March of the Minnows

The two by-elections, at Bromley and Blaenau Gwent have the political classes twittering, but with the turnouts respectively 40.5 (down 24.3 percent from the general) and 51.7 percent (-14.4 percent), it is clear that neither election set the political process alight.

The "shock" result, if you can call it that, was the poor showing of the Bromley Conservative candidate, Bob Neill, who only just got in with 11,621 votes against a strong challenge from the Lib-Dims, slashing the general election majority of 13,342 to 633

But what is especially interesting is the Bromley result. UKIP came third, beating Labour into fourth place, taking 2347 votes, but collectively, the eight minority parties polled 4,518 votes.

The cumulative effect of these minority parties is now getting quite significant and was definitely a factor in the last general election, where the UKIP/Veritas vote exceeded the Labour majority over the Conservatives in 28 seats, undoubtedly costing the Tories a significant number of seats.

Then there were the recent Council elections where not only did the BNP romp home in Barking and Dagenham but came in second in Bradford with 27.5 percent of the vote in the wards which they contested.

It is always dangerous to extrapolate results from by-elections, but the "minnow" phenomenon is beginning to become well-established, where many of those who are prepared to turn out to vote are so disillusioned with the established parties that they are prepared to vote for minority parties. And, of course, in Blaenau Gwent, the independent candidate won.

What we are almost certainly seeing, therefore, is not a rejection of politics but a turning away from the established party politics. Political issues have never been more closely and actively argued, but the established parties are simply not part of the debate.

Of this, I can vouch personally. In all the years I have been writing about the EU and political issues generally, I have never experienced so many personal messages and discussion as I have over the intensely political issue of the inadequate equipment provided for our armed forces in Iraq. Furthermore, this has been reflected in a marked increase in the “hits” for this blog, in the unprecedented level of interest in our forum thread and the nearly 11,000 “hits” on the unofficial Army forum thread.

In all, this should not come as a surprise as, in February this year, we reported on a Mori poll which put "defence/foreign affairs/terrorism” as the most important issues facing Britain today, giving a 34 percent response compared with the NHS/Hospitals at 33 percent.

By contrast, last weekend I attended a Conservative Party function with 450 party members crammed into a huge tent, where the discussion was "David Cameron this" and "David Cameron that" and how we must all fall in behind "our new leader".

More than one person, however, remarked to me of the high average age of those present, one suggesting sadly that we were looking at a party on the verge of extinction. Posing the question, why are younger people no longer interested in politics, my rejoinder was that they are – they are simply not interested in your brand of party politics.

The problem, I declared in my grand manner which (rightly) infuriates so many people, was that the established political parties have become so introspective that they are now only interested in themselves. That much is glaringly evident from the Tory Boy Blog. My remedy was equally straightforward. Start taking an interest in the things that ordinary people are interested in, and they will take an interest in you.

Until then, I suspect we will see the continued onwards march of the minnows.

COMMENT THREAD

The great debate

For an update on this post, see here.

And so it came to pass that their Noble Lords had their debate on defence yesterday and, in the nature of things, widely ignored it was by the media and the great unwashed.

It was in many senses a messy affair, covering too wide a range of subjects – from the nuclear deterrent to housing for the armed forces and all points in between.

One contribution which did stand out though was from the Viscount Brookeborough which, especially in the context of my earlier post, seems to make enormous sense. In the interests of fuelling our own debate, therefore, I am publishing the full text here:

While in Basra recently, I was struck by the similarity of certain operations to those that we carried out in Northern Ireland. But what really made an impression was the obviously low numbers of helicopters—less than half the maximum of 72 that we had in Northern Ireland. I have been involved in anti-terrorist operations in Northern Ireland for the past 30 years or so, and I saw some interesting parallels.

In Basra, in the multinational force area, insurgents are not normally suicidal. However, they have taken IRA technology—which is what it was—directly off the shelf. Suffice it to say, it is a device that noble Lords may have seen in the newspapers last week. It is called a PIR RC IED—a passive infrared radio-controlled improvised explosive device. It is almost certainly manufactured in Iran. It is not improvised—the device has been made by machines in a factory. The system of initiation enables extreme accuracy. That is why soldiers are being killed in Snatch vehicles. It is also capable of disabling tracked vehicles.

I am aware that we are developing counter measures. However, like Northern Ireland terrorists, the insurgents are most certainly developing the next generation of weapons to get round our counter measures. By the nature of things, we will always be slightly behind, so the problem cannot just be shuffled away, with the hope that there is a counter measure.

We were told by the Minister in May in answer to a Written Question that our service helicopter fleet was only 59 percent operational. That is seriously bad news; it is a disgrace within a modern Army. We were also told that there were 28 helicopters in Iraq, of which an average of 22 percent were not serviceable. Therefore, there are, on average, 20 serviceable aircraft in Iraq. This does not differentiate between the various capabilities. We were told that we had two Chinooks, eight Sea Kings, seven Merlins, five Pumas and six Lynx. I read a report about more Sea Kings going to Iraq, but I am not sure whether they are the right aircraft and whether we are not plugging a hole with the wrong nail.

If these helicopters are defined, rather vaguely, into "support/heavier lift" and "tactical/patrol deployment" categories, that would result in the Chinooks, Sea Kings and Merlins being in the support and heavy lift category, the Pumas being dual purpose and the six Lynx being the patrolling aircraft. This does not take into account the fact that seven may be unserviceable, spread over all types, or in extremes, all from one category. That is a possibility, but we hope it does not occur.

My observations are as follows. The 17 aircraft in the larger category and the Pumas in the second category are almost entirely used moving personnel and equipment between bases in the multinational force area in southern Iraq. That also includes providing aircraft to go to Baghdad occasionally. These tasks include administrative resupply, changeover of units, servicemen travelling to and from R&R; and hospital visits. These tasks are important—in fact, they are essential. They have become a vital priority in maintaining our deployment, so they are not for giving up, day by day, in preference to something else.

That leaves the Lynx and sometimes some of the Pumas for all the other tasks, including operational patrolling, surveillance and general taxi work. Surveillance is important because our modern surveillance system—the successor to P3—fills up the back of a Puma. You cannot land it on the ground and pick up eight soldiers. That helicopter is operational for surveillance only.

At the very best, it would be difficult to ring-fence the use of more than eight choppers for eagle patrolling and tactical operations by troops on the ground throughout the whole of our area. Where the use of single aircraft is at high risk, it will have to be done in pairs, thereby reducing separate operations that may be supported by choppers at any one time.

In practical terms, regardless of the theory, if anyone suffers a reduction in heli hours due to serviceability, it is the soldiers deploying on routine operations—they may be routine, but they are highly dangerous in Iraq—and not the vital admin resupply and support. It is therefore true that an overall increase in helis, and therefore heli hours, by, for example, 25 per cent, would be seven aircraft. That could result in a 100 per cent increase in availability of choppers for supporting patrolling on the ground. That is not great and I do not understand why we are not doing it.

We have lost personnel increasingly while on mobile patrol. We had a very similar problem in Northern Ireland, and we had to put large areas completely out of bounds to mobile patrols. Where I live, across the main road, it did not matter what happened—you were not allowed to take a mobile patrol. We used covert patrol vehicles, but I accept that that is not an option for Iraq. We also used helis, but we had 72 before taking serviceability into account. They often had to operate in pairs. We must ask ourselves questions about the patrols, especially mobile patrols. Is a given patrol really necessary? What is the threat and why is the IED beside the road? Could the patrol be done on foot? If we have the heli hours, could we use helis to patrol at virtually no risk? Are the helis at risk?

There was a range of conclusions, which included the following. Obviously many mobile patrols are vital to achieve the mission, but occasionally, if you ask the questions carefully, it is found that the answer is that they are "not really vital". So why are we doing it? If the threat to a mobile patrol is an IED, then why did the opposition set it up? To protect something, or purely because the patrol would pass it? If the latter is correct, then there is no need to be there, and that is why the IED is there. That is a very simple but important argument.

If the patrol is on foot, it is easier, through tactics developed in Northern Ireland and now in Iraq, to protect themselves and control the environment around them. I shall not go into detail, but that is what occurs. If there are heli hours, eagle patrolling reduces the risk immediately. If helis are at risk, the use of helis in pairs enhances safety yet again. One helicopter operates while the other one watches. Two helis in the air can virtually freeze terrorist movement in a 2 kilometre-square area. The second one can react to any unusual activity. There are more ARFs—air reaction forces—in the air, day by day, which can react to other things occurring in the area.

In Northern Ireland, the threat to helis virtually disappeared when there was more than one of them in the air. There were occasions in County Fermanagh, where I live, when a patrol or OP was hit and there was not vital necessity for it to be there. There would have been no attack if it had not been on the ground at the time. If it was not in an ambush position, what was it doing providing a target? That is what some mobiles are doing.

While in Iraq, I asked a very senior person how the Iraqis will patrol when we leave and remove our technology, which is going to happen. I was told that the Iraqi mobile patrols did not seem to be targeted in the same way. We seem to be providing ourselves as a target, especially if an Iraqi patrol can do it. That is fact—it is what I was told.

If you ask a senior officer, "Are you coping with accomplishing your mission?", the answer will be yes. If he gave the wrong answer, you would probably remove him. However, if you were to ask, "If you were provided with substantially more helis, would it change your tactics and make it safer?", the answer would be a resounding yes and you would have a very happy officer. Incidentally, an increase in helicopters to Northern Ireland levels would increase those provided to soldiers by 600 per cent.

In a discussion on research for new vehicles in the other place on 26 June, the Secretary of State said:

"There are medium and long-term plans relating to vehicles, and I shall be considering what we can do to respond to the situation in the short term".

The review should already be under way. We are in an operational situation. How come we have just decided to do it today? The terrorists, or the insurgents, are already reviewing what we are trying to counter, and we are about to set up the review. I suppose that it is something. What are the Government doing when they say that they,
"shall be considering what we can do to respond ... in the short term"?

The "short term" is tomorrow. Something should already have been done. That debate was on 26 June. It is amazing.

Later, the Secretary of State said:

"Decisions on which vehicles to use on operations are for the commanders on the ground". [Official Report, Commons, 26/6/06; cols. 4-5.]

The commander can use only what he's got. It is a lovely turn of phrase, but if he had the helis, he wouldn't be in the wagon.

A number of those in another place and some commentators have asked about bigger or stronger vehicles, but I do not think that that is the right line to go down. We do, however, need a patrolling vehicle, because the type of IEDs being used will disable tracked armoured vehicles. What are you left with after such an incident? You are left with a marooned armoured vehicle. How do you get it out? If you cannot, you may have a riot situation. Or perhaps we do not need to worry about it because, after they have stopped killing people in the tracked vehicle, the crowd will ensure that the situation is sufficiently in hand to petrol-bomb the living daylights out of it. These vehicles are difficult to recover. All I will say is that these reviews are a bit late in the day, and we ought to get some of the 41 percent of choppers which are non-operational into the air pretty quickly.

I shall have more to add on this and other contributions to the debate, when I have been able to study it in more detail. I will post the forum link with the general debate on "Snatch" Land Rovers.

COMMENT THREAD

Diving for cover

Looked over the edge of the trench to see what is going on in the wider world and read this:

The squabbling began even before the talks did. The world's most powerful trading nations gathering Thursday to hammer out a long-delayed global trade treaty spent most of the first day finger-pointing - leaving little apparent hope of a breakthrough when official talks begin Friday.

"Somehow the gaps don't seem to diminish," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said of the differences that have put the Doha round of trade talks two years behind schedule. "If anything, if I look backwards, maybe to two or three months ago ... I have the impression that the gaps have widened, or at least become more rigid," Amorim told reporters after a meeting of the G-20 group of developing nations.

Ahah! It’s WTO time again. Wake me up when it's all over and the talks have failed – I'm going to bed.

Some cracking stories in the morning for you, including a long one from my co-editor.

COMMENT THREAD

Mean streets 2

For an update on this post, see here.


While hunting for photographs for my previous post, I came across this remarkable shot of a Lynx flying over Basra, which I couldn't resist. Disregarding the superb view of the "toy" and looking beyond that, what immediately strikes one is the narrow, cluttered streets (not). Bearing in mind our previous exercise, it really is getting very hard to take Lord Drayson seriously. One has to ask, what is that man for?

Also emerged is another shot of Basra, this co-incidentally taken at the time of the recent, tragic Lynx crash in Basra - reported to have been taken out by an RPG. It shows a dismounted patrol, but the location is interesting - clearly a back-street scenario. Once again, what is striking is the width of the lane, clearly more than sufficient to allow an RG-31 passage, or even something more substantial.

And, a propos my previous post, a thought occurred. The Second World War lasted six years, whence we went in with biplane fighters and emerged with jet aircraft. Now, it is taking eight years bring an updated version of an existing helicopter into operational service - two years longer than the entire length of the Second World War.

It is a good job Drayson wasn't around at the time, in charge of the Spitfire programme.

COMMENT THREAD

Jam tomorrow...

For an update on this post, see here.

A critical shortage of battlefield helicopters reported last year is to remain, year while the MoD commits to a long-term £1 billion project to buy 70 helicopters – averaging £14.2 million each – which will not be in service until 2014. This is at a time when the Army is down to six Lynx multi-role tactical helicopters in the whole of Iraq and desperately needs more capability.

The Americans, on the other hand, are paying in the order of £3.6 million each for their OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopters, which are providing invaluable service in supporting US troops in Iraqi counter-insurgency operations.

Their value has been graphically recorded by the award-winning free-lance war correspondent, Michael Yon, who writes of his first-hand experience as an embedded reporter in some of the "hottest" areas of Iraq. Of the Kiowa, in the battle for Mosul, he wrote:

Intelligence warned that another car bomb was looking for us, so the soldiers decided to go hunting for it. American helicopters were helping with the search and a Kiowa flew so low that we could literally have hit it with a rock at times. By flying so low they can spot threats to us, but the danger to the pilots is severe: for instance, a Kiowa was just shot down near Baquba, killing two Americans. One of the helicopters with us started taking fire. I heard a pilot on the radio asking if we needed him, he wanted to land, check for holes quickly and get back in the air. A soldier said to me, "I love those guys".

More generally, he posted another account where he describes how soldiers on the ground hold their helicopter pilots in extreme regard, writing, "I've never heard a real combat soldier calling pilots 'fly boys' or anything disrespectful." "Sometimes," he adds, "they fly so low they are practically lawnmowers. One Kiowa pilot came so low that I could read the time on his watch in the photograph. I was not using a telephoto lens. Just a 50mm prime."

This is highly relevant to the current controversy about the inadequacies of Snatch Land Rovers as even the most ardent advocate of better armour protection for our troops will agree that any effective strategy for defeating the insurgents is multi-tiered. And there are few better weapons than light tactical helicopters which can escort patrols and convoys, scouting ahead to warn of potential ambushes and to attack insurgents when they break cover.

When the shortage of helicopters was again raised in the House of Lords by Viscount Brookeborough in May this year, he noted that, at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, we had 72 helicopters in operation in the province.

Lord Drayson – none other than he – denied that there was a shortage of helicopters, only then revealing that the total number of helicopters in Iraq was two Chinooks, eight Sea Kings, seven Merlins, five Pumas and six Lynx, 28 in total, with all but six being transport helicopters.

However, what we once again see with this MoD contract is "jam tomorrow" and nothing today. The new helicopters will be a central component of the EU's fantasy European Rapid Reaction Force and, in good European style, will be built by the Italian owned Finmeccanica subsidiary AgustaWestland. But when it comes to the real army, currently engaged in combat, the troops must go begging.

Kiowa photographs stolen from Michael Yon, for which theft he will undoubtedly sue me.

COMMENT THREAD

The mean streets of Basra

For an update on this post, see here.

Today, there is a defence debate in the Lords. It will be the first opportunity for Lord Astor, the Conservative defence spokesman, to challenge Lord Drayson over his egregious lie about the British Army having used RG-31s before, and to question him on his claim that, "The RG-31 cannot access areas that Snatch Land Rovers can get to."

The relative size of the two vehicles has been something of a preoccupation with some contributors to the unofficial Army forum , where an extremely robust discussion has developed over the utility of the "Snatch" Land Rovers.

Given that the Land Rover weighs in at just under six feet and the RG-31 at just over eight, we were keen to know how many of the mean streets of Basra were actually so narrow that only a Land Rover could squeeze down them. Visiting the area, obviously, is out of the question – and even Lord Astor has not been permitted to go – but, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we have been able to take a "virtual tour" of the city and are able to present the results here.

That said, the first picture (top left), although it came up in a search for Basra, clearly is not a view of that city. The troops are obviously American and the vehicles in the background look very much like Strykers. The picture has a value though in that it shows the aftermath of a car bomb, with the crater in the foreground and the wreckage of the car in the near distance. It demonstrates that the terrorists by no means confine their activities to the narrow side-streets.

The next picture (right) most definitely is Basra though and the vehicle in the centre ground is a Saxon APC (now withdrawn from Basra). At just under an inch wider than the RG-31, you can see what a tight squeeze the RG-31 would have, hence the difficulty the "suicide donkey" (presumably) is having overtaking the vehicle.

Getting narrower is the next street (left) but, easily able to accommodate two cars with plenty of room to spare, it would no doubt permit passage of a Land Rover. In what looks like a one-way street (but you never know), we think and RG-31 might just be able to squeeze by, which seems to put Lord Drayson's claim rather to the test once more. The parking of the car on the left, incidentally, does not seem too brilliant.

About this cityscape (right) I am not certain it is Basra – it looks a bit like Baghdad to me. No doubt someone will correct me. In the foreground is what looks somewhat like a bomb crater, but it could be just disrepair. Again though, the Land Rover would have no difficulty traversing the road but it would be also very hard to imagine that the RG-31 could have a problem. We cannot vouch for the side streets though, as the views of them are not clear.

In this road scene (left), some sense of scale is given by the massive six-wheeler truck, giving the road-width – at a rough estimate – of something three times the width of the truck. Even allowing for the bicycle, we assume, therefore, that a Land Rover could squeeze past, but is this yet another of those "narrow" roads where an RG-31 would have difficulty getting down? Note again the parking technique – this does not seem to be the Iraqis' forte.

Here, we do not have to guess about the Land Rover (right) – a "Snatch" is parked centre picture, with its door open. This is the Coldstream Guards on patrol, doing their "hearts and minds" bit, and very good at it they seem, to judge from the crowd of children around and in front of it. The truck to one side and the car to the other (badly parked), and the spacing, however, does seem to suggest that an RG-31 could just about squeeze past. Whether the motorcyclist would have such an easy passage is anyone's guess.

This (left) is the best I can do for a view of a side-street. If there was an IED around, it could well be embedded in the trash-filled gutter – a favourite hiding place for the terrorists and totally invisible to any passing patrol. The street itself does look narrow but, in the distance, you can see what appears to be a parked car, giving some sense of scale. From the look of the approach, a Land Rover would have no problem. An RG-31 might have difficulty squeezing past the car, but would any mounted patrol really want to go down this road where there could so easily be an ambush?

The right-hand scene is for real, where a bomb has gone off. The van to the right has been caught in the blast and has been burnt out. The structure, however, looks relatively intact so a passing "Snatch" Land Rover might just have survived the blast. In an RG-31, however, that survival would have been more certain and, from the look of the spacing, it would have been able to have driven down the road without too much difficulty.

On the left, we have another Coldstream Guard patrol. You can see the "Snatch" on the left, behind the parked car, with the "top cover" – the Americans call them "sky guards" – aiming his weapon up the street, giving cover to the soldier on foot, the so-called "dismount".

Once again, the vehicles give a sense of scale, the road measuring at least four car-widths, but probably wider. Clearly, the Land Rover had no problems navigating the road and, once again it is very hard to see how an RG-31 would have had any difficulty. Another one for Lord Drayson to explain?

The photograph on the right, taken over the top of a parked car, shows a group of British soldiers, so this is obviously – at the time, at least – a patrolled area. There is no sign of a patrol vehicle, but the centre strip shows the road to be a dual carriageway and the truck parked off-road to the right suggests that large vehicles can navigate the road. One senses, therefore, that an RG-31 might not have too much difficulty.

I think I recognise the road (left) from scenes on television, and recall seeing a film of a convoy of "Snatch" Land Rovers led by a Warrior hammering down this road. Not in your wildest imagination could you argue that an RG-31 would have difficulty here, so this is yet another bit of road where Drayson's preference for Land Rovers does not seem to stand up. Down here, you could line up half the Army's complement of tank transporters.

And, on the right – if this really is Basra and not Heathrow airport or somewhere else - we could land a Jumbo Jet, or even an Airbus A380, and have room to spare. No doubt, someone will tell me if this is not Basra, but even then it is difficult to see where the "nasties" might hide an IED. But not even Drayson, I imagine, would try arguing that an RG-31 would have difficulties travelling down this road.

Another day, another patrol (left) – a convoy of "Snatch" Land Rovers, with a "dismount" in front and another "top guard" covering him. This is yet another dual carriageway and you can see from the way that the Land Rovers are staggered, rather than directly in line, that there is plenty of room on the road. Once again, therefore, we have a patrol area where an RG-31 would have little problem and if, as appears from the picture, there is a car tucked in between the Land Rovers, a potential suicide bomber, the troops would definitely be safer in the better-protected vehicle.

Another one, "for real" (right). This is another bomb explosion in a busy thoroughfare, with considerable damage evident to vehicles. One again these are civilian vehicles and the one on the left is not totally destroyed, again suggesting that the blast would have been survivable at that distance, more so in an RG-31 than a "Snatch". Despite the crowds of people, the width of the road is clearly evident and the snaking hoses suggest a fire engine in the near vicinity. An RG-31 would not have had any difficulties passing down this road.

We've used this photograph before (left) - an offical MoD photograph, showing "Snatch" Land Rovers on patrol. Clearly this is a main road and the volume of truck traffic, and the spacing between the Land Rovers and the trucks easily demonstrates that an RG-31 would have absolutely no problem navigating this road - yet another route knocked off Lord Drayson's list.

And finally... (right) this is the scene of the famous Basra riot, where the graphic scenes were flashed across the world of British soldiers spilling from a burning Warrior with their bodies wreathed in flames. You can see a "Snatch" to the left of the picture and a Warrior centre-right of picture. And, where a Warrior can go, an RG-31 at less than half the width, can easily follow. Note also, the youths are attacking the Warrior - the more aggressive-looking vehicle - and ignoring the "Snatch". Would they have attacked a convoy of RG-31s?

Anyhow, this is the best I could do with my "vitual tour". No doubt there are streets in Basra down which an RG-31 could not pass, but then would you want to drive a Land Rover down a potentially dangerous road where you have only one foot clearance down each side? But that apart, if there are such roads where only Land Rovers can travel, clearly there are many routes which are accessible to the larger vehicle. It would be absurd to suggest that, because some roads might be inaccessible, then only Land Rovers should be used for all of them. But that, effectively, seems to be what the Minister is saying.

COMMENT THREAD

Energy wars

Today’s Wall Street Journal Europe [subscription only] carries an article entitled “Russia’s oil wealth raises political hurdles for U.S.”.

The gist of it is that the American government and its successors are facing a more assertive Russia in the world. Her assertiveness is based on her enormous resources of oil and gas, something that has given Russia an economic renaissance and put her among other global powers as an equal. Or so says President Putin, using yesterday’s speech as a warning to Secretary of State Rice, who arrives in Moscow today

“hoping to win Russia’s support on key international issues such as curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, even as the Bush administration has stepped up criticism of Mr Putin’s policies both at home and toward Russia’s nearest neighbors.”

Interestingly enough last month President Putin gave a completely different picture of the situation in his much-discussed state of the nation address. Then he emphasised the difficulties Russia was facing in relying solely on export of raw material as its economic base.

His other theme was then the country’s low birth rate and short life expectancy. Economically and militarily (with emphasis on the second) this was a potentially catastrophic combination. At the time he came up with a purely Soviet idea of rewarding mothers who have many (or, at least, more than one) children. There was little talk of raising life expectancy. Even if people do not die in their fifties and early sixties they would not be much use as soldiers.

It is, as ever, hard to work out what Putin really wants to say. On the one hand, it is true that

“[t]hey [the Russians] are certainly feeling better about themselves than at any time since the breakup of the Soviet Union”,

as one administration official told the newspaper.

On the other hand, it does not take too many brains to work out that a major economy and global power cannot survive on oil and gas money alone. Having rattled a sabre or two against its nearest neighbours, the Russian government has changed its approach slightly, sending out Gazprom to buy up aggressively western companies.

Rosneft wants to float part of its possessions in London, an act that would be contrary to international agreements, say the remaining spokespeople for Yukos, since these possessions include the dubiously acquired property of the latter.

Even the question of Iran is slightly difficult. Russia has maintained very good relations with the Mullahs, put every possible obstacle in the way of American and European attempts to control the nuclear programme and has supplied the country with arms.

One does wonder whether this has been well thought through. Of course, selling arms brings in money but what will end up with Hezbollah and how much of that will be passed on to the Islamist groups Russia is fighting in Central Asia?

In the end it is back to gas and oil supplies. A quarter of all Europe’s gas comes from Russia and there is a push to become a major supplier to China, who is beginning to run into difficulties with its rather rapacious African policy, and the US.

In the meantime, there remains the question of Putin’s successor (if there is one in the near future) and several names of more or less known personalities have been advanced. All are waiting for the man’s own imprimatur. Will he do a Yeltsin and effectively nominate his successor?

Whatever America’s negotiations may come to, other countries, better aware of the dangers of Russian dominance, are beginning to stir.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe carried a short item, entitled: “EU supports Caspian Sea pipeline project”. This was a not uncommon muddle in the mind of the journalist. It was not the EU the article was about but a number of European and other countries.

Energy ministers from Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey have signed a declaration in Vienna for the Nabucco project, a privately funded pipeline that will carry natural gas from the Caspian Sea region to European countries. Please note that, despite the newspaper’s take and statements by the Commission, it is separate countries, only two of whom are EU members, who have signed the agreement.

The participants are Austria’s OMV AG, Hungary’s MOL, Turkey’s Botas, Bulgaria’s Bulgargas and Romania’s Transgaz SA Medias. The energy ministers who signed the declaration made it clear that their governments would push the project forward.

“The 3,400-kilometer pipeline, costing $5.8 billion, would supply Europe with gas from countries such as Azerbaijan and Iran, giving them direct access to the European gas market. It could also hook up with pipelines from other parts of the Middle East and with further projected pipelines across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. That would reduce Gazprom’s control over the gas trade between Central Asia and Europe, because all gas piped to Europe from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan currently has to pass through Gazprom’s pipelines.”

We can fully expect Russia to exhaust its supply of monkey wrenches, trying to derail the project.

COMMENT THREAD

The wickedness of the Beeb

For the Pinzgauer "Vector" see here.

For an update on this post, see here.

There is no doubt that the "Snatch" Land Rover issue is hotting up, especially with the regrettable deaths of two soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday. The Guardian, in particular, noted:

The soldiers from the Special Boat Service were returning from a night patrol when insurgents hit their armoured "snatch" Land Rover with a rocket-propelled grenade. The soldiers left the vehicle and two died in the ensuing battle. The injuries to the third were described last night as serious but not life-threatening.

It is too early to say whether a better-protected vehicle would have changed the outcome for, as we pointed out yesterday, the RPG 7 is a different order of threat. The anti-mine measures embodied in vehicles like the RG-31 would not necessarily have saved the troops in this particular firefight.

Nevertheless, this did not stop the Guardian noting that the casualties "may stoke the controversy surrounding British troops' use of open-topped Land Rovers, which offer limited protection." The paper cites Captain Gibson who observes that: "It's a balance of protection, mobility and risk … If you drive around in fully armoured vehicles you can't talk to the local population."

But the Guardian, rather confusing the issue between the open-topped patrol vehicles and the "snatch" versions, goes on to say:

The vehicles have been criticised as a soft target after the roadside bombs which have killed some 18 British soldiers in Iraq. Des Browne, defence secretary, told MPs on Monday that the issue was being reviewed. Defence sources said possible alternatives include the RG-31 mine-protected armoured vehicle made by a BAE Systems subsidiary in South Africa and used by US forces in Iraq.

It seems also that the matter has been raised directly by journalists at one of the daily briefings at No. 10., when the prime minister’s official spokesman said: "Let us be clear that the very sad deaths today were down to those who attacked British troops. We shouldn't make it any more complicated than it is. Our thoughts are with their families."

Enter, therefore, the BBC to put its "impartial" analysis on its website to inform general readers about the issues. Headed, "Q&A;: Army Land Rover row," it tells us that:

The use of Snatch Land Rovers by the British Army has become controversial after several high-profile roadside bomb attacks in Iraq. Now a Snatch in Afghanistan has been attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade, leaving two soldiers dead.

What is then remarkable is that the Beeb – usually no friend of the MoD and definitely of an anti-war persuasion - not only trots out the establishment line but adds a few embellishments of its own.

It starts by quoting an MoD spokesman to explain that tanks are often too big and too slow, cumbersome and likely to annoy civilian populations. "You can't exactly go downtown Basra in a battle-tank," says our man helpfully. What he doesn't say though is that the security situation in Basra has deteriorated to the extent that the Snatches are no longer allowed out on their own, so patrols are escorted front and rear by (tracked) Warrior MICVs – a procession that is hardly likely to be much less annoying to the civilian population.

What he might also have mentioned is that the Warrior fleet in Basra and surrounds is doing such high mileage that the vehicles are being worn out very rapidly and the maintenance problems are stacking up. They are being used at an unsustainable rate – for a purpose for which they were never intended – and something soon will have to give.

Nevertheless, the Beeb continues in its role of MoD platform, allowing the spokesman to add, "The Land Rovers are fortified with armour to offer the troops protection against explosions and ballistics … They also have electronic counter-measures (ECMs) - designed to detect roadside bombs before they explode."

Note the use of the word "fortified", which is not the one I would have chosen – "lightly armoured" would be a neutral description. As for "protection against explosions and ballistics", last night we heard it from the horse's mouth when Sky News interviewed a soldier on patrol in Basra. His view, simply put was, "These Land Rovers are no use to anyone".

The ECM is, of course, useful, but only against bombs detonated by radio or mobile 'phone. Against pressure plate activation, command wire detonation or infra-red triggers, it offers no defence.

Never let it be said that the BBC does not try though. Posing the question as to why the Land Rovers are "controversial" – not "deadly" mind you – we are told that "a number of incidents in Iraq have thrown the spotlight" on them. We are not told that "number", only that "Insurgents have begun to use roadside bombs against British forces - killing several soldiers", with the Beeb continuing, "Families of dead soldiers have complained that the Land Rovers do not provide enough protection."

Then, putting the best possible gloss on this, the Beeb tells us that "Defence Secretary Des Browne responded by promising to review the use of the vehicles in Iraq," quite forgetting to say that this was only after a serious campaign had started.

Then we come to the really serious spin. Reviewing the alternatives, we are told that "critics of the Army" say the vehicles are an outdated, cheap alternative to the more modern equipment used by the US and South Africa. No Beeb, we are not criticising the Army. We are criticising the government, and Blair in particular, for sending troops in without adequate protection.

As for the US forces, well, the Beeb says, they use "Humvee vehicles", again forgetting to tell us that they are also introducing RG-31s, Cougars and Buffalos, and are actively looking for a replacement (see above left). No, all we get is, "these (Humvees) come in for similar criticism to the Land Rovers and are thought to be susceptible to roadside bombs and grenades."

Now we arrive at the meat: "Others have suggested that vehicles used by the South African army - RG31s - should have been bought to replace Land Rovers." Again, there are some key missing facts, like the US is using them in Iraq and the Canadians are using them in Afghanistan – and have just ordered another 25. Instead, we get:

But RG31s are designed to protect against landmines, not the kind of explosives the Army deals with in Iraq. The Army used RG31s in Bosnia, but took them out of commission due to maintenance problems.

This, of course, we have rebutted thoroughly on this blog, here and here, but the lie is now in the system and the Beeb is at the forefront of perpetuating it.

And, to conclude this "impartial" analysis, Lord Drayson, the procurement minister, is given the last quote: The "size and profile" of the RG31s did not match the Army's requirements, and they could not access urban areas the Land Rovers could. We are then left with this:

Other armoured vehicles that the Army already uses, such as the Warrior, have been suggested. But these are much bigger and less mobile than the Snatch Land Rover. The MoD has argued that their Land Rovers have enough counter-measures to make them safe for peacekeeping patrols. They say that the equipment they use is under constant review, along with the tactics and electronic counter-measures.

So, everything is fine with the world of the BBC and MoD. Except, we learn from Monday's defence questions, after an intervention from Conservative MP Mark Pritchard, the government has "agreed to supplement Snatch with a new patrol vehicle, Vector, which will come into service in 2007."

The "Vector", it turns out, is the Armoured Pinzgauer, which we have already dubbed coffins on wheels. The thing has already had a glowing review from the Sunday Telegraph's Sean Rayment and is now attracting its defenders on the unofficial Army forum.

The odd thing is that the 80 armoured vehicles, at a cost of £35 million, were supposed to be going to Afghanistan, yet the question Pritchard posed was in relation to Iraq. Are we on the verge of a fudge here, with the MoD diverting these dangerous vehicles to Iraq as a public relations measure?

No doubt, if this happens, the Beeb will be on the case, and first in line with criticism when soldiers are slaughtered, despite having done nothing to prevent it. That is the wickedness of the BBC.

See also this update on the Pinzgauer

COMMENT THREAD - Joint Posts

Wrong again

Despite attempts by The Observer on 14 May last to engineer a "collision course with Brussels", with minister for energy, Malcolm Wicks, cast in a heroic mould, protecting church organs from the depredations of the Restrictions on Hazardous Substances, it has all come to naught.

According to Reuters, "brides and grooms can breathe easy as the European Commission said on Tuesday it had decided church organs are not covered by a directive that bans the use of hazardous substances, such as lead, which is used to make pipes for organs."

The head of the European Commission in London, Reijo Kemppinen, said: "British organ builders need not fear for the future of their art and craft. The European Union has no wish to jeopardise this ancient tradition."

Of course, you could have read precisely that on this blog on 30 March, just short of three months ago. However, as we are all aware, blogs don’t actually report news – the are entirely derivative, following in the wake of the professional journalists of the MSM who know so much better than us.

We are sorry for getting it so wrong.

COMMENT THREAD

Dear Mr Blair, here is some advice

Reaction to the PM’s latest wheeze has been mixed. Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town has welcomed it. SecGen Kofi Annan (father of Kojo) has clearly welcomed it because it will provide him with yet another opportunity to travel round, sit in meetings and pontificate (and who knows, there might be another medal of achievement at the end of it).

Sir Bob Geldof is very happy about it, as he, too, will be given extra publicity and a chance to pontificate. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has recently been prevented from becoming president-for-life, is equally happy. He will be one of the panellists.

Other agencies, possibly because they were not asked, are less happy and are muttering about buck passing and backsliding.

So, what’s this all about? Well, a year or so on from G-8 and Live8 and any other 8 you might care to think of, nothing much has happened about reducing poverty in Africa. Of course, some of us have always maintained that “Make Poverty History” is considerably less useful than the alternative proposed by us: “Make Stupidity History”.

So, the Prime Minister has decided to set up a new panel of world leaders to monitor the aid given to African countries. It is not entirely clear whether its effectiveness will be monitored as well or merely the amount of money that is being shelled out, the usual criterion for much of aid giving as Richard Tren, the Director of Africa Fights Malaria said at a recent seminar he gave at the International Policy Network in London.

I shall do a more detailed posting on the seminar and Richard Tren’s account of the past, present and possible future of the war against malaria.

In the meantime, let it never be said that this blog is merely negative; that we criticize politicians and their activity, without offering positive suggestions. Here is one for Mr Blair, who, we assume, is genuinely worried about conditions in Africa.

Forget about panels and world leaders; ignore Bill Gates and his money; break off relations with Sir Bob Geldof and SecGen Kofi Annan. Concentrate on the following:

The number of malaria cases in Africa are not precisely known, though Bob Snow of the Wellcome Institute has estimated 600 million around the world, most of which are on that continent. Malaria hits children in particular and devastates whole communities. It reduces the African economy by something like 1.2 per cent of GDP – a large amount in the poor world.

It is an almost wholly preventable and curable disease and the prevention will cost us nothing or next to nothing.

Richard Tren pointed out that after a great deal of campaigning by Africans and others various organizations like USAID and WHO have changed their attitudes to controlled domestic spraying with DDT and other pesticides. The one organization that is out of step and refuses to acknowledge recent medical and scientific work is the EU.

The EU has huge powers as donor and economic partner of African countries. It is using those powers for ill purposes. Instead of helping the countries that are desperately fighting this scourge, the EU and, yes, we are part of this nasty conspiracy against African people, is trying to prevent routine use of domestic spraying, which has been effective for decades in prevention of malaria.

May we humbly suggest to Mr Blair that he should use what influence he has to change the EU’s attitudes. And if he cannot do so, to proclaim that Britain will not abide by this senseless, unscientific, disgraceful behaviour.

COMMENT THREAD

Well, gollygosh!

Listen to some Europeans and, indeed, Britons and you would think nothing but nothing mattered more than global warming … oops, sorry, climate change … and the way it is being caused by human behaviour (particularly American human behaviour).

Emissions and other supposed human effects on the climate (all unproven scientifically – maybe yes, maybe no) have taken the place of original sin in many people’s calculation. Alas, just as original sin, there seems no way of dealing with it all.

There is Kyoto, of course, the modern equivalent of buying indulgences, but the United States, whose economy it was set up to control, refused to sign up. As did India, China and Brazil, three of the greatest polluters in the world. Their, perfectly sensible, argument is that cleaning up the industrial debris and other aspects of pollution can be done in a rich and developed society. They need to get there. Whether China will do anything about it as it gets richer, remains questionable.

All the same, you would think that the European countries, the torch-bearers (with environmentally friendly torches) of the anti-global warming campaign, would reduce their emission. Not so, but far from it.

According to the Copenhagen-based European Environment Agency, as reported by EUObserver,

“Emissions of climate changing greenhouse gases from the whole of the EU increased by 18 million tonnes (0.4%) between 2003 and 2004 while emissions from the EU-15 increased by 11.5 million tonnes (0.3%) in the same period.”

Since we do not know for certain that greenhouse gases are climate changing (climate having changed steadily back and forth for millennia) this may not be such a big problem. From the point of view of the European soul, on the other hand, it is important. We are all guilty.

Some, though, may be more guilty than others. How much of this increase is due to ever more frantic travelling round by EU politicians, often to view retreating glaciers and other environmental horrors?

COMMENT THREAD

We've been there before

For an update on this post, see here

Yesterday, Parliament finally woke up to the scandal of the inadequately armoured Land Rovers used by our troops in Iraq. In defence questions, the Conservatives mounted a spirited attack on dismal Desmond, the current secretary of state for defence.

It is a measure of the inability of the clever-dicks to understand the issues involved, though, that all we got in the print media was a tiresome little piece from The Times. That was in the form of a parliamentary sketch by Ann Treneman, which did not even begin to do justice to the subject.

As I research this issue more fully – rather in the manner of peeling an onion – the stakes, which were always high – now seem stratospheric. The real issue, when you think about it hard enough, is whether we take the current campaign in Iraq to be representative of further campaigns, or whether it is an aberration and in no way typifies the tasks that will confront our Army in the future.

Trying to answer that question is not easy but all the signs are that Iraq does represent the future. And, if that is the case, then we have to confront the stark reality that our armed forces have the wrong structures, the wrong equipment, and the wrong tactics.

To gain some insight into this, I have been revisiting the "liberation" struggle in Rhodesia where, like the insurgents in Iraq, the guerrillas' weapon of choice was the landmine and the IED. It has, in fact, been speculated by some that more vehicles in then Rhodesia struck landmines during the seven year war than by all the Allied forces in Europe in WWII from D-Day until June 1945.

The figures are stark. Between December 1972 and January 1980, 2405 vehicles struck landmines, 632 people were killed and 4,410 were injured. By the end of the war, things had escalated to such a degree that between 5-6 vehicles were hitting landmines every day.

This is set out in a remarkable narrative, which offers some fascinating photographs of the types of countermeasures which were developed (an examples of which is shown above), the basis of which are currently being applied by US forces in Iraq but, significantly, not by the British. An extract from a technical manual also shows how the scientific principles are well understood, further reinforcing how ill-equipped British forces are.

But, if mines and IEDs are the greatest threat to our forces, they are not the only one. We learnt today of an attack on British forces in Afghanistan, in which two British soldiers were killed after a rocket-propelled grenade – no doubt the ubiquitous RPG7 - destroyed their vehicle.

This weapon itself is derived from the German Panzerfaust of World War II vintage, which was a deadly killer of tanks. But, even then, Russian troops had devised their own home-made remedy, one which caused some surprise as victorious T-34s rolled into Berlin in 1945 bedecked with spring mattresses, looted from German houses. It had been found that the coiled springs prematurely triggered the shaped charge of the Panzerfaust, disrupting the projectile and causing it to expend itself against the tank armour.

This has found its modern format in "slatted armour" which can be seen on American Strykers (pictured above left) and British Warriors but, inevitably, cannot be applied to lightly armoured vehicles. Countermeasures here, therefore, remain a major technical challenge for military vehicle designers.

Part of the answer, though, is not in passive protection but the use of UAV escorts for convoys and patrols and also by using light tactical helicopters as escorts to warn of impending ambushes. The both, and particularly the latter, can also intervene in firefights, the US using, amongst other things, the light Kiowa helicopter (a militarised version of the Bell Jet Ranger - pictured above right) to such effect that troops have declared their pilots "honorary infantrymen" because they fly so low as they "mix it" with insurgents at close range.

Against RPG7 ambushes and the ever-present threat of suicide bombs, drivers of explosive-laden vehicles ramming trucks in a convoy, the US have also revisited the Vietnam war where, to counter convoy ambushes, they devised "gun trucks" able to lay down high rates of accurate fire against attackers. And only this week, we learnt that an updated version of this idea was becoming available, an air-defence Humvee converted to the "gun truck" role (pictured above left).

