The sound of Salzburg

The meeting “The Sound of Europe” has come to an end with very little to show for the great event – but then what did anyone expect?

There have been various accounts of what, if anything, had been achieved and the one that made me laugh out loud was in the English language Wiener Zeitung:

“It was to be a talk on common values (such as music) and future trends but artists say it was all just hot air; politicians could not agree on whether or not Europe really was in a crisis but the president of the EU-commission, José Manuel Barroso, said it was a “wonderful group and music therapy”.”

Why anyone should think that politicians are the right people to discuss Europe’s art, music and culture in general, remains a mystery.

The answer is, presumably, that it was not that they were discussing but, as is their wont, they were using such words as “art” and “music” and “culture” to promote their own cherished project, European integration and the constitution, in the hopes that nobody notices that these are not at all the same concepts.

Even the Financial Times managed an ironic title: “Leaders sing the praises of the ‘European Project’”. Not Mozart precisely, though Richard Strauss might have been persuaded to write somewhat satirical music for an opera buffa.

The FT’s Brussels Bureau Chief seems to have been unimpressed:

“But as so often with such initiatives, the Sound of Europe conference in Salzburg was notable for the presence of the continent’s political, cultural and academic elite and the absence of ordinary citizens.

The only connection with the views of citizens was via a video presentation, inevitably hit by a technical glitch that left their voices unheard. The Sound of Europe began with the sound of the people’s silence.”

It seems that Dominique de Villepin and Jan Peter Balkenende assured the listeners that the people of their countries did not vote “No to Europe”. Probably not, since it is impossible to vote No to a continent. They did, however, indubitably vote No to the European Constitution and that is really the problem all the attendees (mostly, one understands from the older members of the EU) had to face.

On the whole, they seem to have been rather confused. On the one hand, Europe is all about culture, with poor old Mozart being the finest representative of artists rising above national boundaries. This clearly could not have happened without the EU, except that, wait a minute …. Mozart was born 250 years ago and the EU was not precisely a lively force at the time. (Though there were various attempts to integrate the countries whether they liked it or not. Step forward Louis XIV, Louis XV and Napoleon.)

Remembering this, Austrian Chancellor and temporary European President Wolfgang Schüssel called on all present to ensure that the EU is about more than just economics. How often have we heard that particular serenade? The trouble is that while people might just about put up with it being about economics (and increasingly less so), as soon as they fully realize it is about other things, they decide against it.

In fact, there was an awful lot that we have heard before:

“Both Mr Schüssel and Mr Barroso vowed to respond to demands from citizens that Europe stop interfering in areas that should be the domain of national or local authorities.”

All well and good but Commission President Barroso also

“… believes the European Union needs to take decisive policy action in areas such as energy supplies, better regulation and opening up the single market in services before troubling voters again with the constitution, with its raft of institutional innovations such as an EU foreign minister and full-time president.”

Inevitably, the prize for asinine comments must go to a theatre director:

“Others such as Jürgen Flimm, the German theatre director, said the problem was a lack of understanding of Europe’s cultural heritage, and that “workers in Romania and farmers in Bulgaria” needed to know more about EU culture.”

As Expatica, the English language news service from Belgium, explains, the whole shebang was criticized by the Austrian Social-Democrats, who held their own conference in Dublin, by the group of “independence and democracies” in the European Parliament and by anyone else who noticed that the conference included all the same suspects discussing the same matters.

Whatever happened to D for dialogue with all the citizens?

Never mind, Mark Leonard, the boy-wonder of NuLab and of the europhile intelligentsia in this country, was there and was quoted by the BBC. Interestingly, the BBC, which hosted the debate during which Master Mark was heavily defeated by Charles Dumas and myself, did not bother to ask anyone who may harbour doubts about the project.

Try as I might I cannot find confirmation of David Rennie’s account that there was a discussion about creating an EU news channel, heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. It is possible that the delegates in Salzburg were not aware that such a news channel, Euronews, already exists.

Maybe they were not aware of the French attempt to set up a rival to CNN, currenly floundering for lack of finance, as we have reported before.

Maybe, they actually meant something else. Not a news channel but a real TV channel with other programmes: documentaries, plays, crime series, soaps and reality TV shows. I think there are plenty of possibilities there.

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The problem starts at home

Recently, we have posted two stories, exploring the phenomenon of the "regulatory mindset" (here and here), where we see the common skein that binds Whitehall and Brussels is the belief that there is no problem so big or so small that it cannot be solved by making yet another law.

To that extent, we aver, leaving the EU would not make that much difference for, as long as this mindset prevailed in Whitehall, our own legislators are just as capable of passing their own inane laws making our lives misery as those in Brussels.

For every law, however, there must also be the process of enforcement, without which any law is meaningless. It is also the case that, to an extent, a poor law can be improved by good enforcement and, vice versa: the intents of a good law can be undermined by bad or inadequate enforcement. And, of course, a bad law can be made even worse by clumsy or over-zealous enforcement.

It is in this latter area that the UK seems to excel. No EU law, it seems – whether it is slaughterhouse rules or financial regulations – is so bad that our gifted enforcement officials cannot make it inestimably worse.

Therein lies a major problem for Eurosceptics in that many of the more damaging effects of EU law that we have followed over the years have arisen not from the law, per se, but from the irrational and over-zealous enforcement by British officials. But the further, more fundamental problem is that these officials do not need EU law in order to make our lives misery. They are equally adept at applying their own brand of insanity to British laws.

That much is evidenced by a report in today’s Telegraph which recounts how a Rotherham couple have been issued with a £50 spot fine "in a dawn swoop" by council wardens for scattering winter feed for wild birds.

As if that was not bad enough, it seems that the couple, George and Janine Cooper were secretly filmed for four days by council officials as they made their "seed run" around their village of Kiveton Park, near Rotherham, South Yorks.

They were, according to the Telegraph, "shocked when two wardens appeared from the shadows and gave them the £50 fixed penalty notice for dropping litter. The wardens said that CCTV cameras had been tracking their movements for days."

In defence of the council action, a spokesman says: "Obviously we want people to be responsible and not put down too much food so that it piles up and may become a health hazard," while Rotherham's environmental enforcement officer, Richard Brammall, said the council had received a series of complaints from people in recent months about problems caused by a large number of birds. He added: "The problem was traced to a couple who were dumping large amounts of bread. They were asked to stop but the food kept on appearing."

You can actually see that there might be a germ of a problem here and it is more than possible that the newspaper has not told the whole story. But one cannot but marvel at the totally disproportionate use of resources and the cack-handness of officials in dealing with this issue – an example of what Booker and I came to call "the sledgehammer to miss the nut".

It is precisely this sort of thing that gives one the general impression that the system is spiralling out of control. We could add many other examples but one of the classics is the "reign of terror" being conducted by councils over parking, in an often illegal manner, against which Neil Herron is doing such sturdy battle.

While we all rail against the depredations of parking wardens, however, the greater complaint is the mad way the law is being applied (or not). Compare and contrast two situations.

One the one hand, I was told by a mini-cab driver that he had been issued a ticket when he stopped by the roadside to look at a map for directions. On the other, is a situation from my own experience. We live in a cul-de-sac which leads directly on to the main road, at the brow of a hill, alongside the flank of a tall building. When driving out, visibility is difficult at the best of times but, when vehicles park on the road right up to the junction, in defiance of the Highway Code, we are blind. You just have to nose out, very cautiously, and hope for the best.

Realising the danger, we wrote to the police, asking them to control the parking. We went to see them and even turned up at one of these ghastly "community meetings". No action was taken and, sure enough, a local health visitor, unaware of the hazard, was badly injured and her car written off when she tried what we have to do every day. And still no action.

Therein is encapsulated the wider problem, of which the EU is part, but in many people's eyes, only a very small part. It is hardly surprising that Euroscepticism has not set the nation alight, when there are so many other issues to be concerned about. To succeed, the Eurosceptic movement is somehow going to have to link all these issues together, making it clear that the EU is not the problem, but a symptom of a broader problem which is largely created by mad legislators with their equally mad officials.

In other words, the problem starts at home – as does the solution.

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What kind of European Union?

British Euroscepticism "is a myth". So says Reijo Kemppinen, the head of the Commission's EU representation in the UK, in an "exclusive interview" with Euractiv.com.

He wants to move the British debate away from the "useless to be or not to be" discussion. The UK, he claims, is not more eurosceptic than other member states. Depending on how you define eurosceptic, more than half of Europe is. "The British people may have great reservations as to how the institutions work and how they have been built," he says, "but I don't think people will put into question the idea of having an EU, it is more a question of what kind of EU."

I am thus reminded of a joke in which Saddam Hussein came to New York to attend a meeting of the UN Security Council. The night before, he spends his time in his hotel watching Star Trek and the following day, on his way into the Security Council, he bumps into George W. Bush.

George W. asks Saddam what he thinks of New York, and Saddam launches into an enthusiastic tirade about American television and, in particular, Star Trek. But, he complains, the programme is biased. You have Americans in it, he says. You have Russians, Chinese, English, all the world is represented… even extra-terrestrials, but no Arabs. "Why is that?"

"Ah!", says George W. "That's because it is set in the future."

Despite Kemppinen's fond wishes, I have in mind the same future for the European Union.

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Riding two horses

Just over a week ago, the aviation world was intrigued to see recently released photographs of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by BAE Systems, known as the Corax. Observers noted the resemblance to a cancelled US military reconnaissance UAV, while Defense Tech hinted that it could be associated with the joint UK/American venture code-named "Project Churchill", an effort focused on the joint, airborne command and control of the UCAV.

A report in Janes International Defence Review had already identified this "little-discussed effort" – described as "the UK's long-running and highly classified work into UCAVs and home-grown stealth technology". This, apparently, is still continuing, despite the MoD having cancelled the joint UK/US Future Offensive Air System (FOAS) programme, which included UCAV development.

Following that cancellation and the recent Defence Industry Strategy Review, when defence secretary John Reid announced that the UK had no plans to develop any further manned aircraft after the current generation, we have speculated on this blog that the UK was poised to join the French-led Neuron programme, being carried out entirely separately from the US projects.

So far, no announcement has been forthcoming but, late last week, the UK took a step into the French camp with the announcement that France and the United Kingdom were jointly to examine lightweight radar technology for use on small platforms such as UAVs, under the aegis of the European Defence Agency (EDA).

UAV reconnaissance has been collectively identified by EU nations as a key technology to develop in support of the European Rapid Reaction Force and their development remains one of the EDA's top priorities. The EDA already has issued the first of two small technology study contracts, in this case for line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight data links on long-endurance UAVs.

The Anglo-French project now appears to put the UK firmly in both the French and the US camps. Given the American sensitivity to technology transfer and the suspicions about technology leakage, and the fact that the French are technology partners with the Russians in the development of UCAVs, it remains to be seen whether the British position is sustainable.

Riding two horses, as any cowboy will tell you, can be an uncomfortable – if not dangerous – experience.

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What's in a word?

This posting will have not guns in it. Not directly, anyway. Some of the people it is about have guns but I am not writing about guns. Not big guns or small guns; not rifles or shotguns. Got that? No blinking guns.

I am not against guns and I am not against people owning guns. I think this country was probably a better place when lots of people owned guns and learned at an early stage how to use them. BUT, I am bored with the subject.

So, having got that off my chest, let me turn to the subject of the posting: the EU foreign ministers. As we reported earlier they were due to discuss a common position vis-á-vis the new(ish) situation in the Middle East.

Then again, I have also expressed the view that a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas will not be all that different from the self-same authority being led by Fatah. If anything, this is easier to deal with as there can be no doubts about the organization’s intentions.

It seems that this is not crystal clear to everybody. How else are we to understand the curious phraseology of the EU foreign ministers. Or, to be precise, how are we to interpret the phraseology, as reported by the BBC World Service: “EU 'to keep funding Palestinians'”.

The story was summed up in the first paragraph:

“The European Union says it will continue funding the Palestinian Authority so long as its new government is committed to peace with Israel.”

The thing is, the new government will have Hamas in the majority, and the latter has never been committed to peace with Israel. How can there be a “so long as its new government is committed”?

Deutsche Welle puts it slightly differently. According to this, Javier Solana has stated that Hamas must change its attitude:

“They have been a terrorist organization. They have to change their methods and they have to accept that violence is incompatible with democracy. They have to also recognize Israel, because in the end what we are trying to do is construct a two-state model and to do that, you have to talk to the other.”

I suppose that does not say that money will not be forthcoming unless Hamas changes but there is the problem of it being listed as a terrorist organization.

Secretary of State Rice has made it clear that the American government expected the European ones to stay on side as far as Hamas was concerned and not go around handing out large sums of money while terrorism was openly glorified and Israel’s right to exist was not recognized.

“Supporting a peace process on the one hand... and on the other hand, supporting the activities of a partner in that set of negotiations which does not recognize the existence of the other partner, it just does not work.”

Meanwhile Angela Merkel, speaking at a joint press conference with Mahmoud Abbas, said quite firmly, that Germany would not support and, presumably, not give any money to an organization that would not renounce violence and refused to recognize another country’s right to exist.

Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has called upon the donors to continue giving money, to ensure that the PA could continue to function and run the Palestinian territories. Since the PA was not all that successful in doing that before this election, that particular call does not seem to be rooted in anything except sheer panic.

A separate story on the BBC website tells us that the talks between the EU3 and Iran have once again ended “without progress” as nothing new was said by the Iranian negotiators. An impasse seems to have been reached on every front.

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Fact checkers?

One of the more pompous claims of the MSM – in asserting their moral supremacy over the blogosphere – is that their stories are checked for factual accuracy by the legions of journalists, subs and editors, whereas mere bloggers can just post anything they like on the web, right or wrong.

One such story was undoubtedly the front-page scoop in the Sunday Times yesterday, revealing that "laws that threaten the British 'pinta' and traditional loaf of sliced bread are set to be waved through the European parliament this week."

This is precisely the sort of story, you would think, that is meat and drink (or bread and milk?) to our site but, knowing from experience that the claims of the MSM so often as empty as their stories, I held back until I had time to check it out.

Being rather busy checking the facts for one of my own stories, it wasn’t until today that I got down to the task and, sure enough – as some instinct had warned me – the story is utter garbage.

Far from banning the "pinta" as the Sunday Times asserts, what we are dealing with here is a rather boring piece of technical legislation, a directive "laying down rules on nominal quantities for pre-packed products, repealing Council Directives 75/106/EEC and 80/232/EEC, and amending Council Directive 76/211/EEC". Its purpose, far from banning the "pinta" is to remove the requirement to sell a whole range of products in specific quantities. In effect, therefore, the proposal removes the statutory requirement to sell milk in pints (this only applying to doorstep milk anyway), which is a far cry from banning it.

Nevertheless, this did not stop the Sunday Times launching into a fantasy of its own making, reporting, "Dairy farmers and British MEPs are fighting a last-ditch campaign to block the moves to harmonise packaged food across the European Union."

Then, to make its story, political editor David Cracknell rang up Mr Renta-Quote himself, Christopher Heaton-Harris, the Tory MEP, who – as he so often does - added his own tuppence-worth of garbage, demonstrating - as he so often does - that he did not have the first idea of what was going on.

This morning, the BBC website rode to the rescue of the EU, headlining "No EU threat to pint of milk" after having contacted a spokesman for the European Parliament in London.

The only outcome of this story, therefore, is to give the EU commission more ammunition to support its own claim that the British media does nothing else but peddle "Euro-Myths", while reinforcing the MSM's increasingly deserved reputation for producing garbage. Fact-checkers, they are not.

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A long time coming

Rank clearly does have its privileges for, while we chunter away to ourselves on this blog, when a senior judge takes up an issue on the same point, it goes straight into the pages of The Daily Telegraph. The only consolation is that he too will be ignored.

The point the learned judge makes, in this case, is that there is simply too much law, set out in a piece entitled Judge attacks 'explosion' in new legislation.

The man in question is Sir Roger Toulson chairman of the Law Commission. But his recipe for improvement, we are told, is that there would be less need for new legislation if Parliament scrutinised existing laws after they had been passed.

In 1965, when the commission was established, there were 7,500 pages of new laws, including both statutes and secondary legislation. By 2003, that figure had grown to 16,000 pages, plus another 11,000 pages of European Union legislation. In 2004, the figure for domestic legislation had risen still further to almost 18,000 pages.

"There has been, over the life of the Law Commission, a legislative explosion," Sir Roger said. "It has been a steady progression: each government has legislated more than its predecessor." One reason, he says, was that life had become more complicated. Another was that Britain had become part of the EU.

The Telegraph leader takes up Toulson’s points (oddly enough, not reproduced on-line), asking what is the point of all this new law. Do you feel safer as a result of the 30,000 pages of new laws passed each year by this Government? Or freer? Answering its own questions, the result, the paper says, is in fact a society with more laws but less justice.

Actually, Toulson isn’t even off the starting blocks. Parliamentary scrutiny is all very well but would not be necessary if the laws did not exist in the first place. As we pointed out, in a post last December, the underlying problem is the "regulatory mindset", the belief that there are few problems in life that cannot be solved by a new law.

But, since we have rampaging law-factories in both Brussels and Whitehall – the only growth industry we have - nothing it going to get any better until we, the people, decide we have had enough and cast off our chains. And that looks like a long time coming.

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In for the long haul

Never let it be said that EU funding does not create jobs – in Romania at least.

According to the Bucharest Daily News, prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu has decided at an extraordinary meeting of his government to approve the employment of 8,500 extra civil servants to ensure "efficient management" of EU funds and an "optimum absorption rate".

The employees will be divided among the ministries which deal with European funds and – guess what - most of the new employees - 6,000 - are being distributed to the Ministry of Agriculture. Given them time and they will reach the magic level of more bureaucrats than farmers. Then they will be truly "European".

Meanwhile, extra effort is going on "cross-border cooperation" with Bulgaria, aimed at spending the €50 million available to finance infrastructure, environment, economic development and cultural projects. This follows complaints that the "absorption rate" amounted to 12.14 percent for the year 2003, having declined from 44.68 percent in 2002 and 96.8 percent in 2001.

Hard work, spending all this money, especially if you're in it for the long haul.

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Another one down

Sneaked out without, it seems, any announcement by the Ministry of Defence, yet another important contract has gone to a European supplier, this one in preference to a product developed by our own BAE Systems.

The contract in question is for an advanced mine disposal system known as Seafox (pictured above), worth "in excess of £35 million". It is to be built by the Bremen-based Atlas Elektronik GmbH, announced by the company and its British partner on 9 January this year.

Seafox, we are told, is an expendable, remotely-operated underwater vehicle that includes an explosive warhead used to neutralise the target sea mine. It is launched from the parent ship and guided to the mine using a combination of an on-board sonar and television sensors. Delivery and installation will commence early in 2007 and will continue over a period of three years.

The award was given in preference to BAE Systems "Archerfish" design, which was developed privately by the company in partnership with Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, at a cost of over £5 million. The innovative nature of the weapon was recognised during 2003 when it won a top gold award in the BAE Systems Chairman's Award for Innovation.

The ultimate accolade, however, came the same year, when Archerfish was selected by the US Navy, with the award of an $18 million programme to equip its Airborne Mine Neutralisation System programme, developing it for operations from the MH-60 helicopter.

The system was still being evaluated by the MoD in 2004 but it was dropped shortly afterwards. In January 2005 Labour MP Syd Rapson (Portsmouth, North) in whose constituency the weapon was being developed, challenged minister of state for defence, Adam Ingram, about the programme, saying: "The Americans have grabbed it with both hands … We have lost a brilliant invention, and export potential for this country."

Offering no details, Ingram simply dead-batted the complaint, saying that Archerfish had been "deselected" in the competition "on the basis of its performance against the UK's requirement" – a requirement that has never been revealed.

The award to Atlas Elektronik, however, underlines another irony. At the time of the competition, the company was owned by BAE Systems. In 2005, however, BAE Systems decided to sell it, a sale that was held up when the German government refused to allow the French-owned Thales conglomerate to purchase it outright, this being considered against the national interest.

Eventually, at the very end of December, the company was sold to ThyssenKrupp and the European defence conglomerate EADS, each owning 60 and 40 percent respectively and, just over a week later, the MoD awarded the Seafox contract to it.

Needless to say, nothing of this has found its way into the national media, although the local Portsmouth papers have covered it fully – and rather well – following the defence aspects as well as the employment issues (click on illustrations to enlarge).

This of course, is merely the latest in a long line of contracts that have gone to European manufacturers, including the infamous missile system for the new Type 45 destroyers.

By coincidence, the first of this class, HMS Daring, is to be launched – weather permitting – in three days time, and event celebrated by Sylvia Pfeifer in the Sunday Telegraph. Not for one moment would you get any hint of what a disastrous project this has become from the gushing Mz Pfeifer but then, as with the Archerfish project, we have long given up expecting adult reporting on defence issues from the MSM.

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They are going to meet

Tomorrow the EU foreign ministers will foregather in Brussels to discuss what the common line on Hamas should be in political and, above all, financial terms. Going on past experience, a common position is going to be next to impossible to work out.

So far, the European governments have been insistent that they will not deal with Hamas unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel’s right to exist. Germany has been particularly adamant on the subject and Angela Merkel, who is about to visit the Palestinian territories (well, does she ever stay at home?) has said that she will not meet the Hamas leadership.

So far, we have heard nothing from the Great Panjandrum, Javier Solana or, for that matter, l’escroc Chirac. Whatever happened to the French policy in the Middle East?

There are problems ahead. According to Deutsche Welle

“EU diplomats say time is of the essence, and the Europeans should watch how government building progresses and how the politics of Hamas develops.

If Hamas swears off violence and acknowledges Israel's right to exist, that would be a step in the right direction and a signal that the EU can continue channeling extensive financial aid to the Palestinian Authority without worry. But the ministers have not gone quite so far as to draft concrete demands for the Hamas or to threaten with financial consequences.”

So what are they going to do?

“Last year the EU headquarters in Brussels handed out some 280 million euros to the Palestinians. Combined with bilateral aid from the 25 EU members, the sum came to over a half a billion euros ($612 million). The EU is the single largest financial backer for the Palestinians, and stopping the flow of much-needed cash could seriously put a dent in Hamas's activities.

On Thursday, the European Union pledged continued support for the Palestinian economy even after Hamas won the legislative elections. So far no strings have been attached to this offer, but the 25-nation bloc has warned that the new government must be committed to peaceful relations with Israel.”

It is, as we know, not the Palestinians who received all that lovely moolah but the Palestinian Authority and a good deal of it disappeared, ne’er to be seen again. That, at least in part, is the reason for the Hamas victory.

It would appear that the EU wants to go on pouring money into the Palestinian Authority, no matter who runs it and where the money is going to but needs to find a way to get round those pesky rules about terrorists (and the general shock at the Hamas victory).

There is, of course, former President Carter’s suggestion of channelling it through the UN, thus by-passing the legal problem. This has the merit of ensuring that a good deal of the money gets stolen before it ever gets to Hamas.

Meanwhile, Hamas is assuring all and sundry that they will not put up with financial pressure but will look for money elsewhere, that is the Arab world. This may turn out to be more difficult than they imagine. Some Arab governments will pay what will amount to hush money – here it is and leave us alone – but others are not that keen on encouraging another terrorist organization.

There is Iran, of course, but there are limits to its capacity for supporting outside causes. There is Hizbollah as well. Also, Hamas tend to be Sunnis and Iranians Shi’ites. That does not preclude deals but makes life a little difficult. But, above all, there are economic problems in the country itself. Unemployment runs at 25 per cent, there is serious discontent in various parts and bombs appear to go off in places where the President is expected to appear.

Still, judging by the cautious reporting, the new Hamas-led PA might not have to look to Arab countries for finances. What’s wrong with the EU? Why break the habit of a lifetime?

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This stupid nation

The Business this morning ran two leading articles, headed respectively "The Stupid Nation (1) & (2)".

The first of the leaders refers to its front-page story which reports a "groundbreaking study of 10,000 children". This reveals that 11- and 12-year-olds are between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago in terms of their ability to think and reason, confirming the worst fears about the breakdown of the education system. It also destroys any hopes of the UK assisting the EU in achieving that oft-touted ambition of the "Lisbon agenda", becoming a "knowledge-based society", thus making "Europe" the "most dynamic and competitive" economy in the world by 2010.

The study, says the leader, has demonstrated "beyond peradventure" that children are regressing and becoming less capable. So, it observes:

This is ground-breaking stuff, with huge implications not just for British education but the country’s ability to compete and prosper in the 21st century. So nobody should be surprised that it has been almost wholly ignored by the British media: only The Spectator website (a sister publication of this newspaper) bothered to follow it up properly. Plain folk might regard it as a devastating indictment of our increasingly frivolous media that it did not dominate every front page and lead every news bulletin. But that would be unfair: the media had a dying whale in the Thames and the sexual peccadilloes of minor Liberal politicians to cover (to say nothing of a minor UKIP MEP ed), obviously far more significant than a story that raises grave concerns about the nation's future.

The paper continues on this theme in the second leader, noting that:

Fundamental questions of national strategy and defence procurement still make front-page news in America, France or Russia; but no longer in Great Britain, where such matters are deemed less worthy than the death of a whale or married politicians visiting rent boys.

No surprise, then, that hardly anybody in Britain is aware of the quiet transformation of the country’s armed forces – and the devastating impact this will have on Britain’s influence in the world.

And this it continues in a manner that demonstrates just how infantile our MSM has become:

Last week, a new Franco-British deal was signed for a joint aircraft carrier programme designed to carry the new American Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Britain also plans to build a new fleet of vehicles for the Army based on advanced networked information technology, a programme called Future Rapid Effects System (FRES). The combination of the carriers, the JSF and the FRES are fundamental to Britain’s current defence strategy for the foreseeable future; but the terrible truth is that every aspect of this three-pronged strategy is deeply flawed.

Because Whitehall mismanaged negotiations with Washington so badly, Britain never got agreement from America that it would have full access to the crucial JSF software codes necessary to have full control of the planes. The carriers will be delivered late and over budget. The FRES programme means buying into European systems considerably more expensive than the parallel American programme and considerably less effective; it also makes cooperation between British and American forces increasingly difficult – if not practically impossible. Given the extreme unlikelihood of Britain fighting a serious conventional war without America but in alliance with France and Belgium, this is a ludicrous development. But it is merely the latest in a string of procurement decisions aimed at making friends in Brussels rather than improving Britain’s forces. For many of Britain’s top officials, the most important thing is to be part of the latest European project regardless of how expensive, corrupt or foolish it is.

Britain’s new aircraft carriers are a case in point. They will not give Britain the capacity to project power or wield global influence; rather, they are being built to help Britain sit off the African coast with France, flying aid to corrupt regimes as part of European Union "humanitarian missions". If Britain was serious about projecting global power and influence, the strategy would be to build a new generation of bombers capable of hitting any point on earth with weapons or sensors in an hour, which is what America is doing. Such a project was begun under Margaret Thatcher but cancelled, and the patents classified, by Michael Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke who preferred European integration over the global influence they thought now beyond Britain. The Heseltine-Clarke ethos is now in the driving seat of defence procurement and security strategy; Britain’s armed forces will be diminished as a result.

This, dear readers, it what a grown-up editorial in a grown-up newspaper looks like and it is perhaps no coincidence that it alludes to several stories we have covered on this Blog (here, here, here and here). But, if that is too meaty, well, at least we can rely on The Sunday Telegraph to tell us what is important. No wonder it has lost 72,000 (10.17 percent) circulation in one month, despite its "intelligent, beautifully written features" and "high impact news stories".

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Booker

In his column in the incredibly shrinking Sunday Telegraph, Booker has picked up the story on the government's plans to introduce road charging using the EU'’s Galileo satellite system.

For Sunday Telegraph readers following the link from his column, the full story is here.

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The church militant

Things are coming to a pretty pass when the Roman Catholic Church starts attacking a European Union institution, but that is precisely what is happening.

According to the Catholic newspaper, The Universe, Italy's highest-ranking Catholic has taken the EU parliament to task over a resolution on married and same-sex couples.

This is the resolution sponsored by Michael Cashman, the British Labour MEP. Its critic is Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's Vicar for Rome. Yesterday, he denounced it as "profoundly wrong and full of negative consequences". The Cardinal described the parliament's actions as "part of moral pressure aimed at weakening the very cornerstones of our civilisation".

He also said the Church could not accept "equating the rights of homosexual couples with those of true and legitimate families," emphasising what he called "the growing importance that specific anthropological and ethical problems are assuming, even in the political and legislative realm."

Not one for brevity or the catchy soundbite, Ruini also referred to the "widespread tendency in many countries and also presently in Italy, as different signs show, to introduce norms that, while they do not respond to actual social needs, would compromise the value and functions of the legitimate family, founded on marriage, and the respect due to human life from conception to its natural end."

I would not exactly call this a "backlash", but it is the first time to my recollection that a high official of the Catholic Church has made such an outspoken attack on an EU institution. Even in our increasingly secular society, that must stand for something.

COMMENT THREAD

It has begun

In the wake of what must be the stupidest “spy scandal” in history – the transmitter in the artificial rock – the Russian authorities have wasted no time in acting.

Let us not forget that late last year the Duma passed a law that was to put the control of NGOs into the hands of the security authorities, who acquired a great many rights. The NGOs’ lives were to be made quite difficult in administrative ways – many more forms to fill in, reports to make, officials to square.

There was also provision for shutting down or suspending organizations that undermined Russia’s security or, in any way, criticized Russia’s history and culture, this including, one must assume, the concept of authoritarianism, so ably reconstructed by President Putin and his siloviki.

The law was signed “almost secretly”, as Novaya Gazeta says, by the president, early in January, just as Russia was beginning her stint as the president of the G8. Still, he was obviously a little nervous because of the international outcry.

Lo and behold, there is a TV programme to tell the Russian people that all those nasty organizations are not really there to protest infringements of human rights or hand out money to groups in desperate need, such as orphanages and schools for disabled children. No sirree!

They are spying for the old Great Game opponent, the United Kingdom. And how are they doing it? By using a transmitter in an artificial rock (there is some doubt whether the right one was shown on TV or not), just like they do in fifties espionage textbooks.

All the same, it will end badly. The BBC World Service reports that the Russian government is already seeking the closure of one of the oldest human rights organizations in the country: the Russian Human Rights Research Centre, which is the umbrella organization for a number of well-known human rights groups, such as the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Soldiers’ Mothers.

These two have been particularly outspoken about events in Chechnya.

The Research Centre is not, apparently, being accused of espionage, merely of not filling in the requisite forms. We are told that they had not registered any information on their activity for the last five years.

The new law has not yet come into effect but the authorities are already busy.

COMMENT THREAD

Has Europe lost its soul?

That is the question asked by the writer on political, philosophical and relgious matters, Michael Novak in a paper, published on the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) site.

His conclusion is yes and he is worried that Europe will, through its obsession with collectivism and socialism, through its refusal to live up to its Judaeo-Christian heritage and through its disregard for its own history, repeat all the mistakes of the twentieth century in the twenty-first.

While I go along with many of his arguments, I do find the final paragraph puzzling:

“Europe will find during the next 30 years that it desperately needs alliance with the United States, for many reasons. It is utterly clear to Americans that in the immense challenges looming ahead in the 21st century--from China and India, as well as the Middle East--we will desperately need an alliance with a strong and united Europe. That is why the prospect of a Europe beset with sickness of soul, and with illusions about its own spiritual health, worry us deeply. We very much need Europe to be successful--and soon.”

Michael Novak, it seems to me, undermines some of his own arguments by misunderstanding European history. How else are we to interpret the implication that a strong Europe (yes, probably, the United States does need it, though not as much as all that) is a united Europe? Or, perhaps, he does not mean united in the political sense.

Too often American commentators, who study European developments and understand a good many of them, go astray by that sort of vagueness of definition.

Nevertheless, we cannot recommend the piece strongly enough to all our readers.

COMMENT THREAD

Losing the plot

For some little time now, I have been toying with the idea of penning a letter to Margery Proops, the famous agony aunt – if she still exists. My letter would be short and to the point, couched in the following terms:

Dear Margery, I am the co-editor of a "blog" on European Union affairs, and should be writing a clinical account of the goings-on in the organisation. Increasingly, however, I find its proceedings so utterly tedious that I am struggling to find the motivation to put fingers to keyboard. Instead of writing earnest analyses, I am more inclined simply to take the p**s. What is wrong with me? What should I do?

That, however, looks like being one of those great, unwritten letters of history (there's self aggrandisement for you). Before writing it, I availed myself of my own counsel. Often enough I have warned analysts to beware of trying to distil order and coherence from a confused situation, when the reality of the situation is that it is confused. Likewise, rather than search into my own soul for reasons as to why I find the EU boring, the more simple explanation is simply that the current behaviour of the EU is, er… boring.

What brings this on is the account in The Telegraph of the great Austrian presidency extravaganza in Salzburg, its "Sound of Europe" conference, something we flagged up earlier this month.

The conference, aimed at giving "fresh impetus to the spluttering European Project", has already run into trouble, with the assembled EU worthies not even able to agree amongst themselves that there is a crisis at all, much less come to a "consensus" on what to do about it.

Thus we have that towering statesman, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, complaining that, "To talk about a crisis is not right... Such talk (is) a distraction from problems where the EU could prove itself, such as fighting terrorism, crime and pollution."

Hilariously, French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, "in a tough speech" went on to prove Balkenende right. After attacking the "rapidity" of enlargement as the proximate cause of EU troubles, he went on to propose a list of projects to bring the bring the EU back into line. Described by the Telegraph, as "distinctly modest", these included proposals for a Franco-German border police, co-operation over bird flu, and the creation of a committee to award "European heritage" status to tourist sites.

That indeed does make my point. In a week when the EU finance ministers were tearing themselves apart over the vexed question of VAT on hairdressers and French restauranters, now Villepin is agonising over "the creation of a committee to award 'European heritage' status to tourist sites."

Compare and contrast this with another piece in The Telegraph, which reports: "EU shows signs of panic on aid to Palestinians aid".

This records how the EU's "united front" over Hamas's shock win began to fracture yesterday as governments debated whether the EU should continue Palestinian aid payments, or suspend the flow of money until the group renounces terrorism.

Then there is the account which we picked up in the small hours of this morning, where the EU is planning to delay referring Iran to the Security Council, in the hope of attracting support from Russia and China for its action – despite the obvious hazards of such a delay.

Given the monumental importance of the events in the Middle East, and the imminence of a showdown that could have devastating effect on the global economy and the political stability of not only the Middle East by also Europe, you would have thought that, at the very least, the assembly in Salzburg would have ditched their navel-gazing agenda. A more grown-up reaction would have been to convene crisis talks, if only to emphasise the gravity of the situation.

Small wonder, therefore – as my co-editor constantly reminds us – the United States is increasingly regarding the European Union and it member states as an irrelevance; marginal players on the fringes of events, bogged down as they are on squabbles about hairdressers, obsessed with questions of "European identity" and awarding "European heritage" status to tourist sites.

More and more it is becoming evident that the "little Europeans" are unable to cope with the real world and are retreating into their fantasy world of trivia and irrelevancies. You cannot take them seriously, or even find them interesting. They are losing the plot.

COMMENT THREAD

A deadly combination

Possibly, the only way that Israel can be dissuaded from taking action against Iran is if the nuclear enrichment issue is referred speedily to the UN Security Council (pictured), followed by a credible threat of real sanctions in the event that the Mullahs fail to come into line.

That, at least is the theory, with Israel signalling that it is prepared to go down the diplomatic route for the time being.

So, given that time is of the essence, once again the European Union is demonstrating its gift for taking the wrong turning. Instead of pushing hard for a reference to the UN, it has decided to slow down its push, in the hope of winning support from Russia and China.

According to the Financial Times, it is now likely to offer Iran one “last chance” by delaying a substantive Security Council discussion of the file to March. It had originally hoped to secure a decisive referral as early as next week but the extra time would meet objections from Russia and China that the EU and the US have been "too hasty".

On this revised timetable, it looks like a final decision on whether the Security Council should proceed to consider action on Iran will not be taken until March, with a full hearing not taking place until some time later.

However, on 28 March, Israel will be holding its general election and, although Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima leader Ehud Olmert are running neck-and-neck in the polls, the current figures do not reflect the Israeli public response to the Hamas electoral victory this week.

The chances are that this development will strengthen Netanyahu’s chances which means there is now a more realistic proposition of seeing a hard liner at the helm on the day after the election. And amongst his first tasks will be to assess the whether to launch a strike against Iran.

Delay by the EU on the UN referral will not exactly boost confidence that a diplomatic solution is in the offing. With the clock ticking on the delivery of high-performance anti-aircraft missiles from Russia – plus the news that Iran is embarking on an emergency programme of hardening its enrichment sites – it seems possible that Netanyahu, far more than Olmert, is likely to give the green light.

Once again, therefore, we may see the deadly combination of EU ineptitude and Palestinian activism influence Middle East events for the worse, with the Hamas election providing the trigger that leads to military action against Iran.

Should that happen, of course, the question of whether Israel will move towards negotiating with Hamas will be speedily resolved. Amid the heightened tension that would follow any strike, any such outcome could be safely ruled out.

COMMENT THREAD

Shock wave or, maybe, not

As all the world knows, Hamas has done better in the Palestinian elections than expected, pulling ahead of Fatah. Understandably, this has caused a great deal of commentary.

