democratic structures of its members.

Which brings me to the final point: what on earth is a “united Continent of democracies”? In what sense is it to be united? If we talk in general terms of a loose union of democracies, then Ukraine is already a member, conditional on how its politics will develop. If we are talking of a real union with, let us say, a Commission that consists of dubious politicians but which has sole power of legislative initiation as well as being the executive; a Council of Ministers that decides far-reaching legal and regulatory structures behind closed doors on the basis of horse-trading; a European Parliament that is elected on the basis of closed lists by an ever decreasing number of people, that does not legislate or, even, debate in any meaningful fashion; a Court of Justice, whose purpose is to further integration; then where do all these democracies come into the picture?

So much for the newspaper that actually writes about the EU. But what happens in the United States? Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official, a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington DC and the author of Europe drops out of the picture has tried to find out what the attitude to Europe is across America.

The conclusion he came to after a good deal of research is not exactly flattering either to Europeans or their self-important politicians. Outside Washington there is precious little interest. Businesses pay some attention because they want to carry on doing business but, apart from that, interest has long ago shifted to other parts of the world.

Economically, Asia has become far more important. The expanding American free trade area has focused attention even more on Central and South America. Other parts of the world may be problematic. There are foes and friends to be found everywhere. Europe does not figure on this map. Its economy is shrinking; it is no longer a stalwart ally in the fight against the enemy – terrorism (Britain, for the time is an exception, but that will not last as the Hoon “reforms” go through).

I imagine some of the comments on this posting will tell me rather superciliously that Americans are not interested in the outside world. This is not true. Reading the American broadsheet press will show considerably more interest in the world than reading the British equivalent will. It is just that the interest is not in Europe.

As Mr Merry puts it:

“Europe is not a problem, not global, and of the past. A nice place to visit,but pricey.”

He concludes his article with the following paragraphs:

“Americans perceive a Europe that values comfort and safety, but that is also in long-term demographic decline and disengagement from unpleasant realities. War may no longer be part of European life (for which Americans think they can merit some of the credit), but in American eyes it is a fantasy to project this reality on the wider world.

Above all, Europe is increasingly eclipsed by Asia. As people oriented toward the future, Americans see Europe as isolationist and Asia as resurgent. Americans would like partnership with Europe but think that finding ways to work with China is more important. Finally, the American demographic itself is visibly shifting away from its European origins,with America’s future as a “global nation” apaprent on the streets of almost any city across the heartland.”

A few points have to be made about this conclusion. This disengagement to a great extent has spread to Washington, or, at least, to the political think-tank world. European development and European integration, its pros and cons, are rarely seen to be worthy of analysis. (Though, I am delighted to note that Cato Institute, after a long gap, has once again organized a discussion on the subject, though only because T. R. Reid of the Washington Post has published a book called The United States of Europe.)

This is not a healthy situation on either side. Being sidelined in this way will cause greater stagnation in Europe itself, that might have serious repercussions. It is, however, inevitable with the sort of structure the EU is and with the sort of aims it has set itself.

The idea that somehow war has been permanently eroded from Europe is laughable. There are the problems in the Balkans, in the post-Soviet states, in western Europe with terrorist groups. But the sort of attitude Europeans have displayed towards these problems are very dangerous: they consist of ignoring what is coming until it arrives; then scrabble round for immediate solutions that ought to have been worked out before; sometimes, as in the Balkans, the Americans have to be called on for help.

Nor is this situation a happy one for the Americans. Yes, they can ignore Europe up to a point, as being of little value or danger. But the EU will always have the capacity ot create trouble and undermine any western alliance, as it has already shown.

Nor can there be a complete break, despite the demographic changes. The United States and its political ideas grew out of European ones and, especially, British ones. Then there is the question of the struggle against the unaccountable, anti-democratic transnational organizations, that the United States and any real democracy will increasingly have to wage.

The EU is the political expression of that “movement”. It is the epitome of unaccountablity and anti-democracy. It is a transnational organization par excellence. In the great battle for world-wide influence, it will be ranged against freedom and democracy.

As ever, the question is which side do the individual member states want to find themselves on. We had better decide soon, while we still can. Before we are irredeemably shunted into the sidelines.

The Booker column

This week, in his column, Booker excels himself with a timely piece headed: "Do you recognise your rulers?"

With his peice accompanied by a photograph of the EU commission, he asks "How many of these faces of our government can you identify?", suggesting that a New Year resolution for 2005 might be for us all to recognise just where the government of our country now lies.

