Pseud's corner

"Right now, I'm going to wash up the porridge…". So says the Boy King in his new yuk-making venture into popular politics - his own blog with embedded video clips.

In going for webcasts, the Boy is attempting to communicate with the "yoof" who do not read newspapers. "Lots of young people now don't bother with newspapers - they see that as the dead wood industry and they get their news off the internet," he says. "But we're not really there communicating with them so... I'm launching a totally new idea in British politics."

Actually, Dave, it's "dead tree sellers", not "dead wood industry". There is nothing quite so pathetic as someone trying to come over as "cool" by rattling off the jargon and getting it wrong.

And get it wrong he most certainly does: talking to camera, the Boy makes out as if he is about to do the washing-up – a man of the people no less. But have you ever seen anyone do it with his sleeves rolled down, wearing cuff-links?

You can actually read a lot of things into gaffes like this. They show, deep down, that the Boy isn't really on the same planet as the rest of us, which probably explains why he is getting such crap poll results. He is just another of those Tory toffs with his head so far up his own … that he can no longer see daylight.

But, as the song goes.. "it can only get worse". I think that was how it went. Matthew Parris is worth reading on the subject.

COMMENT THREAD

What more can you say?

NATO yesterday failed to find any volunteers to contribute 2,500 reinforcements that are needed for combat duty in Afghanistan. After two days of talks in Portoroz, Slovenia, defence ministers from the 26-nation alliance said that nobody had produced the reserve force, first requested by Nato commanders more than three weeks ago.

"There was no offer of more troops. There were some encouraging signs but it is unlikely anything will be decided until our next meeting in Riga in November," said a British official at the talks.

I can't make up my mind whether this is a deliberate ploy by the "Europeans" to bring down Nato or whether this simply reflects the gutless, anti-militaristic nature of European society. Either way, Nato is proving to be about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

COMMENT THREAD

Trouble in Francophonie

Oh dear, oh dear. Things are a bit troublesome in Francophonie, the world-wide organization that exists to counter the onward march of the English language.

It meets every two years in countries with large French-speaking population, such as Burkina Fasa or, as it were, Romania. It is, in fact, the latter country that is hosting the meeting this year, presumably, at least partly because France is once again attempting to spread its influence among the new member states of the European Union.

Romanian is a Latin language and, therefore, there has been a tendency in the past to learn French as the foreign language (except in the parts where they speak German of Hungarian).

The problem has come from the usual source: who is to be invited. Thus the pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, ostensibly because of the UN report that had implicated his government and the Syrian one in the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

That is not how President Lahoud sees the matter. In his opinion, this is all l’escroc Chirac’s fault, who is “meddling with Lebanon's domestic affairs”. There seem to be an awful lot of people meddling with Lebanon’s domestic affairs and none of them seem to be Hezbollah.

By acting in this unconscionable fashion, President Lahoud went on, Chirac was

harm[ing] principles of Francophone and the historic and deep-rooted relations between Lebanon and France.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who had been invited, refused to go, sending as his personal representative, the Culture Minister.

COMMENT THREAD

The fate of the Union?

With the publication yesterday of the Department for Transport's (DfT) road safety statistics for last year, there has been much focus on the revelation that – contrary to previous official assertions – "speeding" is not a major killer on our roads.

Up to press, the official line has always been that excessive speed is a contributory factor in a third of all accidents but, what transpires from the latest set of figures (summary here) is that "speeding" – defined as exceeding the speed limit – is a factor in only five percent of accidents (1 in 20).

Why the authorities should be so obsessive about speeding, therefore, has always been something of a mystery, except that it has the advantage of something that can easily be measured and is therefore relatively easy to enforce.

But, another important factor – of which most people are entirely unaware – is the European Union. On 12 September 2001, when the EU commission defined the road safety targets to be reached by 2010 in its Transport White Paper, it too singled out “speed” as the major issue and, in its list of priorities called for tighter enforcement of speeding laws.

If not actually the cause of the speed camera blitz, therefore, the EU has been right in there supporting the mindless morons and the government liars who have been quite deliberately distorting the presentation of the data and confusing the issues.

Even yesterday, in the official DfT press releases, the weasels were out in full force, highlighting that:

Exceeding the speed limit or going too fast for conditions were reported as a contributory factor in 15 per cent of all accidents. However, the factor became more significant with the severity of the accident; it was reported as contributory factor in 26 per cent of fatal accidents and these accidents accounted for 28 per cent of all fatalities (793 deaths).

And that is how they do it, eliding "too fast for conditions" – a variable independent of the speed limit – with exceeding the speed limit. But, whereas the latter is amenable to speed enforcement, the former is not. By such legerdemain, though, is the bulk of enforcement effort distorted, with effects that have been pointed out by Paul Smith of the organisation Safespeed.

Smith thus argues that the obsession with speed limit enforcement, increasingly through the use of speed cameras, is counter-productive. And such is the malign effect that the rate of decline in the death rate due to road accidents has tailed off. When it comes to serious injuries, data from the British Medical Journal suggests that there has been no fall at all, year on year.

Pro-camera advocates – not least those who benefit financially from them – still insist, however, that their loathsome tools should be called "safety" rather than "speed" cameras, but the evidence it now pointing to another possible appellation – like "death cameras". Ironically, the very measures which the EU supports and encourages are preventing the UK from reaching the targets that the EU itself has set.

As for possible solutions, the pictures above happily illustrate options which could apply equally to cameras and the European Union. It really is interesting, though, to see quite how many people believe burning is the most appropriate answer (more here and here).


COMMENT THREAD

Give me money, that's what I want

Following this, I wrote to The Telegraph Group asking for details of the prices charged for a general license for the occasional use of Telegraph photographs on our blog, and the terms and conditions of such use. I have received the following response:

Dear Dr North

Thank you for your email. I followed the link you kindly sent me to your blog site, where I saw the letter from our Group Managing Editor and various comments posted in response.

Before answering your question directly, let me say this: the overwhelming majority of pictures we publish are not the property of Telegraph Group Limited. Copyright is retained by the photographers/artists who create them. These are almost invariably self-employed and make their livings solely from licensing us and other publishers to reproduce their material. In the case of photographers such as Heathcliff O'Malley, who spent many months in Iraq during the war, they have gone to considerable trouble and personal risk in building up their libraries of material. It is not fair or right that others should be able to exploit their property for free. With respect it is irrelevant whether you make money from using their material: the effect is to diminish the exclusivity and make their pictures less marketable in the future.

The Telegraph's Syndication department is an agency that represents the interests of our regular writers and photographers in exchange for a prearranged commission. We have a duty to police illegal use of their material and protect their interests.

Having looked at the site again I see a few of our images have been removed but I would be grateful if you could remove all photographs until we have an agreement about the fees to the photographers.

Our standard rate for the use of an image on a website is £70. It must be also guaranteed that the image is used within the same context of its original publication

Yours sincerely

Richard Bentley
Syndication Manager
Daily and Sunday Telegraph

Taken literally, Bentley is demanding that we remove all photographs from the site, whether they have anything to do with the Telegraph or not. This surely cannot be his meaning and, in any case, we have refused.

As to the fees which the Telegraph Group wishes to charge, clearly these are absurd for a non-revenue earning blog, especially as we might put up as many as five (or more) posts in one day, some with multiple pics. Clearly, the intent is to seek to prevent their use, rather than protect the interests of the photographers - which is the claim made.

If the Telegraph Group was actually interested in the welfare of its photographers, it would arrange for a realistic fee which people could and would be prepared to pay, obtaining some money rather than none at all - and engendering considerable goodwill (and free advertising) in the process. Given the number of blogs there are, the overall revenue might not be insignificant.

The special pleading by Bentley, invoking Heathcliff O'Malley's name, therefore, is especially interesting. We are told he "spent many months in Iraq during the war, they have gone to considerable trouble and personal risk in building up their libraries of material. It is not fair or right that others should be able to exploit their property for free."

However, if his and any other photographs were published then presumably, they were paid for and the photographer has gained an income. That the Telegraph Group is then asking that he should be paid again and again for the same photograph, ad infinitum is an interesting concept - and lies at the basis of syndication rights. However, while the intent may be sound, where blogging is concerned, there is often no revenue to obtain (certainly not at the fee level proposed) and, therefore, the effect is to prevent blogs using photographs rather than protecting photographers' incomes.

Since these images are very often part of the story, this also has the effect of closing down debate. Imagine, for instance, if the agencies and newspapers had enforced their "rights" over the Qanagate issue and the Beruit photoshopping. Clearly, therefore, there are sides to this issue but, as it stands, The Telegraph Group is not living in the real world.

Incidentally, The Sunday Telegraph has just fired two of its loyal and especially dedicated staff photographers (and its picture editor) for no other reason than maximising the profitability of the group, so we can take the expressions of concern for photographers with something of a pinch of salt.

COMMENT THREAD

Who says UNIFIL is doing nothing

Well, we do for one. But now is the time to recant and to acknowledge that some parts of UNIFIL are actually quite active, though not necessarily in the way we had all expected them to be. (Well, now that you mention it, when I say “we” I do not mean this blog.)

The French troops have been active (incidentally, has France sent the promised 2,000 yet or are they still at the 200 level?), protecting those wonderful and highly objective individuals the journalists. So strongly do the French troops believe in the freedom of journalists to report whatever they feel like saying as long as it does not upset Hezbollah, that they almost clashed with the IDF.

Members of UNIFIL's French battalion almost clashed with Israeli troops who arrested a French journalist and a Lebanese photographer at an improvised checkpoint in the border area of Marwaheen in the western sector of south Lebanon.

A UNIFIL officer told United Press International that a French force was rushed to the location of the checkpoint and a heated argument erupted between French and Israeli officers, which lasted an hour before the Israeli troops released the two journalists.

It was the first time that such friction occurs between Israeli troops and UNIFIL forces, international forces which deployed in recent weeks to increase the number of the original peacekeepers in the area.

One can see that the enlarged UNIFIL and UN Resolution 1701 is going to be a huge success.

COMMENT THREAD

Damned and double-damned

It seems that EU enlargement is not only costing us a fortune, creating enormous difficulties with the mass migration of populations, but also causing huge problems in the enlargement countries themselves.

The Times has the story – after a fashion. But, if you want real detail on Poland, read a blog.

Behind all the political instability in Poland, however, is a vital question - will the commitment to send an extra 1000 troops to Afghanistan survive the turmoil? And, if it doesn't, who else is going to step in as the situation deteriorates?

COMMENT THREAD

A love letter from the MSM

Letter received from The Telegraph Group today. They must be getting desperate.

COMMENT THREAD

Choosing sides - 2

It looks like this one will run and run. I was going to devote part 2 of “Choosing sides” to an account and analysis of the meeting I attended on the subject of Israel and the media. Alas, that will have to wait at least one more day.

Instead, here is a choice morsel of news about people choosing the (wrong) side. The Netherlands National News Agency reported a couple of weeks ago that the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) came up with a corker of a report. (One wonders, incidentally, what the definition of “scientific” is in this case.

The Report poured shame on all Dutch legislators and, indeed, Dutch people for endlessly lambasting Islam and Islamists instead of criticizing more seriously “friendly countries such as the US, Israel and Russia”.

Whether Russia is a friendly country is a moot point and, undoubtedly, its human rights record is dismal as is the behaviour of Russian troops and security forces in Chechnya, a much more complicated problem than some people try to make out.

Undoubtedly, there is room for criticism of the US and Israel and its governments. They are only countries and the governments are … well, just that, governments. But to say that we should concentrate on criticizing them and forget the far worse behaviour of numerous Muslim countries, not to mention gangs of thugs who burn churches, threaten everyone who says anything critical of anything Muslim and murder nuns is, to display a very peculiar attitude to the world. And that is putting it mildly.

The Report was supposed to be presented to Commission Vice President Franco Frattini but we have not heard how he received it. Given that Frattini has been making tough statements on the need to fight terrorism, on control of immigration (particularly if this involved further integration) and on the need to support Pope Benedict XVI, it is unlikely that he was overimpressed by the Dutch Scientific Council.

The researcher, Jan Schoonenboom, had presented the report to the Dutch parliament in April, where it was given short shrift.

In April, when it was presented to the Lower House, he stated that the debate in the Netherlands was dominated by "Islam-bashing". He advised the Dutch government "not to be so spastic about Sharia law" and to "support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon." He added "we must address Russia more forcefully on human rights violations in Chechnya, Israel for its decades of ignoring UN resolutions and the US regarding Guantanamo Bay."

One wonders whether Mr Schoonenboom actually knows anything about the Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor of most of the Islamist terrorist organizations of today or about Hezbollah and its treatment of all those who oppose it, be they Jewish (preferably), Christian or Muslim. And, errm, just exactly what does he think Sharia law says about the treatment of women, for instance, or about freedom of speech or about the freedom to carry out scientific enquiries?

It is reassuring to know that the findings of this so-called Scientific Council were rubbished by various Dutch politicians on all sides of the spectrum. It is a little less reassuring to think that research of this calibre and of such political stupidity can be done at the taxpayers’ expense anywhere.

COMMENT THREAD

Blog with attitude

If blogs were not important, The Daily Telegraph would not be firing 51 members of staff on its daily and another 18 on the Sunday paper, while intensifying its electronic coverage. Neither would the new Secretary of State for the Environment be wasting public money on his and the fragrant EU commissioner for communications would not be expending so much of her energy on hers.

However, it has to be said that The Telegraph is merely adding to the diet of trivia which infests the print copy, with a blog specifically dedicated to political gossip. By so doing, it is following The Times into the fray, a publication that is continuing its long decline from being the "paper of record" to just another piece of MSM tat.

In producing these testaments to the decline of serious journalism, the proprietors of the respective newspapers hope, one presumes, to capitalise on the growing online advertising revenue which the current brand leaders have already sought to exploit.

But, while hopes are pinned on the trivia bringing in the bucks, commentators like Mike Ion on the Guardian's Comment is free site are talking up the political influence of blogs, Ion himself offering his own "take" on why they are so important. He writes:

They take the media out of the hands of the corporate world and put it into the hands of anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Their audiences tend to be political junkies who have almost non-stop access to a computer and large amounts of time to surf the internet for breaking news. This is what makes political bloggers so powerful - their ability to influence the influencers.

Despite this, Ion seems to confuse popularity with influence, citing two blogs which are almost devoid of serious content, on which both The Times and The Daily Telegraph seem to be modelling themselves in their race for the bottom.

However, we take the view that the blogsphere is too valuable a resource to be devoted entirely to the lightweight and trivial and will continue to build on our base as serious bloggers with something more to offer our readers than titillation. But, we decided, such a noble enterprise needs an identity – a logo. And if the Conservative Party can have one, so can we.

Fortunately, for a mere £40,000,000,000.23 (plus VAT) A non EU mouse has come to our aid and we are now able proudly to display our new logo on the sidebar. "Blog with attitude" R Us.

COMMENT THREAD

If you really want to know what is going on ....

Fouad Ajami is one of the most interesting and knowledgeable commentators on the Islamic countries and on the war against terror (for which read war against terrorists and their controllers).

He is a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and has written extensively, both books and articles.

He has a long article in today's Wall Street Journal Europe, entitled "The War Critics", though on the website, which takes its cue from the American edition of the newspaper, it is called "Infidel Documents".

Non-news about non-negotiations

Could this the most unexciting introductory paragraph on a Reuters story?

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Thursday he had failed to reach a deal with the chief Iranian negotiator on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but they had paved the way for further talks.

Well, that’s nice. Let us hope they have sorted the seating plan out for the next few rounds of those further talks.

The EU common foreign policy high panjandrum, Javier Solana, has surpassed himself in pretending that he had something to communicate.

"We have been progressing," Solana told reporters after discussions with Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani.

"We still have some issues that have not been closed," he added without elaborating. Solana said he hoped to renew contact with the Iranians by the middle of next week.

The State Department has said that time is running out for a deal and this latest round with the subsequent information given to the press would confirm that. What will be the next stage? Possibly an attempt to get the Security Council to apply sanctions, though it seems unlikely that the EU3 will support the United States on that. And, according to President Ahmadinejad, the SecGen has told him not to worry too much about what the Security Council might say.

COMMENT THREAD

Medals galore

The news that almost 180 British soldiers have been recommended for gallantry awards for their efforts in Afghanistan, including "several" Victoria Crosses, brings to mind the last days of the siege of Stalingrad, when Junkers 52s from Hitler's Luftwaffe were despatched to airdrop container-loads of Iron Crosses to the beleaguered troops of the 6th Army.

That is not in any way to disparage the bravery of our troops but, as The Daily Telegraph remarks, the scale of the awards suggests a conflict out of all proportion to the security operation first outlined by the government when Britain committed forces to southern Afghanistan in January. John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, expressed the hope that the troops might be able to get in and out of Helmand without firing a shot.

read more...

COMMENT THREAD

A matter of perspective

In one had to point to one organisation that had done more than any to demonise waste disposal and legitimise the flood of restrictive legislation on waste, Greenpeace would be a pretty good candidate.

Thus it is inevitable that, when a disaster arises in part as a result of the very legislation of which Greenpeace so much approves, they will be the last people to recognise the consequences of their own actions.

The disaster in question is a waste oil dumping scandal, involving the ship Probo Koala (pictured above), which has killed at least eight Africans, including children, and poisoned thousands of Ivory Coast residents, reported (sketchily) by Reuters via Toronto Star (which is equally uncomprehending of the underlying issues).

read more...

COMMENT THREAD

They are lining up

SecGen Kofi Annan (father of Kojo) is coming to the end of his second term in office but, I have no doubt, that his retirement will not be impoverished. Yesterday the Times devoted an editorial to the incredibly important question of who his successor might be and who it ought to be.

It seems that, according to Buggins’ turn, it will have to be an Asian personality, as the last one of those was U Thant from 1961 to 1971. He was followed by Kurt Waldheim and because the list was that way round, the Europeans are out of the consideration this time round.

Well the former Thunderer thinks that this is a very poor idea. SecGens should be chosen on the basis of merit. What kind of merit?

read more...

COMMENT THREAD

When is a riot not a riot?

When, it seems, it involves Muslims in Brussels, at Ramadan.

This one is in the Marollen district of Brussels, near the Midi station – the terminus of the Brussels Eurostar link. Riots in this area are common enough. They occur many a weekend, although the activities are usually confined to torching the occasional car and duffing up the Belgian police – who tend to regard the "high spirits" as training exercises.

This one, however, looks to be a little different. It is in its third day and has spread to torching shops and other buildings, including firebombing the local hospital.

Snapped Shot has the story and is tracking the media's curious lack of interest, recording that not a single agency photographer has been despatched to cover the activities of the Muslim mob.

Brussels Journal is on the case as well.

COMMENT THREAD

The real business of politics - 2

Although the meat and drink of real politics might be about dots and commas in draft legislation, it is also about life and death, as we have pointed out before. And there can be no better an illustration of this, and the total failure of our political process, than the contrast between this photograph (left) and the one below.

The first shows a Canadian RG-31 Nyala in Afghanistan which, according to CTV News was today attacked by a suicide bomber in a vehicle. The soldiers inside escaped unscathed and no other Canadian troops were hurt in the attack.

We are told that the attack took place about two kilometres from the regional international reconstruction headquarters in Kandahar and, according to reports, the suicide bomber tried to ram a vehicle into the convoy that was travelling through the city of Kandahar on its way to the main Nato headquarters at Kandahar Airfield.

The bomber was driving what appeared to be a minivan in front of the convoy. The driver pulled over as the convoy approached, then turned around and drove into one of the vehicles in the convoy. Soldiers said there was little warning of the attack.

Now compare and contrast with the outcome of a similar suicide attack earlier this month, only this time against British troops. They, to their misfortune, were riding in a lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rover. And, as a result of the failure of the MoD to equip our troops properly, they died.

This, as the media are belatedly beginning to realise, is one of the more egregious failures of the MoD procurement process, but one that has – with a few honourable exceptions – been almost totally ignored by the British political "blogosphere".

Nevertheless, the combined effort of the blogs that did engage, with the help of a cross-party and cross-House alliance of Parliamentarians, the support of Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph and the intervention of The Sunday Times, the Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne was forced to purchase armoured vehicles for our troops.

This does show the power of the political process when it is harnessed properly and focused, hence my irritation when the growing power and influence of the blogosphere is frittered away on trivia and puerile "tee-hee" comment.

A graphic illustration of that dynamic comes from Ian Dale's website which has recently made a rare expedition into defence issues, but only to report on this issue of utmost gravity:

As part of the government's Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), it was decreed that the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) - don't they just love acronyms - should merge.

I see from the the (sic) current edition of Jane's Defence Weekly that, from 1 April 2007, the merged organisation will be known as Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S). Even by the standards of NuLab, it seems a bit much that the Secretary of State should be naming part of his empire after himself!

By his own estimation, Iain Dale's site is third in the rankings of top British political blogs and thus in a position to influence the political process for good or bad. And, while it is not entirely fair to single out Dale's abysmal efforts, his output typifies much of what is wrong with British political blogging – and illustrates how it is failing to capitalise on the blogosphere's growing power and influence.

Although not of a religious bent, I am reminded of the parable of the talents. More prosaically, one of Rudyard Kipling's quotations comes to mind.

COMMENT THREAD

The real business of politics

Just to show there are no hard feelings, this time I completely agree with the sentiments expressed by Simon Heffer in his op-ed in The Daily Telegraph today. He writes:

The past few weeks should have convinced most of us that a knowledge of politics, and years watching the game, were now inadequate for a commentator like me to be able do his job. A grasp of psychiatry would be much more helpful, especially where the Labour Party is concerned. Politics used to be about ideology, but now it is about love and loyalty. Does Gordon love Tony? Does Tony love Gordon? If the answer to both parts is no, then how does it affect the delicate balance of the Labour high command?

Perhaps most important, since we technically live in a democracy, what on earth are the general public outside the G-Mex centre in Manchester, where Labour's conference is being held, supposed to make of all this? Now that we have heard from both of the alleged titans of New Labour, and they have both preened and postured in their respective corners, can we perhaps get back to the real business of politics, which is to govern the country?

The trouble is that the chattering classes, the politicos, the wannabes and sundry groupies are no longer interested in governing the country. That requires knowledge, hard work and some understanding. Moreover, as anyone who has been engaged in the process will tell you, it is at times extremely tedious and unrewarding.