It is by contrasting the US measures with the British that illustrates quite how reluctant the British government is to invest in the Iraqi war and the safety of our own troops, but increasing political and media pressure may change that. But, in order to do the job properly, the government is going to have to recognise that it can no longer afford its grandiose schemes of equipping a rapid reaction force and divert that funding to the here and now requirements of counter-insurgency.

And strangely, if it does, it will be adopting many of the weapons and tactics pioneered by colonial settlers in Rhodesia who learned the lessons the hard way. We could do no better than to recognise their skills and apply them in the current theatre of operations, not least because, if Iraq is the way of the future, we will need them again.

COMMENT THREAD

We are all free men (and women)

As one who has been led down to the cells in handcuffs for non-payment of Council Tax – mine for refusing to pay the police precept after our house had been burgled four times and my wife’s car broken into, I can totally empathise with Josephine Rooney, the 69-year-old pensioner who was yesterday imprisoned for three months by South Derbyshire Magistrates for refusing to pay hers.

Her story is told in detail in The Daily Mail and elsewhere, noting that, unlike ordinary criminals, who get an automatic fifty percent remission of their sentence, there is no rebate for Council Tax debt and Josephine. Thus, says The Mail,

...at a time when the Government seems to be taking every opportunity to stop sending genuine criminals to jail - and once inside, releasing them as early as possible - she will spend the next three months mixing with drug addicts and murderers after being sent to New Hall prison near Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

Of course, Derby City Council deputy leader, Dave Roberts, like any true state apparatchik, disowns the decision. "The council has no wish to send anyone to jail," he says. "Miss Rooney had ample opportunity to pay her council tax, but she has steadfastly refused. Her sentence is the court's decision, not ours."

But actually, there was no decision. The Magistrates have no discretion in this matter, so the penalty is automatic. To save taxpayers' money on the courts, they would be better of having "go to jail" machines on the lines of "speak your weight machines" in the foyers of police stations, leaving more time for the Magistrates to release the day's crop of burglars and muggers.

But the central point which I addressed when I was last arrested is that this makes a mockery of any idea that we are free men and women. Essentially, you retain your liberty only if you pay your annual license fee to the Town Hall.

For me personally, the situation is even worse. With shared ownership of our house, Mrs EU Referendum’s name also appears on the Council Tax bill. But, the apparatchiks who send out the bills, knowing that I am prepared to make a stand over "services" we pay for but don't receive, have now reversed the order of the names, so that hers appears first. It his her, thus, who receives the summons and if I don’t pay the bill, she goes to jail.

Jail I can stand but the thought of dealing with Mrs EU Referendum after she has been released…? I want to live, so I pay up.

And all this is arranged by the kindly "Customer Services" department of the Council. And that is what really pisses me off, this total perversion of our language, the dishonesty of it all. If I was really a "customer", could my wife be jailed because I did not pay a bill for services I was not receiving? I think not.

And what has this got to do with a blog labelled "EU Referendum"? Well, in truth, not a lot, except that it does demonstrate, once again, that the EU is far from being our only problem. When we have brought down the EU, the local Councils must be next.

COMMENT THREAD

Coffins on wheels

An energetic discussion on the issue of force protection for our troops in Iraq is being conducted on the unofficial Army forum, together with our own forum and a particularly pompous intervention from Mick Smith on his Times blog.

The Smith piece is worth noting as it is a classic example of "clever-dickery", combining establishment thinking with know-it-all superiority, a condescending attitude and a basic lack of fundamental research, all with a complete failure to put the story in its broader political context.

Headed, "too big for Basra" it takes on the themes which finally emerged in The Sunday Times yesterday, with the opening declaration that, "No-one should suggest or suspect that either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown wants British soldiers to die needlessly." Smith then adds, "The senior British Army officers who are trying desperately to find a solution to the problem certainly do not want soldiers to die needlessly."

That is the establishment line but, as has been rehearsed on our forum, the deaths arise in part as the consequences of decisions made by Tony Blair (and, one presumes, Gordon Brown). Whether they want soldiers "to die needlessly" is not the point. The fact is that some are and the reason is that money which should have been put urgently into devising counter-measures for IEDs is being spent on equipping a fantasy army for the European Rapid Reaction Force.

Similarly, although we can accept that "senior British Army officers" are "trying desperately to find a solution" – and we can certainly accept that they do not want soldiers to die needlessly – that again is not the point. Those senior officers, first and foremost, have to work within the budgetary constraints set by the MoD so their "desperation" is heavily qualified by the amount of money they have available.

Thus, when Smith then moves on to ask, rhetorically, "So why three years after the problems with IEDs first surfaced in Iraq are our troops still dying?", he has already conditioned the debate to exclude the main reasons for the situation.

Instead, we get a knowing but unsubstantiated assertion, combined with heroic name-dropping, with Smith recruiting Brigadier Bill Moore, Director Equipment Capability (Ground Manoeuvre), to his cause.

Moore is "in charge of the programme to get a new vehicle", and says the MoD had done "a significant amount" to improve the situation and “was continuing to try to do so”. I love that word, "significant" and use it all the time. It is the King of weasel-words because it implies "an awful lot" but is in fact meaningless. In fact, it actually means "not an awful lot", otherwise one calls a spade a spade, and says, "a great deal". But then, we know a great deal has not been done because troops are still patrolling in lightly armoured Land Rovers.

Then comes the spin. The "use of heavy armour had to be balanced with the need for soldiers to interact with local communities," says Moore. Yup… we agree. And if "Snatch" Land Rovers are too dangerous to use so you end up patrolling in Warriors and Challengers, for want of an intermediate vehicle like the RG-31, what price interacting with local communities, Mr Moore?

But that question is neither posed nor answered. Instead, Brig. Moore argues that protection from threats (such as IEDs) is 30 percent equipment, 60 percent tactics, techniques and procedures and 10 percent luck. Again, this is more weasel words. For sure, avoidance of IEDs requires that mix – although the precise mix ratios can be argued over – but when all that has been accounted for, and an IED goes off next to a vehicle, whether the occupants survive is 100 percent equipment.

Nevertheless, Moore claims that, "We work constantly to ensure that our tactics, techniques, procedures and equipment meet the demands of the operational environment. We have done a significant amount to enhance existing equipment and continue to do so."

But that is a matter of opinion, and Moore does not substantiate his claims. As I point out on the Unofficial Army forum, a successful counterinsurgency strategy is more than a question of improved armour for patrol vehicles. Looking at the measures available, I argue that the vital role of humint (human intelligence) could be enhanced. We know that the Army has cut down on language courses for troops being deployed to Iraq, but we definitely need more native language speakers. There could be more funding for informers and rewards and even such incentives as offering British citizenship and an emigration package to those informers who put themselves in harms way to assist HMG.

In terms of terms of technical countermeasures, we need greater use of UAVs – which are very limited in the British sector, but which the US are exploiting with great success. On the horizon are techniques like "environmental exception mapping", using computer-aided analysis to compare "before and after" video films taken by UAVs, to pick up things like disturbed soil by the side of a road, which might indicate that a bomb has been hidden there. Then there is an urgent need for more light helicopters, the current fleet of Lynxes being described as "knackered" and far too few in number. Then we could certainly employ vehicles such as the Buffalo and Cougar to hunt out IEDs.

Yet, as far as we know – and we know a great deal – nothing like this is happening in the British occupied sectors.

But finally, Mick Smith gets down to money, but in a mealy-mouthed way. We have an RAF Chief of Defence Staff, he writes:

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup is a good man but I wonder how he would defend the cost of the RAF's expensive Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft, large numbers of which we don’t need, alongside the amount of money allocated to Moore to try to sort out the problem of the inadequate armour protection on the Snatch Land Rover.

But then comes yet more spin. "The simple truth," adds Smith:

…is that putting a large amount of armour on a small vehicle is extremely difficult. The British Army looked at a number of different options, including the Nyala RG-31, a South African mine-protected vehicle produced by BAE Systems. Ministers say that – at just 50 cms wider than the Snatch Land Rover - it is not manoeuverable enough to be used in the streets of Basra, has then wrong profile for peacekeeping and that an earlier version was used before by the British Army in Bosnia where it proved to have maintenance problems.

The army used it in Bosnia for "route-proving", quite literally going out in front of a convoy and using the safety of its protective armour to ensure that there were no landmines on the route. The "maintenance problems" were in fact caused solely by attempts to put heavier armour on it. The engine and suspension couldn't cope with the extra weight.

The "route proving" bit is wrong, and so is the comment about "maintenance problems", but never mind.

Smith then remarks that the Canadians have bought the RG-31 for use in Afghanistan but, strangely, does not mention that the US has bought 148 for use in Iraq for protection against IEDs. "Ministers still defend the decision not to go for the RG-31," he then tells us, "It might have proven effective against land mines. It might be good enough for the Canadians. You might even be able to get it on the ground very quickly. But its profile is all wrong and it's just that bit too big for Basra."

That is the impression we are left with… "it's just that bit too big for Basra." But, of course, the Warriors and Challengers are not – and they really do have the right profile, don't they.

Now, as we reported quickly, earlier today, the secretary of state for defence, Des Browne has stated that he has asked for a review of the Land Rover question. For once, Tory MPs have done their stuff, Roger Gale MP having demanded in defence questions to know what vehicles are being considered to replace them.

With success possibly on the horizon though, now is the time to step up the pressure, not least to make sure the right decision is made. As Smith points out in his piece:

Earlier this year, as the British prepared to deploy to Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, the Taliban began copying the insurgents in Iraq using the same sort of IEDs. The need for a vehicle that had improved armour protection above that afforded by the Snatch Land Rover became increasingly urgent and ministers agreed to pay £35m for 80 armoured Pinzgauer Vectors as part of an "Urgent Operational Requirement".

This is where Smith displays his ignorance and lack of research. The Pinzgauer is not a patrol vehicle but a 14-seat troop transport.

Furthermore, the level of protection is no greater than the "Snatch" and, with its slab sides and flat floor, it is not a mine protected vehicle. It is described as being designed "to withstand two NATO L2A2 hand grenades detonating simultaneously only 150mm below the floor pan. These grenades would normally carry a lethality radius of 5 metres." Compare and contrast the RG-31 specification, which can withstand the equivalent of two anti-tank mines exploding simultaneously under any wheel – 14Kg of TNT - or 7Kg under the cabin.

In March of this year, 14 US Marines and a civilian interpreter were killed when their amphibious assault vehicle struck an IED about a mile south of Haditha, Iraq. The "Amtrak", as it is known, affords a level of protection similar to the armoured Pinzgauer. And one feature of these lightly protected vehicles is that an IED may penetrate one wall but not have the force to break through the second, the armoured enclosure thus containing the blast with fatal consequences to all the occupants.

These Pinzgauers, far from making troops safer, could end up being "coffins on wheels". When it comes to new patrol vehicles for Iraq, therefore, the MoD cannot be trusted to make the right decision. The battle must continue.

See also Corporate manslaughter for an update on the Pinzgauer Vector.

COMMENT THREAD

Talking outside the box

Reluctant though I am to intrude on the private correspondence between my colleague and a few of our forum members, I nevertheless feel that there are one or two thing I should like to interpolate. No, not about toys. This is not a posting about toys. They are very important but I do not understand them (though I did see what my colleague tells me must have been T-55s rolling down streets as a wee child) and, therefore, leave them to those better versed in the subject.

So, I shall continue to cover other subjects and, with a bit of luck, annoy people quite considerably.

This morning I spent talking to two groups of sixth formers at a secondary school in west London. This is not the first time I have addressed school children and consider the effort very well worth making. Today's sixth formers are, after all, our future and they will need all the weapons at their disposal to survive and fight in the international jungle that is rapidly growing around us all.

As ever, there were several curious aspects to the exercise. That most of the seventeen-year olds I speak to know very little about anything outside their immediate existence does not surprise me. I was seventeen myself once and, though, I considered myself to be extraordinarily well informed about the world and ready to discuss it at the drop of a hat, other people may well have had a different opinion of my knowledge.

Nor am I particularly suprised by the lack of interest displayed by a large proportion of the boys and girls, who are clearly dragooned into attending these sessions with outside speakers when they would much rather be gossiping in the library. The teacher who had organized this particular session, was rightly insistent in our discussion on the way back to the underground station that these sessions will be very useful to them in the future.

He was also rather despairing about the lack of knowledge they and, indeed, most people in this country (and the rest of the European Union) display of the structures, politics and legislation of that body. Though we disagreed in our opinions - he being rather a supporter of the project for all the usual reasons: social integration, people being friendly to each other and trading with each other etc - we did agree in deploring the lack of interest in a subject that affects everybody's life.

On the other hand, I must admit that the sixth formers of today are considerably readier to discuss matters with adults and not just their teachers, than many were in the past. This has certain disadvantages, in that they will speak even when they do not have anything much to say, and many advantages, in that they will ask questions and, even, listen to the answers.

By and large, both my colleague and I agree that we do not find the children difficult, even when they waffel away in a slightly silly fashion. In my experience they are well behaved, polite, interested to some extent and ready to ask about various points raised. It is not their fault that they are rarely taught to think in a logical fashion and encouraged to emote instead.

When we get over the tongue-tiedness and inevitable shyness, as well as the giggling attempts to get someone else to speak (all very familiar to those who remember their own teens), out come the comments that they have clearly been taught.

What, we were discussing, is the Single Market? It is a very beneficial structure for consumers. Why is it beneficial? Um, well, it strengthens competition and removes barriers between countries in trade. But could that be achieved without the political superstructure (actually, I did not use that Marxist term)? Blank looks all round. Clearly the children had not thought in those terms and, more importantly, had never been encouraged to think in those terms.

Now, this is not another "let's knock the teachers" posting, though I did get somewhat irritated by one young lady teacher today, who very charmingly kept trying to drag the discussion back to the benefits of the EU and away from its structures, legislation and democratic deficit. The point is the emotionalism.

The EU is a singularly boring subject. Its ways are complicated to the point of incomprehensibility. But, I maintain, intelligent seventeen year olds should be encouraged, as far as possible, to try to find their ways through the labyrinth. They should not be filled with warm muzzy feelings.

They are quite capable of thinking, if needs be, as several (all girls, as it happens, today though not always in the past) demonstrated it. After I mentioned several times that one must differentiate between facts and opinions, one of them challenged me on a glib statement about the relative difficulties of starting a business in France and Britain. Was that a fact or my opinion? I had to justify very coherently what I had said.

On another occasion, in a different school, I was asked by a boy how I could justify support for democracy and free trade. What of the countries that were not democratic? It is no bad thing, I find, having to reply to questions like that.

In return, I'd like to think that at least some of my audience has gone away to think about a few very new ideas: that trade across boundaries does not require political integration or a huge regulatory structure; that business does not need a "level playing field" but a chance to compete; that the world is a bigger place than just Europe; and that high social protection leads to unemployment that hits the poorest and most vulnerable first. It was worth the trip out towards Heathrow this morning.

COMMENT THREAD

Coincidence?

Yesterday, we have all this and today we have this.

Coincidence?

COMMENT THREAD

Tip of the iceberg

This weekend, I had dinner with a very senior politician – one who had had direct and prolonged experience of the innermost workings of the Ministry of Defence and close working contacts with prime ministers.

Amongst other things, my politician confirmed that which we have worked out for ourselves , that there is, and has been for many years – before even the Blair regime – a "Europe first" defence procurement policy. However, I heard details of how this extends right through the procurement process to a degree which is quite staggering. Quite deliberately, at times, inferior, old fashioned and more expensive European equipment is bought, even where the more modern and effective equipment from the United States is actually cheaper.

What confuses the outside observer, though, is that the MoD is riven with factional infighting between competing tribes and not a few purchasing officers have found ways of circumventing the policy and breaking the "Europe first" rule. This allows gainsayers to leap triumphantly on the few exceptions and dispute its existence, even though it is well established and supported at the very highest level.

But what also emerged was confirmation of the thesis that we ourselves on this blog have been struggling to put together – that there are two separate and distinct defence policies being conducted by this government. The one – to which all the resources are being devoted is the "European" defence policy while the poor relative is the "trans-Atlantic" policy which is at its most visible in our support for the US-led coalition in Iraq.

When this is put together with the flurry of media coverage over the weekend about equipment inadequacies, we are able to draw the incontrovertible conclusion that the government is simply not prepared to finance the war effort in Iraq. Further, so poor is the equipment and so lacking in numbers are our troops, that we are able to draw down increasing evidence from the public domain that, into order to minimise politically embarrassing casualties, the Army has ceased to play any effective role in the policing of Southern Iraq.

Many areas of Basra and Al-Amarah have thus become "no go" areas to British patrols because they are simply too dangerous, leaving our presence confined to the safer and less populated areas in what is now a token operation. This is spelt out in some detail in the Independent on Sunday yesterday, which reports that British forces are facing rising violence among Shia Muslim factions in southern Iraq, but are powerless to contain it.

The paper also adds that both British and Iraqi authorities were seeking to play down the situation – each for their own reasons. For the British government, it is keen to project a charade that the Iraqi authorities are gaining in strength and competence so that it can hand over to them and declare "mission accomplished", bring the troops back in "triumph".

The reason for the inadequacy of the British forces is, as we continue to report, primarily due to the priority given to equipping the European Rapid Reaction Force. The essential problem is that the equipment required to take on and defeat the counterinsurgency is so specialised that it has no place in the EU's air-portable rapid reaction force structure. Set on withdrawing from Iraq at the first possible opportunity, the government is simply not prepared to invest in specialist equipment which will get limited use and will then not be suitable for the EU force.

We have seen already how this is putting our soldiers lives at risk, through the MoD insistence on keeping wholly inadequate Land Rovers in place, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

This is brought to the fore by that stupid and ignorant piece in The Sunday Telegraph where correspondent Sean Rayment is quivering with excitement over the emergence in theatre of something entirely new to him, "the armour-piercing 'explosively formed projectile' or EFP, also known as a shaped charge." This, the excited Rayment tells us, "fires directly into an armoured vehicle, inflicting death or terrible injuries on troops inside."

And what particularly gets Rayment worked up is his "discovery" that, "Government scientists have established that the mines are precision-made weapons which have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions," probably originating from Iran. He tells us that, "a source from the American military, who has been working closely with British scientists, said that the insurgents have perfected the design of the weapon and know exactly where to place it to ensure maximum damage to coalition vehicles."

The ignorance manifest in this piece is simply demonstrated by the fact that these weapons are not at all new. As we have reported before, they appeared in Bosnia in the early 90s, in the form of the TMRP-6 mine.

The fact that it is called a "mine", however, should not be allowed to confuse the situation. The Serbs not only buried these devices, but became adept at fixing them to the walls of buildings alongside roads or hanging them from telegraph poles. Ready to be triggered by passing vehicles. In other words, these devices were being used in exactly the same way as Rayment's "explosively formed projectile" (which is exactly what they were), with like effect.

Nor indeed are these the most deadly devices in the Iraqi theatre. Not least of these is the standard BK-29 HEAT-MP round, a 125mm Russian shell used by the T 72 tank. In dumps and caches all over Iraq, there are estimated hundreds of thousands of these shells, already in the hand of insurgents. One of these shells, suitably positioned, and detonated by a remote device, can easily take out an Abrams or Challenger Main Battle Tank and, indeed, several Abrams have been lost to these and similar devices - one only last month.

Further, given that only an estimated 20 of the devices have been brought in, compared with 11,000 roadside bombings in Iraq last year (compared with 5,607 in 2004), this is by no means the devastating problem that Rayment makes it out to be.

It can be no accident, though, that Rayment believes this type of device to be "new" as other journalists are reporting the same thing, which suggests that are buying government "spin" on this. Together with what appears to be government-inspired propaganda that there is somehow no defence against it, this "spin" is particularly wicked.

So well known is this type of threat that, in April 1999, the then under-secretary of state for defence, John Spellar, actually hosted a press briefing on it. And, as we know, by then, successful counter-measures had already been developed.

But, by allowing ignorant and gullible journalists to run away with the idea that this is somehow a new and different threat, the government absolves itself from any failure to protect our troops from it and, by implying that there is no defence against, calls for introduction of counter-measures are sidestepped.

Once again, we are back where we started. Introducing counter-measures in theatre would be expensive and the money is already spoken-for. In order to pursue European defence integration, therefore, it is more expedient to let troops die, especially – as my political informant told me – the MoD is confident that it can always rely on an ignorant and indifferent media not to report the facts.

COMMENT THREAD

The greatest enemy

For an update on this post, see here.


So far this week, we've run an unprecedented five stories on a single topic, the unnecessary deaths of British soldiers from roadside bombs in Iraq, due to the inadequacies of their equipment. We started with this one, with follow-ups here, here, here and here, pointing out that, had the MoD provided our troops with armoured RG-31 patrol vehicles, some of our soldiers, like the more fortunate Americans pictured below, could have survived.

Today, the Sunday Times takes on the issue with an editorial headed: "Pay up and save lives", which we reproduce in full here:

It is of course a hugely sad matter that the toll of British soldiers killed in Iraq has been growing steadily to reach its current total of 113. Every military death is a blow for the country and a tragedy for the family and friends of those who fall victim. So it is reasonable to assume that the Ministry of Defence will do all it can to prevent the deaths or injuries of our troops. including providing them with the best weapons and armour to do such a dangerous job.

Now we learn that British soldiers have been patrolling the streets of Iraq in Land Rovers that offer almost no protection against lethal roadside bombs. Nearly a quarter of British soldiers so far killed in hostile action have been the victims of roadside bombs and were patrolling in these so-called "Snatch" Land Rovers. The vehicles, some up to 20 years old, were shipped to Iraq from Northern Ireland, where they were used to police a very different and much less bloody conflict. Their bodywork and floors offer only thin protection against the improvised explosive devices used by the insurgents. Aware of this, the terrorists have started to target the Land Rovers and the risks of more fatalities are increasing every day.

We would naturally expect the ministry to do something about this. Far from it. The bureaucrats are digging in. It is not as if there is no alternative. The RG-31, an armoured Land Rover built by BAE Systems, is being used by the Americans and the United Nations. Some deaths from roadside bombs can never be prevented but other countries’ soldiers seem better protected.

Complaints about inadequate equipment have dogged the British mission from the start. When Sergeant Steve Roberts was shot two years ago it emerged that the protective vest he should have been wearing was not available. The six military policemen killed by a mob three years ago had antiquated radios and inadequate ammunition. The scandal over Land Rovers not fit for their purpose is just the latest sorry example of Whitehall warriors sending our fighting men badly protected into the field.

This is in a week when the Tory Diary blog has been discussing such vital issues as a new logo for the Conservative Party and an interview between the Boy King and Jonathan Ross.

The contrast perhaps speaks volumes for contemporary politics when even a defence debate in the Commons goes unnoticed by the chattering classes. Fortunately, the Sunday Times did not share the values of the "modern compassionate" Conservatives. In addition to its editorial, it has published the Land Rover story on its front page and also devoted a full-page to a focus analysis. The story cites a certain Richard North, "an author and internet blogger" who has been campaigning over the failure to invest in heavily armoured vehicles. He says:

It was an incredibly crass decision to reject the RG-31 and shows yet again the MoD's knack of creating a disaster of every procurement decision. The looked at whether to stick with cheap, second-hand Land Rovers that were not safe to use in Iraq at that time, or buy a vehicle that would save lives. What did they do? They stuck with the Land Rovers.

The Times story follows in the wake of The Sunday Telegraph, with Christopher Booker continuing the story he started last week. Moreover, this is clearly an issue with which the public clearly empathise, the two lead letters in the Telegraph supporting the calls for better equipment.

That does not, incidentally, stop the Telegraph's dim excuse for a defence correspondent, Sean Rayment, pursuing his own line that "the policy of using Land Rovers" is due to the lack of Warrior MICVs. This, he admits, is a claim the Ministry of Defence denies, a denial that has substance as no knowleageable person will argue that the Warrior is a suitable patrol vehicle. And, at three times the width of the Land Rover, it most certainly cannot gain access to many areas in urban environments.

Nevertheless, for those who want to understand more about the real enemy which is threatening our democracy, this is a good starting point. Clever Dicks and Tory politicians, it seems (with some notable exceptions) need not bother.

COMMENT THREAD

Week-end reading material

Though my colleague has explained very clearly what our thinking is on the blog in the future (I just go on posting happily or not so happily my thoughts, hoping to annoy as many people as possible), practical considerations make it necessary for us to make short postings as well as long ones.

There are practicalities for us - we cannot always produce long analytical pieces - and for our readers - they do not want to read long boring articles all the time.

So we intend to do more short snappy paragraphs that link with articles or postings on other sites. This will undoubtedly bring about complaints on the forum, but that's just the way it is.

My first link is with an rticle in the Wall Street Journal. Every Saturday a well known writer lists his or her five favourite books in his (her) own subject. This week it is David Pryce-Jones's turn.

Mr Pryce-Jones has many subjects as he has written widely and extensively, fiction and non-fiction. But he is best known as an expert on the Middle East and, inevitably, Islamist terrorism.

His list is then of the five best books on terrorism and why he thinks so. Read the whole piece and, if you can, follow his advice.

The ministers must lie

For an update on this post, see here.


Not that you would have known it from the MSM but, on Thursday there was a debate in the House of Commons on defence policy. You would have thought that a switched-on opposition could have made considerable political capital from the issue raised on this blog about the inadequate protection for our troops against roadside bombs, but there was not a squeak from the Conservative front benches.

It was left to a Tory back-bencher, therefore, to raise the issue. This was Lee Scott, MP for Ilford, North, who noted that:

The American soldiers and marines in Iraq have access to RG-31 Nyala mine-protected vehicles which enable the crew to survive the blast of an improvised explosive device. Canadian troops deployed in Afghanistan also use RG-31s. British soldiers and Royal Marines need to make do with lightly protected Land Rovers. That is not acceptable.

Traditionally, the minister responds to such points at the end of the debate but, before he could do so, Ann Winterton, another Tory back-bencher intervened. Addressing Adam Ingram, the minister of state directly, she posed a question "about equipment connected with Afghanistan":

As our forces appear to be winning the firefights in Afghanistan, does he expect those who oppose our troops there and in other theatres to revert to the use of improvised explosive devices? If so, what vehicles are our forces to be equipped with to counter the threat?

Because it was an "intervention", Ingram answered immediately and, from this you can see the way questions do not get answered. His response is a classic example of evasion - pure extruded verbal material:

We have been very effective in Afghanistan. We have a potent force in the Apache attack helicopters. We are up against intelligent and capable enemies, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, and we know that they will continue to look for ways to attack land-based vehicles or air-based platforms. We have a lot of measures in place. The hon. Lady will understand that it is not appropriate to discuss all the detail, but where we identify a threat - be it a new or technological threat - we identify a quick way to deal with it. Sometimes that takes time as we come to understand the threat before developing the technical response. Our focus at all times is the protection of our personnel, whether it involves fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, land-based systems or maritime systems.

So, don't you worry your pretty little head, dear. "Our focus at all times is the protection of our personnel".

At the end of the debate came the summing up by the parliamentary under-secretary of state for defence – there's glory for you - none other than Mr Tom Watson. He had an opportunity to deal with the Land Rover issue but chose to ignore it. Instead, what we got was:

Firstly, we need to ensure that our people, who do a magnificent job, are properly looked after. Secondly, we need to ensure that they have the equipment that they need to do the difficult and dangerous things that we ask of them. Our success depends above all else on our personnel…

And then…

They are making a unique and valuable contribution to help to bring peace and security to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the world. I know that our debate will have reassured them that we have their best interests at heart and are all working to ensure that they have the finest support from the British Parliament.

I am not sure that our personnel will be that reassured, but I suspect not. According to the latest edition of Private Eye, British troops in Basra were distinctly underwhelmed by defence secretary Des Browne on his inaugural visit last month "Smug, sleek and fat - and every inch a New Labour apparatchick" one of them informed the magazine.

The hero of the hour, however, was a young squaddie who, while Browne was meeting and greeting, asked what he knew of the military. "Not much," the minister admitted, "but what do you know about politics?" "Well," said the soldier, "I can lie well".

Clearly, that is an essential attribute for a defence minister. Our picture above is further confirmation of the lie uttered by Lord Drayson on 12 June during the House of Lords debate. "We had 14 RG-31s in Bosnia, which we took out of service some time ago due to difficulties with maintenance." This is an official MoD photograph and the caption reads:

SFOR, Bosnia, April 1997: Alvis 8 Mine Protected Vehicle (MPV) of the Royal Engineers.

The Alvis 8 is the Mamba, an early version of the design from which the RG-31 was developed, and further developed, the current version being the Mk III. To imply, on the basis of a different vehicle, in service nearly ten years previously, that a current type is unsuitable is clearly dishonest.

Furthermore, we are unable to get any confirmation for the minister's claim about "maintenance difficulties". We have in fact been contacted by a soldier who was serving in Bosnia who actually drove the short-wheel-base version. His comments were:

…it was a pretty old fashioned vehicle with a 4 speed manual gear box, a huge delay on the steering, nightmarish brakes that really struggled to get the thing to stop (air brakes but the poorest I've ever come across). All in all it was a real challenge to drive, I got to love it in the end, but it put off many a driver during its time. It had its good points, the separately fuelled heater (easily coped with the Balkans winter), the sound of it, and of course it carried as much kudos as any vehicle in Bosnia!

Separately, we learn that decisions to use "Snatch" Land Rovers in Iraq have caused officers "untold anguish and mental suffering" because they knew "how vulnerable they were". One source told us that, "I have seen very senior commanders cry because of the decisions that have had to be made."

Being Army, they have no choice but to use the equipment with which they are provided, and to carry out the tasks assigned. Ministers, therefore, have a special responsibility "to ensure that our people… are properly looked after". But, they are not doing so. All they are doing is uttering cheap platitudes.

But, if they admitted the real reasons why troops were being ordered to use equipment that their officers knew was dangerously vulnerable, there would be a public outcry. Thus, the ministers must lie.

COMMENT THREAD

What next for the Western alliance?

Arguably, the EU-US Summit is not the world’s most exciting occurrence and little was expected from the one that has just taken place. Presumably, this was Bush’s last EU summit for, as I keep saying, Bush Derangement Syndrome notwithstanding, his presidency is due to end on December 31, 2008.

It was, somehow, symbolic that he should arrive in Vienna the day after the horribly mutilated bodies of two American servicemen had been found with the supposed new leader of al-Qaeda, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announcing that he had carried out the torture and murder personally.

Naturally enough this was not mentioned by the various European politicians, who had been expected to spend a lot of time demanding that Guantanamo be closed. Or so the BBC surmised.

Others preferred to think that there would be problems over the handling of Iran, though there is now a general agreement that the country is itself a problem and dealing with it might be more painful and difficult than it would have been, had the EU3 (France, Germany and the UK) had taken a tougher line at the start of the drawn out and rather one-sided negotiations, several years ago.

The solution may well lie with the people of Iran, who have been considerably more angry and rebellious in the last few months than the British media had bothered to report.

In the event, the final communiqué of 16 pages produced a great deal of well-meaning waffle and little of substance. Much to some commentators’ despair, the press conference appeared to be considerably more relaxed and friendly than the average event of that kind after a European Council. President Bush seems to have disarmed the Europeans in some way or, possibly, there has been realization that these summits (two so far) are not of any use to anybody and the detailed negotiations on many differing subjects will be more important.

President Bush then showed his remarkable good sense by going to Budapest from Vienna, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution. In actual fact, the commemoration is due in October but the President has explained that he will not have time to go then so, an early visit is better than none at all. He has clearly been bitten by the bug of Hungarophilia.

At the open air meeting by the Castle, Bush has extolled Hungary’s fight for her national and political freedom, adding that Iraq will follow in Hungary’s footsteps:

“"The lesson of the Hungarian experience is clear - liberty can be delayed but it cannot be denied," Mr Bush told an audience at a ceremony on a hill overlooking Budapest from which Soviet tanks had fired into the city.

The Soviet Union had "crushed the Hungarian uprising but not the Hungarian people's thirst for freedom", he said.

Mr Bush praised the new Iraqi PM, Nouri Maliki, saying Hungarians would recognise his spirit.

But, he said, Iraq's democracy was still under threat from "determined enemies".

"Defeating these enemies will require sacrifices and continued patience, the kind of patience the good people of Hungary displayed after 1956," he said.”

It is likely that there were some more practical discussions of the kind that summits do not cover, for instance about the question of entry visas into the United States for Hungarian visitors.

Meanwhile, we saw the usual parade of self-important demonstrators in Vienna, who maintained with quite unbelievable stupidity and ignorance that President Bush was the No1 terrorist in the world. They even imported the Moonbat Mom, Cindy Sheehan, for the purpose. (One would like to know who pays for the lady’s endless criss-crossing of the world. What of the environmental implications?)

The Wall Street Journal Europe published two opinion pieces on the subject of America and Europe (and, even, the rest of the world). Unfortunately, they are both for subscribers only, which is something of a mistake in my opinion. However, the more interesting of the two, Yves Roucaute’s “With Friends Like This”, seems to be a translation of a piece he had previously published in Figaro, which was roughly translated by Joe Noory on No Pasarán.

The less interesting one is by Robert Kagan a far-from-Republican analyst and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Entitling his piece “On Hating America” he explains quite clearly that, much as he disagrees with President Bush and his foreign policy, he has to admit that the present much-hyped world-wide hatred of America has little to do with either. It did not start with Bush’s presidency and will not end with it.

It is, in fact, a symbol of many frustrations that people feel about their own governments and countries but prefer not to express.

Kagan describes a panel discussion he took part in recently in London about civil conflict and “failed states” around the world.

“The panelists included the son of a famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official and the head of a of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally, our reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogrified into an extended round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy.”

As Kagan tells it, even the panel chairman was moved to protest but one also wonders to what extent he himself was stunned. It is not unusual for right-on anti-Bush, anti-Republican Americans to feel that they have much in common with the critics, only to find that they are lumped together with their enemies as those American imperialists.

The conclusions seemed to be (and, apparently the son of the African dictator was particularly voluble) that failed states were all America’s fault either because it intervened, as it did to sort out the mess in the disintegrating Yugoslavia or because it did not as in the bloody massacres of Rwanda.

What of the governments that steal the money, oppress their people and destroy the economies of those countries? They are not to blame. What of the militias, official or not so official, who massacre other inhabitants? They are not to blame. What of the Islamists who call for terror, send in suicide/homicide bombers, kidnap, torture and murder people? They are not to blame.

It is all the result of American imperialism which started long before America was a particularly powerful country, for, it seems European imperialism is also America’s fault, particularly as described by people under whose rule life has become so bad that even some imperialism is regarded benignly.

Kagan’s summing up consists of contradictions:

“No one should lightly dismiss the current hostility toward the U.S. International legitimacy matters. It is important in itself, and it affects others, willingness to work with America. But neither should the U.S. be paralyzed by the unavoidable resentments that its power creates. If Americans refrained from action out of fear that others around the world would be angry with them, then they would never act. And count on it: they’d blame America for that, too.”

Who provides that international legitimacy? African dictators and their spoilt, corrupt offspring? Latin American guerrilla leaders, with bloody hands? Or those Europeans who refuse to acknowledge that another great fight is going on, in which liberal democracies must defend themselves, and continue to attack the greatest and strongest of those democracies?

It is the latter that are the subject of Yves Roucaute’s article. M Roucaute is a professor of political science and philosophy at Nanterre University and author of numerous books and articles.

His article is uncompromising, starting as it does with the following sentences:

“The old continent is wilting in the global war against terror, just as it did when faced off against fascism and then communism.” When at today’s summit with U.S. President George W. Bush the European Union will once again take its ally to task over Guantanamo, it will expose its own, not America’s, most serious moral crisis of the post-Cold War era.”

Professor Roucaute pours scorn on all the complaints about Guantanamo, pointing out that prisoners of war had always been kept incarcerated, away from their possible friends to prevent information filtering out.

He is not impressed by the accusations of torture:

“But where is the evidence of torture in Guantanamo? The famous incriminating report of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, whose members include communist China, Castro’s Cuba and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia among others, was based purely on the testimony of released Islamists. Not one member of the commission even visited the camp, under the pretext that they couldn’t question prisoners in private.”

He dismisses the ludicrous docu-fiction “The Road to Guantanamo” that, inevitably, won the Silver Bear at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival. The three “innocent” heroes, who, having allegedly left Britain to go to a wedding in Karachi, somehow or other found themselves first in an al-Qaeda command centre in Kandahar, 1,200 kilometres away, then in Kabul with the Taleban and then on the Pakistani border. Too much stag night celebration, perhaps.

To top it all, they managed to be subjected to all kinds of poorly described torture, none of which left a single mark on their bodies. A tad different from people who come out from other Cuban prisons, the ones under Castro’s regime.

The three Guantanamo suicides do not point the way to anything.

“Did we have to release Nazi leaders after the suicide of Göring? Did we have to close German prisons after the suicides of Rudolf Hess or the Baader-Meinhof group? Should French prisons be closed because 115 prisoners took their lives in 2004 alone? Well, some of them actually should. Many French prisons and detention centres for asylum seekers are truly horrific. But they are of little concern to the anti-American demagogues”

We, too, have written about the horror of the French detention centres. And we, too, have pointed out that the West should look around and see more clearly who the real enemy is.

We are not saying that no American policy or American politician, should ever be criticized. We are, however, saying that the world is divided into those countries that, theoretically at least, believe in freedom and those who do not. We should be fighting for our freedom and trying to spread it to those countries whose people suffer from tyranny. Let us not forget that the courageous Hungarians received no help from the West.

The world is also bedevilled by transnational organizations, whose aim it is to undermine liberal democracies and impose a rule by unelected and unaccountable lawyers and bureaucrats. Their greatest enemy is the United States. We, British and Europeans, should be lining up with the latter.

“The real strength of republics must be measured by the courage to fight for them. On this side of the Atlantic, this strength, once again, is lacking.”

Professor Roucaute is talking of Kantian republics, which European countries ought to belong to and ought to fight for.

COMMENT THREAD

Democracy or stability?

I have to admit that I am struggling with this blog, between offering a balanced spread of stories on EU and related issues in general, and the need to pursue more focused coverage of the defence/foreign policies that we have been following.

Looking at the problem in the round, however, I am coming to the conclusion that we are close to the end game in the battle over European integration, with the "colleagues" perilously close to winning the match, without anyone even realising it. In this particular post, therefore, I want to address this issue and seek the views of our readers on matters which will become apparent through this piece.

Returning to this issue, in terms of my rather bald statement that we are entering the "end game", readers may rightly feel it contradicts earlier assessments published on this blog. Variously, we have argued that the European Union has reached the limits of integration and – with the failure of the constitution - politically, the construct is dying on its feet. It is only a matter of time, we have suggested, before the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

That, actually, still probably remains the case. History is littered with the wreckage of grandiose political constructs, but there is nothing to say that that the collapse of the EU will come soon or suddenly. More crucially, in the time available to it, it continues to grow and expand its powers, as does its capacity to cause enormous harm, and damage to UK interests.

Taking that on board, one has to understand that there are two separate models of European integration at work, each with their own advocates, their own power bases and their own agendas. As they interact with each other, we see a confusing interplay of events, which is difficult to interpret and, at any one stage, can attract different conclusions.

Cutting to the chase, though, the two different models can usefully be described – if approximately – by the horrendous labels of "neo-functionalism" and "intergovernmentalism". Both have as their end point the political integration of Europe – effectively a United States of Europe - but each rely on different methodology and have as their end point fundamentally different structures and ideas as to the division of power.

The first of the two, the "neo-functional" model, embodies the "Monnet method" approach, relying on step-by-step economic integration gradually to ensnare the nation states by the classic process of engrenage, thereby bringing them into the maw of a single economic entity that then assumes a political dimensions, emerging as the government of Europe. Crucially, at the heart of this construct is the Commission, comprised of appointed technocrats ruling as benign Platonic guardians, protecting the interests of all the peoples of Europe.

The second, "intergovernmental" model differs in that crucial respect in that, while the objectives are exactly the same, the ruling body is a cabal made up from the leaders of the member states. This, in the current institutional structure of the European Union is the European Council, which sees itself as the heir to the mantle of the "government of Europe" and would prefer to treat the Commission as its civil service, subordinate to it in all material respects.

This is what so few people understand about the European Union – that there are two competing models. There are two separate institutions which aspire to the Crown. They are not complementary parts of the whole, but rivals, competitors which – unseen and unrecognised by most of the world – are fighting out a deadly battle for dominance.

What so few people also understand is that the failure of the constitution represented a massive defeat for "neo-functionalism" and, by default, a victory for "intergovernmentalism", the nature of which is only beginning to become apparent. What it did not represent was a defeat for European integration, which proceeds apace.

To understand this, one has to appreciate that we have been here before. It was in 1952 that a European constitution was formally proposed as the framework for a European Political Community (EPC) which, in turn, was to provide the political structure for a European Defence Community employing its own European Army.

If nothing else, this reminds us that the core ambition of the integrationalists was always to develop what is now called a "European defence identity", under a broader political umbrella. That had as its main aim the projection of a European common foreign policy and through that the re-creation of a new European empire in its own right. This remains the core ambition – the rest is detail, a means to that end.

That the EPC was rejected by the French Assembly in 1954 was a major defeat for Monnet and his supporters, which led to a change of tactics and a reversion to the step-by-step "neo-functionalist" approach which had been pioneered in the European Coal and Steel Community. In effect, by going for the EPC, Monnet over-reached himself and the subsequent Treaty of Rome was a more cautious return to the original plan.

While the overall effect of the rejection of the EPC, therefore, was to delay the timetable, it did nothing to sate the appetites of the integrationalists, whose plan re-emerged in the run-up to the Maastricht Treaty when the hope was that the then Community would emerge as a full-blown European Union, complete with a foreign and defence policy along the lines envisaged back in 1952.

However, the member states were not yet (or at all) willing to surrender that amount of power to the Commission and what emerged was an unholy compromise of a three-part treaty comprising three "pillars", the first constructed on the "neo-functionalist" model and the other two – foreign policy and "security", and justice and home affairs – on intergovernmental lines.

Ever since Maastricht, the Commission and its allies have been seeking to demolish this structure and bring all the components into a unified whole, increase their control of the elements. This process is known in Community jargon as "collapsing the pillars". That was what the constitution was really all about. That the Commission and its allies failed is now history, but that has not deterred them trying to salvage their plans. They will continue to do that – and have so far failed - because that is what they must. Their very survival depends on it.