"If government is measured by who has the power to put forward the laws which rule our lives," he writes, "then to a great extent our rulers are not Tony Blair and John Prescott but the 25 commissioners of the European Union."

This really must be the theme for 2005 for, as our domestic politicians posture and prance, while the increasingly vapid media indulges in soap-opera politics, for want of addressing the real issues, power drains away to Brussels and the only response of that stupid, ignorant man Blair is to try and give away more powers through the EU constitution.

It is quite apposite, therefore, that Booker’s second story is about the long-running saga of the Shropshire firm run by Dr Per Lindstrand, the celebrated Swedish balloonist.

Until 15 months ago, Booker writes, Lindstrand Technologies in Oswestry was the world's leading manufacturer of aerostats, giant helium balloons, costing £500,000 each, which carry up to 30 people 500 feet into the air on a fixed wire.

In September 2003, when the right to certify aircraft was handed over to the EU's new European Aviation Safety Agency, it became illegal, thanks to a quirk in British law, for Dr Lindstrand's aerostats to be sold anywhere in the EU, including Britain. This handed over a monopoly of the market to Lindstrand's only rival, Aerophile, run by its French founder, Matthieu Gobbi, who publicly boasted that EASA had "decided to adopt as the European standard many of the regulations that I helped develop".

Unless Dr Lindstrand's aerostats could quickly be certified by the UK's Civil Aviation Authority, now little more than a front-office for EASA, he would be forced to lay off much of his 90-strong workforce, or even move his operations abroad. When this absurd situation was first publicised by his MP, Owen Paterson, and through this column, the chairman of the CAA, Sir Roy McNulty, promised that the problem would be resolved by Christmas 2003.

After a whole year of Kafkaesque prevarication by the CAA, during which Dr Lindstrand lost millions of pounds in potential orders while Aerophile mopped up the market, Mr Paterson and I again challenged this scandalous victimisation. We were promised, both by the CAA and by transport minister, Charlotte Atkins, that action would be taken.

Dr Lindstrand has now been informed that this month he will have a visit from officials of the CAA's Flight Test Department. As he points out in a letter to Sir Roy McNulty, "this is laughable as there is no flight test to be carried out". His aerostats don't even have a pilot, because they simply rise and fall on a fixed wire. What irks him even more, as he loses hundreds of thousands of pounds a month, is that Sir Roy recently made a speech accusing the EASA of being unable to "get their act together", because they lack sufficient technical expertise.

"In all my 28 years as a lighter-than-air manufacturer," says Dr Lindstrand, "I have never been treated so badly". Meanwhile his rival Aerophile continues to enjoy its lucrative monopoly – thanks to the EASA, whose regulations its managing director is proud "to have helped develop".

This, dear readers, is utter madness. In fact it is worse than madness. Here, demonstrated for all to see, it is the way power has drained away from our ministers so, when they are confronted with an outrage of this nature, all they can do is bleat from the sidelines while nothing at all happens.

It is instances like these that illustrate so well exactly what membership of the European Union means – that our ministers are eunochs and that any idea of democracy and accountability is a hollow charade.

Booker then moves on to a pertinent comment about the contrast brought out by reporting of the tsunami disaster. He notes that there have been two quite different ways by which people now try to convey the scale of such a terrifying phenomenon.

Those viewing it from a distance, such as seismologists, have all spoken solemnly of walls of water "six metres high" roaring "up to a kilometre" inland. However, those directly caught up in this awful experience have almost without exception talked of the sea "withdrawing several hundred yards", followed by "a wave 20 feet high", which filled rooms "to within a foot of the ceiling".

It is as if, he writes, that we now speak in two different languages: the language of ordinary folk, and that of the ruling elite, abetted by politically correct BBC hacks (although, initially, even one or two of these, in the excitement of the moment, forgot to observe the orthodoxies).

This is something which is ever more pervasive in our lives – something I was hinting at in my New Year piece, when I wrote that never more had I felt so out of tune with our government. There is a terrifying gap building up between "us" and "them", to the extent that we no longer even share the same language. That distance is dangerous. In might breed apathy and indifference in the short-term but the next stage is resentment and from there comes anger.

At least, however, we have a way of identifying the "enemy" – by their accursed metres and kilogrammes. Far from getting used to the metric system (or, at least the bastardised version in current use) I now regard it as the language of the occupying power.