That in part accounts for the attraction of the European Union. In performing its role as a gigantic law-making machine, it saves the politicos the trouble and tedium of having to legislate on the vast number of dry, technical issues that a mature democracy seems to think essential. Instead, they can concentrate on the "real" issues – such as how to get elected – without having to bother their pretty little heads about the real business of government.

So it is that politics has been reduced to all the gravitas of a soap opera, its "stars" competing for air-time with the next episode of Neighbours or Corrie, while – as one of our forum members so aptly puts it – our media cease to be political commentators and become theatre critics.

Needless to say, this infantilisation of politics is attractive, as much of the real business of government is indeed tedious. For instance, no amount of "sexing-up" is going to make the detailed scrutiny of a draft law interesting – the process of line-by-line analysis, changing commas into full stops, amending part-clauses and knocking out obscure sentences which, years later, could have a profound and damaging effect on a small (or even large) number of people.

How much easier it is to focus on the salacious gossip – who is slagging off whom; who is shagging who's wife (or boyfriend) – and all the clever-dick tittle-tattle that emanates from the political hothouse, populated by second-raters distinguished only by having intellects in inverse proportion to the size of their egos.

But, while this is all good "entertainment", it is also the death of good government. When the elections become beauty contests rather than sober assessments of the performance of governments, politicians will play to the gallery rather than get down to the nitty-gritty of good administration.

And as long as the media fritters away its time and power on giving these buffoons space and airtime, instead of using their skills to make the dull interesting, and thus inform rather than titillate the population, the politicians will continue to value acting skills and "presentation" over substance.

It is here that the antidote is the internet – a superb medium for conveying information and a portal through which the mass of detail we need to know can be accessed. Never has participating in the democratic process been easier. But, unfortunately, the internet is equally capable of becoming a vehicle for accessing the same, low-grade titillation and dross that so gratifies its authors and entertains the masses.

The trouble is that being a grown-up in a complex and increasingly dangerous world requires a sense of responsibility – a realisation that being a citizen of a democracy requires more than self-gratification and the right to 24/7 wall-to-wall entertainment. It requires taking the time out to explore and understand the issues, to complain long and loud when we are misinformed, misled and badly governed. In other words, being grown-up requires that we behave like adults.

But, as the politicians and the media are failing the test, so is the internet – at least on this side of the Atlantic – where it too is dominated by the trivial, the salacious and the populist. And that must reflect the readership which finds it easier to dwell on the infantile than to assume the responsibilities of adult citizens.

If we behave like children, however, we can hardly complain if, increasingly, we are treated like children. If we see the exponential growth of the "nanny state" it can only be because, increasingly, we are incapable of, or unwilling to, manage our own affairs – or take personal responsibility for our own actions.

Thus, there is a hard nugget of truth in that phrase, "we get the governments we deserve". If we wish to dwell on the trivial, the jokey and the superficial - to the exclusion of all else - we will continue to suffer the ministrations of the dross that populate the political classes.

Yet, by the same measure, our salvation is in our own hands. Politicians are nothing if not populists and if they perceive that the public is in no mood for the low grade fare that they and the media insists on doling out, they will change. And the internet is one of the most powerful (but not the only) tools for sending such a signal. Abuse it and we only have ourselves to blame.

So, to paraphrase Heffer, we need get back to the real business of politics, which is to govern the country. Boring, at times it might be but hey! Who ever said it was easy being a grown-up?

COMMENT THREAD

What's in a name?

The story of George Blake, one of the most successful Soviet spies in Britain, and his human rights, as trampled on by the Attorney Genera, according to the ECHR, is not precisely a theme for this blog.

However, some of our readers might like to see the musings over on the Conservative History Journal blog.

The long farewell…

So say, currently, 1309 articles posted on Google News, mute testimony to the media obsession with the Labour leadership – an opportunity to indulge in the mindless pap that has poisoned intelligent political discourse and saved legions of idle hacks from doing anything strenuous like reporting news.

Anyhow, by common consent, Tony Blair's speech to the conference yesterday was his "farewell" – but not to the country… that really would be a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, this is only billed as the farewell to the Labour Party. Our "Tone" still has another nine months or so in office, more than sufficient to complete the destruction of our nation that started with his accession in May 1997.

Needless to say, his speech was greeted with "euphoria" among the Labour faithful – something we will have to take the hacks' word for. Television and radio news has been banned from the EU Referendum household as the sight of TB posturing and prancing was more than even strong stomachs could bear. Watching a fourth re-run of a Star Trek Voyager episode on Sky 1, showing flesh harvesting mutants, was infinitely preferable.

A number of hacks – always ready with the empty cliché – write that his will be a tough act to follow, which is undoubtedly true. When most of the nation is already wrecked, it will be exceedingly difficult to do as much damage as this man has done, although Gordon Brown – if it is he that follows – will undoubtedly try his best.

"Love him or loathe him, it was a leader's speech," said Tony Woodley, general Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and indeed it was – although even Lemmings, presumably, have leaders.

The only thing more depressing is that after this love-fest of the morons, next week we have another, as the Boy King addresses his faithful – what's left of them – in the south coast seaside town of Bournemouth. Mercifully, from the perspective here in the frozen north, in Yorkshire, it would be difficult for him to be further away and still be in England – and the off-switch on the television is still functional.

Possibly though, there is something more depressing. When we finally do get rid of Blair, his successor may be so awful that he makes Boy King Cameroon look attractive. That is probably the only thing that would get him elected and the thought of that plump, smug, vacuous face leering from the television, being addressed as "prime minister", is something we do not even want to begin contemplating.

Should that happen – and in any event – the second draft of history will be written and Tony Blair – who's name coincidentally and appropriately shares initials with a malignant disease which his government has singularly failed to check – will re-emerge as the great statesman.

It will take several generations before historians are able to write a more accurate account of his reign, recording just how damaging this man has been - but the truth usually comes out in the end. That, at least, is of some comfort.

COMMENT THREAD

This is quite interesting

Hilary White, journalist and blogger on religious matters has found some interesting patterns in the way Pope Benedict’s speech at Regensburg University was reported by the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times. (Hands up those few who are surprised by this list.)

As the article points out the early reports of the lecture were very subdued and uninterested. There was the Pope talking about reason and faith and the need for both in life and there were the journalists, secularists to a person, completely uninterested in any of it. Or, perhaps, they found it hard to follow his arguments. Or, perhaps, they had never heard of Byzantium and her emperors.

Then, three days later, the BBC suddenly began to report fears of riots and actual riots in various Muslim countries and areas. This was followed by the Guardian and the New York Times and also, as Hilary White does not mention, a large proportion of the MSM in Britain. Even the Daily Telegraph spent some time bloviating on the subject of what might have gone wrong in the Pope’s entourage for him to have been allowed to make such an imprudent speech.

News agencies tut-tutted about the Pope’s lack of media finesse, not, probably, the first thing that comes to the Holy Father’s mind when he plans a lecture on theology. (I have said it before and, no doubt, shall say it again: one can but wish that the Archbishop of Canterbury spent a little less time on media finesse and a little more on theology and ideas. Well, one can wish.)

So the story grew for several days with frenzied demands for an apology and various rather violent though not very big demonstrations by the Islamist rent-a-mob in various countries, including Britain.

Did the media create the crisis for some reasons of its own? Was it a way of getting at Pope Benedict, a hate-figure for them as Hilary White argues?

This is not to be excluded, though the desire to create a story where none exists may well be an even bigger incentive than hatred of the Pope. Then again, there is the media’s own crowd mentality. Each journalist wants to say and write whatever the others have said or written.

There is also the problem, articulated by Melanie Phillips, with regards to reporting from the Middle East of the editorial narrative. For most of what Rush Limbaugh calls the drive-by media, the narrative is that of angry Islam being provoked by insensitive Westerners. (That’s when they are not being provoked by oppressive Israelis or jack-booted Americans, William Dalrymple, travel writer and historian of India, being a very fine example of that type of journalist.)

Conspiracy or carelessness? A vicious desire to do down the West or merely an ignorant and nasty desire to break up everything of value? Whichever it is, the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times, together with their acolytes and followers can take responsibility for the murder of Sister Leonella Sgorbati.

COMMENT THREAD

Disingenuous, or what?

EU commission president José Manuel Barroso's has called for "sweeping reforms" before any EU enlargement, declaring that, "I think it would be unwise to bring in more member states apart from Romania and Bulgaria, which will be joining us soon, before we have solved the institutional question."

The phrase, "institutional question" is, of course, Euro-code for the EU constitution, made clear by Barroso’s further statement when he dismissed the idea of small treaty changes, insisting any further enlargement "is the time to take a decision on the constitutional treaty."

Speaking in Berlin, it seems that the commission president has in mind, amongst other things, "more coherence in external relations" – another Euro-code, this one meaning an EU foreign minister.

One wonders though whether Barroso has thought this through – or whether he is being disingenuous. Given that the French rejection of the EU constitution was certainly linked to enlargement, and was to some extent a proxy vote against Turkish membership. Overtly to link the need for a new constitution with further enlargement, therefore, has to be a certain way of ensuring that any attempts to agree a new treaty are rejected.

COMMENT THREAD

Bloggers - which is it to be?

Having dealt in a little detail with the Afghan situation on Sunday, what is particularly remarkable about the piece to follow is that it cites the European Union's special representative in Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, who not only seems to make a great deal of sense but also seems to corroborate the source we used in our Sunday piece.

The details we picked up not from the UK media but off a Texan online news service with a shorter version of the same report from the Chinese news service Xinhua.

Now, before dealing with the reports and other information, the summation of which has worrying implications – a personal note.

Frankly, I am getting more than a little tired of the self-obsessed indulgence the media is currently displaying with the Tony and Gordon show in Manchester at the Labour Party conference. But that irritation also extends to the British political bloggers who seem quite content to follow in the wake of the MSM and prattle endlessly about exactly the same issues.

Often the humour and analysis is about the level one would expect of the 4th form of a second-rate boys boarding school and I have heard more intelligent comment from college students in fifth and sixth forms in the lectures I have been given to schools recently.

In a nutshell, the Tony and Gordon show is fluff – nothing is going to be decided immediately and much water is going to pass under the bridge before things come to a head. Meanwhile, we are a nation at war, we do have troops committed to a dangerous foreign venture and, if the material we have accumulated in this and our previous reports is at all representative of the situation, there is the potential for the situation to go seriously belly-up. In that case, over the winter, we could be seeing soldiers coming home in coffins in very large numbers.

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COMMENT THREAD

Why am I not surprised?

News from the stronger and larger UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon does not exactly fill one with hope for peaceful resolution of that unfortunate country’s problems. (Hint: Hezbollah)

It seems that, as predicted by many, including this blog, the 5,000 strong force (what happened to the rest of it?) is not actually allowed to do anything.

They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.

Well, well. Why am I not surprised? As a matter of some interest, whatever happened to UN Resolution 1701, which was supposed to guarantee the Israeli-Lebanese border and help the people and government of Lebanon by disarming Hezbollah, which was supposed to have been disarmed under UN Resolution 1559 of 2004?

The Security Council resolution, known as 1701, was seen at the time as the best way to halt the war, partly by giving Israel assurances that Lebanon’s southern border would be policed by a robust international force to prevent Hezbollah militants from attacking. When the resolution was approved, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, one of its principal architects, said the force’s deployment would help “protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area.”

But the resolution’s diplomatic language skirted a fundamental question: what kind of policing power would be given to the international force? The resolution leaves open the possibility that the Lebanese Army would grant such policing power, but the force’s commanders say that so far, at least, that has not happened.

Lt. Col. Stefano Cappellaro of the San Marco regiment says that there is a lot of misunderstanding about what the UN peacekeeping force is supposed to be doing there. I’ll say there is, not least among the force itself.

The theory is that UNIFIL is there to win the trust of the Lebanese people for purposes unknown. Their softly-softly behaviour has certainly not endeared them to the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nazrallah, who has already made it clear that UN resolutions or no UN resolutions, his thugs will not disarm and will continue to impose their rule on parts of Lebanon. If the Lebanese government did not like that state of affairs, it could go away and leave Lebanon to the Sheik and his henchmen.

He has not been too complimentary about the UNIFIL:

“Thus far, I have not heard any country participating in the Unifil say that it sent its sons and soldiers to defend Lebanon and the Lebanese,” he said in a speech Friday before hundreds of thousands of his supporters. “They are ashamed of us, brothers and sisters. They are ashamed of saying they came to defend us, but they talk about defending Israel.”

As far as the UN is concerned, this is clearly another case of you lose some and then you lose some more.

COMMENT THREAD

Irish academics really, really believe in academic freedom

A couple of weeks ago, we quoted The American Thinker and, indeed, supported their question: will the British academics call for a boycott of Iranian ones, in the wake of the purge, proposed or ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Well, we have heard nothing about that but 61 Irish academics, at least some of whom must know where Iran is and what is going on in that country, have called for a boycott …. of Israeli academics.

As the Rector of Bar-Ilan University points out:

“Academic boycott is not ethical and contravenes the principle of academic freedom.

Attempts to exclude Israel and Israeli academics for the purpose of isolation and demonization, overlooking history and decades of violence, are ethically unacceptable.”

What is curious about the Irish academics that, according to the news item, they are writing from all over the world. One would think that all these people who travel all over the world would know that Israeli universities have all kinds of students: Jewish, Muslim and Christian; that Israeli academics have all sorts of political opinions; and that there are countries that are far more oppressive in intellectual terms.

One would also hope that academics of whatever nationality would actually display some ability to research the truth behind facile media propaganda. The letter that these peripatetic academics have sent to their colleagues says, among other things:

“There is widespread international condemnation of Israel's policy of violent repression against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and its aggression against the people of Lebanon.”

Well, well, so these academics do not read the blogosphere and have not heard about Pallywood and Hezbollywood. They do not even appear to have heard of Hezbollah. Then again, they do not appear to know that Hamas has once again announced that it will not join any Palestinian government that negotiates with Israel.

Going on, the letter says:

“We feel it is time to heed the Palestinian call to take practical action to pressure Israel to comply with international law and basic human rights norms. Many national and European cultural and research institutions, including those funded by the EU regard Israel as a European state for the purposes of awarding grants and contracts.

We call for a moratorium on any further such support to Israeli academic institutions, at both national and European levels. We urge our fellow academics to support this moratorium by refraining, where possible, from further joint collaborations with Israeli academic institutions. Such a moratorium should continue until Israel abides by UN resolutions and ends the occupation of Palestinian territories.”

Not just ignorant but lacking in logic as well. Grants and contracts are awarded to Israeli academic institutions because they happen to be quite good at various levels and that includes their Jewish, Muslim and Christian researchers.

There is the further problem that as far as, say, Hamas is concerned, all of Israel is an occupied territory. So, the Irish academics from all over the world are, in effect saying that Israeli institutions should be boycotted until Israel ceases to exist, after which the problem will no longer arise.

I wonder what the said academics would say if someone suggested boycotting various Arab universities because they do not allow anyone in except Muslims and, often, refuse women education; or Chinese universities until the occupation of Tibet ends and academic freedom is allowed without people being sent to the gulag for speaking up against the party?

COMMENT THREAD

EU in the frame

Leaving it a bit late, this time at least the EU president José Manuel Barroso has come to the support of Pope Benedict XVI's, defending his remarks about Islam. According to yesterday's edition of the German newspaper Weltam Sonntag, he says he is disappointed the leaders of Europe did not defend the Pontiff.

Islamic extremists, adds Barroso, are a threat, but people cannot confuse tolerance with political correctness by putting others' values above their own. Barroso also said the problem does not lie with the Pope's comments, but with the violent reaction of extremists.

This example of "solidarity" is more evidence of collusion between the Vatican and Brussels, yet more indications that the EU is a Catholic plot. Why else would a former Maoist communist spring so readily to the defence of the head of the Roman Catholic church?

COMMENT THREAD

Invasion of the blogosphere

Waking up to the growing power of the blogs, the media and political establishment are moving in to neutralise the threat, using time-honoured techniques perfected during centuries of colonial rule and through keeping the great unwashed in their place.

Their use is typified in a web report from Channel 4 News on the Labour Party conference, hilariously entitled, "What the bloggers say".

If the popular view of bloggers is of "citizen journalists" looking in from the outside, Channel 4's idea of "the view on the blogosphere" is somewhat different. It starts off with a link to that famous "citizen journalist", none other than the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson who, it declares, "encapsulates the mood".

Next on the list of the "citizen journalists" is Kerron Cross, a local district councillor in South Oxhey and senior parliamentary assistant to a Labour MP, followed by Jonathan Roberts, an officer of Thirsk and Malton Constituency Labour Party, a Town Councillor campaigning for local Fair Trade initiatives and executive officer of the Labour Movement for Europe.

To add balance to this impressive line-up of "citizen journalists", we get Labour MP Michael Meacher and then, just to prove that this is really about bringing power to the people, Channel 4 brings in a "token ethnic", in the form of Omar's Blog (daily average hits 27) to make a comment of stunning predictability and blandness.

What we can see here is the obvious technique – creating a parallel body which appears to be the real thing but isn't, which can be relied upon to say the "right" things and can freeze out any dissident comment. All the time though, this allows you to say you are "listening" to the blogosphere.

Channel 4 is not the only organisation to adopt such tactics. The Tory establishment is doing likewise, funnelling readers into a carefully selected list of semi-approved sites, the occasional licensed dissident, who offers the usual diet of trivia but can be relied upon to stop short of offering any damaging criticism, the safe pair of hands, and the media pals, none of whom will rock the boat.

By carefully ignoring any sites that do offer genuine criticisms of the establishment, and promoting those which are "safe" – not least by creating faux lists of "top blogs", dissent is absorbed, diverted or contained. Stand by for the Channel 4 awards for the top political blogs of the year. And the winner is… stand up Nick Robinson!

This is how the establishment works: nothing so blunt as censorship or harassment. We did not rule half the planet and come away learning nothing – we bribe the compliant, divide and rule and then marginalise the opposition.

Welcome to the British political "blogsphere", a scene with all the power and vitality of a neutered tomcat.

COMMENT THREAD

A "European" victory?

You would not have guessed it from the blizzard of blue and gold flags at the K Club in County Kildare today that the Ryder Cup was originally a sporting event between the best American professionals and those of Great Britain. The first contest was in June 1927 at the Worcester Country Club, Massachusetts, when the United States team defeated their counterparts from Great Britain 9½ -2½.

This victory was to set something of a precedent in that in the first 19 matches (played every other year, with none during WWII) from 1927 to 1971, the British won only three times and drew once – in 1969.

In an attempt to balance up this uneven competition, Ireland was officially added to the British team in 1973, it becoming an Anglo-Irish team for the three tournaments of 1973, 1975 and 1977. The addition, however, did nothing to change the fortunes of the players on this side of the pond. The US also won those three contests.

Almost in desperation, therefore, the British Professional Golf Association prevailed on its American counterpart to widen out the competition to all of continental Europe and, in 1979 the first of the modern matches was played, styled as the USA versus Europe. The US won that and the next two matches.

Meanwhile, the great dream of a "European identity" was stirring in the bosom of the nascent European Union (yet to acquire that name) and, in 1984 the European Council at Fontainebleau (where Thatcher got "her money back") commissioned a report from a committee chaired by Italian MEP Pietro Adonnino to recommend various measures to build the public's sense of European identity.

He reported back at the Milan Council in 1985, suggesting, amongst other things, a Euro lottery, an EU driving license, the adoption of the blue flag with gold stars; and the creation of European sports teams.

The latter endeavour has been singularly unsuccessful to the extent that when Romano Prodi in 1999 suggested "European" teams should represent the 25 EU nations at the Olympics, he was laughed out of court. But, ironically, the one area where the commission has had some success is in hijacking the "European" Ryder Cup, flooding the venues with its emblem.

Thus, as the headlines proclaimed, "Europe wins historic third victory in succession over America in Ryder Cup", there were "ring of stars" symbols everywhere, on hats, scoreboards, flags, shirts, etc. All the television symbols and other publicity logos were blue with the ring of stars.

This was all that Adonnino could have wanted when he proclaimed in 1985 that sport provided a key opportunity to promote a "sense of a European identity".

But, like so many things the EU touches, the victory was an illusion. The victorious "Europe" team included two Swedes (one of whom lost in the final day singles), two Spaniards (one of whom lost), two Irishmen (one of whom lost, the other ended all square) along with six citizens of the UK (four English, one Scot, one Northern Irish), all of whom won. In all, 21 of the 25 "European" nations were not represented. There were not many Latvians in view, or Italians, or French.

Effectively, the 1927 dream of a victory by Britain over the US has come true – only now it is under the cover of an EU flag. Perhaps that is the only model to which the EU can ever aspire which might even bring it "victory" in a wider sphere, which might explain why – for all the provocation – the poor little Europeans are so keen for Britain to remain in the EU.

Nevertheless, one does wonder how much of the EU's publicity budget was spent by the European Commission to see six Brits beat the USA.

COMMENT THREAD

In their tender care - revisited

In May last, we wrote about the Somali criminal Mustaf (aka Mustafa) Jama, implicated in the murder of policewoman Sharon Beshenivsky, who had been freed from prison instead of being considered for deportation.

Jama was one of a thousand or so foreign criminals who had been released in this way, the subsequent furore causing the then current Home Secretary Charles Clarke to resign and the Home Office to be labelled "not fit for purpose".

His successor, John Reid, soon after his appointment as Home Secretary, said he would "move heaven and earth" to find the prisoners and there were almost daily questions in the House of Commons about the number recovered.

But now, we learn from The Sunday Telegraph in a fine piece of reporting by Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent, that the hunt has been quietly abandoned and the team of 60 police and probation and immigration officers spearheading the hunt has been disbanded.

At the last count, however, more than 400 of the prisoners had not been traced. They included 74 violent and sexual offenders, seven of them guilty of murder , manslaughter, rape or sexual offences against children. The Home Office conceded yesterday that the manhunt (including searching for Mustaf Jama) was no longer a "priority", despite so many offenders remaining at large.

Come to think of it, we have heard nothing of any more arrests after the Muslim demonstration in London last February, when they were protesting against the Danish cartoons. There certainly have been no prosecutions that we can recall, despite strong public revulsion against the inflammatory placards.

Should we not be grateful, therefore, that our government is so diligent in looking after our safety?

COMMENT THREAD

Ever popular

This sign is on Arbroath harbour wall in Scotland. Note the bricks.

Our correspondent writes: "Accident? Methinks not. The sign is actually on the opposite wall of a canal and therefore any damage would have to have been deliberate."