The BBC called it a “stunning victory”, going so far as to describe Hamas as Islamic, a term they tend to omit when writing about suicide/homicide bombings. With slightly more understanding, perhaps, Deutsche Welle referred to a “shocking victory”.

The Guardian this morning wrote of a “shock victory” but it would, perhaps, be more of a shock to people who have been publicly proclaiming that the so-called peace process was stalled repeatedly solely because of Israel’s supposed intransigeance.

All the news services have been quoting various people, some named, some anonymous or semi-anonymous, in Arab countries, who were rejoicing in what they saw a victory to the people who had given their blood (and other people’s, of course). All of these are countries and people who are prepared to fight for the cause to the last drop of Palestinian blood and why the Palestinians allow themselves to be manipulated in this way has always been a mystery to me.

But is this really such an enormous change? In the first place, it was clear that Hamas will do well, as the splintering and quarrelling groups in Fatah had only barely managed to come together to produce a single list of candidates.

It appears from today’s coverage that numerous Fatah supporters had decided not to vote or to vote for Hamas “to teach Fatah a lesson”. The trouble with tactical voting is that the tactics might not achieve the results you wanted.

In the second place, what exactly is the difference between Fatah and Hamas? Hamas sends in suicide/homicide bombers and fights other Palestinian groups for ruling position. Fatah’s side group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade sends in suicide/homicide bombers and the whole group fights other Palestinian groups for ruling position.

So far equal, more or less. It is true that Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that he was prepared to negotiate with Israel but he had been unable or unwilling to disarm the militant terrorist groups (I bet, he is sorry now) and merely wrung his hands after every outrage and demanded that Israel desist from retaliation.

Furthermore, Abbas recently announced that money would be given to the families of “martyrs” or, as most of us would call them, terrorists.

Hamas, of course, does not even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and has already announced that negotiations are not on the cards.

The Daily Telegraph (and other newspapers and news agencies) reports that Sheikh Said Syam, “one of Hamas’s leading strategists in Gaza” has explained:

“Talks with Israel are not on our agenda, and our military wing will not lay down its arms.”

Interestingly, he has also added:

“Nor will our fighters become part of the Palestinian security forces. They will remain separate.”

Clearly, his strategy does not envisage a peaceful Palestinian state either. The seeds of a very nasty civil war lie in that statement.

In a way, that is quite useful. At least we can dispense with the charade of the peace process or peace negotiations. (That was my first reaction and I am delighted to see that Emanuele Ottolenghi, who teaches at the Middle East Centre in Oxford and is an international expert on the subject, said more or less the same thing in the National Review Online.)

Not that we shall. As the shock of Hamas victory dies, we shall see the same people popping up to tell us that, no matter what, Israel must make concessions and it is unreasonable of her to demand that the terrorist groups disarm or that they acknowledge her right to exist.

We are already hearing voices telling us that the EU should not just acknowledge Hamas (nothing else to do, after all they were elected) but continue pumping large amounts of money into the Palestinian Authority.

The voices on the other side of the Pond are more muted, though I understand former President Jimmy Carter, one of the least successful American politicians of the twentieth century, has been making similar comments.

According to Deutsche Welle, on the other hand, German politicians are questioning whether the EU should continue to pump the annual half a billion euros into the organization.

“Either Hamas renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist "or we'll think about letting the finances dry up," Gert Weisskirchen, foreign policy expert of the SPD told daily Berliner Zeitung.

"We can't give taxpayers' money to such a government," said Elmar Brok, a CDU member and head of the Foreign Council in the EU Parliament.

Other politicians have underlined that Hamas must fulfill the twin requirements of renouncing violence and recognizing Israel's existence before there can be further cooperation with the EU.

In addition, Hamas must formulate a concrete plan for disarming its various factions, others said, saying that future German future financial help to the region would hinge on the factor.”

Others, such as the Daily Telegraph leader, have encouraged politicians to separate Hamas leadership, that had decided not to boycott the elections from its hot-head “activists”. I must admit I do not remember the Telegraph making the same distinction between Sinn Fein and IRA but that was our problem. (Still is.)

On all sides we are told that Hamas must now abandon its violence or, more optimistically, that being in government will bring it to its senses and violence will gradually be abandoned. Both those arguments seem to me to be nonsensical.

It is the Hamas leadership and the many “activists” who stood in the election and are now in the Palestinian parliament, who are assuring us that they have not the slightest intention of abandoning the fight of sweeping Israel into the sea. If that involves missile attacks, bombs, explosions, so be it. If retaining power means violence towards other Palestinians, who do not obey the rules as laid down by Hamas, so be it again.

In the wake of the election results being announced, Reuters published a piece, entitled “Arabs see US changing stance on Hamas”. It was not so much a question of seeing as assuming.

“Mohamed Habib, deputy leader of the Egyptian Islamist movement, told Reuters that the vote for Hamas meant that Palestinians had opted for the choice of "resistance."

"(Israel and the United States) will have no alternative but to deal with Hamas ... The Americans will submit to this, especially as Hamas does not want to monopolize power," he said.

"The Americans will start secret contacts with Hamas and in fact they have already started. But in the first moments they will exert public pressure to try to make Hamas change some of its ideas," added Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian specialist on Islamist movements in the Middle East.”

What is so interesting about the various comments, apart from the already noted readiness on the part of Arab politicians and commentators to fight the battle to the last Palestinian, is the tendency for expressing views that echo those of the left in the West.

“The (Palestinian) voters have answered Israeli extremism with a Palestinian counterpart and I believe only those more extreme sides will produce peace," said Anani.

"We want hardline politicians in the face of the Israeli hardliners. We need that in order to deal with Israel, which gave nothing in return for ... concessions. We need an Arab Sharon," added political analyst Dawoud Sharayan, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Abdulaziz al-Mahmoud, a Qatari columnist and political writer, said Hamas was in a strong political position after winning elections while retaining its armed wing.

"But they are also humans who want to live in peace, so I believe they will start negotiations with Israel, but as equals, not like the Palestinian Authority that gave so many concessions which were not returned by the Israeli side," he added.”

Fascinating. What were those concessions, one would like to know. And what happened to the withdrawal from Gaza, the dismantling of the settlements, all carried out in the teeth of a great deal of Israeli opposition? Forgotten, apparently.

A Jordanian official commented more soberly:

“The Hamas victory could have enormous implications for the peace process and Hamas must now act responsibly to ensure the Palestinians don't lose more.”

But then, Jordan, unlike Qatar, has had her own problems with Palestinian militants and dealt with them in a ferocious fashion.

Which, of course, brings us to the question of what will be Israel’s reaction. There is an election coming there, as well. We can be reasonably certain that the half-hearted suggestion of withdrawing from the West Bank and, even East Jerusalem, made in the last few days by the acting Prime Minister, will now be put on ice.

The withdrawal from Gaza was made for various practical reasons but, also, in the hopes of changing the political situation. Now Israelis, who opposed it, can proclaim that nothing had been gained – quite the contrary. Those who had supported the withdrawal are likely to turn away from more concessions until something practical is given in return.

Many Israeli “doves” voted for Sharon because of Arafat. How many will vote for Netanyahu because of Hamas?

Well, what now? Is the fight for democracy over because it can produce anomalous results? As I see it, there can be several reactions when terrorists and extremists are elected in a hitherto untried democratic system.

One can try the Algerian method and call off the second round. That resulted in a bloody civil war, massacres and something like 150,000 dead.

One can abolish democracy completely and, indeed, that is usually what happens, though it is done by the victorious party. It is not clear whether Hamas will call any more elections, particularly if they cease to be popular. The late unlamented Chairman Arafat did not, after all.

The outside world can do little, beyond accepting the decision and watch warily how the new government treads. Handing over money without being able to monitor it sounds like an extremely bad idea.

What will actually change under the new rule? Very little, I should have thought. Despite the assurance of British journalists from the BBC to the Telegraph, nothing much has changed in the local districts Hamas had taken in the last lot of elections.

It is true that it will be difficult for the organization to keep its glamour and mystique when they have to deal with unemployment of rubbish collection. On the other hand, they are unlikely to wind up their security services, much of whose activity is directed against Palestinians brave enough to defy them.

An almost immediate set of victims will be the women of Palestine. While the religious aspect of Hamas is not always clear – many of the terrorist groups grew out of Marxist movements – they will undoubtedly use religion to impose controls.

How will they deal with the economy? After all, the Israelis are hardly likely to open the borders to let in Palestinian workers if an unknown number of them might be carrying explosives. What else is there?

A great deal of money from the West, of course, and I predict that it will start flowing again after a certain amount of foot-shuffling, particularly from Europe, both the individual member states and the EU. After all, they were rarely fazed by evidence that money to the PA in the past went astray.

The United States may hold out longer. There the decision will have to be taken by Congress and that body, unlike the State Department, say, is reasonably capable of understanding that Hamas does not intend a two-state solution.

Will the money help the ordinary Palestinians? Don’t be silly. Whether siphoned off to terrorists and their families or to individuals, little will change in financial terms. And Israel will go on being painted as the cause of the poverty and hopelessness.

How soon before the Palestinian people realize that they have made another mistake and try to correct it, and what will happen then, are all things that are impossible to predict. On the whole, they have not been lucky with their leaders.

Gaza has been sliding steadily into chaos and that is unlikely to stop. The fights between Hamas, Fatah, local chieftains and the Palestinian security services will, one assumes, continue, as will the burgeoning kidnap and ransom business. There is some indication that the existing security services are aware of what is going on and are not uninvolved.

The same might happen in other parts of the Palestinian territory.

(Rather nastily, I must admit that I cannot summon up any anger while the victims are dumb peace activists and their equally dumb relatives.)

The one thing, however, is clear: we cannot really be surprised by the results. This is the bloody legacy of Arafat, who had oppressed his people, stole their money, destroyed their economy and made any kind of a normal political life impossible. With the best will in the world – and we do not know if he had the best will in the world – Mahmoud Abbas could not have turned the PA or Fatah into viable political entities.

The EU bears its share of responsibility. Its blind and insane support for Arafat, no matter what happened, simply to annoy the Americans, has contributed to the bloody mess he left behind him and the even bloodier future.

COMMENT THREAD

Eat your hearts out boys!

My colleague will attend to the events in Palestine a little later today, once she has made a dent in her day job. Meanwhile, I have been slightly hors de combat, delivering another of the Civitas lectures on the EU to sixth-formers – this one to a group 120-strong in a school near Barnsley.

Going into my now usual routine, I gave a powerpoint presentation on the history of the EU, starting with the battle of Verdun and working from there. As part of that presentation, I show pictures of two artillery pieces form the battle, one French (below, left) and the other German (below right) and – since being "interactive" is all the range - I invited students to spot the crucial difference between the two.

I have repeated this exercise many times over the years, and even taken parties out to Verdun, where examples of the artillery are ranged in front of the Museum of Peace, and to this date, no one has been able to tell me.

As usual today, when I asked the question, there was silence but, just as I was about to move on and give the answer, a small voice piped up from near the back of the room – a young lady. "The French gun hasn't got a recoil mechanism," she said. Dead right. All those strapping young lads I've shown the pictures to and not one of them got it. The young lady puts them all to shame. My colleague would have been so proud.

Readers might, by now, be asking what a recoil mechanism on a 1916-vintage German gun has to do with the history of the EU – and the answer is, a great deal.

As they doing now, prior to the battle, the French government had been cutting back on arms production and, in the early stages, they were ranging against the Germans pieces of 1875 vintage. The Germans, with their more modern guns - fitted with recoil mechanisms – were able to fire seven shells to every one of the French which, in a battle where the French alone fired over 12 million shells was a grave disadvantage.

It was this huge disadvantage that nearly lost them the battle and which precipitated a crisis in the French cabinet, which led to the appointment of a French industrialist, Louis Loucheur, as armaments minister, charged with re-equipping the French Army.

To do so, he embarked on a massive manufacturing programme but, as the production of guns ramped up, Loucheur found he was running short of steel with which to make them. When he addressed that shortage, he found critical shortages of coal and, in an attempt to redress that with imports, found he was running short of shipping capacity.

From his wartime experience, Loucheur came to realise that the deciding factor in what was effectively, the first "industrial" war was not feats of arms, but industrial capacity – what he came to call the "sinews of war". In particular, he focused on coal and steel, reasoning that, if the independent capability of nation states to control the supplies of both was lost, then they could not go to war.

Hence, he came up with the idea of creating a superior authority to control the production of French and German coal and steel, in a bid to prevent a repeat of a war that had cost those countries so dear – and idea that was eventually to emerge in 1950 as the European Coal and Steel Community, the pre-cursor to the EU.

It was not Jean Monnet, therefore, who was the intellectual "father" of the EU, but that other Frenchman, Louis Loucheur, a man about whom few have ever heard, with fewer still recognising his pivotal role. And it all boiled down to a crucial difference between French and German guns. Well done that girl for spotting it. Eat your hearts out boys!

COMMENT THREAD

Until proven otherwise…

A constant refrain on this blog is the sentiment that not only is government not to be trusted, it is virtually a civic duty not to trust it – whether local, national or supranational.

This should not be from a sense world-weary cynicism but from a conviction that all governments are intrinsically malign and, if given an opportunity, will abuse their powers and waste our money.

The essential credo rests on the premise that we should tolerate government only because the alternative – having no government – is worse, but only as long as we, the citizens of a democracy, keep it in check.

Too often, though, the gullible "sheeple" believe governments to be a force for good, no better demonstrated than by the generally positive rating given to the EU over its environmental legislation, despite the appalling costs and the damage done.

It helps, therefore, occasionally, to bring the message home, addressing issues with which people are more familiar, to which they can personally equate. And there is nothing closer to home in this respect than crime, figures for which were released yesterday.

These figures reveal increases in major categories of crime. For instance, in the three months to September 2005, there were 315,800 violent incidents, compared with 304,300 in the same period in 2004 – an overall increase of four percent, with an 11 percent rise in the number of robberies. This is the biggest jump in street robberies for three years.

However, while acknowledging this rise – how could it do otherwise – the government points to its "success" in countering domestic burglary. This peaked in the mid-1990's and fell by 47 percent in 2003/04, albeit at a still massive level, the level in England and Wales then recorded at 943,000 incidents.

Furthermore, to explain the rise in street crime, police are trying to shift the blame to "teen-on-teen" crimes in which children attack each other for desirable items such as mobile phones, iPods and bicycles. This beguilingly simple explanation, however, does not even begin to do justice to the phenomenon.

What is happening, to a very great extent, is that crime is being displaced. In terms of burglary, householders, fed up with the rash of burglaries and police inaction have taken their own measures, have bought the improvements in burglary figures through increased vigilance and security, investing upwards of £430 million a year in security bolts and locks, in thief-proof double glazing and burglar alarms. And now that houses are not such the easy targets that they were, the thieves have moved elsewhere.

Similarly, reductions in car crime have been achieved primarily by insurers and car manufacturers, through features such as immobilisers, steering locks and car alarms. Yet this appears to have been offset by an upsurge in "car hijacking" – a crime normally associated with third world countries. Again, thieves have adapted their tactics to changed circumstances.

In an attempt at damage limitation, the Home Office glosses over the increased robberies and claims that the current British Crime Survey indicates that overall crime has fallen two percent, and violent crime by five.

This, again, is misleading. In the latter category, sexually related offences are not recorded, which makes overall estimation difficult. Additionally, violence against the person crimes are both notoriously under-recorded and acutely sensitive to variations in reporting procedures.

As to crime overall, there are huge gaps in the statistics. Neither fraud nor "commercial" crime are recorded in the Survey. Yet a study carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses revealed that nearly 60 percent of businesses had been the victims of crime, while over a quarter did not report it. Other data suggest that police may record only between 1 in 100 and one in 1000 shoplifting offences, and anecdotal reports suggest that internet crime (also not recorded by the British Crime Survey) is a major growth area which the criminal justice system is struggling to contain.

In other words, there is considerable evidence that, where one category of crime is targeted, criminals simply change their behaviour to exploit other weaknesses. Then, as long as their are huge gaps in the recording of crime – and criminal activity is being displaced to non-recorded categories – global crime statistics are unrelaible. They could well (and probably do) conceal an overall rise in criminality.

Needless to say, the government does not in any way recognise (or acknowledge) this state of affairs. Instead, as reported by the Times website, Clarke is asking "why (the) public doesn't trust crime figures". To find out, he is spending public money on a review of "why the public refuses to believe good news that crime is falling."

Clarke has set up a group to look at how Home Office crime figures are compiled and published, "in an attempt to allay the public's exaggerated fear of crime and the perception that society is growing ever more lawless."

"I have been concerned for some time that Home Office crime statistics have been questioned and challenged," he says. "This has got to the point that most people seem confused about what is happening to crime in this country, he adds, stating, "Despite the fact that most crime categories are falling, fear of crime is still too high and public perception is often at odds with reality. That is why we need to look again at the statistics and find out why people do not believe them.”

But people are not confused. The reason why they don't believe crime statistics is because their own eyes and their own experiences tell them they are not true. They also know that their police are manifestly failing to get to grips with crime, witness the recent report that the Metropolitan Police spent more on paperwork than in fighting crime - £123 million compared with £62.2 million dealing with robberies and £42.2 million on house burglaries.

But here, at least, we can rely on our own senses. In how many other areas, though, do our different levels of government "inform" us, where we have no means of checking veracity? And if this government honesty cannot relied on the matter of our own personal safety and security, how can we believe it on anything else?

It is not necessarily the case that everything our governments do tell us in untrue but, in our relations with them, there should be no question of "benefit of the doubt". The presumption must be that, if not actively lying to us, they are attempting to mislead – until proven otherwise.

COMMENT THREAD

Lib-Dims shock

We could, of course, post erudite comments on the fate of the Lib-Dims, but "someone" got there first – and did it better.

COMMENT THREAD

Poland still refusing to shut up

Several of our readers noted yesterday’s report in the International Herald Tribune of the Defence Minister Radek Sikorski’s statements about Poland’s future as he sees it (and finances, helped a bit by the British rebate partially disappearing, permitting).

He sees Poland as a major regional player, with strong defences – with 2 per cent of GDP agreed on as a reasonable proportion of defence spending – and every intention of overhauling the military. Furthermore, Poland is not going to give up its American alliance and will keep troops in Iraq (though reducing numbers) as long as it is necessary.

President Bush and both his Secretaries of State, as well Defence Secretary Rumsfeld worked long and hard to keep Poland and the other East European countries on board. This was not noticed nearly enough in the media here but there were many visits by the previous Polish President to the White House and there will, no doubt, be many by the new one.

Mr Sikorski himself, has excellent contacts in Washington, having spent years there and been a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Over and above that, there is the small matter of twentieth century history that the pooh-bahs of EU have not taken into account.

We, on this blog, have cast doubt at the economic influence that the new member states, clients one and all, can have on the EU’s development. But we have always maintained that enlargement has put an intolerable strain on the idea of the common foreign and security policy.

In fact, I claim to have spoken about this long before Rumsfeld or anyone else, at a conference in Oxford, before enlargement had actually taken place (and while there were still talks of the Conservatives in the European Parliament leading a new right-wing, eurosceptic, free-market group).

It seems obvious that, given the different developments in the two parts of Europe in the twentieth century, the attitudes to the United States, which is the crux on which the CFSP is based, will be different. East Europeans are not going to be anti-American and are going to be wary of Russia.

Sikorski puts it in a historical context:

“What has not yet happened is a growing together of a pan-European historical consciousness. I think the West Europeans have not fully taken on board our history, our misfortune and our suffering under communism, but also our history as part of the history of all of Europe.

Only when they do take it on, when they think of European history as a whole, will they understand some of our dilemmas and some of our attitudes.”

The problem is that for the western members to acknowledge all these historical peculiarites would mean destroying some of the basic and most cherished ideas that lie at the root of European integration and the common foreign and security policy.

COMMENT THREAD

Filling his satchel

"My department will examine the detailed technical issues about how road pricing might be introduced, including discussions with industry about future developments," says Mr Alistair Darling, transport secretary. "And we are asking everyone to help us to carry the debate forward and consider the choices before us."

But, without having waited for the outcome of that debate – or even noticeably encouraging it – Mr Darling's officials seem already to have made up their minds. Already his department has spent £93 million on the EU’s Galileo satellite global positioning system and now, it appears, they are conducting detailed discussions with a major German firm about implementing Galileo-based road charging systems.

This we learn not from Mr Darling’s department of course, but from an obscure online publication which tells us that T-Systems has announced the foundation of a new subsidiary, Satellic Traffic Management GmbH.

T-Systems just happens to be the IT division of the German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom. Its new subsidiary has been set up specifically to develop satellite-based road toll charging technology and market it internationally.

Called Satellic, it is based in Berlin and, besides offering satellite-based toll charging technology, the new company wants to spearhead "the development of innovative traffic-management systems,” helping toll operators in their “migration from microwave to satellite technology".

T-Systems itself developed the technology behind the first satellite-based toll system, operated by Toll Collect GmbH and Satellic expects the world-wide turnover in satellite technology applications to be at around €250bn by 2020.

Now we come to the crunch. In Europe alone, says the report, eight countries - the UK, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and Hungary - intend to introduce a road toll charging system and Satellic is already involved in close talks in the UK.

Although no decision on the technology has been made, we also learn that Satellic bases its current product on the US GPS standard, but its parent company T-Systems, as a member of TeleOp, is part of the Galileo project. It hopes to provide IT services for one of the ground control centres, which will be based in Germany. Furthermore, Satellic says its traffic-management services can only be offered with satellite-based technology

A key issue, concludes the report, will be whether the highly-sophisticated satellite technology can be employed while keeping operating costs at bay - a key decision criterion for governments aiming to fill their satchels at minimum cost.

So now we know. All we need is the bit of kit like that pictured above (left) fitted to our cars and Mr Darling can start filling his satchel - at our expense.

COMMENT THREAD

Will the real Barroso please stand up (reprise)

I expect some of our readers can recall those heady days when the new Commission led by Señhor Barroso was described happily by British and American commentators and less happily by some French ones as being “free-market”.

This blog pointed out at the time (repeatedly) that there was no particular evidence for this and Commission President Barroso’s immediate demands for the increase of the EU budget in order to finance huge Europe-wide projects (along the lines of the old “Asian mode of production”) indicated otherwise.

In the same way, we remain sceptical of the free-market credentials of the new members in Eastern Europe while they hold out begging bowls and whinge at budget meetings about the unfairness of it all. (Except that, given the promises they were given and, more to the point, had to make to their own people in order to get them to vote the “right” way, there is a sense of unfairness around.)

Some people, I am delighted to say, still believe that canard about Barroso and the free-market. Really, politics is a very dirty game these days. Why a man should be persecuted for nothing more than a possible mild flirtation I cannot imagine.

The people who believe the stories told about the upright statist Commission President are members of the French Assembly. On Tuesday the man was booed and heckled when he was speaking to the august body.

The French politicians accused him and his Commission colleagues of favouring free markets “at the expense of social protections”.

Barroso defended himself as best he could:

“There has been a caricature of my commission and of me from the very start.”

Meaning, presumably, that this is not true.

One particularly vociferous critic was the Communist Alain Bocquet, who told Barroso that this was not “the European dream our fellow citizens aspire to”. Since his fellow citizens were rarely asked and when asked voted ambiguously at best and negatively at worst, it is hard to tell how he knew. He also informed Barroso that the Constitution was dead, again not something Bocquet is going to be making any decisions about.

Curiously, in his demands for stronger social protections, Bocquet said that 15 per cent of the 450 million Europeans lived in poverty. This may or may not be accurate but most of that poverty is among the East Europeans, whose needs will not be addressed while the French get the screaming abdabs every time there is a suggestion of regulations being lifted and taxation being lowered in order to give the people of Eastern Europe a chance for jobs.

Barrroso did try to come back. He told the deputies that he believed in the Constitution and its principles but acknowledged that he had a long battle on his hands.

He also said to Comrade Bocquet:

“To maintain the European model and values we must have the courage to modernize our policies, reform our economies. Permit me to tell you, Mr. Deputy, that it is not with speeches against businesses that you will create more jobs and growth.”

Fair enough but what was the Commission President proposing? Speeches, it seems, though not necessarily against business:

“The choice of opening up to the world is a winning choice for France and Europe. In the face of globalization, only the European dimension can make the difference and allow us to control the process.”

So we are no nearer to understanding what will save French and European economies or what Señhor Barroso’s real views are.

COMMENT THREAD

Czechs bouncing back and forth

The Czech Ministry of Justice has sent a draft amendment of the law that implements the European Arrest Warrant to the Chamber of Deputies, where a vigorous debate is expected.

The problem at the moment is that the law applies only to crimes committed since November 1, 2004 and this has meant that other countries have refused to extradite wanted people (for criminal rather than terrorist activity) to the Czech Republic.

As the Prague Daily Monitor explains:

“The countries that refuse to extradite suspected Czechs include Britain, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

The Justice Ministry said the main problem is with Ireland because it is not possible to reach the extradition of some members of the Berdych gang.

The gang, that includes former elite policemen, is suspected of murders of rich businesspeople, robberies and kidnappings in 2000-01.”

Some Deputies maintain that they had not been warned by the Justice Ministry that this would be the effect of the restriciton; others insist that the law was passed only because the retroactive restriction had been imposed.

COMMENT THREAD

Does she ever stay at home?

Angela Merkel is getting to be just like Tony Blair mark I, the international statesman who was always found to be in any country but his own. Not that it has done her any harm apparently with the people of Germany.

A survey conducted by TNS Infratest institute for Der Spiegel and mentioned briefly in Monday's Wall Street Journal Europe, 85 per cent want her to “play an important role in the future”. This is slightly ambiguous as the “important role” might mean “as far away from Germany as possible” but it seems that this is viewed as endorsement of her activities as Chancellor up to now.

Nevertheless, she does seem to travel rather a lot, playing, it would appear, the international statesman, the one who will sort out problems within the EU as well as its relations with other countries.

She started her Chancellorship by visiting France and informing the world that the Franco-German axis was alive and well; then she came to Britain to tell the same world that there would be more co-operation between Germany and Britain (another axis, maybe).

Since then she has been whizzing round the place. In particular she went to Washington to discuss the improved or improving German-American relations but undermined that slightly by raising the subject of Guantanamo only to be told to mind her own business. (Of course, Hammadi’s release did not improve those relations either or the still unexplained Osthoff kidnapping and release.)

Then she buzzed off to Russia where she was described by various commentators as showing the world that the “new” Germany was going to be a big player. (As near as I can recall, as this is hardly interesting enough to look up. The fate of the Thames whale is more interesting.)

She did not precisely show Germany’s strength and position by saying anything very difficult to President Putin. After the Guantanamo comment you might have expected a word or two about Chechnya, Russian prisons, control of the media, destruction of economic independence, destruction of regional political democracy and the fate of the NGOs. Or, at least some of those subjects. Apparently, nothing was said.

Nothing much was said, so far as one can make out about Russia’s interesting way of using its enormous reserves of gas to control the politics and economy of surrounding countries. But then, Germany gets something like one third of its gas from Russia and however new the foreign policy might be, it cannot include rows with Putin. Let’s just stick to Guantanamo.

Now she is about to open the Davos World Forum. She will talk about her plans to turn round the German economy and European integration. It will be interesting to see whether she will refer to an interesting essay in “Global Agenda”, apparently the official publication of the World Economic Forum.

Among all the solemn and probably largely meaningless pronouncements by politicians and economists there is an essay by Mazin Qumsiyeh that calls for a world-wide boycott of Israel and makes a number of inaccurate and offensive comments about that country and its people.

Update:

Um no, she hasn’t mentioned the booklet but has called for innovation, creative action and free markets as the way forward for Germany and Europe. She has promised sweeping reforms in Germany.

Before that Chancellor Merkel managed to put in another trip to her best buddy l’escroc Chirac. Various German politicians had insisted that she should raise the subject of Chirac’s proposed unilateral nuclear strike but, it seems, that was not important enough for the Chancellor. Neither was the mess in the Ivory Coast, extensively chronicled on this blog.

They did, apparently, talk about hairdressers and other service providers, as my colleague noted.

And now what? Will the lady stay at home for a bit? Those reforms will not simply happen of their own accord.

COMMENT THREAD

They should have expected this

Two German engineers, René Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke, on short-term contracts in Iraq have been kidnapped by persons unknown so far. No demands have been made. A third German national and an Iraqi also in the car have escaped but seem to be unable to throw light on the events.

The men were working at the Baiji refinery compound and, according to Deutsche Welle,

“A guard at the refinery, whose access was cordoned off, told AFP the Germans were snatched by seven men, all in army uniform, including two with officer rank.”

This might or might not mean anything. Iraqi and American forces have set up road blocks and are searching for the victims.

Meanwhile, in Germany a crisis centre was set up and meetings are going on to discuss the situation. The president of Germany's BND intelligence agency, Ernst Uhrlau, said:

“Iraq is increasingly being associated with a successful abduction industry. The people involved in this trade may have a fundamentalist, nationalist or simply criminal background. But the experience gathered over the past two years has shown us that once there are hostages, the various kidnappers in Iraq have a strong network of communication among themselves. This makes it impossible right now to say who exactly is behind the disappearance of the two German engineers.”

How very true. There is, however, a special problem associated with certain nationalities. We have seen this with the French and the Italians. Once a government is prepared to pay ransom in whatever form (and the Italian Red Cross even agreed to smuggle terrorists through Italian check points), that country’s nationals are endangered more than others.

That brings us back to the still mysterious Osthoff case about which rumours (some on our forum) abound. Michael Pohly, a Middle East expert told Deutsche Welle that he was convinced the German government had paid a ransom for the archaeologist-turned-aid-worker-and-activist Susanne Osthoff.

“It can't be ruled out that the hostage affair around Susanne Osthoff has encouraged criminal elements in Iraq to go for more. Germans had not been the main target group, as far as abductions are concerned. But it certainly had an impact on the criminals' strategy that the French and Italian governments paid ransoms to free their hostages.”

Did they really not think of this?

COMMENT THREAD

Even the groundhogs are revolting

This is groundhog day with a vengeance. Yet again, EU Presidente José Manuel Barroso has called on EU member states to step up the pace of structural reforms to boost growth and jobs across the bloc.

Out of idle curiosity, I Googled the string "EU" and "reform" and got 19,300,000 hits. With "regulation", I got 15,300,000 but a repeat of the same exercise with "deregulation" yielded a mere 1,430,000. Says it all really.

Unaware of the growing revolt of the groundhogs, El Presidente says it is "time to move up a gear," a remark timed to coincide with its first update on the revised Lisbon strategy. He adds that there is a broader consensus in Europe about the need for reform. "Things are moving in the right direction, but still it is not enough," he concludes.

And guess what? The commission wants member states to improve investment in education, research and innovation, reduce bureaucratic obstacles hindering SMEs, enhance job-creation policies and guarantee a secure, sustainable energy supply.

Goundhogs! By the left…

COMMENT THREAD

Not so brave after all

Having recently garnered applause from all over the world for their stand against the American government or the State Department (two separate entities), Google has decided “that’s enough bravery for one year”.

As AP reported yesterday, Google has agreed to all the Chinese government’s demands in return for better access and, no doubt, large amounts of moolah. What would have happened if the State Department had thought of that as a weapon?

Then again, as even the BBC’s Justin Webb agrees, it is always easier to deal with (and, indeed, criticize) democratic governments.

“To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.

Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, some topics, such as Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects.

Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.”

Michelle Malkin has suggested a new logo for Google.

Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s senior policy counsel remains reasonably confident in the rightness of the decision:

“We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China.”

For the moment Google’s service will be limited to searching webpages and images.

“Neither Google's e-mail nor blogging services will be offered in China because the company doesn't want to risk being ordered by the government to turn over anyone's personal information. The e-mail service, called Gmail, creates a huge database of users' messages and makes them instantly searchable. The blogging services contain a wide range of personal background.”

Having been successful once, the Chinese government will know what to do next time.

COMMENT THREAD

Conservatives win election – shock!

"The Liberals had run a campaign portraying Mr Harper as an extremist determined to wreck the welfare system and the country's "diversity". But that cut little ice with the electorate. His platform of a crackdown on crime, tax cuts, increased defence spending and greater power for the provinces impressed many." (Daily Telegraph.)

Compare and contrast:

"It is the Tories' sheer economic illiteracy that is so depressing. Cutting taxes and spending is not about making the rich richer or grinding the faces of the poor by depleting their public services. It is about encouraging enterprise and prosperity, and pointing out to the public sector that just because the taxpayer happens to fund it doesn't mean it has a licence to stand under the proverbial shower tearing up £5 notes. The "stability" that Mr Osborne talks about will come only with growth, and growth will come only with better productivity, and better productivity will come only with rigorous efficiency and spending controls and higher-quality investment in the productive sectors of the economy, which must be funded by tax cuts. Got it?" (Simon Heffer.)

Well, the Canadian Conservative Party spent ten years in the wilderness before it triumphed. On current form, it may take the British Conservative Party a little longer.

COMMENT THREAD

News Values

Perhaps it is a reflection of our society that news editors felt it was necessary to saturate the media with the whale story this weekend, or perhaps it is simply that the media has lost the plot.

Today, a remarkable lack of coverage on the UK-French carrier deal (can’t have grown-up news on defence can we?), but all is not lost. Someone, at least, didn't think the whale was that important.

COMMENT THREAD

UK to dump Joint Strike Fighter

In a deal which has, in my view, spelled the end of the joint UK-US Joint Strike Fighter venture, defence secretary John Reid and his French counterpart Michèle Alliot-Marie came to an unexpected agreement yesterday on cost sharing for the design of their proposed aircraft carriers.

The French have agreed to pay Britain as much as £140m to develop and construct an aircraft carrier based on the design of those being built for the Royal Navy.

Flagged up on the blog two weeks ago, even until late last week, the talks on design co-operation – which had been proceeding in fits and starts for three years – seemed to have stalled, with French negotiators offering half the £100 million-plus the British had been asking,

Sir Peter Spencer, the Defence Procurement Agency chief, and his French counterpart, Francois Lureau, had met in France on 13 January but had failed to make much progress on the subject. A French government official observed that the talks over the "economic conditions" for co-operation were "difficult".

He argued that the French too were bringing something to the table, their more recent experience of building a large carrier but there was a lack of agreement on the valuation of that knowledge. He complained that they (the British) "think the Charles de Gaulle doesn't exist."

Then, on 17 January, Executive Chairman Jean-Marie Poimboeuf of the French ship-builder DCN warned: "The discussions are numerous and difficult", saying that there was no "plan B" if London and Paris failed to come to an agreement.

Thus, although Reid's meeting with Alliot-Marie today had been planned for some time, with such entrenched positions, there was no sign of an imminent breakthrough. Some commentators were even suggesting that the deadlock would have to be broken by direct, bi-lateral talks between Blair and Chirac.

Yet, not only do the French appear to have "caved in" over the British asking price – paying double what they had been prepared to accept only a week ago - they have agreed to put in another £40m towards the development of the carrier, which remains in the final stages of the detailed design work needed before construction can begin.

So surprising was the agreement that, according to the Financial Times, the people involved in Tuesday's meeting emerged "surprised and giddy". "We did not expect such a fruitful result," said one French official. Both sides said the final talks were also unusual in that both Reid and Alliot-Marie were personally involved in detailed and sometimes heated negotiations.

The Financial Times also reports that, for the French, the deal allows them to jump approximately two years ahead in their efforts to build a partner ship to the Charles de Gaulle. Their programme, codenamed Project Juliette - developed by DCN - is far less advanced than the Royal Navy design drawn up by Paris-based Thales and BAE Systems.

The first £30m French payment for the Royal Navy design is expected to come when the deal is officially signed, which Alliot-Marie said could be in a few weeks. A second £25m payment would be mandated for July, but the final £45m year-end payment is to be conditional on France making a final decision to pursue a joint programme.

The additional £40m payment will cover about one-third of the development work common to the two UK carriers and the additional French ship, which Britain estimated at £115m.

However, fairy-tale endings like this do not happen in real life. They are generally only found in er… fairy tales – especially when the French are the negotiating partners. There is a very strong smell of a side-deal which has not been disclosed.

The sudden agreement might not be unconnected with the announcement on 15 December by the French defence group Thales – which is a design partner for the British carriers - and the state-owned naval shipyards DCN. They are to go into partnership, signing a shareholding alliance paving the way for Thales to take a 25 percent stake in DCN, with DCN buying the naval shipyard activities owned by Thales in France.

But the crucial explanation lies in what we flagged up on 6 January - the extraordinary tale of the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. This story got more mysterious last week with the highly suspicious leak of the news that Bush has apparently rejected Blair’s pleas that the programme should be rescued.

This "snub", we suggested, would set Blair up with just the excuse he needed to call of the whole JSF co-operation programme, in time for the British to avoid having to make a firm order for the aircraft, due in November.

The only practical alternative, of course, is the French-built Dassault Aviation Rafale (above left, and right), which is to equip the French carrier. It makes absolute sense for Britain and France, having now agreed to co-operate with their carrier designs, to operate the same aircraft.

As another straw in the wind, on 16 January the French government announced that it was to buy only 51 of the latest-model Rafales – which have yet to win a single export order - rather than the 59 stipulated in the original contract. Curiously, the value of the deal was to remain at €3.1 billion, the addition finance being used to upgrade systems and avionics to make the aircraft "more suitable for export". And to whom are the French so confident of selling the aircraft?