Nevertheless, that has not stopped many commentators – ourselves included in the earlier stages before the process became clearer – claiming that the "European Union" was attempting (and in some cases succeeding) to implement the constitution, without ratification. But, as we tried to point out in an earlier post, that is not what is actually happening.

The trouble is, of course, that the two institutions, the Commission and the European Council, are variously described in short-hand terms, as "Brussels" or the European Union, the latter often as "European Union leaders", which obscures the nature of the battle going on, and fatally undermines attempts better to understand the dynamics of integration.

What is actually happening, though, is something very different. The "intergovernmental" cabal in the European Union are flexing their muscles, introducing elements which were in the constitution – and some which predated it – but in many ways freezing out the Commission and keeping the power within the ambit of the European Council and participating member state leaders.

In this sense, within the EU, all the prime ministers and heads of state (that participate in EU affairs) have two separate and distinct roles. In one, they act in their familiar domestic capacities but, as members of the European Council, they are in effect cabinet members of the putative government of Europe. And it is there that many of the decisions concerning the high-level issues of defence and foreign affairs are made, to be implemented by the self-same "cabinet members" using their own domestic resources.

This does make the process of integration very difficult to understand. The popular perception is of "Brussels" forcing unwilling member states to do its bidding, whereas in the sphere of "high politics" it is the "double-hatted" cabinet members of the European Council using the resources of their own countries in the service of European integration and the projection of European Union power. In the UK, therefore, we may have a prime minister in Blair but, as a member of the European Council, he has a higher loyalty to a different, superior government.

Now, in respect of the UK, the understanding is doubly complicated by the perception that Blair serves two masters, the European Union and the United States in the persona of George W. Bush. In fact, in the light of the Iraqi adventure, probably more people see Blair as Bush's "poodle" than as a servant of the European Council.

Here, though, the perception is almost certainly wrong, not least because Blair – apart from the then perceived domestic advantages of joining in the second Gulf War – has continued a traditional foreign office line. This holds that a close association with the US somehow strengthens the UK's influence in the European Union. Although this strategy has spectacularly backfired on this occasion, that is the perversity of the Iraqi adventure.

When it comes to dealing with the current counterinsurgency in Iraq, however, the equation has changed in an important respect. Whatever enthusiasm Blair may have had originally has evaporated. Although he is maintaining troops in southern Iraq, it is clear that this is a token presence which is performing very little useful service in the prosecution of Bush's "war on terror". In effect, Blair is paying lip-service to the US-led coalition, while looking for the first available opportunity to make a dignified exit.

Whatever the words, this is evident from the facts on the ground. The prosecution of the campaign in Iraq requires new types of equipment, different force structures and tactics, all of which require huge expense. The US is making this investment but Blair is simply unwilling to commit anything of what is needed.

This is because such resources as he has available are already committed to the European defence identity and, in particular, to equipping the British component of the European Rapid Reaction Force. And, so different are the equipment, force structures and tactics being devised for the ERRF that they will be useless for dealing with anything else but the nebulous "peacekeeping" tasks for which the force is designated.

The eventual retreat from Iraq by the British, therefore, will also mark a retreat from the US-led coalition and a move more fully into the "intergovernmental" structure of the European Union, where Blair's (or his successor's) foreign and defence policy will be increasingly defined by his colleagues in the European Council "cabinet".

At this point, with or without the EU constitution, the UK will be almost completely absorbed into the political European Union, which will be acting as a "superstate" in all but name. And so entrenched will be the systems and so integrated will be our armed forces and other structures that extraction will be virtually impossible.

Therein lies the point of this post. Although we have referred to Bush's "war on terror", the broader campaign is to achieve the spread of democracy – which is the ultimate aim of the occupation of Iraq. The EU, on the other hand, it committed to a policy of "stability". It is not particularly interested in democracy. It is not a democracy itself, so why should it care?

Thus, we have a choice between "democracy" and "stability", the choice between supporting – and occasionally leading – campaigns and initiatives alongside the United States and its allies, or supporting the foreign policy initiatives of the European Union and its allies. And, as it stands, we are sliding towards the latter, in a contest between two incompatible world visions.

If we are to reverse this, the litmus test is actually Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. While the cries are for a rushed withdrawal of troops – as soon as can be arranged – the truth is that installing democracy in Iraq is a long-term task which will require a commitment for decades rather than years. As importantly, it requires massive investment and all that goes with it to conduct an effective counter-insurgency campaign, rather than the tokenism in which we are currently engaged.

By that measure, as I see it, one of the most crucial issues of the day – and the means by which further political integration into the European Union can be avoided – is to pursue a campaign for a more active, effective and longer-term engagement in Iraq, staying there until we have a fully-functioning, liberal democracy. This is not only in the interests of democracy, but in the interests of the United Kingdom itself. Therefore, Iraq, in my view, is not only the crucible of a new democracy, it could also be the salvation of the UK as an independent, democratic nation. On the other hand, a retreat from Iraq is a de facto retreat into "Europe".

So convinced am I of that thesis that I am moving – with my colleague – towards focusing this blog more towards to "high politics" end of the spectrum, with more analytical and discursive posts, and fewer routine news items on EU and general politics. It is that on which readers comments would be welcome.

COMMENT THREAD

Denial is not an option

Let no one be under the illusion that our recent focus on the headline issue of the deaths of British soldiers arising from inadequate equipment is simply about what my colleague calls "toys".

The central and substantive issues, which are beginning to emerge from our forum discussion, are the very nature of our armed forces, what they should be doing and how they should be structured and equipped – all in the context the pursuit of our national interest.

From this stems the thesis – which we have explored and will continue to explore in future posts – that we are at a decision point, where we must chose between two divergent foreign policy objectives.

On the one hand, there is the prosecution of the "war on terror" in Iraq and elsewhere - the "long war" as Bush puts it - in alliance with the United States and like-minded nations, within or without a Nato operational framework. On the other, there is the development of the capability to act independently from the United States, under the political umbrella of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), again within or without a Nato operational framework, dedicated to a more traditional – if somewhat ill-defined – "peacekeeping" role.

The problem we have in addressing this choice is that the options are rarely stated clearly and, in terms of the European agenda, often denied. Many thus believe there is no choice to be made and we can continue as we are.

We must thank, therefore, the German MEP, Karl von Wogau who has set out the European defence agenda in a remarkably concise form and, this week, presented it to the European Union parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence – of which he is chairman.

The report, on the implementation of the European Security Strategy in the context of the ESDP represents, effectively, the near-final shape of a European Union defence policy.

Furthermore, its champion, von Wogau, is no ordinary MEP. He is a respected member of the German political establishment, a senior and active member of the EPP – the political group to which the Conservatives still belong – and an arch "federalist" who is at the leading edge of integrationalist thinking. His agenda very much represents the thinking and ambitions of the hard core supporters of European integration.

Insofar as it is possible to sum up the document briefly, its main sections are contained in paragraphs 29 & 30, which are worth reproducing. Intended as an expression of the view of the EU parliament, it:

29. Considers that the EU is in the process of building a Defence and Security Union covering external security as well as various aspects of internal security and natural disaster management with the following elements:

(a) the commitment of the Member States to be able to:

- deploy 60 000 soldiers within 60 days and sustain them for one year for
peacekeeping and peacemaking operations, and to build up 13 battle groups deployable at short notice;
- develop capabilities for civilian crisis management in the areas of police operations, the rule of law, civilian administration and civil protection;

(b) a European structure of command consisting of a Political and Security Committee, a Military Committee, a Military Staff and a Civilian and Military Cell with an Operations Centre;
(c) the European Gendarmerie Force;
(d) the European Defence Agency;
(e) Europol and the European arrest warrant;
(f) common rules for arms procurement and arms exports;
(g) European security research within the framework of the 7th Research Programme;

30. Is of the opinion that the Defence and Security Union should be completed by the inclusion therein of the following elements:

(a) a common system of satellite and airborne intelligence and common telecommunications standards, to be at the disposal of the military, the police and the disaster management services;
(b) the establishment of a common market in the field of defence;
(c) a European budget covering not only the civil but also the military aspects of security;
(d) an EU minister responsible for foreign affairs, assisted by a Deputy in charge of security and defence policy and a Council of Ministers for defence;
(e) a mutual assistance clause;
(f) adequate parliamentary scrutiny by the Parliaments of the Member States and the European Parliament.

That, to all intents and purposes, equips the European Union, in its own name, to act as an autonomous military power, all in the context of threats defined by the European Security Strategy. These include terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, state failure and organised crime, but also take into account the increasing world-wide competition for sources of energy, as well as natural disasters and the security of the Union's external borders.

To that effect, von Wogau declares that:

…the task of the European Foreign and Security Policy is to protect the citizens of the Union from those threats, defend the justified interests of the Union and promote the objectives of the Charter of the United Nations.

Like it or not, what von Wogau proposes is coming closer to the reality by the day. The European Rapid Reaction Force, the 2010 "Headline Goals", the European Capabilities Action Plan, the planning cell and many of the other components of his "Defence and Security Union" are not theoretical.

For the UK, though, this creates a huge problem. The EU's vision of how to deal with the threats it identifies is so different from the US vision that - in terms of defence structures, resources, equipment and the rest - the two are completely incompatible.

To pursue both would effectively require of the UK to two completely different armed forces, structured and equipped in entirely different ways. The option of maintaining single, all-purpose armed forces, able to pursue both – or able to switch between them – is simply not realistic.

Yet this is precisely what our government is attempting to do and, as we have so many times before remarked, this is Blair's great error. For as long as he fails to recognise the need for the choice to be made, and act accordingly, he will continue to putting the lives of our troops at risk – as we believe is happening in Iraq and could well happen in Afghanistan – while exposing us and our allies to the real possibility of mission failure.

But, with the von Wogau report, at least the issues are out in the open. Now we must respond. Denial is not an option.

COMMENT THREAD

EU wags a finger

The EU is rather proud of the fact that at its last Council it still refused to give money in aid to the Palestinian Authority because of Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to existence or to give up its terrorist attacks (some of which backfire quite literally, as the developing story of the murdered family on the Gaza beach shows).
Instead, the European Council decided to use NGOs for humanitarian purposes. This can be interpreted various ways. On the one hand, assuming the decision is put into effect, this ought to stop people, such as former President Carter (arguably the most unsuccessful incumbent of the twentieth century), complaining that the embargo put on Hamas is keeping money away from schools n’hospitals.

Then again, money seem to be available for arms, ammunition and explosives but that is not something the likes of President Carter want to think about. (We must admit that there has been a little less support for Hamas from the great and the good since they have displayed their civic spirit by fighting their rivals Fatah.)

On the other hand, there is the point that by paying for various social and humanitarian projects in Gaza, the West and the European Union, in particular makes it possible for Hamas to use the money they manage to collect otherwise for … well ….paying their civil servants, which is a large proportion of the population, their various military groups, and, presumably, buying in yet more ammunition to aim at either Israel or Fatah (or their own people, if needs be).

In other words, there is no apparent need for Hamas to develop into a real government that takes responsibility for its people and their welfare in whatever shape or form.

Arab banks have not been lending money to the organization, partly because they do not wish to incur the wrath of the Americans but, more importantly, because they do not trust Hamas either. (I don’t suppose they trust Fatah, given the fiscal record of the late unlamented Chairman Arafat and of his friends and relations.)

Some money has been collected by various Hamas ministers and spokesmen, then smuggled through the border from Egypt. Israel is not happy about it, since it has shrewd suspicion about the use that money will be put to.

Come to think of it, the EU is not happy either, and it is manning the crossing at Rafah. As the Washington Times reports:

“European monitors who have overseen the first Palestinian-controlled border terminal for the past seven months warn of unspecified "consequences" if Hamas officials don't stop smuggling millions of dollars into the territory.

Yesterday, the Gaza Strip's main international gateway was closed after the European monitors said an Israeli security alert prevented them from manning the crossing, officials said.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas said it suspected the Rafah crossing with Egypt was closed to send a message to its government to stop carrying cash by hand into Gaza to sidestep a Western aid embargo. The monitors brushed aside the accusation.”

Well, as they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice. And the money is not incosiderable, though nowhere near what Hamas says it needs to run Gaza and its people, most of whom are employed by the Authority.

“The Islamic militants paid government employees this week for the first time in almost three months after Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar carried $20 million across the border. Mr. Zahar's refusal to declare the cash at the Rafah terminal has alarmed Israel and triggered a protest by the European delegation.”

In fact, it was the Egyptian authorities who notified the EU border official about Mr Zahar’s interesting luggage. “But when Mr. Zahar reached the Palestinian side, the foreign minister claimed his diplomatic status granted him immunity from being searched.”

“Mr. Zahar, who later deposited the $20 million in the Palestinian treasury, was defiant. In an interview with a reporter from Israeli Channel 2, he said the Palestinians had a right to smuggle money into Gaza given the international "siege" of the territory.

The EU monitoring spokesman said that the team was concerned by that statement and was awaiting a clarification from Mr. Erekat.

Mr. Erekat said the Palestinian president, who has taken control of the Gaza crossing by deploying his presidential guard, wants to do whatever is necessary to ensure the European monitors remain at the border.”

The Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was named by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to oversee the terminal.

Julio De La Guardia, the spokesman for the EU monitors has pointed out that this is not an isolated incident. “Three weeks ago, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri smuggled $807,000 in euros across the border in a money belt.”

The money comes from various Middle Eastern countries, possibly governments, possibly individuals. There is not much the European Union can do except demanding that international standards of transparency be kept to and periodically closing the crossing, producing pictures of miserable looking Palestinians who are stuck at Rafah.

COMMENT THREAD

Barbarossa Day

Today is the 65th anniversary of what turned out to be the turning point of the Second World War: the German invasion of the Soviet Union, carried out despite the vows of eternal friendship of the 1939 Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact. It was the start of that monumental battle between the two most monstrous regimes of European history.

Curiously enough, Stalin, who had never trusted anybody in his political career (and probably not before that, either) seems to have trusted Hitler. There are numerous accounts of his refusal to believe the news of the Nazi attack as it was being brought to him. He had, previously, refused to believe warnings sent to him by the British government and his own agents in the West that Hitler was planning an attack and probably in June.

There are various accounts of what happened immediately in the Soviet government and the top echelons of the party but, it seems, that panic set in and there was an immediate decampment from Moscow. Stalin’s greatest fear, shown in his refusal to set up a home guard as the capital itself became endangered during the autumn, was that people might turn against him.

This was not completely wrong. The people of Russia and other states of the Soviet Union are no less patriotic than anyone else but they had suffered considerably more from their own government than others. The propaganda picture of the people of Riga welcoming German invaders does not tell a complete lie. The German troops were welcomed at first in the Baltic states, in Byelorussia (now Belarus), in the Ukraine and even Russia itself.

We have to remember that it is not accurate to say that Germany invaded Russia in June 1941. They did not get to Russia itself for a number of weeks, despite the fact that the troops rolled forward unchecked, the air force had been destroyed and the trains that ought to have been bringing troops to the west were fully occupied carrying prisoners from the newly conquered countries to the east.

When the German troops crossed the border they were crossing from western to eastern Poland, both of which had been devastated by the two separate invaders. They then moved into the Baltic states who had lost around a third of their population into the Soviet gulags, moved on the Byelorussia and the Ukraine, both of which had suffered unspeakably from collectivization and the purges of the late thirties.

The Germans were seen as liberators and their drive to round up and murder the Jewish population was not always unpopular. Though many people, as in other countries, tried to help their Jewish neighbours and friends, many others saw the destruction of the Jewry as a just punishment for the fact that the Communist power, as they thought, had been imposed largely by Jews. Alas, there are too many people in that part of the world who still think that way.

While many in the higher echelons of the German army felt that they should capitalize on these feelings, disband the collective farms and install autonomous local governments, the Nazi ideology prevailed. The Slavs were also described as untermensch and treated accordingly. The horrors of the Nazi occupation of large chunks of the Soviet Union have been described by many.

Stalin’s own reaction was interesting. He first broadcast to the people on July 4. My mother, who was a teenager in Moscow at the time, has told me that his appeal to “brothers and sisters” caused panic. Things were far worse, the Russians reasoned, than anyone had told them if the old tyrant saw them as his brothers and sisters.

This is not the place to describe the subsequent developments of the war on the eastern front but a few aspects might be recalled, as we are often told that the EU is a direct and necessary reaction to the evil nationalism of, well, somebody called the Nazis.

We need to remember Stalin’s refusal to sign the Geneva convention and refusing to see Soviet PoWs as nothing more than traitors. All offers to help them by the Red Cross and the British government were refused. The severe maltreatment by the Germans of the Soviet prisoners cannot be excused but neither can Stalin’s own refusal to help.

We need to remember the lines of Smersh (Smert’ Shpionam – Death to Spies) machine gunners who stood behind the Soviet troops, mowing down those who tried to retreat from the German onslaught.

And we must recall that it was Stalin’s appeal to pure patriotism that made the Russians and many others fight on against all odds and through unimaginable losses until the victory of 1945.

We must also recall the nationalism of many other countries who fought the Nazis and its suppression by the Soviet “liberators”. The story of the doomed Warsaw uprising is just one of several one could recite.

Another 40 years elapsed before the second tyranny was overthrown.

COMMENT THREAD

"Mobility and protection"

For an update on this post, see here.

Continuing with our theme of how Blair is killing our soldiers, with this follow up, and this, we have found some remarkable MoD photographs of the despatch from Belfast of the "Snatch" Land Rovers and their arrival in Umm Qasar on October 2003 (double-click to enlarge), with the original MoD captions:

Dateline 11 September 2003: A row of armoured Land Rovers line up in preparation to board a merchant vessel in Belfast Harbour, on the first leg of their journey to Iraq. Bound for Iraq 178 armoured Land Rovers shall be leaving Belfast bound for Iraq. The Land Rovers, all drawn from reserve stock or currently surplus to requirement in Northern Ireland, will give much needed and potentially life-saving protection to army patrols in southern Iraq.

Dateline 4 October 2003: 180 armoured Land Rovers arrive at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasar. The wagons were delivered on Dart 10, a chartered roll-on roll-off ship. British peacekeeping troops will use the new batch of armoured Land Rovers alongside the dozens of civilian all-terrain vehicles already in use. Some of the vehicles await collection after being offloaded from the Dart 10 ship.

With a daub of sand-coloured paint, the vehicles were soon put into use patrolling the streets of Basra and in other British occupied areas in what was to become known as "occupation-lite". But, if the Brits thought they knew counterinsurgency better, this year the light-touch was seen to go badly wrong as violence erupted in the streets and the militias ran riot. But, as lightly-armoured Land Rovers proved to be inadequate for the task, the MoD was not to be moved, hence:

Dateline 12 June 2006: Lord Drayson. My Lords, I do not accept that Snatch Land Rovers are not appropriate for the role. We must recognise the difference between protection and survivability. It is important that we have the trade-offs that we need for mobility. The Snatch Land Rover provides us with the mobility and level of protection that we need.

Yet, having dumped second-hand and distinctly battered "reserve stock" vehicles, and those "currently surplus to requirement in Northern Ireland" into the middle of a shooting war in Iraq, nothing was too much for our gallant lads who were set to joint the European Rapid Reaction Force. For them, the very best in Italian-built chic:

Dateline 6 November 2003: Lord Bach. We are pleased to announce that the Ministry of Defence has today signed a contract worth £166 million (including VAT) with Alvis Vickers Ltd, for the manufacture of the Future Command and Liaison Vehicle (FCLV).

The FCLV will perform the command and liaison role and replace the ageing and disparate vehicle fleet within the manoeuvre support brigades comprising elements of the 430 Series, Saxon, Land Rover and Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) fleets. From its planned in-service date of 2006, the FCLV will provide levels of crew protection and mobility commensurate with their roles in an increasingly extended ground manoeuvre area. It will offer protection against small arms, blast and anti-personnel mines.

There we have it – at £413,000 apiece, these are the Rolls-Royce of military SUVs, the very latest in fashion accessories for the image-conscious commander. Meanwhile, the peace-loving Swedes had different ideas:

Dateline 19 May 2005: South Africa's leading armoured and peacekeeping vehicle manufacturer BAE Systems Land Systems OMC has scored another export success with FMV, the Swedish Procurement Agency, confirming a production order for 102 specialist RG-32M patrol vehicles valued at close to ZAR 180 million.

At a mere £152,000 each, the Swedes are well-chuffed to have acquired the latest in mine-protected vehicles for their peacekeeping forces. The picture shows the vehicle being put through its paces by a Swedish motoring journalist, who declared himself "impressed". But such luxuries are not for our troops in Iraq. According to Lord Drayson, "The Snatch Land Rover provides us with the mobility and level of protection that we need."

COMMENT THREAD - JOINT POSTS

Be nice to the French, Gordie

You have to give it to little Gordie. Not even prime minister yet (if ever) and he is already making the "big decisions". And they don't get much bigger than deciding to renew Britain's "independent" nuclear deterrent.

That certainly has got the BBC nicely worked up, and the Guardian too, not least because the estimates of the cost vary from £10bn to £25bn, depending on what type of new missiles or submarines are chosen.

In fact, generally, Mr Brown was very robust about his future defence policy in his Mansion House speech last night, declaring that he would be, “Strong in defence in fighting terrorism, upholding Nato, supporting our armed forces at home and abroad, and retaining our independent nuclear deterrent." For all the world he sounded just like Liam Fox, complete with exactly the same commitment to Nato – thus, ostensibly kicking European defence integration into touch.

But, Brown's declaration will also renew the argument about whether the deterrent is truly independent, not least because the missiles will be made by the US – probably Lockheed Missiles and Systems - and we will be beholden to the US for the supply and then the ongoing maintenance.

As before though, we will be making the warheads – which gives us the notional indpendence, except for one very important difference. As we recorded in November last year, the last remaining military explosives factory in the UK is being closed down, and the production transferred to France.

Included in that transfer is the vital and very special technology for making the conventional explosives which are required to trigger a nuclear bomb, without which we will have no deterrent at all.

If Mr Brown wants his "independent" nuclear deterrent, therefore, he had better not be too robust about his support for Nato. Au contraire, he will need to be very, very nice to the French - or he won't get his bombs. I wonder if anyone has bothered to tell him this?

COMMENT THREAD

But we are not like those nasty Americans

It is difficult to follow events in Comoros and there is no particular surprise that the Times labels its time chart as: Comoros chaos. The tiny country has been independent for 30 years and during that time it has had 19 coups or attempted coups (though it is frequently hard to know the difference).

Colonel Bob Denard, a French mercenary whose real name is Gilbert Bourgeaud, who gained a fearsome reputation in the sixties and seventies in Belgian Congo, North Yemen, Biafra and Angola, was involved in four of the most significant ones. (Give the man his due: nothing if not persistent.)

Colonel Denard is now 77 and has Alzheimer’s. He and 26 other mercenaries were on trial in France for their role in the coup of 1995 (there was at least one other since then, possibly more).

According to the Times:

“Denard led 30 mercenaries who landed on the Indian Ocean islands in rubber dinghies on September 27, 1995, and captured M Djohar in his palace.

A week later M Chirac sent a 600-man force that put down the putsch but did not restore M Djohar to power.”

Indeed not, as it seems M Chirac was well aware of the coup that was going to happen and, according to the court’s ruling:

““It is clear that the French secret services knew of the plan for a coup d’état conceived by Robert Denard, both its preparation and execution,” the court said.

“It is also evident that at the very least they did nothing to hinder it and that they therefore allowed it to reach its conclusion. As a consequence, that means political leaders must also have wanted it.””

The plotters were given suspended sentences because of the decision that they were acting, if not under the orders, at least with the full cognizance of some parts of the French government. It is unlikely that l’escroc Chirac will ever be tried for his part in this or any other coup in Africa.

Many discussions go on about the best way of helping Africa and its unfortunate population. As our readers know, this blog believes that the handing out of aid to corrupt and bloodthirsty kleptocracies, as advocated by numerous NGOs and rock stars, is not only not the solution; it is actually a very big part of the problem.

There is another part of the problem and the solution to that seems as far away as ever: it is the activity of the French government and security services. Until they are somehow neutralized, many parts of Africa will remain subject to continuous violent upheavals.

COMMENT THREAD

Another "surprise" from the Court of Auditors

Another month another report from the Court of Auditors, this time about the EU funds going to the members of the next wave of probable EU enlargement: Romania and Bulgaria.

Our readers will recall that the Commission hummed and haed about those two countries and decided that their legal, fiscal and political structures were not precisely of the transparency and honesty that the EU allegedly requires.

We have no idea what the Romanian and Bulgarian governments think about transparency and honesty in the legal, fiscal and political structures of the EU but we do know what the Court of Auditors thinks about transparency and honesty in the projects funded by the PHARE Programme.

As EUObserver sums up:

“Phare funds are channelled by the European Commission to candidate states in order to prepare their administrations for accession, as well as to boost economic competitiveness.But a large part of the cash ends up in a black hole, the court found in an audit, which covers projects initiated from 2000-2004, involving €511 million of Phare cash for Bulgaria and €1.4 billion for Romania.

"At the time of the audit for over half of the investment projects audited the assets were not, or were only partially, being used for the intended purpose," said Mr Engwirda."Outputs and results lagged considerably behind schedule, sometimes by up to two years," he added.

The court said in a statement that it "criticises" the commission for its "overall management of investment projects."”

I wouldn’t call lagging behind schedule in various projects by up to two years particularly unusual or catastrophic. Have these people not heard of Wembley Stadium?

Do they not know that most projects in Communist and post-Communist countries, if funded and supervised by the state in any shape or form, tend to lag by considerably more than that?

There are some entertaining details, also quoted by EUObserver. Some of them, to do with the jeeps favoured by the Bulgarian border patrol will particularly interest my colleague:

“The report lists a number of non-functioning, half-finished and in some cases apparently useless investments, with Mr Engwirda himself highlighting a €3.1 million bridge linking Romania and Moldova completed in December 2004 with no access road on the Moldovan side.

The Moldovan road has meanwhile been finalised, commission officials noted.

The Bulgarian public prosecutor's office was granted a €1.8 million computer system, but 37 work stations were not used but put in a store room instead, while Bulgarian border police are seemingly not very keen to use EU-funded four wheel-drive jeeps."

The usual fleet of the [border police] is a Russian-built car, costing one third of the price of the car delivered under Phare and with cheaper spare parts," said the report.

A Romanian tourism development area was found to contain "an eyesore, an empty, degraded Olympic-size swimming pool," while a newly-built asylum centre was reported to have an occupancy rate of 7.6 percent.”

Of course, one could argue that the objectives of the PHARE Programme as somewhat skewed but that is not the purpose of the Report:

“15. The overall objective of the Phare programme is to help candidate countries prepare for EU-membership. This involves investments with the aim of strengthening:

(a) the regulatory infrastructure needed to ensure compliance with the acquis communautaire

(b) Economic and Social Cohesion (ESC) through measures similar to those supported in Member States through the Structural Funds, including addressing the effects of restructuring in important sectors of the economy.”

If we were really concerned with the welfare of those two countries (for selfish if no other reasons) we might start by asking ourselves whether “preparing” them for the entirely inappropriate and burdensome acquis communautaire is quite the right way of going about matters. But we are not concerned with anything as silly as that. We are convinced that there is only one way forward for the post-Communist countries in Europe and that is membership of the European Union.

Having decided thus and having allocated quite large amounts of money for the promotion of our ideas, we are faced with our old friend, unaccountability. Neither at the EU nor at the national end is there any kind of supervision of funds. Needless to say, the discipline of the market does not apply.

Every now and then the Court of Auditors produces a report, which, if not precisely ignored, is not taken seriously enough to be acted on.

The Commission does reply each time but each time somebody else is at fault.

“IV. Some of the investment projects audited were indeed not in place or operational at the date of the auditors’ missions. The principal causes of the delays and shortcomings in the implementation and completion of the respective projects were indeed the lack of the necessary administrative capacity of the national authorities on the one hand and on the other hand the delay in making available the required co-financing and other national resources.

However, efforts have been made in order to develop the level of the administrative capacity to ensure effective implementation and completion of the investment projects, within the time limits set in the programming documents.

Equally, continued efforts are being made in order to raise the awareness of all actors involved (national authorities, local authorities) that at the time of programming, further funds and human resources must be earmarked and made available to ensure the proper management and sustainability of the investment projects, after they are completed and put into operation.”

But not fiscal discipline or accountability for the money spent. Other problems are acknowledged but they have all been dealt with according to the Commission response.

“VII.
First indent - The implementation of Phare programmes has been affected by the weakness in the administrative capacity of Romania and Bulgaria in many areas, generating delays in the implementation of some projects. Nonetheless, the Commission would like to stress that since the programming year 2000, the administrative capacity of the Bulgarian and Romanian authorities has improved, although not to the extent desired, and in the framework of the multi-annual programme 2004-2006, specific attention has been given to this issue. In addition, a comprehensive overview of the Phare staff dedicated to the projects by Implementing Agencies has been required and presented to the Joint Monitoring Committees in 2005 and taken into account in the programme 2005. In 2006, a specific statement on administrative capacity has been required with each project fiche.

Second indent - Rules and practices regarding co-financing for Phare have been enhanced in the last years. Parallel co-financing has been discouraged in favour of joint co-financing and the reporting requirements for co-financing have been significantly improved as well.

Third indent - The catalytic effect of Phare money in activities led by international financial institutions has been assessed as far as possible. This also helps to avoid overlap with existing projects financed from sources other than Phare.”

Until the next report.

COMMENT THREAD

Canaries down the mine

For an update on this post, see here.

According to the Rt Hon Adam Ingram MP, minister of state for defence, "we take all measures possible to ensure the safety and security of our troops deployed in Iraq". This is in response to an MP who had passed on a constituent's letter (a former serving soldier) expressing concern about "the safety of so-called armoured Land Rovers".

On the face of it, Ingram's statement is an out-and-out lie, except that in the weasel words that flow so easily from the civil service, to be signed off by their ministers, there is an important qualifier, in the use of the word "possible".

To the ordinary person, that word might encompass every measure known to man, certainly anything technically feasible, but in the dark halls of Whitehall, it would also include the issue of "affordability". Straight out of "Yes Minister", you can almost hear their honeyed words: "There is nothing allocated in the budget, Minister, so acquiring enhanced protection for our troops is not possible".

From there it is an easy step to write to the public, grieving relatives, worried parents, MPs and the rest, telling them: "…we take all measures possible". In strict terms, it is not a lie – but then it is not the truth either.

However, as we research this issue more deeply, inevitably the labyrinthine complexity emerges and what seems at first sight a straightforward black-and-white question of providing better armoured vehicles for our troops merges into complicated arguments about tactics, procedures, training and capabilities.

It is in this grey area that ministers are able to operate, obfuscating the issues and confusing readers of their letters, in which manner does Ingram soothingly declare, "mitigation measures are not just about equipment – all our forces undergo a comprehensive package of pre-deployment training to ensure that they are as prepared as possible for the specific operational environment they will encounter".

The sub-text, of course, is that it is not just about spending more money. In fact, implies the minister, our superb training, etc., etc., will prevail. Carefully does he avoid telling us, however, how any amount of training will protect a soldier in a lightly armoured vehicle from the blast of a concealed IED, triggered by an unseen operator.

It is here, therefore, that we pick up on the emerging story, broached in our two previous posts, here and here, which – on the basis of what we have so far found out - seem to show up the British at their very best and their very, very worst.

By way of background, we need to explore what is currently happening in the US-occupied areas of Iraq, where the scourge of the IED accounts for a full 68 percent of the battle casualties. To counter this threat, the Americans have been, since 2004 and now in increasing numbers, deploying new equipment, the Buffalo mine clearance vehicle (right) and the Cougar HEV/JERRV series (below left), together with the RG-31 series.

Bear with me briefly on the technicalities, but the basic strategy is, acting as a team, these vehicles are sent out onto the roads of Iraq to hunt out mines and IEDs and to destroy them. Then, as a final stage before the any particular road is cleared to allow ordinary patrols down them, the Cougar travels down it in a process known as "route proving" – on the basis that, if there is anything there, the mine protected vehicle will take the hit and the crew will survive.

Now, the thing is that this technique seems to have been pioneered not by the Americans but by the British in Bosnia, as early as 1999-2000. This is why the Mambas were purchased. But, even more intriguingly, it was there that the greater threat of the "penetrator mines" emerged, which led the development of British-funded counter-measures and the order of eight Cougar mine protected vehicles, in what is known as the Tempest project.

This, incidentally was in December 2001, in what appears to be the very first order for such vehicles, more than three years before the US forces placed their orders. Furthermore, the vehicles were upgraded to protect against the new mine threat. In other words, in a pioneering piece of research and development, we emerged with world-beating techniques and equipment, years before our more technically advanced cousins.

However, while the Americans have so far bought 122 Cougars - and have over a thousand more on order - we bought eight. I do not know yet whether they were deployed in Bosnia, but they do appear to have been sent to the Gulf, although I can find absolutely no reports of their having been used. According to one report, however, the vehicles are back in the UK being refurbished, prior to their despatch to Afghanistan where, it is claimed, the mine hazard is greater.

At a point, therefore, when the IED threat in the British occupied sector of Iraq is probably at its highest, the life-saving equipment pioneered by the British has been withdrawn, while the Americans are introducing it en masse, adopting precisely the tactics which our own Royal Engineers developed. You really could not make this up.

In the meantime, I have been sent an extract from the Regimental Journal of the King's Royal Hussars, which gives a graphic account of their recent deployment to Iraq. From this emerges that the current tactics adopted – unwittingly – are brutal and primitive. Quite simply, the troops are told to patrol their areas in lightly armoured Land Rovers until one or more of them are blown up. Then the Land Rovers are withdrawn and replaced by Warriors and Challenger tanks, until it is deemed safe to resume patrolling in Land Rovers again.

In effect – although they do so uncomplainingly – our soldiers are being used a "canaries down the mine" in a tactic redolent of the Red Army, in which punishment battalions were sent into minefields to clear the way for the assault troops.

From a more strategic point of view, this means that the Army can no longer function effectively. While Warriors and Challengers do provide additional protection, as the King's Royal Hussars report testified, their use "caused a major change in the way the Squadron operated, limiting the distances we could cover and the routes we could use." At one point, movement in "Snatch" Land Rovers was "deemed too dangerous" in Al-Amarah and helicopters had to be used to lift fully crewed Land Rovers out to the Iranian border where the Squadron was responsible for conducting patrols.

Returning, therefore, to Mr Ingram's claim that "we take all measures possible to ensure the safety and security of our troops deployed in Iraq", clearly this is not the case. The equipment and techniques do exist and, since the US forces introduced them, their casualty rate from IEDs has halved.

The problem is that Mr Ingram does not have the money. The government is happy to commit £14 billion to the FRES programme, and billions more on other equipment to provide our component of the European Rapid Reaction Force but that leaves nothing extra for the forces in Iraq. To spend a few million on new kit for them is simply not "possible".

COMMENT THREAD

On wings and a prayer

On hearing the news that the prime minister had decided to invest our money in a private fleet of jets for his personal use, I had half expected them to be Airbusses from Enron Airliners – in a gesture of solidarity with the "colleagues".

According to The Times, though, the bigger of the two – to be used for long-haul flights – in what our own Anoneumouse has dubbed "Sleazy Jet" airlines – will be a modified Boeing 737. That never struck me as a long-haul machine, but what do I know?

Anyhow, at over £12 million a year, this is a serious PR gaff, which will no doubt rebound on the prime minister. But - whether intentionally or not – it is also going seriously to dischuff the "colleagues". Tact it ain't – when the Enron Airliner situation seems to be spiralling out of control.

According to the Australian press, Blair might have been able to get a better deal if he had bought "European" as buyers seem to be bailing out of Airbus faster than the Wehrmacht over Crete.

Los Angeles-based International Lease Finance, the world's biggest aircraft leasing company, is threatening to pull its order for 10 of the A380s, worth $3 billion, while Qantas, which has ordered 12 of the "superjumbos" has despatched senior executive John Borghetti to investigate the delay. He is keeping his company's options open.

With Singapore Airlines threatening to sue for damages and ordering $US4.52 billion worth of aircraft from rival Boeing in preference to the A350, things could not look less rosy and a little help from Blair would, no doubt have been appreciated.

Hilariously, the airline builder's problems are even spilling over into the French Assembly, where prime minister Dominique de Villepin sparked uproar yesterday when he accused the Socialist leader of cowardice in a debate over the crisis.

Socialist party members stormed out and the session had to be suspended, to the strains of Socialist grandee, Henri Emmanuelli, shouting, "He's mad". Apparently, parliamentary stewards had to stand guard around de Villepin as Socialist politicians advanced towards him chanting "resign."

Meanwhile, Bush has arrived in Vienna for a summit with European Union leaders, who seem to be spoiling for a fight over Guantanamo prison camp, Iran, the Iraqi war, trade relations and anything else they can think of. At least, though, Bush has the one consolation. When he sets out to go back home, there will be a pristine Jumbo jet out on the tarmac, a Boeing 747, that can actually fly.

I hope he has the sense to wait until the door of Air Force One has closed before he puts two fingers up to the "colleagues".

COMMENT THREAD

Defence – where the debate should lie

It is just the way it stacks up. Liam Fox, the shadow secretary of state for defence gave a speech on the "Europeanisation of Defence" at the Centre for Policy Studies last night and, although it unbalances the blog somewhat – with rather a heavy concentration on defence issues recently – this is something which we cannot ignore.

The Tory Boy Blog got to it first with its own commentary and the view seems to be that it was "a thoughtful and well-balanced speech". For my own part, I have to disagree with the blog author. Much as I would very much like to see a coherent defence policy from the Conservatives, I found Fox's speech horribly superficial, demonstrating an almost complete lack of understanding of the core issues and strategic developments. As a result, it lacked clear (or any) substantive conclusions or direction.

The man starts well enough, pointing out that there are three distinct problems we must consider in relation to European defence co-operation: defence expenditure, foreign policy and democratic accountability.

The first, inevitably, is a given – in that our defence capabilities and therefore policy in general are inevitably determined by what we are prepared to pay, or are capable of paying. As to foreign policy, Fox rightly says, "Defence policy follows foreign policy...". From thereon, however, it is all downhill.

The problem is that Fox does not even begin to define our foreign policy interests, where they have a defence interface, which is probably why he ends up with a curiously flat speech, so lacking in substance.

Arguably, in the context of limited funding, the central issue is that we are pursuing two fundamentally incompatible defence strategies in pursuit of two entirely different foreign policy objectives. The first is supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecuting the "war on terror". The second is the building up an air-portable expeditionary force, primarily to fulfil our commitment to the EU's European Rapid Reaction Force – although this force is "double hatted" and can be used for Nato tasks or with ad hoc multinational alliances.

Failing to make that distinction, Fox blathered on about the European Defence Agency, Nato co-operation and sundry other matters, but what he really did not address was that the shoe is already pinching badly. The problem is that force structures, equipment and tactics required for each of our two objectives are fundamentally different. Given our current defence budget – which Fox shows no inclination to increase – we simply cannot do both simultaneously and well.

This is coming over with increasing clarity from the situation in Iraq. As the experience of Viet Nam adequately demonstrates, once the flow of body bags reaches a certain level, deployment of troops on extended foreign campaigns becomes politically unsustainable, even if the military objectives are achievable. Thus, the political need is for a heavy investment in force protection, to keep down casualties to a tolerable level.

Not only did Fox fail to address that issue, he failed also to acknowledge that the bulk of our procurement funds are already being devoted to fulfilling our commitment to the European/Nato Rapid Reaction Force, which means that the finance is not available properly to equip our forces in existing theatres.

Thus, his central argument that "Nato remains the cornerstone of our defence" is actually irrelevant or, at least, downstream. Both the EU and Nato are competing over the same strategic vision – air-mobile expeditionary forces, able to respond at short notice to crises but equipped only for short-term deployment.

Fox, it seems, want to argue that the force should be dedicated to Nato rather than the EU, but the current demand is for forces equipped and structured for the counter-insurgency role. In layman's terms, I suppose the difference is that, in expeditionary warfare, we move in to beat up the natives while, in counter-insurgency, we stay still and they beat us up. In the latter, the emphasis needs to be on heavy armour for force protection, with forces engaged in long-term action which might extend to decades. In this, the question of EU or Nato does not really arise. The more urgent question is whether we go for "counter-insurgency" or an "expeditionary force". Only if we chose the latter does the EU-Nato issue really become central.

As it stands, in trying to satisfy all demands – which is what Blair is attempting to do - we potentially end up with a dangerously inadequate expeditionary force – whether it is tasked to the EU's ERRF or to Nato - while our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are undermanned and ill-equipped, because we are devoting so much funding to building up the rapid reaction capability.

We are at risk, therefore, of performing all tasks badly and, in the context of our unwillingness to increase defence spending, the crucial issue must be where we put our resource. That is where the debate should lie, and one which Fox completely ignored (or missed). And, despite the indifference and the ignorance of the media, it is a debate which must eventually dominate.

COMMENT THREAD

What kind of reform?

The subject of the United Nations and its relationship with the United States came up a few days ago in the House of Lords, by way of a Starred Question, Lord Judd asking Her Majesty’s Government:

“What is their response to the speech made by the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations on 6 June, and, in particular, to his criticism of the policy of the Government of the United States”.

As it happens, Mark Malloch Brown went further in his speech and poured contempt on the people of the United States as well, showing, as a kind of aside, his distaste for freedom of speech in the media and a desire to see government propaganda that would promote the UN.

Several days before the Question in the House of Lords, John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, had given a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies. Inevitably, the subject of Mr Malloch Brown’s speech came up with Mr Bolton making it quite clear that the former’s behaviour was inexcusable.

When challenged by a questioner from the audience (wisely, the transcript gives not names), he replied:

“He has a sentence in his speech where he said that the rôle of the UN is a myster in Middle America, even as its rôle in the Middle East increases. Now, you know, maybe it’s fashionable in some circles to look down on Middle America and to say that they don’t get the complexities of the world and they don’t have the benefit of Continental education.

There is a suspicion in so many ways that it is illegitimate for an international civil servant to criticise what he thinks are the inadequacies of the citizens of a member Government.