COMMENT THREAD

The erosion of freedoms

It is interesting to see how much energy has been expended by sections of the eurosceptic community on the remote and largely theoretical EU threat to our freedoms represented by the putative abolition of habeas corpus.

By contrast, you will see little concern – and none of any lasting effect – about the continued drip-drip erosion of our liberties that happens in a myriad of ways through the application of EU law.

One such is recorded by Christopher Booker in this week's Sunday Telegraph, under the heading, "Citronella deters insects, but it's illegal to say so".

If, like me, though, you did not even know what Citronella was, perhaps vaguely thinking that it was a branded fruit drink, then that fact that it has been banned for use as an insect repellent by the EU's Biocidal Products Directive, (98/8/EC) is not going to have you storming the barricades.

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COMMENT THREAD

This does not look good

It must have been a slow news day yesterday because Sir Richard Dannatt, the Army's new Chief of the General Staff, stayed on most of the day's television news bulletins, springing to the defence of the RAF after Friday's attack on it.

Oddly though, Dannatt did not even hint that the Major who made his complaints about the RAF may have been mistaken – and been complaining about the wrong air force. And it is doubly odd that not one single news station (or newspaper) which reported on the affair has mentioned this. Clearly, the Major's complaints supports the media narrative that "our boys" are ill equipped and under-strength, so to cast doubt on the man would have reduced the authority of his report.

But this superficiality is getting serious. When it comes to news on Afghanistan, we as a nation are dangerously ill-informed, in two key areas – firstly, the general strategic position and, secondly, over the possible course of events during the winter.

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COMMENT THREAD

Is Osama Bin Laden dead?

See here.

There is a possibility that he might have succumbed to Salmonella typhi.

COMMENT THREAD

Cloth for brains

The Times today informs us that Christopher Patten, the former Conservative minister and erstwhile EU commissioner for external relations, has returned to the (political) fray by joining a 12-strong international "Group of the Wise", which is tasked with finding an alternative to the rejected EU constitution.

He wants – or so we are told - to combat the "playground language" of the debate over the constitution in Britain.

Why this unexciting piece of news should grab the attention of The Times – in what is a relatively long article – is not entirely obvious, but it does serve a purpose in demonstrating that some political journalists really do have cloth for brains.

The two in this case are David Charter and Rory Watson in Brussels who diligently note that Patten's involvement "may come as an embarrassment to the Eurosceptic David Cameron…".

Charter and Watson are supposedly experienced and knowledgeable political hacks. How, therefore, can they possibly describe the Boy King as "Eurosceptic"? And, if they do regard him as such, no wonder they thing that true Eurosceptics belong to the lunatic fringe.

With that quality of comment though, no wonder we are in trouble.

COMMENT THREAD

Smoke and fire

It is extremely difficult to know exactly what to make of the "leaked" emails from a British Army Major, widely reported in the MSM (for instance, here, here and here) as complaining, amongst other things, that RAF pilots there are "utterly, utterly useless".

In one of the published extracts of the emails, the Major is reported to have claimed:

Twice I have had Harriers in support when c/s on the ground have been in heavy contact, on one occasion trying to break clean. A female harrier pilot 'couldn't identify the target', fired 2 phosphorous rockets that just missed our own compound so that we thought they were incoming RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and then strafed our perimeter missing the enemy by 200 metres.

There is a slight problem here – actually two problems. Firstly, the CRV-7 rockets used by the RAF in Afghanistan are not fitted with phosphorous warheads. Secondly, the Harrier GR7As deployed in theatre are not fitted with guns. Interestingly though, the AV8B – the US equivalent of the Harrier – operated by the US Marine Corps, is fitted with both.

Nevertheless, the Major does write: "the US air force had been fantastic", to which he adds, "I would take an A-10 over Eurofighter any day." Cue picture of A-10 (above).

Much else of what the Major does say – about the shortage of troops and how hard-pressed they are – checks out with other information, not least the comments of Captain Leo Docherty, reported in The Times earlier this month.

There is now too much "smoke" to suggest that there is no "fire", despite the bland denials of the MoD. We will, therefore, have a more detailed look at the Afghan situation later today.

COMMENT THREAD

Peace keepers in southern Lebanon

Little Green Footballs provides us with this pictureof a Spanish UN peace keeper in southern Lebanon, doing his duty, being chummy with Hezbollah. LGF calls it "Jawdropper of the Hour" but, personally I do not find it at all surprising.

The European Union shows its strength, as usual

As the International Herald Tribune puts it: “Indonesia Executes 3, Despite EU Appeal”. Once again the EU’s influence is displayed for all to see. It would not matter so much if we were not told at great length by the propagandists in such organizations as the Centre for European Reform, that one of the joys of the EU was its ability to have a quiet influence on all sorts of nasty people. Not, you understand, like those nasty, brutish Americans.

"The European Union, along with many other like-minded countries, opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances," the Finnish ambassador, Markko Niinioga, representing the presidency of the EU, said in a letter that was delivered Wednesday to the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "The EU finds this punishment cruel and inhuman."

The letter was read to a journalist by a European diplomat, who did so on the condition of anonymity because the letter has not been released publicly. An aide to Yudhoyono confirmed that it had been received.

The NYT article carefully does not say but there have been problems with the trial and with the sudden decision to execute. The case grew out of the internecine violence that swept Sulawesi Province from 1998 to 2002, killing more than 1,000 people of both religions. A handful of Muslims have been convicted and given considerably lesser sentences.

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Yet more parochialism

With all the big issues around it is easy to forget what is happening on the ground, so to speak. One London Blog catches up on the various ways Hizonner the Mayor of LondON has of frittering away taxpayers' money.

Well, there's a surprise

Having sacked his deputy prime minister Andrzej Lepper (pictured), he of the left-wing "populist" Self-Defence party, Poland's prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of the Law and Justice party, is now 53 votes short of a working majority.

Unless he can stitch together a new coalition, the government will have to be dissolved, with the prospect of fresh elections in November.

It appears that the major stresses between the coalition partners have arisen over the budget and the decision to send 1,000 extra Polish soldiers to Afghanistan.

The Beatroot has an interesting "take" on this, but also read his latest post (and the comments).

COMMENT THREAD

The sky is not falling in...

If nothing else, the alarums over the meeting of justice ministers of EU member states in Tampere, Finland, over yesterday and today, provide an object lesson in the difficulties in campaigning against the steady march of European integration.

We all (well some of us) know the end destination but that is either denied or not believed, so if you shout too loudly, you are crying "wolf" – and when it finally does arrive, the further cries go unheeded. On the other hand, if you just highlight the latest step in a slow, methodical process – a series of marginal, technical moves – no one, least of all the media, is going to get the least bit excited.

Essentially, when it comes to pressing the panic button, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

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Update: article from David Rennie in today's Daily Telegraph plus a leader here. Meanwhile, Ireland’s RTE News reports that, "Ireland, Britain and Germany will oppose EU plans to scrap the national veto over decision-making on police and judicial co-operation."

COMMENT THREAD

News from Iran

Choosing sides means knowing clearly who your enemy is and why, as well as knowing who your friends are and why. That is why this article by Nat Hentoff, in the Village Voice is of great interest and importance.

Hentoff is on the left of the political spectrum or says he is. In fact, he is a true liberal, a man who believes fiercely in freedom, in particular freedom of expression. I first came across him rather late when I found his brilliant book for children and young teenagers: "The Day They Came To Arrest The Book".

The story involves attempts to ban "The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn", arguably the greatest American novel and is told from the point of view of a young boy who gets involved in the fight to prevent that from happening and learns a good deal of what the First Amendment to the American Constitution really means.

Years have gone by and Nat Hentoff is still fighting. More power to his elbow. But the subject of his article is worth thinking about. Next time you hear words about President Ahmadinejad not being all that bad and, really, no worse than, say, Bush or Blair, think about the women who are stoned to death for the crime of having been raped.

COMMENT THREAD

He doesn't use the internet

Lebanese president Emile Lahoud photographed using a photograph from Qana to illustrate a point in his address to the 61st session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters. You might recognise Green Helmet in a classic pose.

Snapped Shot has the story and lots more pics. AP, Reuters and others - they're all there, photographing a staged pic in another er... staged pic.

COMMENT THREAD

Will you pay our fines?

I suppose we should be grateful that The Daily Telegraph has done the booster seat law and again identified the European Union as the culprit – having had Tom Utley write about it in March.

After our complaints about The Times and The Sunday Telegraph failing to mention the EU origin of the law, it would be wholly ungracious not to recognise that on this, at least, the daily paper has a relatively good record.

Continuing on with our debate on how best to present the eurosceptic case, however, we could complain – as we did about Heffer yesterday – that giving the job to Boris Johnson actually does more harm than good.

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COMMENT THREAD

Which is which?

The following passages are taken from the websites of two "leading" campaigning organisations, one calling itself Eurosceptic and the other strongly Europhile. Which is which?

Exhibit A

While we are committed to European co-operation … we believe that the EU must now embrace radical reform based on economic liberalisation, a looser and more flexible structure, and greater transparency and accountability if it is to overcome these challenges, and succeed in the twenty first century. The best way forward for the EU is an urgent programme of radical change driven by a consensus between member states. In pursuit of this consensus, we will seek to involve like-minded individuals, political parties and organisations across Europe in our thinking and activities, and disseminate our ideas widely across the EU and the rest of the world.

Exhibit B

We support the UK's membership of the EU and oppose withdrawal to the margins; we support positive and constructive engagement with the EU as the only sensible approach and as vital to our national interests. We support a vision of a prosperous free-market Europe able to compete in a globalised world. We support economic liberalisation and oppose excessive EU regulation, centralisation and red tape. We support institutional reform, further cooperation between EU member states where it is in Britain's interests and oppose old-fashioned federalism.

Confused? So are we.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting above their station

Michelle Malkin is conducting a heroic battle against Associated Press over on her site, beating off a sustained PR campaign from the agency over the over their photographer – and terrorist sympathiser - Bilal Hussein, who took the delightful picture shown on the left (Michelle explains the context).

Interestingly, it was also AP which fronted the "rebuttal" over the Qanagate affair, rushing into print to condemn this blog's work without so much as having interviewed its editors.

At least this time, Michelle had the dubious privilege of being interviewed by AP reporter Robert Tanner but, as she says:

Instead of focusing on AP's questionable news suppression and Hussein's so-called journalism, Tanner quotes a few critical bloggers and then devotes the rest of the article reiterating the AP's defense of Hussein's work, quoting the AP and left-wing human rights crowd's call to free or charge him, and quoting liberal bloggers accusing conservative bloggers that unearthed this story of "thuggery:"

There seems to be something very sinister about the activities of AP and news agencies in general and my guess is that they have ceased to become agencies as such, and are now in the business of peddling influence.

That relates back to Nelson Ascher's paper in Politics Central yesterday, where he observes that, in a democracy, "influence is power".

Interestingly, of all the agencies, AP is possibly the most Europhile, displaying a clear bias in favour of the European Union, but it only just beats Reuters, whose chairman just happens to be Niall FitzGerald, also a member of the rabidly Europhile Britain for New Europe group. As is the EU largely anti-Israel, it seems no coincidence that two agencies which are largely pro-EU should also display a clear anti-Israeli bias.

It seems to me, therefore, that the agencies are no longer content with their passive role of reporting the news and are now seeking to make it – setting the agenda. If that is the case, they are getting above their station and need putting back in their box.

COMMENT THREAD

Britons ever shall be slaves

That is what will happen, according to the headline over Simon Heffer’s op-ed piece in The Daily Telegraph today, which tells us: "Britons could all too soon become slaves of Europe".

While I am fully aware that authors do not write their own headlines (or rarely do), one must assume that – from the tone and content of his piece – Heffer agrees with the sentiment expressed. It is also one held by many Eurosceptics and one which, via multiple e-mailings, I have been invited to share and endorse.

read more…

COMMENT THREAD

When all we can do is bitch

An intriguing and illuminating article, brought to our attention by one of our forum members, dissects the relationship between the MSM, politicians and NGOs. It is an important contribution to the debate about the way we are governed, a debate which should be pursued here with much more intensity, but has hardly started.

Headed "MSM, NGOs and paranoia", and written by Nelson Ascher for Pajamas Media, the strap tells us that the article looks "at the strange symbiotic relationship between the Mainstream Media and Non-Governmental Organziations and what it means to our lives", but this is one of those occasions when the strap undersells. Ascher also tells us a great deal about modern politics.

read more…

COMMENT THREAD

Winds of change?

As with Kremlinology, you look for clues where you can find them – and they are beginning to suggest that there has been a sea change in British foreign policy, away from Euro-enthusiasm and genuinely pro-US. All that just at a time when the British public seems to be turning the other way.

It is not just what Blair says - words are cheap, especially when they are uttered by our prime minister. And he tends to be one of those Walter Mitty characters who seems to agree with the last person he met.

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COMMENT THREAD

Outing the lobbyists

The shady world of Brussels lobbyists gets a little light shed on it today by the blog England Expects, with CorpWatch on the case as well.

Their target was Burson-Marsteller, one of the leading professional lobbying groups in Brussels, part of an industry that itself is huge, employing a workforce of some 15,000 lobbyists who spend €60-95 million ($76 - $120 million) a year to buy access to the EU's regulators.

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COMMENT THREAD

Choosing sides - 1

The Parliamentary All-Party Inquiry Into Antisemitism, whose report makes for interesting reading, says the following about Melanie Phillips’s written evidence:

In her written submission Melanie Phillips expressed the view that, with Israel being blamed for endangering the free world, the only Jews who are considered respectable are those who distance themselves from Israel. She says: "British Jews who try to defend Israel against these calumnies and uphold its right to defend itself against genocide are accused of 'dual loyalty'."

I suspect most of us have come across those attitudes, not least in the main-stream media or, as Rush Limbaugh describes them, the drive-by media. I remember discussing the matter with a very proper young man who had been in the army, was doing a second degree in International Relations or Politics and, I suspect, was aiming to join the Foreign Office. When I asked whether Israel had the right to defend itself, his comment was "well, -ish". He, or perhaps his tutor, had decided in their wisdom that, uniquely, Israel had no right to defend itself and its enemies had every right to do what they liked up to and including complete genocide, as threatened by a number of leaders in the countries that surround it.

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COMMENT THREAD

Is there a hidden message?

In a breathless piece on the Conservative Party website shadow defence secretary Liam Fox is warning that one the Royal Navy's main bases at Portsmouth or Plymouth could be closed down in a programme of "radical reductions" being masterminded by Labour ministers who have already slashed back the number of warships in the fleet.

We are told that, after defence secretary Des Browne slipped out his scheme to review UK naval bases in an obscure written statement - hoping to hide the news by coinciding the announcement with a briefing on his first major speech - Dr Fox questioned the Government's commitment to the Royal Navy.

Accompanying the piece though is a picture of an aircraft carrier (shown above) – but not as you might think a Royal Navy vessel. This is an aircraft carrier from the US Navy – probably Nimitz class.

Is there a hidden message here – or is this just the usual incompetence, the Conservative website managers being so thick they do not even recognise a US warship?

COMMENT THREAD

Heh!

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, those of you who have bothered to read the blog would have found themselves ahead in the game. Yesterday I wrote about the Hungarian Prime Minister, his lying, his very understandable refusal to resign and the various threats issued by students and trade unions.

I also pointed out that a month or so before the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was not, perhaps, a good time to challenge everybody in sight. The last time I was there in early 2005 I noticed that the number of memorials to that event was growing almost exponentially. Huh, I said to myself, time they had another revolution. They are becoming a little obsessed with the last one.As it happens, I do not think there will be another revolution now but the news this morning is of interest. According to the Guardian (and others)

“Protesters have clashed with police and stormed the headquarters of Hungary's state television, enraged at a leaked recording in which the prime minister admitted the government "lied morning, evening and night" about the economy.”

Hmmm. Sounds awfully familiar. There are, however, a few differences, not least the fact that at least one reason why the government was lying and now finds itself in a bind is because of their anxiety to join the euro as soon as possible.

Under-rated blog of the week

It's a bit dry at times, and occasionally dull - then aren't we all - but there is also some remarkably perceptive analysis, which makes a refreshing change from the lightweight froth that we have to suffer.

It's The Purple Scorpion.

COMMENT THREAD

Making you feel better

The next three weeks is party conference time - a pretty miserable interval for anyone in Britain who is interested in serious politics. We are now to be tormented by the slap-stick version practised by our joke political parties, of which we suffer three – the Liberal Democrats (most often known as the Lib-Dims), the (New) Labour Party (or Zanu-Lab as it is sometimes called) and the Conservative Party (more usually called the Tories, by friends and enemies alike).

The Lib-Dims go first, filling their agenda with endless policy debates of increasing unreality – like the current proposals to increase annual car tax from £190 for a modest saloon to £2000, and to add £2000 to the annual Council Tax bill. To follow is Zanu-Lab and then come the Tories, all with their carefully controlled agendas and stage-managed presentations.

Unsurprisingly, while the media pretends to take all this garbage seriously, filling acres of news space and wasting gigawatts of broadcasting power on coverage - and the more pretentious of the blogging community rush in to play at being journalists - sensible people in the political game try to arrange their holidays for this period or find urgent work abroad.

By contrast, for this short period, even our real government in Brussels looks vaguely interesting, especially as it is on the verge of being hoist with its own petard.

read more...

COMMENT THREAD

Why on earth should he resign?

No, I am not talking about the Pope, who cannot resign, anyway and who is being threatened by far worse things by the peace-loving Islamists with the support of almost the entire MSM (dead tree and electronic). The chap in question is the Hungarian Prime Minister, who has been caught out by somebody in his own party who leaked a tape of the man’s speech to the media.

In April of this year, the Socialist Party broke the “curse” on political parties in Hungary, under which none had won two elections in a row since the establishment of a democratic system in 1989.

On May 26, Ference Gyurcsány, the less than totally popular Prime Minister made a curious speech at a closed meeting of the party. His comments, freely larded with obscenities, centred on the somewhat unsurprising fact that he and his government had lied to the people of the country about the economic situation and the need for reforms.

“"We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening," he said in a speech that was littered with obscenities, and referred to his own administration as "boneheaded".”

Somebody leaked the tape to the news media. A brief excerpt was broadcast on the state radio on Sunday and longer ones on various news websites. Upon this, there was a demonstration outside the Parliament building and calls for Mr Gyurcsány’s resignation.

While admitting that he did say all of that and yes, there has been a “deluge of lies” covering the country in the last few years, that was not a reason for him to resign. How right he is. If politicians started resigning for telling lies to the electorate, there would be precious few of them left in any position. Hmmm. Something to think about.

The BBC World Service has thoughtfully provided several excerpts from the speech:

“"There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.

"Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true.

"You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?"”

It is entirely possible that the Prime Minister himself authorized the leak, in the hopes that harsh words will make harsh reform more acceptable. In this, he may well have been a little too clever (going round those revolving doors twice and ending up on the wrong side again perhaps).
Local elections are due on October 1 and they may well go against the Socialists. Furthermore, as Al-Jazeera reports:

“Student leaders have pledged to mass 10,000 people on the streets of Budapest this week, while trade unions said they would take action in October.”

Mr Gyurcsány cannot have forgotten the anniversary that is coming up this October. It is fifty years since the Hungarian Revolution, which was triggered off by a huge demonstration in which students, academics, trade unionists, all merged. I am not saying that history repeats itself. It never does, not exactly. But hubris is usually followed by nemesis.

COMMENT THREAD

This may cheer up a lot of our readers

One of those days, I fear, with more to come. As I opened my e-mails I found one of those round robin ones, which can be rather funny. I read it through and it was only moderately so.

Somebody, who clearly has more free time than is good for him/her put together various “spooky” things about number 11 (and I don’t mean the bus either). The list started with the fact that New York City has 11 letters, adding for good measure that New York is the 11th state. Well, blow me down. And so what? Anyone who thinks bad luck accrues to NYC has never been there.

It carries on with Afghanistan having 11 letters and Ramsin Yuseb (man who tried to blow up the Twin Towers in 1993) has 11 letters (in this particular transliteration) as well as George W. Bush. Wow and double wow. Actually, his full name is George Walker Bush, which is 16 letters.

We then get lots of adding up of figures about those planes, always making sure that inconvenient facts such as the real number of people on them remain carefully hidden. None of it really matters until one gets to the supposed translation of Verse 9.11 of the Koran.

Admittedly, there are disagreements on what that Verse really says as this debunking site points out. But what amused me was the complete stupidity of the person who thought that the quoted translation was somehow eerie or spooky:

"The most recognised symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, is the Eagle."

The following verse is taken from the Quran, the Islamic holy book:

For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace.

To me that says that the Eagle is going to cleanse the lands of Allah, which would imply a victory for the Americans. The person who had sent me the e-mail could not understand what I meant when I pointed this out. You know what? I don’t really want that debunked but I guess it has to be.

Perhaps the Americans should have listened to Ben Franklin and adopted the turkey as their national symbol as an infinitely more useful bird.

COMMENT THREAD

A Eurosceptic paper?

Buried in the nether regions of The Daily Telegraph business section today is the most remarkable claim that "UK is now top dog in Brussels".

The story is penned by Edmund Conway who has previewed an as-yet unpublished report by the Europhile group "Business for New Europe" (BNE), comprised in the main of refugees from the now defunct Britain in Europe – itself an offshoot of the European Movement.

read more...

COMMENT THREAD

More grand but futile statements

It was only nine days ago that we wrote about grand but futile statements in relation to Darfur. Somewhat to our surprise, though, it seems Tony Blair does not read our blog, although perhaps he should. It would have saved him from making yet another er… grand but futile statement.

This one is in a letter to his 24 European Union "colleagues", telling them that he knows "…we are all determined to ensure that the international community does not fail to protect our fellow human beings facing slaughter," adding, "I am committed to do everything I can on this."

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COMMENT THREAD

A great day...

Picture of a damaged Greek Orthodox church in Tul Karem, on the West Bank, after a peaceful Palestinian protest.

Another great day for the religion of peace.

COMMENT THREAD

Another own goal

The closure of up to 60 hospital departments, planned by the government to enable it to meet the requirements of the EU's Working Time Directive, has been supported by the medical establishment, "as the only way to guarantee the highest standards of care for patients".

So says Jo Revill, health editor for The Observer today in a carefully spun article that effectively means the EU is causing the closure of key departments in hospitals throughout the country.