Short of having an MoD press release in my hands to that effect, I am now as convinced as I can be that the British government is going to dump the Joint Strike Fighter and buy French, with implications for the Atlantic Alliance that I hardly need spell out.

COMMENT THREAD

Droit de suite at the House of Lords

Later on I shall report in greater detail on the debate in the House of Lords on the Artist's Resale Right Regulation, the draft statutory instrument that will implement the notorious droit de suite directive. As some of our readers may know, the Patent Office and the DTI have managed to ratchet up the already rather harmful directive and this could have been thrown out by the Lords (or the Commons but little is expected of them).

Unfortunately, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who had ensured there would be a debate by putting down an

"an amendment to the above motion, at end to insert “but this House regrets that the Regulations go beyond the requirements of the European Union Directive implementing the regime for the payment of artists and calls for the Regulations to be replaced within six months by Regulations in accordance with the Directive”.",

in itself rather a mild choice of words, decided not to divide the House. A pity, really. Still, there were some interesting speeches made and huge lacunae in knowledge exposed. The debate will be worth a proper posting.

COMMENT THREAD

And the "colleagues" plot and scheme

Following their carefully staged agenda aimed at pulling energy policy into the EU maw, the commission today released a survey which claimed that 47 percent of "EU citizens" want decisions on energy policy to be taken at a European level.

According to this survey, which was conducted last year – before the Ukraine gas crisis and the heightened tension in Iran - a smaller number of people, 37 percent, prefer decisions to be taken by the 25 member states themselves.

In addition, 48 percent favour solar power as a means to produce energy, with 41 percent seeking further national investment for the research and development of renewable technologies. Only 12 percent wanted extended use of nuclear power as an energy source.

EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs said the survey result showed that nuclear energy is a "very divisive" issue, with member states holding differing opinions on its use.

Interestingly, it is not that "divisive" in France, where Chirac seems to have decided on a new direction for his country's nuclear policy, with barely a whimper from the French media and with not a single comment this side of the Channel.

Anyhow, the commission is presenting a green paper on European energy policy to the European Council at the end of March, which will then be used to increase debate among governments and industry in the EU. It could, it says, "potentially be used as the basis for future legislation".

Our local government – the one in Westminster, that is – has already launched its own consultation, offering forms which can be completed on-line. But one sometimes wonders whether there is any point in these exercises when, as the EU survey indicates, public sentiment is so ill-informed.

Any body of people which favours solar power as a better option than nuclear, by a factor of four-to-one, has a long, long way to go before it even begins to understand the issues. One sometimes feels that the Chinese have the right idea.

COMMENT THREAD

Meanwhile…

Peace-loving peoples gather to listen to their leaders.

COMMENT THREAD

News from the Front

The thrilling news winging its way out of Brussels to sit throbbing on our computer screens, ready to inform and inspire the debate of the masses is that EU finance ministers are "deadlocked" and are now taking a temporary break while they regroup their forces.

So we are informed by AP and we sit on the edge of our seats, noses glued to the screen for the latest developments on the unfolding drama…

Will France succeed in its plan to extend short-term lower rates for hairdressers and home repairs beyond 2005, and will it get its way on lower restaurant tax rates?

On the Eastern Front, will the Accession countries succeed in their push for a tax holiday and will Germany continue to insist on keeping the lid of Pandora's box slammed shut, blocking any new VAT exemptions?

Meanwhile our reporter from the Western Front tells us that the climactic meeting between the two Great Powers, France and Germany, in Versailles failed to reach a conclusion when chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her opposition to Chirac’s plea for the lower restaurant tax.

A stiff-lipped and resolute Chirac, however, remained hopeful, telling the throng of reporters: "Our goal is to obtain a lowered VAT. And we will do everything to get there." "Ils ne passeront pas," he was heard to say as he climbed into his armoured car and headed for the trenches.

Jeeze!!! As our American friends are sometimes heard to say. Are we supposed to take this stuff seriously? Is this really what the great European project has come down to – the finance ministers of 25 nations bickering and haggling over tax rates for bloody hairdressers and restaurants?

COMMENT THREAD

Our kind and munificent leaders

Villach makes such a pleasant stop on a Venice to Vienna or Salzburg route, and, blessed as it is with 81 restaurants and 101 taverns, it's a stop foodies may wish to make. It is a pleasant little town in itself, but renowned restaurants and hotels make an overnight trip a real pleasure.

And there is nowhere else in Austria the sun shines longer - an average of 2,010 hours per year and even up to nine hours at time.

There are wonderful views of the Karawanken mountains and the Julian Alps, together with Lake Ossiacher, where the water quality is exceptionally good. No kidding, the water of the lake and the surrounding springs and brooks is so clean that you can drink it without thinking twice.

And it is just the place for a quite meeting, with superbly equipped, modern conference venues and stylish five-star hotels in their own lakeside grounds.

In fact, it was just the place for the informal meeting of the EU's Employment and Social Affairs Council, where 250 ministers and their officials gathered on the weekend of 19-21 January as the guests of the Austrian presidency. And to ensure their comfort during their arduous work, their thoughtful Austrian hosts flew in the conference chairs 200 miles from Vienna, the originals being judged to be too uncomfortable.

Chaired (in comfort) by, amongst others, Austrian federal minister for economics and labour, Britain's pensions minister James Plaskitt was notable amongst the hard-working delegates, complete with his posse of diligent officials.

However, loathe as they were to do so, they managed to tear themselves away from their busy six hours of talks over the weekend, but they only visited the gourmet restaurant for the lengthy meals in order to keep their hosts happy. Doesn't pay to be rude, old boy. Sacrificing all, some even forced themselves to visit the well-appointed health spas and, just to avoid offending the Austrians, they even went to the gala receptions and the entertainments in the local brewery.

Oh, and by the way, in those long, arduous hours, sweating over their important business, prominent on the list, was the "social dimension of the revised Lisbon strategy". Under this heading, the dedicated ministers and officials agreed "common objectives to reduce levels of poverty and to improve the provision of pensions and health care."

Not that they actually decided anything about either poverty or health care. Bless you, no! The whole idea was to "reduce the reporting burden on Member States by making better links between poverty, pensions and health."

Aren't we so lucky that we have such kind and munificent leaders, who work so hard and long for us - what would we do without them?

And well done The Sun for telling us about them.

COMMENT THREAD

The Boy-King comes out fighting (sort of)

Several interesting and rather depressing articles in today’s Daily Telegraph. In the Business Section Ruth Lea, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, attacks the Work and Families Bill, that has left the Commons and has started its path through the House of Lords, where it might conceivably be amended.

This piece of legislation will, when enacted, put extra burdens of regulation and paperwork on all business but while the bigger ones will moan and hand the problem over to the HR departments, the small and medium-sized ones (support for whom is the policy pronounced by HMG and by our real government in Brussels) will groan and, possibly, fold.

This is supposed to be a family-friendly Bill, though why something that is going to be so destructive of smaller businesses, many of which are run by families and all of which provide employment, be called family friendly, is anybody’s guess.

“These extra "family-friendly" provisions include the extension of paid maternity leave from six to nine months. The complication arises with the proposal to allow fathers up to six months paternity leave (which could be partly paid) during the child's first year, if the mother returns to work during this period. Suffice to say, the administrative problems could be quite horrific.”

Could all the people who will lose their jobs and businesses be employed as gender out-reach officers? Surely not.

The other part of the Bill, deals with more and more allowances and regulations for annual leave, measures that Ms Lea characterizes as part of the Warwick Agreement of July 2004 – the price of the unions’ silent support of the government.

Of course, it is not all as simple as that. There is the question of the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC), from whose provisions we still have a few derogations that the EU is anxious to get rid of.

In fact, most of the employment legislation to do with maternity, paternity and adoption leave comes from various EU directives and framework directives. In other words, though the Bill is a little coy on the subject of EU legislation, much of it has to be introduced if we do not want to find ourselves in trouble with the ECJ. And there is the Charter of Fundamental Rights on the way, which is already being taken into account by the ECJ.

“In addition there has been the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, ratcheted up annually, and a raft of complicated regulations from the EU on anti-discrimination measures, working time, working conditions and information and consultation procedures.

One may have thought this was enough. But no - far from it. The EU, intent on creating a socialist workers' paradise, continues to harass the UK about its opt-out from the compulsory maximum 48-hour week and is undoubtedly going ahead with implementing the employee-friendly Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

That’s in addition to all the business-unfriendly legislation introduced by this government, though not entirely off its own bat.

Right, so that is the problem. Do we have a solution? Well, not from the government, obviously or the Lib-Dims, who are engulfed in their own personnel problems at the moment and who may well end up with the euro-fanatical Christopher Huhne as leader. (Personally, I would quite welcome that. It would make the position very clear.)

But, luckily for us, there are two articles on Conservative policy in the same newspaper. First, let us look at Master Georgie Osborne, the shadow chancellor, who has accused Gordon Brown of squandering various advantages he had inherited from the Conservatives.

Undoubtedly true but what is Master Georgie suggesting? Well, he is no longer suggesting tax cuts and has abandoned the idea of looking at flat tax as a possibility. Nothing too radical, then. Slightly radical? Well, errm, no.

Stability must come before tax cuts and, above all,

“He said the Tories would sort out public spending before they promised any tax cuts, but added that stability and a "supply side revolution" would eventually result in growth outstripping spending, leading the way to lower taxes.”

It is not unreasonable to suggest that tax cuts must be tied in with a reform of public spending and an understanding that it should be limited to those branches of economic and social life that can be done only by the state (these are rather limited). But that is not what Master Georgie is saying.

The Tories will sort out public spending. What does that mean? Introduce another level of supervisors on top of the ones we have already to produce more bureaucracy in the name of “sorting out” public spending? And what of the public spending that comes out of the legal requirement that we adopt all EU legislation? The Work and Families Bill will not come cheap either in the immediate amounts of money, paid for by the taxpayer or in the long term effect on economic growth.

Osborne’s exact words were:

“We need a new approach that puts fiscal responsibility at the heart of tax and spending decisions. It is called sharing the proceeds of growth.As the economy grows, we will share the proceeds of that growth between spending on public services and reducing taxes.

Over an economic cycle, output will grow faster than public spending. We aim to use the surplus growth to lower taxes.”

And if the economy doesn’t grow because the economic and political climate is not conducive to it? What, then, of the proceeds to be shared?

Never mind, I thought, there is an article by the Boy-King himself or whoever is on article writing duty this week. That will tell us exactly what we want to hear.

A good crisp start to the article:

“I believe that our country urgently needs a Conservative government to tackle the challenges we face and to prepare Britain for success in the 21st century.”

The trouble is, ever fewer people believe that the party under Master David Cameron will provide us with a Conservative government. One suspects that this view is being expressed ever more loudly within the party itself. Why else would the Boy-King need to write this?

“The next question is perhaps the one I hear most often. Is what we're doing Conservative? Aren't we just turning the party into a pale imitation of New Labour? I am Conservative to the core of my being, as those who know me best will testify.

I'm a Conservative because my instinctive values, and my responses to every political challenge, are Conservative values and Conservative responses.”

Unfortunately, he does not exactly explain what those Conservative values and responses are beyond saying that they are different from Blair’s top-down ones. But how different?

Take education, for instance. The number of people I met recently who were disgusted with Cameron’s comments about grammar schools (though he appears to be proud of them) is very high. All of them would have been Conservative voters in the past – very few will be in the future. What is the Boy-King going to say to them?

“So in education, for example, while we want to give head-teachers more freedom to run their schools, and ask all parents to take responsibility for their children's education, we also believe that government should show leadership in areas where it can make a decisive difference: synthetic phonics to teach literacy properly; setting by ability to stretch the brightest pupils.”

No choice, no selection, and head-teachers to be given freedom to run their schools within the rules imposed by the government. Ahem, top-down or what?

The rest of his ideas are as vague as ever – trusting people; we are all in it together; environment matters; we must get rid of poverty; and there should be motherhood and apple-pie for all.

And there is one word that is conspicuously absent from this article just as it is from Master Georgie’s: Europe. According to Ken Clarke Cameron is the most euro-sceptic Tory leader since before euro-scepticism existed. Unless Clarke has gone completely ga-ga, he must know that this is completely untrue. One must assume that his comment was part of the campaign to pacify those grumbling grass-roots members and potential supporters.

Maybe, if Clarke calls him a euro-sceptic, would-be Conservatives will flock to the Boy-King’s court. Judging by the article in the Telegraph, it did not work and the Boy-King had to come out fighting himself. Sort of. Somehow, I am not convinced this will silence the grumblings either.

COMMENT THREAD

Scotland the brave!

It would be hilarious – if you are into that sort of thing – if it wasn't so er… hilarious.

That brave country Scotland, having struggled under the yoke of its English oppressors for so many centuries and having regained a degree of independence, has its ministers now scurrying around trying to please their new masters in Brussels – and getting it hopelessly wrong.

Their great faux pas – since we are into things continental – was to devise a pension plan for their oh so diligent and dedicated council workers. But, deeming that their masters across the water had stopped them letting the poor dears on the gravy train at the tender age of 60 - because of "anti-discrimination laws" - they adopted a fiendish plan called the "85 rule".

No, dear readers – unfortunately they were not going to keep these good and faithful servants in harness until they were 85 years of age. This was one of those enlightened and imaginative bureaucratic devices which allowed the ancient crones (not) to down tools when the total of their calendar age plus their years of faithful (and not so faithful) service reached 85.

Promoter of this fiendish scheme, finance minister Tom McCabe (pictured), claimed he had no choice but to adopt it – following his former English oppressors who had actually devised it – because to do otherwise would break EU directives on age discrimination.

Enter Katharina von Schnurbein, the commission's spokeswoman on employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. Not so, she tells young Tom, custodian of the treasure of that brave country Scotland, which has struggled so long under the yoke of its English oppressors. Article 6, no less, of the relevant directive gave governments the scope to treat people differently on the grounds of age in certain circumstances.

Adds Ms Von Schnurbein sternly, "It's an artificial debate and is only going on in Britain. The directive has no influence on pension value or pension age. It is completely up to the member state. If they think it is reasonable for people to retire at 60, under EU law that is perfectly legal."

Not good enough says the spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive, a representative of that proud, independent government that came into being after Scotland had struggled so long under the yoke of its English oppressors. "We have received legal advice which concluded that the rule was inconsistent with the directive on the grounds of age discrimination. Based on legal advice, we will pursue this option." We will follow our English oppressors (not) along the road to perdition. The old crones shall not go free.

Oh, Scotland the brave! We are so proud of you.

COMMENT THREAD

Is there any limit to their fantasies?

Günter Verheugen, the EU enterprise and industry commissioner, has come up with another of those "corkers" than could only emanate from those Ivory Towers in Brussels than masquerade as the Commission's headquarters.

According to the Financial Times, he is now advocating that schools should take on the task of teaching "entrepreneurship", as part of the battle "to raise economic growth and job creation". He warns that many countries are "in the grip of an anti-business climate" and says the fightback "must start in the schools and universities".

Many schoolbooks, he claims, perpetuate an image of the business person as an "old, fat man with a bowler hat and a cigar who is exploiting his workers" (Really? - are we thinking of the "fat controller", by any chance?) and now wants teachers to redress the balance, instructing school kids on how to set up businesses and the joys of becoming entrepreneurs.

Apart from the idea of a set of state employees – most of whom have never run a business in their lives and have little knowledge of commerce – teaching kids thus, no doubt Kommissar Veheugen will also have them enthusing about the prospect of kids learning the contents of the 97,000 pages of the EU's acquis communautaire, which will then govern their daily lives.

But, on the other hand, that would mean that children had to be able to read and write first… now there's an idea.

COMMENT THREAD

Separation of powers

Looking at the two men pictured alongside, ask yourself – who has the greatest power?

Contrary to what many people might think – other than our readers of course – in strictly constitutional terms, it is not president Bush but Tony Blair. He, using the convention of Royal Prerogative, can declare war. And, when it comes to paying for the equipment to fight a war, Blair has the advantage of a standing majority in Parliament, from which the executive is drawn, and can thus both propose and gain approval for funds, with very little trouble.

In this, the differences in the US system come to the fore, where the president is the commander-in-chief of the US forces and, as president, can propose a defence budget. But it is entirely within the power of Congress to approve it, with or without amendment. Invariably, Congress adds many amendments – some quite savage – which the president is often obliged to accept.

In holding to this arrangement, the American Constitution has kept in place that which has been considerably weakened in the UK - the principle of "separation of powers". This is the issue which came to the fore in England during the reign of Charles I, the battle over funding the King's military adventures leading more or less directly to the Civil War and the foundations of our current form of parliamentary democracy.

But, while the principle has seemingly been forgotten in the UK (although there are moves afoot to curtail the exercise of the Royal Prerogative), anyone commenting on US politics needs to be fully aware of its role.

It is thus puzzling that first Reuters - last Friday - and then The Business have picked up on the story run in The Sunday Telegraph last week, which we followed up on the blog.

That story retailed how Blair was intervening personally with Bush in a "last ditch attempt" to save the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which was to be built by a consortium including Rolls Royce. Now, we learn from The Business – in an almost direct copy-out of the Reuters story – that Blair ended a video conference with Bush last week "empty-handed".

Interestingly, Reuters claims as a source, "Loren Thompson, a consultant with close ties to defence contractors and the Pentagon," although a spokesman at the White House would not confirm what was said between Blair and Bush.

Both reports now confirm that it is up to Congress to decide the fate of the second engine – but that was always the case. The Congress has the power on this issue, not the president.

Given the dynamics of US politics, Bush could hardly intervene to change a major Pentagon proposal before its submission to Congress – due on 6 February. That would virtually ensure one or other of the Houses would introduce its own counter-amendment which, having been introduced by Congress, would give it a better chance of surviving.

In effect, therefore, Bush's intervention could well have been damaging to Blair, for a proposal which may in any case be overturned by Congress. It would be much wiser for him to remain above the fray – which is precisely what he seems to have done.

The mystery therefore deepens as to why Blair has embarked on an apparently fruitless and possibly counter-productive course of action and why details of what could be construed by the British as a "snub" have been so readily leaked to the media. We thought in our earlier piece that Blair could be preparing the ground for the cancellation of the JSF and, of course, this apparent snub from an American president would go down well with his left wing, muting any complaints if Blair did pull out.

If this is the game Blair is playing, however, he is on very thin ice. Loss of the JSF could very well be the blow which finally causes the military to rebel, and start causing serious political damage to the Labour administration, instanced last week when the First Sea Lord complained that the Navy was already too small to defend us.

Due to retire next month, Admiral Sir Alan West added, "Maybe I'm just a silly old bastard". But that "silly old bastard" may be a taste of things to come. Powerful though Blair may be, no British prime minister has ever successfully taken on the Royal Navy – and won.

COMMENT THREAD

Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira ….

Our readers, I hope, will forgive me for this sudden display of revolutionary fervour. Yesterday I went to see Jean Renoir’s 1937 film La Marseillaise. (What would one do for films if the National Film Theatre did not exist?) As a long-term afficionado of propaganda cinema – I first saw Battleship Potemkin when I was eight – I have to say that, allowing for the fact that it was about twenty-thirty minutes too long, La Marseillaise was infinitely better than all those Soviet films.

There are many reasons for that, concentrating on the fact that Renoir was a near-genius as a film-maker, whereas most of the Soviet ones, including Eizenstein and Pudovkin, were also-rans. Others were not even that. As for the present crop of left-wing propagandists in Hollywood, they are not fit to be mentioned together with Renoir.

In one of the most striking scenes in the film the men of Marseilles start signing up for the battallion that will march to Paris, taking the famous song with them, while the women of Marseilles, egg them on by a rousing chorus of “Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira …” I imagine, many of our readers will know that the burden of the song is that we shall hang the aristos on the lamp-posts.

Now I don’t feel that strongly about aristos. Not the real ones, anyhow. I know a number of them in the House of Lords and a very good job they do for no money and precious little thanks. In fact, the House of Lords is the only part of the British constitutional structure that still fulfills its duty.

Could we not, however, stretch the term “aristo” to include our real masters? For instance, as we agreed with the friend I went to the NFT with, every time one looks at the smug face of the Boy-King of the Conservative Party and hears his pronouncements about how well-meaning toffs like him and his friends will tell us, poor helots, how to run our lives …. OK, OK, I shall not go down that road yet.

Before we get to the Boy-King and his cronies, there are some real enemies to deal with. And none more important than the UN. And this is where one starts chuckling and humming “Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira…”. Because the UN is about to get enmired in another scandal.

There was an interesting side-shoot growing out of the Volcker inquiry. The commission, as the Washington Times reminds us, “had accused [a purchasing officer, Alexander] Yakovlev of pocketing more than $950,000 in illegal payments from companies seeking U.N. contracts”.

Yakovlev pleaded guilty in US federal courts and proceeded, as they say, to sing like a canary. At the time we, together with others, predicted that there would be interesting consequences.

There is now a so far internal inquiry going on into suspected fraud in UN purchasing, in particular, in the peace-keeping sections. Eight officials have been suspended, the highest of these being the Singaporean Andrew Toh, the assistant secretary-general for central support services who is protesting his innocence volubly and U.N. procurement division chief Christian Saunders, who works for Mr. Toh.

Four of those suspended (with pay, naturally) had been recalled from peacekeeping duties (and one wonders what those duties entailed).

Of course, internal inquiries, suspension with pay as an administrative rather than disciplinary act, none of this is really serious. But revolutions do not happen when the ruling elite is at its strongest and most self-assured; they happen when there are cracks in the façade, when the rulers quarrel among themselves, when their dirty linen is washed more and more in public.

As catering firms like Compass Group PLC and its subsidiary Eurest Support Services are also being suspended and investigated, the story will not stay within those internal commissions.

Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira…

COMMENT THREAD

A bizarre tale

A down-page item on page 11 of the Sunday Times on the somewhat esoteric subject of "electric armour" might seem an odd issue to get worked up about.

Its importance lies, however, in that it illustrates, on the one hand, the failure of the media to get to grip with defence issues (and its sheer amateurism) and, on the other, that it raises – inadvertently - questions about the increasingly perplexing behaviour of the MoD.

First, though, we need to look briefly at the story, which is headed: "Tanks to get anti-missile 'force field'". It is written in a breathless "Boys' Own" style, with a graphic that would not have disgraced any boys' action comic. The British Army's next class of armoured vehicles, we are told, will be protected by a "force field" of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket-propelled grenades.

It is being developed to protect forces against terrorists and insurgents armed with the ubiquitous RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade, which can penetrate most current heavy armour, and is so commonly used to trash US vehicles in Iraq.

The armour, the writer Michael Smith goes on to tells us - invented at the ministry's scientific research centre - will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world.

What immediately strikes me about this is that it is an old story – confirmed by a brief search of the internet. The first British demonstration of the concept was in 2002, which was written up, in terms similar to the current ST story, by The Telegraph in August 2002 and the likes of Wired Magazine in the same month.

The concept, though, is much older – so old that it was being actively discussed by the US House of Representatives Military Procurement Subcommittee in March 1998. Thus, it has taken the Sunday Times the best part of eight years to wake up to the concept and report on it – there's being "on the ball" for you.

This, of course, leads us to enquire why the ST should take the time out now, from its busy schedule - which includes nigh-on three full pages on the Thames whale (in common with the Sunday Telegraph) – to publish the story. That clue is given in the text, where Smith informs us that the MoD has awarded a contract to the US Lockheed Martin company, to make a demonstration version "of the British invention".

I am by no means sure this is a "British invention", but let that pass for a moment. The fact of a contract being awarded seems as good as any for a "hook" on which to base the story – except that the award was in the offing in December and was formally announced by the MoD and Lockheed on 6 January. Even by MSM standards, this is old news.

The contract, incidentally, is one of a raft awarded about the same time for the FRES project, including the award to the Swedish company Hägglunds of the development contract for the vehicle platform, something that the Sunday Times has never seen fit to report.

But leaving that aside as well, we come to the really interesting bit – the award of the contract to Lockheed Martin.

Unnoticed and unremarked by the Sunday Times, Lockheed Martin is one of two US companies leading consortiums working on developing armoured vehicles for the US Army's Future Combat System (FCS). The other is led by US armoured vehicle maker, United Defense – which is also working on (and is well advanced with) the electric armour concept - having already tested it on a Bradley MICV (below, right).

Now, United Defense is wholly owned by BAE Systems. The Swedish company Hägglunds is also wholly owned by BAE Systems. Thus, you have a British company with wholly-owned subsidiaries which are working on electric armour and the armoured platforms to which the armour will – if it works – be fitted. So the MoD awards the development contract to a competitor which, as far as I can ascertain, has no recent history of electric armour development.

What is going on? I cannot even pretend to know the answers, but something very strange is happening. It does not feel right. Somehow, it is linked to the increasingly bizarre MOD procurement policy, which in turn is driving defence strategy. What we are seeing does not make sense.

The real reason could be that the UK having pulled out of the precursor FCS programme, code-named TRACER, and aligned itself with its European "partners" to develop FRES, the US is not prepared to let it re-enter the programme by the back door, benefiting from technology funded by American taxpayers. Thus we have the bizarre situation of the MoD being excluded from using technology produced by a British-owned company, being forced to look elsewhere.

The point here is that if the Sunday Times was a grown-up newspaper, it would already have covered the electric armour story some years ago and would not be limiting itself to "Janet and John" explanations at this juncture. It would also have covered FRES in its widest aspects and would thus be in a position to be asking the question raised on this blog. With its infinitely greater resources, it could even – perhaps – get some answers.

To return to "Janet and John", however, Smith of the ST tells us that the new "lighter armour" is going to allow the new vehicles to be moved by C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. The Army's Challenger II tank, which weighs 62½ tons, and the 24½-ton Warrior armoured vehicle had to be ferried by sea to the Gulf for the Iraq war, "a complex process taking many weeks."

This betrays the rank amateurism of the paper. Just for the record, a C-17 can carry a Challenger, and the heavier Abrams – which it did in the Gulf during the last war, delivering a squadron of these heavy tanks to an airfield in northern Iraq, outflanking Saddam's forces.

But what really does make one wonder is how Smith thinks that C-17s can be used to transport anything other than a token force. Currently, the RAF has five such aircraft and no plans to purchase more. Even if you added the whole of the projected A400 "Eurolifter" fleet, we have calculated that it would take six to eight weeks to deliver Brigade-strength vehicles by air, without men or supplies – longer than sea transport.

Smith is indulging in a fantasy – but then so is the MoD. But wouldn't it have made a much better story if Smith had noticed?

COMMENT THREAD

Galloway's troubles grow

Somehow it seems appropriate to write about George Galloway’s troubles on the anniversary of Lenin’s death. (Yes, I know, it was actually yesterday, January 21, but the sun is shining and I am still celebrating.)

So what else can go wrong for Gorgeous George? Two separate reports, by the Senate Commission and the Volcker Commission, came up with different sets of documents that show the same thing: money was going into his or his wife’s accounts from the oil-for-food scam. He has denied it all but has not, as yet, agreed to answer questions directly. I am sure Senator Norm Coleman is devastated.

He has managed to alienate a few (not too many, admittedly) people by his nauseating fawning on the Boy Assad, as Mark Steyn calls him, and by rushing up for a little cosy fireside chat with Fidel Castro.

All of that was as nothing compared to his decision to join the list of fading celebs in the Big Brother House and bringing disgrace to the good name of the feline by his antics. Up with this even his left-wing cronies will not put.

Most interestingly, while in the House (where, I understand, he has managed to annoy and upset his housemates) and, therefore, incommunicado, he has managed to sign a number of Early Day Motions in another House, that of the Commons. Given that he does not precisely frequent the place even when he is not miaowing and lapping milk, the achievement is impressive.

Now comes the unkindest cut of all. Thanks to Little Green Footballs, we find out that an Islamic organization has issued a fatwa on the wretched Galloway. Strictly speaking, it is not clear whether they can do so, but they have done it nevertheless and using language that is distinctly fruity.

“Recently, Allah (SWT) has disgraced these so-called Muslims and the one they have associated with Allah, George Galloway, by causing him to appear on a reality TV show "Celebrity Big Brother". Shows such as this contain all the corruption Allah (SWT) has forbidden, such as free-mixing, fornication, drinking, nudity, swearing and many other abominable acts. These kinds of programmes attract only the lowest of the low who desperately seek recognition and fame by any means possible.

They are people who have no honour, respect or dignity and can only be described as animals. George Galloway will certainly have no trouble fitting in as he has all the criteria the show is looking for. Just recently, the media has shown George Galloway at his best – behaving like a cat (animal) purring at the hands of a woman. This is not surprising as one cannot expect anything more from a person of such low intellect and morality, a representative of those who voted for him.

Furthermore, we all saw how Allah (SWT) humiliated and exposed the hypocritical (munaafiq) organisation based in the East London Mosque, Islamic Forum Europe, after Mr Galloway's election victory last year. They were shown on television, and in newspapers, carrying the najas (impure) Galloway on their shoulders, celebrating and parading the one they had shamelessly associated with Allah in order to gain some worldly benefits.

Is this the animal they took as a lord (lawmaker) besides Allah? Is this animal the one they chose to ally with instead of the believers? Is this the animal they chose to represent them in this world and the Hereafter? Is this the animal they campaigned for and called other Muslims to vote for? Is this the animal they appointed to be their knight and liberate Muslim lands? Is this the animal they claimed embraced Islam? How many promises has he fulfilled? Which war has he stopped?”

Dare I say that language like that makes one purr with pleasure?

COMMENT THREAD

A blogger's lament

It seems that some of our readers are having difficulty coming to terms with what this blog is about – which is hardly surprising as we too have difficulties in understanding and defining our role.

Originally part of the informal "no" campaign for the expected EU referendum, it has since embraced a wider role. It is emerging as a running commentary on the growing failure of our democracy – of which our membership of the European Union is but one symptom. We hope that, by highlighting the deficiencies in the system, we might better understand what is needed to deal with them and, at the same time might motivate others to address them.

Since, as we pointed out in an earlier post, the media plays a pivotal role in the maintenance of a functioning democracy, the failures of the media are necessarily an important part of our commentary. This is not because, as some have implied, we feel that blogs have any inherent superiority – we acknowledge that they are a different medium from the MSM . It is simply that, by highlighting the deficiencies of the MSM, we hope that somehow they will get the message and improve.

Speaking personally, although blogging is tremendous fun and highly rewarding, there is a part of me that resents the time spent doing it. On a Sunday morning, for instance, a far more pleasurable pastime would be – as of yore – to occupy the time with a leisurely read of the papers and then devote the rest of the day to relaxing before the busy week ahead.

Instead, one scans the dead-tree media in an ill-tempered miasma, fulminating at their inadequacies, only then to trudge upstairs to the computer and find out – as best one can – what is really going on, from the internet. That then becomes the pattern for the week. I buy only one newspaper on weekdays, when I used to buy at least two and sometimes three – as well as listen and watch avidly the broadcast news.

Now, I can hardly bear the broadcasters and read listlessly the one newspaper, simply because I must have something to read while I take my morning coffee and bacon butty. Thence I trudge upstairs to find out what is really going on in the world.

There would be nothing better in my life, I sometimes feel, than to revert to "the good old days" when it seemed possible to read the newspapers and listen to the news to find out what is going on – what was important – and then get on with life, guided by the knowledge that one had acquired. Should that happy day ever arise again – if indeed it ever existed – we could give up blogging and get back into the real world.

That said, this post started off as a short introduction to a critique of an article on "electric armour" which appeared in The Sunday Times this morning - but it growed somewhat. What's the connection? You'll see when we put up the post.

COMMENT THREAD

Delusions of grandeur

According to a report by Nora Boustany in yesterday's Washington Post and picked up by other publications:

"Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said Tuesday that NATO should establish a network with such countries as Australia and Japan if it hopes to become a global organization. Verhofstadt, who met with President Bush that day, said he suggested that Belgium and the United States set up seminars to discuss the future direction of the alliance."

Errm ... Belgium and the United States? How did Bush manage to keep a straight face, I wonder.

COMMENT THREAD

A matter of spin

Dead-tree sellers do have their uses. They occasionally come up with stories on their own (without cribbing agency copy). And, in yesterday's Telegraph David Rennie comes up with one which, on the face of it, looks quite good, headed: "Red tape 'turning best firms away from Europe'".

Mind you, all he had to do was turn up at a press conference on Friday, so it was no great feat.

However, I did start to curse him when I read the story, which refers to a report to the commission by Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland. Nowhere does Rennie give the name of the report, making it difficult to find on the net. It looks, though, as if the report (called, as far as I can tell, "Boosting European research and innovation") has not been published, so he can perhaps be forgiven.

That aside, when I read some of the agency reports of the same press conference, I began to wonder whether Rennie was actually there. Possibly, he attended a completely different event.

From the event he attended, Rennie has it that "Europe's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape". The companies that Europe needed to survive were instead investing more money than ever in the United States and Asia and the "lack of investment was so dire that it threatened Europe's 'comfortable' way of life."

He then cites the report author, Esko Aho as saying "Europe has to act before it's too late," adding that, "the findings made unsettling reading for the EU leaders, ripping into their pledges to build a 'knowledge-based Europe'".

When one refers to the AP report, however, its "take" is completely different. "Europe Needs Pact to Keep Pace", it reports, stating that: "European leaders should seal a pact boosting EU research and innovation to stop Europe from falling behind other major world economies," again citing Esko Aho's report.

AP does agrees that "businesses are deterred from investing...", but focuses that claim much more tightly than Rennie, adding, "...in research" – which is actually what the press conference was about.

But – at least according to AP - it isn't just a matter of "red tape". The problem is partly because "the European market is not innovation-friendly… research efforts are often fragmented so more coordination is essential." Thus, says AP, the report calls for better access to venture capital funding to finance innovative companies and more movement between universities and business.

Now we turn to EUpolitix and find its headline proclaims: "EU calls for cash to back talk on research", with the text reading: "European leaders need to show a greater willingness to match strong words on boosting research with adequate financial support, the European commission warned on Friday."

But get this. EU "research chief" Janez Potocnik – the Slovenian commissioner – was there. He "warned" that European countries should not go it alone when it came to measures to boost innovation… "There is no doubt that some kind of co-operation is needed at the EU level," he tells the conference.

Now cut to Jozef Cornu, a former president of Alcatel and one of the four authors of the Aho report. According to EUpolitix, he "gave the concrete example of traffic control technology," offering the following:

Virtually every EU country is considering introducing some form of electronic traffic control technology or road toll system. But none of them are compatible. There are no standards, no norms. This inevitably means that companies think small – on the country level – and rarely on the European, let alone global level.

Potocnik then returns to the fray, saying that the commission was considering measures for increasing its role in co-ordinating R&D; investments across the EU, but warning that it was "complicated". "We would have to go much further than simply the R&D arena," he said. "For example, technology for traffic control also involves co-ordinating in terms of infrastructure – the roads themselves."

Then we get to Reuters. It tells us that "Aho fears that without action at the EU level, some member states will focus on national research projects that would accentuate Europe's fragmented markets."

Re-reading Rennie's report, I would, after all, concede that he was at the same event. But nothing of the flavour of the other reports comes over in his. This was not an attack on EU "red tape", as such. There is merely passing reference to that problem. It is mainly a call for more "co-ordination" and the spending of more state money.

But Potocnik's comments are chilling: "We would have to go much further than simply the R&D; arena," he says. "For example, technology for traffic control also involves co-ordinating in terms of infrastructure – the roads themselves." We're in Galileo territory here, and this looks like the start of a power-grab to me.

The best I can say of Rennie, therefore, is that the Telegraph gave the story a "spin" that it knew would please its readers. But I do not think we have been well served by the paper. Did I really say that dead-tree sellers had their uses?

COMMENT THREAD

I’m well and truly Googled!!

We learn from a variety of sources, including The Telegraph that the US Justice Department is demanding from Google (and other search engine providers) data about every search conducted on its site during a one-week period.

This will include records about the behaviour of millions of people around the world who use internet search engine, the Justice Department claiming the information is vital for its attempt to restore online child protection laws struck down by the US Supreme Court.

Quite unreasonably, some will say, Google is resisting this demand, claiming that, to comply would give the impression that it is willing to disclose personal information about those who use its services. This is, "not a perception that Google can accept", it says.

But in the battle against child molesters, pornographers and the like – who use the internet widely in the pursuit of their loathsome activities – assessing the extent of related traffic is surely a logical step in devising and implementing an effective enforcement regime.

After all, it is not as if us law-abiding citizens have anything to hide. We can sleep easily in our beds while the Justice Department – and like-minded guardians around the world - protect us and our children from the depredations of what are, in fact, some very evil people, chasing down the wrong-doers and bringing them to book.

But hang on a sec… Not long ago, I wrote a story which included references to the Ruth Kelly debacle, and the sex offenders register. Perhaps unwisely, in retrospect, to pull up the background stories to inform my writing, I googled the string: "Ruth Kelly", "schools" and "sex". That's me done-for.

Come to think about it, I have done a lot of Googling on terrorists and explosives, and I did a lot of searching on artillery shells for a recent story. There's me now, with red flags all over my file.