Now, what are the consequences of that? One of the consequences, potentially, is that Americans looking at this will react in the way Americans sometimes do; you know the American saying: “Who elected you?”

That’s one possible response. Another possible response, is one that I fear substantially, is that this will throw our efforts in the UN reform process into disarray.

One of the defences that Malloch Brown made was that the United States shouldn’t be upset because he was being critical; after all, he criticised the Group of 77 as well; but that just proves the point: he doesn’t see the illegitimacy of a civil servatn – who doesn’t represent any sovereign Government the last time I looked – telling Governments that their performance isn’t up to his standards; this is a classic political mistake and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the consequneces, sadly.”

One would think that this eminently reasonable attitude would be reflected among British politicians as well. One would be wrong, if the House of Lords short debate is anything to go by.

While Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (alas, not nearly as glamorous as the would-be Socialist presidential candidate in France who has the same surname) muttered on behalf of HMG that they were not going to interfere in what was not really their concern but try to concentrate on what mattered, which is the reform of the UN, other noble lords produced rather less satisfactory comments.

Lord Judd waffled on about a crisis in the international community, a large part of which, apparently

“is exasperated by what it sees as the arrogance of the great powers, even to the point of using the UN as a subcontractor”.

Lord Howell of Guildford, the leader and intellectual guru of the “let’s revive the Commonwealth” brigade seemed to think that “a period of silence on the part of all those immediately involved might be beneficial”, though he did not explain how he was going to achieve it.

According to Lord Howell

“while Mr Malloch Brown was a shade tactless in attacking the chief paymaster of the United Nations, Mr John Bolton – the US ambassador – is also suffering a serious tact deficiency and needs to learn that America is not the only nation on earth and badly needs friends all round, wherever it can get them”.

Well, true, though America has more friends than Lord Howell seems to realize. Then again, I assume that his lordship was present when Mr Bolton gave his speech and could not have ignored completely the explanation as to why an unaccountable international civil servant attacking sovereign states and their people might not be the best way to go about building up that famous international community.

While Baroness Royall proceeded to exhaust her collection of trite generalities, Lord Wallace of Saltaire managed to come up with some curious comment:

“My Lords, does the Minister agree that, collectively, the European Union nations, which provide 40 per cent of the UN’s budget, are now the largest contributor and that we rather underplay our collective weight?

Given that it was the reaction of the United States representative to the UN rather than the moderate speech by Mr Malloch Brown which appears to have caused the problem, do the British Government consider that it was the very complimentary references which Mr Malloch Brown made to the British Prime Minister’s views that irritated the American representative, or his remarks about the refurbishment of a building of which John Bolton has famously said that it would not matter if the top 10 storeys were knocked off?”

The second part of that statement is embarrassing tosh. It is not part of Mr Malloch Brown’s job to award brownie points to governments or states that are members of the UN, even if he does want to come back to a peerage; nor is it the references to the PM that annoyed the Americans but the very immoderate, not to say, insolent references to the American government and American people.

As for the refurbishment of the building, it does not seem entirely wrong of the American representative to be wary of handing over yet more of the American taxpayers’ money for a self-aggrandizing organization that, apparently, must not be criticized, no matter how corrupt and inefficient it shows itself to be.

Baroness Royall agreed that the EU wields “a lot of financial and moral influence wihin the UN” but the only example she could provide was that the EU, which is not, of course, a member as such, “played a pivotal role in the 60the anniversay of the UN last September”.

The point is that individual EU members face largely the same problems that America does and other western countries do: they would like to see a root and branch reform of the UN but they cannot carry anything through, despite providing that organization with the bulk of its funding.

If Lord Wallace had listened to or read Mr Bolton’s speech, he would have found an interesting account of what happened when the SecGen proposed various management reforms. The Americans largely supported a batch of reforms that the SecGen described as absolutely vital.

These proposed reforms went to the Budget Committee and were defeated by the Group of 77 (“a kind of counterpart to the non-aligned movement”) with all its 132 members uniting and, unsurprisingly, carrying their position.

“The vote in the General Assembly’s final vote was 121 in favour of their motion and 50 against, the 121 constitution about 12½% of the total assessed budget of the United Nations, the 50 against constituting the European Union, the United States, Japan and a number of other important countries like canada, Australia, New Zealand – these 50 countries amounting to 87%of the assessed budget. So, 121 with 12½% of the budget defeated 50 with 87%.”

So much for the influence the EU member states can wield in the UN. It amounts to about the same that Britain can wield in the EU.

Indeed, many of John Bolton’s descriptions of what the problems are with the UN can apply with great ease to the EU. There is corruption, mismanagement, lack of accountability, an “entitlement mentality”. Noticeably, according to Mr Bolton, those agencies of the UN that are funded by voluntary contributions perform much better and are more careful with the money than those funded by assessed contributions. Since all the EU’s agencies are funded by assessed contributions, they all remain inefficient and mismanaged.

Clearly, Lord Wallace of Saltaire thinks there is nothing wrong with any of that and it is really rather arrogant of the Americans to say that as they are giving a large amount of money they want to know a little more clearly what that money is going on. Most of us would call it taking some care of what the taxpayer hands over willy-nilly.

Then there are all those endless resolutions that the General Assembly keeps passing on subjects that they neither can nor should do anything about. How is that different from the activities of the European Parliament?

As their lordships seem incapable of grasping what it is John Bolton has been proposing, I shall summarize it here and direct our readers to the full speech.

There are four aspects to the reform the Americans want to see: a review of the Mandates, which have, until now been piling up on the United Nations without any rationalization or understanding whether these can be fulfilled and whether any of them are contradictory; greater accountability; management reforms (defeated for the time being); a review of the “disjunction between assessed contributions and voting power”.

Any politician who wants to see the UN survive and flourish ought to support these four points. They are unlikely to be carried and so those of us who think the UN has long outlived whatever small use it ever had will, in the end, be proved right.

COMMENT THREAD

The wheels on the truck go round and round…

For an update of this report, see here.



Following my post on Sunday on How Blair is killing our soldiers, the story – if at all possible – gets murkier and murkier. Before proceeding, however, I must thank all those website and blog owners who linked to the piece and the many readers who responded and are taking action. I will keep you abreast of the responses they receive.

And so to the story as we left it on Sunday, with an account of how Lord Drayson, the defence procurement minister, on 12 June this year had dismissed the idea of buying the mine protected RG-31s to replace the "Snatch" Land Rover. Not only did he assert that the "Snatch" provided us "with the mobility and level of protection that we need", he informed the House of Lords that:

We had 14 RG-31s in Bosnia, which we took out of service some time ago due to difficulties with maintenance. We have looked at the RG-31 alongside a number of alternatives for our current fleet and concluded that the size and profile did not meet our needs. Size is important in the urban environment. The RG-31 cannot access areas that Snatch Land Rovers can get to.

According to the minister, therefore – and there can be no other construction from his words – the RG-31s were basically too large for the "urban environment", hence the choice of the smaller Land Rovers.

Well, as it happens, we have found a photograph of the "RG-31s" used by the British Army in Bosnia, which is reproduced at the top of this post. In fact, they were not RG-31s but Mambas, an earlier version of the vehicle – and even then they were not the standard body. They were, in fact, a rare, short-wheel-base version, variously known as the "Commanche" or "Acorn", converted by Alvis PLC, the British owner of the South African manufacturer. You can judge for yourself from the photograph how much of a handicap the size of these vehicles might be.

However, since "the size profile" did not meet the MoD needs, it was decided to replace the vehicles and, around 2002, an alternative vehicle was in the process of being procured. We know this because there was a Parliamentary Question on 5 February 2002 by Mike Hancock, Lib-Dem MP for Portsmouth South, from which we learn that the replacement was called a "Tempest". These were to be used for:

...casualty evacuation and route proving operations where mines are present and provide high levels of protection from anti-tank/personnel mine blasts.

Dr Moonie, who answered the question, was extremely reticent about the price, withholding information "in accordance with Exemption 7a(2) of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information, which relates to information whose disclosure would prejudice commercial or contractual activities."

Anyhow, we also managed to find a photograph of the Tempest (left)and some details from the Royal Engineers website. Known officially as "Truck, Mine Protected Vehicle" (MPV), as readers will discern from the picture, this is based on the chassis of an articulated truck. The Royal Engineers describe it thus:

The MPV, formerly known as Project TEMPEST. The planned role of the MPV is route proving and casualty evacuation (CASEVAC). The donor platform for the cab and chassis services is the Peterbilt 330 articulated tractor unit. The front and forward rear axles were removed and replaced by a Marmon Herrington 4 Drive conversion. MPV is a modified Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) equipment procured against an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) and replaces the MAMBA vehicle fleet of the mine protected vehicles. The vehicles were assembled by Technical Solutions Group in the USA with the UK EOD specific requirements incorporated by Supacat Ltd.

Thus we see the MoD, having decided that the Mambas were too big, decided to replace them – at unspecified expense – with a truck at least four times the size, buying fewer of them into the bargain, for use in exactly the same role. And so desperate was their need that they bypassed the normal competitive contract process and acquired the equipment against an "Urgent Operational Requirement".

Now it begins to get interesting, and not a little murky as we follow two separate threads.

First, we follow Technical Solutions Group. It is owned by a US company, Force Protection Inc, which currently manufactures a range of mine protected vehicles for the US Army and Marine Corps. More of this company later but what is most interesting at this stage is one particular member of the management team, a certain Murray Hammick (below left), who joined the company on 12 February 2004.

Although on the company website as late as 6 June this year, he has suddenly disappeared from the line-up. But, through the marvels of the Google cache system, his details are still accessible, and fascinating reading they make. As "Vice President, Integrated Logistics Support":

Before joining Force Protection, Murray Hammick owned and managed UK-based Seafire Ltd., developers of specialist military vehicles; he was centrally involved in the 2001 sale of the Tempest MPV to the UK MOD. He was head of business development for UK defense contractor Alvis Vehicles Ltd, handling sales, marketing and new product development roles involving the UK MOD, US DOD, NATO, and the UN. He set up and managed the first international transfer of mine-protection technology out of South Africa covering the Mamba series of MPVs, and was ground forces editor for Jane's International Defense Review from 1990-93.

Mr. Hammick is a retired British Army major. He served over 24 years in regular and reserve armored and airborne units and ran armor anti/armor research trials. Mr. Hammick holds a bachelor of science degree, and formal qualifications in military design & technology.

From a separate website, we also see that Hammick's job was to oversee and co-ordinate all projects at both Force Protection and its wholly owned subsidiary, Technical Solutions Group, reporting directly to Michael Watts, the Company's then CEO.

We also learn from this website that Hammick not only won the contract to sell MPVs to the British Army but, while working for Alvis, had been appointed Product Manager, responsible for developing two armored vehicles and one Special Forces vehicle. He subsequently established Seafire Limited and went on to win a number of contracts, including some in partnership with TSG and Supacat.

What this demonstrates is that the very technology that went into the Mamba and subsequently the RG-31 was exploited by Hammick and used in the production of the Tempest, for which the British taxpayer paid a no doubt handsome – if unspecified - price. We also know that, armed with the knowledge of that design and the experience of having built the vehicle, Hammick joins Force Protection.

With that under our belts, let us now follow the second thread – the Tempest itself. A search for information on this vehicle eventually leads you to this site, a general site on "vehicle protection". However, it does have an entry for the Technical Solutions Group (TSG), under which is an active link marked "Tempest". When you click that, you arrive here.

Surprisingly, there is no mention at all of the Tempest. The page is headed "Cougar", a mine protected vehicle made by none other than Force Protection Inc. Furthermore, helpfully, there is a picture of the Cougar (right). As you will see, for all intents and purposes, the Cougar is the Tempest, designed and paid for by the British taxpayer and handed on a plate to the American company by Mr Hammick.

Force Protection is doing very well out of the deal. Not only has it already sold a considerable number of Cougars to the US forces, it has teamed up with none other than our very own BAE Systems to produce a variant called the Iraqi Light Armoured Vehicle, acquiring a recent contract from the US Army worth $180 million for 378 models, which could increase to $445.4 million for 1,050 vehicles, if all options are exercised.

From all accounts, the money will be well-spent. The USMC who already have the equipment, speak very highly of it. In addition, one crew gave written testimony to Force Protection of how it had undoubtedly saved their lives:

Just wanted to write a quick note to all of you at your company to thank you for the hard work you put into the Cougar vehicle. We are stationed in [omitted] Iraq and about 2 weeks ago our JERRV Cougar ran over [deleted] mine coming back from a call downtown. It had been raining that night and the mines were placed in a hole filled with water. Right after the explosion, the Cougar was driven for two miles on the three remaining tires at speeds in excess of 20 mph so that we could make it to a safe area.

Once we got to the safe area we were able to survey the damage and everyone was amazed how far the vehicle had driven. The three of us inside were all okay other than slight concussions and a headache that lasted a few days. We know that if we had been in another type of vehicle that the outcome would have been much worse. We were also able to get a replacement Cougar within 24 hours. Thank you for everything and keep up the good work.

If that does not tell the story, the photograph (above) provides adequate evidence of the life-saving capability of this remarkable machine. And, unlike the RG-31s where, since their introduction, three vehicles have been destroyed by IEDs and enemy action, with five fatalities, as of June 2006, with more than 130 Cougars and the similar Buffalos in Afghanistan and Iraq, the vehicles have taken about 1,000 IED hits without a loss of life.

So far, therefore, we see a life-saving vehicle, designed and developed at the expense of the British taxpayer, being successfully introduced into the US forces, while our own defence procurement minister declares that a much smaller vehicle, based on the same technology, is far too big for our troops. They must continue to use lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers. Of the eight Tempests still presumably in service in the British Army, we know nothing of their whereabouts.

Incidentally, when researching for what amounts to the first part of this story, I was puzzled by the absence of photographs of Land Rovers that had been hit directly by IEDs. I have since found one from a different conflict and can now see why. After a hit, there is often nothing left but smouldering wreckage, barely recognisable as a vehicle – compare and contrast (above right) with the picture of the Cougar above.

Even with this, though, the story does not end. To complete the saga we must go back to the British Army Mambas in Bosnia – those which the MoD was so eager to dispose of.

While in the Balkans, the Army came across a new and more deadly type of mine – the TMRP-6 "shaped charge" mine - for which the Mambas provided no defence. A South African technology company therefore was commissioned to design counter-measures which were applied to the Mambas.

The lessons learned, however, did not stop there. Applying them and the technology that went into the RG-31, Alvis PLC set about building as a private venture a brand new, state-of-the art armoured patrol/ reconnaissance vehicle which emerged as the Scarab (above, left).

This vehicle was then offered to the MoD in the 2001 competition for the Army's Future Command and Liaison Vehicle (FCLV), alongside the RG-31 and its smaller brother, the RG32M and the Fench-designed ACMAT. We covered this competition extensively in earlier posts, here, here and here. Without revisiting all the details, suffice it to say that the MoD introduced another vehicle to the competition, the Italian-built Iveco Panther (below, right), after the shortlist had been closed in breach of its own rules. It then went on to select it as the winner, paying £166 million for 401 vehicles, equating to £413,000 each.

And, as we now know, the MoD civil servant who was "the only person to have been intimately involved in this programme from initiation to contract award," a Mr Andrew Simpson of Bath, now works as a consultant for the Italian manufacturer.

Although a mine-protected vehicle in its own right, it is unlikely that Mr Simpson's Panther was any match for the Scarab – which has since disappeared after Alvis was taken over by BAE Systems. It is now marketing the Panther after it had been awarded the MoD contract for it.

While the Scarab, in its patrol or reconnaissance configuration, could have provided a valuable additional tool in both Iraq and Afghanistan – and given state-of-the-art protection - the Panther, barely if at all adequate as a command/liaison vehicle, would make a poor patrol vehicle. Not that the troops are likely to be given the opportunity to try it out. It is designated for the medium armoured brigades which are to form the heart of the British contribution to the European Rapid Reaction Force, in which Tony Blair has invested so much political capital.

With the money spent on this and other extravaganzas, there is no money left in the defence budget for new kit. British troops must make do with their lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers. The US troops, on the other hand, can enjoy the comfort and security of their Cougars, designed and developed at British taxpayers' expense. But hey! What price soldiers' lives when European defence integration beckons?

COMMENT THREAD

A not so new beginning

The new UN Human Rights Council meets for the first time today and, according to some commentators, namely Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, this signals a new beginning for the UN’s determination to fight for human rights across the world.

The fact that countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Pakistan are on the Council do not seem to upset Ms Arbour one bit.

“Several new features give us reason to believe the council will be a significant improvement on its predecessor. Even the way its members were elected last month marked a welcome departure from "business as usual." Commission members were preselected behind closed doors and then "elected" by acclamation. By contrast, the new members of the council had to compete for seats, and successful candidates had to win the support of a majority of all member states, in a secret ballot.

For the first time in history, candidates gave voluntary commitments to promote and uphold human rights, and will be expected to meet them or else face possible suspension from the council.

The resolution establishing the council stresses the importance of ending double standards, a problem that plagued the past commission. What the politicized debates of the past often obscured is the irrefutable fact that all states have human rights problems, and all must be accountable for their shortcomings.

The test, then, is not membership, but accountability. To that end, a new universal periodic review mechanism will offer the Council -- and the world -- the opportunity to examine the records of all 191 member states of the United Nations. This is a dramatic development with the potential to improve human rights throughout the world.”

Can’t wait to see that “universal periodic review mechanism” in action. Come to think of it, it will be interesting to see what the new mandate will mean in practice. Will the UN really tackle human rights abuses and, if so, how? Or will it continue to pass resolutions and write convenstions such as the one on the Rights of the Child, which appears to give states the power to impose, by force if necessary, their own ideas of what education should consist of?

Let us not forget Slovakia

It was Slovakia’s turn to have an election this Sunday and …. guess what? …. the opposition won. Well, The Smer-Socialist Democratic Party came top with 29 per cent of the vote, which means a long bout of negotiations to form a coalition.

Former Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda’s Slovak Democratic and Christian Movement received 18 per cent of the vote, not as bad a performance as all that, given the much discussed dissatisfaction with the economic reforms in the country.

President Ivan Gasparovic has asked the Social Democrat leader, Robert Fico to form the government but it is not clear at this stage whether he will try to form a coalition with the Christian Democrats and, possibly, an ethnic Hungarian party or with the nationalist ones.

So far, Mr Dzurinda has said that the reforms must continue, particularly if Slovakia wants to be in the euro by 2009, a somewhat unlikely proposition and Mr Fico has said that he wanted a country in which there was more solidarity and justice. By this, one assumes, he means a restoration of the reduced free health care and social benefits. Curiously, there was nothing in the party’s platform that would explain who would pay for that.

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg points out:

“The koruna fell to 38.13 against the euro by 3:02 p.m., trading near a seven-month low, from 38.05 on June 16. The currency has fallen for the last six weeks, its longest losing streak since June 2002, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”

Mr Fico insists that, although he will take a left of centre route and concentrate on reviving the old welfare systems, he wants to continue to foster economic growth and foreign investment.

A model for all seasons

"It's a hard life being a grown-up," a friend of mine once observed after a particularly trying meeting, when we were attempting to resolve a difference of opinion with officials that was going nowhere. This is a message I pass on, with an ironic smile to my children when – as they occasionally do – come to me with their woes, usually with the added injunction, "get used to it".

Of course, faced with the overwhelming complexities of modern life, none of us ever do. We develop strategies, which often involve retreating from the full force of the reality and then picking off bite-sized chunks that we can actually understand and cope with. By this means, we hope that the other problems will somehow sort themselves out, or re-emerge in a form that is more amenable to a solution.

I am reminded of this reading Ruth Lea's column in the business section of The Daily Telegraph this morning. It is a worthy enough piece – in fact it is a Eurosceptic's delight. Ruth makes no bones about it. In the context of the EU's inability to deal with its burden of regulation and its "persistently malfunctioning labour markets", the UK, she writes, "with its unique global connections, should opt for free trade and negotiated bilateral agreements with the EU but withdraw from the EU's political institutions and free itself from its regulatory shackles."

"If the UK took this route," she adds, "then it is highly possible that other EU member states would follow. The UK should take the lead in developing a model for Europe appropriate for the 21st century."

We could hardly disagree with that but, despite our joy at having Ruth now openly converted to the cause of withdrawal, the heart still sinks. For all that she is a particularly bright lady, highly experienced and with an incisive mind, Ruth is by discipline an economist. In approaching the overwhelming complexity of the issues relating to the European Union, she appears to be thinking solely within the framework of her own discipline.

The problem here, as we have been at pains to point out to our readers, is that the European Union has long since ceased to be concerned only with trade (if it ever was) and, in the volume of its legislation and its political activities, that is the least of it. Its tentacles have spread into virtually every nook and cranny of public policy, covering an extraordinary range of issues.

Today, for instance, I read in DefenseNews, a plea by Eurocontrol – Europe's air traffic management system – for a "comprehensive plan" for military-civil air traffic control. It warns of "gridlock" unless military and commercial communities find new ways to manage the continent's air space.

Central control of military usage of air space is, as you would expect, an anathema to sovereign states but it is one of the many issues that is being argued about at a European level, under the overarching framework of the European Union institutions. Creating a free trade model for Britain is all very well but that would not even begin to address issues like this, and many others of equal or greater complexity.

Neither indeed can it be argued that the one – a free trade model – can properly be developed without also taking into account arcane things like airspace management. Airways have become vital trade arteries and air transport is, in itself, a major economic enterprise, the workings of which have a material effect on our overall economic prosperity. Yet, as a truly international – indeed global – activity, it is unthinkable that we could devise a model for this in isolation from our continental neighbours, with whom we so closely interact.

This alone is but one small, if important, example of our interdependence, other particular issues being security, immigration, shipping management and, yes, even commercial fishing. We use the Channel not only as a trade artery but also as a fishing resource and it would be absurd to attempt to manage that ecosystem without reference to the nations that border it.

On that basis, we need a model not only to deal with trade but with the myriad of other shared enterprises and concerns, all of which affect the prosperity and security of our nation and which interact in many different ways.

Therein lies our problem. As it stands, the European Union is the only model in existence which can even begin to address all – or many - of these issues in anything like a coherent manner. For all its flaws, it central lack of democracy, its inefficiencies, its corruption and political infighting, the truth is that it is the only game in town.

Not until the Eurosceptic movement, and its allies, can come up with a proper alternative – a model that addresses the reality of the diversity and complexity of our relations with our neighbours - will policymakers, who do not have the luxury of retreating from reality, take seriously the idea that we would be "better off out".

COMMENT THREAD

Directives Digest

Some time ago we put up a link to a new website, Directives Digest, which was set up by Lord Willoughby de Broke for informational purposes. He has now written a short explanatory note about it:

“I started Directives Digest because I found the web portal to European legislation to be almost impenetrable except to dedicated Euro-anoraks. I think it important that individuals should have easier access to EU legislation that affects their lives and businesses; while this alone will not “empower” them it may encourage them to ask their MPs or prospective MPs some difficult questions.

I would also like to establish Directives Digest as an essential tool for the media - the reliable and accurate short-cut to EU legislation and its often unintended consequences.

My research team and I took the decision early on to point out the shortcomings of much of this legislation and, where appropriate, to supplement our comments with quotes from industry, and sometimes from the legislators themselves, but our site is intended to be factual and informative rather than polemical.

My team of researchers is small but dedicated. We would welcome feedback and suggestions for directives we have not posted yet. Do take some time to browse through the site, and do please email my editor with your contributions.”

We recommend our readers to consult the website regularly as new material is put up on it.

COMMENT THREAD

Hard times ahead!

"There is the tradition of good old Europe that has made this possible," boasted Gerhard Schröder at the ceremonial unveiling of the first Airbus A380 "superjumbo" way back in January 2005.

As for Noël Forgeard, then Airbus chief executive and now CEO of EADS, he came up with what must be one of the most inane comments ever recorded. "Under the name Airbus, Europe has written one of its most beautiful pages of its history," he gushed.

And now, Schröder's "good old Europe" is back with a vengeance. Enron Airliners, aka Airbus Industries, with its self-confessed "incompetent" co-president on the EADS board, Arnaud Lagardère, is about to put its hand out for another huge dollop of public money.

This, according to IHT is being described by some analysts as "a rescue package" but it is also set to revive the bitter trans-Atlantic dispute over the government support for Airbus.

Wedded to their subsidy fixes, though, European governments are already signalling that they are considering a handout, leaving US trade negotiators to warn that any such move could lead to a full-scale battle at the WTO.

The key date is 17 July, the first day of the Farnborough Air Show, when an informal subsidy freeze ends. At that point Enron Airliners' spokesman Rainer Ohler is saying that more cash is "indispensable".

Wiser, if anonymous heads, however, are saying otherwise. With the slowdown in production, cash flow has actually eased in the short term, which means that there actually more time to settle with the US over the exact nature of the aid that could be paid – if any.

But, if the Americans relent, the butcher's bill is likely to be huge and Enron Airliners is also having to cost in plans for redesigning the A350 so it can better compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. You can really see the Yanks going for that.

Noël Forgeard meanwhile – already under fire for the rather convenient dumping of some of his personal shareholdings in EADS, before the price crashed and burned - is doing his best to add fuel to the flames by implying that the company's problems are the fault of his successor at Airbus, Gustav Humbert, a German. He is also criticising the company's plant in Hamburg, blaming it for the production delays.

Thus did one government official - whose clarity of vision demanded that he too remained anonymous – declare, "the next few years will be hard for Airbus." You don't say!

COMMENT THREAD

How Blair is killing our soldiers

This is an unusually long post, but I make no apologies for it. In my view, this is a vitally important issue – quite literally a matter of life and death. Please bear with me – at the end of the post, I am asking for direct action from all our readers.

For an update on this report, see here.


According to the official MoD website, as at 28 May 2006, a total of 113 British Forces personnel have died, or are missing presumed dead, while serving on Operation TELIC since the start of the campaign in March 2003. Of these, 84 are classed as killed in action, including as a result of hostile action.

Of those 84 dead, at least 23 – more than a quarter – have been killed riding or patrolling with unarmoured or lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers, the most common cause of death being the improvised explosive device (IED), better known as the "roadside bomb".

The incidents that I have been able to cull from the internet are as follows:

14 August 2003: Two Queens Lancashire Regiment soldiers wounded and one – Captain David Jones – killed in bomb attack on a converted Land Rover military ambulance in Basra.

18 November 2003: MoD spokesman Charlie Mayo reports two man crew of one Land Rover injured in one of four booby trap bomb attacks over previous seven days.

April 17 2004: Two Territorial Army soldiers shot in Basra and another soldier lost a leg when his Land Rover was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

18 April 2004: Three PWRR soldiers injured, one seriously, in roadside bomb attack on Land Rover in Amarah.

26 April 2004: One soldier injured by roadside bomb attack on six vehicle supply convoy in south east of Basra. Witnesses said the injured soldier was evacuated by helicopter.

28 June 2004: Fusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, from Glasgow, died when a bomb exploded next to his Land Rover in Basra. Two others were injured.

9 August 2004: Five soldiers from Prince of Wales Royal Regiment were injured and one – Private Lee O'Callaghan – was killed in attack on vehicles in Basra. Two Land Rovers were set on fire after militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades at the patrol.

28 September 2004: Two soldiers – Corporal Marc Taylor, Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers, and Gunner David Lawrence, Royal Artillery – killed when military convoy ambushed south-west of Basra. The two soldiers killed had gone to the aid of injured colleagues whose Land Rover was hit by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG).

2 May 2005: One soldier injured and Guardsman Anthony John Wakefield 24, from the 1st Bn Coldstream Guards, killed during routine two vehicle armoured Land Rover patrol in Al Amarah.

29 May 2005: Lance Corporal Alan Brackenbury of The King's Royal Hussars killed from an improvised explosive device in Kahla, near al-Amarah. He was in an armoured Land Rover, one of three vehicles heading to a liaison meeting with representatives of the Iraqi security forces. Four other soldiers were injured in the explosion.

16 July 2005: Two soldiers injured and three killed - Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer, Private Leon Spicer and Private Phillip Hewett - all from the 1st Battalion the Staffordshire Regiment, during three vehicle armoured Land Rover night patrol in suburb of town of Al Amarah, 160 miles north of Basra.

5 September 2005 A roadside bomb killed two British soldiers travelling in an armoured Land Rover in southern Iraq. The device exploded as a convoy passed through a mainly Sunni Arab district five miles east of a British army base known as Shaiba. The two dead soldiers were from the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, based in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

11 September 2005: Three soldiers were injured and Major Matthew Bacon was killed when an armoured Land Rover was hit by an IED in Basra.

20 November 2005: Four soldiers injured, one very seriously, in bomb attack on routine two vehicle armoured Land Rover patrol in northern Basra. Sergeant John Jones of the 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers died in the attack.

31 January 2006: Whilst on a routine patrol in Umm Qasr, the vehicle that Corporal Gordon Pritchard was commanding was struck by a roadside bomb; he died instantly. Three other soldiers were injured, one seriously, in the same incident and received medical treatment at Shaibah medical facility.

28 February 2006: Two British soldiers were killed and another injured when their Land Rover was blown up by a roadside bomb while on patrol in the Iraqi town of Amara. The three soldiers were from 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment attached to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. The improvised explosive device is believed to have been hidden in an abandoned car which exploded when the soldiers passed on routine patrol.

16 April 2006: Lt Richard Palmer, 27, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards was killed when his Land Rover was targeted by insurgents using an off-road mine near the town of Ad Dayr. Lt Palmer's unit, which was attached to a Danish battle group, was on vehicle patrol with the Iraqi army when it was attacked.

13 May 2006: Two British soldiers died after a roadside bomb attack in southern Iraq. The soldiers, from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, were on routine patrol in an armoured Land Rover just outside Basra when the device exploded. The roadside bomb exploded as the patrol approached a bridge just north of Basra. A third soldier was injured in the same incident.

28 May 2006: A British Army patrol from 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards (The Welsh Cavalry) was attacked by a roadside bomb in the Al Jezaizah district of North West Basra. The explosion hit an armoured Land Rover patrol on a routine task in support of the Iraqi Security Forces. The incident killed two members from A Squadron: Troop Leader Lieutenant Tom Mildinhall and Lance Corporal Paul Farrelly.

Collectively, the Land Rover incidents are the single most common cause of death for our soldiers in Iraq, yet - in our view - they are largely preventable. In today's Sunday Telegraph, based on research carried out by this Blog, Christopher Booker explains why they are allowed to happen.

"One reason why British troops continue to be killed and injured in southern Iraq", he writes, "is that they are expected to patrol in lightly-armoured Land Rovers which give them no protection against roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades." He continues:

Meanwhile their American counterparts walk away unscathed, even when their RG31 armoured patrol vehicles are hit by the same explosives, because these are designed to protect them against precisely the same dangers. Yet the Ministry of Defence has not seen fit to equip the British Army with the RG31, even though it is built by a British-owned company.

That self-same RG31 is pictured at the top of this piece – taken at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq on 7 January 2006 by a photographer from the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group. It is resting on its front axle after an improvised explosive device detonated under the vehicle the day before. The IED detonated directly under the vehicle; however, because the vehicle was an RG-31, the blast was pushed outward instead of straight up due to the unique v-shaped undercarriage. Of the five service members in the vehicle, two received concussions and two others received minor burns.

Before continuing with Booker it has to be said that the government's procurement minister, Lord Drayson, does not agree that the RG31 should be used, or that there is anything wrong with the "Snatch" Land Rover. In the House of Lords on 12 June this year, in response to a question by Lord Astor of Hever, this is what he said:

My Lords, I do not accept that Snatch Land Rovers are not appropriate for the role. We must recognise the difference between protection and survivability. It is important that we have the trade-offs that we need for mobility. The Snatch Land Rover provides us with the mobility and level of protection that we need.

We had 14 RG-31s in Bosnia, which we took out of service some time ago due to difficulties with maintenance. We have looked at the RG-31 alongside a number of alternatives for our current fleet and concluded that the size and profile did not meet our needs. Size is important in the urban environment. The RG-31 cannot access areas that Snatch Land Rovers can get to.

You may accord to Lord Drayson's statement any value you wish but it is germane to note that the vehicle is widely used in the world's trouble-spots, to which effect, one of its enthusiastic users, the United Nations, reports:

The RG-31 "Nyala" mine and bullet-protected vehicle (MPV) with high mobility ease of handling and good crew comfort has been successfully deployed with the UN in Bosnia and Lebanon. It has become the MPV of choice of the UN and other peacekeeping and security forces and is finding favour with nongovernmental organizations requiring vehicle with nonaggressive appearance to protect their personal against the threat of landmines.

More to the point, in addition to the United States which has purchased 148 for use in Iraq, the Canadian forces have bought 50 for use by their detachment in Afghanistan, with an option for another 25, having previously deployed three as part of their contribution to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

The vehicle was selected after a tightly-fought contest with other mine protected vehicles and, in the view of one commentator, won the contract because: "Familiarity aside, the RG-31 had advantages that all but ensured victory in the CF's APV contest – proven performance in a range of climates and terrains, relatively small size."

Known variously as the "Mamba" and "Nyala" in Canadian service (the two are, in fact, different although very similar vehicles, the latter being the RG31), it has attracted the enthusiastic plaudits of its users. Says one:

Having spend lots of time in both the Mamba as a Recce Driver on Palladium Roto II and the Nyala as the Engr Recce Sgt on Athena Roto III, I can't think of a more well rounded, safer and rugged vehicle.

and another…

Almost every contingent I worked with would have given their left arm for a Nyala, including those riding around in open top G-wagons. Open top vehicles bristling with weapons are no deterrent or concern to a pressure plate IED or a Spider Device initiated by a Cell Phone or FRS from a safe distance. The only CF Troops in the Kandahar area that require open top soft skins already have them. So if you really want to ride around in one, start doing your application for the farm.

Lord Drayson offers no explanation as to what the "difficulties with maintenance" were, although it is hard to understand why they should have been intractable, since the vehicles used (Mambas) had running trains based on the widely-used Mercedes Benz Unimog and the design employs many readily available commercial parts.

As to the importance of size, and Drayson's claim that, "the RG-31 cannot access areas that Snatch Land Rovers can get to," once again you can judge for yourself from the photographs provided. Altogether, we prefer the explanation that the Army is being short-changed, fobbed off with cheap, second-hand Land Rovers, designed for security operations in Northern Ireland and totally unsuited for Iraq.

Returning to Booker, he writes:

This is a small but chilling example of the extraordinary shambles the MoD is making of Britain's defences, thanks not least to the way Tony Blair is trying to pursue two totally contradictory policies at the same time, This has not been properly appreciated because media coverage of defence has become so scrappy that we have lost sight of the overall picture.

We hear, for instance, about prosecutions of British soldiers for supposed "human rights abuses", the abolition of ancient regiments and some of the more ambitious defence projects on which the MoD is spending tens of billions of pounds, such as the Eurofighter or the two giant aircraft carriers planned for the Royal Navy. But no one fits all the pieces of this jigsaw together.

On one hand, as we saw yet again with his recent visit to Washington, Mr Blair tries to keep in with the Americans, by committing thousands of hard-pressed and ill-equipped British troops to fighting the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush and Blair still like to talk of keeping alive the Joint Strike Fighter project, the last major example of Anglo-US collaboration on military hardware.

On the other, as we saw again with his subsequent visit to President Chirac, Mr Blair has stealthily agreed to Britain playing a key role in the planned European Rapid Reaction Force. For this he and the MoD have been prepared to restructure the British Army, scrapping the old regiments, and to commit colossal sums to buying every kind of European equipment, as well as those giant carriers we are to build with the French. All this is to meet the "Helsinki goals" agreed by EU leaders including Mr Blair in 1999, by which an integrated European defence force is to be brought about.

For the MoD, the top priority has been to get on with meeting those Helsinki commitments, co-ordinated by the European Defence Agency in Brussels, headed by a former senior MoD official Nick Witney, which will enable us to play our part in creating that EU expeditionary force. To this end the MoD has been prepared to spend billions on EU-made missiles, ships, trucks, artillery and armoured vehicles, not to mention a French-led project to build unmanned aircraft which Blair discussed with Chirac earlier this month, following Britain’s withdrawal from a similar joint-project with the US.

But what this has left is a British Army starved of proper resources for its current tasks, so overstretched that it must rely on thousands of territorial soldiers, its morale sapped by the dangerous lack of proper equipment and by the MoD's insistence on enforcing the European Convention on Human Rights in situations to which it was never intended to apply.

The real problem is that all this has been so hidden away behind layers of stealth and deception that no one ever asks any longer that fundamental question: what are our armed forces for? Behind the scenes, the driving force of national policy is to fit us to play our part in building up a European expeditionary force, capable of operating anywhere in the world. But no one can explain the purpose of such a force, for essentially it has only one: to promote the cause of European integration.

This leaves us, in an increasingly darkling world, with forces ill-designed to protect any national British interests. Indeed, so dependent are we now becoming on equipment bought from our EU partners, including our most basic guns and ammunition, that it will soon be inconceivable that we could operate without their consent.

Meanwhile our armed services, which until recently we still prided ourselves on being the most professional in the world, are being asked to perform dangerous tasks, knowing that they no longer have much practical support from a Government bent on exploiting them politically, for purposes they find it increasingly hard to understand.

When the final charge sheet is drawn up against the way Mr Blair governed this country, one of the most damning charges will be the way in which he destroyed its armed forces. Yet the remarkable thing will be how almost nobody at the time noticed it was happening.

Booker's final comment hits the nail on the head. We have tried to get senior Conservative MPs interested in this issue with very little success. And, apart from Booker and The Business, it is proving impossible to get the media interested.

Well, people, this is an opportunity to test the power of the blogs. We have not done this before, but I would ask other blogs to link here and for readers to print off this post and send it to their MPs, with their own comments. As I wrote in the heading, this is truly a matter of life and death. Our view is that our troops are being needlessly exposed to danger and they deserve better. We hope you agree.

COMMENT THREAD

It ain't Brussels, stoopid!

We (or I) – according to one of our revered forum members - should be killing the fatted calf over the leader in today’s Telegraph, headed, "Brussels will never take no for an answer". We – or so we are told - all have said this for years, "but when the by-far-the-biggest non-redtop endorses it," it is a cause for celebration.

Frankly, I'd sooner slaughter the leader-writer. It is precisely this type of muddle-headed, superficial diatribe that confuses the issue and makes it so hard to progress the debate.

Consider, if you will, the opening offer: "You may be outraged by the EU's declared intention to revive the European constitution. But, if you have been reading these columns over the past 12 months, you will not be surprised."

Leave aside the little bit of self-promotion – you will not be surprised (but much better informed) if you read this blog, not least that the intention is to delay any attempt at reviving the constitution, rather than any confirmed intention to bring it back to life.

The substantive issue here is the use of the "EU". As a generic term, this can mean all sorts of things and we all use it as a convenient short-hand. But, in this context - as the next part of the leader makes clear - the reference is to the "leaders of the 25 member nations". It is they, according to the Telegraph, who "have pledged to ratify the main parts of the document by 2009".

In other words – no, in the exact words – it is not "Brussels", as such that is doing this, but the democratically elected leaders of our own governments who are hatching this tryst. One of those is Tony Blair who, in any case, is unlikely still to be leader in 2009 but, if his successor takes the same line, then our problem lies not in Brussels, but at home.

Further, it is not the "leaders" who ratify treaties – they sign them. Ratification is down to the parliaments, with or without referendums. Leader can propose – parliament disposes.

On the slender basis thus established by our leader-writer, however, he launches off into the stratosphere, telling us that "there is never a Plan B in Brussels; Plan A is simply re-submitted over and over again until it is accepted." That maybe the case, but it may not. At the moment, plan A is actually stalled and there is no sure way of working out what happens next. The "colleagues" are at as much of a loss as everyone else.

To "prove" the point, though, The Telegraph tells us that "with or without formal ratification, most of the policies and institutions proposed by the constitution have been, or are being, enacted anyway: the European Defence Agency, the External Borders Agency, the Human Rights Agency, the EU foreign ministry and diplomatic corps, the European Public Prosecutor, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Space Programme." Therefore, "the EU … is behaving as if the French and Dutch electorates had voted "Yes" and the constitution were already in force."

Errr… no. What is happening is a lot more subtle, and more complex. For sure, we have the European Defence Agency, but this has been set up not as a community institution but as an intergovernmental agency. It reports via Solana to the Council and relies for its existence of voluntary annual subventions from the member states. In terms of the Monnet method, it is an aberration and, to the integrationalist orthodoxy, a dangerous one at that.

Similarly, while the commission is providing administrative support to the External Borders Agency, its "teeth" are supplied by member states and its continued existence depends on co-operation between member states, with the Council at the helm. We do not have a KGB-type force wearing the ring of stars, answerable to Brussels.

The same intergovernmental framework applies to the space programme, again funded by voluntary contributions from member states – which is why the Galileo programme is in so much trouble. The commission would like control but it remains outside its grasp.

We saw the same with the "diplomatic corps", certainly slated as a backdoor attempt to introduce the constitution, and worrying in its own right. But, in the final analysis, the plan relies on the voluntary co-operation of the member states. And, what can be given, can be taken away.

What is happening, therefore, is a subtle but important shift in the very nature of the European Union. While the constitution was supposed to consolidate and extend the powers of the commission, entrenching the Monnet method – even bringing the European Council fully into the institutional structure – its failure has given a boost to the rival and instable process of intergovernmentalism.

In that important respect, therefore, the constitution, as devised, is not being enacted. It is, in strict community terms, being subverted. If the commission president was more versed in the orthodoxies of the Monnet method, alarm bells would be ringing, but Barroso is going with the flow. It has thus been left to former commission president Jacques Delors to accuse member state leaders of driving the Union into its "worst ever crisis". In his own terms, he is right to do so.

From all this though, it is possible to gauge the complexities and subtleties of a game, the nature of which The Telegraph seems to be entirely unaware. In its ignorance, it rehearses the one-dimensional stereotype. "Brussels" it says, behaves this way "because, in short, that is what it has been designed to do."

Thus follows a "Janet and John" dissertation of the basics of the engrenage process – without, of course, that term being used - with a concluding peroration which asks, "How much longer can decent democrats subject themselves to such a system?"