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COMMENT THREAD

None so blind…

After my rant last Friday about the stupidity of Mary Ann Sieghart in The Times, for devoting her whole column to a complaint about the new seat belt law which comes into force tomorrow, while failing to mention that the law was implementing an EU directive, today it is the turn of The Sunday Telegraph to exhibit exactly the same level of stupidity.

Even in their own terms, this is dismal hackery but, in their determination to avoid confronting the elephant in the room, these hacks are missing an even bigger story. Not only is the EU imposing "safety" laws of dubious value, it is also stopping the UK government from introducing much-needed road safety measures that would prevent thousands of accidents.

read more…

COMMENT THREAD

National identity

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks has told The Sunday Telegraph that "Britain must regain a pride in its identity".

Nice to see him catching up. You read it here first.

COMMENT THREAD

Putting it all together

More than anything else, the photograph tells you all… the face of Islam as it protests against the imagined slight from the Pope, heedless of the fact that no offence was intended or in fact given.

Now, we are told, the Pope has apologised although, as my colleague indicates, the words used hardly convey any regret. And nor should they.

In fact, the last thing the Pope should do is apologise – there has been far too much apologising of late. It is about time the Western world recognised that, when you are dealing with figures such as the one pictured above – face contorted with hate – you do not apologise.

You send them a signal that affirms your own rights and values. If that hatred then turns to violence which threatens our own wellbeing – as it has done – you respond first with counter-threats and then, if the violence does not end, you kill those responsible for it. This is the way it has always been. To pretend otherwise is to ignore history – and the consequences of submission.

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COMMENT THREAD

Is this an apology?

There seems to be an enormous amount of hot air being generated over the Pope’s lecture in Regensburg and the subsequent statement from the Vatican. Of course we saw all the usual demonstrations, effigy-burnings, threats to the Holy Father, demands for an apology, comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini (by a Turkish politician who did not precisely explain the basis of the comparison) and other suchlike charming displays of desire for peaceful dialogue.

Shamefully but not surprisingly the MSM joined in on the wrong side, chattering idiotically about the Pope’s lack of diplomacy or of media savvy. It did not seem to occur to any of these benighted journalists or the unnamed diplomatic sources that the ability to appeal to the so-called liberal media may not be high on the Pontiff’s list of priorities. Speaking the truth and calling for a revival of spiritual values, on the other hand, seem to be quite important to him.

Among other matters, he is insisting that a

“dialogue between Christians and Muslims "cannot be reduced to an optional extra," adding: "The lessons of the past must help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes. We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other's identity."”

And, of course, there can be only one response to this and to suggestions that some Islamists prefer to impose their ideas, if they can be called that, by violence: violent street demonstrations. You know the kind of language bullies use: “Don’t you dare to call me a bully or I shall beat the living daylights out of you.”

The question is, however, did the Pope apologize. I am not so sure. The Vatican statement insists that his words cannot be changed, though he holds to the view that Islam is to be respected as a religion of the Book and one that is, in many of its tenets, close to Christianity.

The ridiculous accusation that the quotation from Manuel II Paleologus somehow represents Benedict XVI’s own view is dismissed. Then comes the crucial paragraph:

“The Holy Father thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful, and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions. Indeed it was he who, before the religious fervor of Muslim believers, warned secularized Western culture to guard against "the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom."

In reiterating his respect and esteem for those who profess Islam, he hopes they will be helped to understand the correct meaning of his words so that, quickly surmounting this present uneasy moment, witness to the "Creator of heaven and earth, Who has spoken to men" may be reinforced, and collaboration may intensify "to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom" (Nostra Aetate no. 3).”

The Pope has, indeed, spoken of the dangers Western culture faces at the moment as it is his task to do. If only the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of another large international church, would make pronouncements of that kind instead of rabbiting on about “The Da Vinci Code” or, in more light-hearted moments, the war in Iraq.

But the famous “apology” places the onus on the Muslim faithful who are called upon to think a little more carefully about what the Pope has said. Those he did not read his speech, have obviously not bothered to read the full Vatican statement either.

COMMENT THREAD

A dialogue of reason

The most telling part of the Pope’s speech, which is causing so much outrage in (some) of the Muslim world, is the last part, the conclusion. Said the Pontiff:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

And there we have it: "It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures" … he is inviting a dialogue.

How many of the rioters, the effigy burners and protesters (such as the Palestinians pictured above, in Gaza) do you think have actually read the speech – the whole speech?

COMMENT THREAD

Death of a courageous journalist

This time from natural causes. The death of Oriana Fallaci was announced today. We have mentioned this astonishing and admirable lady before, one from whom our own mealy-mouthed journalists who used to complain because Alistair Campbell used bad words to them, could learn something.

Ms Fallaci had been a war correspondent and an abrasive and controversial journalist, whose interviews have become legendary. In the last two years she has found herself in serious trouble because she has dared to write and publish two books: “The Force of Reason” and “The Rage and the Pride”.

Briefly, they are angry, even enraged calls on the West to stand up for its principles and not to give in to the Islamist demands. Inevitably, she was attacked, not just by the usual suspects from the Islamic community (no doubt a few demonstrations were organized in countries as far away from Italy as possible) but, sadly, by others as well.

Environmental Republican describes the American left-wing attitude to this woman whose cardinal sin was speaking what she believed to be the truth, even if it did not agree with “liberal” ideology. (Quotation marks are needed, since that ideology has no relation whatsoever with genuine liberalism.)

Michelle Malkin has an excerpt from her essay on the London bombings. Here is the full text. In it she appeals directly to Pope Benedict XVI to lead the fight for Western values. Whether the Pope listened to her or made up his mind separately, we know that he has taken up that challenge. And guess what. There were demonstrations denouncing his Regensburg lecture in Kashmir and other places where it is unlikely they have ever heard of the place or the man.

The Left in Europe hated her as well. But the saddest part of the story is the caving in of the Italian judicial system. Fallaci was found guilty of insulting Islam and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

She had to stay in the United States, though I note that her death seems to have occurred in a Florence hospital. Perhaps, she was allowed home to die. Alas, we shall not see her like again.

COMMENT THREAD

Why don't they just belt up?

That is the headline awarded to pontificator extraordinaire, Mary Ann Sieghart, in The Times today, who is deploring the new seat belt law due to come into force on Monday. This requires that most children up to the age of 10 (and shorter children of 11) must be strapped into special child seats or made to sit on booster cushions, on pain of a £50 pound penalty.

Sieghart makes some good points, not least the inconvenience caused when children are occasional passengers and there are no booster seats available.

Yet, she writes, "I don't suppose ministers thought twice before enacting it (the law). To them, it is a trivial piece of legislation, nothing like as important as, say, welfare reform or NHS governance. What they fail to realise is that this sort of law has a far greater — and more annoying — impact on most people's lives than either of the above."

And here we go again… these dismal, opinionated little hacks, so full of themselves that their brains have long been empty. Mary Ann, dear girl, this law is implementing an EU directive, specifically Directive 2003/20/EC. It was passed under qualified majority voting – a system where Britain has less than 13 percent of the vote (going down) and can be over-ruled. Thus, ministers had no choice about it – because it was EU law, they had to implement it.

But such intelligence is not for a dim little hackette like Sieghart. She launches off into demolishing the safety case for the new law – fair enough – but then concludes that, "This argument is too sophisticated for ministers. So the rest of us will suffer…."

No, you vain, stupid woman. The ministers were well aware of the arguments, and Dr Ladyman, the current transport minister probably has twice the brains you have. But he had no choice. I say again, it is EU law and must be obeyed.

At least Tom Utley knew it and was able to write a stonking piece last March, putting the blame exactly where it belongs. So, lady, if you can't get it right, why don't you just belt up?

COMMENT THREAD

Little things…

Turning away from great events and life and death matters, for the moment, we turn to er… life and death matters – and a particularly egregious demonstration of how Britain (and the rest of the 25 member states of the European Union) are run by an alien government – a matter which, potentially, has massive international implications.

To put this in context, few people will forget the scourge of BSE – or "mad cow disease" as it became popularly known – a disease which made its official appearance first in Britain and has since been detected in countries throughout the world.

In the initial stages of the disease – as in any animal disease, with or without human implications – early detection is vital, and control authorities rely on farmers and owners to report any ailing animals (or birds). To facilitate early discovery, it is common and necessary to pay compensation to the owners, to overcome the disincentive of a financial penalty arising from making reports.

At the early stages of what turned out to be a major epidemic, however, our government decided only to pay 50 percent compensation for cattle in which BSE was detected (which invariably followed a report from a farmer). As a result, there was a national outcry, with enormous media pressure for 100 percent compensation, for fear the disease would be concealed.

The then government quickly caved into the pressure and full compensation was paid, even in the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, reinforcing the principle that such payments were an essential part of any disease control programme.

But, from 1 January 2007, all that is set to change – not through any desire or action on the part of the UK government, or via a process over which the government has any control at all.

The instrument of change is to be the EU commission which, hitherto has permitted the payment of compensation to agricultural enterprises through what is called a "block exemption" to state aid rules – without which such compensation would be considered state aid and thus illegal under EU rules.

But the sole arbiter of what is and what is not state aid is the commission, which is acting under the mandate of the Treaties and needs no approval or authorisation from member states to change the detailed rules as it thinks fit.

Therein lies a bombshell. Issued on 8 September with a closing date of 17 September was a "consultation paper" from our own ministry concerned with agricultural affairs, known as the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) telling us that the commission intends to change the rules. This, of course, is "consultation" in name only, as no changes can or will be made to the document under consultation.

Set out in the commission document is a move away from universal full compensation that limits aid (i.e., compensation) to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and then to the 75 percent of the market value of animals slaughtered (80 percent in less favoured areas (LFAs)), plus an overall limit for animals slaughtered to outbreaks of disease which result in a 30 percent production loss on the holding concerned.

In the case of BSE, where losses were often confined to small numbers of animals (typically in ones or twos) in often quite large herds, this would have meant that no compensation at all would have been paid to the majority of farmers, with the likelihood that detection of the full extent of the epidemic might well have been delayed.

And, since we know not what might lie in the future, waiting in the wings is perhaps another disease or similar epidemiological characteristics, for which no compensation will be paid and which farmers, therefore, will be reluctant to report.

Nevertheless, since this is being put in place by a Commission Regulation, there will be no negotiations or vote on these issues. Says Defra in its consultation document, "the Commission will decide having listened to the views of the Member States and those with an interest."

What is stunning members of the farming communities (and, we are told, Defra) is the suddenness with which this issue has emerged and the speed with which it is to be implemented – and the fact that no one is able to block it. The commission is not in any way required to take account of the views of member states.

The UK, also, is particularly disadvantaged, in that its average farm size is seven times that of the community average, which means that fewer farms will in any event qualify for compensation that their continental neighbours will be able to pay.

In international terms, though, it is in the interests of every nation in the world that diseases are detected quickly and effective action is taken before they spread not least because – as is so often the case – disease knows no boundaries.

With one fell swoop, therefore, the commission is putting at risk the whole world. It is also abandoning a system that has been in place in the UK for several centuries - before most EU member states were countries - which is well founded, relatively equitable (not that all farmers would agree) and which gives the authorities a fighting chance of containing disease epidemics.

But our government in Brussels has spoken. No longer in vast areas of public policy and lawmaking are we an independent nation and, in this case as with so many others, our job is but to obey – like it or not.

More details on our partner site and Farmers Guardian today.

COMMENT THREAD

Well, they've buggered that one up

Revealed in The Daily Telegraph today is the shape of the new Cougar, 100 versions of which the MoD is purchasing to "relieve the hard-pressed snatch Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Curiously, the paper refers to the vehicle being a six-seater, where the original six-wheeled version, as ordered for the Iraqi Army, is intended to carry 14 troops.

From previous information, we understood that the vehicle was to have additional armour and now we see from the photograph what the MoD had in mind – great slabs of side armour, presumably to protect against explosively formed projectiles (and possibly, RPG-7s).

Compared with the original design (right), therefore, the armoured side windows to the troop compartment have gone, thus depriving the occupants of that all-important asset, situational awareness – the ability to see what is going on outside the vehicle and to assess the tactical situation, instead of being forced to dismount blind.

Additionally, the windows had gun ports, from which it was possible to fight from protected positions within the vehicle. This will not be possible with this version.

Further, the crucial feature of the basic design is the v-shaped hull, which deflects blast sideways and away from the vehicle – an attribute which contributes greatly to its survivability. This accounts for the fact for that, since their introduction by the US Forces, they have taken over 1000 IED "hits" without a single loss of life.

But, with the addition by the MoD of the new side armour which extends below the top line of the "v", a blast trap is created which will contain rather than deflect a bomb detonated under the vehicle. A large enough bomb will be able to flip the vehicle on its side, leaving the crew vulnerable even if they do survive the initial blast.

Then, unlike the US patrol vehicles, there is no top turret. From the look of the wire guards (the projections from the front of the cab) the MoD intends to have "top guards" standing unprotected in an aperture in the roof. Thus, for all the protection given by the vehicle, one or two crew members will still be highly exposed.

Basically, there is always a fine line to be drawn between additional armour, situational awareness and the fighting capability (with troop gun ports). Given that the unmodified vehicle has an unbroken record for protecting its occupants, it seems to me that the MoD has crossed the line.

Then, on reflection, you would expect the MoD to take a basically sound design and completely bugger it up. The civil servants have to justify their existence somehow.

COMMENT THREAD

Targets?

If nothing else, the last-minute intervention of the Polish government, in volunteering an additional 900 troops for deployment in Afghanistan, has temporarily saved the reputation of Nato. Failure to have fielded any additional forces would, as SecGen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made clear, have called into question the whole future of Nato as a viable military alliance.

One cannot help thinking, in this context, that this may well one of the factors that have been behind the reluctance of European governments to contribute troops. Expediting the demise of Nato has perhaps influenced members such as France, Italy and Germany, which are particularly keen to establish an autonomous military capability under the EU banner.

That it also puts the UK "on the rack" might also be seen as a beneficial outcome – a coded warning to future British governments that unless military action is planned within the EU framework, the support of the "colleagues" cannot be assured.

However, while Nato may live to see another day – but probably not many more – the Polish announcement does not offer immediate relief. The troops are not scheduled to arrive in theatre until February next year, and then they are to be deployed in the east rather than the south where Gen. Richards has called urgently for a mobile reserve.

In effect, the offering is too late to affect the immediate outcome of the current battles and will be going to the wrong area. Furthermore, winter will be here. This will force a slackening of campaigning and also give the Taliban an opportunity to regroup.

Then, without in any way denigrating the courage and determination of individual soldiers, the Polish Army is not yet amongst the most capable in the world rankings.

As an amusing but relevant digression, a very good friend of mine – now sadly deceased – was a military aviation fanatic and in the top world rankings of plastic aero-modelling. His models were so good that you could almost have been looking at the real thing. In recognition of his reputation, he was once invited to judge an international competition of military vehicle modelling. To the dismay of the organisers (and competitors) as he walked into the hall where hundreds of models awaited his inspection, his eyes lit up and he pronounced loudly and firmly, "Ah! Targets!"

Certainly, this was the fate of many of the Soviet units which were despatched to Afghanistan, some with equipment which dated from 1946 (the picture above right shows BTR152 APCs which were first introduced at that time). It took time for the Soviet tactics to evolve and, where they did achieve military success, it was with the combination of special troops (Spetznatz), attack helicopters – mainly the Mi 24 Hind and, latterly, the Su-25 "Frogfoot" (below left), the Soviet equivalent of the US A-10.

While the Soviets were eventually forced to withdraw in 1989, theirs was not entirely a military defeat but, like Vietnam for the Americans, was brought about by failures on the political front, both domestically and internationally. It would this be a brave – and stupid – man that ignored the Soviet military experience in Afghanistan, and failed to learn from the successes they did have.

But that is precisely what the western powers are doing. The Soviet campaign underlined the role of airlift for re-supply, the vital need for attack helicopters and all-weather, fixed wing ground attack aircraft and for high levels of mobility and firepower. These are precisely the assets which are most lacking in the current campaign.

Without this type of modern equipment necessary to fight a counterinsurgency, the fear is that the Polish forces may prove of little value and could instead be a liability, as indeed are the other forces – and especially the British – which simply do not have the equipment to do the job.

COMMENT THREAD

The words motes and beams spring to mind

There seems to be a good deal of excitement, especially on the American blogs, about Tony Blair's "withering attack on Thursday on what he called "mad anti-Americanism" among European politicians".

All well and good, say we. It is, for some reason, an accepted wisdom that while Europeans are anti-American, the British are not. This has long ago ceased to be true. There is a great deal of anti-Americanism among politicians and not just those on the left; there is a great deal of ignorant and bigoted anti-Americanism in the media, again, not just on the left; and there is a great deal of ignorant and bigoted anti-Americanism among the people of this country in general, despite the wholesale adoption of many American words, customs and practices.

I have heard too many people in this country, on all positions of the political spectrum, who seem convinced that every single American is stupider than every single Briton and this despite the obvious evidence of far more serious publications per head of population, far better university departments and research (not all, naturally) and greater achievements in many fields, as proven by my colleague's postings on defence and our general discussions of the situation in Iraq.

So, Mr Blair, if you are reading this blog. May we respectfully suggest that you contemplate Chapter 7, Verse 5 in the Gospel according to St Matthew:

"Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Here endeth the Lesson.

Nothing seems to change

The Non-Aligned Movement started in the 1950s, supposedly as a third way between the Communist camp, led by the Soviet Union and the Western camp, led by the United States. As the leading actors of this Movement were Pandit Nehru, the openly fellow-travelling Prime Minister of India (the country is well rid of him and, one hopes, his entire family) and Tito, one can seriously doubt its non-aligned nature.

Democracy Project refers to it, quite correctly, “as a lever for aid from each” but it was also a political weapon frequently used by the USSR in the United Nations and the burgeoning trans-national movement.

Things went slightly wrong over Afghanistan. With a large proportion of the NAM countries being Muslim they found it difficult to go on being pro-Soviet in the face of the blatant aggression. (Incidentally, it is worth emphasising that for several decades before the 1979, or to be quite precise, before growing Soviet interference Afghanistan was not a problem in international terms and was not particularly oppressive. The problems the world has had with that country and is still facing have grown out of those events.)

The results of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were far-reaching, as they contributed to the collapse of the Soviet system and the withdrawal of Soviet funds from various dictators and unpleasant vaguely Communist or Marxist parties. For a while there was some toing and froing and it even began to look like some of the Third World countries might slowly move towards some form of democracy and openness, politically and economically.

The jury is still out on some of the countries (not India, as it happens, which is doing remarkably well at the moment but, then, it is an Anglospheric country) but the Non-Aligned Movement is still with us and still bellyaching.

It can no longer play one superpower against each other in order to get aid, though the European Union would love to be in the position the Soviet Union was. (As the Russians say, “their guts are too thin”.)

So, instead, the NAM has readjusted its position to being solely, rather than just primarily, anti-American, claiming the virtues of multilateralism and anti-unipolarism for themselves.

118 of these countries (all members of the wondrous UN) are meeting in Cuba, that well-known (at least, to the BBC) haven of peace, freedom and brotherhood. Among those present are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, both of whom, as we know are then heading to New York City for the opening of the UN General Assembly.

Who else is there?

“Among some 50 leaders attending the heads of state portion of the Havana summit will be some of the world's most controversial political figures, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela's Chavez, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. North Korea will be represented by Kim Jong-il's deputy, Kim Yong-nam. Whether ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro will attend remains unclear.”

I am not sure “controversial” is quite the word I would use but Democracy Project is quoting CNS Report.

Here is a summary of the aims of this organization:

“Among the summit's purposes, it says, is "to condemn all manifestations of unilateralism and actions marked by attempts at hegemonic domination."

Principles guiding the NAM include "non-interference" in other states' affairs, "abstention from ... exerting pressure or coercion on other countries" and "abstention from resorting to the threat or use of force."

The document calls on NAM members to strengthen "multilateralism" and to work together at the U.N. and other international agencies on issues of priority to the movement.

These priorities, as listed, include "the rejection of unilateralism and the attempt to impose a unipolar world," "the condemnation and rejection of the imposition of coercive unilateral measures" and "the support of the Palestinian cause."

Apart from the statement on the "present international situation," NAM representatives also will adopt other statements, including a final summit declaration which - according to its draft - expresses support for Venezuela's populist left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, and concern about "aggressive" U.S. policies against his government.”

Good to know that when Chávez interferes in other countries’ affairs it is not interference. In fact, one would guess it is brotherly assistance and support.

It seems that the draft declaration on terrorism, which condemns Israel but does not even mention Hezbollah or, one assumes, any other terrorist organization has upset even Amnesty International, an organization not given to fair-mindedness or, even, sensible comments. In fact, the sooner Amnesty International gets back to what it was set up to do, that is campaigning for prisoners of conscience (just a few in Cuba, Iran and other countries we can think of) the better for all concerned, especially the unhappy staff of that organization.

On the other hand, if this meeting managed to provoke Amnesty International into making a more or less rational statement about the situation in Lebanon and northern Israel, some good may have been achieved, though inadvertently.

Anne Bayefsky’s comment in the New York Sun is to the point:

“Together, these nations represent the majority of the 132 developing states and the majority of 192 U.N. members. They are unified not by a desire to democratize, or even to develop, since many are quite content with kingdoms and with servitude in their own backyards. They are a team because they are adroit at U.N. politics, and they have learned that the cartel is good for business. This holds true particularly for the largest single bloc amongst them – the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.”

And no, in case you are wondering, their various ambassadors to the UN and other minions will not leave the despised flesh-pots of Manhattan. They will never try to relocate the UN headquarters to one of those non-aligned countries.

Of course, what really worries the richer Non-Aligned Countries (none of whose population is even remotely well-off) is the possible fluctuation in oil prices and what that will mean to the income of those at the top of those countries. Words are cheap, fuel is not.

Just to remind us of the historic past of the Non-Aligned Movement, huge posters have appeared in Cuba, “advertising”:

“Injustice trembles, Coming soon to a court in north America: 'The murderer' starring Posada Carriles and George W. Bush'”

Now Posada Carriles is really a controversial character. A leading anti-Castro and anti-Communist activist he has been accused of numerous terrorist actions by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments. Perhaps Amnesty International could investigate the truth of those accusations.

Even the bureaucrats are complaining…

…about bureaucracy.