Well, at least I can say it's research (don't they all?). Even though I may occasionally have a look at the BNP site, it is not as if I frequent porn sites, is it? Er… well, actually I do – at least, according to the "internet history" on my computer.

One of the less savoury aspects of running this blog and its associated forum is that I check-out web links of applicants to join the forum and the sites that link to this blog – the latter on the basis of normal "netiquette" of returning the favour. One of the more devious tricks of the pornographers is to secrete their site URLs into apparently innocent links, in the hope of attracting unsuspecting net users onto their sites.

These links, of course, get zapped in nano-seconds. Readers and forum users are never troubled. But the site details are faithfully stored, for some wandering plod to find when they come to seize my computers.

Then there was that time when I let a so-called "friend" use my computer to send faxes from my machine because his had broken down. One day I lent him the house key because I was going to be out, and he had a whole batch to send. When I returned, I found he had spent the day in my house, surfing the net for the most indescribable porn – the details of which, again, are faithfully recorded in my computer memory. He had even, "obligingly", downloaded some material and left the files on the computer desktop.

Never mind, I have perfectly innocent explanations for all of this, so they'll be quite understanding and send me on my way… won't they… er…?

And, as they say, there's the rub. None of us have anything to fear, until they come to get us. This is "big government" at its worst and, whether it is the US government or the British government - with the aid of the EU, they are all the same.

There are still some people – too many - stupid enough to believe that government is benign and, when that "benign government" professes to be pursuing such noble causes as hunting down child pornographers, they are gulled into believing that giving it access to personal information is "a good thing". Repeat after me... "we have nothing to hide...".

But, all governments – of whatever ilk - abuse their powers. They just do it for different reasons - or so they claim. Your totalitarian state will do it for reasons of "state security", the "benign" democracy will do it to counter child pornographers.

Either way, the more information they have, the greater the chance of, and temptation for, abuse. Of course Google is right to resist the Justice Department, just as the campaigners are right to resist this government's plans for ID cards and why we should now be resisting any plans for electronic road charging based on the Galileo system - which will record details of every car journey we make.

Meanwhile, does anyone know how to wipe a computer hard disk… I mean really wipe it? Otherwise, I'm well and truly Googled.

See also, this post from ShrinkWrapped blog

COMMENT THREAD

Think of an advertising slogan

According to a report on the Guardian website, Hamas has had a change of heart. Well, no, since you ask, they are not going to stop blowing up themselves and numerous other people (did somebody say indiscriminate bombing?). What they are going to do is try and put a good image on it.

To this end they have hired a spin doctor a.k.a. a media consultant, Nashat Aqtash, and are paying him $180,000 (£100,000). One would quite like to know where the money comes from but I suppose one is not going to get an answer. Certainly Mr Aqtash is not asking any questions. PR people don’t. They just charge.

One must admit Mr Aqtash faces a daunting task. The way Chris McGeal puts it is that he has been hired

“to persuade Europeans and Americans that it is not a group of religious fanatics who relish suicide bombings and hate Jews.”

I guess you could try to explain that they do not really relish doing these things. Mr Aqtash’s main problem is Hamas itself. Most of its leaders and even ordinary members keep saying that they relish suicide bombings and hate Jews. He has to persuade them to stop dancing in the streets every time they hear of another explosion.

Mr Aqtash, who also teaches media at Birzeit university in Ramallah (would it not be interesting to have a look at the materials he is using for his course?) says:

“Hamas has an image problem. The Israelis were able to create a very bad image of the Palestinians in general and particularly Muslims and Hamas. My contract is to project the right image. We don't need the international community to accept Hamas ideology, we need it to accept the facts on the ground. We are not killing people because we love to kill. People view Hamas as loving sending people to die. We don't love death, we like life.”

He is trying to persuade Hamas leaders not to keep saying that they want to destroy Israel because it is full of Jews. In fact, it might be a good idea not to say that they want to destroy Israel at all.

The trouble is that it is precisely what they have been saying ever since their foundation and it is that “peace-loving” sentiment that is in their foundation document. Then there is the undeniable fact that Hamas is responsible for hundreds of deaths and serious injuries, all of them civilians and many of them children. Actually, they have never bothered to deny it.

However, it looks like they will emerge from next week’s elections as a formidable political force in Palestine and there is a need to gain acceptance internationally. Hence the spin doctor, who will go around telling the world and, in the first place, former President Carter and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, that actually Hamas are cuddly little bunnies who bite only when they are cornered. And not even then. In fact, they prefer the Gandhi method. Those two might even believe it but a certain amount of scepticism is bound to be the reaction of the international community.

Some of the Hamas people are listening to their spin doctor. Muhammad Abu Tir, who is second on the election list and who has been told not to colour his beard red with henna, because it looks ridiculous, has said in a recent interview twice that he was not a Jew-hater. Chris McGeal does not reveal whether Abu Tir also informed the interviewer that some of his best friends were Jews.

So here they are, those

“Helpful hints

The advice Nashat Aqtash gave to Hamas:

· Say you are not against Israelis as Jews
· Don't talk about destroying Israel
· Do talk about Palestinian suffering
· Don't celebrate killing people
· Change beard colour (if red)”

Mr Aqbash’s campaign will be worth watching.

COMMENT THREAD

Money talking

So, Iran has withdrawn its investments from Europe, thus to pre-empt a potential asset freeze, should the UN eventually be dragged into apply economic sanctions.

All sorts of dark motives can be inferred by the movement of vast amounts of money from the Middle East and this move has certainly had the pulses racing of a number of conspiracy theorists. Many, for instance, have long asserted that the US invaded Iraq only because Saddam threatened to convert his oil funds into euros, breaking away from the petrodollar.

It is interesting, therefore, to watch the reaction of the money markets to this move which, according to Reuters, has been minimal. Loftily, the agency explains that Iran's reserves and investments "are probably too small to rock the $1.9 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market."

That is a fascinating figure, well known to most economists but it rather puts things into perspective. At $1.9 trillion a day, that means the amount of money traded in one day is roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of the whole of the UK – until recently the world's fourth largest economy – and to roughly one sixth of the US GDP. By comparison, the whole of Iran's economy is relatively small beer.

The analysts are, however, a little wary, saying that the dollar could feel a pinch if the move by Iran influences other major crude exporters or further inflames the stand-off between Western nations and Iran, currently the world's fourth largest oil exporter.

What is seen as a more immediate problem is Iran retaliating in the form of curbing oil exports. This which would have a severe impact on Japan, which takes a quarter of Iran's exports, and could have a knock-on efeect on the dollar.

But the real "biggy" is the possibility of a military strike on Iran, which is already causing many oil analysts to expect $80 per barrel oil as early as this quarter. A credible threat is then seen as Iran blocking the oil waterways in the strait of Hormuz, through which passes a quarter of the world's traded oil.

It looks like the markets are taking the threat somewhat more seriously than our media. But, as they always say, money talks (whereas the media simply prattles).

COMMENT THREAD

All change at the State Department

Say what you like about Alec Russell, the Daily Telegraph’s Washington correspondent but he does seem to read the newspapers. The story he is trumpeting in today’s paper is actually yesterday’s. Based on a speech made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, the story of the big change in the State Department was covered yesterday in all the American newspapers, among them (to pick two at different ends of the political spectrum) the Washington Times and the New York Times.

Oh well, even Mr Russell gets there eventually, though he finds it impossible to report a major and internationally significant policy announcement without having a giggling little Bush-bashing:

“In a shake-up of United States diplomacy Condoleezza Rice is to transfer hundreds of diplomats from Europe and Washington to postings in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. A third of America's 6,400 diplomats could ultimately be redeployed, officials said.

The secretary of state, reflecting Washington's concern over its appalling image in the world, also called on diplomats to get out of their embassies, and for the creation of one-man outposts away from capitals.”

Well, it could be because of that “appalling image” or it could be because there is a recognition of political realities. And if it comes to that, who is supposed to make sure that America does not have an “appalling image”? Is it not the diplomats? What precisely has the State Department been doing all this time to ensure that America’s image is not that “appalling”.

Holding the fort on the Washington European cocktail circuits and chumming up with European officials, that’s what.

Curiously enough Alec Russell’s example belies his own attitude:

“Miss Rice noted that America had almost as many state department staff in Germany, with its population of 82 million, as in India with one billion people.”

As it happens, America’s image in India is far from “appalling”. Relationship between the two countries is growing warmer by the day and even those famous opinion polls tend to show Indians to be largely pro-American.

The Telegraph editorial is much closer to the mark.

“In his second inaugural address, President George W Bush defined the ultimate goal of American policy as "ending tyranny in our world". His Secretary of State calls the instrument through which this is to be achieved "transformational diplomacy". She has now detailed how it will operate.

At Georgetown University on Tuesday, Condoleezza Rice spoke of shifting several hundred diplomats from Europe and the United States over the next few years to countries such as Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Morocco, Indonesia, Lebanon, Nigeria and Pakistan. The American presence will be more widely spread through "presence posts", consisting of one diplomat, and "virtual presence posts", comprising an internet site.”

The Washington Times quotes Secretary Rice:

“This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be. To reach citizens in bustling new population centers, we cannot always build new consulates beyond a nation's capital.”

During her inauguration hearing last year she had referred to her intention to introduce “transformational diplomacy” and reminded her hearers about America’s work in turning Germany and Japan into democratic allies.

Of course, when it comes to countries like India, the question is not one of turning them into democracies or allies – India is already both. There is a recognition of that vast sub-continent’s growing importance …. and of the waning importance of Europe.

The Telegraph leader, unlike its reporter, notes the need to change State Department attitudes to their work:

“Miss Rice promises a shake-up of American diplomacy similar to that which followed the end of the Second World War and the Cold War. But it will not be fulfilled without a fundamental change in the attitude of her civil servants. For far too long they have failed to sell the policies of the administration that employs them to the countries where they are posted. In comparison with
other bureaucracies, the embassies are passive and the State Department inaccessible.”

It is, alas, a little worse than that. Just as the CIA, State seems to have decided to be a political player separately and, indeed, in opposition to the administration. I was amused during a previous trip to Washington when somebody explained to me that the State Department did not see its role as having to explain American policy to others but as having to explain to Americans why they are disliked by others. This, too, will have to change. Secretary Rice’s message is “Go out and sell your country.”

There is one aspect to it (as I noted above) that is not being mentioned by the MSM either here or in America. The diplomats to be sent all over the world will not be vacating the cocktail parties of Washington solely – they are being removed from the capitals of Europe.

If there is one part of the world where America has an “appalling” image, it is western Europe and precious little have the armies of American diplomats done about it. Probably fanned the flames.

This does not seem to matter to Secretary Rice and the reason is clear to see. As we have mentioned on this blog once or twice before, American eyes are turning away from Europe. I saw direct evidence of this when I was there recently.

American newspapers have many pages of foreign news but these tend to be from the Middle East and the Far East or Latin America. Only rarely was there anything from Europe (including Britain). And if there is anything, it is likely to be from Eastern Europe.

This is, of course, a recognition of political reality. Europe, tangled up in its petty little squabbles and mulishly determined to push through various integrationist measures, has become an ever diminishing force in the world (whether Chirac threatens nuclear strikes or not).

On the other hand, as we have also written on this blog, with the EU defining its position in opposition to the United States, the existence, growth and structure of that body should be of importance to America and its government. Unfortunately, it seems the thousands of State Department officials who have spent such a pleasant time in the European capitals in the last few decades, do not seem to have been able to explain any of it. They may as well go and learn new tricks. If they can.

COMMENT THREAD

The limits of the media

Continuing with my series, which started off by addressing the limits of Euroscepticism, which then moved on to the limits of integration, and then dealt with the limits of centralisation, this fourth essay picks up on a theme frequently rehearsed on this blog.

To put it in perspective, the complaints we air are no mere petulant tilts at the media and its serried ranks of what we so often refer to as "gormless hacks", but a genuine concern for the continued survival of that institution of ours that seems under enormous strain – democracy.

In this context, consider if you will, my recent prophesy that the mainstream media would ignore the Galileo "overspend story". This has come to pass, although one has to admit that it was easy to make. And now consider the implications of the media not following this story, an issue which, to some extent, we have already rehearsed.

Put yourself in the appalling position of those unfortunate creatures who do not read this blog and try to appreciate that those people, if they have been following the progress of the Galileo project only through the mainstream media, will know very little about it.

They will perceive it only in vague terms as an alternative to the US Navstar system. Such coverage as they will have seen has conveyed a generally favourable view of the project, and some people may have absorbed the more extreme propaganda, that it is a "triumph for Europe".

They will be completely unaware that the cost to the UK (about £400 million, so far) or of the fact that the project is overspent and that the member states will, effectively, have to write a blank cheque to get the system fully operational. Not knowing that, and not having been told how the EU then intends to finance the operational phase – through a private finance partnership – these poor benighted MSM readers will be totally unaware of the implications.

Interestingly, one writer who is aware, is the New York journalist Taylor Dinerman, who has followed the Galileo project closely and writes about it in Space Review – a journal not often read by your "average punter".

In an article in April last year, which suggested that Galileo was heading for a massive overspend, he drew attention to the difficulties that the private companies involved would have in recovering the capital they were putting in, let alone making a reasonable return on investment. He then adds a detail which will chill the blood of the average motorist. The only credible scheme so far, he writes,

…is the idea floating around that carmakers would be forced to put tracking devices using Galileo technology in all new cars sold in the EU. The consortium would receive a percentage of the fines levied on traffic violations detected with the assistance of the system.

This may seem far-fetched but, within the EU, the far-fetched has the awful habit of coming true. Who, for instance, would ever have believed, when we joined the "Common Market" in 1972, that British troops would be wearing "ring of star" badges on their uniforms, engaged in European-led military operations in former Yugoslavia?

As regards using a Galileo-based system as a speed monitor, this is technically viable, and therefore a credible option. Furthermore, as readers of this blog know – but the general public does not – the commission has pledged to use its powers to "promote" the use of Galileo.

Since Maastricht, "road safety" has become a commission competence (with predictable results - see right) and it is therefore entirely within its power to propose legislation, on road safety grounds, that all new cars are fitted with the necessary technology. And enough member states, relying on the ignorance of the general population, could vote it through under qualified majority voting, without even the agreement of the UK government, much less the British people.

Clearly, if more people were aware of the implications of Galileo, and what is being done in their name, there would probably be much more concern expressed. Equally, there would be more opposition to the government's plans on police regionalisation, the implementation of the EU’s waste strategy, and on a host of other issues which are simply not being addressed.

Therefore, the point is made – somewhat laboriously – that information is vital to democracy. In that they are a – if not the – major source of general information, the media are a vital part of democracy. This has been stated by so many people, and in so many ways, that it seems barely in need of repetition. But, it seems it does.

All our recent experience shows that the media seems to have retreated from its role as a provider of serious information – that level of information that is necessary to make a democracy work – and descended into the entertainment industry in a vain attempt to amuse the population and thereby increase its business.

Perversely, the strategy does not seem to work. Even the flagship BBC radio Today programme has lost audience and every single newspaper is experiencing a decline. But the BBC, unlike the "dead tree media", cannot claim that its loss represents a decline in radio audiences, In the same period, listeners to the BBC 3 classical music programme have increased to record levels while its competitor, Classic FM, has reached stratospheric proportions.

The website Editors weblog offers some insight into this phenomenon, and also records – to our delight - that the phenomenon is widespread. The New York Times, for instance, has lost close to 20 percent of its readership since 2001.

Of very great interest, however, is the fate of The Sunday Telegraph. Only two months ago, after reinventing itself as a "lifestyle magazine" under its new editor, Sarah Sands, it is strongly rumoured that its already declining circulation has lurched to a new low, with 50,000 copies lost since the relaunch.

On the other hand, if there is a growth sector in the information business, it is the internet. But the greatest beneficiaries are clearly the blogs – with some American sites showing exponential growth. Look, for instance, at Little Green Footballs which from its start-up on its present site in February 2001 has now logged nearly 53 million "hits" and is currently taking nearly 105,000 a day (sigh!). Its last posting (at the time of writing) took 1,162 comments.

This site, of course, is one of many with hit rates in the millions and the phenomenon seems to be catching on over here. Our readership is growing, but then so are the figures for other British blogs. This is, presumably, why the "dead tree sellers" are so worried.

But, instead of addressing their own deficiencies, the tree morticians are, like Sarah Sands, misreading the signs and rushing to "dumb down" their copy even further, only to be rewarded with continuing sales falls.

The problem is that blogs are not actually in competition with the MSM. We have a symbiotic relationship and can never seek to replace them. But, judging from the decline in the number of readers and listeners to news coverage, the MSM is in terminal decline. Already, that must be having an effect on our democracy and the further decline can bode no good.

It would be nice to think that, if some revisited their core values, and started to provide good quality coverage, the decline could be reversed. If not, it seems the media has reached the limit of its capability to service the market for information and, by inference, democracy.

In its own way, therefore, the media - or its decline - is as great a threat to our democracy as the European Union.

COMMENT THREAD

Beware of Greeks…

With tensions rising over the potential nuclear threat from Iran, and the known complicity of China in supplying arms and nuclear technology to the Mad Mullahs, what would you do if you were prime minister of Greece, a member of that sterling (if I may use that word), peace-loving organisation called the European Union?

One thing you might not think of doing is to pop over to Beijing and tell the Chinese premier that the EU arms embargo against China should be lifted, and that Greece will continue making efforts to this end.

But then, Mr Costas Karamanlis has more imagination than you or I, which is probably why he is prime minister of Greece. And, according to the Chinese press agency Xinhuanet, that is precisely what he did yesterday, making this "reaffirmation" in a China-Greece joint statement signed also by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.

Greece, said our imaginative prime minister, "would continue making efforts within the European Union for the early lifting of the arms embargo against China, taking into account the China-EU all-round strategic partnership and relevant conclusions of the EU summit".

However, EU leaders seemed to have reaffirmed their political will during the September EU summit "to work towards ending the ban". That's something I missed. Does Mr Blair know?

Anyway, China now "demands" that the European Union observe its political commitment and lifts the arms embargo against China as soon as possible, "so as to remove the last obstacle to China-EU relations". And, of course, Mr Costas Karamanlis is only too happy to oblige.

Schmuck.

COMMENT THREAD

Chirac threatens nuclear strikes

The “unilateral cowboy” as Little Green Apples refers to him or as we prefer to call him, l’escroc Chirac has announced that France is prepared to use its nuclear weapons if any other state will threaten it with terrorist attacks. He did not specify which other state he may have had in mind.

As reported by the BBC, Reuters, Bloomberg and numerous other news agencies, l’escroc announced at L’Ile-Longue, a nuclear submarine base in Brittany that leaders of states, who

“use terrorist means against us, just like anyone who would envisage using, in one way or another, arms of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and adapted response from us.”

These responses could be of conventional kind or of a “different kind”.

Apparently,

“"In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilisations," he said, adding that "odious attacks" could escalate to "other yet more serious forms involving states".”

I don’t think anyone has actually thought of this before, have they. What exactly would have been Chirac’s reaction (not to mention SecGen Annan’s) to statements like that from President Bush? Will France in its born-again capacity as defender of something or other, support the United States in future dealings with terrorist states? Will it support Israel? Questions, questions.

Come to think of it, France is one of the EU3 (with Germany and the UK) that has brought us all to a sorry pass in their interminable and pointless negotiations with Iran. Is that one of the countries l’escroc had in mind?

COMMENT THREAD

France calls for sanctions

No, not against Iran – wouldn't want to upset the Russians, would we? This is the Ivory Coast which is now tottering on the brink of renewed civil war after at least five people died in violent confrontations between UN peacekeepers and supporters of president Laurent Gbagbo.

Young "patriots" have been blocking the streets of Abidjan, the country's economic capital, for the third day to protest against a proposal to dissolve the pro-Gbagbo national assembly. And, in the town of Guiglo, west of the capital, UN troops from Bangladesh fired on protesters who tried to storm their compound. Officials said at least five people had died.

In response, according to Reuters, France's top-ranking soldier, Army Chief of Staff General Henri Bentegeat, has called on the international community to impose sanctions on the government of Ivory Coast.

A short chronology of the most recent events is provided by Reuters, but what is fascination about the general media coverage – for those few newspapers which chose to cover it – is the one-dimensional reporting.

Nothing comes over of the role of the French as the former colonial power, and its interference in the government of a supposedly independent country – to the extent that the current instability is largely the result of that interference.

Equally, there is no reference to the allegations of the disgraceful behaviour of French troops, or any reference to the fact that the Ivorians loath and detest the French and the UN troops, whom they regard as an occupying power.

But most interestingly of all, no one seems to have thought incongruous the intervention of a French general in an obviously political issue. Least of all has there been any suggestion that, in seeking to lay the blame for the unrest on the civil government in the Ivory Coast, Bentegeat might be indulging in a less than subtle form of damage limitation.

Our readers might recall that the former commander of the French forces in the Ivory Coast, General Henri Poncet (left), has been suspended and is under investigation for "complicity to murder". They will also recall how the shock-waves of this affair have reached the very top of the Army and political establishments. How convenient it is, that the news should be buried under a general wave of unrest.

And what of the UN response? The current unrest has "drawn angry comments" from SecGen Kofi who, we are told by The Independent has come close to accusing president Gbagbo of fomenting the protests "to impede the efforts of a UN-sponsored peace process to broker an end to the conflict". Annan has protested against "the orchestrated violence directed against the United Nations ... as well as the inaction of some national authorities in responding to the situation".

How familiar this all is. When my co-editor wrote about the travails of the Ivorians back in November 2005, she remarked on how the French were then going far beyond the purported UN mandate, and was "ready to lay odds" on Kofi approving ex post facto their actions, which indeed he did.

With some prescience, she also remarked that "the end remains nowhere in sight." It is still nowhere in sight for this once prosperous but now unhappy country, and less so for the meddling of our gallant EU ally, France, and the dark incompetence of the UN – all of which is strangely unreported by the media.

Still, at least we can rely on The Telegraph to tell us what is important.

COMMENT THREAD

And now we get the bad news

After the huge triumphalism of the launch of the GIOVE A satellite on 28 December, only now do we learn that the cost of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation programme has been hugely underestimated.

This is from the Financial Times Deutschland via Heise online which tells us that, even before all the costs have been reckoned up, the system is already a third more expensive than planned

The initial phase is now going to cost a total of €1.5 billion alone, as against the original estimate of a €1.1 billion for both the development and the subsequent validation phase.

This was to be financed partly by €550 million from the EU's scientific research and technological development budget, with the other €550 million coming from the European Space Agency.

The increased bill is blamed on "delays and rising costs" and the new estimate to complete the full 30-satellite deployment stands at €3.7 billion. The cost for the set-up phase, to get the system into operation - currently estimated at €2.2 billion – is not even known.

However, not all is lost. The commission is standing by its promise that it will "endeavour to promote the use of satellite radio navigation in its initiatives in various areas such as emergency calls, maritime safety, fishing and agriculture in conjunction with the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) system, the interoperability of railway systems (ERTMS), justice and home affairs, etc."

The "etc", of course, covers road charging systems, defence equipment and air traffic control so, when the final – and no doubt massively inflated – bill comes in, the commission will have already been working out the new EU legislation which will enable it to charge us all for what has been described as the CAP of the sky.

And, in accordance with our policy of slagging of the increasingly useless MSM, what is the betting that nothing of this gets into the national newspapers? As for the BBC – don't even think about it.

COMMENT THREAD

Gee, they noticed (but what did they notice?)

The blog Little Green Footballs (thanks for the brilliant pic) calls attention to an interesting development as far as EU financing of the Palestinian Authority is concerned.

On her visit to the area Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU Commissar for Foreign Affairs (not to be confused with Javier Solana who runs around pretending to be European Foreign Minister) has announced that half of the €70 million ($84 million, £48 million) allocated by the EU to the PA in November of last year has not been released and is, in fact, under discussion.

Could this be because there is uncontrovertible evidence that money is being passed on to various terrorists? Or because Abbas recently announced that families of suicide/homicide bombers would receive decent pensions from the Palestinian Authority?

Errm no. This constraint is being imposed because there is no budget discipline. Actually, there is no budget either. Or a Finance Minister. As Reuters reports, Frau Ferrero-Waldner said:

“There has to be a credible finance minister, but there also has to be a budget and the budget should also remain within the limits of what the budget has foreseen.”

I am not sure how an EU Commissioner knows about such things as budget constraints, seeing as the EU’s own budget has not passed the Court of Auditors’ scrutiny ever. But the Palestinian Authority has carried insouciance a little too far.

Its last Finance Minister, Salam Fayyad, resigned in November to run in the forthcoming parliamentary elections and none has been appointed since.

“Before resigning, Fayyad predicted aid from a World Bank trust fund [through which the EU donation is channelled] would be cut in response to ballooning Palestinian government wage costs. The trust has paid out at least $230 million to the Palestinians since its founding in 2004.”

The Palestinian economy was destroyed by the second intifada launched by the late unlamented Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000 and the World Bank is anxious to revive it, a Palestinian state being something of a non-starter otherwise. But Ferrero-Waldner maintains that money cannot just be handed over unconditionally. Perhaps the other donors will follow suit.

And pigs might...?

COMMENT THREAD

Of friends and enemies

What is it with right-wing commentators? Yesterday, we observed that neo-con supporter Douglas Murray was suggesting the right action on Iran, for entirely the wrong reason.

Now, in the Telegraph today, we have Simon Heffer arguing that "Doing nothing in Iran is not an option", a sentiment with which we could not but agree.

As for his prescription, though, Heffer rightly observes that any military action against Iran, "whatever it is and whoever takes it," is likely to be provocative to the wider Islamic community. He also quite correctly notes that "none is likely to be quite so internationally combustible as a unilateral decision by Israel to bomb - by conventional or possibly other means - Iran."

The, says the redoubtable Heffer, seems to leave only one feasible option – "a United Nations-endorsed series of air strikes on suspected nuclear installations in Iran, made after due and reasonable warning and only as a last resort." All that must be made clear - but it must also be made clear, by the united powers of the United Nations, that any insistence by Mr Ahmadinejad on pursuing his present policy will be met with such a response.

At least Heffer does go on to say it is unlikely that "this happy diplomatic state can be achieved", which has to qualify for the understatement of the year. Russia is on the UN Security Council and thus holds a blocking veto, a country that is flogging billions-worth of arms to Iran, selling it nuclear technology and demurring even at the prospect of trade sanctions, does Heffer really think that there is any possibility at all of the UN authorising air strikes?

And if, say, the UN – under the management of Kofi, father of Kojo - did managed to get permission to mount an airstrike, who would possibly offer its own aircraft for a strike when, authorisation procedures and the "due and reasonable warnings" will have thoroughly alerted the (Russian-supplied) Iranian air defences which will be ready and waiting? Perhaps the only willing supplier would be Mothercare (right), the aircraft from which would be about as much use as Mr Heffer's ideas.

However, at least Heffer's heart is in the right place. Not so Simon Jenkins who has temporarily departed from The Times to his true spiritual home, The Guardian. There, he proclaims: "The west has picked a fight with Iran that it cannot win".

He would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb "but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it." Iran is a proud country, he writes, "How can we say such a country has 'no right' to nuclear defence?" ... from Israel? And how dare Washington's kneejerk belligerence put the "strong diplomatic coalition of Europe, America, Russia and China" under strain? And America wants to do what?

Jenkins does not see "how all this confrontation will stop Iran doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment". The bombing of carefully dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment, he adds, "but given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a gift to anti-western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty."

Therefore, for his recipe, Jenkins enjoins us to recognise that Iran "is the regional superstate." If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, he tells us. And, "if you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy."

I can't even be bothered to deconstruct this garbage – has he tried talking to the Israelis on this? Has he not seen the video films of strikes in the Gulf, where they can decide through which window they put a bomb? Silly though his ideas may be, I think I prefer Heffer. For Jenkins, I have put a special picture up for him to remind him which planet he is on. He has obviously forgotten.

COMMENT THREAD

The limits of centralisation

In what is turning out, unintentionally, to be a multi-part essay, following on from my pieces on the limits of Euroscepticism and the limits of integration, my gaze today fell upon the front page of The Daily Telegraph to see two headlines with the now obligatory colour photograph of a semi-clothed model (or is it an actress?) squeezed between them.

I have, incidentally, posted back on one of the Telegraph "weblogs", as they so quaintly insist on calling them ("clogs", to you and me), pointing out that, increasingly, the main use for their newspaper is cat litter - except cat litter is cheaper and the text on the packet is more interesting (and takes longer to read).

The main story is about "mini-brothels" being given the go-ahead and the second is about the possibility that "towing away cars could be a breach of human rights". This is, of course, at a time when the situation in Iran is giving us grown-ups cause for considerable concern, yet the paper does not see fit to report on latest developments (correction: down-page on pg 15 - I missed it).

Despite that (or because of that), it finds room to print a picture of a pair of prostitute's (we assume) legs, occupying at least a quarter of a page (page 2). There is a third-page width colour picture of a female's ponytail on page 3, three more colour photographs of the semi-clothed model (or is it an actress?), again occupying at least a quarter of a page (page 5), and a picture of a hamster on page 7. And the people who put this thing together call themselves professionals? Ye Gods!

Anyhow, I digress – slightly. Mercifully absent – from this edition at least – is the continuing docu-soap of Ruth Kelly and the debacle of the school sex offenders' register. But in this issue lies one of those defining moments in politics, which has largely been missed by the media – now there is a surprise.

This came on Monday when, with the embattled secretary of state under pressure from all sides, an official from the Department of Education announced: "We are looking at the role of ministers in the decision-making process and whether they should take these decisions."
The reason why this is one of those "defining moments" is that, once again, an elected politician in trouble is seeking to evade responsibility - or in this case "restore public trust" - by stepping out of the decision-making loop and handing over responsibility to the er… officials.

This, in fact, is the core ideology of the European Union - the root of Monnet's thinking, which he passed on to his mate Schuman. It is based on the premise that mere, venal politicians cannot be trusted with real work. Decisions must be left to wise, disinterested officials, who will weigh up all the "relevant" issues and pronounce in the "public interest". These are the "Platonic guardians" – this is the creed of the technocrat.

Developing this theme, I have for the past few weeks been working on a research project devoted to the government's plans for police "restructuring" – this one for my MP who is especially outraged by Clarke's posturing. The one thing that comes over from our researches is that, to perform effectively, policing must be locally monitored and locally accountable, run by elected local officials.

That much emerged from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's famous experiment in New York when, in late 1993, he introduced a regime of "zero tolerance", turning a notoriously crime-ridden city into one of the safest in the country.

A key component of his success was intensive crime analysis sessions, using up-to-the minute crime statistics and computer "pin mapping" technology based on a system called COMPSTAT. This "transformed the NYPD from an organisation that reacted to crime to a Police Department that actively worked to deter offences."

A crucial part of this was the publication, week by week, of local crime figures, so that residents of each neighbourhood could see exactly what was happening on their patch and what the police were doing about it. This was "accountability" in practice, where watch commanders were held personally responsible for their performances and sanctioned if they did not deal with the problems for which they were paid to resolve.

But one of the broader points that also emerges is one of "localism". When central government interferes in local policing, the result is always an expensive disaster. Yet, down at local level, Decatur police department in Alabama – serving a population of 54,000 – boasts an establishment of 51 full time police employees, including support staff. It is able to do a better local job than the hundreds and thousands of overpaid Federal officials. There were, incidentally, 66 applicants for the police chief's job.

The problem which emerges from this is that, as central government takes on more tasks, national politicians (and ministers) become submerged in so much detail that they can no longer cope. Inevitably, they slough off more and more tasks to their officials – hence Ruth Kelly seeking to delegate one of her responsibilities to a new band of officials. Centralisation, therefore, is the thief of local democracy and accountability but it does not spawn central democracy. Instead, it becomes the precursor to technocracy, leaving politicians to whitter away about "mini-brothels" and miss out on the minor fact that the offical theft of other peoples' cars is not always a good idea - bringing us neatly back to the original theme.

If we are to return to good government, therefore, there must be limits on how far centralisation is allowed to proceed. The problem is that no one, as yet, seems to have a handle on how to stop it.

I have a feeling that we will be coming back to this subject.

COMMENT THREAD

No thanks to the EU

Moldova seems to have come to an agreement with Russia over the supply of gas. As we reported before, this was cut off as Gazprom decided to raise the prices suddenly to what is quaintly described as market levels. As the prices Gazprom sets differs from country to country, the market may be said to play little part in the considerations.

As our readers will recall, Moldova appealed to the EU to arbitrate. This did not happen, though, according to the BBC World Service website,

“The European Union said on Tuesday it would send a delegation to evaluate the situation, but said it did not expect to play a part in the negotiations.”

A compromise of a kind was reached by Moldova, who will now pay $110 per cu. metre, more than Ukraine has agreed on. But then Moldova is not channelling gas to Europe and has no leverage.

Russian control (for which read Russian government control) on the supply of energy to Europe is set to increase:

“Gazprom, meanwhile, has been increasing its presence in the region's gas industry and said it would take a 50% stake in RosUkrEnergo, a company with a near-monopoly over Ukraine's gas imports.

At the same time, the Moldovan government has signalled its willingness to cut its holding in Moldovagaz, a joint venture with Gazprom.”

One wonders whether Chancellor Merkel raised any of these problems with President Putin and what the answer might have been. Frosty, I should imagine. These considerations are bound to play some part in European “thinking” about Russia’s role in the whole Iran imbroglio.

COMMENT THREAD

So the charade continues

It is rather ironic that, yesterday, I should declare that “there is nothing so contemptible as the self-important newsreader announcing "…the BBC has learned…", only to hear in that evening's BBC news bulletins, repeated on the website, a variation of that very theme: "Ministers are preparing to back a large increase in the amount of rubbish that is incinerated instead of being buried, according to documents seen by the BBC."

And so they drivelled on, telling us that: "An environment department paper, to be published next month, suggests the proportion of burned waste could rise from nine percent to 25 percent in the next 15 years. It urges making 'energy from waste', a process in which incinerators are used to power electricity generation plants."

Only at the very end of the web report, but not on the broadcasts, do we get Steve Lee, from the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management, who says: "We have to cut our reliance on landfill because we've got tough targets under the European landfill directive."

This we have referred to many times on this blog and you can see it for yourself here, if you are sufficiently bored.

Made under the EU's Waste Framework Directive, it sets out a strategy that requires, inter alia, that by 2014 "biodegradable municipal waste going to landfills must be reduced to 35 percent of the total amount (by weight) of biodegradable municipal waste produced in 1995 or the latest year before 1995 for which standardised Eurostat data is available."

Nothing of this comes over from the BBC which even goes to the trouble of asking people on its "have your say" site: "Should we incinerate more waste? Ministers believe more incineration is justified as it is a green source of energy, reduces dependence on foreign fuel and health risks from emissions are small."

I have posted a comment onto this "fully moderated" site, saying: What are you going through this charade or asking people for their views? We have absolutely no option on this. We are required by the EU's Waste Framework Directive to adopt this policy, and the government's strategy is simply a copy-out of the Directive requirements.”

Of course, they won't publish my comment. The BBC managed to get through all its broadcast news reports without mentioning EU legislation and requirements once, so why should it bother now, giving the idea to people that we no longer have an independent country able to make its own laws?

COMMENT THREAD

Mediaeval kingship revived

Graham Bowley in the International Herald Tribune has a cute little story today, full of the aaaaah factor. Well, sort of. It seems that

“When property developers in Valencia in eastern Spain started exploiting a local law to force landowners to sell land against their wishes, locals and foreigners who had bought vacation homes in this sunny part of southern Europe did something that might not occur to most Europeans - 15,000 wrote letters to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.”

Well, ain’t that something? And what happened then? The benevolent European Parliament graciously responded to the people of Valencia:

“On Dec. 13, the Parliament responded by declaring Valencia's government in breach of human rights and urged it to change the law.”

One assumes that Valencia’s government is elected by the people of Valencia. Would it not have been a better idea to try to change the local legislation, if, that is, it was as unpopular as the 15,000 people in question thought? Is that not what democracy, accountability and, yes that dreaded word, transparency are about?

It seems not. As our readers will recall, one of the arguments advanced by Europhiles for the benighted Constitution (whose return to our political life is imminent) was that it actually gave people more rights. How so? Well, various articles gave the people of Europe the right to petition the Commission to introduce or change some legislation, as the Commission saw fit.

This reminds one of the theory and practice of mediaeval kingship. The king was the all-powerful but also all-merciful ruler. If there was a grievance against local landowners, magnates, robber barons, magistrates and whoever else may have been oppressing one, the obvious answer was to throw oneself at the king’s mercy, who in his benevolence would (possibly) sort matters out and grant one justice or just plain property.

I must confess that I was under the impression that modern democracy had developed into a somewhat different system. In other words, the rulers are now supposed to be accountable to those they rule and can be dismissed if they do not behave in the way they are expected. Should the people not want to dismiss them, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

The EU, however, through its Petitions Committee in the European Parliament is restoring those old notions of kingship, turning us all into helots. This is particularly interesting as inside the European Parliament the last vestiges of anything that might be called open debate are being abolished by decree.

Bowley, who is something of a flag-waver for the European project, thinks that the concept of petitions is rather a good one:

“The European Union may be under a cloud following the rejection of its proposed constitution, but if it is to reconnect with its citizens the Petitions Committee could be of particular help.”