And therein lies the unacknowledged paradox. The system is being hijacked by those self-same "democrats" – our very own leaders, who subject themselves to the system - and increasingly run it - because it suits them. They are our problem, more so as the ways of the Council, which they employ, are even more secretive than those of the commission. Strangely, they are Brussels' problem as well.

COMMENT THREAD

We are all very grateful…

One cannot help but smile, albeit through gritted teeth, at the outrage of the Greens at the news yesterday of government approval for a waste incinerator in London, thought to be the largest in Europe, 16 years and two public inquiries after plans were first mooted for the site.

The Department of Trade and Industry is saying that the £200m plant, to be located in Belvedere, south-east London - on the south bank of the Thames opposite the old Ford works at Dagenham - will help tackle the city's serious waste problem. It is projected to burn up to 585,000 tons of waste, in theory generating up to 72MW of electricity annually.

Friends of the Earth (FoE), however, are condemning it as "a step in the wrong direction in the fight against climate change," egged on by the BBC (link above) which gives plenty of space to Jenny Bates, from FoE. She complains: "The government is supposed to be promoting recycling and waste prevention but they have just allowed the biggest incinerator in Europe to be built in London." But, of the European Union, there is not a mention.

It is left, strangely, to The Guardian to spill the beans, it reporting that:

The decision shows the government's determination to press ahead with plans to burn three times more household rubbish in the next 15 years and avoid heavy penalties promised in a European Union directive to curb waste buried in landfill sites. The Belvedere project, in Bexley, on which work is expected to start by the end of the year, heralds a new wave of such incinerators, of which 16 already exist in England.

That is the truth of it. The infamous landfill directive lays down a hierarchy of options, starting with waste reduction and recycling, through incineration and thence to landfill, to be used when there is absolutely no other alternative. And since the limits of recycling capacity have already been reached, the government has no option but to sponsor the building of a massive new network of waste incinerators, probably numbering in excess of 20.

Energy minister Malcolm Wicks is also playing down the EU element. In fact, it is invisible in his statement. He is saying that: "London has a serious waste problem, much of which it currently exports to landfill in the home counties." There would, he says, be "ample residual waste to fuel the station" even if ambitious recycling targets "set by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone", were met.

This, inevitably, is going to be the first of many. Forget Ken Livingstone (if you can). It is EU targets that require a progressive reduction in landfill, currently at about 72 percent today, to 25 percent by 2020. There is no way this can be met by recycling so incineration will have to fill the gap, rising from nine percent of total capacity to 25 percent.

This unhappy state of affairs brings out the full scale of the economic illiteracy and lack of technical knowledge of the Greens, with Jean Lambert, the Green party MEP for London, whining that the new incinerator is: "a completely inappropriate facility at a time when we should be focusing on reducing the amount of waste we produce. Instead of making energy from waste we should be harnessing the energy that has been put into the original products by reusing and recycling."

This thesis is explored further by the environmental news sheet Edie which reports research commissioned by the FoE which suggests that this waste to electricity incinerator produces more carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, such as plastics in rubbish, than a gas-fired power station. Its study also shows that the UK could invest in a real renewable energy-from-waste technology, anaerobic digestion, which takes kitchen and commercial food waste and converts it into methane that can then be burnt. The resulting residue can then be used as compost.

We are told, without any elaboration, that "opponents of the anaerobic solution argument say it would be difficult to implement on a large scale and that there are commercial obstacles to overcome."

Therein lies reality. The highly variable nature of the refuse stream and the inevitable presence of contaminants make anaerobic digestion unreliable at best, and mostly impossible. While it might work on a small scale, with a single waste stream of known composition, it has never worked on the large scale. Even if it did, the disposal of the reside requires a huge marketing operation, which for a low-value product, has never proved economic.

On the other hand, the plans for electricity generation from are also unrealistic. Again, the highly variable nature of the waste stream poses huge problems when trying to maintain even combustion, while the increase in recycling is cherry-picking high-calorific materials, reducing the energy yield from the waste stream. That, and the cost of purifying combustion gasses, means that few plants have ever been able to generate worthwhile amounts of surplus energy, while reliability has always been less than predicted, making a nonsense of economic arguments.

Such is the current madness, however, that schemes such as this set to continue, while the Greenies can't even seem to understand that it is their own insanity which is largely responsible for the problem in the first place.

But the ultimate joke is how the EU, as the proximate cause of the mess, seems to evade any responsibility for it. Thus is Rosa Kleb, aka Margaret Beckett, able to declare in Parliament during last week's European Affairs debate that "a huge proportion … of the environmental improvements that have been made in this country in recent years … have come directly as a result of European regulations".

With "improvements" like Belvedere in the offing, I am sure we are all very grateful.

COMMENT THREAD

Another opportunity to be ignored

A particularly ill-informed piece on the website of EU Observer tells us: "National parliaments get say on EU laws".

Chirps Honor Mahony, who really should know better: "National parliaments are to start getting an unprecedented say on emerging EU laws, with one seasoned observer noting that it could be 'revolutionary'."

This is one of the outcomes of the European Council which has requested the commission "to duly consider comments by national parliaments" on proposed EU laws. In the future the commission will "make all new proposals and consultation papers directly available to national parliaments, inviting them to react so as to improve the process of policy formation", say the conclusions of the two-day summit on Brussels.

The genesis of this lies with president José Manuel Barroso, who made the proposal in May, supposedly "as part of Brussels' attempt to carry out reform that citizens can directly relate to." It resembles the so-called "yellow card" procedure proposed in the EU Constitution stating that the commission should review a legislative proposal, if at least one third of national parliaments believe the proposal falls outside EU competencies.

Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schussel is cited as saying that "national parliaments are going to have a far greater role to play" and Jens-Peter Bonde is the one who says it could "revolutionise" EU law-making - depending on "whether national parliaments make proper use of the facility."

If Bonde stopped to think for one minute, he would appreciate that parliaments – in theory at least – already have sovereign powers and can, if they are minded, reject any EU legislation. They can demand clarification, both directly and through their own governments, and are entirely free to dictate and enforce their own scrutiny arrangements.

Thus, to give parliaments a "power" they already have, and then to suck them into a procedure determined by the commission, subtly undermines them, turning them into supplicants, subordinate to an unelected supranational authority.

Yet, all we get by way of criticism recorded by Honor Mahony is a complaint that the European Council draft conclusions were watered down. Originally, the proposal was that the commission should "take into account" any comments by national parliaments, when it now reads that it should "duly consider".

And, since the commission, under the procedure of its own devising, is by no means obliged to change any of its proposals once it has "taken into account" any comments, one commentator from the Ind-Dem group – which funds EU Observer - remarked that this is simply another opportunity to be ignored.

COMMENT THREAD

Mr Incompetent

Straight from the school of "nothing is true until it has been denied by a minister" – or a company official - funding for the planned military wing of Airbus, the A400M airlifter, "is completely secure and will not be affected by problems surrounding the company's flagship A380 airliner".

So says an "Airbus top official" as the row surrounding Enron Airliners intensified with probes being launched into the collapse of the share price of the company’s parent, EADS.

Reuters is also telling us that Frenchman and CEO of EADS – in that order - Noël Forgeard, is clinging to his job after accusations of insider trading. It appears that he conveniently offloaded a tranche of shares just before the price dive, and is now claiming that he was unaware of costly delays to the A380 until after he had sold shares.

In France, opposition Socialists are calling for a parliamentary inquiry and a small shareholder group said EADS leaders should either be fired for incompetence or jailed for dishonesty.

Forgeard is not the only one who appears to have been "caught out" however, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard records in this morning's Telegraph. He retails how three other top EADS executives had – completely innocently, of course - cashed in shares worth millions of euros in March, just weeks before the discovery of grave defects in the A380 wiring system. It was all an unfortunate coincidence said Mr Forgeard. None of them knew anything about the A380 problems at the time.

Arnaud Lagardère, the French co-president of the board, seems to be one of those who conveniently divested themselves of large chunks of stock, halving his 15 percent stake in EADS last month. He too insists he had been given no inkling of trouble at a board meeting in May. "If we had been dishonest, we would have sold all our stock. I have the choice of appearing dishonest or incompetent, a man unaware of what is happening in his own factories. I plead the latter," he said.

And that is just the sort of person you want at the head of the board of a high-tech aerospace company that wants you to trust your life to its products.

COMMENT THREAD

Prodi and democracy

In an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit, partially translated and reprinted by John Rosenthal on Transatlantic Intelligencer, the new Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi explained his views on modern Italian politics and the Italian electorate.

It seems that the narrowness of his victory rankles with Signor Prodi and his views on the Italian people are just a shade on the bitter side. According to him Italy under Berlusconi became post-democratic with the people enslaved by the TV channels owned by Mediaset, of which Berlusconi is not the owner but the principal shareholder.

What precisely is Prodi’s evidence for this terrible state of affairs? Why, the fact that certain groups voted for him in smaller proportion than they did for his rival. Clearly, there was brainwashing at work there.

“Die Zeit: The American journalist Alexander Stille writes that Berlusconi created his own voters with his television channels.

Prodi: That's right. And that is the post-democratic aspect of Berlusconi… In these elections, almost 70% of academics voted for me. 70 percent! Among women between 35 and 55, I received fewer votes, maybe (laughs) because I am not so sexy. But in this age group, I had 11% more voters among people with active careers than among housewives.

Die Zeit: …who obviously watch more Berlusconi-television.

Prodi: The less time people spend before the television, the more likely they are to vote for the center-left. That is the mathematical law of post-democracy.”

QED. People should not be allowed to watch the TV channel of their choice (and, as a matter of fact, some of them may have been watching one of the three Italian state owned RAI network) and professors, particularly if they are left-wing ought to be given the right to choose the government of their country with no recourse to anyone else’s opinions.

The really surprising thing is that Prodi was such a completely useless Commission President. The man is made for that job, I should have thought.

COMMENT THREAD

The silence of the fat lady

We forgot our own dictum – it ain't over until the fat lady sings. And the fat lady is strangely silent on the vexed matter of the Joint Strike Fighter.

Thus, despite the unexpected agreement at the Bush-Blair summit on 27 May, when we were told that the technology-sharing issues were to be resolved, it seems there was the little matter of the small print.

On Wednesday, therefore, Military.com was telling us that the detailed negotiations between US and British officials had reached an impasse on the eve of a "high-level, bilateral meeting" that was scheduled yesterday between US deputy defense secretary Gordon England and Bill Jeffrey, the UK's Defence Ministry's permanent secretary.

This was intended to produce a "statement of principles" to facilitate sharing technologies and secrets with Britain to give it means to maintain and upgrade its notional JSF fleet independent of the United States.

At the time of the Military.com report, it was thought that the agreement was not likely to be reached this week, with "sources involved in the negotiations" saying that the discussions on the statement of principles had broken down earlier in the week.

Now, the plot seems to be thickening nicely. Reuters has reported that agreement was reached yesterday with the eight country partners on a "long-term plan" for the aircraft, although not between the United States and Britain on the technology-transfer plan "crucial to completion of the deal".

A British embassy spokesman is saying that England and Jeffrey had acknowledged the "good work" toward a deal "in a technically complex area". But the only agreement is "to take stock again in a month or so's time," while the Americans are dead-batting enquiries, saying "more time needed, but no snag."

Of course, since the original Blair-Bush summit, we have had the Blair-Chirac summit and the as-yet unconfirmed news that Gordon Brown might be considering scrapping or delaying the proposed aircraft carriers.

Putting all that together, heaven knows what is really going on. The only thing certain, I suppose, is that whatever it is, you won't hear it from the MSM, with the possible exception of The Business.

COMMENT THREAD

Will they, won't they?

It really is extraordinary the extent to which The Daily Telegraph, prop. Daniel Hannan, Esq, is pursuing the EPP agenda, even to the extent of devoting the main leader to the strident call: “Cameron must keep his pledge to leave the EPP”.

The decision, we are told, is David Cameron's “most important of his leadership so far”, not least because his commitment to leave was the one promise he made before being elected leader. “If he fails to fulfil it,” says the leader writer, a.k.a Daniel Hannan, “he will confirm Labour's smear - that he is a flip-flopping lightweight without firm principles - and irreparably damage the electorate's growing sense that here, at last, is a different sort of politician.”

Reading between the lines though, there is a different story. The self-proclaimed Eurosceptic Hannan, in a move that represented a triumph of hope over experience, pitched his weight behind the “flip-flopping lightweight” David Cameron during the Tory leadership election, on the promise of leaving the EPP – given in haste by the Boy King when he saw that Liam Fox might erode his lead.

Now, as we see, the chances of this actually happening are receding by the day, the young Hannan has large dollops of egg smeared all over his face, having not only supported the Boy King but actively campaigned for fellow Eurosceptics to join the band wagon.

In fact, leaving the EPP group mid-parliamentary term was always going to be difficult, as the groups are set up at the beginning of the term and, once settled, MEPs are always reluctant to change. The right time was immediately after the Euro-elections, but that opportunity was lost, making William Hague’s task an uphill slog, even without the active resistance of the leader of the Conservative Group in the EU parliament, Timothy Kirkhope.

In fact, prior to the elections, the deal had all but been done and it was the failure of the Tories to deliver then – not a little due to the actions of the Boy King himself – that soured many of the potential members from the accession countries.

The idea, as we have written before, was to set up an alternative right-wing group, one that would be free-market, eurosceptic, atlanticist, the EPP being none of these things but part of the European project, as Hannan’s article points out. With the influx of supposedly like-minded East European MEPs this seemed an extremely good idea. But it was not to be. All that is now past history and the groups, if not carved in stone are, at the very least, set in hard to shift clay.

In any case, is there really any point to this agonizing (beyond fulfilling the one and only promise the Boy King had made during his election campaign and saving the career of one or two eurosceptic MEPs)?

The leader in the Telegraph gets almost apocalyptic. Leaving the EPP, it explains, will change the entire politics of the European Parliament:

“Indeed, the effect of establishing a new group would be to create, for the first time, a real opposition in the European Parliament - for every current major group, including the EPP, is formally committed to the integrationist project.”

There is, as it happens, a group in the European Parliament, the Independence/ Democracy Group, which is, roughly speaking, in opposition to the European project or as much as any group can be within the Toy Parliament. Surely the writer of the leader must know that the way in which the Toy Parliament and, indeed, the whole EU legislative process functions prevents any form of genuine opposition at any time.

A new grouping, the article goes on, would solve many of the problems Europe (and the European Union) face:

“All over Europe, voters are crying out, not for ever-closer union, but for a Europe of independent states, trading and co-operating on the basis of national sovereignty. Britain's Conservatives are the largest party in the European Parliament to hold this sentiment. They could lead the reform of Europe - but they cannot do so from within the EPP.”

The idea that Britain’s Conservatives hold a consistent sentiment about the EU or European developments from one day to the next is laughable. Most of the MEPs, as it happens, are happily federalist.

In any case, exactly how would a new grouping in the European Parliament achieve that “Europe of independent states, trading and co-operating on the basis of national sovereignty”? Does Mr Hannan have any practical ideas on the subject or will it happen about the same time as Mr Hague reforms of the Treaty of Rome?

[This is a joint posting by the two editors of EUReferendum.]

COMMENT THREAD

A propos…

If anyone needed any confirmation that public administration is going to hell in a handcart, as we in Bradford enjoy our continuing crimewave, readers will be pleased to learn that the Council's police committee is on the case.

Having set up a "safer and stronger communities improvement committee", the key item on the agenda this week is an earnest discussion on the "audit commission inspection improvement plan", under the generic heading of "monitoring improvement" – not performance, mind you, but improvement.

And, amongst the items up for deliberation is this little gem:

So that stakeholders can contribute fully to building safer, stronger and more cohesive communities, the council should:

Ensure that its proposed rationalisation of plans, strategies and partnerships in this area is accompanied by a clear communications strategy so that all involved understand the relationship between the key plans, strategies and activities, and how each contributes to clearly articulated outcomes.

Needless to say, the council is also enjoined to "develop a robust, risk-based approach to involvement in new initiatives, to ensure it has the capacity to deliver existing projects and maintain focus on agreed priorities".

Councillors will, no doubt, he happy to know that this agenda can also be made available in Braille, large print or tape format, and that a buffet tea will be provided while they partake in their deliberations.

Afterwards, they may feel the need for something a little stronger.

COMMENT THREAD

Well, I never!

Even the Europhile Guardian has been waxing indignant about it, declaring that the EU parliament's building in Strasbourg "is an absurd and costly white elephant, which should be shut down."

Yet, despite mounting pressure for precisely that, and a petition signed by more than 500,000 people, we learn that the issue was not even raised at the European Council today.

According to the IHT, the parliament president, Josep Borrell, told reporters that the European Council "does not wish in any way to change the existing setup," adding, "It was not necessary for me to raise the issue again."

The Guardian bleats that this is "a lost opportunity to tackle very real concerns that the good ship Europe is alarmingly 'disconnected' from millions of the citizens it should be serving."

What is really amazing though is that anybody thought that there was the slightest chance the matter would be raised, much less that there is even the remotest chance of the Strasbourg seat being abandoned. What the hell do people think the EU is… a democracy, or something?

COMMENT THREAD

The hangover comes tomorrow

Not that infrequently, one reads a leader from one or other of the "heavies" and nods appreciatively, agreeing with a point made or the use of a particular piece of information. Occasionally, even, we draw such pieces to our own readers' attention, as worthy of special consideration.

On the other hand, there are those all too frequent pieces which strike you as utter tosh, written by one of those dismal species of hacks who would be better employed cleaning the streets, but for the fact that their intellectual capabilities probably would not stretch to such a demanding and responsible task.

Exemplifying this latter genre is the piece in today's Times, headed Europe's big win, with a strap that parades the author's theme: "EU expansion is an unheralded success".

It is hardly necessary or desirable to deconstruct the article in detail, however, in order to point out the central fallacy of seeking to define "success" over such a short timescale in the history of peoples who can trace their heritages back through the millennia.

Thus does the idiot Times writer warble that, while neither Croatia nor Montenegro – the latter barely been recognised by "Brussels" as an independent country – yet the border between the two is a symbol of progress towards the prosperity denied to both countries for more than half a century by ideology and war.

Thanks to reforms required for EU accession, he chirps, "queues and corruption at the frontier post have disappeared. EU funds for a new road tunnel have slashed the travel time to Montenegro's capital. And the hope of quick EU membership was the winning theme in its drive for independence."

Such a tiny example is then taken as the exemplar and put into service to contrast with "the bureaucracy-ridden Brussels as it hosts the bi-annual EU summit", which the writer believes "is striking and instructive." The paralysed of the one is a foil to the dynamism of the other, on which slender thread is postulated the idea that the EU should abandon Monnet's vision and address the new challenge of offering "an economic model attractive and resilient enough to fill the vacuum left by the fall of communism and a decade of Balkan strife."

By any measure, that is an attractive vision, though unrealistic to the point of fantasy. But such is this world of fantasy inhabited by the writer that he is able to assert that: "This challenge has, to an astonishing degree, been met." We do not even need the video evidence, à la Miss Moss, to know this man is on the hard stuff.

In his delusional state, he argues that, in seeking EU membership, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe did not sign up for an elaborate experiment in pooled sovereignty; rather, for the tremendous, measurable advantages of a single market for goods, services, capital and labour.

Those advantages, he says, delivered average growth rates of 6.2 percent for the Union's ten new members last year and also helped to fuel growth and hold down inflation in countries, such as Britain, bold enough to open their doors fully to Eastern European labour.

But, whether they sought them or not, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe did sign up for "an elaborate experiment in pooled sovereignty", which included the unconditional acceptance of the whole of the 97,000 pages of the acquis communautaire. In making the most of the advantages, they are like revellers at the party where the wine flows too freely. Tonight they are happy, but tomorrow comes the reckoning.

Ignore the reckoning, however, and somehow you can assert that everything in the garden is rosy, which somehow emboldens you to write: "The feeble federalists are in a funk because they cannot impose their will, and the people of Europe are quietly celebrating that very impotence."

The truth is, they are just getting trollied – the hangover comes tomorrow.

COMMENT THREAD

Tail wagging the dog

Some years ago when I first started writing and speaking about the common foreign and security policy, at that time still in a budding stage, much of what I said was greeted with open incredulity. Surely, I recall one listener saying to me, we are not going to have the same foreign policy as Greece. I pointed out that we were planning – at that time – to have the same currency as Greece.

Well, the truth is that we do have the same foreign policy as Greece. In fact, Greek foreign policy is our foreign policy because the Greek government is our government or, at least, part of it.

I came to the conclusion at the time (and see no real reason for changing my opinion) that as the CFSP was not rooted in common interests and as its real purpose was to facilitate the creation of a state, it existed in a vacuum. There were no arguable reasons for any decisions within it.

It could go, I argued, one of two ways. Either it will be in hock to the member state that shouts loudest or, somewhat more dangerously, it will be extremely pro-active, regardless of consequences, in order to prove that it exists and is functional.

We have seen a few examples at attempted policy decisions and actions to prove simply that “Europe” has a “strong voice” in the international scene. Mostly that voice had little to say but that little was usually said in opposition to the United States, the latter being, apparently, the only consistent aspect of the CFSP.

Above all, as we have pointed out before, the EU has no clear idea of what to do about countries on its border. If they are not potential members there is no policy towards them. But some of the member states have a policy and that, faute de mieux, gets adopted.

Yesterday I listened to James Pettifer, one of the indisputable experts on the Balkans and, in particular, the former Yugoslavia, outline possible scenarios for Kosovo in the next few months.

According to him, there will be an international decision to give Kosovo de jure as well as de facto independence, though, probably, with various conditions. The problem for the EU member states will be Greece, which may well insist on non-recognition, particularly as the United States, at present the crucial player in the southern Balkans, will go ahead and do so.

The reason, according to Pettifer was simply that the Greeks are still annoyed that the United States (and Russia and China and many other countries) have recognized the Republic of Macedonia under that name. Greece, for rather abstruse reasons that have to do with Alexander of Macedonia not being a Slav (well, no, he wasn’t but he was not exactly a modern Greek either) insist that the country is not really Macedonia but the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

And that’s enough Macedonian Question. Ed. What matters about all this is the reaction of the other EU member states. As my colleague has pointed out, negotiations with Turkey have all but broken down because of a veto put on them by the government in Nicosia.

Similarly, the Republic of Macedonia has not been recognized under that name (and was not recognized at all for a long time) by any other EU member state, including Britain, because Greece says so. And the same might happen with Kosovo. Not that it matters in the end, but it is a rum way to behave.

COMMENT THREAD

The regular brushing of teeth

One of the little rituals in the House of Commons is the six-monthly "European Affairs" debate, held just prior to a European Council. The theory is that this gives Parliament and opportunity to approve the minister's negotiating mandate, although, by tradition, the House breaks without a division so the "approval" is only theoretical.

Again, by tradition, the debate is addressed by the foreign secretary and this was, therefore, the debut of Margaret Beckett in her new rôle. She was thus addressed by the ghastly Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda and, ghastly though he is, rather summed up the proceedings. "May I welcome the Foreign Secretary to this collection of Euro-obsessives who regularly gather together, doling out anoraks before we begin?", he declared.

Veteran MP for Grimsby, Austin Mitchell, returning after a period of illness, also caught the mood. Expressing his pleasure at taking part in "one of our Euro bashes", he suggested a website called, "Euro debaters reunited" because, as he said, "we debate the issue in the same fashion, and make the same arguments every six months, hands warmly clasped around one another's throats." Continuing in that vein, he added:

Our debates, however, have become rather sad. Europe used to be a serious threat for some Members, but now it has all the savagery of a dead sheep. Some Members regard it as a bright vision to distract people from reality, but that vision has become remarkably tired. Europe has ceased to be relevant to our lives - it is no longer a front-line issue, as it has all the excitement and relevance of a debate on late library fines or the regular brushing of teeth. It has become a backwater, and it is of less concern to us, because it is of less concern to the people of Europe…

He is not right though. "Europe" is highly relevant to our lives – ask any fisherman, or talk to the huge bank of people in the electronics industry struggling to meet the deadline on 1 July for the introduction of RoSH. But the trouble is that no politician is prepared to talk about the European Union except in the most general of terms, reducing any debate to, as Mitchell observes, the level of excitement of the regular brushing of teeth.

Thus it was that a debate that started at one in the afternoon, droned on until seven in the evening, producing over 50,000 words for Hansard – which takes up 104 pages of ordinary A4 – and yielded virtually nothing of interest, or very little that we have not heard before.

For the readers of runes, however, there was one little frisson of excitement when Bill Cash intervened on Graham Brady, the Conservative spokesman on Europe to ask him whether he would be "right in thinking that the party's policy would not be to rule out the idea of establishing national control with respect to the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy?"

The question was, of course, set up, and Brady responded with an agreed form of words, that reflected the policy as far as he dared express it, saying,

We have ruled out nothing in respect of the methods that we would use to achieve what all rational people must accept as a necessary objective - to find a system that works, instead of one that has failed so badly.

Not that this was picked up by any of the journalists – if there were any left in the press gallery by then – but that is the definitive statement by the Conservative Party on the CFP. From a definite commitment to unilateral withdrawal, we are now in a situation where the Party has "ruled out nothing". We will have to wait until Europhile Mr Gummer's policy commission reports – he who is slated as the worst and certainly the most unpopular fisheries minister the Conservatives ever had.

For the rest though, it did indeed have all the excitement of the "regular brushing of teeth". I have posted the link (above) but I would not suggest you waste you time reading the debate. I've done that for you.

COMMENT THREAD

That Enron moment

Following on from the shock announcement of a six-month delay in the Airbus A380 "superjumbo" programme, shares of the parent company EADS plummeted yesterday, wiping nearly $7 billion off its market value.

According to The New York Times EADS stock closed down 26 percent at €18.73, or $23.65, the lowest since the stock debuted in July 2000.

Embarrasingly for the European aerospace company, the fall was on par with some of the biggest one-day plunges in corporate history. Enron shares, for instance, fell by 23 percent on 20 November 2001, after the company restated earnings a second time, while Vivendi's shares fell 26 percent on 2 July 2002, after its debt had been cut to junk.

This is certainly not the reputation the company wished to acquire and, more worrying still for the company, a Goldman Sachs analyst has been writing to investors stating that, "This is in our view very damaging both to the credibility of EADS management, and also to Airbus's reputation for program management."

The situation is now made worse by Singapore Airlines - unhappy at the delay in its A380 orders - announcing yesterday that it would buy 20 Boeing Dreamliners worth $4.52 billion, and take options on another 20 aircraft.

Another analyst is saying it is too early to write the A380's obituary but he does say that how Airbus recover from this situation will "test their mettle". The big problem is that getting the A380 delivery schedule back on track is likely to drain engineering resources away from other ventures, testing the company to its limit.

The Financial Times notes that Airbus is having to keep other ambitious projects on track too, including the development of the A400M military transport aircraft (pictured), the first time it has undertaken an all-new project in the defence market. The A400M is due into service in 2009.

And as a measure of how far trust in the company has evaporated, it is retailing a report that investors will apply "a significant discount to the company's and consensus earnings projections" for fear that another piece of negative news is around the corner.

Given the role of hubris in the whole Airbus enterprise, which even the markets have marked down as "arrogance", one has not a little concern for the A400M, not least because the product website proudly proclaims, "Building on Airbus Success".

One thing for sure, if the RAF – already suffering from a critical shortage of airlift – does not get its aircraft on time, it is well and truly stuffed.

COMMENT THREAD

A thoroughly dishonest little speech

Our new Europe Minister, Geoff Hoon, recycled from his old job Leader of the House of Commons, began a campaign on today, ostensibly "to convince Britons of the benefits of the European Union".

So says Reuters which then adds that the real aim is to expose divisions in the resurgent Conservative Party.

He kicked off his crusade – for that we must call it – by giving a speech to the profoundly Europhile Centre for European Reform, the ex-MEP speaking amongst friends, setting, he tells us, "a new agenda for Europe".

The Reuters' report homes in on the Hoon wailing that public support for membership of the EU had plummeted since the early 1990s, vowing to persuade the nation of its advantages. His aim was nothing less than "to restart the debate in this country - and in particular to rekindle interest in the European Union".

Anyhow, when it came to the detail of the "advantages", Hoon – described by the BBC as an "intelligent and able debater" – chose to talk about a "modern, relevant EU", telling his pals that "most of our citizens do not see or understand that the European Union is not the same common market that was established in the 1950s."

With something of an understatement he declared that the "EU has a serious image problem" and then happily dismissed the EU that was "no longer just about a common market for Europe…". As for "the obsession with the CAP," we have taken "huge strides forward down the road to reform," he burbled, "and we will have a further fundamental review in 2008". (Errr... isn't that what Blair didn't get out of Chirac?)

And now… roll of drums… and now, "Instead, the EU's current work programme is firmly based on tackling those things that affect our everyday lives – like cheaper energy. And all the add-ons that make life more flexible like cheaper travel and mobile phone tariffs, the ability to buy property overseas and retire and draw your pension on the Costa del Sol."

Even More Importantly… another roll of drums… "the EU is already focussing on those big issues that our citizens have shown that they care passionately about." That, of course, was Climate Change (his capitals). "Do people realise that the EU is the only game in town on environmental protection?" asks the Hoon. "Reversing Climate Change demands an urgent and sustained international response" … "this government has been at the front of the pack in pushing for action at the European level" … "and the EU is now leading the way in driving collective action."

As to the "new agenda", that was down to us. We must see the European Union as "a real engine of change" in our lives. When we "think about the environment" we must think Europe. Climate change. Think Europe. Tackling world poverty. Think Europe. "Britain is winning the argument on the continent," he concluded. "Now we must win it at home."

Breaking for a quick reality check, even in their wildest dreams, I don't recall the Kyoto freaks claiming that they are going to reverse Climate Change but, it seems, the EU is going to do it folks! Jesus, it seems, has got nothing on the EU, which can reverse climate change and bring down roaming charges at the same time.

Funny thing is, Hoon doesn't mention that other great breakthrough in improving our environment, the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, which is going to cost untold billions to achieve a greater environmental impact.

He doesn't mention that the burden of regulation – according to the commission's own estimate – is costing the EU some £600 billion a year, and nor does he even hint that multinationals are bailing out as fast as they can find alternative homes.

And that is the trouble with Europhiles like Hoon. His thoroughly dishonest little speech paints an unremittingly one-sided picture, accentuating what he believes to be the advantages and achievements of his darling EU, avoiding any hint of a downside.

If there is a problem, it is an image problem. We don't understand the EU so we must change our perception and realise it is a "real engine for change in our lives". Then everything will be wonderful and we can stop worrying and learn to love the EU.

So much for the "intelligent and able debater". But does he really think we are that stupid?

COMMENT THREAD

Compost for brains

When you actually talk to people, ordinary people, and ask them whether they would rate any public service of which they had personal experience as efficient, their answers are almost invariably in the negative.

Yet these same people – or so we are told by the politicians of all parties – would go to the barricades to defend "their" public services and, so sacred are that it is electoral suicide to touch them.

It is these same lame-brain politicians and their groupies (see the comments section) who go all dewy-eyed about municipal recycling schemes and it is thus timely that we get a piece in The Telegraph today telling us about the "composting" rip-off.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of garden waste, we learn, are being driven around the streets unnecessarily every year because councils have an incentive to collect it rather than promote home composting. The growth of "free" green waste collections has caused extra public expenditure, pollution, congestion and probably accidents and been in direct contravention of the government's policy of favouring the minimisation of waste.

Interestingly, that dim little creature masquerading as leader of the Conservative Party was preening during the local election campaign about how Conservative councils had the best record for "recycling". But, as it turns out, the "unintended consequences" of the way that the government promotes recycling means that some of the country's highest-scoring local authorities - such as Tory-held Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, achieve their high figures by gathering green waste that it might have been more environmentally friendly not to collect at all.

The problem, we are told, arises from the government giving statutory incentives to recycle the highest possible tonnages, and garden waste collected for recycling gets subtracted at a rate of 100 percent from the amount of biodegradable waste a local authority is allowed to landfill. On the other hand, any waste that it has managed to save by handing out free home composters, for example, is credited at only 68 percent under the present system – "forcing" councils to go for collection.

The result is a huge growth in "free" (the inverted commas are mine – they aren't bloody well free!) kerbside collections that "has mobilised large quantities of waste, a large proportion of which could otherwise have remained outside municipal collection systems and quietly broken down at the end of people's gardens." Kerbside green waste collections have thus become the fastest growing form of council recycling, growing to 400,000 tons in 2005 from about 20,000 tons in 1997.

All this of course is adding massively to councils' costs, hence the calls yesterday for additional refuse collection charges – the final stage of a bureaucratic system gone mad.

As it happens, our own local council joined in the madness last week, delivering unasked two bijou collection bags (illustrated) to our front door - and then another two to our back - with details of a four-weekly collection cycle which just happens to be different from the four-weekly waste paper collection cycle. It is getting to the stage where we need to keep diary appointments to know what rubbish to put out, and when.

But we are not going to use the bags. We have been composting our garden waste for as long as I can remember and are not about to give the council material that we would prefer to use ourselves, just to help it reach some nominal quota. Nor do we need a "free" composter – why should taxpayers' money go on those?

Anyhow, the real point is that this insane scheme is driven by the EU's landfill directive, not that you would get any hint of this from the Telegraph article. Yet it is about time people woke up to the fact that a previously workable system of waste collection and disposal is being destroyed – at inordinate cost – by mad Brussels bureaucrats.

It is an indictment of the Eurosceptic movement, and especially UKIP, that it has not been able to major on this issue and come up with some saner, workable ideas for promoting recycling. Certainly, though, we cannot look to the Tories. Not only do they not "do" Europe, all we get on this is Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment spokesman, bleating that "the government urgently needs to address this issue and get people to get rid of their waste in the most sustainable way - and that means in a home composter."

The man has compost for brains.

COMMENT THREAD

Lame duck "superjumbo"

One should not really take such pleasure in the travails of Airbus – British jobs are at stake here – but so closely linked has been the fortunes of this company with that of the European Union itself that one cannot help but enjoy a certain grim satisfaction when hubris tilts slowly into nemesis.

Even as we left it though, on 18 May when the "superjumbo" arrived in London and little Gordy was prating about its arrival being, "a great day for London, a great day for Britain, a great day for British manufacturing and a great day for European co-operation," the project was already flying into stormy weather – and it ain't got got any better.

We now learn from Reuters that the company has announced new delays of at least six months in deliveries of the A380 superjumbo on Tuesday, a development described as "an embarrassing new setback expected to blow a two billion euro cash hole in parent EADS".

Airbus is still planning to deliver the first aircraft to its launch customer, Singapore Airlines, in 2006, but is then having to slow down deliveries the following year because, it says, of problems with the installation of electrical wiring harnesses.

EADS is predicting that the delays will mean shortfalls in earnings, before interest and tax, of €500 million a year between 2007 and 2010, and acknowledged it would have to pay penalties to carriers which have signed up for the world's biggest airliner.

This is the second major revision in the production timetable, coming as it does on the back of an earlier six-month delay, despite earlier assurances that the programme was running to schedule. In true European fashion, the company's forecasts are turning out to be about as accurate as those of the EU commission.

Still to come is the decision on whether to invest in the revamp of the A340 and A350 series and, somewhere in the wings is the military airlifter project, the A400M, which is attracting a remarkable lack of headlines that bodes ill for the health of that little venture.

The delays on the A380, therefore, could not come at a worse time as EADS is looking down the nose at a major cash shortfall just at the time when the demands on its funds are at their highest, on top of which it is having to stump up for the BAE shares and extending its reach into the military market. It must not be forgotten, also, that EADS is a major funding partner in Galileo, which explains its reluctance there to bail out that project.

Meanwhile, Airbus's customers, including its largest, Emirates, which has ordered 43 A380s, are "considering their position", and the possibility of some bailing out has not been discounted. Would that we could do the same with the European Union which once so proudly took ownership of the project, that other lame-duck "superjumbo".

COMMENT THREAD

Dullest ever "summit"

It is odd how journalists – English-speaking, at any rate – seem to have difficulty getting their brains round the words "European Council", and fall back on the hackneyed descriptor "summit". French journalists don't seem to have that problem, even in the regional papers.

However, if the "summit" bit is wrong, "dullest" is probably spot-on. That is definitely what Reuters is calling the meeting in Brussels to be held over Thursday and Friday, and they should know.

It is one of those wonderful inside jokes in the European Union that – with very few exceptions, like the frenetic budget deal – the European Council communiqués are drafted well before the meeting and that the first job of the "summit" is to approve the text. And, having seen the draft text, I can vouch for Reuters' judgement.

With Blair on his way out, Chirac emulating a political zombie and even little Balkenende facing an election next year, there is very little that could happen anyway – and that, it seems, is the way the "colleagues" want it.

Says one of those anonymous "senior EU diplomats", "If everything goes well, no one will ever notice this summit happened." He adds that the participants will be able to do little more than prolong for another year a "pause for reflection" on the moribund EU constitution - more "pause" than "reflection" some are saying.

Sometimes though, when nothing is expected, the EU is at its most dangerous, as it will sneak things through while no one is looking. But there does not seem much danger of that here. Even Chirac has been leaned on to be on his best behaviour, so I really pity the journalists at the event. They will really be struggling for a headline.

Thus, it is for chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, in the dying days of the Austrian EU presidency to entertain the troops and put a brave face on the proceedings. Then, they are building the "house of Europe" so they deserve to suffer for the cause. But I bet none of them realised they would have to watch the paint dry as well - before the roof was even in place.

COMMENT THREAD

Forward the Anglosphere?

A combination of day-jobbing and difficulties with internet connection at home has meant a very weak presence on the blog. This has given me a feeling of not quite understanding what is going on. (Yes, yes, there are numerous people around who would say I suffer from that all the time, particularly if they don’t agree with me.)

However, some good things come out of everything. Yesterday I spent the afternoon talking to the guru of the Anglosphere, James Bennett, President of the Anglosphere Institute and author of The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. In the evening, to round things off, I was privileged to chair the meeting organized by the Bruges Group at which Jim Bennett spoke to an appreciative audience.

Well, it was largely appreciative. There was a Conservative candidate for the European Parliament who announced in ringing tones that matters European were all going our way and Anglospheric ideas will win in Europe as they have always done. There must be an underground establishment where these people are bred.

Jim Bennett is a friend as well as a man with whom I have had many discussions on many subjects (he knows about so many things that I find it hard to keep up and often don’t bother) though until a few weeks ago these had all been conducted on the internet. This is entirely appropriate, because Jim believes, as do most Anglospherists, that the existence of the new technology makes it possible for the Anglospheric networks to grow in parallel to official ones.

The problem we are all facing is to try to define some future role for this country. Involvement in the European Union has not been a success and neither has the EU itself.

The alternative that is sneeringly produced by Europhiles is to be a slavish follower of the United States. That is not satisfactory and the much-vaunted special relationship would not stand up to any close examination. It is a relatively new idea in history and has always depended on individual leaders. Thus, it all worked reasonably well with Reagan and Thatcher not just because the two had similar outlooks but also because the lady was not backward about coming forward when Britain’s interests were at stake.

Despite appearances, it has worked considerably less well with Bush and Blair, because the latter has not managed to use his undoubted influence in Washington wisely. The reason there is Blair’s obsession with the need to strengthen transnational governance and with American support for European integration. The latter, he believes in a rather confused fashion would bolster up his own position among the colleagues.

In 2003 Britain’s cachet in the United States was great. Blair could really have had almost anything he wanted. In fact, a Bill was introduced in the Senate that would have created a free-trade agreement between the two countries. Alas, Blair had to decline this, shamefacedly (I’d like to think) having to point out that this country had no right to negotiate international trade agreements.

What he did try to achieve was support for the European Constitution (a half-hearted one was given by the President and a considerably stronger one by State); that famous appeal to the UN before the Iraqi war, when Blair was quite clearly diddled by Chirac; and several pleas for America to sign up to Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. None of these were in either Britain’s or America’s interests.

In any case, the Blair – Bush era is coming to an end. (Despite the prevalence of the Bush Derangement Syndrome, it has to be said that he will be President for only two and a half more years.) What will happen then? Because so much depends on the individuals, that is completely unpredictable, especially as the situation is seriously complicated by the difficulties over defence matters, analyzed in great detail by my colleague. (There are too many postings to link to.)

Furthermore, a relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is always going to be severely unequal. Not quite as unequal as it appeared recently because of Blair’s blunderings but there is no denying the fact that the US is the largest and strongest power in the world at the moment. We have to be grateful for the fact that this giant is a democracy and one that is friendly towards us, ready to help its friends.

The third possibility is the revival of the Commonwealth, discussed at length by a number of people, mostly in Britain. There are exceptions but, on the whole, the Commonwealth does not play a big part in many countries’ thinking.

There are problems with that. The Commonwealth belonged to a particular period in history just as the Common Market and the idea of European integration did. It is, as some Anglospherists put it, a creature of the machine age.

In fact, it was never really a huge success politically, though there were economic, particularly trading, aspects to it that were useful to many. All that is in the past. The big developed and developing countries of the Commonwealth have grown used to their separation from Britain in any meaningful sense of the word. Some like Australia and, to some extent, India have become major powers in their own region. They have formed their own direct links with the United States and with each other.

The idea of them going back to some arrangement whereby these links will be translated through Britain is moonshine. But it gives people pleasant dreams of grandeur. For the insistence on the Commonwealth despite all the inconsistencies and difficulties with many of its members, is another attempt to turn away from the United States and to create yet another rival, one that will restore the pre-eminent British position. Dream on.

It is fair to say that the Commonwealth links would be very useful within the Anglosphere in that they could provide a balance within these arrangements to the largest member, the United States.

Jim Bennett’s research and analysis has led him to conclude that there are various links that depend on a common language and a commonality of economic, political and legal developments. The similarities outnumber the dissimilarities to a surprising degree.

Research done by historians like Alan McFarlane and David Hackett Fischer have shown that many of these “exceptionalist” ideas, such as the importance of individual ownership of property and the existence of the nuclear family go back into the early Middle Ages in England and maybe even further.

On the other hand, most of the “distinctly American” aspects that are so disliked by many people in this country, are actually British. My own feeling is that America and Americans today are very similar to what Britain and the British were in the nineteenth century, displaying the same baffling combination of religiosity and emphasis on material well-being and development.