That is the plaint from none other than EU commissioner Günter Verheugen, the so-called "European enterprise commissioner". And my heart bleeds for him – or at least it would if I could stop sniggering long enough.

His sorry tale of woe is recorded in Eupolitix where he at one calls for the EU to "repatriate researchers" and then declares that "less research bureaucracy is needed" if that is to happen.

I toyed with a career in academia once, after I had completed my PhD and was even offered a research/teaching post. But I had already spent years alongside my supervisor – a gifted and imaginative scientist – watching him spend most of his days processing forms and more forms, and attending meetings about processing forms, all to attract the meagre research funding that would keep his department functioning – and most often failing. And the bureaucracy – mind-sapping enough normally – was never more complex than when EU funding was involved.

To be a senior academic these days is to be a bureaucrat and it is no wonder that the people who are really interested in research for its own sake steer clear of the academic scene. They either go into industry or – what is worrying Verhuegen – depart for more liberal (and better paid) climes, such as the United States.

We see this reflected in the starkness of the figures. Europe produces more PhD science graduates than the US but has fewer people working in research than America or Japan – five per 1000 compared to nine per 1000 in the US and ten in Japan.

And there is a real economic penalty, as Verheugen readily appreciates. "This is an issue we have to get to grips with," he says. "We have no objections if people who did their training in Europe go elsewhere. But we have to pay the costs, what is learned by these people becomes acquired by others."

The insoluble handicap for Verheugen though is he is a bureaucrat, trapped in a nexus of the biggest bureaucracy in the world. And it is to that bureaucracy that he is turning for ideas, asking for proposals to be submitted for discussion at an informal European Council on 20 October.

Nothing he will be offered will do anything to solve the problem and anything that might solve the problem he could not accept. Thus he is doomed, just as are the attempts at improving EU communications.

That is the final hope for us all – bureaucracies become so cumbersome that they cease to be able to function and, being inherently incapable of reform, they must eventually self-destruct. Out problem is the amount of damage they do on the way, and the mess they leave behind them.

COMMENT THREAD

Research?

There has been much alarm in some sections of the eurosceptic community over an alleged EU proposal to transfer issues of criminal law and police co-operation from the third pillar of the EU treaties into the first pillar. This has been fuelled by an Open Europe "research" paper which claims:

At the European Council on 15 June, EU leaders instructed the EU Commission to draw up proposals to transfer This would abolish the national veto and would greatly increase the powers of both the EU Commission and European Court of Justice (ECJ) over a sensitive area of national policy. It would give the Commission sole right to propose laws in this area. So the Commission would actually gain even more powers over criminal law than it would have had under the EU Constitution (where the right of initiative was shared).

Oddly, for a paper which is described as research, there is no citation for the European Council conclusions and there is no direct quotation from them. Reference to the document, however, elicits the following declaration:

In the context of the review of the Hague Programme, the European Council calls upon the incoming Finnish Presidency to explore, in close collaboration with the Commission, the possibilities of improving decision-making and action in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice on the basis of existing treaties.

What stands out here is the Council has not "instructed" the commission to do anything, but "calls upon" the Finnish presidency, "in close collaboration with the Commission". Further, one notes the phrase: "on the basis of existing treaties".

And Open Europe calls its work "research"?

COMMENT THREAD

A failure to communicate

Argue all you like – the decision of this blog is final (until my co-editor weighs in). The most memorable line in any film, for all time, comes in that fabulous scene in Cool Hand Luke, when Luke is returned to the prison after an abortive escape attempt, to be confronted with the "Captain" – mirror glasses and all – who declares in that wonderfully laconic drawl, "What we've got here is … failure to communicate".

Anyhow, it is precisely that "failure to communicate" which is still troubling the "colleagues" in the European Union, to which effect the EU parliament has commissioned a series of reports from its favourite think-tank, the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Theses reports, according to the summary in Euractiv complain that there are still weaknesses in the commission's strategy which means that the EU as a whole is still failing to "reconnect to its citizens".

One cannot avoid the comment - which we've no doubt made before - that an organisation that is trying to "reconnect" when it has never connected in the first place hasn't even got past first base.

Predictably, though, the CEPS studies find a "lack of resources" and "inflexible internal rules for financial control" as the main culprits for a failing communication strategy.

Inevitably, a bureaucratic organisation will always complain of lack of resources – their standard response is always to throw more money (other peoples' money) at a problem, so it is the problem of "inflexible internal rules" that is especially interesting.

According to a high-level official this is because the executive "still has a bureaucratic culture of non-communication where the making of legislation is more important than the communication with citizens". Apparently, the current financing rules are too strict and prevent the commission handling the "mostly small amounts of money for communication measures more flexibly".

In other words, they can handle the big, legalistic projects that take months and years to plan and set up but, when it comes to acting quickly and flexibly, in response to rapidly changing circumstances, the rules and procedures are slowing the corporate monster down.

CEPS is arguing that the system should be decentralised, giving commission representations in the member states the necessary resources to do the communications job locally. It then spoils it all by suggesting that "more common standards" are needed – i.e., more centralisation.

In a way, this is all very encouraging. What the CEPS is advocating are the very two things a vast, centralised bureaucracy cannot do – acting locally and flexibly. And, if those two elements are the key to success, as the CEPS seems to think they are, then they are effectively (albeit unwittingly) writing off any chances of an EU communications strategy ever being effective.

On the other hand, for all the poverty of the eurosceptic movement, it is certainly decentralised and it can be highly flexible, not least because there is no central direction. In the final analysis, that may be why we are going to win.

COMMENT THREAD

Someone seems impressed by Western negotiations with Iran

The New York Post reports that our good friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been continuing his campaign to promote freedom and democracy in Iran.

Two of the remaining opposition newspapers have been closed down for criticizing (rather mildly) the government. Anyone who thought that it is the job of opposition newspapers to criticize the government needs to be sent to a re-education camp.

“Iran's most prominent reformist daily, Shargh, or East, ran a cartoon Thursday depicting a horse and donkey facing each other on a chess board. The donkey - a symbol of ignorance in Iran - has his mouth open and light around him.

Iranian judiciary officials apparently took the donkey to represent Iran in nuclear negotiations with the West, journalists said.

Ahmadinejad reportedly said he felt there was a light around him, and that world leaders focused unblinkingly on him when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly last year.”

I am a little puzzled by the fact that it is Iran that is portrayed as the donkey in the nuclear negotiations with the West but the newspaper has its own battles to fight. I recall an evening spent with Russian friends in Moscow in 1990, a few months before the Soviet Union bade the world farewell. We had a discussion about newspapers and what Western ones might have written about the Soviet Union. In response to some question I said airily: “Oh well, it’s only newspapers. You can’t really believe them.” There was a shocked silence round the table. Eventually, somebody asked rather timorously: “What not yours either?”

The link to the story came from AllahPundit, who, in the same posting compares the large Iranian competition for the best anti-Semitic cartoon to the Israeli competition run in response to it. I have to agree with AllahPundit – the Israeli cartoons are much funnier. Still you can judge them for yourself.

COMMENT THREAD

European Union backtracks on promises

The creation of a Palestinian government through an agreement between Fatah and Hamas has encouraged the European Union to start backtracking on their assurances that they will not lift the economic embargo (except for a large amount of money sent in supposedly for humanitarian purposes that allow the PA to use other funds to pay their armed militias) until Hamas agrees to the “ending violence, recognizing Israel and accepting previous accords between Israel and the Palestinians”.

Far from insisting on the three conditions, according to Ahmed Yusef, political adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, an acceptance of the Hamas stand on all those issues – i.e. a complete refusal – will now be known as “a more balanced stance regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict”.

To be fair, the information comes from the new Palestinian government that has not had time to achieve anything very much or, even, make its presence felt in the Palestinian territories but we have not had a denial from the European Union.

The argument is that the new government is not a Hamas one but a coalition between the two main political groupings. So, that’s all right. Furthermor, as Ha’aretz quotes Ahmed Yusef saying:

“Recognition and other political issues will be part of the negotiations Abbas will hold. We have granted him full legitimacy to negotiate on behalf of the entire Palestinian people. If he can achieve a diplomatic solution, his plan will be presented before the Palestinian institutions, such as the government and the parliament, and they will need to authorize his proposal. The Arab initiative and the previous UN resolutions will be part of the government's future political agenda.”

Which means precisely nothing. The Arab initiative is the Saudi plan for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders (which, of course, did not involve the existence of a Palestinian state, Gaza being then in Egypt and the West Bank in Jordan).

The purpose is greater pressure on Israel, though, clearly no pressure is needed on such states as Syria or Iran or such organizations as Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We will put forth a broad political program that will result in greater European support for the Palestinians, and that will create more diplomatic pressure on Israel, in the hope that this will soon end Israeli occupation. A new diplomatic initiative is needed to bring about change and a solution through peaceful means. The initiative must include greater European, international and Arab involvement than the failed initiatives of the past.”

Can’t wait to see the broad political programme. Will it include democracy and freedom of the press in the Palestinian territories as it exists in Israel? In the meantime, let us remember that, according to Hamas, all of Israel’s territory is regarded as occupied. By supporting the new Palestinian government’s point of view the EU accepts that reading of the Middle Eastern situation.

COMMENT THREAD

The king minnow

It is not only highly fashionable to believe the worst of politicians but experience also tells us caution is the best policy – the oft-quoted jibe about knowing when a politician is lying (when he/she moves their lips) being more true than most can imagine.

Less obvious are the legions of politicians who are quite frankly stupid – without the wit to hold more than one idea in their heads at one time. These gravitate naturally to political parties, which require of their members only that they hold the "right" idea and nothing else.

Most of these have devised stratagems to conceal their stupidity from their voting publics – and even themselves – although there was one Member of Parliament in Yorkshire (the UK equivalent of Texas, without the charm) who positively paraded his stupidity, declaring that there were many stupid people and they had a right to representation in parliament. (I guess he wasn't that stupid – holding his seat for over forty years in celebrated idleness before retiring on a handsome state pension.)

However, if the stupid are allowed their representation, there is one larger and more strident group that is not allowed that luxury. That group is the eurosceptics – a band of brothers (and sisters) who have that weird idea that, to be an independent, sovereign state, you actually need your own elected government, in your own country, and should not hand over your law-making powers to a bunch of unelected apparatchiks in a foreign country.

So far has our ruling elite degenerated in a country that many outsiders still believe is a democracy that, in 1992 or thereabouts, when a group of dedicated patriots decided to form their own political party to take their case to the people, their message was treated as heresy.

Thus, a party by the name of the United Kingdom Independence Party, seeking to regain that independence which too many people do not even realise we have lost, has been ignored, mocked, ridiculed, slandered and generally insulted – but largely ignored.

The inevitable result is that, outside this country of ours, very few people have even heard of UKIP, as it is more generally known, much less its new leader, elected yesterday by 45 percent of its members who bothered to send in their voting slips, a stunningly unimpressive 3,329 people.

That leader goes by the name of Nigel Farage, a member of the EU parliament since the 1999 elections and leader of an equally unimpressive group of MEPs totalling ten, including himself, the Party having lost two since twelve were elected in the ground-breaking 2004 Euro-elections.

Fortunately, Mr Farage presents a respectable and genial face to the public – although his private life is often less so. His lack of political acumen and intellectual ability barely shows alongside his lacklustre colleagues, which enabled him to crawl rather than storm to victory yesterday.

Also fortunately, the deliberate determination of the media and the political establishment to ignore UKIP reflects in the almost total lack of publicity the Party gains, which means that very few of the voting public realise how dire and uninteresting it really is, and how little it has to offer.

Fortified by that ignorance, a significant number (not large, even by UK standards, but certainly significant) are therefore prepared to vote for it, knowing the one thing they need to know – that it is the only political party dedicated to securing British withdrawal from the European Union.

At the last general election, that amounted to 618,898 people or 2.3 percent of the popular vote – too widely spread to gain a representative in parliament but enough to influence the outcome in as many as 30 seats.

Such is the growing disillusionment with the current party system, however, that more and more people are prepared to ditch their traditional party loyalties and vote for the minnows, of which UKIP is one.

Provided Mr Farage can keep up his geniality in public and the media continues to ignore his party, such is the public mood here that, come the next general election - which could be in two or three years time - UKIP could do even better than it did last time.

This will not be reflected in any seats gained but, with the closeness of the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, the former gaining 9,556,183 and the latter 8,772,598 votes in 2005, it could act as king maker in enough seats to decide the overall outcome of the election.

UKIP members themselves are scarcely aware of their own power in this respect and even electoral pundits who make their forecasts about the state of the parties rarely take it into account - not least because their computer models cannot cope with the complexity. But it is the likes of UKIP, the so-called "extreme" right-wing party, the BNP, plus a myriad of independents and smaller parties which are subtly changing the nature of British politics.

With Mr Farage at the helm of UKIP, the day may now be closer when the political giants are brought down by the minnows. And the immensely enjoyable thing about that will be the media which, having largely ignored the Party all these years, will be the last to realise what is happening.

COMMENT THREAD

A little more attention would go a long way

Most of our readers know that I am seriously uninterested in toys. Any kind of toys, not those with wings or those with wheels. I am, however, aware of the political aspects of defence and, even, of toys. So, I want to call attention to Professor Jeremy Black’s latest publication “The Dotted Red Line”, subtitled “Britain’s Defence Policy in the Modern World”.

Professor Black is an eminent historian who seems to be able to publish more than any person alive. There are big books, small books, essays, papers and articles as well as many reviews on The Social Affairs Unit blog. In fact, this book was published by the SAU earlier this year as a sort of companion volume to last year’s “The European Question and the National Interest”.

We are not simply talking about an eminent historian but one who is concerned with the sort of ideas that we in our own humble way (do stop sniggering, there) try to analyze on this blog. Furthermore, Professor Black exhibits the most profound scepticism about the European Union and, indeed, transnational organizations. Unfortunately, his scepticism, also well-merited about Tony Blair’s policies overcomes the others.

The problem with these short volumes is just that: they are short and try to pack in an enormous amount of information and discussion. One comes away from reading them feeling absolutely breathless and, I am sad to say, somewhat disappointed. If people like Professor Jeremy Black cannot get it straight in their minds, what hope is there for the rest of the country?

“The Dotted Red Line” follows the pattern of the previous book, with a chapter on history, the immediate past or the ending of the Cold War, the present situation and future scenarios. It is with the last one that I had problems with.

Well, to be honest, one always has problems with future scenarios, particularly at the end of a book that has shown all past future scenarios as being completely erroneous. The problems with Professor Black’s analysis that, although he does appreciate that the EU is intending to become a political union, that is, a state, he seems to ignore the fact of defence integration as being part of it.

Thus, he talks a great deal about procurement and whether Britain should have closer links with the United States in this respect or the European Union, coming to the conclusion that the future for British defence policies should concentrate on

“… strategic roles that are framed without being directed by the exigencies of particular alliance partners. This latter comment applies to both the EU and the USA. The British military needs to cooperate with both by drawing on a force package which is strong in particular roles that build on national expertise and needs. Commerce protection is an obvious example. In contrast, whatever the future requirements of allies, there is no need for a large-scale tank force capability, or for a large-scale aerial interception equivalent.”

I shall leave the question of “large-scale tank force capability” to one side as my colleague has discussed it already and will, no doubt, do so again. It is not unreasonable to urge future British governments to try to influence whatever defence alliances this country might be part of, with a view to British interests (not, I fear, properly defined in this book). But the whole argument would be more interesting and more acceptable if Professor Black made it clear that the EU is not simply another alliance.

As David Cameron in his speech, so Professor Black in his book: neither seems to grasp that the EU’s defence policy involves total integration. We cannot be part of that and America’s allies (or part of the Anglosphere, a possibility Black does not discuss) at the same time.

COMMENT THREAD

The legacy of Mr Heseltine

This is a defence posting, and one almost feels the need to apologise for putting up yet another one. However, that is the way the cookie crumbles. This one has wider implications than just defence – posts on other subjects will follow.

Something of the debate about defence spending that should be happening in the UK is beginning to emerge in Germany, where the German Armed Forces have announced ten "mission-oriented procurement and modernisation programmes" worth a total of €5.5 billion (just short of £4 billion).

While the programmes await parliamentary approval, critics have already piled in, saying the Army needs more protected vehicles than have been called for in the procurement plans.

Not least, it has emerged that, while defence minister Franz-Joseph Jung has issued orders that German ISAF forces in Afghanistan should to conduct patrols only in protected vehicles, this order cannot be obeyed. Despite the deployment of mine-protected Dingos, and the decision to buy more, there are not enough to go round. Thus, most of the troops must ride in unprotected “Wolfs” – the Mercedes Benz equivalent of the Land Rover.

While the Army goes begging, however, the big winner is the Navy which gets €3.18 billion, mainly for new frigates and submarines. One of the key items of expenditure, though, is a Luftwaffe programme worth €1.1 billion which includes "Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft role adaptation, integrated logistics support for role adaptation, adjustment, retrofitting and role equipment". This will cost a cool €540 million.

This has had retired Lt. Gen. Manfred Dietrich, president of the German Army Association, fuming. He says that "although the Eurofighter is an important and necessary asset in the German Armed Forces, one cannot draw a requirement of 180 aircraft based on today's missions conducted by the Bundeswehr and other nations."

On the other hand Bernd Siebert, defence spokesman for the ruling Christian Democrats has asked for an extra €2 billion on top of the budget to be spent on military equipment over the next two years.

He is backed by Dietrich, who has called for an "annual special programme fund, which is not part of the defence budget" worth €2 billion "carefully controlled by the parliament", enabling the Bundeswehr to acquire, even on short notice, what they need for missions.

He says the Army needs more than "3,000 protected vehicles and a lot more Future Infantry Systems," just to give the Bundeswehr protection for its current commitments.

One immediate point emerges from this. Like in the US, defence procurement spending requires the specific approval of the elected representatives, which does ensure that there is debate on the proposals made by government.

This is quite unlike the UK where the Ministry of Defence has a global budget, voted annually as part of the government's general expenditure. Announcements are then made piecemeal by the Ministry, most often by way of a ministerial statement, with no debate and no specific parliamentary approval required. Decisions are examined after the event and any debates that follow can only deplore government actions, without being able to force changes.

If there was one reform in the UK which would substantially enhance MoD performance, it would be to make all defence procurement decisions subject to parliamentary approval.

But the central point here is the similarities here between the German Army situation and that of the British Army. Both have forces deployed in Afghanistan and both are starved of resources while the "big projects" get the funding, not least the Eurofighter.

With 232 of these machines on order for the RAF, at £60 million each – with the bills only now coming in – we are saddled with a Cold War project which has little relevance to our current operational needs – as indeed even The Daily Telegraph recently observed.

Whatever the merits of the current machines, it must be remember that the multi-national project was originally conceived for wholly political reasons, as a means of fostering European defence integration via common defence industrial projects – on which basis it was enthusiastically endorsed by that rabid Europhile Michael Heseltine.

Had we then bought US F-16s – at a third of the cost of the Eurofighter – we would have been better served not only financially but operationally as, unlike the current Eurofighter version, these aircraft have a potent ground attack capability. Even now, the MoD is having to spend another £73 million on preliminary work to develop the Eurofighter for the ground attack role.

This is by no means the end of the expenditure as European-designed weapons for the Eurofighter are far more expensive than their US counterparts, all of which means that our forces are struggling to make ends meet, while money drains into the sand to fund the great European fantasy.

That is the legacy of Mr Heseltine and the malign effect of a failed experiment which, even now, is costing lives.

COMMENT THREAD

Freedom of the media, Chinese style

Next time we hear delighted media accounts from China, it might be worth remembering the following report from Xinhuanet.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang explained to the foreign media at the routine monthly press conference:

“He said the measures are aimed at standardizing the foreign media's distribution of news and information and regulating domestic users' subscription of news and information from the foreign media, promoting the sound and orderly dissemination of news and information, and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of foreign media and domestic users.”

He did add that “China [was] an open society and has always taken a welcome attitude towards foreign media and journalists' reporting work in China”. Well, as long as it was properly regulated and standardized, particularly as far as domestic readers were concerned.

Two million up

Some time about midday, while I was furiously writing my last post, the counter clocked up our two millionth hit, a singular milestone in the life of any blog – and one I missed. By the time I looked at it, it was recording the figure shown left.

At the beginning of this year, looking at past performance and extrapolating the slow but steady growth in readership, Helen and I estimated that we would reach the one million-mark some time about the end of October. But that was before "Qanagate", an event neither of us could have anticipated.

By that reckoning, that single issue brought us over a million hits, demonstrating the strong public interest in our investigation. It says something of the British media that none of the mainstream news organs have carried it in their main sections and, while various media outlets have been happy to promote some British blogs, references to EU Referendum are noticeably absent in articles which have relevance to the issues we cover.

Nevertheless, two million hits is a happy event. Amongst those who made up the number, it has brought us many new – albeit "virtual" friends and many have stayed on after the "Qanagate" coverage, to become regular readers. To them we extend a special welcome, as well as thanking those that were with us from the start and who have joined us on the way. AS I have written before, without our readers, we would simply be lonely voices, squeaking in the wilderness.

That we need readers is self-evident but more so as we are a campaigning blog – we are not in this for our egos or for the pleasure of seeing the "hit counter" tick over, but to get things done. I would be happy to stop blogging tomorrow if we felt our job was done.

But we are changing things. Although, in the final analysis, it was a team effort which included my good friend Christopher Booker and, latterly, The Sunday Times, we feel that we did make the difference on the "Snatch" Land Rover campaign. I take some pride and comfort in the fact that, when new armoured vehicles finally do reach Iraq, they will save lives and, because of the input of the blog and our readers – as well as the other bloggers who joined in - there will be good people alive who might otherwise have died.

For that reason, we will continue with the Pinzgauer farce, those "coffins on wheels", as we have described them, and with the tolerance and support of our readers (but with little help from the MSM) will keep "banging on" until these death traps are withdrawn and more suitable equipment is put in place.

Perversely, this was not what the blog was set up to do – and not something we anticipated when the EU referendum was first announced in April 2004. But, when the French and Dutch deep-sixed that project, we decided to widen our scope and change our strap, which became, after much discussion: "to discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world".

We have more or less kept true that that line, although the relationship between an increasing number of our posts and our blog title is becoming more and more tenuous, almost to breaking point. That has been pointed out by some of our readers, and in particular in some very kind and thoughtful e-mails we received in response to my recent post (to which we will reply shortly).