Never mind that people voted to reject the constitution; never mind that what they are being offered in return is a benevolent tyranny in return; this will reconnect the EU with its citizens. Boston tea party anyone?

COMMENT THREAD

Right idea… wrong reason

The Social Affairs Unit has put up a post on its blog from “bestselling author and freelance journalist” Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.

Headed: "Why Israel must bomb Iran in the next two months", Murray argues that Israel must bomb Iran - in order to destroy its nuclear facilities - within the next two months. After that, he writes, it will be too late to take action to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Israel, he continues, is the only country with the capacity and political will to carry out this vital operation: the "international community" will not act decisively; the situation in Iraq makes it all but impossible for the USA, or the UK, to take military action against Iran. If Israel bombs Iran's nuclear facilities, this will have appalling repercussions - but the alternatives are much, much worse.

We do not disagree with this thesis but, unfortunately, the reason why Murray believes a strike is so urgent is horribly flawed. As early as March, he retails:

…Iran will have the capability and expertise to enrich uranium in the quantities required to make a device. This is the point after which our options are appallingly limited. Once it has its uranium, Iran can develop its bomb, and do so safe in the knowledge that no foreign power will risk attacking a reactor once it has gone "hot".

Deconstructing this passage, which forms the core of his thesis, what Murray seems to have done is assume that the "reactor" is a part of Iran's uranium enrichment capability.

There are, in fact, two reactors, at Bushehr, in southwestern Iran, located on the Persian Gulf. One is has not been worked on for some time and is not currently scheduled to be completed, but the other in an advanced stage of completion and may be on-line in a couple of months.

But, as one of the commentators on the blog points out, Iran is just developing a U-235 weapon it does not need a reactor, only uranium super-enrichment facilities. Weapons-grade U-235 neither needs nor is useful for a reactor. A reactor only comes into the equation if Iran decides to pursue the Pu-239 weapon type as well – which is not the case.

And it is those enrichment facilities which will have to be the Israeli target. They are based at Natanz, which is located in the northwestern Iran, about 130 miles south of Tehran, although work is dispersed throughout as many as 25 or more other sites. The status of the Bushehr plant is irrelevant.

Furthermore, the best estimates are that Iran will take at least two, more likely three years to enrich enough Uranium 235 to make a weapon, and more yet to a weapons system with arsenal plus delivery.

It is a pity, therefore, that Douglas Murray makes this his central point, as the case for an early Israeli strike needs to be made. A more persuasive argument is the expected delivery by the Russians of SA-15 Gauntlet anti-aircraft missile systems, and issue which has been rehearsed on this blog here and here.

Murray, however, does not stop there. He suggest that the Israeli Air Force might make multiple raids over an extended period. This is hardly credible. No strike could take place without, at least, tacit US approval but, at least, the US could deny complicity - albeit not very convincingly - if the IAF carried out just one strike on the grounds that it had been caught by surprise.

Multiple strikes, over a period, would prove (or be taken as proving) direct US involvement and put the United States in the front-line as a co-belligerent. This would not be politically sustainable.

However, in a single strike raid, however, the IAF is at a serious disadvantage. Unlike Osirak, it would have to split its forces to hit near simultaneously multiple targets. This means it would not be able to achieve local defence saturation - leaving aircraft highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft defences.

Therefore, the best - and possibly only - chance of the IAF carrying out a raid successfully is to do it sooner rather than later. The timetable will depend, more than anything else, on the delivery schedule for the Gauntlets and the time taken for the Iranian forces to get them fully operational. That may in a few months, but it may be longer.

Incredibly, though, the media is still completely failing to address the Russian arms supplies to Iran, which have increased five-fold since 1994 and account for over 90 percent of Iran’s arms imports. I caught on a BBC bulletin today, a comment that Russia was anxious that economic sanctions should not be imposed on Iran, because "it might damage her trade", but – of course – the Beeb failed to state that a massive amount of that trade was in arms.

That sentiment is also conveyed in The Times today, with the headline: "Kremlin says Iran sanctions not the solution". Russia has broken ranks, it reports, saying that sanctions were not the best way ahead.

I am completely at a loss as to why the MSM (MainStream Media) has so totally lost the plot on this issue and rather regret that Murray has said the right thing for the wrong reason. It has not helped.

COMMENT THREAD

The limits of integration

If Euroscepticism is in trouble, so it seems is European integration – at least on the classic Monnet model.

Last July, we wrote a piece entitled "straw in the wind" on the back of the rejection by the EU parliament of the patents directive, pointing out that this setback was by no means unique. The commissioners also were having trouble agreeing amongst themselves on the direction of certain legislation.

Now, with dockers storming the Bastille of the EU parliament in Strasbourg – where 10,000 demonstrated yesterday- setting fire to cars and smashing the windows of the parliament building - and with Europe’s biggest ports still being disrupted by hundreds of striking dock workers over the ports directive, it seems that the troubles won't go away.

It seems that the parliament – which votes on the directive tomorrow – is set once again to reject the commission's proposal.

Nor is this anything like the full extent of the commission's potential embarrassment. Having thrown out the software patent directive last year, proposed directive, by 648 to 32 votes, an increasingly muscular parliament looks set to do it again as Charlie McCreevy, the internal market commissioner, is preparing next Monday, to make “one final effort” to resolve years of deadlock on this issue.

But the really big fight is going to come when the commission tries to re-introduce the services directive, with the unions already girding themselves for the battle – for which they will receive plenty of support of MEPs.

Their determination to block this legislation will be somewhat reinforced by The Times today, where it is reported that "Polish plumbers split EU as trickle turns into flood".

Fresh divisions, writes Anthony Browne, are opening in the European Union over allowing plumbers and other workers from the new member states of Eastern Europe the right to work in the West. The two-year ban on Eastern workers imposed by 12 of the 15 old member states on 1 May 2004 is coming up for review, provoking tensions between the old and new member states.

Crucially, the commission itself is divided, and Browne reports that there were angry exchanges at a preliminary meeting of Commissioners to discuss the report last week. Vladimir Spidla, the Czech commissioner for social affairs apparently insisted that the old member states must open up their borders, while Benito Ferrero-Waldner, the Austrian commissioner led the camp that wants to keep the controls lest a flood of cheap labour destroys existing jobs. One EU official declared: "Blood was spilled."

And, while most West European countries have admitted only a handful of Eastern European workers, those that did not impose restrictions have had a far higher influx than predicted. The British government predicted only 5,000 to 13,000 Eastern Europeans would come, but 175,000 came in the first year alone. Ireland had 85,000 workers from Eastern Europe in the first year.

The services directive, which aims to permit workers from the new accession countries to work in "old Europe" while working to their own domestic labour laws, can do nothing but add fuel to a growing fire.

But the most interesting point about the services directive is that there should actually be no need for it. Freedom of movement and "right of establishment" are central tenets of the European Community, and are enshrined in the original 1957 Treaty of Rome. It thus demonstrates that, behind all the rhetoric for "ever closer union" when it comes to the application of the Union principles, the colleagues are somewhat less than enthusiastic about putting them into practice.

Thus it is that the commission, in spelling out the requirements of the treaties, in the form of the services directive, is heading for a massive confrontation with the member states when, as happened in Strasbourg yesterday and, metaphorically in Brussels last week, blood will be spilled.

In crucial respects, therefore, the European Union seems to be bumping up against the limits of integration. Maybe, in the not too distant future, we could see yet another storming of the Bastille.

COMMENT THREAD

An international community

I hate preening on blogs, as much as I do in the MSM… there is nothing so contemptible as the self important newsreader announcing "…the BBC has learned…" or the "dead tree media" story which starts off: “… the Daily Telegraph can reveal…”.

Not that we don't occasionally indulge in some celebration but hey! We're human too (disagree at your peril), and life's motto has always been, "do as I say, not what I do", as every child will attest when confronted with doctrinaire parents.

All that aside, out of sheer interest, I thought I would post this pie chart (double-click to enlarge) captured from Site Meter at 10 o'clock (GMT) this morning, as it demonstrates so graphically the international flavour of blogging.

The chart, incidentally, shows (for us) relatively few US hits, but it only analyses the last 100, at a time when most of our American friends are in bed. In the small hours, the proportion can reach 90 percent.

Although we take it for granted, I still occasionally take time out to marvel at the technology that can allow "little ol' me" in an anonymous, post-industrial suburb of Bradford, England, to press a button and have copy flash down to a server in Los Angeles USA, only for it to re-appear on my screen seconds later, and then be read by people all over the world.

It may be a small thing… but it is something for which we can be grateful. In many ways, it may be our salvation. Otherwise, all we are left with is this.

COMMENT THREAD

A picture cannot lie?

And if you believe that, you will believe anything. But in this instance, it is the caption that conveys the "lie".

It was picked up by one of our alert readers and is now all over the blogosphere (see here, for instance, and here).

In the original copy, the caption, printed under a photograph (above - double-click to enlarge) published by the New York Times reads: "Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border."

The photograph accompanied the story on the "deadly American airstrike" on a village in the northwestern tribal region last week, aimed at killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, and purports to be a picture of the post-strike scene. Only now has the NYT made a correction, after the blogs had run riot, and appended: "A picture caption on Saturday with an article about a US airstrike on a village in Pakistan misidentified an unexploded ordinance (sic). It was not the remains of a missile fired at a house."

The "unidentified ordnance" is certainly an artillery shell, probably 155mm, and from what remains of the markings, looks to be a Nato-type high explosive round. From the striations on the rotating band near the base of the round, it has almost certainly been fired, which means that the NYT is probably right in describing it as "unexploded". The fuze cap is missing but the fuze looks to be still in place, which makes it rather a hairy piece of furniture to be playing with. (The illustration on the right shows the shell with a "lifting ring" at the top, in the place where the fuze is fitted before firing.)

So, what's the big deal? Well, the US strike was undertaken by a Predator UCAV, the only weapon-fit for which is the Hellfire missile (illustrated). Whatever else, the picture used does not even begin to show the remains of a such a weapon.

The point, of course, is that the mismatch between the picture and the text is easily detectable and shows, at the very least, an appalling lack of professionalism on the part of the NYT. It also tends to support the thesis that the NYT is slanting its coverage to match its anti-administration slant – the set-up of the photograph inviting empathy with its subjects.

Whatever view you take of the cause of the "error", it casts doubt on all the details attributed to the photograph. It is attributed to "Thir Khan/AFP--Getty Images" – AFP not being the most reliable of sources. How do we know even that it was taken in Pakistan at the scene of the strike? Its computer file-name is "14cnd-afghan.583x404", which might even suggest it was taken in Afghanistan.

Crucially though, if you cannot trust the caption text, how can you trust the text of the article accompanying it? Any errors there are not so easily detectable and you have to take the details on trust. But, if the editorial staff cannot even get such obvious details right in the caption, any such trust would be misplaced.

This is the great "professional" MSM in action – or an example of it – so full of itself and its virtues. And without the blogs, it would have remained unrecorded.

COMMENT THREAD

The other economic victim of Russia

While attention has concentrated on Russia’s attempts – sometimes successful, sometimes less so – to bully Ukraine, there has been a memory lapse on the subject of Moldova, an extremely poor former Soviet republic, where there has already been a good deal of Russian meddling in Transdniestria.

Despite its much-vaunted good neighbourhood policies the EU has tried to ignore the problem of Moldova, not having any particular ideas how to deal with it and not wanting to upset everybody’s good friend Vladimir in the Kremlin.

However, when Russia peremptorily raised gas prices for Ukraine, it did so for Moldova as well, demanding that it now pay $160 per 1,000 cu.metres. As Moldova cannot do so, Gazprom, that supposedly independent organization, which just happens to be largely owned by the Russian government, has cut off supplies on January 1.

Moldova’s representative to the EU, Yevgeny Karpov, has asked that organization to intervene and negotiate a deal between his country and Gazprom or, rather, Russia. His opinion is that this is an attempt to pressurize the Moldovan government to turn away from its pro-western policies. They may yet do so, as these policies are not exactly achieving any help or support from the European Union.

Winters in Moldova tend to be very harsh and the temperature is expected to fall to -21°C by the end of the week. No doubt Señor Solana will continue wringing his hands.

COMMENT THREAD

Isn't democracy wonderful?

One of the stories definitely not reported by the American media while I was there, is George Galloway’s strange behaviour in the Big Brother house. Some Americans who follow British news closely knew about it but I heard from Charlie Wolf, when we were discussing our regular broadcast.

Having more or less re-immersed myself into British political life (since yesterday morning) I still remain mystified why it is that a man who has given vociferous support to all the worst dictators and mass murderers in the world; who has clearly taken money from at least one of them – money that was meant for the people of the country about whom he has shed crocodile tears; who has disposed of money he raised supposedly for charitable purposes in ways that have not been accounted for; who conducted a particularly nasty election campaign with vicious personal attacks in Bethnal Green, has been forgiven for all of that. But as soon as he makes a complete fool of himself on TV he is lambasted on all sides. Up with this the Guardian will not put.

It is, of course, true that Galloway is an elected member of parliament and as such should be serving his constituencies and … I was going to say his country but realized in time what a funny idea that is.

Today’s Evening Standard reports, for instance, that troubles are looming for the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. As the local MP for the area, Galloway ought to be involved. Except that he can’t be as he is incommunicado in the Big Brother House. But is he?

Today’s House of Commons Order Paper apparently boasts of no fewer than 12 Early Day Motions graced with George Galloway’s signature. This is most peculiar. He could not have signed those EDMs and he could not have authorized anyone else to sign them. Besides as Speaker Martin said, it is hard to imagine whom he could have authorized.

It seems that one of the EDMs congratulates Harold Pinter on the Nobel Prize for Literature; another one expresses shock and horror at the “obscene level” of city bonuses (though not, presumably, at the obscene level of payments to participants of truly abysmal TV shows). There is also an EDM on post-Christmas abandoned animals – something, I understand, Mr Galloway should know about, especially if we are talking about cats.

After a couple of points of order from Labour MPs Speaker Martin has promised to look into that matter of George Galloway’s apparent ability to bilocate. He also admitted to watching the man’s unseemly behaviour on Celebrity Big Brother.

COMMENT THREAD

A very fishy smell

Several readers drew my attention to the piece in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday headed: "One of our engines is missing".

Written by Sylvia Pfeifer, it claims that "last month the Pentagon decided to kill off a second engine" for the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, an engine which is being built jointly by General Electric, the US conglomerate, and Rolls-Royce, Britain's aero-engine maker. This decision, Pfeifer writes, is threatening to drive a wedge between the Anglo-US alliance on the programme.

This comes on the back of an article written on 8 January by George Trefgarne in the same paper, claiming that “Britain's defence policy” had been “left high and dry”, with the news that the Pentagon was on the verge of cancelling the STOVL variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, that Britain needs for its carriers.

I had considered commenting on the Trefgarne’s story, only to inform readers that it was not true. Perhaps I should have. While the fate of the F-35B was under consideration, the US Marine Corps is fully committed to this project and intends to purchase 850 aircraft. Congress has agreed and has voted enough funds for its continued development.

As regards Pfeifer's story, while not entirely false, it is not giving the whole picture. For sure, the Pentagon has tabled a proposal to abandon the so-called "dual engine programme" – a scheme where the Pentagon had hedged its bets by commissioning engines from two different manufacturers for the one aircraft. The cut is in an attempt to curb the spiralling costs of the whole F-35 programme.

However, according to a much better informed source, Defense Industry Daily, no decision has been made. Furthermore, the decision is not made by the Pentagon but by Congress.

DID says that the JSF engine programme would not be part of the 2006 budget, but part of the 2007 Pentagon proposals, due to be tabled this February. Only if the proposal passes, would the main engine, the Pratt & Whitney F-135 - built by United Technologies (UT) - end up getting the contract for all F-35 aircraft.

Although good news for United Technologies, there is a downside to this option. GE, the partner to the second engine venture, would probably leave the tactical engine business, shrinking the US defence industrial base and leaving UT with a virtual monopoly in this sector. That lack of competition could have a significant effect on future engine costs, which would be very expensive for the taxpayer.

Given these problems, there is a whiff here of tactical "game playing" by the Pentagon, presenting unacceptable choices in order to lever more funds out of the budget from an increasingly unwilling Congress. In other words, this is quite typical pre-budget manoeuvring.

However, both Trefgarne and Pfiefer in their stories refer to the personal intervention by Tony Blair, reporting that he has written personally to Bush, re before Christmas in an attempt to try to persuade the US President to overturn, respectively the decision to scrap F-35B and the second engine.

Neither could have invented these details, but my antenna are twitching. There is something going on here. My suspicion, which is entirely speculative, is that the British government is looking for an excuse to abandon its commitment to the F-35. The Telegraph stories feel like an attempt to soften up sentiment for a decision that has already been pencilled in, giving them a very fishy smell.

COMMENT THREAD

The limits of Euroscepticism

This morning, I took a call from Neil Herron, the doughty Metric Martyrs campaigner who has since reinvented himself as a battler against the increasingly draconian local authority parking schemes that are causing so much grief to ordinary people.

Neil had just walked out of the magistrates' court in Newcastle, having been convicted of failure to pay an excess charge in a Newcastle corporation "pay and display" car park, despite the admission by the corporation that the signage had been incorrect and, therefore, that the charge was invalid. (He will be posting the details of the case on his own blog later today.)

This is one of a number of cases, where ordinary people who are confronted with "the system" are progressively coming to the realisation that the odds are so stacked against them that, irrespective of the justice of their case or the arguments they present, they are into a "lose-lose" situation.

Turn now to the front page of the Daily Telegraph, which headlines: “Thieves no longer have to appear in court”. This is a speculative piece by Rachel Sylvester, based on as yet unpublished plans by ZaNu-Labour, where Tony Blair is "planning a revolution in the legal system that would mean up to a million petty criminals a year being dealt with by prosecutors and the police without ever going to court."

My spontaneous response when I say the headline in the paper shop was to remark that you still had to go to court if you did not pay your Council Tax, to which the shopgirl replied, "as you know from personal experience".

Actually, the obscenity of that is that, when you present yourself to the Magistrate, he has no discretion – unlike when dealing with a local burglar or thug, when he has an array of sentencing options. If you refuse to pay your tax, he has no option. He has to send you to jail. I argued that the court system could save a great deal of money by converting a "speak your weight" machine into a "go to jail" machine. You put your ID card into the slot and it sentences you there and then. Perhaps, even, they could have portable machines in police cars.

Now, compare and contrast this with my piece on Sunday, about plans to give Europol additional powers (which, incidentally, has still not been carried by any British newspaper – although a brief report was carried by the Turkish Anadolu News Agency).

Before indulging in my favourite hobby of railing against the inadequacies of the MSM, however, even I have to concede that the plans for Europol are small beer compared with Blair's plans to turn over a large part of our justice system to the officials and dispense with magistrates – even if they are often useless.

Similarly, although one can rail against the huge amounts of money dolled out to the European Union, the actual amount is minute, in comparison to the huge amount that Gordon Brown now takes off us in tax, giving us – as The Business reported yesterday - a higher taxation level than the much-derided Germany.

And what price complaints against the EU for its waste of money when the same paper also reports that, over the past 12 months alone, Brown has flushed tens of billions of pounds down the drain in useless or wasteful spending?

That story that is re-iterated in today’s Telegraph which majors on a £225,000 scheme advising the elderly on how to wear slippers. By contrast, even with stories like this, the EU begins to look like a model of rectitude.

And what chance is there of getting the population worked up about EU "fraud" when, as some Europhiles rightly claim, the amount of benefit fraud in the UK – as instanced by this story in today's Telegraph - far exceeds the amount lost in the EU system and, like the EU, the Department of Work and Pensions cannot sign off its own accounts.

Therein lie the limits of Euroscepticism or, to be more specific, an illustration of the difficulties of getting people worked up about the European agenda. There is a general feeling that the whole system of government is corrupt and out of control, and the EU is but just one small part of that. Worse still, so egregious are the failings of the UK government that the peccadilloes of the EU pale into insignificance.

This situation presents the gravest challenge for Eurosceptics: how to motivate a population and political system – already naturally predisposed to give the domestic agenda more attention than supposedly "foreign affairs" – to the iniquities of the EU, when there is so much wrong at home.

Pondering on this, perhaps the way forward is to refocus on some essential truths. Firstly, the EU is not - as some Eurosceptics would aver – the root of all our troubles. Secondly, leaving the EU will not solve all our problems. Even if we had the whole of our EU contributions to add to Gordon Brown’s treasury, there is absolutely no guarantee that he would not waste those billions in exactly the same way he is already wasting many more.

At best, therefore, our membership of the EU can only be seen as one part of a bigger malaise – one symptom of the disease rather than the disease itself. How that translates, though, into practical politics, is going to take some working out.

COMMENT THREAD

Losing and winning

Straight out of the Californian Mercury News - and 28 other newspapers – mostly local American sheets – comes the stunning news that "Fabris wins EU men's speedskating title".

This is based on a syndicated Associated Press report on the results of the European Speedskating Championships, datelined Hamar, Norway. Apparently, or so we are told, Enrico Fabris became the first Italian to win a men's title, finishing ahead of two Norwegians.

Actually, I don’t know who Fabris is, I didn’t know there was a European Speedskating Championship going on and frankly – I am sorry to say - care less. But what intrigued me about the report was its headline, repeated in many of the other papers, which refers to: "EU men's speedskating title".

This is a new one on me. We are used to the word Europe being used and a synonym for European Union but - bearing in mind that this is a truly European event – actually being held in Norway, which is not in the European Union, with Norwegian competitors – this is the first time I recollect the term European Union being used as a synonym for “Europe”.

In the use of Europe, meaning European Union, this is a battle we are losing. Many times have I railed against the confusion of the terms, and assiduous readers will have noticed that I refuse to refer to the European Parliament by its official title, always writing "EU parliament" – likewise the European Commission (although its official title is actually Commission of the European Communities).

The reason, of course, is that we wish the European Union to be seen for what it is, our central government – a political construct and not a continent – giving it more visibility, rather than hiding it behind "Europe". But if agency hacks are now describing Europe as the "European Union", we are into a whole new ball-game.

But, if all the bad news currently attributed to "Europe" is now laid at the door of the European Union – even when it applies to countries outside the EU - we could be onto a winner. The "colleagues" will have to start explaining that the European Union is not Europe, something we are always having to do.

Incidentally, one US site refers to Europeans as "Yurps". As Queen Victoria never said: "We are amused".

COMMENT THREAD

Curioser and curioser

Back in the old country I feel as if I may have scattered my brain cells over the Atlantic. No doubt, some kind person will collect them and send them to me at some point.

The first story I found on my return was the extraordinary row that is developing in Germany about what exactly is meant by war against terror and, more to the point, what was Gerhard Schröder up to in government.

According to ISN Security Watch, the trouble began when an unnamed Pentagon official pointed out that the German federal security service, the BND, helped the American forces actively during the war in Iraq, locating a certain convoy of Mercedes cars, one of which may well have been carrying Saddam Hussein.

This caused an enormous row for several reason. One is the obvious one of Schröder’s supposedly tough anti-American political stance. As our readers will recall, he won his second term almost entirely on his opposition to the war in Iraq and even tried to use the theme in the last election campaign against Angela Merkel.

Could this have been simply a smoke-screen, the German media and politicians are asking. Did Germany, in fact, help the United States a lot more than it admitted to? The Greens are particularly furious, as they opposed the war with might and main and feel that they have been betrayed by their partners the Social-Democrats.

One of them, Hans-Christian Ströbele, told a news conference:

“The whole affair is so unbelievable that I am almost speechless. If the story is true then this has to have political and personal consequences.”

Of course, no politician ever goes completely speechless but he is right in that there are likely to be certain consequences.

Renate Künast, the Green Party leader, described the possibility of Germany helping American bombings as “monstrous”, though she did not exactly explain why it should be considered “monstrous” to try to get Saddam Hussein.

While questions are being asked about former Chancellor Schröder, who has been in trouble already over his job with the Russo-German gas consortium that he had pushed through when he was in office, the man whose political future is in more doubt is Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who at the time oversaw Germany’s intelligence services as the head of Schröder’s chancellor’s office.

Herr Steinmeier at first said that there had been no activity on the BND’s part, then explained that agents had remained in Iraq (not, presumably, the only country’s agents) but supplied information only about non-targets like schools and hospitals to try to prevent American attacks on them.

There is some speculation that the BND, in fact, continued to co-operate with the Americans and, indeed, wage a war against terror in defiance of Schröder’s government.

“Last month, it surfaced that German security officials had questioned a German-Syrian terrorist suspect in a Damascus prison in 2002 at a time when the government said it had no idea of his whereabouts.

Steinmeier also had to admit that BND officials had interrogated terrorism suspect Murat Kurnaz in his prison cell in the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Kurnaz is a Turkish national but has lived his entire life in Germany.”

Some German politicians are calling for an open committee enquiry, but that needs a 25 per cent approval vote in parliament. Some Social-Democrats will support it but others may be wary of what else might come out about the last government.

COMMENT THREAD

Another unholy mess

Following what was very clearly an attempt by L'Escroc (whose popularity in the polls is sagging) to cover up the very unsavoury events occurring in the Ivory Coast, another disturbing report about the behaviour of French troops reaches us, this one via that delightfully robust and irreverent site, Fuck France.

The report, originating from the online site, African News Dimension, retails allegations that French troops have been raping young girls and stripping them naked for pornography scenes, in the north of Ivory Coast. One report claims how soldiers forced a young girl to have sex with a dog.

This follows on from other allegations that French soldiers stole €58,000 from the Ivorian reserve bank last year, but they are now accused of kidnapping young girls between 16 and 22 for a strip shows. Some soldiers are said to be giving US$1.50 to the girls "when they are hostile to their disgraceful scenes".

No one – on this blog, at least - is going to claim great knowledge of the goings-on on the Ivory Coast, which is clearly another of those messy African situations with which we are so wearily familiar. Some idea of the complexity of the situation can be gleaned from a number of web-based analyses, specifically here, here and here.

Opinion seems to vary as to whether the French are doing a good job out there, for instance, Worldpress.org, just over a year ago, wrote:

The crisis in the Ivory Coast bears a striking resemblance to events in Rwanda ten years ago. The world had better take notice.

However, it then recorded two opposing views:

"Without France, we would find ourselves in a second Rwanda," claimed Ibrahim Coulibaly, one of the rebels who took control of the north in September 2002, in an interview with Courrier International. He accuses Ivorian President Gbagbo of wanting to "internationalize the crisis and attract neighboring countries into his destructive adventure."

By sharp contrast…

Cameroon's privately owned newspaper, Le Messager (Nov 17), insists that the French and UN peacekeeping forces are the problem, not the solution: "The more time that passes, the more the efforts of the former colonial power and the international community turn manifestly in favor of the rebels, the more radical the militias become. We know what has happened: it's become unbearable."

Interestingly, one of the sharpest critiques of French involvement come from Le Monde diplomatique, which in April 2005 wrote:

The actions of the French Operation Unicorn peacekeeping force in the former French west African colony of Ivory Coast have exposed the greed and seaminess of France's dual role as both mediator and participant.

It points out in detail how French commercial and political interests are combining to strip a once peaceful and prosperous country of its assets, essentially conspiring to destabilise the country when the then president in 1994, Henri Konan Bédié, tried to reduce the French grip on his country – culminating in a French-inspired military coup in 1999, when Bédié was overthrown. The result has been a long and bloody civil war, which even this January saw an attack on a military base in the eastern Akouedo district in Abidjan.

Eleven years on (from when Bédié first tried to confront French dominance), writes Le Monde diplomatique:

Abidjan and Bouaké have turned into bloody battlegrounds for the French army. French media choose to present this shameful affair in anecdotal rather than political terms. Their refusal to recognise the reality of the situation is exemplified by their failure to publish images of the cleansing of the Ivorian capital by troops from Operation Unicorn. But even if these appalling scenes have not been seen in Paris, Ivorians will never forget them. Even in French Africa it may no longer be possible to get away with murder.

With that article written last year, what is very clear is that Le Monde's optimism is somewhat misplaced. France, it seems, is getting away with murder, and much else besides.

And why this is important – apart from the intrinsic humanitarian issues – is that it involves France, our "partner" in the EU, with which we share, supposedly a common foreign policy. France is also a military ally, with which Blair wants a closer relationship through the European Rapid Reaction Force, which is ostensibly tasked with humanitarian relief.

The behaviour of the French raises the question as to why Blair is not bringing up the Ivory Coast issue through the European Council (he could have, for instance, raised it through the UK presidency period), especially as he has made poverty in Africa a priority issue. But it also raises the question as to whether we can afford to be associated with the French military; whether – to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher – these are people with whom we can, or should do business.

The issue also points up the distorted priorities and values of the likes of Cashman, who perhaps ought to be spending a little less time worrying about the rights of poofs in Paris and a little more about the rights of African girls in the hands of French troops.

Politically, it raises questions about the inadequacy of opposition parties. The Conservative web site has no references to the Ivory Coast, while UKIP – which is waxing lyrical about the Ruth Kelly debacle - has clearly no opinion on what is, in fact, a sentinel issue in the context of our European relations.

Above all though, this issue points up the indolence and hypocrisy of our media. While the hacks are quite happy to slag off the American administration and military – from the comfort of their luxury hotels in the Baghdad Green Zone, protected by the lives of those very troops they so detest - none of the professionals who employ them and use their copy have stirred themselves to find out what is going on the Ivory Coast, and report it.

One way or another, this is an unholy mess, but most of the mess is on our doorstep.

COMMENT THREAD

The wanderer returns

Nice to have you back from over the pond, Helen, returning to the warm embrace of "Mother Europe" – or "the Evil Empire", if you prefer. As soon as you've sorted out the cats and overcome your jetlag, we're all gagging to hear about your great adventure in Washington.

Yes, I know the illustration is naff, but what do you expect from Google images? I had to trawl through hundreds of pictures to find that one. You should have seen some of the ones I rejected.

Of course, I could have posted this one (right), but you wouldn't have appreciated the "toy" and my photoshop technique is so poor, you wouldn’t have believed the banner anyway.

So, welcome back. We may only be weeks away from nuclear Armageddon, but who cares? There's blogging in them thar hills.

COMMENT THREAD

No longer a myth

It was all agreed in November 2004 and now the next stage is happening – Europol is on its way to becoming an operational force, following a decision by interior ministers in Vienna yesterday. This is according to the BBC website, which tells us that the ministers have taken to next step, giving it an operational role in investigations.

The 2004 plan was set out in a document produced by the then Dutch presidency under the somewhat unwieldy title of "Draft multiannual programme: The Hague Programme; strengthening freedom, security and justice in the European Union" (see here).

In that plan, the member states agreed "…to realise the potential of Europol" and to implement in full the EU action plan on combating terrorism, "…notably that enhanced use of Europol", extending its then current role of providing expertise, information and technical support.

Following the meeting in Vienna, the EU's "anti-terror co-ordinator", Gijs de Vries, said there was a general desire to now see Europol take on an operational role and, in the name of counter-terrorism, he declared, "we need to give Europol clear competences." One the decision is ratified an amendment to the Europol Convention, "its officers will be able to go to the place of a crime, search or confiscation and to advise national authorities what to look for," says Europol Director Max-Peter Ratzel.

And so it goes on, little step by little step, an unexploded bomb in the heart of our democracy.

And at each step, the "colleagues" deny that the ultimate objective is a federal police force. But we know enough of how the EU works to know full well that that is the destination.

And we are not alone in our concerns. The first illustration comes from a Spanish website and the "bomb" from a Dutch article about Europol.

This is not, therefore, another "Eurosceptic myth". A European police force is being formed under our very noses and, whether we like it or not (not), the colleagues intend to have their way.

COMMENT THREAD

Are we talking about the same man?

So, Mr Gordon Brown says that Britons should not shy away from showing more patriotism. It would help create a more defined sense of what it means to be British in the modern world, he tells us.

Amongst his other sayings today: We should "embrace the Union flag", a symbol which has become increasingly associated with the far right or hooligans. "We should assert that the Union flag is a flag for tolerance and inclusion." "All the United Kingdom should honour it, not ignore it...".

Er… excuse me. But a little niggle in the back of my mind reminds me that Mr Brown has lectured us about "patriotism" before – 10 June 2003 comes to mind when he was making the "patriotic case" for Britain's role in Europe, taking on the "myths and prejudices" about membership of the EU and the euro.

And that was when the chancellor was telling us he believed "substantial progress" could be made to ensure the British economy is in a position to start the process of joining the single currency in 2004. Are we talking about the same man?

Anyway, I think we'll pass on this one. The British have never felt the need to parade their nationality or their "patriotism", and certainly don't need any lectures from a Labour politician who clearly doesn’t know which way is up.

COMMENT THREAD

This is what the "colleagues" think is important

See here.

And to forestall yet another visit from the plods, let me make it clear that, unlike Sir Iqbal Sacranie, I am not going to pronounce on the merits or otherwise of homosexuality.

Although I do object to NuLab's attempts to make it compulsory.

COMMENT THREAD

The march of the clogs

If you go over to the Telegraph website and look at their new venture into blogging, you will see them preening themselves about their "professionalism", as they pile in to grab their share of this new medium.

As I pointed out in my piece on the Charlie Wolf programme in the early hours of this morning, however, these are not real blogs. They are what I call "corporate blogs" – cautious, stultified and leaden.

I note, incidentally that they still call them "weblogs" while we real bloggers call them "blogs", a compression of the two words, "web" and "log". For these pretend, corporate blogs, I have even suggested a new name, based on a compression of those two words, making up the descriptor: "clogs".

What brings on this petulant rant, though, is my utter disgust at the Telegraph this morning, and its story headed Fury over Austrian 'super' rifles for Iranians. Reading it, you really have to question the news values of the newspaper. You can't call it "amateur" – that is unfair to amateurs. Certainly, it is unprofessional. Some might call it moronic.

In itself, you might think, it is a sound enough report, written by "defence correspondent" Thomas Harding. It describes how – as the headline indicates – the Americans and British are "furious with Austria" for supplying Iran with 800 HS50 Steyr-Mannlicher sniper rifles.

This is, in fact, quite an old story – it actually broke in late December, but the story now becomes news because Iran is in the headlines and – more importantly - in the Telegraph’s eyes, potentially, these rifles could be used against "our boys" in Iraq. The slant, therefore, is essentially tailored to domestic concerns, entirely reflecting The Business complaint about "Great Britain's increasingly parochial media and political establishment…".

But, what is especially infuriating is the last sentence of the article: "Iran is said to be re-arming after a £455 million deal with Russia for missiles and radar to ward off any air strikes on its nuclear facilities." That, would you believe, is the Telegraph’s first and only mention of the Russian deal to sell Iran SA-15 Gauntlet air defence missiles.

Now, it may be that I am going over the top in my concern for this development – and there has been a healthy debate to that effect in our forum, but none of our commentators will dispute that the issue is important. For the "professional" Telegraph, however, it is worth one line at the bottom of another story. That is a measure of how low the paper has sunk, and how desperately poorly we are now served by our media.

I should not, however, reserve my bile solely for the media. For a situation that represents one of the most egregious failures of the EU pretensions of having a foreign policy, and an utter, humiliating defeat for its concept of “soft power”, the Eurosceptic community has been remarkable quiet. No reference is made to the issue on the UKIP site, and there is no specific thread on the separate UKIP forum.

As for the Conservatives, the latest we get in on 11 January, with Cameron, predictably, calling on the prime minister "to maximise an international consensus for referring the case to the UN Security Council."

At least in The Telegraph we do get a halfway decent op-ed from Charles Moore, but if you want really informed commentary, you are not going to get it from the MSM or their oh so professional clogs.

COMMENT THREAD

Little Europeans

First it was Galileo, then it was Google and now, guess what, it's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

For an organisation which so desperately wants to asserts its own identity on the world stage, providing a counterweight to American "imperialism", the only way the European Union seems to be able to achieve this is to look at what the United States has… and copy it.

So it is that, according to Associated Press, Austria is embarking on another fit of "me-too-itis", declaring that it is going to use its EU presidency to promote a European rival to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This is their "cunning plan" to stop the continent's brightest minds moving across the Atlantic, and they aim to discuss the plan at the March European Council in Brussels.

As always, the "colleagues" are rankled by the success of the US, in this case because the annual ranking of the world's universities by London's Times Educational Supplement showed US institutions holding seven of the top 10 places, with Harvard and MIT heading the list.

The "little Europeans" believe talent is too thinly spread around the 25-nation EU, and co-operation between European countries is needed to create specialised centres where top students, teachers and researchers could concentrate. Thus, the EU commission is working on the creation of a European Institute Technology that will be presented to national governments for approval.

And (another) guess what… You will really be staggered by this. French prime minister Dominique de Villepin wants the institution be created in Paris with a $360 million starting budget, paid-for out of EU funds of course.

As least there is a dissenting voice. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the EU Parliament's research committee, says: "Everybody knows that it cannot be a copy of the MIT because the MIT needed 150 years in order to become successful, and we don't have that time."

"There is a big, big reluctance among the European universities to accept a new competitor," he adds. "The idea of creating a super, elitist university is not feasible."

Mind you, his alternative is not much better. He wants a European "network of networks" connecting universities and industry to ensure that research is turned quickly into workable business ideas. "We don't have a lack of ideas," he says. "We have a difficulty in implementing ideas... this is our problem in Europe."