The arrogance of the British in that period was excoriated as widely as the American version of it is today.

So where do we go from here? To some extent, links are being forged already through the internet and, in particular, the blogosphere. It is entirely legitimate to talk about Anglospheric blogs both on the right and the left. It is also fair to note as several people did on our forum that the British blogs with a few exceptions fight shy of linking into that network. There is a deal too much navel-gazing in British politics.

This trend will continue and the links will become stronger. There are no more gatekeepers as Jim Bennett explained yesterday evening. Americans, Canadians, Australians, British, Indians and anyone else can read each other’s newspapers, websites and blogs without some editor deciding what was and what was not suitable. Technology is not likely to go back on that.

His proposal is the creation of networks of institutions that would not consider the submerging of individual countries and their differences. There are some Anglospherists who talk of a union and constitution but there is little need for that.

Free trade between the countries is merely a starting point. In any case, this is not to be limited in the mind of a free-trader to the Anglospheric countries. (Or the Commonwealth ones for that matter, though there the logic is less clear.)

Beyond that, Bennett proposes arrangements whereby citizens of the Anglosphere could travel, work and stay for various lengths of time in other Anglospheric countries without the present bureaucratic mess. (This may well cause problems as far as Britain is concerned, there being rather a large number of British citizens, who consider themselves to be jihadists.)

We come to the important issue of defence. As things stand, it is clear that there is a commonality of interest between the several Anglospheric countries and an ability to work together swiftly and efficiently. The post-tsunami effort by America, Australia, India and Japan (an honorary member) showed that clearly. And Britain’s absence showed the difficulties as far as we are concerned.

Above all, the Anglosphere is a project in development and depends largely on ideas. I am delighted to say that the Anglosphere Institute is beginning to grow and others will be established in the countries that are receptive to those ideas.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the Anglospherist ideas of democracy, individuality, small government, free economy, the common law and openness to the world will slowly become successful. As ever, the question is where will the originator of those ideas, Britain, place herself.

COMMENT THREAD

More on CafeBabel

Idly checking through our favourite website, for blog it cannot be called, CafeBabel, I came across an interesting page, which lists the enterprise's partners.

Not a very surprising list but worth pondering over. It is divided into Private Sector Partners, Public Sector Partners, Content Partners and Partners to whom Special Thanks are due. For Partners one must read Funders, so the subject is of some interest.

CafeBabel has an interesting idea of what constitutes the Private Sector, but I expect few of the little boys and girls who work for it have ever been near the private sector and do not expect to do so in their future tranzi-propelled career.

Among others we get European Cultural Foundation, Allianz Cultural Foundation, Foundation of France and Robert Bosch Foundation. Hmmm. Knowing the way cultural foundations work in most countries but particularly in continental Europe, private does not come into it.

Then there is the Public Sector Partners: Regional Council of Ile de France, EC Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Paris City Hall and French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (actually listed as the French Minister of Foreign Affairs but I doubt if the Minister coughs up private money).

Then we get the Content Partners, various outlets of the media and our old friend, EurActiv. Special thanks go to: Maison des Initiatives Etudiants, the Polish Robert Schuman Foundation, Anima'fac and Maison de l'Europe Paris.

With friends like that CafeBabel needs no enemies. As the saying goes, heh!

COMMENT THREAD

First shot across the bows

It seems quite extraordinary but politicians cannot draw the right conclusions even on the basis of random activity. You’d think they would do so once in a lifetime. Well, you’d be wrong.

Take the question of money for peerages – not, in my opinion, a particularly heinous crime and a considerably better kind of behaviour than extracting money from the body politic as MPs do. However, the media and, therefore, our political classes chose to view it as the greatest disaster that had ever befallen this country and ….drew the wrong conclusions.

What both Blair and Cameron want is state funding for political parties, a development that would widen the gap between the politicians and the people to whom they should be accountable even further.

While it is reasonable to discuss ways of changing the rules of private, business and organizational (remember the unions?) funding, the idea that somehow it will be more open, more transparent, more democratic for political parties to be funded by the taxpayer according to a decision made by some overstaffed and highly expensive quango, is preposterous.

Inevitably, we are going to have a Review, a close relation of Consultation. The Review will be conducted by One of the Great and the Good, in this case, Sir Hayden Phillips, whose biography I reproduce here for the edification of our readers:

“Sir Hayden Phillips is chairman of the National Theatre, senior adviser at Hanson Capital and charities consultant to HRH The Prince of Wales. He is a director of St Just Farms Ltd, of GSL, and an adviser to Englefield Capital. He is chairman of the Salisbury Cathedral Fabric Advisory Committee, chairman-designate of Marlborough College Council and a governor of the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust.

His previous career was in the Civil Service. He was Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor's Department from 1998 to 2004, and Permanent Secretary of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport from 1992 to 1998. Before that he held senior positions in the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and in the European Commission. His report on The Review of the Honours System was published in July 2004.”

On the website he gives all sorts of rather pompous ideas as to how he is going to conduct his Review. We, on this blog, take issue with his three “unarguable” basic principles:

“The financial health of political parties is fundamental to our parliamentary democracy

How parties are funded should be fully transparent

A future system should encourage democratic engagement and be as fair as is possible between parties.”

Well, one out of three ain’t bad. Not good but not too bad, either. To start with, the assumption that the “financial health” of specific political parties is fundamental or even essential to parliamentary democracy is nonsense. There have been many parties in this country’s political history and, one hopes, there will be many more. If a party is not financially solvent or healthy it tries to change that situation within the legally allowed framework or it disappears. Too bad.

Most of us will go along with the second point, though “fully transparent” needs some definition.
The last point again, makes no sense. Who is the arbiter of fairness? The government? Some overpaid quango? Some overpaid and pompous civil servant, who is unlikely to look favourably at parties outside the establishment?

Surely, as long as laws are not broken, if people, businesses and organizations want to give more money to one party than to another, that is their privilege. What they get out of it, is a different matter.

COMMENT THREAD

Paying through the nose

It was rather helpful of The Times today to inform us that Britain spends £2.6 billion on domestic waste collection and disposal, equivalent to £120 per household per year.

That gross figure provides a useful baseline against which to compare the costs imposed on us by its ill-conceived landfill directive, currently estimated at £5-8 billion a year, on top of an investment of £10 billion to provide the alternative disposal infrastructure.

In other words, courtesy of the EU, the costs of one of our most basic council services is to increase three to four-fold but such is the madness of our age and the paucity of public debate that, instead of railing against this entirely unneccessary burden, no less than Sir Michael Lyons is actively considering whether homeowners should paying a second tax to meet the expense.

Sir Michael is apparently considering this option as part of a range of proposals to reform council tax, telling us it's "a fairness issue". The dreadful man argues, "Why should people who don’t take recycling very seriously or have a lifestyle that generates a lot of waste be able to do that when their neighbours are being very careful not to generate waste and putting their energies into recycling?"

For sure, there is a fairness issue here, but not the one Sir Michael would care to raise: why should we pay four times as much for the collection and disposal of our rubbish just to satisfy an EU directive, especially as so much of the "recycled" material simply ends up in China to pollute their environment?

Bearing in mind that the Tories no longer "do" Europe, at least we had a half-way sensible comment from Caroline Spelman, the shadow secretary for local government, who, once she had got over the obligatory "greenie" bit, said, "the danger with a scheme like this is that it will increase fly-tipping by those who simply don't want to pay the charges."

And ain't that the truth. Many times we have reported that the current measures are leading to an epidemic of fly-tipping and, in some cases, so lucrative has it become that criminals are even moving out of drug dealing into illegal waste disposal because it is more lucrative.

Nor is this only a British phenomenon. Tucked in a report in The Independent last week, entitled "Italy is Europe's worst environmental offender", was the news that:

Among the more pernicious problems are the increasing involvement of Mafia-like gangs of criminals muscling into the disposal of hazardous waste: offering bargain prices to factories in northern Italy with dangerous waste to dispose of, trucking it to the south of the country, faking the documentation and dumping it in landfills or even in national parks.

All this reinforces one of those universal truths, that there is nothing so bad that an EU bureaucrat cannot make it worse. And, courtesy of Sir Michael, it looks as if we are going to have to pay through the nose for the privilege.

COMMENT THREAD

Battle of the blogs

It seems the "colleagues" are waking up to the potential of blogs in a big way with Cafebabel extolling their virtues as a possible "solution to the crisis of communication between Europe and its citizens".

In a flurry of articles on the subject, it takes a "journey through the European blogosphere" chirping about "an emerging new media which hopes to unite Europe in 'dialogue, democracy and debate.'" It is through blogs, it says, "that the European Union hopes to break into the heart of citizens who are becoming more and more eurosceptic."

Particular endeavours are singled out for praise, such as here, here and here, with more than a token mention of Eurosceptic blogs – and even the "success" of this site gets a mention.

Despite their weaknesses, Cafebable argues, blogs are growing in force; three million new blogs were created in the first four months of 2006 in France alone. "And that's not all," it says. "Given the apparent reluctance for any official debate on the EU constitution, there now exists a void to be filled by the blogger with their criticism of the EU, with the vitality of their ideas, and with the understanding of public opinion that only a private citizen can have."

And, in a rare area of possible agreement, Cafebabel continues: "Everyone's listening to them, but how many European leaders have ever left a comment or a post on a blog? Is it too optimistic hope that the 'no' vote to the European constitution may have triggered enough alarm bells to motivate politicians to reconnect with public opinion?"

Unlikely, but there you go. There are still too many politicians out there who do not even know how to turn on a computer and are therefore oblivious to a medium through which they could access a huge constituency.

By coincidence, the Tory Boy Blog is also on the case, picking up on a creditable attempt to pull together a directory of right wing blogs, including Eurosceptic sites, under the name Right links. This is a good starting point for finding useful sites, although too many of them exhibit the claustrophobia of narrow party political issues. In a second post it develops the theme about the utility of blogs.

Anyhow, if the Europhiles are waking up to the potential of blogs, it looks as though we have a fight on our hands to dominate the internet. Whoever thought we would be in the front line!

COMMENT THREAD

Junked?

The Evening Standard last night has come up with an absolute stunner, headlined "£1bn cuts threat to defence industry".

Written by Robert Fox, he reports that the defence industry is facing up to the prospect of the first government spending cuts since Labour came to power ten years ago, retailing that under next year's Comprehensive Spending Review, the Treasury has warned that the defence budget will have to be cut.

According to Fox, this means that a number of major projects are threatened, including the plans to build two aircraft carriers.

Gordon Brown, we are told, also wants £1bn taken from defence and given to the budget for homeland security, according to Whitehall officials. Fox cites a senior official saying "It is a major defence review and cut under any other name." On the back of that, a recently retired chief of staff is also cited, commenting: "They'll have to tear up Labour's whole defence strategy and start all over again."

It appears that, ahead of the spending review to April 2008, defence chiefs have already been told that "at least one major procurement programme has to go". The most obvious candidate, say several senior officers, is the plan to build two 60,000-ton aircraft carriers, due to be commissioned in 2012 and 2015. The programme was due to go to final construction contract in October but this, at the very least, will almost certainly be postponed.

Nor, it appears, does the carnage stop there. As the costs rise of supporting and protecting the 15,000 British forces in Iraq, the Middle East and Afghanistan, other programmes will come under further Treasury scrutiny, and could be cut altogether.

Among them is the FRES programme. As we reported two weeks ago Chiefs are now considering making an off-the-shelf buy of armoured personnel and communication vehicles, rather than develop their own British system. Says one planner, "I think that would be a huge mistake as nothing available is really what we want".

Obviously the implications of all this are profound. Not least is another Blair Brown confrontation in the making. It was only last week that Blair was talking up the carrier programme with Chirac and if Brown wanted to humiliate the prime minister, scrapping or delaying the carriers seems a very public way of doing it.

Then, we see the article in The Sunday Times, the thrust of which was repeated in The Daily Mail yesterday, from Rear Admiral Chris Parry, stressing the homeland threat and the dangers of mass migration. Now, we have Brown wanting to transfer £1 billion from the defence budget to "homeland security". Was the publicity given to Parry a coincidence, or are we looking at another example of news management?

Then there is the downgrading of the FRES project. The comment of the "planner" is very, very revealing and we will post later on the technical implications.

Undoubtedly, this "bombshell" will send shock waves through the defence establishment, but it is something of a setback to Blair's ambitions to equip the armed forces for their European Rapid Reaction Force role. Is this a Eurosceptic Brown flexing his muscles?

More later, as and when more news emerges.

COMMENT THREAD

Another regulatory disaster

Such is the power of the European Union as a trading bloc that some of its regulations have a global reach. This we see with the RoHS Directive. Although it is based on flawed science, inordinately expensive and counter-productive, manufacturers as far afield as China, Japan and the United States are having to comply with it in order to keep open their access to European markets.

For those manufacturers, it is then often too costly and troublesome to run separate production lines for the export and domestic markets so the regulation – despite being farmed by a foreign power – ends up being applied to the home market, by which means the EU is effectively dictating world standards in some commodity sectors.

Your would have thought that US manufacturers particularly would object to this process, except that many of the big players are multi-nationals with significant European interests. They find it convenient to work to a single global standard and there are often other advantages.

What is not generally understood is that many large companies – while making ritual protests – actually welcome regulation and, in fact, much of the technical legislation promulgated by the EU actually originates from such companies, or the trade associations in their pay.

The reason for this is quite simple. Basically, in crowded and highly competitive markets where there is little scope for expansion, market share can only be gained at the expense of competitors. While the traditional route, through advertising, is expensive and uncertain, these companies have found that regulation can do a much better – and cheaper job.

The mechanism works because regulation generally has a disproportionate effect on small and medium enterprises so that suitable framed law can put competitors out of business, leaving their customer base up for grabs. Compared with the costs of advertising, compliance costs tend to be relatively modest, and can often be recouped through price increases, making regulation one of the most cost-effective means of increasing market share.

This is effectively one of the ways in which Ruth Lee, in the article my colleague reviewed earlier, goes astray. She puts the responsibility for "regulatory reform" directly onto government, declaring that it will not happen "unless the Government is prepared to get off people's backs", not acknowledging that much regulation stems from industry pressure and lobbying.

However, even EU legislation has it limits, where the costs of compliance exceed the commercial advantages gained from it, tilting the balance of utility. And, hitting the buffers, it seems, is the infamous REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of CHemicals) directive which, according to one report is meeting with stiffening resistance from a US-led coalition.

Already opposed by India, Brazil and South Africa who predict that compliance costs will exceed what the EU gives in aid, the US has enlisted India, Japan, and ten other countries to denounce the likely trade disrupting effects of directive, arguing that it will hit developing countries and small businesses.

The directive itself was given a first reading in the EU parliament last year and the Council of Ministers voted on the text in December. The draft will now be given a second reading in the parliament in October this year.

The proposal has been around now for three years and the law, if passed, will require producers to perform health and environmental safety checks on some 30,000 chemical substances out of the 100,000 or so which are currently used in daily household and industrial products.

But the US and representatives of the 12 other nations in the coalition, including some of the EU's largest trading partners have issued a joint declaration, asking the commission to revisit the draft. They denounce "the opacity of the regulatory process" and highlight concerns regarding the high cost burden that REACH will inflict on SMEs, particularly in developing countries.

Needless to say, the arguments are given short-shrift by the greenies, at the forefront of which is the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which accuses the US of trying to weaken the law "to the benefit of its chemicals industry". "There is nothing new in this document," it says. WWF also disputes the costs, claiming that ACP countries will have to find a mere €50 million over 11 years.

What the WWF and its fellow-travellers do not argue though – and neither indeed does the US-led coalition – is that REACH perpetuates a flawed regulatory model which, in practice, will reduce consumer safety and make health threats more difficult to resolve.

This we noted with the pesticide licensing model, on which the REACH regime is loosely based, relying on a predictive model to determine safety and a system of governmental "prior approval" before a product can be marketed.

In the first instance, while predictive models are relatively effective in determining the acute response to toxic chemicals, they are poor at identifying potential chronic toxic responses, especially where there are extreme genetic or environmentally induced variations in population sensitivities. Where high sensitivity occurs at low frequency and the size of the population exposed is large, a chemical which passes all safety checks can still give rise to high absolute levels of morbidity.

Furthermore, no test on any specific chemical can predict synergistic effects, where two or more relatively innocuous chemicals can, in combination, cause significant ill-health to those exposed. Mixing certain, relatively safe pesticides with detergents to improve their wetting can, for instance, increase their toxicity by several orders of magnitude.

Most dangerous of all, however, is the little-discussed phenomenon of "regulatory capture". In this case, it manifests itself in a particularly sinister way.

Where governments in addition to product suppliers are party to the process of assuring safety, they also bear some of the blame when the assessment process fails – as it inevitably will. Thus, the regulatory authorities, far from representing sufferers, end up siding with producers, seeking to avoid liability for their joint failure. And those sufferers, who seek recompense through the courts have an extra burden. In addition to proving injury from any particular chemical, they also have to demonstrate with whom the liability lies – the supplier of the agency which approved the chemical. As we have experienced, tax-funded lawyers defending governments, can run circles round often poorly-funded claimants and thereby evade liability.

As if that was not enough, there is also the problem of generic products, where there is no patent holder and thus no commercial advantage from paying the substantial fees required to gain approval for a product. This can have the perverse effect of removing from the market entirely safe products and force the use of others which are considerably less safe.

This is what we came to call the "Hugtite" effect, which will have to be the subject of another posting, in which I will also deal with more effective regulatory models for what is, in fact, the real problem of ensuring chemical safety. For the moment though, we wait and watch as the drama plays out and – most likely despite the US intervention - another regulatory disaster grinds its way onto the statute books.

COMMENT THREAD

Questions, questions…

We've been giving defence quite a good airing lately, so I was reluctant to devote another long post to the subject, for fear of stretching the patience of our readers.

Considerable interest, however, has been displayed in the piece by Peter Almond in The Sunday Times yesterday, headed "Beware: the new goths are coming", and, on reflection, it is too important to glide over. So here goes.

The piece records the views of "one of Britain's most senior military strategists" who is warning that western civilisation "faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire", comparing future migrations with the Goths and Vandals, adding that north African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.

This is Rear Admiral Chris Parry's view, who suggests that Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries. He calls it a "reverse colonisation" by groups that stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights, making the idea of assimilation redundant.

Parry's views are important because he is head of the development, concepts and doctrine centre at the Ministry of Defence and is charged with identifying the greatest challenges that will frame national security policy in the future.

If his apocalyptic vision of a security breakdown occurs, Parry thinks it is likely to be brought on by environmental destruction and a population boom, coupled with technology and radical Islam, triggering mass migration from the Third World.

"The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns," he says. "Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned ... [the process] acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet."

Parry predicts that as flood or starvation strikes, the most dangerous zones will be Africa, particularly the northern half; most of the Middle East and central Asia as far as northern China; a strip from Nepal to Indonesia; and perhaps eastern China.

He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America's sole superpower status. This will come as "irregular activity" such as terrorism, organised crime and "white companies" of mercenaries burgeon in lawless areas. The effects will be magnified as borders become more porous and some areas sink beyond effective government control.

Parry expects the world population to grow to about 8.4 billion in 2035, compared with 6.4 billion today. By then some 68 percent of the population will be urban, with some giant metropolises becoming ungovernable. He warns that Mexico City could be an example.

In an effort to control population growth, some countries may be tempted to copy China's "one child" policy. This, with the widespread preference for male children, could lead to a ratio of boys to girls of as much as 150 to 100 in some countries. This will produce dangerous surpluses of young men with few economic prospects and no female company.

"When you combine the lower prospects for communal life with macho youth and economic deprivation you tend to get trouble, typified by gangs and organised criminal activity," says Parry. "When one thinks of 20,000 so-called jihadists currently fly-papered in Iraq, one shudders to think where they might go next."

The competition for resources, Parry argues, may lead to a return to "industrial warfare" as countries with large and growing male populations mobilise armies, even including cavalry, while acquiring high-technology weaponry from the West.

That, with a little more detail, is the thesis which, as far as it goes, is all good stuff. But like an appetiser without a main course, its leaves one only partially sated. What is totally absent from the Times report is any idea of how government should respond and how this affects not only defence but other policy areas.

What does come over, to those who are aware of the broader issues, is a scenario where the boundary between homeland security and defence are becoming blurred. Further, immigration seems to be moving up the agenda as a security issue, while third world development and issues such as aid seems to be a vital part of our overall security strategy.

There also seems to be a confirmation of a broader recognition that the future of conflict lies not in war between states, each fielding conventional forces, but in armed gangs and loose trans-national coalitions, acting within and across national borders, with conflict spilling over and manifesting itself as international terrorism and organised crime.

This is the future of the jihadist, where war is declared not by states but by groups of people who share cultures or political objectives – or who are simply motivated by a nihilistic hatred of other cultures. But it is a future that, in certain respect, is already with us.

That we have people like Rear Admiral Chris Parry thinking about this – with, apparently, a staff of 50 at Shrivenham, is slightly comforting, but what we do not see is how his ideas and predictions translate into policy.

If we are to deal with scenarios that he envisages, how does this equate with the current restructuring plans for the British Army? Is the expenditure of £14 billion on FRES necessarily the right way to go. If we are having to deal with an enemy in our midst, is the purchase of two aircraft carriers, which with their air groups will cost in the order of £15 billion, a sensible way of using our resources?

For that matter, is the commitment to a European Rapid Reaction Force, dedicated to intervention in as yet unspecified circumstances, against unknown objectives, at all the right way to go.

If we are going to find ourselves intervening, more in a policing role, rather than in overt warfighting, is the equipment we are buying entirely appropriate and are the force structures and training at all adequate to the projected tasks. Can we indeed maintain the traditional separation between military and civilian security forces or, as the nature of conflict blurs, will we see the distinction between the two roles also blurring?

All these and many more questions arise from Parry's efforts, but we see no overt political debate – or any intelligent discussion in the media about the fundamental issues raised. Thus, all we have is questions, questions, but no answers.

COMMENT THREAD

A completely different way of thinking

This piece has to start with an apology for my presence on the blog being somewhat intermittent in the last week. (Well, apology to some, while others might be rather pleased.) I have been having computer problems, in particular severe difficulties when trying to go on line. As London Underground would put it: severe delays will probably continue for a little while.

Going on to what really matters (some of the time, anyway), there is a very sensible article by Ruth Lea, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, on the subject of “better regulation”, which she calls an oxymoron.

Ms Lea announced about seven or eight months ago that she no longer believed there was any possibility of reforming the European Union and the only possible solution was for the UK to pull out and create new links with other European and, indeed, non-European countries. (Ms Lea seems to favour a revival of the Commonwealth, something I do not entirely agree with but it is a legitimate point of view.)

Since then Lord Blackwell, the Chairman of CPS, has also effectively made it clear that he, too, is in favour of Britain pulling out of the EU. Thus we have an interesting situation of the premier Conservative think-tank moving on in the European debate, while the Conservative Party itself moving backwards to a John Major-type position.

Back to the article. Ms Lea whips through the various ramifications of trying to create “better regulation” since 1997, listing various bits of legislation; various differing and ever-multiplying task-forces, units and executives; and the inevitable action plans, initiatives and other ideas the emanate from the Chancellor’s fertile brain.

She does make it clear that there is nothing we can do about EU regulations and that, pace idiotic statements by Mr Hague, the EU is not moving in our direction and is not relaxing on the regulatory front.

Usefully, her list of events to do with “better regulation” makes it clear that the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which caused a great deal of excitement in the media and on some blogs, was only the most recent and, possibly, the worst (so far) piece of legislation that gave power to ministers in the name of “simplifying” regulation or making it “easier” to do so.

The trouble is, and this may not be Ms Lea’s fault, the article does not go far enough. There are hints in it of the real problem – that is a completely different way of looking at the world that unites the political establishment in the EU and this country. The latter includes the government and the opposition, not to mention large chunks of the media, and most of the public sector.

The truth is that these people do not really understand what the problem is. They quite genuinely believe that the way the world, its politics and economy, its social and legal structures, can function is by regulation. There can be no other way. The trick is to find “better” regulation.

This is why they prefer managerial governance to political and why they are so greatly in favour of transnational organizations made up of bureaucrats and lawyers to the messiness of genuinely democratic politics and the free market, the most efficient economic structure but one that frightens those who like to have everything in boxes.

The EU is merely a political construct that embodies in itself these managerial attitudes to governance of all kind. That, I suspect, is the reason why our politicians find it so difficult to accept its failure. Surely, they argue, all that regulation simply needs to be made “better”.

COMMENT THREAD

A cunning plan

Despite having done our best to ignore the tedious ins and outs of the Boy King’s attempts to withdraw his troops from the EU parliament's Eurofederalist shock troops, the EPP group, the issue has climbed so far up the Westminster village agenda that we can no longer maintain our lofty silence.

The latest development in the saga in recounted in more detail than any normal person could possibly want in today's Telegraph, precipitated by a piece in the Sunday, essentially dumping the blame on William Hague for taking so long in dragging the Tory MEPs – some kicking and screaming – into the new dawn of a Eurorealist group.

But that was yesterday and today, as usual, it is a different story. The Boy King isn't about to sack his foreign affairs spokesman. Young William has been doing a splendid job, no one is at loggerheads and the idea that there is some sort of fall-out "is complete nonsense".

Not of course that we are any closer to the Tories actually leaving the EPP but, according to party chairman Francis Maude, the Boy King remains "committed to delivering on his pledge" and young William is committed to making a statement about this "some time, he hopes, before the end of July."

So that's alright then.

Meanwhile, there is the strange case of the Sunday Telegraph leader which told us yesterday that “the big story is being missed,” although it should look to its own laurels before casting aspersions.

Anyhow, the "big story" we are apparently missing is that David Cameron "is being truly revolutionary". He has one of those Baldrick-type "cunning plans" to give the EU something it has never had before: an Official Opposition. So said the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, although we rather think it would be a good idea if we had an official opposition in Westminster.

Anyhow, it looks like us thickos haven't realised quite what a genius the Boy King really is. It was entirely wrong of us to think that he only made the commitment because he wanted the Tory Eurosceptics on-side and thought Liam Fox might steal a march on him, and then sent young William blundering into a situation where he was comprehensively outmanoeuvred by the Europhile MEPs.

Nevertheless, us thickos are still having a little trouble working out how, as Booker wrote in his column yesterday, the Boy squares his Eurosceptic credentials with dumping the fishing policy.

Since this now means that his conversion to supporting the CFP in principle means that the Conservative Party must now be committed to defending that central plank of the CFP, the "Third World fisheries agreements" which are creating such havoc down the west coast of Africa, we also wonder how his MPs can explain how they will persuade Brussels and Spain to abandon what has now become as integral to the CFP as the disastrous quota system which forces fishermen every year to discard hundreds of millions of tons of dead fish back into the sea.

"Modern", it may be, writes Booker. "Compassionate" it is not. But then, us thickos may have got that wrong as well. For all we know, the Boy King has a cunning plan on that as well.

COMMENT THREAD

Danger, MSM at work!

Slagging off the MSM is certainly a favourite sport of bloggers, and one to which we are particularly partial, although taken it excess it can be tedious and counter-productive. After all, as we observed recently, the MSM does have its role and the relationship between blogs and the general media – at its best – is largely synergistic.

That said, one of the particularly irritating characteristics of the MSM is its arrogance in assuming that, because it has just noticed a story, that makes it "news". The usually unspoken (but sometimes articulated) corollary is that mere blogs simply recycle the news supplied by the MSM

Thus is it that The Sunday Telegraph today reports that criminal gangs are "cheating the taxman out of VAT on £1 in every £7 of Britain's trade with Europe".

The full extent of the growth in so-called carousel fraud, says the newspaper is laid bare for the first time in trade figures quietly released by the Office of National Statistics last week. They show that it is almost five times greater than it was a year ago and now involves as much as 14 per cent of all Britain's imports and exports with the EU.

Errrr…. Not exactly. On this blog on 10 August 2005 we reported precisely the figure of £1 billion loss, adding that, "this the first time fraud on this scale has been detected, and, since 1990, VAT fraud is estimated to have cost the Exchequer at least £20bn - another cost attributable to our membership of the EU."

We returned to the issue again on 13 January of this year with a report headed, somewhat presciently, "Head in the sand", remarking how the news of this growing scandal had passed without a ripple in the media.

Nevertheless, The Telegraph does add some new figures, stating that, if the losses continue escalating at the current rate, the figure would rise to more than £4.6 billion - enough to pay off the National Health Service deficit of £1.27 billion three times over.

The piece concludes, however, with a comment from Mike Warburton, a senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, the business advisers, who says: "Government attempts to crackdown on this type of fraud seem to be having no effect whatsoever."

And there the story is left hanging. In a grown-up newspaper, the implications of this stark comment might actually have been the core of the story, pointing up the situation that we had reported in both of our stories, that VAT is so complex and structurally flawed that it is wide open to fraud. Furthermore, no sooner do the authorities attempt to plug one loophole, then another is found.

Thus, the only rational conclusion that one can draw from this situation is that VAT should be abolished, and replaced with a local sales tax or some other measure which is less prone to fraud.

But, of course, VAT is an EU tax and we are not free agents, so there is absolutely nothing we can do about this haemorrhage of money, without addressing the EU issue. And since the government is not prepared to do that, and the Boy King doesn't "do" Europe, this is left unsaid. We are left with a "curiosity" story with no political dimension and no pointers towards a resolution.

Such are the glories of the MSM.

COMMENT THREAD

Stealth politics

At last week's Anglo-French summit, while all attention was on the nuclear energy deal, Blair also agreed to step up arms co-operation with France, focusing on the joint development of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. This is yet another major step towards European defence integration.

Furthermore, the deal comes only two weeks after Blair was in Washington meeting Bush for a bilateral summit, one of the highlights of which was the apparent rapprochement over the sharing of JSF technology.

Given that the long-standing spat over the JSF was seen as a stress point for the "special relationship", the apparent agreement (the details of the deal have yet to be finalised) was seen by many commentators as bringing the two allies back on track, especially in view of the joint statement which included the declaration that both sides "strengthen and deepen the relationship between their defence establishments, achieve fully interoperable forces and leverage the strength of their industries."

Last Friday, however, after he had hopped over the Channel to see his old mate Jacques Chirac for what is their last annual summit - with L'Escroc stepping down for the French presidential election, when a successor will take his place - Blair was up to his old tricks, playing both sides of the fence.

Continuing the joint initiative at the St. Malo summit of 1998, which led to the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy and the agreement to set up the European Rapid Reaction Force, Blair and Chirac committed "both countries to strengthen the Europeans' capability to contribute to international peace and security."

They agreed that the co-operation on aircraft-carriers was "an important symbol of this bilateral commitment" and declared that their "common commitment to peace support operations and development of European capabilities remain at the core of our priorities."

Released on the French Embassy website , but curiously unreported by the mainstream media and entirely absent from the No. 10 website which reported on the summit, is a lengthy joint declaration setting out the details of the defence agreement.

The agreement makes it clear that the two countries intend to encourage greater and more systematic co-operation on key projects, and especially "the development of generic underpinning technologies associated with UAVs". They intend to establish a "high-level working group from British and French government and industry" to consider ways to build upon and enhance existing co-operation in armaments programs. That group is to report by the end of the year.

Both countries also agreed that the European Defence Agency "must be a lever in the growth of the European defence effort," and pledged to support its activities "in all its areas of competence". This includes plugging gaps in European defence capabilities, especially in strategic transport, air refuelling and communications. In research and technology the, declaration said, the Agency "must encourage European States to step up their efforts by identifying common projects".

The United Kingdom and France, they conclude: "have already brought their work on lightweight radar to the agency, and wish to do the same on armoured vehicle technologies at the appropriate time."

This latter declaration is significant in that it follows on from the news on 31 May 2006 when the MoD was reported to be scaling down its plans for a high-tech FRES platform and considering buying an off-the-shelf design from a European manufacturer. Here now is a further indication that the British government is planning to harmonise its medium-weight armoured capability with European forces.

As significant is the commitment to co-operate further on UAV technology. Like the FRES programme, this also represents a progressive cleavage from the US. This became apparent when, in June last year, the UK pulled out of the £10bn project called the Future Offensive Air System carried out in co-operation with the Americans for seven years, aimed at on producing a high-tech Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) by around 2018 when the RAF's fleet of Tornado GR4s is expected to reach the end of its operational life.

At that time, the "definition phase" was not due for completion until 2008 and industry observers reported that the UK government was thinking about joining the French in its "Neuron" UCAV project.

Since then, we have seen the French programme progress to the development of a full prototype, followed in December when John Reid announced that there were no plans to develop any further manned combat aircraft in the UK.

In January, there then followed an 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. Now, this latest declaration takes the UK that little step further along the path where a joint UCAV programme – under the "leadership" of the French - will become an inevitability.

The best complexion that can be put on this is that Blair is trying to maintain the traditional British policy of providing a "bridge" between the United States and Europe. Additionally, this latest declaration may in part be compensation to Chirac over the JSF.

On this, we were certain that Blair was going to dump this advanced aircraft in favour of the French Rafale, using the second engine cancellation and the refusal to share technology as excuses.

But now Congress has all but restored the funding for the second engine and Bush has agreed the deal on technology sharing, Blair has been outflanked and will find it very difficult to pull out of the JSF project.

But, as we remarked at the time, the French are now probably discounting the JSF as "yesterday's project" and, with procurement decisions made for ten and twenty years hence, they are looking to harmonise the next generation technology, with the thinking focused on unmanned aircraft.

Whatever the motivation though, there is no doubt that the UK government is being less than frank about its agenda, not least since the full defence declaration has only been published on the French embassy site. Furthermore, there is a suspicion that the MoD is carrying out a "disinformation programme" to take the ever-gullible MSM off the scent.

Only the previous week, the Telegraph ran a "Boys Own" piece about UK involvement in US Predator UAV operations in Iraq, citing this as an example of the health of the "special relationship". It turns out that several papers ran this story, including The Guardian and the Daily Mail.

For the MoD suddenly to give widespread media access to a previously "top secret" programme shrieks of news management. That the news should be released just one week before Blair does a deal with Chirac on UAVs seems to be too much of a coincidence.

Interestingly, one of the main characteristics of the French "Neuron" system will be its "stealth" capabilities. The way the whole issue is being handled though, the UK is using capabilities of its own - playing "stealth politics". I hope the US State Department is able to penetrate the fog.

COMMENT THREAD

Cyprus - the minnow bites

The fears arising from president Tassos Papadopoulos' victory in the Cyprus general election at the end of May seem to have been well founded.

At the time, observers were concerned that Papadopoulos could block Turkey’s accession negotiations and now, according to The Guardian, it looks like this might be happening. Reporting under the headline, "Cyprus vetoes Turkey's talks to gain EU entry", Brussels correspondent David Gow says that the talks are “headed for collapse at the first hurdle last night” after Cyprus “torpedoed a deal to kick-start the stalled negotiations.”

It appears that, after signing up for a late-night compromise on Thursday, designed to allow formal accession talks with Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to go ahead on Monday, the republic of Cyprus unpicked the agreement on the least contentious issue of science and research - the first of 35 negotiating "chapters".

With new ministers in place, Cyprus is accused of acting "ultra-politically", while Ali Babacan, Turkey's chief negotiator, is warning that the country should expect delays in its attempt to join the EU, and talks on the second "chapter", education and culture, could also be postponed. However, Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, is saying that the talks are heading for a "train crash".

It is now up to the 25 foreign ministers of the member states to try to break the impasse in yet another meeting on Monday.

COMMENT THREAD

Never trust a Tory

Despite the rather pathetic attempts of the Tory Boy Blog to backtrack on the dumping of the fishing policy, confirmation of Helm’s story comes in the South-West regional newspaper, the Western Morning News.

The core part of the story reads:

…a spokesman for Mr Cameron confirmed the Tory leader had decided to scrap the policy. He said: "The CFP and Common Agricultural Policy are both unsatisfactory and we want to improve things by having greater national and regional control. But we will not now extend that to include unilateral withdrawal. "David Cameron thinks it is very important that we have strategic priorities and he is very clear that the big things are economic competitiveness, employment and social policy."

Rear Admiral Ben Bradshaw, the Labour minister presiding over the current phase of the destruction of British fisheries is, as you might expect, crowing with delight, declaring, "I welcome this latest flip-flop from David Cameron…. The Tories seem finally to have accepted Labour's argument that withdrawing from the CFP would be impossible without leaving the EU altogether."

He adds, in a pointed sneer at former shadow fisheries minister, Owen Paterson, "This is highly embarrassing for senior Conservative politicians who have been banging on about CFP withdrawal for years. We can hopefully now have a more sensible debate in this country about how best to conserve fish stocks and make the CFP work better."

With that, it is fair to say that there is not a smidgin of difference between New Labour and the Boy King's "modern compassionate conservatism", especially in terms of tactics when dealing with the EU (See illustration for details).

Needless to say, we saw it all coming, and so did most of the fishermen. In meeting after meeting, when the new fishing policy was being presented, fishermen said they liked what they saw but did not trust the Tories to see it through. Their scepticism was, of course, well-founded, confirming the first law of modern politics: Never trust a Tory.

COMMENT THREAD

The Single European Sea

It looks like the story initiated by Justine Stares on 21 May on EU plans to create an "EU navy" were spot on.

Announced three days ago by commissioner Joe Borg in a speech to the EU parliament – which thereby ensured minimal publicity – was the commission’s "green paper", entitled "Towards a future maritime policy for the union", setting out ideas which, as Stares suggested, could lead to an EU navy.

You would not, however, have gleaned anything of this from Borg's speech and it is only in the detail of the white paper that you begin to see how they are joining up the dots. Pages 39-41 refer, culminating in the innocent – but effectively rhetorical – questions: "Should an EU coastguard be set up? What might be its aims and functions?"

For sure this is a "consultative" document so it cannot be said that the EU is definitely proposing to set up an EU coastguard. That will have to wait until the end of the consultation period in June 2007, when a formal white paper will be published, setting out firm proposals. Nonetheless, we are told that, "work is underway in the EU military committee on the maritime dimension of the European Security and Defence Policy".

Neither can it be said of another major issue raised that there is anything definitive – a tentative suggestion that the EU should set up a register of shipping. This was came up last November when the hare was raised that this would lead to the demise of the Red Duster, only to be hotly denied, not least by the Lib-Dims.

Conscious of the political sensitivities of this issue, the commission is asking, in carefully neutral terms, whether an "optional" EU register should be "made available", and then asks "what conditions and incentives should be contemplated for such a register".

Again, you only have to join up the dots. It is only a matter of time before we see EU-flagged ships on the high seas. This will be voluntary, of course, but you can already see the game. It will be made progressively more difficult to flag ships on the national register, and all sorts of bribes will be offered to encourage ship-owners to run up the ring of stars until entirely voluntarily of course, the Red Duster finally disappears.

All this is predicated towards establishing a "Common European Maritime Space", a Single European Sea by any other name – to include, by the time the Boy King has let the Common Fisheries Policy finally run its course, the single European fish.

COMMENT THREAD

A certain lack of focus

Despite the plethora of news yesterday, the important contribution by Con Coughlin to the defence debate in The Telegraph should not be overlooked.

In a thoughtful opinion piece headed "It's time Blair supported our Forces", he notes that Tony Blair has been loyally served by Britain's Armed Forces but, he writes, "it is unlikely that many members of the Armed Forces would say the same today about the Blair Government."

Having served their country with courage, Coughlin continues, the least our servicemen and women might have expected in return was the support, if not the gratitude, of the Government. In fact, the opposite has proved to be the case.

Rightly, much of the piece is then focused on the recent prosecution of the Guardsmen, arguing that the "Government's most egregious act of betrayal has been its eagerness to prosecute British soldiers for war crimes on what appear to be the flimsiest of pretexts."

I take his point and do not in any way seek to diminish it but regret nevertheless, that he devotes only one paragraph to the ongoing scandal of the poor equipment supplied to our troops, summed up by this comment:

Spending has been reduced to such a level that the Army is unable even to provide troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan with sufficient protection against the sophisticated roadside bombs being used to kill and maim them by Islamic militants.

This is in stark contrast to the news from the US, supplied by the indispensable Defense Industry Daily, which reports on yet another contract for force protection vehicles, in this case a Cougar variant (above left), manufactured, ironically, by BAE Land Systems.

A link from that report takes you to an earlier variant (immediately above) while another report deals with developments in gun shields (below), with an expanded article here.

It is easy and fashionable to deride the US for its mistakes in the immediate post-victory phase of the Iraqi war, and too many people seem to take a somewhat misplaced pleasure in pointing out how soooo superior our tactics have been in Basra. But, with the situation in the southern province going "belly up", we are beginning to see that our forces are both ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the more hostile environment, putting our troops at risk.

By contrast, we see that the US forces are taking "force protection" very seriously indeed, which points up an endearing and impressive facet of the American character. While they do make plenty of mistakes, they also seem to be able to admit them more readily and devote their considerable ingenuity and capabilities to finding solutions.

That is certainly not a characteristic notable within the portals of the MoD and this comment, appended to the online edition of Coughlin's article, from Chas Villiers has special relevance:

My son went to the Iraq war at the start of the invasion, but beforehand he and his colleagues spent hundreds of pounds, mostly on their credit cards, to buy essential kit for the task ahead of them. An MP raised this issue in the House at the time but the government fobbed it off as "vanity purchases". Amongst the vanity items he bought I don't remember seeing a Harrods logo on his water bottles, or Armani sand goggles, Hugo Boss body armour, Timberland desert boots, a Cartier compass or even a Gucci combat knife! The boots he was offered by the military were 1960s issue and a size too small, and they were told that for any missing kit to "steal it off the yanks when you get there!" We also supplied him with regular food parcels because he lived off Compo ration packs for weeks on end, which are designed for short term use only! My son and many other career soldiers hurt at how shabbily they were treated by the government, left the military immediately after the war. To add insult to injury they were told that they even have to apply for their medals! Perhaps Blair and Hoon should shove their medals where the desert sun don't shine!

Underlying this, undoubtedly, is a lack of commitment on the part of the MoD and the political establishment. While the Americans are concentrating on the "war on terror" and putting their energies into defeating the Iraqi insurgency, British strategic thinking is split, on the one hand, between supporting the US effort and, on the other, pursuing the separate and to a very great extent incompatible objective of European defence integration.