Therefore, Helen and I are thinking hard about where we go – whether to set up a new blog - and many incidental issues, not least whether we can afford to migrate and lose our "brand identity" as EU Referendum. We must also think hard about financing the operation as it is now absorbing so much time that the idea of a "day job" is also becoming rather tenuous. It is only with the support and tolerance of our "employers" that we have managed so far.

That said, which is probably too much, we must thank again our readers past and present, and our forum members – many of which we will continue to vex – and look forward to our next million, either in this or another format, depending on the outcome of our ruminations.

COMMENT THREAD

Snarl mode

No this isn't another defence posting – it is about my current preoccupation: indolent (and rather stupid) hacks… who just happen to be writing about defence issues.

The rot started at the weekend, with The Sunday Telegraph starting its ill-judged campaign on soldiers' pay, bleating that an eighteen-year-old soldier got paid a starting wage slightly less than a qualified (and much older) teacher.

For sure, there are pay issues – mainly relating to some of the allowances that have been withdrawn – but any reference to Army pay scales shows that they are not ungenerous. Together with the opportunities for training and promotion – with the higher pay scales that go with them – the non-contributory pension and resettlement deals, the total package may not be a king's ransom but it is far from the "outrage" that The Sunday Telegraph would have us believe.

Such is the nature of modern hackery though that, no sooner is the virus in the system, then the other hacks pile in and copy each others' stories. First at the gate, yesterday, was The Independent, which ran a scandalised headline, "British soldiers risk death for less than the minimum wage".

They work this out by taking the average salary of a newly qualified soldier, applying a notional 16-hour day in a combat zone and calculating an hourly rate of £2.45 – less than the minimum wage. One could ask whether the Independent would find it acceptable that soldiers risk death, unnecessarily, for a higher rate of pay – but such niceties do not trouble this newspaper.

The Independent was not alone. It was joined by The Daily Express and, I gather, The Mail but, with those stories consigned to the archives, today was the turn of The Times to trot out the same mantra – this time via the keyboard of staff columnist Libby Purves. But, for her, the paper chooses a more lurid title: "A man's job on a boy's salary".

Despite this, the strap has a certain resonance, asking: "Who cares about feuding politicians when a soldier in Afghanistan is paid £2.45 (honestly) an hour?" The first part reflects our sentiment - with our troops engaged in fighting, this is no time for politicians to be squabbling about the leadership of the government. But, like the hacks before her – going for safety in numbers - Purves chooses to contrast this with the money: the wrong choice. We do not pay "blood money" and our soldiers are not mercenaries. If they're in it for the money, they're in the wrong job.

Nevertheless, with a clever-dick introduction to show what an important writer she is, Purves then launches into the well-worn thesis (not that she acknowledges that two newspapers have already had a go at it), cutting to the chase by paragraph six: "…a man with a year's training, engaged in Helmand, is taking (or more likely sending) home £1,150 a month — Is that fair?"

With some deft cutting and pasting and judicious editing to avoid making it look like the plagiarism it is, Purves then goes into sermonising mode, telling us:

…soldiers are different. Service people place themselves under obedience; they agree to be a tool of the State, not to ask questions or flounce off on a whim. Soldiers have to go to war even when they think it’s a nonsense; they are bound by loyalty to their fellows, Queen and country. Politicians are given the awesome responsibility of deploying this human loyalty, and they therefore have a massive duty of care towards the military, who are at their mercy. It is far greater than any imaginary duty to nag the rest of us about our weight, tell us how to think about Islam or pay us compensation for tripping over paving stones.

And they don't fulfil the duty to the forces. That matters. It matters far more than what Charles said Gordon says about Tony, and whether it might be Alan's chance. A plague on all their houses.

A nice flourish at the end and, wham, bam, thank-you ma'am! That’s another thousand quid in the Purves coffers – or whatever the current rate is for "superstar" writers - for not much more than an hour's work at the keyboard. Not for her the sixteen hours at less than minimum wage. I did suggest, in The Times comments that, if the lovely Libby was that concerned, she could always donate her salary to the cause. There is no chance of my post being published.

That, of course, is not the point. The real point is that the most pressing issues in Helmand and elsewhere are "overstretch" – not enough troops – and crap equipment.

Something of the latter comes over in The Daily Telegraph today, in an interview with Lt Gen David Richards, commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

He gives a bullish account of the campaign – which is precisely what you would expect. His job is not to fill the pages of newspapers but to hold the line – to stiffen resolve and morale, and to send a message to the enemy, the representatives of which will undoubtedly be scanning the western media for clues of Nato intentions.

Even despite this though, after the reports over the weekend of "beleaguered British forces marooned in isolated 'platoon houses' in the north of Helmand suffering daily attacks from the Taliban," Gen. Richards is on the back foot.

He makes it clear that the tactic was not of his making: "The platoon houses were occupied before I took command of this operation," he says. "I'm not going to be critical, but they are only one tactic. They have some benefits but they happened before I took command". He adds that the sole seeming advantage is that the platoon houses have acted as magnets to the insurgents who have taken heavy losses trying to take them. The disadvantage "is that we lacked sufficient manoeuvre capability to move around Helmand in a more hard-hitting role".

There it is – slightly between the lines – but there: "…we lacked sufficient manoeuvre capability". In other words, we lack the (armoured) vehicles, the medium and heavy-lift helicopters and – while we are about it – the tactical support helicopters, the artillery, the reconnaissance assets and all the rest of the kit needed to root the enemy out of his lair. And, if you lack those assets and want to engage the enemy, what else do you do but adopt the "Alamo tactic" of placing your troops in harms way, where the enemy cannot ignore them, and letting them take the hits.

That is at the heart of the problem and that is the problem the media should be addressing. And in this, for all her sermonising, does not Purves – and the rest of the band of dismal hacks – also realise that they too have a duty to the forces? Theirs is to seek out the inadequacies and failings of the government, to expose them to public gaze and to orchestrate the outrage that will force change.

But, to address equipment and tactical failings (the latter brought about by equipment and manpower shortages) requires knowledge and understanding. Both can be gained, but that takes time and hard work. When it comes to the Libbys of this world – on her thousand pound an hour sinecure – that is too much effort. For someone who would not know the difference between an APC and an MICV, much less an MPV - and who probably thinks DPM stands for deputy prime minister – following the pack and wingeing about peripheral issues is the easier option.

And that, dear reader, is modern journalism.

Update: The BBC Radio 4 World at One programme today ran a feature about Afghanistan. It carried out a vox pop in Colchester, from where many of the forces currently in theatre are drawn, speaking to soldiers and soldiers' wives; it spoke to a military expert and no less than three MPs, plus the father of one of the soldiers who had been killed. All of them, without exception, spoke of "lack of resources" (i.e., manpower) and inadequate equipment. Pay and conditions were not mentioned at all. If ever there was an ersatz campaign, got up by a small number of dim-witted hacks, this is it.

COMMENT THREAD

Under-rated blog of the week

Alright, it's Scottish, but the writing is good, with a dry sense of humour, some good pics and a deft political touch.

It's Freedom and Whisky - a nice combination.

COMMENT THREAD

The challenge of reality

If one were to try and guess what either or both Basil Liddell Hart (left) and JFC Fuller were thinking at this moment – presumably as they perched on their lofty celestial clouds (or perhaps not in the case of Fuller) - it is difficult to decide whether they would be laughing or crying.

Both of them armoured warfare theorists in the inter-war period and strong advocates of the tank, they might perhaps be amused – in an ironic sort of way - by the news that the Canadian government has ordered its armed forces to prepare 120 troops and 15 Leopard tanks to send to Afghanistan as early as next week.

This is the government which used has 66 of these machines but was in the process of trimming the fleet to about 44 vehicles, judging them costly and less useful than in the Cold War era, having succumbed to the current military fashion for medium-weight wheeled armoured vehicles.

What has the hallmarks of a sudden decision follows changes in Taliban tactics in southwestern Afghanistan, where the 2,200 Canadian forces contingent is heavily committed in Operation Medusa to clearing out the Taliban from Kandahar province.

According to Canadian deputy commander Colonel Fred Lewis, the Taliban appear to be concentrating forces and digging in defences - moving to what he called "semi-conventional" combat, compared to guerrilla-style tactics employed before. In this scenario, the tanks would provide well-protected firepower to blast away and plough over such defences.

Interestingly, at 42 tons, the Leopards are considerably lighter than the US Abrams tank – weighing in at 65 tons – are more lightly armed with a 105mm gun as opposed to the Abram’s 120mm, but they are also faster. They may prove a better weapon against lightly armed irregulars, providing the Canadian all-arms co-operation is good enough to protect them from the ubiquitous RPG-7s.

But the crucial issue here is that, yet again, another army is turning to heavier armour. This follows in the wake of the US and Israeli armies, who have found that there is no substitute for thick steel when protection is needed, reversing the thinking of recent decades where the tank has been considered redundant on the modern battlefield.

The news comes little more than a week after the new British Chief of the General Staff (the professional head of the British Army), Sir Richard Dannatt , has called for a debate on defence spending, questioning whether the five percent of public spending (about £30bn) on defence was sufficient.

A similar line was taken by The Times but it must surely be getting to the point where there must be a similar debate on what equipment is needed by our forces, who are committed to so-called "asymmetric" conflicts for the foreseeable future. Not least, the big-spending projects like the £14 billion FRES project must be reconsidered, now that the former CGS, General Sir Mike Jackson – and champion of the project – has departed.

The problem is, of course, that – nominally – the UK government is still committed to Chirac's dream of a European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF), of which the FRES concept is an integral part. Will Blair have the courage to tell L’Escroc that he needs to ditch the dream or will we have to wait for his successor – presumably Gordon Brown – to break the bad news to Chirac's successor?

Therein, however, lies danger. So laboriously has the ERRF deal been stitched up that unravelling it and its component parts, like the European Capabilities Action Plan and establishing the EU Battlegroups (with plans only finalised in 2005), would open up a such a can of worms that the "colleagues" might resist any review. They could instead put pressure on member state signatories to honour their commitments and maintain their European fantasy.

Thus, while most of the forces which are actually in contact with the enemy are having to revise their thinking – and their equipment programmes – to deal with the realities on the ground, the British government may find itself under pressure to stick to the programme agreed with the "colleagues".

Whether a new prime minister will rise to the challenge – the challenge of reality versus dogma – and resist the pressure, will be an important test. Many lives will depend on the result.

COMMENT THREAD

The struggle continues

[Health warning: this is not a posting by Dr North so a number of our readers will want to skip it. Please do so.]

As my colleague pointed out earlier, there is one overwhelming topic for today and that is the war the West is waging against another manifestation of oppressive illiberalism. I imagine all of us can recall with great precision where we were and what we were doing when we saw or heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

As for me, that entire day will stay in my memory almost minute by minute. And one of the things I recall very clearly was my immediate conviction that we were at war. My second thought was to wonder where I can sign up. This was going to be a war of ideas, of propaganda as much as of bombs and bullets. I could do that, I thought. Well, it took a little while but I think I managed to sign up for the duration.

One of the most difficult things to define, particularly for a liberal democracy, which we sort of are, is what it is we are fighting for. We know what we are fighting against or, at least, some of us do. Far too many do not, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions on this blog. But what is it we are fighting for?

We come back to our old problem: the definition of identity, the identity we want to preserve and develop, for one of the ineluctable parts of that identity has to be constant change and adaptation. If we want to freeze a particular moment in history or recreate it in aspic, we become no different from our enemies, who are great at maintaining that there is only one right path and one right attitude. This was true for Nazism and for Communism. It is true for Islamism.

I have written in the past about my interest in wartime films and various curious aspects of the propaganda in them. Let me return briefly to the subject. Among the ones I have seen most recently is the excellent "Night Train to Munich", directed by Carol Reed in 1941.

Any film that has the young Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison can never be even indifferent but this one is superlatively good. (One of its great attractions is that the dire Paul Henreid - still with a 'von' in his name - plays a baddie. Heh! That makes up for Viktor Laszlo in "Casablanca". But I digress.)

The film involves the desperate struggle just before the actual start of World War II for the life and work of a Czech scientist whose new invention is supposed to revolutionize warfare. The struggle is between the British and the Germans and the film is reasonably honest about the realities of life under Nazi occupation.

What is interesting is the picture of Britain and the hidden argument as to why the British side is the right one. After all, as Margaret Lockwood points out, the British and the German agents act in exactly the same way when trying to secure her father and herself.

Of course, we see Britain in the last weeks before the war and the picture is, therefore, peaceful and sunny. But there is a relaxed atmosphere, a feeling of freedom, of easy every-day happiness. This is what life should be like, it is implied and this is what it will be like for other countries, including Germany when the terrible shadow is lifted.

All well and good but as the war progressed it became more and more difficult to rely on a simple and slightly passive message. There were various attempts to create some idea, some image of what the war was for as well as what it was against. Few were successful. Probably, the best films were the various quasi-historical ones that harked back to previous struggles: "Henry V", "That Hamilton Woman", "The Young Mr Pitt" and others. Of the ones that concentrated on contemporary life, the Powelll and Pressburger ones were the most interesting and, probably, the most successful. Needless to say, Emerich Pressburger was a Hungarian.

So, what is it we are fighting for? The question is particularly urgent because this war is not just an external one. Despite the various fifth columnists portrayed in films and books (and a few in real life), despite the honeycombing of the establishment by Communist agents, those past wars were essentially external ones. The enemy was outside.

No longer so. The enemy is inside and outside. We are not speaking of a fifth column here but of a large proportion of our population who wants to help the enemy, who is the enemy, whose aim it is to destroy our society.

Can we fight back? Can we defeat this enemy as we defeated the previous ones? One cannot be sure, of course, but I think we can (despite some of the unfortunate allies we pick up en route). But more and more urgently we need to know what it is we are fighting for as well as what we are fighting against.

Curiously enough, the European Commission or its minions realized long before almost any political body in the member states that there is a seamless progression between the internal and external battle in this war. Naturally, they wanted to use it for their own purpose, basing such integrationist measures as the European Arrest Warrant and the European Evidence Warrant on the need to combat terrorism.

The only other manifestation of a link is the fatuous repetition by too many people that we would be safe from terrorists if we changed our foreign policy. We have dealt with that issue in previous postings and shall, no doubt, return to it. After all, one of the things we are fighting for is the absolute right not to live in a state where foreign policy is decided by a bunch of hoodlums. (And no, I don't want to hear any nonsense about Blair being just as bad as the bombers or the imams who tell us that we must obey them or else.)

What the EU does not understand as that would undercut its ideological existence is that it is not just not part of the solution, it is part of the problem. In order to strengthen the project, it has campaigned against national identities, equating nationalism (and nothing else) with war and bloodshed.

As we in the West face another great danger from people who think they are certain of their identity and are determined to destroy what they see as their enemy - us - we need to reverse the tide that destroyed nationalism. By itself it is not good or bad, only what we make of it. Right now, we need to know and we need to be able to define. Just thinking that you know will not be enough in this war.

COMMENT THREAD

A very slight inconsistency

If anything, it was politically astute on today of all days for opposition leader David Cameron to give a speech on foreign policy and national security to the British American Project.

And, central to the Boy King's thesis was the importance of the relationship with America, with him declaring:

The fact is that that Britain just cannot achieve the things we want to achieve in the world unless we work with the world’s superpower. So when it comes to the special relationship with America, Conservatives feel it, understand it and believe in it.

He takes great pains in his speech to tell us that he is a "liberal conservative", with a lower-case "c", which he then attempts to define, in terms of a foreign policy requiring "our intelligence, our patience and our humility".

But the one thing the Boy does not do is attempt to define the "special relationship", although he talks of "rebalance", whatever that means. Had he done so, he might have had cause to refer back to Winston Churchill's speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946. It was there that Churchill did define the relationship, with this particular extract spelling it out in some detail, when he declared that, "This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise":

Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force…

Whatever else, therefore, the bedrock of the "special relationship" was not only a military alliance but the effective integration of the military forces, the "intimate relationship between our military advisers…", etc.

It is here that the Cameron thesis falls apart for he tells us glibly that "it is not military might alone which will deliver security to us, or freedom for the world", never once acknowledging that not even military might can deliver security unless it is deployed effectively, with the military properly equipped, working to a clear mandate and able to work alongside its allies – in this case the United States.

To explore this very slight inconsistency between the Boy's speech and reality (the two rarely have anything in common), one must go to a little-reported public meeting in Dorchester last week organised by the Campaign for an Independent Britain, where two speakers, Roger Helmer and Oliver Letwin, under the general title of "Conservative Party Policy - Does membership of the EU benefit the United Kingdom?"

It was there that Letwin expounded the central ethos of the Cameron policy towards the EU, which amounts to a belief that that Britain needed membership of the EU.

But, unspoken, it that a core policy of continued membership is military integration, a policy which Conservatives initiated back in the 1970s and which many still support. Yet it is the pursuit of this policy which has been the proximate cause of the diversion of billions of pounds into unnecessary defence projects (detailed here), which has left our armed forces singularly ill-equipped to undertake their present roles.

Yet, the progress of this integration continues apace, about which the Boy King has nothing to say – and in principle supports. Yet, unless he gets the military component of the "special relationship" right, it simply does not exist. Furthermore, since the process of European defence integration is essentially directed at forming a "counter-weight" to American power, British participation is not so much incompatible with the special relationship but inimicable to it.

However, while this may be the case, and it is largely the case that Conservatives understand and believe in the special relationship, the problem is that the Boy King isn't a Conservative.

COMMENT THREAD

A nation at war

There could be only one possible subject for a post for this morning – the fifth anniversary of the 11th September terrorist outrage, a date the Americans insist on calling 9/11.

Equally, it would be utterly banal to entitle that post something ponderous like, "Lest we forget". You would have to be on another planet not to be aware of the anniversary – the media have been full of it all week and the papers today are all pitching in.

On occasions like this, it is common to recall what one was doing when the news came as. This one does with the Kennedy assassination (I can't remember) and the Discovery shuttle disaster (sitting on the toilet – which also happened to be the spare seat – in a private jet, heading for Plymouth).

When the early news came in of what was to be known as 9/11, I was sitting where I am now, at my computer in my office, when I received a 'phone call from a friend, telling me that a "twin engined aircraft" had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York. What immediately came to mind was the incident on 28 July 1945 when a twin-engined B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building, but a quick check on the internet soon disabused me of any parallels.

I rushed downstairs and switched on the television and remained in front of the screen for the rest of the day and well into the night, absorbing the horror of it all but, also, conscious that this was a "great event" and that history was being made.

Maybe others might have been surprised at the consistency and intensity of the US response but even then the words attributed to Admiral Yamomoto after the failure of the Pearl Harbour attack came to mind: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

What was also predictable is that Britain would fall in with whatever the United States decided. The parallels with Pearl Harbour were too great to ignore – the event which not only triggered war against the Japanese but also brought the United States into alliance with Britain against the Nazi menace, and thereby ensured victory. No prime minister – of any party – could have walked away from America's call to arms.

But, on the general theme of "lest we forget", what too many people in this country seem to have forgotten – or are in denial about – is that fact that the action of the terrorists who slaughtered so many innocent people was no random act but a declaration of war. Since then, not only the US but the UK have been nations at war.

That status was in fact formally confirmed last week in respect of the Taliban, where we have soldiers fighting and killing the enemy, and also being killed in unacceptably high numbers.

That we are either forgetting or denying this status is evident from the behaviour of the media, of our politicians and our government. As one distraught lady put it yesterday at a conference attended by Tony Blair – still our prime minister – "if I was a mother with my dead son being brought home in a body bag from Afghanistan, I would be outraged at the behaviour of the Labour Party this week, bickering over the leadership of the government."

A nation at war has certain responsibilities – party differences, internal and external, should be put aside and all the attention should be focused on winning, with as little cost to our troops (and our allies) as possible. And whatever resources are required to win, should be devoted to the fight, even if it means making sacrifices elsewhere. Fighting a war is not a fashion statement or a policy option that should have to compete for funds with schools 'n' hospitals. It is a deadly, vicious affair and we can only accept one outcome. We need to devote the resources to make that outcome a certainty.

So indeed, lest we forget, we are a nation at war. It is about time we behaved as if we were.

COMMENT THREAD

Our own worst enemies

As I tend to do when I have a bee in my bonnet (what a wonderfully English phrase – I wonder what the equivalents are in other cultures), I go out into the garden and do some physical work, allowing the mind to mull over the problem while the body is occupied – which partly explains the light blogging yesterday.

The encroaching autumn - or "fall" as our American cousins so economically put it – is an exceptionally good time for this activity as the overgrowth of the summer requires cutting back, allowing an exercise in the savagery of cutting, slashing and burning that is some – albeit poor – substitute for the real thing.

If one cannot indulge in the real thing, the blog is also something of a substitute, where one can indulge in intellectual savagery which, if nothing else, will offend even more of our readers than I managed so far to do on our own forum.

While some of the comments there have provoked my ire, the underlying cause of my savagery is the growing realisation that the core activity of this blog – and the cause to which I have devoted three decades of my life – is a complete waste of time and effort, an utter, dismal and unremitting failure.

That cause, of course, it euroscepticism – the handy if somewhat inaccurate tag applied to the movement in Britain devoted to our withdrawal from the European Union. We may, on occasions , divert into other territories but it was in pursuit of this aim that we established this blog, and that remains our main aim.

It would be false modesty – which, in itself is a form of vanity - to assert that its two authors, myself and Dr Helen Szamuely, are anything other than acknowledged and widely published experts on the European Union (and other things besides). It perhaps says something for the British eurosceptic community, therefore, that the readership of our freely given input is largely from the United States, consistently above 65 percent and sometimes rising to just short of 90 percent.

Then, while it is fair to say that blogging has taken off more in the United States, it is also true to say that there is a malign characteristic of my fellow Brits. This determines that they should revel in their ignorance and prejudices, to the extent that many of those who should know better actually parade their ignorance of "blogs" and wear as a badge of distinction the fact that they never read them.

We can only look upon the efforts of the likes of Little Green Footballs and Michelle Malkin – and their huge hit rates - with admiration and awe, not only for the quality and vibrancy of their work, but also for the willingness of their audiences to engage and take part in that unique experiment in democracy which is the "blogosphere".