What none of the other dire, inwards-looking, lame-brains realise is that the MIT is both a symbol of the economic system it supports, and a creation of it. To duplicate the MIT, you have to duplicate the system as a whole. And that is the one idea they do lack. But then, what do you expect from "little Europeans"?

COMMENT THREAD

Russia is the key

Reviewing this morning's press on Iran, the single thing that is most striking is not what is said, but what is not. The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to the view that the politicos and the media are misreading the situation, and are emphasising the wrong things.

As it is, the focus is on Iran and its recent decision to re-commence work on uranium enrichment, with various erudite – and less informed – comments on the application of sanctions through the UN.

But, as has been thoroughly rehearsed on this blog and on the forum, the immediacy of the crisis has not been brought about by the Iranian decision. At best, it would probably be late next year before Iran has enough material to construct even one bomb. Given the probabilities of launch or delivery failure of its relatively primitives missiles, the likelihood is that, to make a credible strike against Israel, the Iranians would want several bombs in their armoury before deploying them.

Thus, it is probably fair to say that there is no immediate threat from Iran, and any such threat may be several years away.

The other driver of the crisis is, of course, the political situation in Israel, with the prospect of a hard liner being elected in the wake of Sharon's departure from the political scene, with a mandate to take pre-emptive action against Iran. That put the date of a strike at the end of March, or shortly thereafter.

On reflection, though, that does not stack up. A strike at this time, when the Iranians have produced relatively little, if any, weapons-grade material, would cause relatively little delay, while a later strike, aimed at destroying or rendering inaccessible such material as had been produced, would have a more serious effect. Arguably, this suggests that the best option would be a watching brief rather than an early strike.

What has to be asked, therefore, is what makes the difference – what makes the likelihood of an Israeli strike imminent? The answer, of course, is makes the difference the forthcoming delivery by Russia of the SA-15 Gauntlet anti-aircraft missiles, the sales of which it has been negotiating since 2001, and right through the EU3 diplomatic initiative.

Fully to understand the significance of this, one must go back in history to 1970 and the "War of Attrition" between Israel and Egypt. With recently delivered US F-4 Phantoms, the IAF was able to command air superiority over Egyptian skies until June, when – with Soviet assistance – the Egyptians deployed SAM-3 missiles, the very latest in anti-aircraft weaponry.

On 30 June, the IAF launched a furious attack on Egyptian defences after it had been discovered that dozens of SAM-3 batteries and hundreds of AAA guns had been advanced the previous night. But, unlike previous occasions, two Phantoms were downed, both falling prey to Egyptian SAMs. Another Phantom was downed on 5 June, once again by a SAM. By August five Phantoms had been shot down and the IAF was forced to suspend operations over Egypt.

I was in Israel during this period and remember the profound sense of shock amongst ordinary people. Travelling on the busses, the radio was piped continuously to passengers and, when the news bulletins came on, there was absolute silence. Everyone listened and, following the news of the first downing, instead of the animated chatter that you so often get, there was tangible gloom. Unlike our ignorant, pampered population, the ordinary Israeli-in-the street was fully aware of the implications.

That has left the IAF with a profound respect for Russian-built SAMs (a respect that USAF pilots acquired when they met SAM-3s in Viet Nam) and they will be under no illusions that, with the deployment of SA-15s, the chances of a successful air strike against Iran will have been reduced to as close to zero as makes no difference.

The new Israeli prime minister, therefore, is faced with a wholly new and uncomfortable decision. He will know that he has a very narrow window, when an strike could be effective. Following that, the only air force in the world which could deploy effectively in Iranian airspace would be the USAF, any strike spearheaded by its B-2 "stealth" bombers which would engage and suppress air defences.

For an Israeli prime minister – any prime minister - that is an uncomfortable position in which to be. He must either decide to act or give up any chance of future retaliation and trust that the United States, at some time in the unspecified future, will take the necessary action in the defence of Israel, should the need arise.

With what I know of Israeli psychology, my guess is that, at the moment, the "hawks" will be making the running. Whether they get their way depends very much on who is elected prime minister. In the case of Netanyahu, he has already said he would follow the example of former prime minister Menachem Begin who ordered the IAF bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981.

But the central point is that this current crisis has effectively been triggered not so much by the Iranian action, but by the Russian decision, in December last year, to sell the Iranians advanced anti-aircraft missiles. Thus, while the Western powers line up to condemn Iran, and look to Russian as an ally, perhaps they should be focusing their attentions on Russia, demanding that it delay deliveries of weapons to Iran.

Of course, with the EU cosying up to Putin, and reliant on Russian gas, it is unlikely to take this course, which leaves the Israelis exposed and the situation ever-more dangerous.

COMMENT THREAD

Head in the sand

In just one short week, we have covered subjects ranging from defence procurement, the (ab)use of academia to produce public policy, the ports and services directive, the denied boarding directive, refuse collection, recycling, food safety, waste of regional funds, nuclear power and energy policy, and the deteriorating situation in Iran.

All these issues are in some way (mostly) directly or indirectly linked to our membership of the European Union and we know that we have not begun to cover the full range of EU-related issues that have broken into the news during the last seven days.

Without even reading our comments on the issues we have covered, however, it must be apparent even to the casual reader now pervasive has become the European Union and how great is its influence in our daily lives – all from something that, in 1970 was "sold" to us as a trade agreement.

In a way, therefore, we can understand why the media, politicians – and much of the population - shies away from discussing the EU and adopts a determinedly head-in-the-sand pose. It is all too much to take on board… too complicated and too depressing.

Even on this blog we feel the strain, for the range of issues is almost too much for even the both of us to deal with. It is, for instance, quite a conceptual leap to be writing, on the one hand, about growing Iranian crisis and then, in this next post, descending from high politics back into the weeds, to deal with something as mundane as Value Added Tax.

But deal with it we must, as it is all part of that ever-encroaching system of government – our government – that we call the European Union. This time – as so often – the story is about VAT fraud, with an unusual twist.

Yesterday, the ECJ ruled that the British government could not refuse to reimburse VAT to bona fide companies which had sold goods to other companies which had turned out to be fraudulent and had not paid their VAT.

According to the version in the Scotsman, the government may now have to change domestic law to accommodate the ruling, with dealt with three British companies, Optigen, Fulcrum Electronics and Bond House Systems. They supplied goods which, unknown to them, later became part of a so-called carousel fraud.

In such a fraud, a trader in a circle of transactions claims back paid VAT and disappears before passing on the repayment. The products may then arrive back with the original supplier who may be entirely innocent.

A British tax tribunal declared that original traders could not deduct input tax on goods involved in the fraud, even where they were innocent parties. The High Court referred the matter to the ECJ which ruled that: "The right of a taxable person to deduct VAT cannot be affected by the fact that, without that person knowing or having any means of knowing, another transaction in the chain is vitiated by fraud."

One can see what the Government was trying to do – effectively trying to offset some of its losses from a type of fraud which costs the country more than £1 billion a year – by dumping the responsibility on traders.

The human cost of this tactic has been serious. One company, Bond House, according to Mobile Europe, was owed £13.2 million by the Revenue and Ian Prescott, founding partner and director of the company, based in Castleford, West Yorkshire, was forced to cease trading. He had to make 20 people redundant and he and the other business directors and their families, he says, "have suffered terribly as a result of the Customs actions."

All this was to protect a system which is increasingly indefensible. In August last year we wrote that, since 1990, VAT fraud is estimated to have cost the Exchequer at least £20bn - another cost attributable to our membership of the EU.

Furthermore, according to the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a wave of VAT fraud had been hitting Germany, with suspicions that the proceeds are being used to finance terrorism. And, compared with the UK, costs were even higher, the annual loss estimated at €20 billion (£14 billion).

So vulnerable is this highly complex, bureaucratic tax, we wrote, with multiple payments and refunds, that it is a fraudster's dream, and no sooner is one loophole plugged than criminal gangs find another scam. Were we free agents, the tax would have been long abolished, and replaced with the simpler and less fraud-prone sales tax.

But, of course, since we are not free agents, there is absolutely nothing we can do about this haemorrhage of money. So – rather than the media getting excited – the news passed without the ripple - what's a mere billion quid, eh? - as will this current story. And there is the answer to the EU: keep your head in the sand boys. The trouble is, it won't go away.

COMMENT THREAD

Troubles enough

It was in February 2003 that Iran revealed its uranium enrichment programme at Natanz, when it claimed that it was using the technology for peaceful purposes. The US, at the time, did not believe Iranian assurances, alleging that the programme was part of a drive to develop nuclear weapons. As a result, Washington sought to refer the Iranian case to the UN Security Council.

That brought an intervention from the EU, and three countries in the Union, Germany, France and Britain – the so-called troika – opened negotiations with the Iranian government. Then, in November 2004, in a triumphant exercise of what was hailed as "soft power", the EU3 succeeded in getting Tehran to sign a "temporary agreement" to cease uranium enrichment.

We picked this up with a piece on 18 November 2004 but the utter fatuity of this exercise was brought home a couple of weeks later by an writer for Arab News, Amir Taheri, in an article entitled Taking Europe for a Ride. Over a year later, it has kept its freshness and vibrancy and serves as a reminder of the folly of European aspirations.

And now, not a month short of three years after the United States sounded the alarm, and after an utter, complete defeat of European negotiations, the Europeans have finally admitted defeat and taken the first steps toward referring Iran to the UN Security Council, after Iranian scientists re-commenced work on uranium enrichment.

So says the online edition of The Times and 2,511 other articles (on Google count) as the media rush to catch up on a story they have shamefully underplayed for those three years.

The EU cave-in follows crisis talks between Jack Straw and his counterparts in Berlin, with straw finally admitting that a diplomatic resolution to the crisis had now reached a deadlock. Without so much as a blush, he says, "It is a matter of very great regret ... Iran has decided to turn its back and these negotiations have reached an impasse".

The joint statement accuses Iran of a "documented record of concealment and deception" – now there's a surprise – only to be met with bland denials from Tehran, where president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed that he would not be intimidated by the "fuss." "Unfortunately, a group of bullies allows itself to deprive nations of their legal and natural rights," he declared. "I tell those superpowers that, with strength and prudence, Iran will pave the way to achieving peaceful nuclear energy."

Meanwhile, the crisis is already casting a shadow on the oil market, with Reuters reporting that prices have climbed a dollar to a three-month high, on fears of supply disruption from Iran – still the world's fourth biggest crude exporter.

Analysts fear that if UN sanctions are imposed, it could slow investment in Iran's ageing oilfields and that Tehran in retaliation might cut off its oil supplies. If Iran halted exports of around 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd), the rest of the world's spare capacity would not be able to make up the shortfall.

Ever quick to exploit a situation, the EU has stepped up its calls for a common energy policy. But, in a taste of battle to come, Reuters tells us that, when the touchy topic of nuclear power entered the discussion, an EU official privately conceded: "It's hard enough to imagine a common policy on energy”. Consensus on nuclear was "for the birds".

Amazingly, Polish Christian Democrat Jerzy Buzek is saying that "we need a common energy policy" similar to Europe's existing common agricultural policy. Doesn’t he think we have troubles enough?

COMMENT THREAD

Letter from America No. 3

One of the interesting comments at yesterday's discussion at the Hudson Institute was made by the host, John O'Sullivan. He pointed out that anyone who really wanted to follow the Alito hearings had to read the blogs that were providing not only hour by hour reporting and analysis but also commentary and quotations from many of the participants that frequently countered their present stance.

I haven't done that as yet but I did watch some of the proceedings on TV. The Alito hearings is the biggest news here and has managed to dwarf even the Jack Abramoff scandal, though the latter might well have a deleterious effect on the Republicans' chances in the forthcoming mid-term elections.

The general agreement is that by and large Alito has done well. He has managed to by-pass the clearly political questioning by the Democrats, whose aim seems to be to overcome the fact that they are electorally challenged by trying to impose a "liberal"agenda on the Supreme Court.

Without going into any of the details, let me refer to one or two comments by Alito that impressed me. He explained to the senators that the opinions he had expressed as an advocate were one thing but a judge cannot have an agenda. A judge has no clients and no interest in the outcome of the case. The judge is there to interpret the law as the law stands.

The Democrats had also tried to pick him up on one or two cases (apart from the one he should not have taken on as there was a clash of interests) when he allegedly did not come out on the side of the "little guy". Well, there are several points in response to that. First of all, the "little guy" is not always right. Given the fact that the rather left-wing legal "clinics" that are attached to the big universities and their law departments, tend to work for some of the largest organizations as long as they are on their side of the divide and care very little about jobs for the "little guy" or the "little gal" this whole discussion is problematic.

But Alito's biggest argument is that he is the "little guy". After all, he comes from an immigrant Italian family, grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, and has made his way up, as did the rest of his family, entirely by his own efforts. Beat that, Senator Kennedy.

And that brings me neatly back to the discussion on Europe, America and the Blogosphere, which I shall describe in greater detail at a later stage. The big question is why it is that Europe, including Britain, is so far behind the United States in the development of the blogosphere.

Some of it is due to technological differences. No question about it - everyone seems to have at least one PC or laptop in this country. They travel with it, they check their e-mails all the time, they blog or read blogs wherever they happen to be.

Internet is available everywhere and the wireless (how nice to see that word again) is widely available. Wireless was described to me a magic and it is. You can just connect to the internet. No mess, no muss.

But, allowing for all of that, there are psychological differences. I shall, when writing about it in detail, go into the various arguments, but would like to leave a couple here as expressed by members of the panel and the audience.

Blogs are started by people who feel that they are for whatever reason barred from expressing their opinion through the available channels. Many people feel that in America but very many people feel that in Europe and in Britain as well. The difference may be that Americans feel that they are all entitled to their opinion and have the right to express it. And that is something we need to achieve in Britain.

COMMENT THREAD

Told you so…

Sneaked in on 28 December when no one would be looking, is the award of yet another European defence contract, and one which firmly demonstrates the government's intention to Europeanise the armed forces.

As predicted in this blog and in my CPS paper, The Wrong Side of the Hill, the MoD has awarded technology demonstrator contracts – worth £4.8 million - to the Swedish firm Hägglunds, to develop its SEP concept (pictured above) as the basic platform for £14 billion Future Rapid Effects System (FRES).

From this contract, there is an extremely strong possibility that, for the first time since the Second World War (when the Army was issued US-built Sherman tanks), the British Army will be reliant on foreign-manufactured armoured vehicles and, for the first time in the history of this nation, we will be reliant on a European manufacturer.

Some comfort may be gained from the fact that Hägglunds is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BAE Systems, but not a great deal. BAE Systems is also working on the parallel US project, the Future Combat System (FCS), through its US subsidiary, United Defence, having produced a test platform there, for evaluation (pictured above).

The point here is that the two arms of BAE Systems are producing respectively a European and American version of a weapons system, produced to the same concept, but very different in design and execution, driving a further wedge between British and US forces. And, since – as with aircraft and warships – much of the technology is not in the basic platform but in the electronic systems. The MoD has assigned this work to the French-owned Thales company, so the finished system is likely to be very different from the US version.

On the broader front, DefenseNews reports that the FRES project timetable is slipping badly, with one industry source stating that it would be "at least 2016 before the more sophisticated variants of FRES started entering service in the British Army."

The vehicles are the cornerstone of Army plans to equip an air-deployable, medium-weight armoured division and underpin the British contribution to the European Rapid Reaction Force, which was to have been in operation by 2010. It looks like that European military ambitions will have to be put on hold for a few years as well.

COMMENT THREAD

Necroeurophilia

It looks like Austria's love affair with a corpse might be heading for a sad parting, with Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, pointing out the obvious truth that the fair mistress is er… "dead".

Clearly not believing in miracles, Bot, according to the Telegraph and others, has broken to news to the throbbing would-be swain, Wolfgang Schussel, who has been insisting that the constitution was "not dead, but in the middle of a ratification process".

Sweeping away months of euphemisms and half-truths, Bot is effectively pointing out that it is not only dead, but that "the corpse stinketh", and the third day has long gone. Resurrection, as they say, is not an option.

Our own Jack Straw seems to agree. "Since the best that can be said about the draft constitutional treaty is that is in limbo, which is somewhere between Heaven and Hell, it is difficult to argue that it is not dead," he says.

Limbo, or course is for those unfortunates who die without sin, before receiving the sacrament of baptism. The more likely home, therefore, is that other location – purgatory. Perhaps that is what Schussel is hoping, where - according to Catholic doctrine – the constitution can be purged of its imperfections, "much as silver in the fire sheds its impurities".

COMMENT THREAD

They just don't go away

"Not one crane is moving," union spokesman, Uwe Schroeder, said. This was Hamburg docks yesterday, as 4,500 workers went on strike to express their opposition to the EU's ports directive.

According to the International Herald Tribune, they were amongst the tens of thousands of dockworkers in several European Union countries who went on strike yesterday, protesting against the plans to "liberalise" cargo handling at seaports in the member states, allowing "self-handling" of cargo by ships' crews.

The European Transport Workers' Federation said a total of about 40,000 people were participating in 12 countries to protest against the directive. Supporters, according to IHT, said the directive was needed to cut costs, speed deliveries and encourage investment in ports across the 25 EU countries. Dockworkers' unions said they feared it would lead to lost jobs, lower wages and less safety. They want qualified stevedores to continue doing dock work, arguing that the job is too specialised to leave to ships' crews.

Yet, we have been here before. This is the proposed directive that was first introduced in 2001 and "torpedoed" by the EU parliament in November 2003. It was then re-introduced in October 2004 as one of the last acts of the outgoing commissioner for transport, Loyola de Palacio.

There is, of course, much more to the proposal than "self-handling". The directive seeks to impose rules governing the right to provide cargo handling services within a port, licensing operators to provide such services to as yet undefined "competent authorities" for limited periods. Licences would be for a maximum of eight years where no investment is required; 12 years where the licensee invested in "movable assets" such as fork-lift trucks; and 30 years where it paid for "immovable assets" such as new warehouses.

Back in 2004, David Ord, managing director of Bristol Port Company pointed out that the directive made partial sense on the continent, where the big ports are state-owned, run by comfortable cartels which can set their own charges and conditions, seeing off competitors and stifling free-enterprise and innovation. The commission was trying to achieve is "intra-port competition" (competition between providers of a same port service within a port).

However, in the UK, the industry is structured differently. We have already gone through our denationalisation and have a network of private ports, which thus creates a competitive environment between ports, so the directive would simply hamper and disrupt the UK structure for no gain.

But this is not what the continentals are complaining about and out lot will certainly not be joining them in the a demonstration in Strasbourg on Monday, when the EU parliament meets to debate, once again, a directive it has already thrown out.

And, if the parliament does not throw it out again, this country will again be suffering from another "one-size-fits-all" directive. Even if it is rejected, however, you can be sure that the commission will have another go. As all our readers know by now, they just don't go away.

COMMENT THREAD

The shapes of war

The photograph (left) shows an Israeli Air Force F-15E, a specially built, long range version of the Strike Eagle. And it is this beast, according to the Scottish newspaper, The Herald that is going to be used for a pre-emptive strike on Iran, possibly as early as the end of March.

That is certainly the view of defence correspondent Ian Bruce, who reports that Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, citing unnamed "military and intelligence sources".

The F-15E raid will be augmented by cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons programme back by up to two years. Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions.

The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process.

Bruce's sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.

The Iranians have meanwhile dispersed production facilities across hundreds of miles of remote countryside to make a single, knockout blow more difficult. They have also ringed the sites, some of them deep underground, with missile batteries and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns.

He tells us that part of the reason for an acceleration of Israel's contingency strike plans is that Russia agreed last month to sell Tehran £700m-worth of advanced SA-15 Gauntlet mobile missile systems. This is a low-to-medium altitude SAM system is capable of engaging not only aircraft and helicopters but also RPVs, precision-guided weapons and various types of guided missiles. Deployed around target sites, it could make an Israeli attack hazardous in the extreme and even defeat it.

Some of these missiles are believed to be destined for defence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on the Gulf coast, which Russian engineers are helping to build.

Writes Bruce, although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.

An Israeli source said: "We believe Iran will have useable nuclear weapons by 2007 unless something is done to prevent it. If Tehran is allowed to start enrichment of uranium, it will be too late. Underground facilities have to be supplied with air, water and fuel from the surface. They also have entrances which are vulnerable to conventional attack. Close down the infrastructure and you close down the facility."

Make no mistake, if this does happen, the Middle East will erupt and any semblence of normaility will evaporate. Not least, an enraged Iran could well launch missiles against shiping in the Gulf, closing down the Middle East oil supply and causing economic chaos in Western economies.

Of course, considerable pressure will be brought on Israel to avert this scenario, and much of what is coming out of Israel could be part of a war of words, aimed at prodding the Western powers into action. But, faced with the very real possibility of nuclear destruction, and seeing its options being closed down by the arrival of Russian missiles, it would be unwise to assume that Israel is bluffing.

COMMENT THREAD

Could you make it up?

A good contender for one of the most overworked clichés of modern times has to be "you couldn't make it up". But could you make this up?

With the world going to hell in a handcart, according to Euractiv, EU leaders are saying: "Services Directive the most important issue in 2006".

To be fair (although I promise I won't make a habit of it), the story goes on to say that, "Leading figures from the Austrian presidency, the commission and the parliament agree that the Services Directive will be one of the most important issues of the new year." This is based on an account of the first working meeting between the three institutions, on 9 January.

El Presidente Barroso says that, after two years of discussions on the matter, the commission was now going to prioritise the Services Directive. More precisely, he is going to come forward with a new proposal in due time before the Spring Council, on 23-24 March, making it possible to reach an agreement on the directive before the end of the Austrian Presidency, on 30 June.

The EU parliament is to debate the directive on 14 February, with the vote scheduled for the next day. Trade Unions and NGOs are preparing two large-scale demonstrations in Strasbourg to coincide with these dates. Could be fun.

COMMENT THREAD

A certain disparity in treatment

Adding to the long list of issues the British media deigns not to report, we at least have CNN to thank for reporting the latest development on the less than glorious activities of the French Army in the Ivory Coast – the story itself lifted from an AP report.

This stems from a report in October last, when French defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie suspended General Henri Poncet, the officer commanding French "peacekeepers" in May 2005, when an Ivorian man, named as Mahe, died after being shot by French troops. In addition to Poncet, Colonel Eric Burgaud and an unidentified platoon commander had been suspended.

Now, in a New Year address to the Army, Chirac at the Elysee Palace in Paris has said that the killing of Mahe "must spark deep reflection within France's military".

It was the first time Chirac has spoken about the killing but, although he called it a "serious offence", he also described it as "an isolated act”, saying that it "must not tarnish the reputation of the French military." The killing "must nonetheless incite you to reflect more about the deep meaning of the profession of bearing arms," he added.

It would be hard to agree, from accounts of French behaviour in the Ivory Coast, that Mahe's killing was an "isolated act", but it seems, from the fact that Chirac chose to refer to it in his address to the military, that the investigation of General Henri Poncet for "complicity to murder" has shaken the French military at the highest levels.

Once again, though, we cannot help but remark on the disparity in the treatment of this incident, compared with the media obsession with American activities in Iraq. Can anyone imagine that, if an American general had been suspended for "complicity to murder" of an Iraqi citizen, and the issue had been mentioned by Bush in his own New Year address, that the story would have been confined to a shot slot on CNN?

Speaking of unreported stories, incidentally, Claudia Roset has come up with a major new development in the oil-for-food scandal, over at National Review.

COMMENT THREAD

Respect?

There is hope for us yet. Despite the saturation coverage given to the prime minister's "respect" agenda, at least The Daily Telegraph devoted its leader to the events in Iran, declaring that “The West must call Russia's bluff on Iran”. However, even in a relatively robust piece, it shows no sign of appreciating quite how serious the situation really is.

But it is yet another measure of how infantile the media and politicians have become that the bulk of coverage (including the BBC lead last night, on all news channels) was devoted to the "respect" agenda. Once more, one has to observe that, if the élites are expending their energies on such trivia, it is hardly surprising if the population in general is turning away from politics with a stifled yawn.

It is not that yobbery and the general break-down in law and order on our streets are not important. The dismissal relates to the prime minister's approach to the issue, trivialising something which needs to be treated very seriously, and approached in a grown-up manner.

That is certainly the view taken by the Daily Mail, which headlined its leader: "Respect? This only deserves contempt", declaring:

With stunts and soundbites, photo opportunities galore, eye-catching initiatives and Ministers in full cry, New Labour proclaims its doctrine of 'respect' across the land. And yet again the public can only wonder at the glaring contrast between rhetoric and reality.

The Mail website also invited comments and one anonymous correspondent from Macclesfield added his views, which will strike a chord with many of our readers:

The reason that yobs rule many of our streets and respect has gone is because they hardly never get punished. It somebody assaults someone else they should be put in prison. This will deter them and their friends in the future. When I was assaulted I went to the Police station to report it. The Police told me they were too busy to deal with it, even though I knew who had assaulted me and where they were. This is not an isolated case. It happens all the time. Keeping crime figures down is the governments top priority not fighting crime.

The Police are just like the Inland Revenue. They gather tax. Crimes that pay fines, such as speeding are the most important to them as they gather revenue. That's what all this about. Money.

I was even moved yesterday, to add my own views to the Telegraph site, in the following terms:

In my experience, one of the most egregious examples of the lack of "respect" can be found in the courts service. Correspondence from the courts - specifically fine notifications but also general correspondence - is invariably addressed with the first and last names, but no title (Mr, Mrs. etc). There seems to be a view taken that, because the respondent has fallen foul of some administrative diktat (like parking in the wrong place) that automatically disqualifies them from being treated with the normal courtesies.

The attitude seems to carry over into the courts themselves. Some time ago, I did jury service, where the judge is "my lord" this, and "my lord" that, and the barristers are "my learned friend". Yet, when I reported for duty, the usher, without a blush, checked me off her list (and all the others) by my first name.

Furthermore, the police are just as bad. I had dealings with a police sergeant who, although he full well knew my title, having it written down in front of him, insisted on calling me "Mr" (I am a PhD). When I called him "constable", though - in retaliation - he was mightily offended. Basically, if those in authority treat us all with such lack of courtesy (or even contempt), they can hardly be surprised if we reciprocate.

For sure, these are but small examples, but the point is that "respect" starts at the top. Whether it is the prime minister's blatant disregard for public sentiment in caving in on the British rebate to the EU budget, the EU itself in seeking to ignore the verdict of the French and Dutch public in rejecting the constitution, or a host of other issues too numerous to list, the general feeling is that the ruling élites have nothing but contempt for us all. It even trickles down to the dismissal of the growing band of people with strongly-held views on "Europe" as "Europhobes" or "little Englanders".

It is that which, I believe, is at the heart of the issue. As with respect, contempt cuts both way. Our population may be divided in its politics and aspirations, but we are united in one thing – our universal contempt for our rulers. And if we have contempt for them, that soon extends to embrace their laws as well. This may manifest itself in different ways, at different levels of society, but the malaise is the same. That, the prime minister will not be able to wash away with a pressure-jet cleaner.

COMMENT THREAD

A matter of inevitability

With the preliminary ruling on 8 September going against the airlines, there was no way that the final ruling of the ECJ was going to be any different.

So it has come to pass that, yesterday, the challenge against the EU’s airline passenger compensation rules – the so-called "denied boarding" directive – was defeated, when the full court ruled against the airlines.

The judgement, set out in the court’s press release, gives no quarter. In deadpan prose, the airlines’ arguments are simply tossed aside, leaving the likes of Rynair having to pay compensation to passengers for cancelled flights at levels considerably higher than the face value of their tickets.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents airlines, had led the challenge, and its chief executive, Giovanni Bisignani, was not happy, telling The Financial Times that: "Higher costs for air transport with no added value does not pass the good regulation test, let alone the common-sense test". Needless so say, the commission welcomed the decision as "good news for passengers."

IATA estimates the regulation will cost the industry more than £410m a year at a time when it is facing higher fuel charges and increased competition, which can only come from travellers' pockets.

Low-far airlines are hardest hit, with a spokesman for EasyJet declaring: "We think it is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever produced by Brussels because it makes airlines responsible for paying compensation for events wholly out of their control."

Presumably, when these airlines increase their fares to pay for this legislation, the commission will be equally ready to announce the "good news for passengers".

COMMENT THREAD

Hidden Europe

In my local paper tonight, there is a news article about the two local authorities, service Bradford and Halifax, teaming up to handle their refuse disposal needs.

All good stuff, this – the meat and drink of local papers. But the article opens:

Rubbish from Halifax could be ferried through Bradford in a bid to meet tough new waste laws. The Government plans to reduce the amount of rubbish being dumped at landfill by forcing local authorities to recycle more.

Note the missing detail. This is not the "government" in the normal sense of the word. It is our government in Brussels that is "forcing local authorities to recycle more".

It is hardly surprising that people are so ill-informed about the EU if its actions and laws are not identified at the point they apply.

COMMENT THREAD

A glimmer of intelligence

Although one should not get too excited, it seems that El Presidente Barroso has got the point – unlike some of his confrères.

David Rennie, in the Telegraph, is telling us that the man has distanced himself from the calls to revive the EU constitution, not least from the attempts by the Austrian presidency to revive the corpse.

Barroso pours cold water on talk of a swift return of the constitution, enjoining EU leaders to look at the wider "context" of its rejection, "not to look obsessively at the text". He warns against "a fresh bout of institutional navel-gazing" that "would only expose deep divisions within Europe".

In this, the commission president has a fervent supporter in Denis MacShane, who recently told UPI that an attempt to revive the constitution "tel quel" would produce a revolt amongst European citizens whatever the view of the European political elite. "The Totentanz is fine for gothic horror stories but climbing into the coffin of the corpse of the constitution is taking necroeurophilia too far," he says.

However, what Barroso has to offer instead is not much better. He proclaims that 2006 "can and should be the year of a new drive for Europe", adding that the drive should focus on "what matters to people", which was economic growth and job creation.

Actually, what matters even more to people, and is a precursor to "economic growth and job creation", is peace and security - about which Barroso and his precious commission can do little.

That, at the moment, is resting in the hands of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Britain, France, China and Russia – who earlier today delivered diplomatic démarches to Iran's mission in Vienna, calling on Tehran to step back from its threat to resume its programme of nuclear "research and development".

In response, Iran is showing every sign of ignoring such entreaties, leaving the EU3 with nothing much left in their locker than to threaten "breaking off exploratory talks" between the EU3 and Iran scheduled for 18 January, and an early referral to the Security Council

At least, Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA director-general, seems now to be aware of the gravity of the situation, cited by The Financial Times as telling the BBC: "We are at a stage where what is happening this week could turn into a major crisis."

Just how far this crisis develops is anyone's guess, but it certainly does underline Barroso's thesis that there are slightly more important things on the agenda than "institutional navel-gazing".

COMMENT THREAD

The death of ideas

Mark Steyn writes a good piece in the Telegraph today, even if the title tells you all you need to know about it: "Ideas win elections: glamour doesn't".

This is a sideways dig at the Boy King and his policy-free zone, based on Steyn's own observations of the Canadian election campaign. There, against all the apparent odds, "a guy called Stephen Harper", who is "widely agreed by all the experts to have 'negative charisma'", is on course to win.

The reason is, according to Steyn – and I have no reason to doubt him – is that Harper, like Bush and Howard (the Australian version) have the sense of being at ease with themselves and secure in their philosophical moorings. All three know where they want to go and how they're planning to get there. By comparison with their anglosphere cousins, British Tories seem mired in the shallows - and, if Cameron's first utterances as leader are anything to go by, they're happy to gambol there indefinitely.

Glamour ungrounded in ideas is rarely enough, says Steyn. Whereas ideas without glamour seem to do just fine. Indeed, politically speaking, ideas are what's really glamorous. Until the Tories get some glamorous ideas, that's the way it will stay.

For "glamorous", of course, read "good". There is no point having stupid ideas – like the idea of the state running hospitals. Just how crass can you get, supporting a system that gets pots of money, which then finds that treating patients costs extra and has to be discouraged. If the money follows the patient, then hospitals learn that, to make money, you have to treat patients – simple really.

But there is more to it than that. One of the characteristics of contemporary politics is its claustrophobic, stultifyingly narrow scope, focused almost entirely on schools'n'hospitals, plus law and order. Where are the debates and discussions on foreign policy, defence, immigration, transport, the environment, energy, trade and the many other issues that are of vital concern to this nation?

Here, we can point a finger at the European Union, where it has an effect on the whole policy process – the generation of ideas – that is poorly, if at all recognised.

This I identified in the research for a paper on the role of the EU in funding academia, which shed some light on how the commission, with its relatively modest resources – cited as being "tiny, with fewer employees than Leeds City Council" - can produce so much by way of policy documents.

The fact is that the commission out-sources much of its policy work, specifically using funds from the research framework programme (and other sources) to pay academic institutions, consultants, and others, to produce policy ideas. Thus, in the paper - which, unfortunately, we never got round to publishing – I wrote, in the context of the EU using its funds to academia for propaganda purposes:

If propaganda is one result of EU intervention, there is another, negative function, which probably represents the greatest harm done. The outward effect of this damage is the extraordinary policy vacuum at the heart of the body politic, affecting both the government and the opposition where all parties seem to be bereft of any original or imaginative ideas to deal with the manifest problems affecting society.

At first sight, this would appear to have nothing to do with the EU, but that assessment would be wrong. Essentially, policy development, "clear blue thinking", "thinking the unthinkable" and much of the creative work from which stems working policies, arise from or in conjunction with academic institutes. That is very much the case with the EU, where the European Institute and the network of Jean Monnet professors, and other academics, are consulted by the Commission on all matters of high policy. The Commission even runs its own "think tank", called the Forward Studies Unit, staffed in the main by academics. It mode of operation is often to set up "workshops" attended by leading academics, to offer advice.

Therein lies the problem. The brightest minds in politics, in a whole range of policy development areas, and other matters of vital concern to policy-makers, are working directly or indirectly on the "European dimension". The reason for this is quite simple – again it is a question of money. Any researcher wishing to research specific policy issues, whether they affect the environment, food safety, farming, "sustainable development", or even political theory, would find it very had to attract funding unless the work has that “European dimension”. Courtesy of the EU virtual monopoly on research funding, that is the way the system is now structured.

On the other hand, anyone who wished, say, to work up environmental policy issues of strictly national application, the objective of which was to discredit or provide an alternative to EU policy, would simply not get the funding. Furthermore, there would be no point in attempting such a project. Since so many policy areas are now wholly or mainly EU competences, a strictly national approach would have little or no chance of being implemented. No half-way intelligent researcher, with ambitions of seeing their work recognised, would want to indulge in such an activity. It would simply not be a career enhancing move.

By the same token, those few, foolhardy souls who insist on carrying what might be deemed as "anti-EU" research are poorly funded and resourced, lack the critical mass of co-researchers and tend to excluded from "mainstream" (i.e., EU-funded) academic circles. There are no funds for conferences, no subsidised papers or web-sites and there is no institutional support. A form of ostracism prevails and few but the most dedicated – with no ambitions of a mainstream career - dare to embark on this route

Politically, the significance of this is profound. In the absence of a steady stream nationally-orientated policy ideas, contrasted with the flow of ideas on "European" themes, the EU is seen as the "only game in town". This reinforces the myth that the future lies with "Europe" and lends credence to propaganda that there is no alternative to membership of the EU. As ordinary people become steadily more disillusioned by the policy vacuum, "Europe" wins the game by default.

Thus, the shadow of the EU lies over so many areas of public policy that they become "off-limits" to domestic politicians, who will not or cannot discuss them for fear of pointing up the fact that they lie within the realm of the Union. There is either a "European solution" or no solution at all which means that, when it comes to formulating national policy on a huge swathe of issues, we are seeing the death of ideas.

COMMENT THREAD

Death of a conspiracy?

There is a constituency on the fringes of Euroscepticism which believes that the EU is a Catholic plot. This is, at least, a refreshing change from the more prevalent belief that the EU is a Nazi plot, or that the real villains were Bilderbergers.

But, if the Catholics were really behind the EU (not), it would have to be admitted that the commission seems to have an odd way of showing its gratitude.

According to an article in The Times today, the commission is demanding that the Spanish government ends a VAT exemption granted to the Church, which is saving it €25 million (£17 million) a year.

Failure could comply could bring the Spanish government to the ECJ but the action, says The Times, could cause a new row between the Spanish Socialist Government and the Church, whose relations are already frosty. If the government complies with the Brussels demands — as seems likely — but does not make up the shortfall, it will land the bishops in a financial crisis.

The Spanish Episcopal Conference, the Church's ruling body, expects Madrid to pay up, if it gives in to Brussels. But María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, the Deputy Prime Minister, refused to give a commitment, saying only: "We will take this into account when we renegotiate the financing of the Church by the State this year."

Madrid signalled last year that it had plans to cut state funding for the Church, but the exact amount has yet to be decided. Opposition parties such as the Catalan nationalist ERC, on whom the minority Socialist Government depends for support, are against compensating the bishops if the VAT loophole is closed. If the Government refuses compensation and cuts its state grant, the bishops could be €60 million poorer each year.

Interestingly, the commission's notification - in the form of a "reasoned opinion" - dates back to 16 December last year, when attention was focused on the European Council and the budget drama. Thus we all missed it, except the Spanish Noticias and a few others.