For his final story, Booker picks up on a point raised earlier in this Blog, where we observed that while the response to the tsunami disaster was turning into some sort of obscene beauty parade, about who could be the most generous donor, the much-vilified US was getting stuck in with the most practical form of assistance – a carrier group and a fleet of amphibious assault ships.

As we watch our television sets today, we see stories of aid logjams, and stores piling up at the airports, with no means of delivery, while the people in real need are being succoured by local charities and – of all things – by US military helicopters.

The impression I am getting is that, as the NGOs and the relief agencies grind to a halt, the serious work is being progressively taken on by the militaries of the different countries, and by local governments and ordinary people.

When the immediate furore has died down, there must be a serious accounting of the way relief has been organised (about which my colleague will have more to say) but, for the moment, the point which seems to be emerging is that, for all the high-flown rhetoric of the "tranzies", when the chips are down, it is ordinary people and nation states which get things done.

Off the blocks

In his televised New Year address, president Chirac has announced that he will hold a referendum on the EU constitution "before summer".

"You, the sovereign people, will be called on to choose your own destiny," he told viewers, effectively launching the campaign.

This means that the French referendum will be held at roughly the same time as the British general election, which should provide some interesting moments for Mr Blair if he tries to keep EU issues off the election agenda.

Well, what can I add to that?

Precious little. As good a litany of this country's woes as any. I would say, much of that extends to the whole of the western world, which, fifteen years after its victory over the evil Soviet system, finds itself in a quandary. I do see some signs of hope, but, alas not here and not on the continent of Europe.

Still, as my colleague says, we shall carry on with our work and our great hope is that the powers that be will find our blog seriously inconvenient.

Happy new year to all our readers. May the force be with us all.

2005 – A New Year

There is a wry comment made about Irish politics that if after having been briefed fully about the political situation you think you understand it, you haven’t been listening.

Much the same must go towards any traditional expression of happiness for the New Year now dawned. If you are happy, you simply do not know what is going on – not least with the appalling situation in South East Asia. On that basis, to wish our readers a happy New Year seems somewhat inappropriate.

But it is not just the aftermath of the tsunami that casts such a cloud on proceedings. This year, there is going to be a general election. Barring a miracle, it seems almost certain that we are going to see another Labour victory and even, possibly, a further decline in the fortunes of the Conservative Party.

Anyone with any political awareness and an understanding of how we are governed, and how we should be governed, cannot help but feel gloomy at the prospect. I cannot be alone in wondering quite how much longer this nation can survive under a Labour administration.

As if that is not enough, many pundits are quite seriously suggesting that 2005 will be a year of recession and some go further to predict that we could well see an economic collapse on the scale of the events that triggered the 1929 depression.

On top of that, experts in the energy field have been warning that the current electricity supply situation is so fragile that the national grid is only one crisis away from disaster. With just a small adverse event, we could see the lights going out all over England.

Returning to the political situation though, what is now last year was the year a new government took over in Brussels, our government – in many areas or "competences" the supreme government of the United Kingdom.

If I have never before felt so entirely out of tune with my own government, it is partly because it no longer resides in Westminster and Whitehall but in Brussels.

That government rules without my vote and thus without my permission – a sentiment shared by many of my fellow Englishmen (and women) – on which basis it and its collaborators in the British government lack, in my view, any legitimacy, democratic or otherwise.

In a year when I found myself twice locked up for refusing to pay taxes to this government, I felt I owed it to myself in a small way to prove that which none of us should ever forget – particularly those who rule over us: that, in the absence of consent, they rule by coercion. In the final analysis, they must exercise their power by depriving us of our liberty, using whatever level of violence is necessary to achieve that end.

It is only personal fear, and the effects of state violence on my nearest and dearest, that force me to conform with a government I detest – both governments, actually, the one on London and the one in Brussels.

This year, those governments are going to expend time and energy – and some of my money – on convincing us that we should vote to give our government over the water still more power to exercise its baleful rule.

With that, I make myself – and you all – one promise. We (and I know I can speak for my colleague on this) will expend all our available skills and energy on seeking to frustrate these travesties of governments and do our very best to bring this nation closer to the state where, once again, we can call ourselves a democracy.

Much of that energy, perforce, will be directed through this Blog – which we see as a prime weapon to counter the insidious propaganda of our enemies. Thus, if I cannot feel comfortable with wishing you all a happy New Year, I can at least wish you a productive year, and offer you the hope that, by the end of this December coming, we are that much closer to achieving a mutual goal.

I will leave my respected colleague to express her own wishes, in her own way.