It is there that lies the proximate cause of my ire, tangentially illustrated by the admirable USS Neverdock – one of the blogs which I never fail to read every day. There, recorded in a series of linked posts is an account of how the so-called "right-wing blogs" are taking on the predominantly left-wing national media, and running them ragged, to the extent that, on many issues, the political agenda is being set not by the MSM but by an increasingly influential group of blogs.

There is perhaps the reason why the US blogs have made such an impact and we have so significantly failed. While they do engage in the hurly-burly of political comment, they have made their primary target the media. In the UK, most are either trying to emulate the media or go into competition with it or both. For sure, there are a few, like the indefatigable Biased BBC but, for all its worthy attention to the dire inadequacies of our state-funded broadcasting organisation, it – and the few like it - remain niche blogs, largely ignored by the mainstream.

There again, it may not be the bloggers themselves who are entirely at fault but their own audiences. All of us (deny it if you dare) live and die by our hit counters and – ever attuned to what garners the hits – the temptation to pander to the audience is extremely powerful. And. so far, the (British) audience seems to respond most favourably to the sort of political trivia and banal comment that we get in the MSM itself.

Here, while so many of us profess to being disgusted, offended or irritated – or whatever – by the media, huge numbers of us still watch, listen and read its output. Despite manifest declamations, therefore, the MSM is still hugely respected and powerful... and it still sets the political agenda.

That, in itself, raises an interesting issue. The eurosceptic community is particularly voluble about the failings of the MSM – mainly about its unwillingness to publish its output, or to address the European Union issue seriously. But, rather than take it on, many campaigners pathetically fawn at the table, begging for crumbs – spending much of their time and energies in pathetically seeking attention. And when, from the lofty height, the media occasionally throws them a bone, the response is paroxysms of delight and paeans of praise for whomsoever is the careless donor.

At the heart of this perhaps lies another malign characteristic of my countrymen. For all our proclaimed love of freedom and independence, sixty years of the welfare state, sub-standard state education and official nannying has imbued the population with a craven conformity and introspection that bodes ill for the future.

Thus do you find eurosceptics arguing that if we did not spend the £6 billion of so on our membership of the European Union, we could spend more on doctors, nurses, more hospitals, more policemen… Never once have I seen expressed in any eurosceptic tract the idea that the money could be spent on defence, to magnify our efforts in the "war on terror", alongside our ally, the United States of America. The decades past have atrophied their brains and sapped their spirit.

In fact, an ill-concealed relative in the closet of many a eurosceptic – driven more by anti-europeanism than any crusading zeal for freedom and independence – is a nascent anti-americanism. The phrase "little Englander" in this context is cruelly apt.

So, where does that take us?

Basically, we as a nation – and the eurosceptic community in particular – have a choice. We can continue as we are, bleating from the sidelines in the hope that the media will somehow take pity on us and espouse our cause, thereby condemning ourselves to the continued failure to which we have become accustomed. Or we can do something positive. And, looking at it in the round, that means redirecting our fire.

Of this I have written before but to understand what we need to do, we need to understand more fully the relationships between power, politicians and the media.

It has to be said in this context that huge power does rest with that small band of politicians within the inner circle of government but, as we have observed before, in a democracy – in theory – the ultimate power rests with the people. It doesn't, of course, and that is where the media comes in.

Over the last couple of centuries – in fact since the late eighteenth century – first the newspapers and then the broadcast media have taken on the role of articulating public opinion - ursurping the role of the coffee houses (see here also). As their circulations grew, the newspapers had some claim to that role. Then the politicians, unable to communicate directly with their expanding constituencies, began to rely on the media as the sounding board, keeping them in touch with what the public thought.

With remarkable speed, the media learnt that they could use this phenomenon. Even the most autocratic of governments – collectively - crave popular approval while politicians, both mighty and low, yearn for public attention. Thus by giving or withholding approval and by deciding who had access to their pages and airwaves, the media found it could exercise considerable control over the politicians and, through them, the government.

Even today, when the newspapers, working as a pack with the other media, all combine on one issue, they are very powerful. They can make or break ministers and, when governments (or prime ministers) are weak, they can bring them down.

Over the years, the media have acquired a monopoly position, purporting to represent public opinion, a situation which worked after a fashion for as long as – at least on the big issues – it actually did.

But the situation is increasingly developing where it does not. I may, for instance, buy The Daily Telegraph but that does not mean I agree with what is says. In fact, most times these days I wholeheartedly disagree with it. Nevertheless, my purchase and the hundreds of thousands of others contibute to the newspaper's power base, which gives it its unique grip over government. Equally, I may listen to BBC Radio or watch its television news, but I do not agree with its agenda, or much of what it reports. Nevertheless, the BBC holds great sway in the corridors of power because of the carefully cultivated myth that it too represents the people.

Thus, we effectively have a closed loop. The politicians believe that the media represent the public – and pay attention to it – while the media maintain the increasingly threadbare myth it is representative. Each part then relies on that myth to promote their own agendas. The media is thus the key player and the public does not get a look in.

This is where the bloggers come in. In effect, we are the modern equivalent of the coffee houses. Collectively, we can claw back power from the media and challenge that assumption that it represents the public. That is not to say that we wish to replace it as the public's representatives. We need not do that - we are the public. Thus, our role is to articulate that simple truth, summed up in the slogan coined by the anti-war demonstrators: "not in my name". When the media speaks, it does not represent me, it does not represent us – it speaks only for itself.

We can do this in manifold ways. Firstly, we can disagree with the media, challenge it publicly and make our disagreements known – known to the public of which we are part, and to the politicians who would otherwise believe that the media was speaking for us.

Secondly, we can challenge the veracity and accuracy of the media output, in so doing challenging its authority as the monopolistic purveyor of information and opinion. We can make it known that the MSM is but one source, not necessarily the best and certainly not one which can be relied upon.

Thirdly, we can provide alternative views and analyses, both on our own account and through our forums and comments sections, where our readers have their chance to air their opinions. We can also give a platform to politicians, thinkers and others, airing ideas and opinions that the MSM chooses to exclude – thereby again challenging its monopoly.

Fourthly, we ourselves can perform some of the basic functions of the media – providing news and analysis. Even with mainstream stories we can often do it faster and better and certainly – in respect of analysis – there are more experts out in the blogosphere than there are accessible to the media.

But we can also fill the gaps – which was the original aim of EU Referendum – writing up the stories which the MSM chooses not to follow. By so doing, we challenge the power of the media by not accepting its right to set the agenda. We write up and discuss the issues we think are important – not just those that the media sees fit to tell us about.

All this, inevitably, requires that there should be a wide range of blogs, loosely working to the same overall agenda, partaking in that informal alliance which has worked so successfully in the United States under the generic name of the "blogosphere". Over the next few weeks, I will be talking to fellow bloggers with the idea of forming what might be called a "freedom network".

But, whether such an idea works depends most of all on our readers. If they read and promote the blogs, then through our readership numbers we will have the credibility to take on the media. Without those numbers, we are but small voices chirping in the wilderness.

Despite the MSM's attempt to ridicule us and denigrate our efforts, we know there are some good writers out there in the blogosphere. And, as I remarked earlier, both Helen and I are published authors – our news sense is such that many a story we have written has later appeared in the media and, when it suits them, the MSM are not at all adverse to stealing our material. Thus, we know that the quality of our output - and others' - is up to the mark.

To conclude this long essay, I refer to one of our forum members who wrote this afternoon that: "sometimes I wonder if people value liberty, or merely the freedom to shop on Sundays", commenting on the low grade of debate on the European Union.

And to my question in an earlier post, entitled: "Who holds the media to account?", another of our members wrote:

Here we arrive at the final level of responsibility: the general public. It appears the public are sufficiently gullible and lazy that they accept both incompetent officials and a superficial and incompetent media. In a democracy, it is the people who perpetuate mediocrity with their votes, money and attention. Just as the "average hack is idle", so is his readership, the voting consumer citizens.

That need not be the case. We have seen the US model and it appears to work. I know of no other plan on the table. Agree or disagree, it's over to you the reader.

In the final analysis, as my favourite saying goes, democracy is not a spectator sport. You can have idleness or you can have democracy – you cannot have both. And if we choose the former, we are our own worst enemies.

COMMENT THREAD

What is wrong with these gormless hacks?

Under the heading, "They deserve more", The Sunday Telegraph today is launching a campaign to "get the Government to reward our soldiers properly".

Central to this campaign is the argument that the government now pays a newly qualified teacher £52.49 per day whereas a private "dodging bullets, bombs and missiles in Afghanistan is paid £39.24p a day for the privilege".

Illustrating just how lame this argument is, the paper is referring to the lowest level of wage, which would be paid to an 18-year-old soldier after 20 weeks of (free) training, a young man who may have no qualifications or experience.

By the time a soldier reaches the age of 21 – the age at which a newly qualified teacher might start – he will be on £54.60 a day (with no student loan repayments), unless of course he has been promoted, whence as a lance-corporal he will be earning £57.10 or, as a Corporal, a minimum of £64.48p. And, of course, certain specialists (such as parachutists) receive additional special pay, currently £4.85 per day.

Add to that a non-contributory pension – which can be carried over to other careers – plus tax-free lump sum after completing 18 years service, and the last problem soldiers have is their pay-scale. It is certainly not, as The Sunday Telegraph claims, a "pathetically inadequate level of pay", and far from being an "outrage".

What is an outrage though is their pathetic level of equipment, which Booker addresses in his column. He writes:

When Cpl Mark Wright of 3 Para was killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, attempting to rescue six comrades who had been badly injured when their patrol vehicle was hit by a mine, this brought to 35 the number of our Armed Forces killed since their new deployment in Helmand. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been at pains to conceal the vehicle's identity, but the evidence suggests that yet again it was a Snatch Land Rover.

When Canadian and German patrols were also hit by explosive devices, their occupants escaped largely unscathed because their vehicles, an RG-31 and a Dingo, are designed to be "mine protected". This underlined the MoD's scarcely believable folly in sending our troops into action in Afghanistan and Iraq in unprotected vehicles, with the wholly predictable result that more than 30 have now died.

The MoD seeks to reassure us that it will soon be sending 100 Pinzgauer patrol vehicles to Afghanistan, costing £487,000 each. What they do not admit is that these "coffins on wheels", as they are known, offer less mine protection than the £60,000 Land Rovers. Meanwhile the RG-31s used by our allies, costing just £320,000, have saved scores of lives. Not the least forgivable aspect is how the MoD uses spin and deceit to conceal its incompetence.

Put it to the average soldier to whether they would prefer a wage rise, or decent kit that might keep them alive, and I have no doubt where their choice would lie.

So what is it with these gormless hacks that they so consistently grab the wrong end of the stick?

COMMENT THREAD

What to do about Darfur?

Altogether, since we started this blog in April 2004, we have written 38 posts on Darfur – to be more accurate, that many posts in which we have made reference to that benighted land. And the constant theme has been that the situation was bound to end in tragedy once again. That indeed is happening.

Whatever else could or could not have been done, as late as the end of March this year, I was writing that: "The one thing of which you can be sure - despite the bleating from the EU and its pretensions of being a 'world power', it will do precisely nothing."

Actually, I was wrong – the one thing the EU will do is continue bleating, another example of which we saw yesterday with the IHT reporting that the EU had "strongly condemned" the violation of a cease-fire by Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur and "expressed alarm" at the renewed fighting in the region.

This was in a statement from the Finnish presidency which went on to declare that the EU was deeply concerned by "the further deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in the region." It went on to say that it – the presidency – "condemns this continuing violation of the cease-fire, particularly the violence directed at the civilian population and providers of humanitarian assistance," then urging all parties "to respect human rights and allow deliveries of humanitarian aid".

The same day, United Nations' refugee chief Antonio Guterres warned that the worsening violence in Darfur was threatening the whole region. According to the BBC website and others, he is predicting a “humanitarian catastrophe” if the security situation does not improve. The day before, UN SecGen Kofi was issuing similar warnings, saying that three million lives are at risk.

Yet, earlier this week, the Telegraph’s David Blair was explaining why absolutely nothing constructive would be done by either the EU or the UN about the impending genocide.

What was interesting about this article, posted on the web, was the die range of comments which, amongst other things castigated Blair for not mentioning the "elephant in the room", the malign role of China. But most interesting all was a comment from Alexander Hugh, who stated:

The First World (African countries are in no position to help themselves) has a choice. Either collectively we make grand but futile statements and draw up meaningless plans through an increasingly impotent United Nations, and accept that in reality the wars will continue. A second option is to accept that African countries will one day emerge from the disasters of today's wars, but that it will take time, and in the meantime use targeted sanctions to attack the corrupt and evil leaders that are responsible for most of the mess.

In the absence of any commitment to send troops to sort out the Sudanese government, the second option looks as good an answer as any to the question we posed: "What to do about Darfur?"

One thing for sure, thought, these "grand but futile statements" are more than a little wearisome. They may make their originators feel important, but they convince no one and simply add to the utter contempt we all have for them all.

COMMENT THREAD

We cannot afford to play fast and loose

To give credit where credit is due – and, believe me, there is very little due - there is a good opinion piece in The Times today from Gerard Baker.

Under the heading, "One friend Britain must stand by", he argues that the first task for the next prime minister must be to make sure that sure foreign policy is right behind America.

You would expect a determinedly Atlanticist blog like ourselves to agree with such a sentiment. But Baker makes the case for the continued alliance.

What worries him is that, with the impending change of prime minister – although who knows, or case, when - the country seems to be in a mood to seize "to choose a radical new turn: end the ruinous special relationship with America and construct a new foreign policy that pragmatically chooses ad hoc between go-it-alone bulldog independence and alignment with our European "partners".

There is even a hope, Baker writes, that Gordon Brown will seize the opportunity to declare his independence from the US yoke, reflecting the poll this week The Times – on which we commented on this blog - that suggests a majority now favour much looser ties with the US.

But, Baker continues:

…if the next prime minister is a real leader, and not a mere implementer of the latest public opinion trends, he will take a firm stand against the seductive anti-Americanism that has Britain and much of Europe in its grip.

He should state, categorically, that whatever our reservations, whatever our irritations, Britain will stand with America. Not because Britain is a weaker power that has little choice, or in the hope of some quid pro quo, but because it is the right thing to do.

There is no need for this to sound craven or submissive, adds Baker:

It can be a balanced and candid assessment of the world and its problems in the five years since 9/11. It should acknowledge the disquiet and alarm in Britain at what has gone wrong. It should offer a reasoned critique of the way the war in Iraq has been handled, of the overreach by the US in its handling of matters such as detention of suspected terrorists. It can distance Britain from all those hints of religiosity and that slightly cloying idealism that Americans of all political persuasions go in for.

The main argument though is that our reservations should be put in their place. A new prime minister's government should insert into the fevered debate on foreign policy in Britain a sense of proportion and history:

It should say that, whatever we think about the Iraq war, we are in no doubt where right lies in that struggle now. The insurgency in Iraq is not some heroic struggle by the oppressed against neocolonialism but murderous terrorism by competing groups of thugs. Over Afghanistan too, despite our tragic losses there in the last few weeks, it should recommit Britain to resisting the attempts of a small minority of Afghans and their foreign friends to turn that country back to the medievalist nightmare from which it has only recently escaped.

This new statement of our foreign policy interests should say that, while Britain will reserve the right to criticise Israel’s policies, it will have no truck with the spreading assumption that Israel is the principal author of the Middle East’s problems, and that that nation's security against terrorists and states who would destroy it is an essential objective of British policy. It is time, in other words, to identify the enemy and stop identifying with him.

The post-Blair foreign policy should above all seek to elevate the British public's vision above the trials and errors of the past five years. It should remind the people that America represents still, as it has for the past 60 years, the last best hope of freedom.

Whether you agree with the detail or not, that is the nub of the issue. Whatever complaints we might have about the US – many of which, undoubtedly would be echoed by a large number of US citizens – the fact remains that the US is our most steadfast and reliable (if that is not tautology) ally. We cannot afford to play fast and loose with such a relationship.

COMMENT THREAD

More parochial stuff

The One London blog has another item about Hizonner's vanity projects and their cost to London's taxpayers.

Who holds the media to account?

The Telegraph letters page today continues with a tranche of correspondence about the inadequacy of military equipment – albeit down page – under the group heading, "Standing up for the Armed Services".

That indeed is an admirable sentiment but it is not one in which the media is showing any particular interest, its main contribution today being to recycle the MoD press release which reveals the name of the solder who was killed in Wednesday's mine incident.

The soldier who was killed has been named as Corporal Mark William Wright, 27, from Edinburgh, who was in 3 Para. According to the MoD account, as retailed by a very small number of newspapers, "he died attempting to save the life of a fellow paratrooper who had been injured in a mine incident. He did so in complete disregard for his own safety whilst fully aware of the dangers to himself."

It is right and proper that the bravery of soldiers who are killed while doing their duty should be thus acknowledged but, as I remarked in the comments section of the Scotsman, which also ran this story, why is the media not asking why these deaths occurred?

As we have pointed out on this blog, both German and Canadian forces in Afghanistan have mine-protected vehicles. Both forces have had vehicles run over mines (and attacked by suicide bombers). In all cases where mine protected vehicles have been involved, the crews have survived with only minor injuries.

Here, the media do have a duty. They have a role in protecting our troops by making sure that they are properly equipped. So far, they are not doing it. Instead (with a few honourable exceptions), they simply regurgitate uncritically the MoD press releases and, occasionally publish ill-focused pieces about military equipment, without ever going for the jugular.

What the information on Corporal Wright does, however, is clear up one point. Early information gave a casualty roll of seven, which is one more than would be expected to be riding in a "Snatch" Land Rover. That Corporal Wright went to the aid of his fellow paratrooper suggests that six were caught in the initial blast, which is entirely compatible with a "Snatch" having been hit.

But, as we have observed, the media seem to be entirely incurious about what actually happened and, even more damning, seem entirely unconcerned that the MoD has no plans to introduce a mine-protected patrol vehicle into the Afghanistan theatre. The average idle hack is content to take the MoD at its word that "tougher" armoured Pinzgauers are to be supplied by the end of the year.

Thus, while, obviously, we cannot loose sight of the fact that when troops are killed in combat, the primary responsibility lies with the enemy who killed them, there is an additional chain of responsibility. That lies first at the door of the MoD, for failing to equip and support them properly, then at the door of the elected politicians who fail to hold the government properly to account.

But responsibility also lies at the door of the media. In a democracy, it has a duty to highlight the inadequacies of our government and our politicians for, without the information which only the media can disseminate, there is no accountability. Here, it is simply not doing its job.

When, in the fullness of time we see the butcher's bill in Afghanistan reach the symbolic figure of 100, you can bet the media will be right there, full of indignation and outrage, gushing concern for "our forces". But when it comes to doing something constructive to prevent them getting killed in the first place, it is just delivering empty rhetoric.

Who then, holds the media to account?

COMMENT THREAD

Neither strength nor unity

Is there anything the EU has ever done that can be considered, unambiguously, an unalloyed success?

Well, if you are to believe the hype, one such is the Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM to its friends, a "cooperation forum" for Asian and European countries. It was initiated in 1996 "to strengthen dialogue and interaction between the two regions" and to promote "concrete cooperation that aims at sustainable economic and social development".

Yet, via chron.com, Associated Press writer Robert Weilaard puts a different spin on it. Normally, AP is the most Europhile of all the press agencies, but Weillaard is definitely not of the Kathy Gannon mould.

Heading his piece, "Unhappy Birthday for EU-Asia Relations", he tells us that at a summit in Bangkok in 1996, European and Asian leaders pledged to boost economic, trade and political relations to offset America's disproportionate weight in global affairs. Today, he adds, both sides agree that has failed miserably.

Ahead of the 10th anniversary Europe-Asia summit, opening Sunday in Helsinki, thick policy papers detail how the relationship between the two continents has weakened even though the summit agenda buries this debacle under a welter of debating topics.

The 38 leaders of ASEM will over two days debate globalisation, security threats, energy, climate change, collapsed world trade talks, cultural dialogue and competitiveness. Through it all, they will seek to turn the Europe-Asia relationship into a more credible one, notably by issuing a declaration on climate change.

But, writes Weilaard, it all seems doomed to be an unhappy event for European and Asian nations that have failed to make their relationship reflect the reality that collectively they account for 40 percent of the world population, 50 percent of its economic output, and 60 percent of global trade.

He cites Dato Mohammed Jawhar Hassan, deputy head of Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies who has written a report to the summit. "After 10 years (the Europe-Asia relationship) is still grappling with the idea of what it is going to become," he says,

The inability of the 25-nation EU and its partners - China, Japan, South Korea, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - to develop a coherent partnership has left the United States as the dominant economic, political and security partner for many Asian countries.

Further damnation of the venture comes from a joint study of the University of Helsinki and the Japan Center for International Exchange. It says that Europe's political and economic dialogue with Asia has degenerated into a talk shop lacking "substantive cooperation", adding, "and there seems to be no overall consensus on how to change the relationship”.

The EU, of course, continues to have robust trade with Japan, China and South Korea, the three Asian economic powers. In the past decade, EU trade with Japan and South Korea grew by double digit figures. With China it has positively skyrocketed: EU exports surged 227 percent to $61.49 billion, and imports by 382 percent to $163 billion between 1995 and 2004.

But Europe's trade with Southeast Asia - which comprise the majority of Asia's ASEM members - has been stagnant. Over the past 10 years, Southeast Asia's share of all EU exports fell by 1.2 percent, and European investment in the region has declined.

The political side of the EU-Asia relationship is also a struggle. The Europeans want Asian governments - notably in China and Southeast Asia - to do more to protect human rights. The Asians say the issue has no place in economic and trade discussions, and are internal matters governed by national culture and history.

There is also much agonising over who should be in ASEM. The EU argues each time it admits new members - as it did in 2004 when Cyprus, Malta and eight East European nations joined - they must automatically join the Asia-Europe partnership. Ever wary of the need for balance, Asians fear this automatic ASEM membership gives Europeans too big a say.

Over European objections, they have brought in Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, but not Pakistan and India - two rising economic powers judged too large, especially by Malaysia and Singapore.

How different this all looked in September 2002 when Romano Prodi was EU commission president and addressed the opening of the sixth ASEM summit in Copenhagen

"For us," he said, "dialogue with our Asian partners has become an integral part of our normal agenda: it is not triggered by euphoria when the economy is going well or sparked by pessimism in times of crisis. It is simply the result of the Commission's new Asia Strategy - what we call Enhanced Partnerships."