Noticias informs us that the commission is challenging Spanish government commitments that it has made under the "Agreement between the Spanish State and the Holy See on economic affairs" of 3 January 1979.

The government argues that this is an international agreement concluded prior to the accession of Spain to the European Community and that the exemption is therefore covered by the first paragraph of Article 307 of the EC Treaty. That paragraph states that rights and obligations arising from pre-accession international agreements concluded by a Member State with a third country are not affected by the EC Treaty.

But the commission asserts that the exemption is not authorised under the European Community VAT system set out in the Sixth VAT Directive (77/388/EEC) and the Agreement is not authorised by the EC treaty.

However, the commission is also saying that this does not prevent Spain from paying some financial compensation to the Catholic Church in return for taxes the Church has to pay to the Spanish tax authorities. Thus, if the Spanish government is forced to cave in and impose VAT on the Church, but does not give the money back in some form or other, there could indeed be a "holy war" between the parties.

It then become a matter solely between the Spanish government and the Church, which leaves the commission in the clear. The conspiracy theorists – some of them – will be able to breathe more easily.

COMMENT THREAD

I'm impressed

See here.

COMMENT THREAD

Fiddling while Rome burns

If I was asked to nominate the single, most pressing political issue of the moment, I would have no hesitation following the lead of The Business and pinpointing the growing crisis in the Middle East.

For my second most important, I would pick the not unrelated issue of energy – and particularly electricity generation – not least because disruption in oil supplies attendant on a Middle East crisis would have a devastating effect on our economy and well-being.

In both, it seems we are not looking to the distant future, as Iran could well be have a nuclear arsenal as early as March, the consequences of which could be devastating.

Among the possible scenarios – which I have not seen in print anywhere, although it has undoubtedly been discussed – is the possibility that Iran could actually be successful in launching a nuclear strike against Israel. Given that eventuality, there is – at the very least – a possibility that a dying Israel could launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against Iran, in a major act of escalation – with who knows what result.

It is very far from fanciful, therefore, to suggest that we are facing the most serious threat of nuclear war – albeit on a regional scale – since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

In a world with a grown-up media and politicians, one might expect this prospect to be at the top of the agenda, dominating the coverage and discussion but, certainly, as far as the UK media is concerned, the dominant event is the forthcoming election contest for the leader of Britain's third-largest political party.

As for the EU, with its pretensions of having a world role, it is absolutely typical of this dire organisation that, having devoted its last European Council on an orgy of introspection on the budget question, should now turn – under the aegis of the Austrian presidency – to the question of the failed constitution.

Thus it is that both The Telegraph and The Independent devote space to the attempts of the presidency to revive the constitution, one option being to "cherry pick" favourite elements from the moribund treaty.

Particularly keen on this is Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, who was expecting to become the first foreign minister of the European Union - a post that will only be created if the constitution is ratified. According to The Telegraph, Solana told the Brussels journal E!Sharp that ratifying the constitution would have been a major boost to European foreign policy. He is cited as saying, "I can tell you that the sooner the elements that are contained in the constitution relating to the decision-making structure are put in place, the better for the EU. Time is important."

He got that last bit right, but the unholy obsession for the trivia of institutional structures is redolent of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. By the time the colleagues get down to discuss who does what, the game could be over and the "Sound of Europe" that Austria is using as its theme could be the (hopefully) distant rumble of nuclear explosions.

COMMENT THREAD

This is where our money goes

From the Scottish edition of The Sunday Times comes a story of a type where you can only stand back and say, "you couldn’t make it up".

And you most certainly could not, as it concerns the expenditure of our money recycled through Brussels and dolled as part of the European Regional Development Fund out to a tiny Scottish community in the picturesque Coigach peninsula in Western Scotland.

The story is written by Reiner Luykens, a German journalist who lives in Coigach, who starts by reminding us that, six years ago, a cartoon in The Sunday Times depicted the residents of the remote community looking to the skies in wonder. It was raining banknotes.

The story alongside reported how 240 souls who live in five villages strung along a single-track road had been drowned in European money. It poked fun at a huge new community hall, an "aircraft hangar with pitched roof", which had been provided for the place.

This tiny community, continues Luykens, came to mind last week when Tony Blair’s spin doctors launched an all-out effort to depict Britain’s presidency of the EU as a complete success. The UK, they argued, had insisted that European funds have to be spent efficiently and only with good reason. Which rather implied that this was always the case in Britain, a country that receives just under £1 billion in aid from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

I can do no better than republish verbatim, what he then writes:

Coigach shows Britain in a rather different light. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) which acts as a conduit for European monies in the region, presents this spot as a prime example of a fragile community threatened by depopulation and economic decline and so in in real need of financial aid.

The community hall was just the start of it. Five years ago, Davy Garrett had the idea to turn another, redundant hall into a piping school. He put together a business plan that foresaw 120 students in the first year of operation, drawn from all over the world for week-long courses. Each course would be priced at £300, creating a turnover of £36,000, a figure that was meant to double in the following years. Five jobs were to be created. HIE was enthusiastic and agreed to provide, together with the ERDF, most of the money.

One year and £125,000 later the Highland cultural establishment appeared for the opening ceremony. Nobody seemed to have had any doubts about the school's success — apart from a few who happen to know the piping scene well. There are already two highly reputed facilities in Glasgow — the National Piping Centre and the College of Piping — competing for students.

During the first year, 11 pipers turned up, most for just one or two hours’ tuition. The turnover reached £570. The second year was more promising: 79 students showed up. A delegation of the ERDF visited the facility and wrote a largely positive report. In 2004 however, student numbers dropped to 33. Last year's turnover was just £3,300.

Garrett has to put up with a lot of mockery in the village. Economically, though, his failure doesn’t really affect the place. Coigach is anything but a fragile community. The population is younger than the Highland average and grew by more than 3% between 1991 and 2001. Unemployment is low, car ownership is high, house prices have risen sharply. An overnight stay in the local hotel (whose restaurant has a Michelin star) costs nearly £100.

In 2003 HIE lavished more money over Coigach, this time for broadband internet access via a wireless satellite-fed connection. HIE and the ERDF launched a company, Hi-Wide, to supply at first five communities, Coigach among them, and later 50 areas with the technology in a £2.6m scheme.

It was unfortunate that BT announced just two months later that virtually every house would soon be able to receive broadband for the usual subscription fees. Hi-Wide adjusted some of their plans accordingly, but this did not stop the subsidy machinery: a first instalment of £800,000 had been approved and that was that. Hi-Wide hired subcontractors to carry out the work.

But at the northern end of Coigach, some houses fitted with the new technology didn’t benefit. The signals got lost in the hilly terrain. Meanwhile, broadband has reached the peninsula via the telephone — and it works.

British critics have been quick to criticise the grand scale of EU waste: the Italians who abused the common agricultural policy with fraudulent claims for the number of olive trees they grew; the Austrian farmers who inflated the size of their pastures eligible for subsidy by 60 percent; the £670m lavished on the Brussels parliament itself. But where do you look for our much-vaunted financial good sense for a point of comparison? Not in sleepy Coigach, that's for sure.

The next time you get a Euroluvvy tell you how well Scotland does out of the ERDF, and how necessary it is for its development, jobs and everything, just show them this posting.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker

For some unexplained reason, the Sunday Telegraph has not put a link up on its website front page for the Booker column today, so for those who have been unable to find it, here is the link.

For his subject matter, Booker leads off with the Barroso story, in which the listeners of the Today programme voted the commission president the most powerful man in Britain.

But, writes Booker, if the selection was a joke, the last laugh is on the likes of BBC political correspondent, Nick Robinson, and Guardian correspondent Nicholas Watt, both of whom claimed that pointed out that power in Brussels rested not with Barroso but with "the council of ministers", as evidenced in that pre-Christmas row over the EU budget.

Both, of course, were referring to the European Council, a wholly different institution. "This schoolboy howler only showed yet again how ignorant most commentators are about how our EU system of government works", says Booker.

He adds that it might seem remarkable that the BBC's political correspondent appears so ignorant of the distinctions between these institutions (a mistake as basic as not knowing that Paris is the capital of France). But it is obvious that our grand pontificators are equally hazy about the extent to which this system dictates the way that the countries of Europe, including our own, are run.

He then gives the example of the growing disaster in our waste management policy, long since handed to Brussels, adding to the detail on this blog, having talked to Peter Jones, a director of Biffa, Britain's largest waste company.

Jones tells us that, in addition to the £10 billion infrastructure costs to set up the EU's "recycling society" in Britain alone, there will be a further annual cost for running 300 "waste parks" needed to implement the EU's recycling law.

The trouble is, Booker writes, that it will not be economical to do this until the cost of landfill - thanks to the steady £3 a year rise in the EU-inspired landfill tax - has risen to around £60 a tonne, which will not be for another four or five years. As our landfill tips disappear (they are currently closing at two or three a month), we shall be faced with a colossal waste crisis.

We shall no longer have any way to dispose of our rubbish because that £10 billion-worth of infrastructure and the 40,000 staff to run it will not be in place.

Such are the results of handing over ever more of the running of our country to a mysterious, unaccountable system which reduces our politicians to impotence, and which most commentators are far too grand to understand. As for Mr Cameron's Not-the-Conservative Party, Booker avers, it will have nothing to say either, because it seems to be quite as oblivious to all this boring, practical stuff as the BBC's Mr Robinson.

And there is the rub. The Booker column these days is confined to the inside back page of the paper and they can't even be bothered to put a link to it on the website. Yet, in one short piece, there is more about how this strange, unaccountable political construct works than you find from reading the entire newspaper. Such is life.

COMMENT THREAD

Looking after number one

In a week when the "colleagues" started picking up the pieces after the Russian gas crisis, focusing once again on how they could turn the situation, to their advantage, a week that also coincided with a report that, for the first time in decades, the UK was no longer self-sufficient in oil, one of the most significant pieces of news not to get into the newspapers was tucked into a Reuters report on French energy policy.

According to this source, France is planning measures to cut oil use by 2020,by introducing a new reactor design, with L'Escroc announcing that, in 20 years time, French trains will not use a drop of oil.

Already the world's second largest nuclear power producer - after it decided after the 1970s oil shocks to reduce its oil dependence by building a fleet of 58 nuclear reactors – France is now to pick up on the design of the so-called pebble-bed nuclear reactor, having one of these fourth generation reactor in use by 2020.

We have referred to these plants before. The design originated in Germany but was abandoned after opposition from the yoghurt knitters in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, but picked up by the South Africans and latterly the Chinese, who already have a prototype up and running.

The system is well worth the study, comprising a gas cooled reactor (see illustration above), which relies not on the traditional uranium pile, but graphite coated uranium oxide balls, the coating of sufficient thickness to allow critical mass when the balls (or pebbles) are stacked in a hopper. But the genius of the system is that, if the mass overheats – the cause of the potential “China syndrome” meltdown accident – the graphite coating expands and separates the uranium cores, whence critical mass is lost and the cooling takes place spontaneously, without no outside intervention.

In pebble bed technology, therefore, the human race has the prospect of the first truly fail-safe and therefore safe nuclear energy production. But, on top of this, because the system is gas-cooled (using helium gas for heat transfer) and is unpressurised, individual plants are smaller and can be massed produced, making them cheaper to provide and easier to locate.

Coupled with this are developments in hydrogen production, with the use of high temperature, high pressure hydrolysis, which is now reaching the stage where it is a commercially viable. Using this technology, the Chinese intend to break away from the classic application of nuclear power – using it only for the "base" load, with peak demand met from more flexible generation sources – to provide for peak capacity while using the off-peak capacity for hydrogen production.

With the first of the commercial pebble-bed reactors due to be on-line by 2010, china at one could become the first nuclear/hydrogen economy, freeing itself from the tyranny of imported energy supplies, and leave the rest of the world standing.

But what is so significant about the Reuters report is that France seems also to have realised the potential of pebble-bed technology. Thus, while the "colleagues" bicker about the "European dimension" to the energy crisis and we despoil our countryside with wind factories, the French, as always, are looking after number one, and are set to steal a march on the rest of Europe.

Good luck to them. We should be doing the same.

COMMENT THREAD

It's Chicken Little time

One of the easiest things a commentator can do is rush around like Chicken Little, warning that the sky is going to fall in. In many ways, it is a good option. If the sky doesn't fall in, no one will remember your warnings but, if events turn out as you predicted, your reputation is made forever.

Thus it is with the Middle East, which is always in turmoil, where the inherent instability of the region always threatens to erupt into a higher level of insanity and killing. Therefore, anyone making predictions of more bloodshed is on a pretty safe bet.

That said, there have been a steady stream of warnings on the growing nuclear threat from Iran, and avowed determination of president Ahmadinejad, Iran's new, hard-line leader, to make and deploy nuclear missiles against Israel.

This is a topic we have not visited since the end of October when Ahmadinejad gave a speech in which he called for Israel to be wiped off the map, but we have watched developments uneasily, wondering and waiting, as the situation deteriorates.

Now, today, The Business, in taking up the theme of a nuclear-armed Iran and the political uncertainty in Israel, caused by the departure of Sharon, has decided it's Chicken Little time, with a long, robust leader under the unequivocal headline: "The crisis facing the Middle East".

We find it very hard to disagree with the sentiment expressed in that headline, and the general thrust of the leader, and applaud the style, especially the opening, which begins thus:

Even at the best of times, the abrupt removal of an Israeli prime minister would be destabilising for the country and the Middle East. But Ariel Sharon’s stroke, which prematurely ended his political career on Wednesday, comes as the Middle East faces its greatest test for three decades. The region is staring catastrophe in the face, though Great Britain's increasingly parochial media and political establishment, gripped by the unsurprising admission that the B-division politician who until Saturday led Britain’s third party has a serious "drink problem", has failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. But if London's attentions are elsewhere, it cannot be said that the other major world capitals have shown themselves up to the challenge either.

This is exactly the point we were trying to make in our brief – some might say terse – piece we posted about Kennedy on Friday, expressing our view that the coverage of a "B-division politician who until Saturday led Britain's third party" was somewhat overblown, and that the more important issue was Sharon.

The only point on which we would take issue with the narrative is where The Business expresses what we feel is undue pessimism about the ability of the United States or Israel to succeed in a military strike against Iran. Rightly, the paper observes that this is not a situation like taking out Saddam’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, as the Iranians have spread their installations across the country. But it is perhaps neglecting the fact that the highly sophisticated electronic surveillance systems deployed by the Americans will probably be able to detect any missiles in their pre-launch phase, in sufficient time to launch pre-emptive strikes.

For sure, as The Business does observe, any such action would "trigger a massive explosion of rage in the Middle East, with unpredictable consequences", but the capability to avert nuclear Armageddon in Israel is probably better than most people realise.

Thus, while the paper offers as its specific thesis that, "not only have the Great Powers failed to do anything to contain Iran, they have no strategy to cope with a nuclear Iran – and cannot even start to think how to deal with a further proliferation across the Middle East and the horrifying possibility of nuclear terrorists," that might be too pessimistic. But that apart, we are certainly on the brink of a crisis and, as so often, if it erupts, it is unlikely to be contained within the region.

We would, therefore, enjoin you to read the leader (link above), which is long and detailed as befits a grown-up newspaper in a land where the general media, in its descent into infantilism, remains obsessed with their "B-division" politician. It looks like Chicken Little could be right this time.

COMMENT THREAD

Nemesis

After years of being lectured by Mr Gordon "Prudence" Brown on how to run their economies, the "colleagues" are about to wreak a delicious revenge.

This is according to Reuters, which reports that it has obtained a has obtained a copy of a draft recommendation from the commission, telling Britain next week it is not doing enough to control its budget deficit

The recommendation is due to be cleared by a full meeting of the commission on Wednesday and expected to be discussed by the EU's 25 finance ministers on 24 January, when they are expected to endorse the commission's view by a qualified majority and giving him six months to spell out how he will cut the deficit.

"The United Kingdom authorities should put an end to the present excessive deficit situation as soon as possible and by financial year 2006-2007 at the latest," the commission's draft states, noting that, unless Britain changes its fiscal policy, "the overall government deficit would rise from 3.2 percent of GDP in 2004-2005 to 3.4 percent in 2005-2006 before falling again to 3.2 percent in 2006-2007".

Although Britain is not a member of the eurozone, it is still obliged to try to avoid deficits that exceed a limit in the Growth and Stability Pact of 3 percent of GDP. However, unlike eurozone members, Britain does not face the threat of financial sanctions, so the action is purely symbolic.

Nevertheless, it is certainly enough, says The Guardian to "raise the chancellor's hackles", as the commission is setting the Treasury a deadline of just 15 months to bring the deficit under control.

But the ultimate ignominy is that Britain, formerly hailed by the commission as a model of sustained growth and sound finances, is now being placed in the same camp as France and Germany, with the deficit expected to breach the 3 percent limit for four years in a row.

COMMENT THREAD

EUFOR in action

One ventures into the area of Balkans politics with some trepidation, but there seem to be some unanswered questions about the incident last Thursday when EUFOR soldiers in Bosnia killed the wife of suspect war criminal Rada Abazovic and badly injured her 12-year-old son Dragan.

Now reported by the AKI agency - which, like all media reports, must be treated with caution – the Serbs are protesting about the killing, which occurred when the soldiers stormed the family's house in the village og Kozoci, some 40 miles east of Sarajevo.

The incident took place Thursday when EUFOR soldiers, came to arrest Dragomir Abazovic, who is wanted for war crimes he allegedly committed during the 1992-1995 Balkans war.

According to Reuters, wife and son fired four clips from an AK-47 at Italian troops as they came to arrest Abazovic, before a soldier killed her and wounded the boy. The Agency cites a EUFOR statement, which claims:

At approximately 0945 on 5 January, members of EUFOR, acting on intelligence, approached the residence of Dragomir Abazovic in order to conduct reconnaissance to establish his whereabouts. Abazovic was seen and positively identified, outside his property, by the EUFOR tactical commander. As is standard procedure, the commander requested ... the immediate presence of local police, in order that they could carry out an arrest ...

At the same time, a woman came out of the house and opened fire on the commander and his civilian interpreter ... she fired short bursts from an automatic weapon, a Kalashnikov AK-47. Soon after, she was joined by a boy. As the commander took cover, other members of EUFOR chased Abazovic while the woman turned her fire on them. Abazovic was eventually cornered, and he turned his weapon on himself, shooting himself in the forehead and falling to the ground.

AKI, however, maintains that the events are not wholly clear and the official statement on the EUFOR website is less than forthcoming. It simply confirms the killing, on the morning of 5 January. According to this statement, as EUFOR troops were deploying at the location, they were fired upon and "fired back in self-defence." The statement continues: "Two people in the target house were injured. The suspect subsequently injured himself."

Bosnian Serb leader Dragan Cavic, president of Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska (RS), has responded with a statement, saying that it was not the first time that the international forces had used violence against RS citizens, "with tragic consequences". He described the EUFOR action as "manifestation of a brutal force and violation of European conventions on human rights and freedoms".

In Belgrade Andreja Mladenovic, spokesman for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia, said the Eufor action was “unprofessional, brutal and arrogant”. “No one has the right to commit crime under any circumstances, and this time innocent people were shot at by those who pretend to implement justice,” he said.

The troops come within the responsibility of the "Multinational Task Force South East", which includes six participating nations: Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Morocco and Albany, under the command of a Spanish Army officer, Brigadier General Benito Raggio – whose experience includes participation in missions in Angola and Guatemala.

The case has now been referred to the State Prosecutor’s Office and no further official statements have been forthcoming. One wonders what the media would have made of the incident had it been in Iraq, with US troops attempting to arrest one of Saddam's henchmen.

COMMENT THREAD

This is what it has come to…

By coincidence, following my piece yesterday on the increasing bureaucracy in food safety, brought about by ever more rigorous and inane EU laws, Ireland online is running a piece this morning headed: "Cattle farmers slam new EU food hygiene regulations".

The Irish Cattle and Sheepfarmers Association, it seems, has slammed strict new EU regulations "designed to improve food hygiene standards". The rules, which came into force on January 1, require slaughterhouses to immediately destroy any animals with physical irregularities or whose tests are out of date.

The ICSA is claimed the law would see perfectly healthy cattle with tiny imperfections being dumped for no good reason. It said this was ludicrous given that South American cattle were accepted without any traceability requirements.

I do not doubt the ICSA claims for one minute. As a student learning meat inspection, my instructors told me that any fool can condemn meat, but it takes skill and judgement to save it. Nowadays, the meat inspectorates, empowered by laws which have long since departed from reality, seem to delight in finding ever-more excuses to condemn perfectly sound meat, to the point that running a slaughterhouse has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

I could fill a book with the stupidity of these inspectors but one short story will suffice. Under the laws brought in to control BSE, slaughterhouses were required to stain sheeps' heads with a bright blue dye, to prevent them being sold for human consumption after they had been collected by the offal merchants.

In one midlands slaughterhouse, however, the owner had purchased an extremely expensive incinerator to destroy the heads, to save on offal collection charges – massively increased since the inception of EU law. The unit was positioned not five feet from the exit to the offal room, from which the heads came, and the operator, finding that the heads doused in the water-based dye were putting out the furnace, decided not to spray them with the dye.

This was spotted by the ever-vigilant inspectors and reported for prosecution, which cost the slaughterhouse owner £15,000 in fines, plus costs. Shortly afterwards, he sold the unit for development and left the industry. These morons will not stop until they have completely destroyed the industry - and farming with it.

COMMENT THREAD

French to join carrier programme?

With the news last month that the UK is to proceed to the preliminary design stage of the new aircraft carriers, it now looks as if we are going to enter a co-operative agreement with France on the project.

Not, of course, that we get such an important detail from our own government. This little titbit comes from across the Channel, with the French government announcing that it hopes to sign an intergovernmental agreement with Britain early in 2006. This will be an agreement to exchange information about carrier programmes, aimed at saving money on the French ship, known as the "Porte-Avions 2 (PA2)" vessel.

The objective, according to a French official, a memorandum of understanding which will allow the French state and industry to study Britain's detailed design work on its large carrier program.

No confirmation of this has come from the UK, with a British MoD spokesman saying he "was not in a position to comment" on the "possible signing".

Nevertheless, Louis Cazaubon, chief executive of MOPA2, the DCN-Thales joint venture in charge of the PA2 program, said that the French government had opted for a common detailed design and procurement with CVF, adding that an earlier French industry feasibility study had showed 80 percent to 85 percent commonality with the British vessel.

Apart from the reticence of the British government to confirm this arrangement, there is something not quite right here. Amongst the claims made by the French is that the propulsion system could be a major source of savings if three power systems are ordered instead of two and one, as a warship’s power system has a higher proportion of cost than a civil vessel.

However, the French intend to operate catapult-launched Rafale aircraft while the current plan is for the British to operate the short take-off and vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter. The former will need steam-driven catapults, requiring at the very least an auxiliary steam generator, provision for arrester gear and different deck layouts.

Given also that the combat management systems and weapon systems are expected to be national options, it is then very, very hard to accept that the French and British ships could have anything like 80-85 percent commonality claimed by Cazaubon.

The only way the commonality could reach that level seems to be by the British government ditching the Joint Strike fighter and buy Rafales. On this, the specialist website Navy Matters suggests that, excluding flight deck and combat systems "where there are significantly different national requirements", only 75 to 80 percent of these two programmes could be common. Overall commonality, therefore is likely to be significantly lower, which seems to allow for the different aircraft.

A much more detailed analysis can be found on the Navy Matters site, which makes it clear that the issue is far from resolved. We, as always, will be keeping an eye on it.

COMMENT THREAD

Letter from America No. 2

When I called my colleague this morning (well, afternoon for him) to discuss whether there was any news at all on the other side of the pond from me, he informed me that the biggest news was Charles Kennedy admitting to problems with alcohol. That stands somewhere between dog bites man and gardener plants daffodil bulbs in the autumn as a newswworthy story.

I told him that it had not hit the American papers and news channels. I was wrong. The New York Times devoted a whole paragraph with a picture of the lad, conscientiously explaining who he was and why anybody should care about his drinking habits. (Actually, no, they did not explain that. I am none the wiser.)

The NYT also managed to inject its usual note into the biggest domestic story: the death of the 12 miners in Sago, West Virginia. While other newspapers and news channels concentrated on the notes several of the men left behind for their families and on the possible law suits, the editorial of the "newspaper of opinion" brought the story round to Bush. Somehow or other he had to be made responsible for the disaster, even though the mine in question had been in trouble repeatedly for longer than Dubya has been president.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

"But in accounting for the deaths, inspectors should look as well into the budget cutbacks and staff attrition thathave marked the Bush administration's management of its own ranks in the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The latest budget imposes a $4.9 million cut for the safety agency, according to Congressional critics who estimate that the agency has suffered a reduction of 170 positions in the past five years."

This may or may not be accurate, though it would sound more reliable if the figures had been researched by the newspaper's staff instead of relying on Congressional critics. On the other hand, the owners of the mine, waiting for the law suits with some trepidation might be quite pleased to slough off responsibility.

Meanwhile, there was a far larger mine disaster in China, in which well over 100 people were killed. It is estimated that over 5,000 miners are killed in that country annually, despite the safety campaigns run by the government.

The Chinese government has ordered the closure of 5,290 mines for being unsafe. There is little confidence that this will actually happen. As several newspapers reported here, mines closed down by the government tend to be reopened illegally as soon as the inspectors leave town.

One way or another, China is in the news here, though not as much as Sharon and, therefore, Israel or Iraq but more so than the travails of the Lib-Dims or the Boy-King of the Conservative Party who might as well not exist as far as the American media is concerned. (And who can blame them?)

There are news of party officials who double as businessmen being imprisoned for fraud and bribery. Then there is the news that Microsoft has become the latest internet company to aid the Chinese government in its never-ending fight against the blogosphere.

Micrososft MSN Spaces closed down on December 30 a blog run by the journalist Zhao Jing under the pen name Michael Anti. Blogs, as we have written before, are gaining an ever greater importance in China. Chinese IT IT consultancy Analysys estimates that by the third quarter of 2005 there were 33.4 million registered blog accounts in China.

Most of these tend to be personal but an ever larger number are political, as was Mr Zhao's whose final crime was the acerbic description of the government-mandated shake-up at the more liberal Beijing News. His average of 7,000 visitors daily (sigh!) peaked at 15,000 when he was writing about the newspaper and what was happening to its journalists.

Western companies, on the whole, have been so keen to get into the Chinese market that they have gone along with the Chinese government's demands, even if that meant helping one of the most oppressive systems in the world to prevent free speech. Their argument is that by going into China, they help to modernize that country, which much be a good thing. And freedom? Well, who needs it, anyway? Not Bill Gates, one of Time Magazine's persons of the year. No wonder they passed on the US marines.

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Dead man walking

This is the first and last word we will have on Charlie "who?" Kennedy and his merry band. What is highly significant, we feel, is the huge amount of attention being give by the British media to what is, if not trivial, of secondary importance – especially with Sharon so gravely ill.

Booker and I were discussing this earlier and we both noted that the Beeb's Nick Robinson was verging on orgasmic in his excitement over the issue. Now there is a political correspondent who really knows what is important – not Sharon or any such minor matters, or the £8 billion bill for our waste disposal, which will affect every household in the land, adding up to £300 to every council tax bill. Our Nick is in the big league.

My fellow blogger, who spoke to me from New Jersey this evening (and sends her greetings), tells me that, strangely, the Kennedy news hasn't gone down that big in the United Sates. It hasn't even appeared on Fox News. I wonder why.

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An unsung anniversary

This morning, I took a call from a researcher with Radio Wales, who had picked my name from the BBC database as a food safety specialist. She was mooting running a piece on the anniversary of the Food Safety Act 1990, which came into force on the 1st January fifteen years ago.

The Act, of course, was in response to a succession of food scares, starting with the notorious salmonella-in-eggs scare started by Edwina Currie in December 1998, which merged into the Listeria scare of 1989 and then into BSE – which was to peak in 1997, followed by another scare over E. coli O157.

Given this background, when food safety has all but receded into the background, what my interrogator wanted to know, was whether the 1990 Act had marked a sea-change in our perception of food safety and whether it had had any lasting effect, or "legacy". My response was not helpful. The Act, I told her, was largely cosmetic, rushed out by the government as a knee-jerk reaction to demonstrate, in that time-honoured fashion, that is was doing something about public concerns.

But what it did represent was a historical landmark – it was the last piece of major legislation on food safety that this government ever produced. From thereon, the issue was taken over by the European Union and has become what is known as an "occupied field" which prevents any member state promulgating its own legislation.

At this point, as you might expect, the BBC researcher suddenly lost interest in the whole idea, but it would have made a fascinating story.

The turn-round came on 12 January 2000 when, to a crowded room of journalists in the heart of the European Union quarter in Brussels, then consumer commissioner David Byrne unveiled with a flourish the much-awaited White Paper on Food Safety which, amongst other things, set out plans for a European Food Safety Authority.

One of the key triggers to this was the infamous Belgian Dioxin scare of 1999, which finally alerted the commission to the existence of another beneficial crisis, from which the process of integration could be advanced.

But it was also the beginning of the end, not only for any rational approach to food safety but also my career as a food safety specialist. Already, in 1999. I had concluded a ground-breaking research project, re-evaluating the causation of over 6,000 food-poisoning outbreaks, occurring world-wide over the previous twenty years. This culminated in a paper which demonstrated that the traditional approach to preventing food-poisoning in commercial premises was flawed, and offered a new, exciting approach aimed at targeting the precise causes of failure.

On the back of that research, I embarked on a programme – supported by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, for whom I also wrote an instruction manual – of training local authority environmental health officers in targeted inspection techniques. Altogether, with a much respected colleague in the field, we trained over 1,000 inspectors.

But, time and time again, as we toured the country to deliver our message, we were told by inspectors that, although they wholeheartedly agreed with what we were telling them, nothing of what we were advocating could be put into practice, as the procedures and resources allocated were now dictated by EU requirements, which were progressively coming into force.

This led me in 2001 to write a pamphlet on quite how damaging was the EU approach to food safety. But it was to no avail. The new approach, dominated by paperwork and useless procedures, had become a bonanza for consultants and a new wave of gold-digger food safety “experts” and the message was drowned.

Oddly enough, the scare that had started it all – salmonella-in-eggs – had long since been resolved. It was never about eggs, which was a side show, but there had been a real problem with the emergence of a new strain of Salmonella, known as Salmonella enteritidis Phage Type 4.

What we found out was that this strain had a affinity to poultry and, although some (a very few) egg producing flock were affected, it was rampant in the national broiler flock – about which no government action was taken. But what made this salmonella different was that – unlike others – it affected the heart, giving rise to a condition called infectious pericarditis. The liquid in the heart sac became colonised with salmonella, creating an almost pure culture amounting to billions of organisms.

This effect gave rise to massive cross contamination, but also a quantum leap in the numbers of bacteria involved, which massively increased the risk of food–poisoning. The results we saw spread across the front pages of our newspapers.

Funnily enough, the situation was resolved not by government intervention, but by the voluntary introduction by the poultry packers of automatic crate washers, the crates being the main way the infection was spread between poultry farms. That broke the cycle of infection – which was never feed-borne as the ministry thought – and the problem died away.

Now, as with politics, we have "two cultures": the increasingly bureaucratic world of legislative food safety, dominated by the EU, and the real world of food safety, where intelligent men and women are taking their own steps to ensure our food is safe, without any reference to the legislative code.

Gradually, however, the former is suppressing the latter, with who knows what effect and at what cost. This is another example of how the EU is gradually wrecking vital systems, and it would have been a fascinating story to tell. But, in the mainstream media, it will be a story that remains untold.

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Who said we lose influence out on our own?

In an intriguing article from an unlikely source - tamilnet.com - comes news that the Norway has ceased its alignment with the EU "terror" list of banned individuals and organisations.

The reason given by the ministry of foreign affairs is that continued alignment could cause difficulties for Norway in its role as "neutral facilitator in certain peace processes". The country wanted to intensify its involvement in this arena and wanted to avoid a situation that makes it difficult for it to have contact with any of the parties to a conflict.

Norway's role, it says, could become difficult if one of the parties involved was included on the EU list, and the opportunities for contact were thus restricted.

In other words, Norway – as an independent nation – wants to increase its influence on the international stage (for a wholly noble reason) and feels that, in order to do so, it must distance itself from the EU in a crucial area of its foreign policy.

And who was it who said we would lose influence if we left the EU?

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Down in the garbage

Ruminating, as one does, about the piece I posted last night, the full enormity of the cost of the EU's recycling directives is sinking in.

Any which way you cut it, £10 billion is a lot of money and to find that simply to provide the infrastructure to comply with EU law knocks into a cocked hat the idea that we are an independent nation. There is no way our cash-strapped government would spend that sort of money unless it was forced to and, since most of the money will have to come out of Council Tax, one cannot imagine any government voluntarily loading such huge extra costs onto local authorities.

But what is particularly offensive is that this obsession with recycling – and that it is – is entirely misplaced. Left to the market, paper and aluminium can recycling could be profitable enterprises, placing no burden on the public purse. Similarly, with some inspired tax manipulation, which is practised in the United States, disposal of old cars ceases to become a problem.

Overlaying the recycling obsession, however, is the almost paranoid and totally irrational dislike of landfill, to the extent that the EU is insisting on incineration as a better option, which is set to add another £8 billion or so to our disposal bill.

Yet, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with landfill. In fact, my own personal experience is that, used properly, the process can enhance the environment and public health.

It is always dangerous to argue from the particular to the general, but that personal experience relates to a small field just outside a village of Stainland in West Yorkshire, tucked into the flanks of the Pennines, just outside Halifax. It is a place few people have ever heard of, and to which fewer people have been. As to the field, it is perfectly ordinary – a rectangle of grass used for grazing – to which no one would give a second glance as they drove past.

But when I pass, which is not as often as it used to be, I smile to myself at the knowledge that it is "my" field, the site of a small but enjoyable victory over the forces of bureaucracy.

What makes it special is that, when I was inspector for the district, more years ago than I care to remember, it wasn't a field at all. It was one of those innumerable small, disused quarries that litter the flanks of the Pennines. And, being immediately adjacent the road, it became a favourite spot for fly tipping, a steady pile of rubbish accumulating to the point where a sizeable population of rats was disturbing the equanimity of local residents.

Short of keeping a 24-hour guard on the site, there was nothing immediately I could do about the problem but, determined to deal with what had become a festering sore, I hit upon an idea. After having a word with the farmer on whose land the former quarry was situated, I served on him a formal "statutory nuisance" notice under the then Public Health Act 1936, requiring him, in legal terms, to "abate" the nuisance.

That done, I popped down to our local power station, in the days when we still had one, which had lagoons groaning with the substance called pulverised fuel ash, the residue from the furnaces after powdered coal had been blown into them. There, I told them of the farmer's predicament and suggested that the could perhaps help him out.

Sure enough, that weekend, the peace of that part of rural Yorkshire was broken as a succession of 20-ton tipper trucks thundered through the village. By Monday I was able to turn up at the site, to find level ground, neatly covered by a layer of topsoil.

Back at the office, my telephone erupted. Not least, a very angry planning officer demanded to know why I had "authorised" tipping without planning permission. The County disposal officer was on my back, spitting blood and feathers about unlicensed tipping, and my boss was furious about the rash of complaints from people on the route complaining about the dust and noise.

To the officials, I adopted the pose of sweet innocence, telling them that it was all down to the farmer obeying my legal notice in the full knowledge that, although we had broken every rule in the book, there would not be a court in the land that would convict my man for doing what I had told him to do. As to the local residents, they were quite understanding when I called in on them and told them what I had done. And, from that day to this, it has always been "my" field.

That apart, this was a classic example of land reclamation, and there are many unsightly holes throughout the country, which would benefit from landfill treatment. I have illustrated some here, one a former claypit and another an open-cast mining site. The third photograph shows what a well managed "tip", as we used to call them, can look like. Add to this the use of such techniques as high-density baling and methane capture, and landfill can be regarded as a perfectly acceptable option.

But this is not the EU's view and, based on what amounts to irrational prejudice, we are going to have to spend a small fortune – entirely unnecessarily – on more expensive alternatives.

This is what makes me so angry about the likes of Nick Robinson and, to a lesser extent, David Rennie. They burble about the "big picture" but none of them will get stuck into detail like garbage – messy but vitally important things like refuse disposal, where the real and important loss of power manifests itself.

Today, I addressed a group of students at Dinnington Comprehensive School, and asked them to make a choice between paying for a hip operation for a "granny" and buying a new bottle bank. They opted for the hip operation, whence I told them the choice had been made for them. The EU demands bottle banks – or their equivalents, £10 billions-worth.

That is why I hate the EU, and have the heartiest contempt for those superficial, trivial little clever-dicks who are soooo grand and would ignore the reality of what we have become – mere subordinates to the supranational project.

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The sound of Europe

The Austrian presidency is organising a conference, which it is calling "The Sound of Europe". This, it says, "takes up the debate on a European identity that began under the Dutch EU Presidency." The blurb reads:

"Europe is a spiritual conception. But if men cease to hold that conception in their minds, cease to feel its worth in their hearts, it will die. [...]. This is the supreme opportunity, and if it be cast away, no one can predict that it will ever return and what the resulting catastrophe will be". With these memorable words Winston Churchill described the possibility of a united Europe in 1947, but at the same time warned of the consequences of failure.