Here Coughlin does miss the point in claiming that defence "spending has been reduced" when, in fact, it has increased. But so much is being devoted to re-equipping and re-structuring our forces to meet the 2010 "Headline Goals" in order that the UK can meet Blair's commitment to the European Rapid Reaction force, that there is nothing left over – as Chas Villiers' comment indicates - for even the basic necessities, much less new equipment of the type being supplied to the US forces.

Almost as important, though, is the lack of focus, which is brought home today by a report issued this month by the Brussels-based Institute for Security and International Studies. Entitled, "Developing EU Civil Military Co-ordination: The Role of the new Civilian Cell", this reminds us of how much energy and thinking is going into developing an "autonomous EU military capability" marking the "departure from the uniqueness that some used to attribute to the EU as a civilian power".

Therein seems to me the core of our problems. As a medium-sized power, we have neither the financial resource nor the intellectual capability to deal with two entirely separate objectives at the same time – defeating the insurgency in Iraq and pursuing European defence integration. We risk doing either or both badly and, in the former, the result will most definitely bring with it the risk of failure and the preventable deaths of our troops.

Thus, to return to Coughlin's piece, headed, "It's time Blair supported our Forces", it is also time for our government to decide which of the two objectives is most important to it – and us as a nation. It should then put its resources into achieving success in one of them. In this game, divided objectives and lack of focus can be fatal.

COMMENT THREAD

More labels and more labels

Just as the EU has decided to spend another huge amount of money to turn wine into industrial spirit (not quite what the Gospeller had in mind, I suspect), another institution has come with yet another wizard idea for putting more burdens on businesses, in this case purveyors of alcoholic drinks.

The Institute of Alcohol Studies (sadly, I suspect, it is not what it sounds) has produced a report for the Commission, which suggests that alcoholic drinks should have health warnings on them as tobacco products do.

Unlike the famous picture of Alice staring at a bottle that says “Drink me”, the Institute would like it to say, “Drink me but not if you are about to drive, are pregnant or a young man between the ages of 15 and 29”. I wonder why Lewis Carroll or Tenniell did not think of that.

“The report, written by the London-based Institute of Alcohol Studies for the European Union's executive arm, estimated the economic cost of alcohol at 125 billion euros (165 billion dollars) a year.

"Alcohol is responsible for 7.4 percent of all ill-health and premature death in the European Union ... and a cause of over 25 percent of male deaths in the age group 15-29 years," it noted.

Among key recommendations to cut the toll was the inclusion of clear warnings on packaging of alcoholic drinks, for example highlighting the negative impact on driving ability or pregnant women.”

Clearly, the problem is that none of these people know that alcohol may have unhappy effects. Latest medical research, on the other hand, states that some alcohol may well be quite good for you, it being another example of the bleeding obvious that people get large amounts of money to research into. The Bible, what with Jesus changing water into wine and St Paul (hardly the jolliest person in history) advising to “take a little wine for your stomach’s sake” seems to take the same view.

Undoubtedly, the Institute of Alcohol Studies, who is producing reports for the Commission (and who is paying for it, one would like to know) would probably insist on adding health warnings to both those well-known lines in the Good Book.

There are two problems with the recommendation. There is no estimate of how much it would cost to go over to the new labels and how that expense would be distributed; and it is not clear that warnings of that kind actually work.

In fact, it may be reasonable to suppose that people looked at warning labels more carefully in the days there were very few of them and these were completely unambiguous.

“Although there is limited evidence for the impact of warning labels on alcoholic products in reducing the harm done by alcohol, European consumers can benefit from receiving accurate and consistent information on alcohol in order to help them make informed choices.”

It seems a little unlikely that there is anybody in the world who does not have reasonable information about alcohol. What the Institute means is that people should be encouraged to make the “informed” choices they approve of.

Well, I have a couple of other suggestions. Maybe we should stop subsidizing the wine growers of France and Italy only to subsidize them again as they turn their unsellable wine into alcohol. (Then again, that might just be another health drive – you can’t drink the alcohol.)

Perhaps, the various food quangos in this country should stop pumping money into “promoting” English wine. If it is any good, people will buy it. If it is not, tough. Wait for the global warming.

Finally, an issue I do feel quite strongly about. Could the government in its various guises stop subsidizing student bars? Of course, students will drink and will get drunk and will (with a bit of luck) learn how much they can carry. But let them pay market prices. Then they can make “informed” choices on what they want to spend the money they have borrowed on. And while we are on the subject, could the universities stop promoting themselves as nothing much more than drinking institutions? Or is that a realistic assessment of what they are nowadays?

COMMENT THREAD

Still navel gazing

While US airpower was wowing the world, a sad group of little men were meeting in Brussels to discuss how to "boost" the credibility of the EU.

Amongst them was El Presidente José Manuel Barroso, lamenting the sad fact that "Europe is still punching under its weight." Perhaps some kind person should take him aside and whisper in his ear that you gain credibility by being credible.

Typically, the BBC described this as the commission unveiling plans "designed to strengthen the EU's role on the world stage", but there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that it plans to buy a squadron of F-16s equipped with GBU-38.

Instead, it is going for "better co-operation" between with the Council, allowing EU officials to attend national diplomatic training schemes and an "enhanced programme" of exchanges between the commission, member states' diplomatic services, and the Council's secretariat.

For the pièce de resistance, the commission is also suggesting that it and the Council secretariat should produce more joint strategy papers, as well as co-ordinating more closely in crisis management, while having top officials abroad taking on a dual role as head of the commission delegation, and special representative of the Council.

All of this is aimed at sending stronger and more co-ordinated messages to the EU's "foreign partners", to be achieved by "harnessing the synergies between all the actors involved".

And that will really get al-Qaida squitting in its knickers.

COMMENT THREAD

Got the bastard!

Isa Younis, a 66-year-old retired teacher, said: "I thank God and the Iraqi government for this huge gift. I don't know how I'm going to celebrate but I know that this is the happiest day of my life."

"I'm overjoyed. God willing this will be the end of all terrorists. I hope Iraq can now begin to stabilise now this pig is dead," said Qeysar Ahmed, a Baghdad shop owner as he watched Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki make the announcement in a televised news conference accompanied by U.S. officials.

Those comments come from the Reuters report, and there is a lot more in similar vein, celebrating the death of the head-hacker in chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda leader in Iraq.

In a triumphant demonstration of intelligence combined with air power, Reuters also reports Major General William Caldwell telling a news conference that it took detailed planning before two F-16 fighter jets dropped two 500-pound (227 kg) bombs on a house in a village north of Baghdad and killed the most wanted man in Iraq.

He said that U.S. forces were trailing Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, and that led them to a small house in a palm grove area where they also discovered the al Qaeda leader was staying. The bombing started at 1815 (1415 GMT) on Wednesday, he said.

"What everyone needs to understand is the strike last night did not occur in a 24-hour period. It truly was a very long, painstaking, deliberate exploitation of intelligence, information gathering, human sources, electronics, signal intelligence that was done over a period of time, many, many weeks," Caldwell said.

There were six people in the house, including a woman and a child, but only Zarqawi and Abdul-Rahman have been identified. Zarqawi's identification was verified at 0330 on Thursday (1130 GMT), Caldwell said. Forensic experts are conducting a DNA test on Zarqawi and results are expected in 48 hours, he said. Caldwell displayed at the news conference what he said was a picture of the corpse of the bearded Zarqawi with his eyes shut.

He said 17 more raids were conducted on other suspected hideouts for Zarqawi associates in Baghdad and its outskirts a few hours after he was killed. They produced a "treasure trove" of information.

Just for once, there is little need to add to these reports.

COMMENT THREAD

Keep those migrants in their place

Spain has called a conference of fifty European and African governments in the Senegalese capital a couple of days ago to draw up a plan to deal with the flood of migrants who are leaving their homes to undertake the hazardous journey to European countries where they are unlikely to find employment.

As the Washington Times puts it, Spain is in the forefront of the problem but the article highlights only one aspect of that: the number of migrants who are arriving in that country. There is no mention of Spain’s complicity in causing the problem by depriving fishermen of their livelihood.

Of course, this is the EU’s problem largely, as the third country agreements, which are part and parcel of the CFP, now supported by the modern caring compassionate Conservatives represent one aspect; the other is the aid that the EU pours into African countries as it deprives the people of their livelihood – aid that supports oppressive, kleptocratic governments.

None of this is mentioned in the article and, one assumes, in the document, known as the plan, was produced by the meeting.

“The plan -- originally drafted by Morocco, Spain and France, three countries in the front line of the immigration problem -- is expected to be adopted by European and African ministers at a summit on migration July 10 and 11 in the Moroccan capital, Rabat.

"This is a political initiative of the highest importance that aims to combine both managing migrant flows and managing development," said Alvaro Iranzo, a senior Spanish Foreign Ministry official.

On Europe's southern flank facing Africa, Spain is the first target of thousands of penniless sub-Saharan Africans seeking entry to Europe, and Madrid has begun a diplomatic offensive in West Africa to try to stanch the flow.

But while coastal patrols and surveillance can cut illegal departures, European and African experts agree that such short-term measures will be useless unless the unemployment, poverty and conflict that prompt migration from Africa are tackled.

"If we don't go to the root causes, there's not going to be a solution," Moroccan delegation chief Youssef Amrani said.”

No mention of the Common Fisheries Policy or of the third country agreements.

COMMENT THREAD

Flying false colours

Never let it be said that the MSM is slow on the uptake so, having reported it on this blog in December last year, it is still good to see the Daily Telegraph catch up with the news today with its report headed, "Cameron drops plans to pull out of Europe's deal on fishing".

Never mind that Booker also reported it on 7 May in The Sunday Telegraph and that it appeared in last month’s edition of Freedom Today, which we also reported, this time on 30 May.

No, never mind all that. Toby Helm, Mr Chief Political Correspondent Of The Telegraph has a newspaper to fill and a mortgage to pay so, with his eye on the ball as usual, he decides it's news. And suddenly it's news. Just remember, though, you read it here first, six months ago.

In making out that it is "new" news, however, Helm must invent the fiction that – as he writes – "David Cameron has made a further dramatic break with the Tory past by dropping his party's long-standing commitment to pull Britain out of the European Union's much maligned Common Fisheries Policy."

Family blog or not, there is only one response to that: bollocks!

The man was always against the idea and there is no one in the business who did not know that, at the first available opportunity, he would junk the policy and revert to the status quo. And he did that last December.

The policy, as it currently stood, represented two years of gruelling hard work and the personal commitment of then shadow fisheries minister, Owen Paterson who produced in December last a credible alternative to the CFP in the form of an opposition "green paper". That had to be personally approved by Howard and, in seeking that approval, throughout the whole process, the main obstacle was Howard's then aide, none other than Mr David Bloody Cameroon, the Boy King himself.

Furthermore, in a little piece of untold history, the only thing that forced Howard to give the go-ahead for developing the policy was the political courage of Owen Paterson and his then immediate boss, John Whittingdale. On the eve of the 2004 Euro-elections, they threatened to resign unless Howard honoured previous commitments to the fishermen on repatriation of the CFP. The resignation of two of his shadow team, on this issue, at such a critical juncture when UKIP looked like it was about to sweep the board, was potentially so damaging that he caved in and produced his "famous" 10 June letter.

It is a measure of just how little the political correspondents really know of what is going on that what amounted to a major political coup went entirely unnoticed. Nor indeed was any notice taken when the man who, by general acclaim was the best shadow fisheries minister the party had had since it went into opposition – none other than Owen Paterson – was quietly reshuffled to transport last December as a precursor to ditching the fishing policy. The Boy King knew full well that, with Paterson's personal commitment to it, had he remained in post, he would have had no alternative but to resign, seriously damaging the Boy King's fragile Eurosceptic credentials.

However, why the fishing policy was so important, and why we invested so much time and effort in it, is now only hinted at in Helm's piece, when he writes:

It is understood that Mr Cameron, who is trying to tone down his party's hostility to the EU while retaining a strong euro-sceptic edge, had been warned by colleagues and experts that withdrawal would have been unachievable without provoking a huge legal crisis in the EU.

To provoke a "huge legal crisis" was precisely the aim. Within the institutions of the European Union, the "holy grail", the one single, untouchable dogma, is the inviolability of the acquis communautaire, the principle that, once made, EU law cannot be un-made.

By demanding the repatriation of the CFP, a popular issue where the failure of the EU is so easily demonstrated, we were quite deliberately challenging that central dogma of the EU. By so doing, we hoped that, if successful, a precedent would be set for further unravelling a host of other issues. We even had a name for this strategy – reverse engrenage – unravelling to EU, step-by-step, after the commission's own strategy of engrenage, the step-by-step accumulation of power.

There is no doubt that the Boy King was aware of this. Advised by the "old guard" Europhiles, including Clarke, Heseltine and Gummer, he was also fully aware of the danger, which is why the repatriation commitment had to go. With it goes any shred of pretence that Cameron is in any shape or form a Eurosceptic. As we see from Hague's speech yesterday, he is a "heart of Europe" man, wholly wedded to the status quo and not in any way inclined to rock the boat.

That same day it was that the Boy King engineered yet another photo opportunity by riding his bicycle decked with an English flag. Had this charlatan shown his true colours, he should have been kitted out with the ring of stars. That, at least, would have confirmed that, as long as he is at the helm of the Conservative Party, there is no hope whatsoever of achieving any progress in the battle against Brussels.

COMMENT THREAD

Saddam "the federator of Europe"

From the European Coal and Steel Community, based on the "Schuman Plan" of 1950, the progression to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 looks, from the distance of nearly 50 years, to have been a smooth and natural progression.

But, as we describe in The Great Deception, the Treaty of Rome was a close-run thing. Negotiations which has begun in earnest in early 1956 had, with the passage of ten months, become hopelessly stalled. None of the parties, particularly France and Germany, could see a way forward.

What broke the impasse, however, was the Suez Crisis or, more particularly, the unilateral decision by Anthony Eden to abort the campaign, without even informing his French counterpart. Adenauer, who was in Paris at the time, consulting the French Cabinet, urged the prime minister to "make Europe your revenge".

So dramatic has been the impact of the crisis that the French did precisely that and previously insurmountable differences between them and the Germans melted away. As the deal came together, therefore, a colleague of Jean Monnet suggested, only half-jokingly, that a statue should be erected to the man who had triggered the crisis, Gamel Abdel Nasser, "the federator of Europe".

That a Middle-East tyrant should have had such a pivotal role in the creation of the European Union is hugely ironic but an even greater irony is that history appears to be repeating itself.

That, at least, is one construction which can be put on a Populus opinion poll reported in The Times yesterday, which shows that the British public has become increasingly cool towards American policy and critical of its role in the world after the sustained violence in Iraq.

The survey indicates that fewer than half the public believe that America is a force for good in the world and – as sentiment turns away from America - nearly two thirds believe that Britain’s future lies more with Europe than with the US.

The exact figure is 65 percent, responding positively when asked of they believed that "Britain's future lies more with Europe than America". In March 2003, before the invasion, about 71 percent believed that "the conduct of the US towards Iraq makes it more important than ever that Britain is at the heart of Europe".

Care must be exercised in interpreting this result as surveys on sentiment towards "Europe" – as with other issues – depend notoriously in the context of the question. But it does suggest that the steady, malign drip of anti-Americanism is not without its perils, if turning away from the US creates a vacuum which is filled by the European Union.

Generally, the antithesis to European integration is most often seen as Atlanticism, with which Eurosceptics generally tend to be quite comfortable. However, almost entirely as a result of the Iraq War, there is a strand of virulent anti-Americanism emerging in some parts of the Eurosceptic movement, often thinly disguised as anti-Bush sentiment.

If this brings increasing numbers of people closer to the European camp – sometimes only because they hate the US more than they hate the EU – then, as the trigger of the crisis that brought this about, maybe some Europhiles in the future will be considering whether to raise a statue to that other Middle-East tyrant, Saddam Hussein, "the federator of Europe".

COMMENT THREAD

How can they be nasty about that nice Mr Annan?

Oh dear. Boo-hoo. This is just so sad. Waaahh-haaah!. Can’t help laughing ….woops …..sorry, crying. Mr Mark Malloch Brown (yes, one of ours), deputy to SecGen Kofi Annan (father of Kojo) has attacked the United States for … oh dear, somebody give me a handkerchief … undermining the United Nations.

Unacceptable, he spluttered in true “Yes, Minister” style.

“"The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable," said the deputy, Mark Malloch Brown. "You will lose the U.N. one way or another."

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington's tolerance of what he called "too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping."

"Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News," he said.”

And what do these heinous organizations report or discuss? Could it be the oil-for food scandal, or the unresolved question of the limousine purchased by the egregious Kojo Annan, or the behaviour of UN troops in Africa and the Balkans? Or, for that matter, the suspension of one UN official after another because of financial malfeasance? Then again, there is the saga of sexual harassment in UN offices. (Maybe it’s Prescott who should become the new UN SecGen, not Blair as it is touted round the MSM. He will be right at home.)

John Bolton’s office reacted icily with his spokesman, Richard A. Grenell, pointing out that Malach Brown did not extend them the courtesy of sending over a copy of the speech ahead of delivery. In the fullness of time they will respond.

Of course, even the New York Times knows what the real problem is:

“The speech reflected frustration in Mr. Annan's office with a looming crisis over the United Nations budget, which, under a six-month gap agreed to under pressure from Washington in December, will pay the bills only until the end of June.

The deal was struck to link budget approval with achievement of significant management reforms, and Mr. Bolton made frequent mention of Congressional impatience with the United Nations and legislation that would authorize Washington to start withholding its dues. The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of its budget.”

One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this self-pitying nonsense.

COMMENT THREAD

We were misunderstood

June 4, among other things of importance to Etonians, is also the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre when the tanks moved in to crush the peaceful students’ demonstration. (On the left is the iconic picture that went round the world at the time.)

It is a picture you will not find on Google in China. The organization that has paraded its liberal and humanitarian credentials, promising to do no evil, did a deal with the Chinese government. In return for being allowed set up Google.cn, they promised to censor a good deal of the material.

Thus if you try to find Tiananmen Square on Google.cn, you see lots of yummy touristy pictures, including this one of children parading with red flags. It doesn’t matter, Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, whines. If Chinese want to see the real information they go to the main Google site, Google.com. Except that it is not accessible in Chinese provinces, points out Reporters without Borders.

It seems that Google feels it ought to rethink its whole position on China, with Brin saying that perhaps a principled approach now makes more sense. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Brin, in Washington to lobby the Senate

“to approve a plan that would prevent telephone and cable companies from collecting premium fees from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! for faster delivery of their services”,

because that might break the stranglehold those companies have on delivery of internet services, had to answer some searching questions on the subject of China.

It’s so unfair, he said. After all, everybody else does the same – agrees to do what the Chinese government demands and they don’t get an international outcry.

This is not precisely true. There were outcries when Microsoft and Yahoo! behaved despicably in China. But it is Google’s founders who strut around in self-righteous prattishness. So it is only fair that Google should get the biggest share of moral condemnation.

COMMENT THREAD

Says it all

Trust The Sun to go for the jugular. And, when all the prattling is over, the stark fact will remain – the Boy King is adopting the classic ambiguous fudge on "Europe", trying to run with the hare and the hounds.

I listened to Hague on the Today Programme this morning and Naughtie had him skewered on the question of his "reform" agenda, pointing out that it would require the scrapping of the Treaty of Rome. The shadow foreign secretary did not disagree, enabling the BBC website to pronounce, "Mr Hague says he is not ruling out rewriting the Treaty of Rome".

The chances of that happening, of course, are precisely nil. We need not go through the laborious process in detail, but all our readers will be aware that, for a treaty change, there would have to the prolonged process of an intergovernmental conference, with unanimous agreement of a new draft treaty by the leaders of all 25 member states (soon to be 27), followed by unanimous ratification. This, as we all know, is just the process that has prevented the EU constitution being adopted.

Basically, Hague is offering moonshine. Intellectually – if that word can be used in this context – this fantasy comes from the same stable as "in Europe but not ruled by Europe", wishful thinking that bears no realistic prospect of coming about.

As for the detail of Hague's speech, who cares? Fisking it is almost intruding on private grief. The Tory Boy Blog has already made a start, but it cannot improve on The Sun's headline. Effectively, the Boy King has ruled himself out of the game.

COMMENT THREAD

Hey! They’re only Africans

"…we cannot abandon those people. The European Union must put money where the needs are: help relieve Africa from hunger, disease and abuse of human and civil rights."

So burbles the communication commissar, Margot Wallström on her increasingly dire blog. Yet all she demonstrates with her vapid prattling is how totally divorced she is from any semblance of reality.

That reality as it stands is that the European Union – amongst its may other sins - is unarguably directly responsible for the death of upwards of 110,000 children in Uganda alone, who succumb to the unfashionable but deadly disease of malaria.

This we have covered several times, most recently here chronicling how the EU has played a particularly wicked and sinister role. Through the years, it has sought to dissuade Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni from taking the simple and cheap measure of reintroducing DDT, a measure that would not only save those thousands of lives but have an immediate beneficial effect on the Ugandan economy.

To his eternal credit, Museveni has resisted the increasingly aggressive blackmail and has expressed a determination to go ahead with this much-needed health measure. But, according to The East African, such is the insidious pressure exerted by the EU’s head of the Economic, Trade and Social Sectors desk in Uganda, who goes by the name of Tom Vens, that agricultural exporters have taken fright.

They have petitioned Museveni, asking him to stop the planned use of DDT, arguing that its used "will turn buyers against their products". They fear it will "negatively impact on Uganda's export market," creating a stigma that will then "attach to Uganda's export products will affect all sectors."

Vens, in the weasel words that have characterised the EU's whole approach to the issue, is now saying that there will be no official EU ban on the country if it uses DDT according to laid down international conventions, but… And that is a huge "but".

He is telling the exporters that "consumer organisations are free to react anyway they choose to," adding that, "If the strict controls that should be put in place when DDT is used are not fully adhered to, and there is a risk of contamination of the food chain, it will not automatically lead to a ban on food products, but it will mean that that particular consignment cannot be sent to Europe."

For the exporters, a nod is as good as a wink, and you can bet that the EU will be monitoring residues in Ugandan exports with an enthusiasm that their officials normally only reserve for their monthly pay cheques.

For all the emoting of the fragrant one, therefore, Uganda is going to have a tough time of this, with absolutely no help from the EU. If that dire organisation wanted to put Wallström's words into practice, it could offer active help with the DDT spraying programme, and then encourage member state importers to continue buying product.

That it does not makes a mockery of its publicly expressed good intentions, but – I suppose – that is only to be expected. What really hacks me off about this whole episode, therefore, is the way the EU is allowed to get away with its callous indifference to human life.

This issue has been grumbling on for years, yet the British media – so voluble about Live8 and African poverty - has been almost totally silent on this, as indeed has the care Blair.

Equally, on an issue where he could validly demonstrate his "modern compassionate Conservatism", Cameron is utterly silent, as is UKIP, for which this issue would be an absolute gift, if there was anyone in that party with the brains even to realise what was going on.

But, Uganda is a long, long way from here. As long as we enjoy the purity of food free from the "deadly" DDT, who cares if hundreds of thousands of people are dying? Hey! They're only Africans.

COMMENT THREAD

We shall overcome!

You do wonder what game little Angela is playing, as she can't be wholly for real in cosying up to Chirac over the constitution. Even she must know that L'Escroc is "dead man walking" – politically if not in actuality. Any deal she does with him isn't going to survive the presidential elections next year.

Thus to see Merkel and Chirac meeting outside Berlin – as they did yesterday – and agreeing "to create fresh solutions to resolving the EU constitutional crisis" makes you wonder what the real game is.

Anyhow, the fair Angela is suggesting – for public consumption at any rate – that "a decision should be reached" on the EU constitution when France holds the EU presidency in the second half of 2008, telling reporters that she and her new bestist friend L'Escroc had agreed that "the constitutional treaty will be reviewed during the German presidency", after a period of reflection.

Chirac, for his part, said that France "trusts the German presidency to steer the ship in the right direction," declaring which Gallic insouciance that, "We have certain problems but we will of course overcome them."

Yeah, right, Jacques… after you've won the French presidential election. But what's your game Angela?

COMMENT THREAD

Mind how you go

What would Sergeant Dixon (originally of Paddington Green but killed there in “The Blue Lamp” and resurrected for the Dock Green nick) have said about this report?

The Press Association tells us [not, apparently, on line] of a curious conclusion a new report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) has come to. Looking at vetting procedures in police forces in England and Wales, the report has found 40 loopholes, which means that, in effect, those vetting procedures are worth very little.

Smaller police forces, it is said, are finding the whole process particularly difficult, time-consuming and expensive. They are sternly enjoined to put national procedures into place by next April at the latest. Presumably, this is another step towards those mergers, so dear to the heart of our politicians and civil servants.

Actually, it seems a little pointless to put national procedures into place if there are these 40 major loopholes. The most interesting ones relate to EU nationals who might want to work in the British police force. I wouldn’t have thought that is a terribly good idea at the best of times but even less so because it is impossible to carry out proper checks in a number of countries.

“In effect, current policy means that forces can reject a United Kingdom applicant with a caution from three years and a day ago, but they can accept a war criminal from a country where checks are not possible.”

That seems a little over the top. One can hardly envisage WWII war criminals still being spry enough to get into our police, unfit though many of its members are. On the other hand, of course, there are the French officers who are serving in Côte d’Ivoire or with the UN in DR Congo.

There are the former secret police officers from the Baltic and other former Communist states. Not necessarily war criminals (how their minds do run on that category) but frequently guilty of humanitarian crimes.

The real problem is considerably less dramatic. A number of the EU member states have inadequate central criminal records and it is next to impossible to find out whether a certain applicant has a record or not.

It would, one presumes, be possible to decide that anyone whose record cannot be proved to be pristine is not allowed to become a police officer, police staff or “non-police personnel with access to police premises”. Police forces do not come under Single Market rules and the usual crime of discrimination need not apply.

Failing that, we should, at the very least, have clear rules, on the basis of the precautionary principle, about not taking any present or former French or Italian politician.

COMMENT THREAD

The dog that didn't bark

I don't know much about Mr Michael Witheridge, other than he lives in Hayle, Cornwall, but his letter to The Daily Telegraph today is spot on.

The subject is army equipment in Iraq, picking up on the letter we spotted from Mr Martyn Pocock, who complained about our troops being equipped with inadequately armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers.

Witheridge picks up the theme, stating that Pocock is "fully justified in feeling despair and outrage" at the failure of the government to provide adequate armour for our troops in Iraq. He adds that which we already know, that vehicles such as the armoured Land Rover offer wholly inadequate protection against the improvised explosive devices in use there, and again restates the sad truth that soldiers are dying as a result.

Opening out the argument, Witheridge then writes:

What defies belief is the imbalance to be found in the MoD's current equipment procurement programmes. The Royal Navy has recently received into service new ships. In the pipeline are two aircraft carriers, new destroyers and new submarines. The RAF has ordered a huge number of Eurofighters, the cost of just one of which is £80 million.

Any such amount could purchase very large numbers of adequately armoured vehicles. Is it not high time that the MoD's equipment priorities were re-examined and emphasis placed where it is needed in order to save lives?

This goes almost to the heart of the matter, but not quite. Procurement programmes reflect defence priorities which, as we never tire of stating, reflect foreign policy which, in turn reflects – or should reflect – the national interest.

And, in this context, the current equipment programme, which includes a projected £14 billion on the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES), is dictated by the determination of the government to restructure our military as an expeditionary force, meshing with the European Rapid Reaction Force, of which it will be an integral part – reflecting the foreign policy objective of promoting further European defence integration.

The practical result of this is that the scale of equipment – including the two carriers – is not that required to maintain long-term counter-insurgency operations of the type being conducted in Iraq. But, such are the spending priorities that the Army is being robbed of cash for its current role, to pay for a future capability which, even if provided, is largely useless for the roles (in both Iraq and Afghanistan) for which it is currently tasked.

Yet, in so far as we are able to project, the more likely role of the Army – for the foreseeable future – is precisely the type of sustained counter-insurgency role that it is at present undertaking, which present equipment, force structures, training and logistic issues which are almost entirely at odds with the demands of sustaining a rapid reaction force.

Since, as Mr Witheridge points out, the effect of getting the decisions wrong is that troops have died – and will continue to die – entirely unnecessarily, it has never been more vital that there should be an open and intelligent debate on where we are going. This we must have if we are to adopt a procurement policy which reflects actual need rather than the vainglorious ambitions of closet Europhiles in the Defence and Foreign ministries.

Yet, as demonstrated by the two letters we have reviewed, such debate as there is has been conducted not in the main pages of the newspapers – which are distressingly focused on the "Boys Own" aspects of operations - rather than the cold, hard political realities.

Equally, we have to say, in sorrow as much as in anger, the parliamentary activity has been lack-lustre and ill-focused, which leaves the military (and public) interest largely unrepresented.

Either way, this lack of debate is simply not good enough. It is all very well the media baying for blood when military disasters do happen, but many of these result directly or indirectly from decisions made years earlier. Thus, if we are to prevent the preventable, then the time to be discussing the issues is now, when decisions are being made and can be unmade or adjusted.

That the media have instead retreated largely into trivia and irrelevancies is perhaps the greatest indictment of them all, representing a complete abrogation of its responsibility as the "fourth estate". It is not, therefore, an exaggeration to declare that, in the days and years to come, and more troops die through the wanton neglect and incompetence of our government, part of the responsibility will rest with the media – the dog that didn't bark.

COMMENT THREAD

Claustrophobia

Just when you start to get delusions of grandeur, and believe there are some really serious life and death issues that really should be addressed, you can always guarantee that the European Union will drag you back to the basics.

Thus it is that, after an "emergency" summit in February last, the commission is finally ready to make a pronouncement on a subject of earth-shattering importance – what to do with the Union's surplus four billion bottles of wine, which swallows up €1.2 to €1.6 billion (£810 million to £1 billion) of taxpayers' money each year.

Considering that the British taxpayer forks out between £90-120 million of this (as a conservative estimate), all part of "our" EU contribution – which would buy our hard-pressed troops in Basra a cool 3-400 RG31s - one is tempted to assist the commission with some pretty graphic advice on what to do with the bottles.

But such are the priorities of the EU and its grip on our government that we must go along with the charade of supporting an organisation that, having paid French and Italians (and others) a king's ransom to produce the stuff, is spending something like another £350 million distilling the unwanted surplus, to use as industrial alcohol.

Yet, for France, even this is not enough. It has asked for the commission to subsidise the so-called "crisis distillation" of 2 million hectolitres of table wine and 2 million hectolitres of quality wine, while Italy is seeking similarly to transform 3m hectolitres of table wine and 100,000 hectolitres of quality wine. I have no idea what a hectolitre is, but it sounds like an awful lot of wine.

Anyhow, even this is proving a bit too rich for agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who – we are told - is about to propose the distillation of lower quantities and at lower prices than the two countries have demanded.

This is something, however, that the odious Frogs really get excited about (much more important than mere British soldiers getting blasted into the next world) so a mega stand-off is expected. The French – aided and abetted by the Italians – will then do what they do best: screw even more money out of the EU.

After some ritual posturing by both sides, and a commitment to some reform of one of the most inefficient and controversial aspects of the CAP – which from past experience usually means paying out even more money – the Frogs will get most of what they want, and the Italians will mop up behind them. And behind them will be the Greeks, who also have their hands out for some cash to bail out their wine industry.

And that, people, is what is really important in the claustrophobic little world of the European Union, that wonderful organisation which brings us so many benefits. Tell that to the troops in Basra.

Today, incidentally, is the 62nd anniversary of D-Day - the start of the liberation of Europe. You sometimes wonder why we bothered.

COMMENT THREAD

Shape up or get out

I think we've got past the stage where we believe that bloggers are going to replace the MSM, much less conquer the universe, and are settling down to the idea that we cater for a small niche market, with our own brand of specialist comment and occasional exclusive news item.

By and large though, our relationship with the media is one of synergy. We feed off them and they off us. In the former case our role – we believe – is to add value, providing insight and context to often one-dimensional pieces.

With that in mind, we must congratulate The Times for its excellent on-the-spot reportage of the situation in Basra, especially after its abysmal performance on the Haditha photograph.

Written by Ned Parker, under the heading, "Daily attacks and abuse - the new reality for British troops", it chronicles the experience of The Times correspondent on patrol with members of Delta company in Basra, who spend their time "dodging the taunts and the missiles".

The graphic account – which gels with other reports we have seen on the situation - strongly suggests that the British Army has long ceased to make any effective contribution to the policing of the city. In fact, in the sullen and rebellious mood prevailing, our troops themselves seem highly vulnerable targets, with insufficient numbers and resources even to protect themselves adequately, much less the population.

Parker cites Major Rob Yuill, who tells him, "It's ... drifting toward a situation like Bosnia," comparing the targeting of Basra's Sunni minority to the fierce ethnic conflict of the Balkans in the early 1990s. Sergeant Lans Downe adds to this, saying, "We're stuck in the middle… We're trying to assist the Iraqi police and Army, but we get caught up in it."

We are reminded that nine British soldiers were killed in 50 attacks in May and, writes, Parker, every time the men of Sergeant Downe's Delta company go out in their Warrior carriers (as pictured above), they are tailed by cars or watch men on cell phones marking their movements and passing the information to someone farther down the road.

"You are constantly being watched. They put a name on where you are and what you are doing," says Downe. "Every time you are out (the danger) is a constant. One moment civilians will ask you for water. The next they bomb you ... It's worse than it was in Northern Ireland."

Yet, in a city of 1.5 million, there are only about 700 British troops available for active patrols, with a local police force that, according to Major Yuill, has only "a small minority" of good cops.

That the number is insufficient is made clear by Parker's piece, who records that the men in Delta company "admit that they do not have the eyes and ears to rein in the death squads and gangs that have caused Basra's murder rate to skyrocket". Citing Downe again, Parker writes, "A lot of it happens behind the scenes. There are a lot of side streets. It happens in the shadows, in the places we don't know about."

Without in any way encroaching on the debate as to whether British troops should have been sent to Iraq, or questioning whether in principle, they should remain, it is germane to note that, in Northern Ireland, at the peak of the troubles, there were over 22,000 British troops engaged in security operations – in addition to the civilian police.

Clearly, our forces in Basra cannot do any sensible job and, as we noted in an earlier post, there is very serious concern about whether they are being supplied with the right kit. When it comes to the "Snatch" Land Rovers, for instance, in "high risk" environments, the US are now using the RG31 (pictured) produced by a wholly owned South African subsidiary of BAE Systems.

From this vehicle, damaged when it drove over an improvised bomb,its five occupants emerged with only minor injuries. Had they been in a Land Rover, they would surely have been killed. How ironic it is - or perhaps scandalous would be a better word - that US troops should be protected by equipment made by a British-owned company, yet our own forces are deprived of it.

Therefore, we (and I have discussed this at length will my co-editor) feel it is right to question why our troops are in Iraq under the current circumstances. If they are to be there, they should be in sufficient numbers to be able to do the job, with the appropriate equipment, necessary to protect them and complete their tasks. They should also have the very clearest of instructions as to what they are supposed to be achieving and full political support in the execution of those instructions.

As it stands, with too few troops on the ground to make a difference, in a hostile environment with no clear mandate, and with inadequate equipment that makes them extremely vulnerable targets, we cannot see what Mr Blair thinks he is achieving by having them there.

If this is just gesture politics, and there is no intention to send reinforcements and new equipment – and it is hard to see how this could be done - then our soldiers' lives are worth more than that. They should be withdrawn. In other words, Mr Blair, shape up or get out.

For our latest report, see here.

COMMENT THREAD

Gone over to the enemy

In the Eurosceptic battle order, it is not uncommon to find the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) prominently listed in the ranks of the good guys. But the reputation is undeserved. For some years, the organisation has been actively subverted from within by a clique of Europhile luvvies, gradually turning it from a staunch opponent of the EU to one of its cheerleaders.

This is despite – in fact, in defiance of – the sentiments of its 190,000 membership, which has twice voted for withdrawal from the EU, once in 1995 and again in 2001, when the majority was 2:1 in favour.

But so confident is this Europhile clique of its grip on power that it has finally come into the open with the launch, proudly announced on its website, of a new office in Brussels, celebrated by the publication of a report, which makes no concessions at all to the views of most of its members.

Described as "the FSB's blueprint for small firms in the EU", it rejoices under the title, What can Small Businesses do for Europe?, demonstrating clearly the policy shift from one of active opposition to one of willing collaboration.

The report itself makes some good points but, signed by the FSB's rabidly Europhile "EU and international affairs chairman", Tina Sommer, it talks glowingly about "how the small business community can help the EU to overcome five of the biggest challenges we face".

Yet, if this represents the final sell-out of the organisation, it has been a long time coming. I used to write a column for the FSB's magazine, First Voice, and, oddly enough, one of the very first posts on this blog was an article written for the magazine in 2004.

That it was never published speaks volumes for where the organisation was going at that time, especially when it led to my instant dismissal as a columnist – in another of those curious episodes where no one had the balls to tell me and it was left for me to find out when the article did not appear.

With the FSB having gone over to the enemy, however, it is following in a long line of organisations which have been suborned, not least the Church of England, which is an active advocate for the "European" cause. One wonders though, whether the FSB rank-and-file membership, who are notoriously apolitical, will actually notice and, if they do, whether they will protest at the hijack of their organisation.

COMMENT THREAD

Peter and the Bear

Since September 2004, a nasty little trade war has been brewing between Poland and Russia, sparked off when Russia closed its borders to Polish dairy imports, claiming they did not comply with its health requirements.

At the time, we forecast that this could have a significant effect on British farming, not least because the outcome could have been the adoption of EU-wide rules to meet Russian standards – which require Bovine TB free status for dairy products. With Bovine TB spiralling out of control in this country this could have led to an export ban on the scale of the BSE ban, excluding British products from the EU marketplace.

Nevertheless, this did not materialise, mainly because Poland chose not to invoke the EU in its dispute and opted for bilateral talks. But, nearly two years later, far from being resolved, the dispute has escalated and widened, to include Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have now imposed the bans on Polish meat exports in November and March respectively on the grounds that Poland was allowing illegal exports to cross the border, cutting off some ten percent of Polish meat production.

This has caused serious alarm in Poland and deputy prime minister and agriculture minister Andrzej Lepper last week called for EU involvement in the negotiations. According to Tass, Lepper is threatening to impose restrictions on food exports via Poland to Ukraine and Russia unless the EU steps in sharpish.

The Polish News Bulletin reports now that Peter Mandelson has stepped into the breach and has now met with premier Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, telling him that, "We must work harder" to unblock trade between Poland and Russia. He is proposing a trilateral meeting to Russia

Already though, Consumer affairs commissioner Markos Kyprianu has denounced Russia's ban, saying that the problem lay with Russia's new regulations which "exceed EU standards".

However, if Mandelson thinks negotiating on the Doha WTO round is difficult, he ain't seen nothing yet. Intervening on behalf of Poland and trying to do a deal with Russia will stretch his capabilities to the limit and beyond. Almost certainly, Russia will demand concessions from the EU which could lead to precisely the situation about which were so concerned in 2004.

Thus, while Prokofiev wrote a happy ending for Peter and the wolf, Peter and the Bear might be an altogether different proposition.

COMMENT THREAD

Political chaos Czech style

First we had Germany, where negotiations for the Grand Coalition went on for weeks; then there was Italy, where despite the much-vaunted dissatisfaction with Berlusconi, his policies and financial affairs, the Left under Romano Prodi barely managed to scrape through and have spent some time trying to put together a government; now we have the Czech Republic.

The elections that took place on Friday and Saturday have ended if not precisely in a draw but in a somewhat difficult situation. The right-wing Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Vaclav Klaus’s party, won but only just. They got 35.3 per cent of the vote as against the Social Democrats’ 32.32 per cent. This will give them 81 seats and the Social Democrats 74.

Any government would have to be a coalition and the ODS’s preferred partners would be the Christian Democrats and the Greens, who, with 6.75 per cent of the vote will now enter parliament, the first green party to do so in any post-communist party.

So is Mirek Topolánek beginning those tortuous negotiations? Well, in order to do so, he must have his opponent, the still sitting Prime Minister, Jiri Paroubek, who has been accused of holding up investigations into criminal gang activity, acknowledge defeat.

Mr Paroubek has preferred to throw his toys out of the pram.

“If you think that I’m just going to admit defeat and shake the hand of my opponent, think again.”

He has threatened to go the Supreme Court to ask for a recount and has, rather oddly, compared the ODS campaign and victory with the 1948 Communist coup. Then he added that he could form a government with the communists in any case and the ODS need not bother.

In return, he was attacked by President Klaus who, quite understandably, said that he will not allow Mr Paroubek ignore the results of a free and fair election and by the leader of the Green Party who has likened the stubborn statement to 1950s communist rhetoric.

COMMENT THREAD

Logic, what logic?

Remember Prime Minister Zapatero? He, who came to power, after the Madrid underground bombings, who then pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq and announced to all and sundry that everything was President Bush’s fault, the American military’s fault, blood for oil, blah-blah-blah?

Well, he may have changed his mind as Barcepunditt reports, quoting the US Army News Service:

“Spanish Ambassador Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza and Spanish Defense Attache Brig. Gen. Antonio Valderrabano awarded the Grand Cross of Military Merit with White Ribbon, Spain’s highest military honor, to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker for his “long and brilliant career” and his dedication to international relations May 31 at Fort Myer, Va.”

Wait a minute. Is this not the person who is in charge of the terrible mass killings and tortures in Iraq?

General Schoomaker accepted the award in the name of the US Army, saying somewhat disingenuously:

“This truly is an honor. I appreciate the sincerity of its presentation. Our relationship with Spain goes back a long time. We don’t have to look far to see the influence of the Spanish culture on this nation. Now, we are working closely together to fight the Global War on Terror and are making advances in that battle.”

As for the relationship that goes back a long way, that was mostly wars of different kinds. The influence of Spanish culture is a debatable subject. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the differences in development between North American and Central and South America could be put down to the differences between the Anglosphere and the Hispanosphere.