Fifty years on, Eastern and Western Europe are at last united, what was inconceivable at the time has become a reality. However, alongside this unprecedented opportunity, problems that many considered had been solved have resurfaced. Nationalism, populism, indefinable fears about the future and social discontent mean that for many people across the continent, Europe no longer stands for peace, prosperity and security. These eurosceptic sentiments were reflected in the French and Dutch 'No' to the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. Such developments raise questions as to the nature of Europe, the existence of a European identity and the prospects for a common European future.

The event being organised by the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU entitled “The Sound of Europe” is intended to initiate a broad public debate on the meaning and role of Europe, as well as about the tensions within the European Union and to propose practical solutions. At the invitation of Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, personalities from the world of politics, diplomacy, the arts, culture, science, the media and business will meet in Salzburg on 27 January 2006 to debate these issues.

So… personalities from the world of politics, diplomacy, etc., etc. And where are ordinary people in this "debate"? Over the hills and far away, I would venture to suggest.

The indefatigable Anoneumouse has it in pictures.

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A period of silence

Whether it is Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Spectator who pleads: “Spare me touchy-feely Tories”, or the leader in The Telegraph, one gets the feeling that the Boy King' honeymoon is screeching rapidly to a halt.

What most closely approaches this blog's sentiment, though, is a letter in the Telegraph from Ted Huxley. He writes:

If, prior to the leadership contest, Conservative Party members had been aware of David Cameron's socialist plans, I don't think he would have won. However, we are where we are.

One subject is missing from his list of priorities: the European Union. Since his declared intention to take his MEPs out of the EPP, things have gone very quiet on Europe, and he has a minor rebellion on his hands.

From previous Tory leaders we have had "Britain at the heart of Europe", "In Europe but not ruled by Europe" and "I am determined that Britain shall remain a positive and influential member of the European Union".

Is Mr Cameron going to give us more of the same?

There is, incidentally, a letter from a certain Christopher Booker who notes, a propos the recent discussion about the Royal Yacht, that the sum quoted to replace it when it was decided to scrap Britannia in 1997 was £60 million. This, Booker points out, would have cost us less than we now pay every two days into the EU budget (£70 million), and is less than the cost of one Eurofighter (£65 million). Which of these three projects, he asks, would have given the taxpayers best value for money?

Anyhow, Wheatcroft suggests in his Spectator article that a "period of silence" from the Boy King would be welcome. But for the opportunity to use another splendid photo-montage from Anoneumouse, we would also have preferred a "period of silence" about the Boy King.

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Credit where it is due

We – and I say this not in the "royal" sense, but reflecting the shared opinion of myself and my colleague – do not, as a rule, like "corporate" blogs – typified by the thoroughly dishonest ego-trip hosted by Nick Robinson over at the BBC – who has still to post any of our comments.

The immediate instinct is to be equally dismissive of the Daily Telegraph’s attempt at blogging, which stems from the same corporate wellspring. It could be seen as an attempt to hijack a new medium which is challenging the hegemony of the MSM, hoping to steer people away from the more anarchic, privately funded sites.

That said, we have looked again at the blog hosted by David Rennie – the Telegraph's Brussels correspondent – and have to say, through gritted teeth, that it shows promise.

Rennie has written an interesting piece, updating the Barroso story, and in another posting offered an insight on the EPP saga. Not only that, he appears prepared to publish comments – which Nick "beebie" Robinson is clearly afraid to do, albeit that they are moderated Margot-style.

If he can bring himself – or is allowed – to put up external links, to respond to comments and show a hit counter, then there is some chance that this blog could become a valuable addition to the blogosphere. We will add it to our sidebar links.

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"Green" energy in practice

If you want to see the effect of the EU's other obsession – its love affair with "renewable energy" in the form of wind factories - have a look at this website.

The picture shown here is one of a sequence of hundred, illustrating the environmental degradation to an upland site in central Wales called Cefn Croes, all done with the approval of bodies such as the Forestry Commission (which is not only an active partner in the enterprise, but also a major financial beneficiary), the Countryside Council for Wales, the Environment Agency and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

This is to achieve an annual saving, as an optimistic estimate, of 115,000 tons of CO2 emissions, compared with the 520,000 tons annual CO2 emissions from a typical jumbo jet.

But then, with an annual income of £16,000,000 from the 39 turbines on the site – much of it drawn from the £485 million annual subsidy bonanza – no wonder are its foreign owners, Falck Renewables - an Italian company based in Milan – and General Electric Wind Energy, so anxious to get in on the act.

But aren't we so lucky that the EU - with the active co-operation of our own government - takes such a keen interest in the protection of the environment?

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The cost of an obsession

We reported recently on the EU’s obsession with increasing the recycling of waste, but it takes today's Guardian to tell us how much it will cost.

The information comes from Peter Jones, a director of Biffa – a company which collects the waste of more than 50 local authorities. He has warned that the tighter EU recycling laws and higher landfill taxes will cost up to £8bn - about 10 percent of the cost of the National Health Service - within years.

By 2009, Jones expects most counties to have only one landfill site, and a new generation of large industrial composting and waste recovery plants costing several billion pounds. "The days of chucking waste into holes in the ground are over and the future is hi-tech, efficient, but fiendishly expensive."

"Instead of chucking 75 percent of everything we have finished with down a hole for about £12 a ton, within a few years very little will be landfilled and that will cost two or three times what it costs now," he says. "We expect it to cost Britain £5-8bn to deliver an 80% diversion from landfill. Everyone is in for a rude shock."

His warning comes as the Institution of Civil Engineers publishes a stark report saying the UK needs a level of investment similar to that required to set up the motorway network and the electricity grid, to provide new facilities to handle and process waste. It puts the price at £10bn.

And if that is the price, we really do have to ask ourselves whether it is worth it, especially as there is no market for much of the recycled material, some of which is exported to third-world countries where it is burn or buried. Frankly, while the EU is totally obsessive in its aversion to landfill, this is a cheap and sanitary system that has served this country well, and has been used widely for reclaiming otherwise unusable land.

However, while we can always ask whether the recycling route is one we want to take, we do not have an option. As we pointed out in our earlier post, this is a matter of EU law and our government's duty is but to obey – like it or not.

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Letter from America No 1

It's not that I am particularly incompetent with technology, it's just that it often does not want to do what I expect from it. As a consequence, I have been forced to seek the sanctuary of the world's largest internet cafe in 42nd Street to write this posting.

The big story here is the one about the miners in West Virginia. Trapped after an explosion for a couple of days in a mine that has had safety problems in the past; the opening of it surrounded by scared looking families in pictures we have not seen in Britain for some decades; the miners were on every front page.

Today's big story, however, is that all the newspapers got it wrong. On the basis of the first announcement, every single newspaper reported that 12 miners had been found alive. Alas, that is not true. 12 bodies were found and the 13th alive but in a critical condition.

The New York Times, reduced itself to a freebie today. As I wondered round the Financial District, trying to identify the evil American capitalists among the tourists, paper boys and girls were handing the "newspaper of opinion", whose shares, incidentally, have been sliding, out to all passers by. Strangely, only a few accepted the gift. I was one of them.

The NYT has given good coverage to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine and the gas that may or may not be pumped to Europe in the future. I was interested to see that, having announced a policy of non-inervention, both Chief Foreign Affairs Panjandrum Solana and, even, the German Energy Minister Michael Glos, have been making statements, in the case of the second one, somewhat worried ones:

"Thirty per cent of our gas comes from Russia. That should be increased but it can only be increased if we know that deliveries from the east are dependable."

Of course, Herr Glos, some of us, notably this blog, have been warning about that for some time.

Andrei Illarionov, President Putin's last liberal adviser, who resigned, as we reported, at the end of last year, explained the problem in a radio interview to the station Ekho Moskvy.

The price of $50 per 1,000 cu.meters had been set in 2004 in order to help the pro-Moscow presidential candidate, Yunkevich. Since he did not win, Gazprom, although it maintains that it is a completely independent company, motivated purely by economic considerations, has decided that Ukraine needs to be pressurized into paying what it says are market prices. (Gazprom charges different market prices to different countries.)

As the New York Times commentators pointed out the ensuing crisis, which seems to have included Ukrainians siphoning off gas that they says came from Turkmenistan and they had paid for, was completely unnecessary and has tarnished the name of both Gazprom and Russia as it takes up the presidency of G8.

Incidentally, there seems to be some disagreement about the gas from Turkmenistan. The Ukrainian government insists it has paid for a steady supply. Russia maintains that Gazprom has bought all the gas of the first three months. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has confirmed Ukrainian payment but has not so far clarified the discrepancy.

In the meantime, Solana, as is his wont, has been wringing his hands and pleading with all to go back to the negotiating table, something they will surely have to do.

What of the long-term repercussions? President Putin has once again overplayed his hand and put up more hackles than is strictly necessary even for Russia. Presumably, that will not last long and Angela Merkel, who is going to Moscow this month is not going to break up the policy of energy collaboration that had been started by Helmut Kohl, though it is really Gerhard Schroeder who has been particularly active and who has benefited from it personally.

Nevertheless, the absence of Putin's best friend Gerhard has been keenly felt. Germany seems to have become a little more worried about dependance on Russian gas. The events of the last few days may strengthen Merkel's hand, should she wish to overcome her coalition partners' opposition to the continuation of nuclear power stations.

Other voices are being raised that more attention should be paid to renewable energy sources. Ironically, at least for Russia, Ukraine, with its rich soil and low population density has the biggest potential of all European countries as the provider of biomass.

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Not another Boy King posting…

I thought long and hard about whether we wanted another Boy King posting on this site, but the Simon Heffer article in the Telegraph this morning is really too good to miss, even if it also means I have to put up another photograph of the man.

Not least, I share Heffer's views when he writes of being expected by the Cameroons to "unload bile, venom and anger on Mr Cameron for his pronunciamiento in which, among other things, he talked of the need to 'stand up to big business'. Sorry, boys and girls, he writes. “I just can't be fagged… I'm bored by the sensation-seeking, turning-over-the-furniture, épater les bourgeois predictability of the new, Labour-lite Conservative Party. It's just so last year."

The most telling sentences, though, are where he points to the Boy King’s tactics: "You spot your enemy, in this case people who have backed the party through thick and thin over the past 25 years or so. You unveil, on an almost daily basis, new ideas completely at odds with what these people have always believed."

Heffer then concludes a long piece by saying that what Cameron needs most to worry about… is that when the electorate finally has its choice between a real social democratic party and a recent imitation of one, it will incline once more towards choosing the real thing rather than deciding to play with the replica.

But the Telegraph is not finished with the Boy King, Jeff Randall in the business section doing a very neat job deconstructing Cameron’s ideas on business.

He also debunks the idea that the Boy King has any business experience, telling us that Cameron wasn't a businessman as such. He was a boardroom lackey, writes Randall a combination of Michael Green's bag carrier and a company spokesman, at a time when Carlton was making a monkey of itself by trying to take on Rupert Murdoch's Sky with Ondigital.

That has not stopped the Boy King delivering a speech on the NHS today, the like of which testifies that we are no longer dealing with a Conservative politician.

The word is that he is deliberately trying to provoke his “right wing” into retaliating, in order to have a Blair-like "Clause 4" dust-up with his party, the plan being to emerge victorious over the “unreconstructed dinosaurs”, demonstrating that the Party has indeed changed.

And where "Europe" stands in all this, heaven knows. But a Labour-lite Conservative Party under the leadership of the Boy King doesn't look like it's going anywhere.

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Another beneficial crisis

They tried it in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, when in October 1973 Egyptian forces, backed by the Russians, attacked Israeli-occupied territory on the east bank of the Suez Canal on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, bringing chaos to the global oil market.

When the price of oil quadrupled overnight, threatening chaos to western economies, Jean Monnet saw an opportunity to develop a common European energy policy amongst the then nine countries of the EEC.

It was not to be, though, with the Nine breaking ranks, each rushing to strike individual deals with the oil sheiks, leading Ted Heath later to write that, at this moment, the Community "lost sight of the philosophy of Jean Monnet: that the Community exists to find common solutions to common problems".

Monnet saw in this a need to strengthen community institutions, "enabling our countries to organise themselves for collective action", an ethos which has driven European integration to this day.

But, with the Russian gas crisis, the idea of common action has re-emerged with force, the commission again seeking the opportunity – thwarted by the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution – to forge a European energy policy.

On the back of its Green Paper, “Towards a European strategy for the security of energy supply”, published in November 2000 in anticipation of the EU acquiring powers over energy through the constitution, the commission has rushed out another report, again urging common action with “a view to reducing the risk of a total breakdown in supply or, at the very least, energy prices that could not be borne by our economies and our citizens.”

The commission wants action under four main heads: action to manage demand, by increasing energy efficiency; diversification of “European” sources, with a reconsideration of nuclear energy and greater reliance on renewable energy sources; streamlining the internal energy market, pushing the “liberalisation” of the electricity and gas markets; and “controlling external supply”.

Under the latter head, the commission argues that:

…the EU must enter into strategic partnerships with major potential suppliers such as Russia and even far-off countries such as Iran. It must promote dialogue with its immediate neighbours with the aim of integrating the available electricity and natural gas networks so as to guarantee better security of supply. The EU must maintain structured dialogue with oil-producing countries so as to ensure prices stay stable.

And therein lies the devil of the plan. As with external trade, where the EU negotiates on behalf of all 25 member states – with the disastrous results that we saw in the recent WTO talks – the EU wants to take over responsibility for securing energy supplies from the individual member states.

Of course, it will not happen – yet – but the experience of 1973 tells us that the commission never forgets, and never gives up. It thrives on crises, whether terrorism, natural disasters, food safety or, in this case, energy problems, forever seeking to advance its own agenda on the back of whatever problem happens to be in the headlines. And here we go again, with that same cynical opportunism that Monnet was quick to harness. To the EU, every crisis is an opportunity, to the extent that the driving force of integration is what we have come to term "the beneficial crisis".

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Cut-price terrorists defeating EU controls

In the wake of the Madrid and London bombings, the EU commission was quick to call for more powers, offering a comprehensive Counter-terrorism package in September last year.

A centrepiece of this package was an extension of the controls on money laundering, but a new report now indicates that the vast apparatus of financial controls is of little avail. Terrorists, it seems are using cut-price techniques which will evade the contol systems.

This finding, recorded by Reuters, is focused on the London bombing which, according to the report, cost no more than several hundred pounds to carry out. Economist Loretta Napoleoni, an expert on financing terrorism, then told the BBC world service the cost fitted a bigger pattern.

"If you look at 9/11, which cost only 500,000 dollars to execute, and then you look at all the subsequent attacks that have taken place - going from Bali to Istanbul to Madrid to London - we actually see that the cost of the attacks is decreasing," she said.

The Madrid bomb attacks in March 2004 killed 191 people and wounded some 1,900 when bombs went off on four packed commuter trains. Investigators at the time said Islamist militants recruited common criminals and used money raised from selling drugs to fund the bombings. EU officials estimated they cost less than €10,000.

Douglas Greenburg, who studied the financing of the US attacks as part of the 9/11 commission, argues that the relatively low cost made it harder for banks to spot any financial irregularity. "If you have someone who is working and depositing their pay cheques into the bank, and periodically withdrawing money and at night buying components for a bomb, constructing a bomb in their basement, what's the bank going to do about that?" he asks.

Needless to say though, the EU will maintain its regime of increasingly severe controls, which are making it progressively more difficult for ordinary people to open bank accounts and conduct other financial transactions. Given the opportunity of capitalising on yet another "beneficial crisis", there is no way that the EU is going to let a minor thing – like the fact that its controls are completely useless – restrain it from making new laws.

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A silly idea

There is a superb piece in Space Review, published exactly a year ago, on this blog's favourite subject: Galileo. It could have been written today (and I thought it was). Here is a taster:

From the beginning, Galileo was never intended to be civilian. This idea is as silly as that of a civilian aircraft carrier or a civilian armored personnel carrier. Such things may have some non-military uses, but they are hardly instruments of peace. Galileo is a strategic military asset, meant to be one of the cornerstones of the EU's military power.

That's telling them.

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How high?

Although the Guardian and Telegraph Brussels correspondents pitched in to trash the Today programme poll on Barroso, the stridently Europhile Independent was strangely muted on the subject, publishing only a dead-bat report which confined itself strictly to the facts.

On the other hand, when Nick Robinson put up his blog, the first comment came from Richard Lamming, director of the Federal Union, who also visits the subject on his own blog (everyone’s got one these days). This in turn prompted one comment, an utterly mad rant, which asked – amongst other things – "How can anyone seriously believe that Mr Barroso runs Britain? Can they point to a single thing, one single aspect of British life that Mr Barroso has even influenced?"

Well, Stephen Castle of the Independent certainly could, which perhaps explains the paper's discretion. Just prior to the Today poll result, he was reporting a story under the headline, "EU May Prosecute Over Recycling Failure".

Britain, he retails, could be taken to the ECJ as early as this month over delays to plans to recycle millions of electronic goods from mobile phones to mowers. This is the infamous WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) Directive, which should have come into force by August 2004 and by this summer collection systems ought to have been in place.

By the end of December 2006, roughly 7lb of household electrical waste per head of population should be collected, including 80 percent of some items, such as fridges and microwaves. But, writes Castle, "Whitehall" has failed to make preparations for a change in recycling legislation, so there is no prospect of the UK getting its act together in time.

This must be specially aggravating for Defra Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett – an enthusiastic Europhile – and more so as the commission has just launched a long-term EU waste strategy designed to make Europe "a recycling society".

The strategy was actually launched on 21 December, not that anyone actually noticed apart from the Independent and a few specialist journals, which is why, presumably, Lamming's commentator was able to pose his utterly fatuous question.

In respect of WEEE, already, the commission has given Britain two official warnings, the first of which was issued in July last year, with the government due to provide an explanation last month as to how it will implement the law. Instead, however, energy minister, Malcolm Wicks announced a Whitehall review which "will be followed by a full consultation exercise in the spring before we proceed to transpose the main provisions of the directive into UK law".

Effectively, this is a snub to the commission which, says Castle, makes it almost inevitable that the UK will be taken to the ECJ. He cites Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for the commission, said: "It is not acceptable. We need to abide by the law. We have waited a long time and it is time for the directive to be transposed. If not the UK will have to face the court."

There we have it, naked in tooth and claw – the power of the commission over the supposedly sovereign United Kingdom. Here, we have a particularly troublesome piece of law, from the same stable that brought you the fridge mountain, to say nothing of the green bottle mountain and much else besides.

And, if there was any "one single aspect of British life that Mr Barroso has even influenced" – Barroso being taken as the representative of the commission – the EU’s disastrous environment policy would be as good an example as any. Not that Barroso will ever drag Blair to the phone to discuss it – things are done differently in the EU, but the effect is the same. When the EU says jump, Blair's only allowable response is "how high?"

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Some conversation

The main thing which makes blogs different from a newspaper column or even TV or radio broadcast is that it is a conversation between the author and the audience. So the success of Newslog will depend on you letting me know what you think about the news, and indeed about what I've written myself.

So gushes beebie Nick Robinson, he of the Today programme poll on Barroso, writing in his very own blog.

When it comes to comments on his trashing of his own poll, however, in a piece posted at 9.34 am yesterday, our Nick's "fully moderated" site allowed ten posts up to 1.42 pm, the balance in favour of his thesis.

Such was the situation until well after midday today, when one more comment, timed 1.56 pm, appeared, with yesterday’s date, plus one more, dateline today and a timing of 4.56 am. Of comments by this blogger – and others who are not entirely enamoured of the Robinson thesis – not a sign. Even the fragrant Margot does it better.

Clearly, this is our Nick's idea of a "conversation". Perhaps readers would care to pop along to his site and remind him of what blogging is about, and then post a copy of their comments on the forum here.

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Squeaks of protest

What have the Brussels correspondents of the Europhile Guardian and the supposedly Eurosceptic Telegraph got in common – apart from their both working in Brussels and covering EU affairs for their respective newspapers?

The answer is that they are both mortified by the result of the Today programme poll which elevated King Barroso to the top of the poll, making him "the most powerful man in Britain" – and have both rushed into print, declaring their disgust at the result.

The Guardian's correspondent is, of course Nicholas Watt who, in today’s print edition, under the heading, "José? No way", "marvels at radio listeners' nomination for the title of most powerful person in Britain”.

Watt starts his piece with a comic (he thinks) parody, which completely distorts the relationship between the UK government and the commission, all to set up his thesis that the Today programme readers are in error. "Tony Blair is enjoying an early dip in the warm waters of the Red Sea," he writes...

…when an aide rushes out with an urgent message. "Prime minister, it's the most powerful man in Britain on the phone. You must come quickly." With no time to grab a towel, and with the worried look of a pupil summoned to see his headmaster, the prime minister rushes to the phone to speak to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission. "Good morning, Mr President, what are my orders from Brussels today?" the prime minister inquires.

The vote, claims Watt, provoked guffaws in Brussels, where Mr Barroso has endured a miserable year struggling to enforce his writ in the European commission, let alone across the Channel in Britain. The finger was being pointed at highly organised Eurosceptic groups - about the only people in Britain outside Westminster to have heard of Mr Barroso - for ensuring that he came out top in the Today poll.

A line-by-line deconstruction of Watt's piece, however, would be more tedious than the original but the most egregious – of many – errors comes when the boy wonder claims that:

What sophisticated Eurosceptics know, but refuse to admit, is that the real centre of power in Brussels is the council of ministers, where elected ministers and heads of sovereign government thrash out EU deals. At last month's European summit in Brussels, which decided the highly important business of an EU budget, Mr Barroso was a mere bystander as he watched heads of government slash his proposal for a trillion euro budget to €862bn.

Eurosceptics understandably criticised the prime minister, who chaired the negotiations as part of Britain's presidency of the EU, for abandoning a part of Britain's budget rebate without winning a French commitment to cut its generous farm subsidies. But Britain's failure to secure a wholesale reform of EU finances had nothing to do with Mr Barroso, a reformer who is sympathetic to Mr Blair. It was Jacques Chirac, the elected head of the sovereign French government, who blocked the Blair plan.

The negotiations showed that Britain has, in common with the other 24 members of the EU, handed over some of its sovereignty to the EU - mainly to the council of ministers. A truly sovereign nation would not have to negotiate with other countries on how a proportion of its budget is spent.

Hilariously (you have to laugh, or you would weep), Watt has confused two entirely separate Community institutions, the Council of Ministers and the European Council. With some prescience, one of the first pieces I wrote on this blog – back in April 2004, was on the European Council, aware as I was of the confusion that existed.

But Watt avers that "pro-Europeans have been utterly hopeless in explaining to the British people that Britain has pooled some of its sovereignty to achieve a greater good," without realising the absurdity of his own statements, where clearly he is ignorant of the basic structure of the European Union.

Imbued with that ignorance, he is able to dismiss the Today poll, arguing that Barroso is "at times marginal figure," citing the egregious Denis MacShane, saying, "The notion that José Manuel Barroso has effective executive power over any European country is just silly."

This is virtually the line taken by Telegraph correspondent, David Rennie, is his first piece in is newly established blog. So ridiculous did he find the notion that his first reaction was mirth, "and to wipe up the coffee I had just spilled."

Mr Barroso, writes Rennie, does not even fully control the European Commission, let alone the UK. Around Brussels, he is seen as a decent, but rather downtrodden sort, undermined from his first day in office by a lack of support from the EU's biggest beasts, France and Germany.

With that firmly lodged, Rennie then dismisses the result as "horribly revealing."

It spoke of the worst of British Euroscepticism - that mixture of masochism and dank, resentful defeatism that wants to believe the UK has already surrendered to Brussels, turning the British people into sleepwalking vassals.

Not for Rennie, though, this "dank, resentful defeatism". He wants to look at the "big picture". The European institutional machine, he claims, has rarely been weaker. Mr Barroso threw his full weight behind two key projects last year - securing ratification of the EU constitution and agreeing the next EU budget.

And there lies Rennie’s nemesis. The European Union is not about the "big picture". The very basis of its success lies in the genius of Jean Monnet, devising what the nerds call "functional integration", the slow, steady process of economic integration, carried out small step by small step, so slowly and over such an extended timescale that it is barely noticed.

Monnet himself called the process engrenage, and it is that process which has built the acquis communautaire to its present level of over 97,000 pages of law, which has supremacy over all national laws in the fields it covers.

It is that same process that Rennie airily dismisses, in a few pithy (he thinks) phrases, thus: "As I write this, officials in the Commission are undoubtedly pushing ahead with all sorts of ill-judged or alarming schemes, that will waste public money, and costs jobs."

But this, to Rennie is just trivial detail. The real real, urgent peril facing the EU, and Britain's place in it (he thinks), comes from other EU member states, where voters are panicking in the face of globalisation, and refusing to face up to the imminent collapse of the feather-bedded, highly-regulated postwar continental labour model.

This is Rennie's "big picture", in pursuit of which he displays an ignorance just as profound as that of his Guardian colleague, a refusal to confront the nature of the integration process and the progress it has already made. Thus, to Rennie also, Barroso is a bystander. "Fantasising that he is anything else, is a dangerous distraction," writes the man.

Therein is his final, more dangerous error. The Today programme voters chose Barroso as the symbol, the office-holder who represents the whole construct that is the European Union. Rennie has confused the person with the office. Barroso personally may be a nine-stone weakling, but as the president of the European Commission and all it represents, he is a giant amongst men.

Barroso photograph by Anoneumouse. David Rennie courtesy of The Daily Telegraph..

COMMENT THREAD

You can't fault the logic

In pursuit of the fabled "level playing field", Lib-Dem MEP Chris Davies – leader of his group in the EU parliament - is calling on Jose Manuel Barroso – the most powerful man in Britain - to recommend minimum levels of sanctions for breached of Community law, rather than leaving them to the member states to decide.

This follows an EU commission report comparing national penalties. It found that the average fine being levied against individuals guilty of forging EU fisheries control documents varied from about £90,000 in the UK to £3,000 in Spain - and just £180 in France. National sanctions for failing to comply with EU laws banning dangerous chemical discharges into rivers were equally varied: the UK maximum penalty is five years in prison, compared with two years in France, while Greece has introduced no measures at all.

The commission's findings come in the wake of the ECJ judgement which affirms the exclusive right of the commission to propose criminal penalties for breaches of EU law - reported on this blog on 13th and 14 September, and 22 November.

To date, the commission has routinely included the requirement that member states should impose penalties that are "proportionate, dissuasive and effective", but it has fought shy of actually suggesting specific levels.

Davies sees this omission as "little more than a cheats' charter", allowing some countries to avoid their obligations. In his letter to Barroso he claims that ministers say one thing when they agree new EU laws, but another when they return to national capitals to put them on the statute books.

"The Commission is chasing its tail trying to keep up with the number of infringement cases. Far too much time and public money is having to be spent trying to persuade member states to do in practice what they have already agreed to do in theory," he writes.

"European legislation is agreed for a purpose and should be implemented equally across the Union. It must not be reduced to a pick 'n' mix selection basket by countries wanting to avoid their obligations."

Furthermore, Davies claims that the current system has led to the creation of a "north-south divide" in which countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the UK tended to apply tough sanctions, for example on environmental legislation, while the record of Mediterranean countries in EU enforcement was weak.

Given that EU law is supposed to be applied uniformly throughout the Community – and penal sanctions are a necessary part of any legal code – within the framework of the mad system which our governments' have adopted, it makes sense that there should be some standardisation of penalties. In this, you cannot fault Davies' logic, although the sensitivity of the issue may mean that the commission is reluctant to act on his request.

COMMENT THREAD

Barroso is king

Additional photograph here

It was very clear from the tenor of the Today programme this morning that this was the result the Beebies least wanted – for Barroso to come top of the poll on "who runs Britain".

Furthermore, of the ten shortlisted entries, El Presidente of the EU commission won by a handsome margin, with 22 percent of the vote polled in his favour, compared with the runner-up, Rupert Murdoch, who polled 15 percent. Uncle Tone trailed in seventh place with a mere seven percent of the votes.

The Beeb website quotes political editor Nick Robinson, who on the Today programme, did his best to downplay the result, his line being that: "voters may be using the poll to say Europe has too much power."

The piece does, however, note that Barroso is unelected, which allowed Roger Knapman, UK Independence Party leader, to come up with one good comment in an otherwise lacklustre performance, noting that the BBC poll was "the only chance you'll get to vote for him or for that matter against him".

He was countered by former Europe Minister Denis McShane who asserted that it was "an urban myth" to suggest that Britain's laws were decided by Europe, claiming that only nine percent of our current laws were of EU origin.

The egregious Robinson expands his theme on his own blog (yes, even the BBC is dipping a foot into the blogosphere), repeating the dismissive tone he took on the Today programme, declaring. "There'll be hearty laughter in the Barroso household today and a few raised eyebrows in tomorrow's papers after the verdict of Today programme listeners that José Manuel Barroso runs Britain."

The electorate is, of course, never wrong, sneers Robinson, his tone clearly suggesting otherwise, averring that "Today listeners may be using this poll to send the message that Europe does more than they would like."

Barroso, adds our egregious hack, "would point out that given that he does not even get to choose the members of his own Commission - a body smaller than some county councils which can only propose laws and not actually pass them", which makes the idea of the president being all-powerful "an implausible idea."

In what passes for balance, Robinson goes on to ask whether you can "dismiss the verdict of Today programme listeners?". In answer to his own question, he responds, "not that fast", which almost certainly means that he will dismiss it slowly. "The problem of Europe," he adds, "is that voters - not just on Today but in electorates across the continent - cannot easily identify a name to blame for political developments they dislike." He continues:

Take just one row on the Euro map at the moment. Euro-sceptics are warning that the Commission could soon have criminal powers - powers they believe are a defining characteristic of the government of a nation state and, therefore, should never be given to the EU. This follows a European Court of Justice ruling that "Community legislature may take measures relating to the criminal law of Member States when that is necessary for the achievement of an important Community objective".

The ruling was about EU environmental protection regulations - such as those controlling the cleanliness of beaches. If you're concerned by this, who should you blame? The Court, the Commission, the governments who agreed to the rules of the EU and would have to agree to any extension of EU law? What about Jose Manuel Barroso? Why him? You can't even vote for him - except, that is, in the Today programme poll.

This, I think, is called “muddying the waters” and how typical it is of a Beebie to pick on "cleanliness of beaches" as the one tangible example of EU power. Where Robinson goes badly wrong, however, is that he is confusing "blame" with the reality. As leader of the government of Europe, Barroso is indeed - in the commission's areas of competence - more powerful than Blair. Who is to blame for that situation is a completely different question.

However hard the Beeb tries to fudge it though, the fact remains that their own poll put Barroso in the lead position, way above Blair. That makes a statement that cannot be ignored.

COMMENT THREAD

Poor old Österreich

They do not do much for the self-confidence of the European Union, but the Google figures on various EU-related stories in the news are highly instructive.

In a very thin field – as you would expect at the back-end of New Year's day - the key issue is easily the Ukraine gas crisis, with 1.372 stories listed. The specific EU dimension now is that the disruption has spread to Hungary and Poland, after Russian cut off supplies to the Ukraine yesterday. However, exports to the EU are carried through the same pipes, and Gazprom now says Kiev is stealing some of that gas.

But, if that is the main story, and one that you would expect to get a fair bit of coverage, the take-over by Austria of the EU presidency might also be considered newsworthy. But, it appears, all Google can manage is a mere 59 stories, headed by the IHT which reports: "from Austria: new thoughts on the EU". From the number of stories though, it would appear that no one is very interested in what Austria thinks. Poor old Österreich.

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Electronic tagging

Booker does us proud today, with a special mention of the Blog in his column – which, needless to say, the techies on the Telegraph site haven't translated into a live link.

The subject – as you might have guessed – is Galileo, Booker picking up on my earlier pieces (here and here) on the inability of the media to cover the issue in a grown-up fashion.

Interestingly, the very point Booker makes is amply demonstrated by a new piece on the BBC website, which deal with one aspect of the system – road charging.

Written by BBC News science reporter, Paul Rincon, under the headline "navigating future for road charges", this piece waxes lyrical about how the Galileo network "would allow a vehicle's exact movements to be tracked, presenting new possibilities for road-user charging and tolling." The precision and availability of the Galileo signal, we are told, would facilitate the application of charges according to the distance travelled by a vehicle, along with other parameters.

Then chirps Rincon, "each motorist would, of course, need to carry a satellite-linked 'smart box' in their car," but what he does not mention anywhere is that this so-called "smart box" picks up the Galileo signal, translates it into positional data and then adds your details in order to beam it on to the road charging administrator.

This means, of course, that you are effectively carrying a tracking bug in your car and every movement made in the vehicle will be recorded and retained. "Big brother" will be in the back seat or the boot (trunk, for our American friends) and, any time they wish, state authorities will be able to call up information.

Why the Beeb should want to omit such an important detail can only be imagined, but you can bet that, if the government decided to insist on electronic tagging for everyone, there would be an outcry. Yet, this is exactly what the system is – it is an electronic tag by any other name, and you don't even have to commit a crime to get one.

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Just when you think it couldn't get any worse…

It is ironic that our first substantive post of the new year is about none other than the wunderkind himself, the Boy King, who has invested the Conservative Party's hard-earned money in a full-page advert in the Sunday Telegraph.

There, we find in conveniently large print - no doubt for the visually as well as the politically challenged - a declaration of his six principles that he hopes will guide the Party to victory.

For the Telegraph, this is a "dramatic" move – a bold statement from a failed newspaper about a failed party - with political editor Patrick Hennessy citing an unnamed shadow cabinet member who suggests that, "There may be a few of the disillusioned old colonels who throw their toys out of the pram but most people will go for it."

As I write, my colleague will be winging her way to the United States and I have never taken her for a "disillusioned old colonel", but I do hope – for the sake of her fellow passengers - that she has not bought a copy of the Telegraph. Such would be the smouldering incandescence that her part of the cabin would be uninhabitable.

Of the more egregious statements in the "declaration" comes the claim that, by 2010, our national debt will be £617 billion, "risking higher interest rates", followed by the assertion that "Ensuring economic stability is the first duty of any government". To that, though, is appended the most amazing rider: "We've learnt the lessons of the ERM".

Far be it for me to rehearse the events that led up to "Black Wednesday" but, as I recall it, the linkage of sterling to the exchange rate mechanism – the precursor to the single currency – was sold as an instrument of economic stability, ironing out the fluctuations in the exchange rates between the basket of European currencies.

As it turned out, it was this attempt to secure "stability" which led to the fiasco which destroyed the Conservatives' reputation for sound economic management and it was only the forced decision to quit the ERM and surrender to the inherent instability of market forces that restored the UK to economic health.

Not least of the lessons of the ERM, therefore, is that the pursuit of economic stability by governments leads to precisely the opposite – that it is no part of governments' tasks to "ensure" stability, and neither is it within their capability so to do. More simply, their responsibility is to respond to the inherent instability in the markets and to reduce the adverse effects, while capitalising on the advantages.

Through his beguilingly simple comment does the Boy King demonstrate that he, at least, "has not learnt the lessons of the ERM". As the implications of the vacuity of his statement sink in, I suspect it will not only be "disillusioned old colonels" – and my colleague – who throw their toys out of the pram.

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A Happy New Year from him

This time last year, we were still in the thrall of that terrible disaster of the South East Asian tsunami, when I expressed the view that any traditional expression of happiness for the New Year seemed somewhat inappropriate.

The devastation in New Orleans and the long drawn-out agony of that unhappy country Kashmir, with its less spectacular but savagely devastating earthquake later in the year, hardly improved the tenor of the year but it is a testament to those that have suffered and the rest of us that the human spirit prevails and life goes on. However, there is always a small part of all of us that never forgets that there are people far more unfortunate than us, not least today which is a time for remembrance as well as celebration.

In the national arena, this time last year we were confidently expecting a general election and I wrote at the time that, 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." In all respects, we were not disappointed – if that is the correct word – although none of us could have predicted that the Boy King would ascend to the Tory leadership and set about dismantling what was left of the Party.

We were also expecting a number of referendums on the EU constitution, not least the French referendum after L'Escroc, in his televised New Year address, had announced his intentions. Equally, none of us could have predicted such a happy result, both in France and Holland, although the results deprived us of the referendum that we were expecting this year.

Nonetheless, the game is not over and, if we were to be so incautious as to make a prediction, we would hazard a guess that we could well be looking at another round of referendums next year, after the French presidential elections.

On the home front, after much needed repair and redecoration in the house, our female cat has taken an aversion to the living room and will not enter it under any circumstances. Instead, she has taken to sleeping on the stairs, in a position calculated to cause the greatest danger to the unwary. If this blogger suddenly ceases posting, it may not be that I have been carted off to jail yet again.

Cat permitting, I will continue blogging, as indeed will my colleague – who has mercifully weathered her arduous, year long experience of the NHS - in the hope that it makes the difference. Amongst the pain and disaster, not forgetting the bomb atrocity in London, and the more frequent and more devastating terrorist attacks in Iraq, Israel and elsewhere, it has been a good year for the blog.

After starting in April 2004, we entered the year just departed with just over 90,000 hits and came out the other side of our first complete year with over 550,000 – a five-fold increase. It would be too much to hope for this rate of increase to be sustained, but nevertheless, we wish our existing, much valued readers – and those to come – as well as our forum members, a very happy New Year.

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