Still, it is good to know that the two countries are fighting terrorism together.

COMMENT THREAD

Are there no depths…?

We thought they were getting pretty desperate when they came up with the idea of a song and dance routine for "Europe" but, in recruiting Bob the Builder to their cause, but they are surely plumbing the very depths.

But that is precisely what the EU commission is doing, according to Justin Stares in today’s Telegraph, using him as “the latest weapon” to convince children to help to save the world from global warming.

Our Bob is to take part in a publicity stunt during an energy ministers' meeting in Luxembourg, where he will extol the virtues of home insulation to help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, all on the back of the commission's climate change initiative launched last week.

However, environmentalists are less than impressed with the commission president's conversion to the cause as they have noted that he drives gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive VW Touareg – that is when he is not being chauffeured to work in his top-of-the-range Mercedes limousine.

Demonstrators at the commission headquarters in Brussels last week asked how Mr Barroso could expect children to observe new environmental guidelines when his vehicle churns out almost double the amount of carbon dioxide the commission wants to see European cars emit by 2008.

Barroso's response is that "Brussels" is trying to encourage a change in behaviour without being moralistic. "We never said we were perfect," he said. And he can say that again.

Anyone doing the Brussels-Strasbourg run at the start of the EU parliament's plenary week will see a procession of limousines cruising down the motorways, empty apart from their chauffeurs, making the trip to the French regional capital. These are the commissioners' cars, sent from Brussels while their masters jet in to the local airport, thence to be met by their cars and ferried to their top-class hotels in town.

The MEPs are a little better – but not much. They are met at the airport by a luxury coach, which is driven down from Luxembourg for the week, but for the main part, running to and from the parliament, they use chauffeur-driven Renault limousines, supplied locally.

For a supposedly "green" organisation, however, car sharing is strictly forbidden – at least when it comes to MEPs sharing their cars with their staff who are going the same direction. They (the staff) are supposed to take the rickety and often overcrowded bus or, when it ceases running – incredibly early in the evening – wait in the lengthy queue for a taxi into town.

I did once write to the "service" - as the parliament administration is called – asking if we were supposed to doff our caps or touch our forelocks as our masters swept by in the splendid isolation of their luxury limousines, but never got an answer. Now they have recruited Bob the Builder, though, perhaps the current batch of serfs can hitch a ride on his JCB.

After all, Barroso is at pains to tell us of his "green" initiative, "This is not a moralistic campaign. We don't have a totalitarian mentality. We don't want to control the private life of every citizen. It's up to each person to take the measures he wishes." Except for car sharing, of course.

COMMENT THREAD

A prophet without honour

It is not every day that we have a book launched by a Head of State but, while this blogger was toiling over a hot keyboard this week, my partner in crime, Christopher Booker was over in Prague, receiving accolades from none other than the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, at a seminar to launch the Czech language edition of The Great Deception: Can The European Union Survive?

As Booker records in his Sunday Telegraph column this week, this is our 600-page history of "the European project" which we published last year, and it was entirely thanks to President Klaus that it has now been translated into Czech.

Strangely enough, yesterday, Booker was on the platform at the UK Independence Party South East Rally in Marsham Street, London, alongside the one man who had done most to sabotage the creation of the book, UKIP MEP and putative party leader, Nigel Farage. He has since not only ignored the book but done his best to prevent it being publicised to the rank and file of his party membership.

This is the man who, incidentally, also worked to sabotage my selection as the lead MEP candidate for the Yorkshire Region at the last Euro-elections, putting in his drinking mate, Godfrey Bloom as an alternate, and then actively colluded in preventing a disciplinary enquiry being held into the gross breaches of the party rules which led to Bloom being selected. That (in)action left me no alternative but to resign from UKIP. Farage’s response then was to have me fired from my post as research director for the EDD group, leaving it to the group administrator to break the news, he not even having the balls to tell me personally what he had done.

Despite that, the book has done tolerably well and, as our readers will be only too aware, the work of publishing Eurosceptic tracts has continued, the most recent being my CPS publication The Wrong Side of the Hill, warning of the steady, secretive march of European defence integration, a pamphlet that took a prodigious amount of study and research.

It was that which led, indirectly to my publication in The Business last week of my long article on further moves towards defence integration, on the back of the EU’s procurement agreement.

This is an issue, the dangers of which very few people have fully understood, one of which is definitely Geoffrey van Orden, Conservative defence spokesman in the EU parliament, who featured in my article.

You can imagine my surprise, therefore, at the letter in this week’s edition of The Business from Gerard Batten MEP, the man who laughably calls himself the UKIP spokesman on security and defence, attacking van Orden. Amazingly, Batten also claims that his colleague, ex logistics officer Godfrey Bloom MEP, made the same points (as made in my article) to the National Defence University in Washington last November. Such points as were made, however – by someone who would have difficulty putting his underpants on the right way round unless they had labels "front" and "back" on them – were in fact cribbed from an advance copy of "The Wrong Side of the Hill", delivered, as you might expect, without a trace of attribution.

To suggest, therefore, that UKIP MEPs even know the time of day when it comes to the issue of defence integration is a travesty. Batten himself has to crib from my work whenever he offers an opinion on a subject about which he is otherwise noticeably silent.

It was precisely that general theme which Booker addressed in his speech yesterday to the UKIPites, building on my concerns that the political parties had become totally obsessed with their own affairs, telling the gathering to, "Do your homework. Put over the facts. Explain all those things about the way we are now governed which the other parties are desperately trying to avoid."

Booker's words are likely to be ignored. The bulk of UKIP members – it seems to me – have very little interest in how the EU works, and are as a result lamentably poor in putting over coherent objections to it. That partly explains why they achieve so little media coverage. Then, that seems to be the case generally with Eurosceptics, reflected in how few of them actually visit this blog. And that is perhaps why, to receive plaudits for our book, Booker had to travel to Prague. What was that about a prophet without honour in his own country?

COMMENT THREAD

The jury is still out

There is a Russian saying that amounts to “I am selling this for the price I bought it”. This is a little stronger than “take it or leave it”, which indicates indifference. There is more of an understanding that it is hard to decide what to think of a story. This is one such story.

It is to do with those famous WMDs that “everybody knows” did not ever exist in Iraq; could not have existed; and were never going to exist. By “everybody” I mean people who know little on the subject but like to push a certain political line. In America they call it Bush Derangement Syndrome. Speaking as somebody who has disliked Tony Blair and his government since the first moment, I have also diagnosed a Blair Derangement Syndrome.

People, who actually know something about the subject, on the other hand, tend to be cautious and discoursive. At least one expert I heard, said quite frankly that on the basis of all the information that was coming out of Iraq he had firmly believed (as did just about everybody else who had been to the country and/or read all the reports) that Saddam had WMDs.

Several years on, the expert still does not know what really happened. Was everybody (including the UN inspectors, Hans Blix, who seems to be suffering from a memory lapse, and the sainted Dr David Kelly) fooled or did the WMDs disappear from the country in those months, while the invasion was being prepared and the interminable UN resolutions were being debated?

A few months ago a piece appeared on Newsmax.com that appeared to give a partial reply. Former Deputy Defence Secretary John A. Shaw was speaking at an “Intelligence Summit” in Virginia and said:

“The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon. They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence.”

This reminded me of a curious episode that took place soon after the invasion had begun. American troops, it was reported, tried to stop a Russian convoy of armoured cars that were racing towards the border. They had, it appeared, opened fire but failed to stop the convoy. One would have expected the Russians to express anger, outrage, at the very least, dissatisfaction and a demand for an apology.

Not so, but far from it. Before the Americans could make an explanatory statement the Russians announced that they were not a bit upset; it was clearly a mistake; these things happen; boys will be boys and other suchlike platitudes. Along with many other people I immediately started wondering what or, possibly, who was in those cars.

Of course, none of it is proof, though Mr Shaw, in his presentation, seems to have given a certain amount of circumstantial evidence, including this:

“The Ukrainians were eager to provide the United States with documents from their own archives on Soviet arms transfers to Iraq and on ongoing Russian assistance to Saddam, to thank America for its help in securing Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Shaw said.”

The story of Russians assisting the removal of weapons from Iraq and some of them surfacing in Syria has reappeared more and more frequently, especially since the slow process of the translation of the captured Iraqi documents has actually begun(unnoted, largely, by the British media).

A few days ago it surfaced again in FrontPage magazine, not always the most reliable of sources. In this case, Jamie Glazov was merely reporting a symposium on “Iraq, WMDs and troubling revelations”.

“Just recently, Saddam Hussein's former southern regional commander, Gen. Al-Tikriti, gave the first videotaped testimony confirming that Iraq had WMDs up to the American invasion in 2003 and that Russia helped remove them prior to the war. His testimony confirms numerous other sources that have pointed to Russia's secret alliance with Iraq and the co-ordinated moving of WMDs…”

One can, of course, in the circumstances cast doubt on General Al-Tikriti’s testimony. One can cast doubt on all of it. But only very foolish people can go on thinking that the question of the WMDs in Iraq has been solved for good and all. Unfortunately our media consists of very foolish people.

COMMENT THREAD

Economical with the actualité?

The Business has come up with a stunning report which seems to drive a cart and horse through successive ministerial statements about the civilian status of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system.

According to the report, Britain's future programme is in jeopardy because two UK government departments are arguing over who should pay for the next financial instalment. And the two departments? These are the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport, which are apparently arguing the toss over the £60m five-year-subscription for the project.

And, with ten weeks left to go before the payment becomes due, the launch contractors are to call on Blair to resolve the impasse, telling him that the government risks losing its original £100m investment as well as British jobs and contracts unless it recommits to the project. One industry source said: "We are running out of time because one department can't agree with another about who is most interested in having Galileo. We could end up with no department having it at all – everything is at stake."

The dispute, says The Business "is particularly significant because the Europeans have always claimed the project to be civil, while the Americans claim it is military". And it is not only the "Europeans". Time after time, British ministers have stated absolutely unequivocally that Galileo is a civilian project.

That includes Denis MacShane who, on 18 November 2004 declared that "Galileo is a civilian system under civilian control, as confirmed by successive EU Transport Councils." He went on to say that,

A decision to develop or use specific military applications for Galileo would, under the terms of the EU treaty, have to be taken by unanimous decision by all member states. The UK is opposed to the development of military applications for Galileo.

Latest in the long line, though, is the current defence minister Adam Ingram who, on 19 January 2005 told the House of Commons:

On Galileo, let me just say that it will be a civil system, under civil control. That has been confirmed by successive EU Transport Councils. The UK has emphasised that that should remain the case. In December … the Transport Council stated that any decision to alter the civil status of Galileo would have to be agreed unanimously by member states under pillar 2 of the EU treaty. That is the constitutional structure under which Galileo exists. It is quite clear that what we have laid down with our NATO partners will protect the integrity of that system. The global positioning system, not Galileo, is currently the basis of NATO operations, and will remain so into the future. Galileo will be a civil system. That has been expressed time and again in the Chamber and elsewhere.

If that is the case, then there should be no question about who pays. After all, the Department of Transport has, since the inception of the project, always been the responsible department. And last December, when the Giove-A satellite was about to be launched, a government press release revealed that, by then, the British National Space Centre and the Department for Transport had invested over €136 million in the project.

That the Ministry of Defence is apparently being called upon to make a contribution to the project speaks volumes and, if The Business report is true, Mr Ingram and many other ministers have been rather economical with the actualité.

COMMENT THREAD

This is truly embarrassing

One gets used to it from the BBC. One expects it from certain newspapers like the Independent. But, foolishly perhaps, I still think that the Times should have some semblance of accuracy in its reporting. Anyone who shares my illusions should read through the story on Michelle Malkin's blog.

I feel I ought to point out that the response she had from Gerard Baker, the US Editor of the Times, was prompt and honourable, though it did imply that the picture editing on that newspaper and its website is shoddy beyond belief.

Read on, however, through the list of headlines that seem to have condemned the marines well ahead of any inquiry. How are the mighty fallen.

COMMENT THREAD

Are we a nation of mummy's boys?

I am sure Maj Gen Andrew Ritchie, the retiring commandant of Sandhurst – with a pint in his hand and in decent company – would have some quite interesting views on the fate of the British Army. Short of that, a knowledgeable media interviewer could, I am sure, elicit some interesting observations, that would be worth reading.

That could have been a task for the Daily Telegraph but, instead they sent one of their girlie reporters to talk to him, in this case the stunningly ignorant Rachel Sylvester – with predictably dire results.

It thus takes forever to get past the "human interest" garbage – the General is taking a plumbing course… yeah! – and the compulsory trivia about the Royals, before we get to a half-way illuminating comment. With four officers who graduated from Sandhurst during Gen Ritchie's time having died in Iraq in the past year, recruitment, says Ritchie, is being damaged – something the MoD has always denied.
"There's a 'mum' factor," says the General. "Mums find Iraq deeply unpopular. They are concerned that their youngsters will be exposed to real risk and danger. And mums are hugely influential in boys and girls joining the Army."

That is a worrying development, if kids are making up their minds on the basis of what "mum" thinks, which certainly suggest something of a "mummy boy" syndrome afflicting our society. Such a nation cannot survive long as a credible military power if parents cannot let go, and the prevailing ethos is to avoid military commitments because of the risk of casualties. Would we, for instance, have fought Hitler in such circumstances?

In this context, there was a highly relevant commentary in the Telegraph's letters yesterday which touches on a debate which has yet to be seriously aired in the mainstream media.

The letter is from Martyn Pocock, of Oakham, Rutland who records his sadness at the deaths of more of "our gallant servicemen who were serving with distinction in Iraq" and then goes on to write of his "despair, consternation and outrage" on reading yet again on the MoD website that the deaths were as a result of an improvised explosive device attack on "armoured Land Rovers".

"On how many more missions will our troops have to go in vehicles that were essentially designed for Northern Ireland?", Mr Pocock asks. "How many more deaths will there be before the government is held to account for not providing the money for equipment that is fit for the role?"

He then concludes, "The 'Snatch Land Rover' may have been armoured in the context of Northern Ireland, but it certainly is not in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan."

It would have been very interesting indeed to have heard Gen Ritchie's views on this subject, and I am sure his answers would have been highly illuminating, except that, if Sylvester put such questions to him, neither questions nor answers were published. More likely, the girlie Rachel would not have the first idea what a "snatch" was, other than a street mugging where she lost her handbag, and would not have even thought to have asked about something so "technical".

But it is issues like these that go to the heart of our defence strategy. They beg the question that, if we are to commit our troops to what Ritchie calls a "counter-insurgency situation" and, because of the "mum" factor, we are not prepared to sustain losses, how should we equip them, and at what cost?

Nor even are those easy questions to answer. Mr Pocock implies that we should have better armoured vehicles and, certainly, the MoD has got the message with the emergency purchase of 80 armoured Pinzgauers for our detachment in Afghanistan – although there is no hint of or troops in Iraq being similarly equipped.

But one has to ask whether armoured patrol vehicles are necessarily the answer. We have seen in the US area of operations the progressive introduction of up-armoured Humvees, the insurgent response to which has been to increase the power of their roadside bombs and to use shaped charges which are capable of defeating the heaviest of armour. Then, there is the ever-present threat of the RPG, which can destroy an armoured Pinzgauer.

The risk is, of course, that the Army, in seeking to protect its troops, gets locked into an increasingly expensive spiral of measure and counter-measures, building ever-more better armoured vehicles, only for the insurgents to deploy even more lethal weapons and tactics. But the greater possible risk is that, as they are encased in ever-thicker layers of armour, the troops become even more insulated from the populations they are policing. They then lose the battle for "hearts and minds" that is at the heart of any counter-insurgency effort.

Taking a more holistic view of the problems presented by the complex counterinsurgency challenges of Iraq, the US has come to realise that there must be a multi-layered response. At the high end, this includes the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the roads and detect suspicious activity, to heavily armoured "minesweepers" such as the Buffalo, which can investigate roadside packages, and artillery radar to pinpoint hit-and-run mortar attacks.

At the low end, there are all manner of activities, from foot patrols, liaison and goodwill visits, training missions and what is known collectively as "humint" – human intelligence - the use of informers and the local population to provide detail on terrorist activities and their whereabouts.

It is here, in the absence of much of the "high-end" equipment that the Americans enjoy. that the British are supposed to excel, with their "soft hat" patrols and their rapport with the local population. But, as we know, the situation has gone belly-up in Basra. It is best described as "tense" leaving our troops ill-equipped to deal with the hostilities.

Here, though, it is not just a question of our troops being provided with inadequate equipment – or none at all. For instance, the MoD has drastically reduced its expenditure on language training so that most troops about to embark receive only a two-hour language "familiarisation" lecture. What price "hearts and minds" when you cannot speak to people in their own language and have to rely entirely on translators?

If our government wants the Army to do a job, then it must provide it with the right equipment and ensure that troops have the right skills and capabilities – and are present in numbers sufficient for them to be able to fulfil their tasks. And therein lie those central questions. What do we actually want our troops to achieve? What equipment and skills do they need to perform? And are we prepared to pay what it takes, both in blood and wealth?

These are important questions. Mr Pocock touched on one aspect of them but the media does not seem interested in expanding on them or adding to them. Instead, we get told about the "mum" factor, while the media retreats into banalities and trivialities. But, if we really are becoming a nation of "mummy's boys", should we be there at all? Should we have an Army at all, or would we be better off joining with the "soft power" Europeans, and let some real men (and women) do what is needed?

COMMENT THREAD

All so very plausible

In a move that has been slated as a backdoor attempt to introduce an EU diplomatic service, the EU commission in Brussels yesterday announced that it had adopted proposals for "Common Visa Application Centres" and introduction of biometrics in the Visa Information System (VIS).

The objective, of course, is nothing at all to do with furthering European political integration, but is simply the benign, caring commission aiming to "reinforce internal security and facilitate legitimate travelling to EU".

Yet, these "Common Visa Application Centres" are just one step short of EU embassies – which have been blocked with the demise of the EU constitution – and represent an inspired move to circumvent the blockage. Represented as simply "co-operation" by member states – which enables existing treaty provisions to be used - what is being proposed is that all member states should move their visa offices in each of the third countries into a single office, effectively creating EU consulates in all but name.

EU commission vice-president Franco Frattini, as you might expect, glides over this happy outcome, telling all the happy people that this will:

...facilitate the visa issuing procedure, prevent visa shopping, facilitate checks at external borders and strength the fight against fraud and, within the territory of the Member States, assist in the identification and return of illegal immigrants and the prevention of threats to the internal security of the Member States.

Glowing with pride, he also tells us that:

Common Application Centres" will have the advantage of reinforcing and streamlining local consular cooperation between Member States as resources can be pooled and shared, which will be of benefit to both states and visa applicants. One central access point will even ensure that the data protection requirements, to which I attach the greatest importance, are more easily met.

This follows from an adaptation of the "Common Consular Instructions" (CCI) to "the use of biometrics in the area of visa policy" which will "create the legal obligation to collect fingerprints from visa applicants." And, says the kindly vice-president,

In order to avoid all Member States having to install the necessary equipment for enrolling biometric identifiers in every consular office, the idea of creating "Common application Centres" was born. This is the reason for dealing, in the second part of the proposal, with the organisation of Member States' consular services.

Needless to say, the EU is not usurping the powers of the member states – oh no! It is just being helpful, offering the opportunity to use common facilities. "In all cases," says the commission, "the treatment and the decision on the application is taken by the Member State responsible." So there you are then, nothing at all to worry your pretty little heads about, especially as the details will be discussed in-depth with the EU parliament and the member states.

This is all in the interests of efficiency and cost savings, aimed at being cuddly and fluffy to visa applicants. Where could be the harm in that?

COMMENT THREAD

Frog eats Frog

From AFP, via L'Ombre de l'Olivier and Yahoo France comes a sorry little tale about French fishermen at odds with each other.

These are the anchovy fishermen of south-western port of Saint-Jean-of-Luz who, confronted with a dramatic fall in their catches and "unsuited" EU rules, the small anchovy fishermen have blockaded the port. Their target is the larger "industrial" vessels, after a "vertiginous fall" in anchovy catches in the Bay of Biscay.

After what the skipper of the Eperantza II calls "true carnage" for 20 or 30 years, the EU finally moved last year to ban industrial fishing in the last half of 2005, but has permitted it to re-commence in March this year. But the small fishermen believe that six month's suspension are not long enough for the stocks to recover, putting at risk the livelihoods of about fifty fishermen working from ten small vessels.

They also complain that while they are bound by EU rules which impose a minimum of about five inches, resulting in much of their catches being discarded, the industrial fishery is able to circumvent these by applying an average size rule.

Thus do the small fishermen regard themselves as "more virtuous" yet they are more heavily penalised than the industrial fishermen. In this, it seems, they have the support of their Spanish equivalents across the border, who are also calling for industrial fishing to be halted.

In days of yore, of course, the French could always march on Paris, and the Spanish on Madrid, but Brussels is a long way away, with the fisheries directorate presided over by a Maltese who clearly isn't listening. So, for the moment, as the blockade tightens, it's become a Frog eats Frog situation.

COMMENT THREAD

We don't want to be divisive

In the wake of the unsatisfactory summit with Russia, the Commission and the EU foreign policy High Panjandrum, Javier Solana, have, according to EUObserver, come up with a paper, entitled: “An external policy to serve Europe’s energy interests”.

The paper will be discussed at the next European Council on June 15 – 16 but its essence appears clear. Well, clear as mud.

On the one hand, we want to have a new deal with Russia as

“…part of a general revamp of political ties with the Russians, with the current Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between Brussels and Moscow open for re-negotiation from 2007 onwards”.

On the other hand we are a little worried about the fact that Russia supplies a quarter of the EU’s gas and oil and is not necessarily the most reliable of suppliers as witnessed by Gazprom’s antics with Ukraine and Moldova at the beginning of the year and recent threats, since rescinded, of selling energy products to China as an alternative to Europe.

The paper proposes that the EU

“works towards a comprehensive agreement with Russia covering all energy products”.

Interestingly enough, it seems to have dawned on the High Panjandrum and his colleagues that the buyers of energy can have as much if not more influence on the sellers of it as the other way round. After all, Russia has to sell that gas to somebody, as that famous economic growth (on with President Putin cast some doubt in his state of the nation address) depends on it.

So, there appear to be proposals to diversify energy sourcing:

"There are a number of new gas projects which have either been decided or are in an advanced stage of planning (North Africa, Middle East, Caspian region, Russia and Norway)," the paper reads.

The document characterises the development oil pipelines from the Caspian region and Central Asia directly to the EU as "vital."

Well, indeed. They are of some importance to the countries of the region, as well, since they would like to be able to become more independent of Russia. Turkey, through whose territory projected pipelines would pass is also interested and then there is Algeria, ready to sell energy to European countries if the necessary work is done.

If the report is correct, the paper includes some veiled threats to Russia – that summit must have been really "frank and open":

The officials also highlighted that the Russians need "enormous amounts of investment" to modernise and expand its energy infrastructure.

"They not only need capital, they also need technology," suggesting EU firms could provide Russia with the necessary know-how if the Kremlin granted equal market access to EU companies.

The policy paper also stresses the need for "diversifying geographical origin and transit routes", promoting energy supply routes which largely bypass Russia.”

Beyond that, the paper seems carefully anxious not to say anything divisive. There is little discussion of any possibility of an EU energy policy or, even, any new “instruments” to provide early warning of an external crisis.

And talking of alternatives, what of nuclear power? No mention of it. Too divisive.

COMMENT THREAD

They really are getting desperate

"EU hopes to win over public with songs" says Reuters, brought to us courtesy of The Scotsman, in response to which it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

According to a document "seen by Reuters", the commission "is turning to cake-baking competitions and cross-border song and dance parties to win the hearts and minds of sceptical citizens."

In addition, a new logo, an EU theme tune, carnivals and concerts and a special "European Commissioner's Day" are ideas being proposed to mend the perception among many "Europeans" of an EU run by distant and elitist bureaucrats.

"We have big plans to make the EU more punter-friendly," one EU official is reported to have said. "The intention is to heighten people's awareness and make the EU fun. We intend to use the 50th anniversary of the Union in 2007 as the vehicle to drive the initiative."

This public relations onslaught begins this month with the launch of a competition to find a logo and slogan to mark the occasion. Experts will choose 10 logos, which will then be voted on by "citizens" across the EU from September.

The climax, we are told, will be an EU-wide song and dance party proposed by Belgium and in the same mould as the Eurovision Song Contest (our own A Non EU Mouse has his own take on this). One song will be picked to be played throughout the 25 member states of the EU, as well as future entrants Bulgaria and Romania, and accompanied by choreographed dancing. It will be live on television and big screens. "We want to show the EU can dance," the document said.

Reuters do suggest, though, that there is some concern at the cost of the events, with some newer and formerly communist member states in particular turned off by the idea of a song and dance party. "They feel people are being forced to dance and sing, like they were by the communists," says an EU diplomat.

In fact, there is something terribly "New Labour" about all this. Never mind that the EU is run by distant and elitist bureaucrats. They can't change that – and nor would they want to – so the plan is to go about changing the "perception". And, no doubt, the BBC will give the celebrations the maximum of publicity, and hang the cost.

COMMENT THREAD

What are we going to do about the BBC?

Well, of course, I know the answer to that or, rather, I know the answer to a slightly different question: how can we stop subsidizing this appalling organization. However, I am aware that many of our readers, for reasons I cannot divine, still pay attention to what goes out from Broadcasting House, TV Centre and other suchlike constructions.

That being so, I really must point out yet another piece of egregious behaviour on the part of the BBC. Actually, it is doubly egregious.

On the one hand, there seems to have been no reporting of the continuing ethnic and student demonstrations, turning into riots, in Iran or the brutality with which they are being put down. This is a subject we shall have to cover in greater detail but, for the moment, it is worth having a look at Gateway Pundit, who has been following developments.

So much for the sin of omission. Now for the sin of commission. Undoubtedly, our readers would have noticed that the BBC is salivating at another supposed massacre of Iraqi civilians by American troops.

The Americans are saying that a building collapsed under heavy fire, the fighting having taken place because of a tip-off about a visit by what the BBC describes as an “al-Qaeda supporter”. (Do they, by the way, report when various highly placed al-Quaeda officials are either killed or arrested?)

The Corporation and its star broadcaster John Simpson (the only man who still believes that staged gun-fight in Bucharest was for real and who managed to report the 1999 events in Kosovo from a hospital bed in Belgrade) know better.

“The video material obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.”

Excellent journalistic work, you might say. Isn’t it? Well, no.

“The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces which has in the past been accused of having links with al-Qaeda.”

An entirely unbiased source, of course. Even those rather odd individuals at the BBC must have realized that this did not sound too good. So they buried the paragraph at the end of the website story and added the following rider:

“Our correspondent says the BBC was not given the footage but had to dig it out, adding that the group was not interested in Western news organisations and may have intended the pictures to go to al-Qaeda sympathisers abroad.”

Gosh! And wow! They had to dig it out! Double wow! Out of what? A pile of rubble, where it had been carefully placed by the aforementioned hardline Sunni group, perchance? By the way, who is this hardline Sunni group? Not the Ba’athists by any chance?

No matter who they are, they seem to have found their target if they really were looking for sympathizers abroad.

COMMENT THREAD

Bizarre

We have remarked on several occasions on the "Boys Own" tendency in the media, in the way they treat defence issues. A better example of this could hardly be found than in a gushing two-page spread in the news section of the Telegraph today, chronicling the deployment of Predator UACVs by the RAF in Iraq.

Apart from the fact that this is hardly news – the MoD has been leasing Predators from the US for the best part of two years, to my recollection – such is the superficial nature of the story that it lacks any of the analytical bite that might be expected of a serious newspaper. It might, for instance, have questioned why it is that the UK finds it necessary to hire UAVs, in which event it might have stumbled on the much more interesting story of the abysmal failure of Britain's own programme.

This is the story of the Phoenix, a drone with such embarrassingly poor hot weather performance that it failed entirely to deliver. Yet, oddly enough, this was reported by the Telegraph in November 2002, which told us that an upgrade to allow high temperature operations had been cut "to save money", something that the paper then branded "ill-considered".

It is due that that "ill-considered" economy that we had to go cap-in-hand to the Americans to lease Predators, until the Phoenix replacement comes into service – the Watchkeeper - not expected until 2010 at the earliest, at a cost unspecified yet likely to be substantial.

And only hinted at in the Telegraph story is the problem that the Predators are regarded as "theatre assets" so that, while we are paying for the leases, and making our own personnel available to operate them, they are tasked according to coalition priorities, which means they are often unavailable for British use.

Such is the juvenile approach of this once serious newspaper to such issues that it is hardly surprising that our population is so ill-informed and the government gets away with so much.

COMMENT THREAD

The CAP of the sky?

Mirroring the lacklustre performance of the “project” as a whole, bad news about the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system continues to filter through the barriers. So persistent are the reports that the system is in trouble that, whatever the denials, there must be something in them.

It was, in fact, only just over a week ago that we recorded the latest in the gathering woes, with China poised to cream off whatever financial bonanza might accrue from sales of receivers, but now we hear from the AFX news agency, via Forbes that the whole system could be delayed as a result of a funding dispute with the launch contractors.

The primary source of this information is the French daily Le Monde, which is predicting a delay until 2010, two years behind schedule, because no agreement can be reached between the contractors and the commission as who should fund the early period of the system's post-launch operation, before the commercial exploitation is sufficient to make it self-funding.

This is a dispute which has been grumbling on since January - unrecorded by the British media – and stems from the inherent weakness of the commission's financing strategy and a gross underestimate of the costs involved.

Initially funded from diversion of funds from the EU's framework research programme, that source of funding is drying up as there are too many calls on a programme that has been limited by the budget agreement, and because, as a development project, the commission is finding it difficult to justify using funds which are supposed to be dedicated to research.

That leaves individual member states' contributions to the European Space Agency, which are by no means sufficient, with the gap to be filled by the launch contractors. There are eight of these, including EADS, Alcatel, Thales and Finmeccanica, all of whom are looking at having to find the best part of €2.5 billion (up from €2.2 at last estimate, against the original estimate of €1.5 billion) to fund what is, commercially, a highly risky venture.

Needless so say, they are balking at the risk and arguing that member states should share the burden. So far, though, they have been reluctant to do so and the EU, though its own resource, has only been able allocate €900 million from the 2007-2013 budget period.

Rainer Grohe, the executive director of Galileo Joint Undertaking, is taking a tough line in public, telling Le Monde that governments should not have to pay the full balance, but Thales, one of the lead contractors, is countering that many of the potential commercial applications for Galileo depend on political decisions that have not yet been made. On that basis, it considers that "European authorities" should cover the risks.

Despite emollient words from the commission and other official sources, there is no indication that a resolution is in the offing, hence the prediction that the operational date may slip to 2010 instead of 2008.

Such is the prestige riding on this venture that one expects there will be some sort of fudge but, hard money will be needed to keep it on track. At the moment, therefore, the description of "CAP of the sky" attributed by an anonymous wag, is looking to be all too appropriate.

COMMENT THREAD

Whither manufacturing?

The Financial Times is telling us that British manufacturers are struggling to maintain their share in Europe's recovering economy. Its source is the manufacturing purchasing managers' index for May, which shows that, while UK manufacturers reported strong output and new order books, the improvement in business conditions has been eclipsed by stronger gains seen in all the big economies across the Channel.

UK manufacturers, says the FT, now lag behind all their continental counterparts both in the level of output recorded in the surveys and in the improvement over the past year, with Michael Saunders of Citigroup said there was cause for concern that the UK manufacturing sector was under-performing in the global recovery because the service sector, though strong, was no offsetting the relative manufacturing weakness.

"The UK has exceeded the eurozone's economic growth rate for the past 10 years, but the gap has vanished in recent quarters - we're moving from a world in which we did much better than continental Europe into one in which we’re doing about as badly", says Saunders.

As to the longer-term outlook, the FT observes that many economists see a global economy, growing at its fastest rate for 30 years, and question why the UK economy, heavily dependent on global conditions, is not doing even better.

Of course, the reasons cannot be in any way related to the enthusiasm of public authorities – as shown by our picture gallery - to buy their equipment from European manufacturers - not that we would wish them to buy poor value equipment but one does wonder why it is that we seem to be so keen to buy from the continent and the sentiment is so rarely reciprocated.

COMMENT THREAD

Stop stealing their fish

Reuters is telling us that the EU has announced a 35 percent rise in development aid to poor countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (ACP), "as part of efforts to stem migration into the wealthy bloc". Thus, the "aid package" to be shared among the 77 ACP countries over the 2008-13 period will total €22 billion ($28.1 billion).

The announcement was made as EU and ACP ministers met in Papua New Guinea to discuss migration together for the first time. "Managing migration for the benefit of development is a new priority of EU development assistance," says a commission statement.

But, as we have pointed out, here and here, the current wave of migration to the Canaries, which has triggered this sudden "generosity", is entirely due to the effect of the predatory third country fishing agreements, which are depriving Africans of their livelihoods.

The immediate answer, therefore, is to stop stealing African fish. Scrap these deals and help these countries develop their own fishing industries, complete with processing facilities which give the added value.

Instead, having created the mess – with the use of a not inconsequential sum of taxpayers' money – the EU is now proposing to spend even more taxpayers’ money, much of which will go nowhere near the people who really need assistance, and which will do nothing to tackle the underlying problem which was largely created by the EU.

Nevertheless, the EU will be able to bask in a warm glow of smug, self-congratulation as it parades its largesse as evidence of its social conscience, while the media and politicos avert their gaze to the growing crisis as still more thousands of Africans brave the perilous sea journey, and many more thousands die.

COMMENT THREAD

We can all save the climate

What do Manneken Pis and Johann Strauss II have in common? (No, since you ask, Strauss played the violin.) According to the BBC they will both, together with other statues around Europe, be dressed in t-shirts with the following message:

Showing the Earth in the universe, with a thermostat attached to it measuring its rising temperature, it includes the message: "You control climate change. Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk".

Yes, it's another wizard idea from the Commission and its oleaginous president Barroso, who managed to get out of his expensive limo before he went into his expenisvely run office in order to give Europeans the message. (Now, that I think of it, the message may have been given actually inside one of those luxuriously appointed offices.)

The message is that we can all stop climate change. The mere fact that this has never happened before since the earth has existed does not deter our gallant Commissars. It stands to reason that people could not stop the mini-ice age, which started in the fourteenth century or prevent its cyclical end with the gradual warming up from the beginning of the nineteenth. They did not have the ultimate weapon – the European Union with its Commission.

Of course, both those statues are quite small. Will there be t-shirts for the bulldog-like Churchill in Parliament Square or General Napier in Trafalgar Square? In any case, don't know about the Manneken but I can't see Johann Strauss II being too pleased with the whole idea.

Inevitably, there is a website, whose purpose it is to educate people on climate change and what they can do about it. As it happens, education is the last thing the Commission and whoever thought of this latest whizz have in mind. If they did they would publish a great deal more about the scientific debates that are raging all over the world.

They would, for example, refer to a recent article in the Washington Times, which followed the arguments of several highly respected hurricane scientists, who cannot agree whether the severe weather of 2004 and 2005 around the southern coast of the United States is cyclical or the result of temperature change in the Indian Ocean.

Well, scientists may disagree, but Al Gore in his private plane and Commission President Barroso in his limousine know it for a fact: climate change means global warming, caused enirely by people using electric bulbs that are too bright, overfilling their kettles and not switching off the heating when they go out.

Oddly enough, the website does not mention the letter 60 Canadian scientists sent to the Prime Minister, in which they explained that Kyoto and all that went with it was not a sensible way of dealing with environmental problems.

No mention of the highly respected New Zealand scientists who cast doubt on the whole idea that it is human activity that is causing climate change, which does not happen to be any more dramatic than past experience.

No mention of the recent findings that the average temperature of the earth went up by no more than 0.7°C in the last 150 years and has, it appears, stopped rising in the last few years altogether.

Instead of which we get the following tendentious and scaremongering introduction:

The Earth is rapidly getting warmer. This change in the climate threatens serious and even catastrophic disruption to our economies, societies and to our natural environment. The warming is being mainly caused by 'greenhouse gases' that are released by human activities, in particular the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. In the atmosphere, these gases trap the sun's heat in the same way as a greenhouse.

Even if it were true, switching light bulbs off is not going to make any difference. It is, after all, a truism that the richer a country is economically, the better its environment is and the readier it is to deal with the inevitable climatic disasters.

Compare and contrast the effect Katrina and the other hurricanes had on the United States last year to the effect their weaker brethren had had on the same area at the beginning of the twentieth century. The same hurricanes that cause the odd problem in Florida, reasonably quickly dealt with, devastate a place like Haiti, killing thousands of people and destroying what there is of an economy.

Since climatic changes are unpredictable and cannot be explained by one factor alone, the sensible thing would be to allow economic growth to continue in the West and to encourage it in other countries, so we can all deal with whatever the weather might throw at us. But to acknowledge that would be to deny the whole basis of "thinking" as shown by the Commission, and the scaremongering "environmentalists".

Entertainingly enough, the press release that tells us about this new and, no doubt, extremely expensive project, says this:

"You control climate change" is the title of an awareness raising campaign that European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas will launch today in Brussels The campaign challenges individuals to make small changes to their daily routine in order to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

It offers a wealth of practical and easy-to-do tips while aiming to give people a sense of personal responsibility and empowerment and help them contribute to the fight against climate change. Households in the EU are responsible for some 16% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from the production and use of energy. EU Member States will be launching the campaign at national level over the next few days.

Fascinating. The Commission is the organization that has been lambasted repeatedly by the Court of Auditors for, among other things, having a culture of no responsibility. Nobody can be found who will take responsibility for anything.

Slightly more worryingly

The campaign also targets secondary school pupils. The Europa Diary distributed in more than 1.1 million copies at the beginning of each school year will include a section on climate change in September 2006. It will encourage students to sign a pledge to reduce their CO2 emissions, providing them with a form to track their efforts. This material will also be available on the website.

While, for the most part, school children pay little attention to what they are told at school, they are vulnerable to seemingly idealistic views and have no real understanding that these are not based on any real scientific proof.

What is so puzzling about the whole venture is the timing. Why now? Why go into overdrive about climate change, global warming, saving of energy just as scientists who have found it difficult to get a hearing in the past for their non-consensus views, are making ever louder noises debating, even denying the that consensus?

Not only is the Commission getting into a real tizz. Over on Daily Ablution, Scott Burgess has been following the saga of Johann Hari's near libellous comments about Björn Lomborg and the Independent's refusal even to acknowledge the latter's attempts to publish the truth.

Hizonner the Mayor of London is threatening to introduce "statutory carbon emission targets" even though he has no very clear idea of what that is or how such targets can be enforced.

Above all, we have the hysteria exhibited by the stars, moguls, critics and other hangers on at Cannes, most of whom have flown there by private planes and whose yachts guzzle up quite a large proportion of the earth's fuels, going into raptures over that old phony, Al Gore, whose own "humvee days" have long ago turned into decades. Think how much energy we could save if we did not have Al Gore.

As for the scientific debates, they are getting nastier with various media personalities weighing in and accusing the "heretics" of all kinds of sins instead of answering their points.

My own guess is that it is precisely because the so-called consensus is falling apart that its promoters are getting hysterical.

Kyoto is chuntering to its end with no visible effect. The most polluting countries (with Russia's exception) have not even bothered to sign up; those who have signed up have not reduced their emissions and, in some cases, have increased them; the only country whose emissions have gone down is the wicked United States; and new ideas of how to deal with climatic problems, based on developing technology, are gaining ground.

If you add to that the ever louder grumbling in the ranks of international scientists, you can quite understand why the Commission wants to make a last stand for global warming and personal accountability (though not, of course, their own).

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Nee-derlands

And so it was, a year today that the European dream came crashing to earth, as the Dutch voted "nee" in their own referendum, just three days after the French "non".

We promised not to gloat when the exit poll came in predicting 63 percent for the "nees" with the "ja" camp trailing badly at 37 percent – but the temptation proved irresistible. It was worth it just to see Barroso for once without that silly smirk in his face. One could see he had been "nee-capped", although the smirk quickly reappeared.

The result immediately had the not-so-fragrant Margot suggesting that there would be debate on "exactly what kind of 'no' this was" – that was before she invented her "plan D for democracy".

A year later, though, lessons have definitely been learned. Dutch prime Peter Balkenende – but not for very much longer at this rate – has told his adoring electors that he would "prefer to avoid" a new referendum on any new treaty. He believes that, in future, ratification should be left to parliament. "Referendums are risky affairs," he says, adding, "If you can avoid one that would be my preference." Too right, Pete! They might say "no" again.

With that, Balkenende still thinks a new treaty is necessary, but he is rather worried by the result of an opinion poll last week which showed Dutch opposition to the idea was now six percentage points higher than a year ago, But, showing that hope does occasionally triumph over experience, he believes opposition will fall away if the EU proves its worth and banished the impression that the Dutch are governed from Brussels.

Needless to say, the man welcomes the extended period of reflection but, given that he faces a general election next year, we trust that, after the vote, he will have plenty of time to take advantage of the extension. He might then be able to work out how he is going to convince the Dutch people that they are not governed from Brussels, when they are, er… governed from Brussels.

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Wish I had been there

Every now and then some corker of a story comes out of the UN that makes me wish I could have been there to watch it. This is one, from the New York Sun via The American Thinker.

“A verbal brawl erupted at the Security Council yesterday as it debated the subject of terrorism. During the skirmish, Syria accused Israel of starting World Wars I and II, as well as "contemplating" a third world war.”

Terrific. Here is a country where the teaching of history is even worse than it is in our schools. Wow! On second thoughts, maybe not. After all, how many teachers of history know that Israel did not exist either during the First or the Second World War?

It seems that the row was caused in the first place by the Israeli representative, who had described Syria and Iran as being part of the “axis of terror” (there must be a third one – you have to have three members to be an axis in history) not, in itself, a particularly earthshaking statement. Both those countries have proudly told the world that they were political and financial supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas (many of whom are still in Syria or creating trouble in Lebanon under Syrian auspices) and Hezbollah.

Still, admitting to supporting terrorism, praising terrorist homicide bombers is one thing but being accused of the same thing by someone else, particularly the designated victim, Israel, is something completely different.

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