"One of the strengths of the ASEM process," he added, "is engaging peoples of various cultures, civilisations, religions and experience, at different stages of development, in order to draw unity and strength from diversity."

By their speeches shall they be judged. Four years on, there is certainly diversity – but there is neither strength nor unity. In fact, with perhaps millions of air miles expended on seeking "dialogue and interaction", the EU is no further forward than when it started ten years ago.

But then, in the affairs of the EU, what else is new?

COMMENT THREAD

The wrong sort of government

I was struck today by four things. Firstly, following up on the overnight story about the land mine incident in Afghanistan, I searched all the on-line dailies for more details, only to find that accounts in different newspapers were wildly different.

Overnight, we had picked up The Times version, which is one of the first up on the web, and that recorded a soldier being "killed after his vehicle hit an unmarked land mine today…".

The essence of this account seemed to be confirmed by The Independent, which reported that, "one of the soldiers was killed and six others injured when their convoy hit a landmine in Helmand province… It is believed the troops were on a routine mission when they hit the mine. The troops' patrol had unwittingly strayed into an unmarked minefield, Nato said."

The Daily Telegraph, however, cited the Ministry of Defence, saying that "the soldier who stepped on a mine was on a patrol not in contact with any enemy." It then cited "a military source", saying that, "our initial assessment is that this was old anti-personnel mines".

Turning to the MoD site, though, all we get is:

One UK soldier has died and five others were very seriously injured as a result of a land mine contact in northern Helmand Province at approximately 1220 local time. Another soldier received minor injuries.

There is no mention of a vehicle, but neither was there any suggestion that it was a foot patrol that was hit.

Turning then to Google news, there were just short of 150 stories on the incident, in diverse media outlets, but none gave any additional or clarifying detail. Basically, they were all variations of the MoD press release.

This, then, was the first thing that struck me: how ill-informed we are, and how little the media actually know what is going on out in Afghanistan. The MoD site is a study in obscurity and none of the media seem bothered enough to find out what really happened.

Secondly, in an attempt to glean more information, I resorted to unofficial Army forum, which sometimes has details that the MSM does not carry. In this case, it did not, but I came across this thread commenting that, while 17 members of the armed forces had died in the last few days, instead of it being real front page news, "we are swamped with Blair leadership leaks".

Certainly, reference to Google news confirms this – as if it needed it – with, currently, 1,542 stories posted on the subject, more than ten times the number on the dead soldiers.

That was the second thing that struck me – hardly new, I have to concede – that there is something extremely perverse about modern news values. That is not to say that the Blair leadership issue should not have been covered but, as always, it was the amount of space dedicated to the issue that offends.

In the context that the Afghanistan story harbours what is probably a major procurement scandal, the third thing that struck me came from a number of comments on our own forum to the effect that the British government was not alone in its neglect of its armed forces.

One contributor offered his experiences of how badly the German Army was equipped, while another offered a link to Spiegel online, headed, "German army feels the pinch", recording some of the problems the modern armed forces were having to deal with.

I was particularly taken with the account of Angela Merkel's visit to the German naval base in the Baltic seaport of Warnemünde, which the paper counterpointed with the experiences of two naval patrol vessels, the "Zobel" and the "Frettchen", which are about to be detached to Lebanon as part of the UN peacekeeping forces. Says Spiegel,

Out at sea the navy was showing off the capabilities of two of its speedboats, the "Zobel" and the "Frettchen." One of the two craft shot magnesium flares into the air to demonstrate the navy's latest method of distracting enemy rockets. Germany has promised to send three or four of these boats to Lebanon as part of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent being assembled there.

It's a daring promise on Germany's part, given the problems the boats have experienced on previous missions in the Mediterranean. At high speeds, the crafts' ribs broke in the Mediterranean's heavy swells. Since then, the ships are no longer permitted to travel with full fuel tanks and have been forced to reduce their weapons payloads while in the region. Higher water temperatures have wreaked havoc on cooling systems for the vessels' electronic systems and diesel engines, forcing the speedboats to travel at reduced speeds.

The journey to the Levantine coast will be a long one. Because the boats cannot be operated without their full 34-man crews, they'll be forced to put in to port every two days. The trip for these so-called "speedboats" will be everything but speedy and will take an estimated two weeks.

But no one is likely to care much about the delay, because these are not the types of ships that will be needed for one of the peacekeeping force's key tasks in Lebanon, which is to search other vessels. The rocket launcher on the afterdeck takes up so much space that there is no room for a rubber dinghy that would enable the German sailors to board a suspicious ship. The two frigates' "Sea Lynx" helicopters, which will also be redeployed to the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, will handle the task instead. But even these helicopters are not designed for such use and will have to make two flights to carry a complete twelve-member search and inspection team.

The equipment difficulties the Lebanon mission highlights, adds Spiegel, are symptomatic of the Bundeswehr's overall condition and of the fact that Germany's armed forces have not been properly equipped for their changing duties for some time now. This chronically underfunded, poorly outfitted and physically exhausted force is now embarking on a new foreign mission, with ten others already underway.

In a way it is some small comfort that we are not alone in suffering inept governments, although it is indeed very small comfort.

The fourth and final thing that struck me is how bored I am with the European Union – in particular the sheer pettiness of its remit and the tedious scope of its day-to-day activity.

Top of today's agenda was and EU court ruling on the British interpretation of the working time directive. Britain, it seems, broke European law in the way it advised companies to interpret EU rules on working time limits for employees.

This, in its own way, is actually quite important as it has significant economic implications for the nation and it strikes at how the Labour government had sought to minimise the impact of the directive by issuing misleading and – as it turns out – illegal guidelines on the law.

But, the truth is that I just could not being myself to write about it – and neither could my colleague. When we are engaged in a war of terror and our troops are in foreign fields, dying as a result of the neglect of their own government, the working time directive seems just too trivial for words.

That – even if I have said it before – is the real reason why we must leave the EU. It forces us to spend too much of our time and energies on the trivial, elevating issues to the top of the political agenda that should, at best, be dealt with by some minor clerk in an obscure ministry – if at all. We have too much of the wrong sort of government, which is distracting us from the real issues, the matters of life and death.

COMMENT THREAD

OK, this is a little parochial

Time to descend temporarily from the grandeur of the UN (stop sniggering, will you) and look at a more parochial matter of Hizonner the Mayor of LondON blithely setting up vanity projects and financing them through what can safely be described as Enron-style accounting.

Over at One London there is a detailed examination of one such project.

They are all going to New York

SecGen Kofi Annan is certainly going out in a blaze of glory. The last session of the General Assembly under his enlightened guidance will be addressed by Hugo Chavez as well as President Ahmadinejad.

Will President Chavez ever set foot in Venezuela, a country, which may be oil rich but where most pumping stations are finding it hard to stay in business? In the last few months he visited Cuba, Russia, Belarus, Syria and probably a few other dictatorships I cannot quite recall at the moment.

President Ahmadinejad is due to address the General Assembly, on September 19, at 7 pm. President Bush is due to address the meeting at 11.30 am of the same day and in between, we are told by NewsMax.com, SecGen Annan (father of Kojo) will host a lunch, which will be attended by both. I am not sure what I hope for: to have lots of other people sitting between them or to have them sitting next to each other.

Now here is a question to our readers: should there be a demonstration in NYC on that day, who is it likely to be directed against? President Ahmadinejad has managed to con the EU3 negotiators over the nuclear fuel enrichment question and has snapped his fingers laughingly at the Security Council. Will anybody accuse him of endangering the world through his unilateralist policies?

President Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel and has denied that the Holocaust had ever happened. Iran has been running a competition for Holocaust-denying and anti-Semitic cartoons. Will anyone suggest that the man is interested in ethnic cleansing at best and genocide at worst?

The man’s domestic record includes the arrest and beating up of various demonstrations, including of women, who protested against the unfair rape laws; the destruction of satellite dishes and arrest of bloggers; the public hanging of young boys who had been accused of being homosexual and of a young girl who had been raped by an older relative and was, therefore, accused of immoral behaviour; a call for the removal of all non-religious and liberal-minded lecturers from the universities. Will anyone carry placards showing the Nazi swastika on a picture of the Iranian president?

As Allahpundit reminds us, the last time President Ahmadinejad addressed the General Assembly and ranted about the need for the world to be conquered by “peace and justice” as interpreted by him and his friendly ayatollahs, he also told the world that he felt a special light around him and saw the world leaders watch him unblinkingly for many minutes. Will anyone make disdainful comments about this ridiculous religious self-importance?

Well, I think we know the answers to all those questions. I am prepared to have a bet with anyone who is willing to put money on it, that all those comments, statements, demonstrations and placards will be in evidence, all centred on President Bush.

COMMENT THREAD

Just how valuable is public opinion?

Some readers of this blog might have noted my great love for war-time propaganda films. I have now seen a goodly number of them either at the National Film Theatre or, back in the days I still had one of them, on the goggle box. What I have always found slightly surprising is how many of them (as well as the number of thrillers published at the time) that dealt with fifth columnists. Some films give the impression that the country was absolutely honeycombed with groups and individuals at all social levels who sympathized with the Nazis and worked actively towards a German victory.

The best and best-known of these is the shattering “Went the Day Well?” but there were many others.

Naturally, I have thought, during a war, people must be alert; there will always be traitors, particularly if the war is to a very great extent an ideological one, and all others must be careful and vigilant. But was it really sensible to propagate the idea that a large proportion of the British population was not really involved in the war effort? Quite the contrary. Surely, that was completely untrue.

Anyone who thinks seriously about what would have happened had the Germans succeeded in occupying the whole of the UK, not just the Channel Islands, realizes that everything would have been quite similar to what happened in other countries. Officials would have gone on being officials; most people would have kept their heads down and got on with their lives, not knowing exactly how long the occupation would last; a few would have resisted for a time; and life would have gone on. Unlike the Danes, I do not believe the British would have done much to save the Jews, though, undoubtedly, many heroic individuals would have helped as they did in other countries.

The question that inevitably arises from the films and the books of the period is to what extent that sort of attitude existed while the country was fighting to prevent the occupation. There can be no real answer to that, though we do know from recent publications of mass observation opinion polls that there was a huge support for the “French solution” before and during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Not the majority, perhaps, but a sizeable minority thought that the war was being fought by Churchill and his cronies for their own purposes with no regard for the sacrifices made by the rest of the population.

Much of that opinion would have been expressed not as pro-Nazi but as peace-loving with a strong dislike for the “corrupt” and “oppressive” British regime. Noticeably, there was a shift in the opinion after June 22, 1941, when the Soviet Union found itself willy-nilly at war.

Yet the question of the fifth column and its extent remains troubling. The popularity of that fatuous slogan “Better Red than Dead” (as if people, whose countries were invaded or taken over had choices over such matters) increases one’s uncertainty though, as ever, ignorance is much more to blame than real wickedness or treasonous feelings.

Attitudes expressed by apparently sane and intelligent people in the last few years as the war against terrorism has become open (one of the many aspects of it all that people seem reluctant to admit is that the war was there long before 9/11 but we were losing it) have made me review my certainty that the picture presented of a wide-spread active or passive fifth column during the war was completely and incomprehensibly erroneous. Who knows?

Take Peter Riddell’s article in today’s Times about a recent Populus poll about terrorism and what Britain should do about it. One has to be very cautious about polls as people are influenced by immediate events, usually misrepresented by the MSM, in this case the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan that had killed 14 servicemen, and by the way the questions are phrased.

As the responses are not that different from those given to a recent YouGov poll, one must assume that these are realistic results. Whether they do reflect the thinking of the “voters” as Riddell would like us to believe, is much more questionable. The truth is that most people do not become “voters” until they approach that voting booth, when they are unlikely to recall what they said (or, more likely, what somebody else said) to some pollster months before.

A month ago, I wrote a posting on the subject of who should be running our foreign policy, a question that needs to be sorted out in people’s minds before we can even begin to think what the policy might be. The results of the Populus poll prove once again that the thinking in question has not been done on any level and that the passive fifth column in this latest war is far more wide-spread than we like to acknowledge.

“Nearly three quarters of the public (73 per cent) believe that “the British Government’s foreign policy, especially its support for the invasion of Iraq and refusal to demand an immediate ceasefire by Israel in the recent war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, has significantly increased the risk of terrorist attacks on Britain”.”

Great, just great. As Pajamas Media puts it in the link to the piece: “Leave Us Out of It”. This is not really opposing certain aspects of Blair’s foreign policy, a perfectly legitimate attitude, but is a completely ignorant and cowardly opinion that British foreign policy should be decided by anyone who feels like threatening this country. (Oh yes, and what would that demand for an immediate cease-fire have achieved?)

Going on from there:

“Moreover, three fifths (62 per cent) agree that “in order to reduce the risk of future terrorist attacks on Britain the Government should change its foreign policy, in particular by distancing itself from America, being more critical of Israel and declaring a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq”. Women (66 per cent) and Liberal Democrat voters (74 per cent) agree with this view particularly strongly.”

We have discussed at length on this blog the pernicious anti-Americanism so wide-spread in this country and the concomitant opposition to Israel with very little understanding or desire to acquire that understanding of what is really going on in those countries.

Then we start getting into real nonsense. 63 per cent believe that Islamist extremists hate the West and western values and even if the foreign policy changed they would find something else to oppose. At the same time 52 per cent think that

“even though there is no justification for terrorism, the British Government’s foreign policy, especially towards Iraq and the recent attacks on Lebanon by Israel, is anti-Muslim and it is understandable that many Muslims are offended by it”.

Why is it understandable? Given the age-old war that has been going on between different groups of Muslims, the idea that they should all unite somehow in their understanding of political developments is laughable. And if people of Pakistani descent who have lived in Britain all their lives care all that much about Lebanon why do they find the fact that NATO went in to help Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and, let us face it, Afghanistan, so utterly uninteresting.

Then we get to the wording: attacks on Lebanon or attacks on Hezbollah who have never been particularly bothered about killing Muslims who disagree with them. In the last couple of days we have had reports of more assassinations and attempted assassinations in Lebanon of people who oppose Syria. Does this offend any Muslims or, for that matter, the muppets who respond to these opinion polls? Probably, never heard of it.

Apparently, two thirds of the respondents feel BAA has been completely justified in introducing completely idiotic rules that would do nothing to increase our safety but make flying an even less pleasant experience than ever before and two thirds (is it the same two thirds, one wonders) disagrees with the very idea of any kind of focused investigation.

“Just a third believe that security checks should be “particularly focused on people who appear to be from the same ethnic or religious background as previous terrorists, rather than treating everyone as if they represent an equal risk”. But two thirds disagree.”

Why would we want to learn anything from the pattern that has emerged over the last decade and a half of terrorist attacks?

Meanwhile, EUObserver that seems to have accepted the mantra of the European project has come up with another opinion poll, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, an organization that has been a cheer-leader and enthusiastic participant in that project.

To start with, one rather wonders about the concept of a “majority of EU citizens” and about an opinion poll that is conducted across several countries with different populations in number and social make-up. It seems that “around 1,000 people” were interviewed in Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia and a majority spoke up for a single EU foreign minister, largely because they did not think very highly of President Bush’s foreign policy.

Whether one agrees with Bush’s foreign policy or not, he is not going to be president beyond some time in January 2009, the United States being a democracy bound by its constitution. To create a post that would represent an integrated foreign policy for the EU member states, that is to discard the idea of an independent foreign policy because of one American president, is fatuous. But 52 per cent agreed with the notion in Britain.

Of course, neither the German Marshal Fund nor EUObserver bothers to raise the small matter of what that single EU foreign minister would do. After all, as we have pointed out repeatedly, the EU’s record in the war against terror and the various recent international crises has not been particularly outstanding.

COMMENT THREAD

When is it going to stop?

Via The Times, agencies and others, we learn with great regret that the Army lost three more soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday, with 11 other troops injured.

Particularly distressing was the death of one of the soldiers after his vehicle hit a land mine, with five other troops also seriously injured. Another soldier received minor injuries.

The incident took place in the north of Helmand province, and occurred after the soldiers' patrol strayed into an unmarked minefield. There was no contact with the Taleban.

Very few news reports mention a vehicle, however, and the MoD have not disclosed the type. The likelihood is that it was a "Snatch" Land Rover. From the number involved and the fact this vehicle is the most widely-used patrol vehicle, the odds point very much towards this.

Another soldier of the three who died today one of the crew who was ambushed by a suicide bomber last Friday – an attack that had already left one soldier dead.

Yet, German forces have recently been subject to an attack by a suicide bomber while one of their patrols also hit a mine. Riding in mine-protected Dingos, however, both crews survived with only very minor injuries.

In May, a Canadian vehicle also ran over a mine after it had been sent to aid a resupply convoy that experienced a breakdown of one of its vehicles.

Fortunately, the vehicle was an RG-31 Nyala. Although the crew was briefly hospitalised after the incident, Brig. Gen. David Fraser, commander of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, was reported to be smiling as he left the hospital after visiting the soldiers.

For the British yesterday, there were no smiles. Yet the tragedy of the mine and suicide bomb incidents is that the deaths and serious injuries were almost certainly preventable. Unlike the other nations providing major force numbers in Afghanistan, though, British soldiers have no mine protected vehicles for carrying out patrols. Had they been German or Canadian, their odds of survival would have been that much higher.

And the only thing on the horizon for the troops are lightly armoured Pinzgauer trucks, which provide no mine protection either.

When the hell is the MoD going to do something about these unnecessary deaths?

COMMENT THREAD

Dying of ignorance

A crop of letters in the Telegraph today (double-click to enlarge), under the heading, "Armed Forces deaths are the result of a lack of equipment", attests to the fact that the this blog is by no means alone in its view of the MoD's procurement performance – not that we ever thought we were.

But a recurrent theme in the debate is the issue of "underfunding". For instance, Telegraph correspondent James Heitz Jackson of London sees a direct correlation between the overstretch and underfunding imposed on our armed forces and the deaths of service personnel.

This is a charge made by former soldier Michael Moriarty in the "comment is free" section of the Guardian last week. Moriarty actually claims that soldiers are paying with their lives for the MoD’s incompetence, declaring that, "escalating commitments, budget squeezes and big equipment programmes have left Britain's forces fatally overstretched". He argues that:

Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching our forces - the army in particular - beyond the limits of the assumptions on which their funding is based. This situation has arisen through a combination of the government's enthusiasm for use of the armed forces to support its foreign-policy aims and the failure of defence chiefs to adequately highlight the limitations of military force and to demand that the government properly resource its military ambitions. There is a real risk that the armed forces could fail in their politically appointed tasks, with terrible long-term consequences for both them and Britain's world standing.

This has had defence secretary Des Browne rushing to the ramparts with what he thinks is a rebuttal, denying that British troops are ill-equipped and that the defence budget is insufficient.

At the heart of Bowne's rebuttal is his claim that the Afghan operation is fully funded from the Special Reserve and, therefore, the defence budget is not threatened by operational costs. Furthermore, he claims, the annual defence budget has risen by five billion pounds over the last five years - well in excess of inflation.

One has to say that this sort of charge and counter-charge gets us nowhere. It is little more that the "yah-boo-sucks" type of exchange that you can get any day in any school playground, lacking as it does any detail upon which to chew.

Actually, both are wrong and both are right – and neither has got to the key point. Yes, the defence budget has increased, and yes British forces are underfunded. And the reason both are right is that the money is going on useless projects like the Eurofighter, the Type 45 Destroyers and the Storm Shadow (the million pound bomb) – none of which are any use to the troops committed in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

But there is another all-important issue which neither of the proponents seem to have recognised. That is the value for money issue, which must also be assessed with regard to the tactical need.

Taking the second point first, outside a very narrow group of military specialists, there is very little debate as to what precisely is the right type and mix of equipment needed for counter-insurgency operations. Yet this issue is too important to be left to the specialists and – especially – the military establishment, which has a glorious and virtually unbroken record for getting it wrong.

Whether it was the introduction of the rifle in the Napoleonic wars – which was strenuously resisted – the change from red tunics to khaki in the Boer War, and the tardy issue of machine guns, or failure to develop a suitable tank (or armoured personnel carrier) during the Second World War, the record is dismal.

One of the current, most vibrant arguments at the moment is the role of armour in counter-insurgency, one that came to the fore in the battle for Fallujah (see here and here), which has had the US military reappraising the role of Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) and committing to a major programme of upgrading their Abrams fleet to improve its survivability in urban warfare.

Similar thinking is influencing the Israeli military. Before the Lebanon war, it was a given that the IDF would halt production of the latest mark of its Merkava MBT.

The view now – according to DefenseNews - is that the tank acquitted itself well in the recent fighting, not only in its primary role but in support missions such as escorting infantry, delivering supplies and even extracting battlefield casualties. The tank, therefore, is expected to evolve into a multi-purpose vehicle and its continued production looks assured.

Not only is the tank version undergoing a transformation, however, the Israelis are funding a project to develop the Merkava chassis into a dedicated armoured personnel carrier, called the Namera, building on their experiences with the Puma and its limitations.

All this is happening though at a time when the British Army is undergoing a major transformation, cutting back on its heavy armour and planning to replace much of its capability with medium-weight, wheeled armour, under the aegis of the £14 billion FRES programme, all to fit in with the EU concept of the European Rapid Reaction Force.

One can only marvel at the thought that the two armies which are most actively engaged at the sharp end with so-called "asymmetric warfare", in deadly counter-insurgency campaigns are opting for more and heavier armour while the British military establishment, imbued with the ethos of European integration, is going the other way.

But, if the choice of equipment is suspect, what about the costs? One of the main disadvantages of the Israeli Namera, we are told, is the cost – at a cool $750,000 each. But that, in sterling, is £398,631 (at current exchange rates) yet this compares with £437,000 each for lightly armoured Pinzgauer trucks.

No one is saying that the Namera would be the most appropriate equipment for the British Army in Afghanistan – although I suspect that some commanders would not turn them away if they were offered them – but surely the MoD can do better than spend nearly half a million for a truck that offers little if any better protection than that afforded by a "Snatch" Land Rover.

Then, as we have reported before, while there is a crying need for tactical helicopters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the MoD is committed to buying the " future Lynx" at an average cost of £14.2 million each, which means that they cannot be brought into service until 2014. Yet, the US Army is quite content with the well-proven Kiowa variant, at less than £2.3 million each.

All this and much more (such as the near £200 million on 400 useless Panthers – which cannot be used in Iraq - see also here) suggests that, not only is the MoD buying the wrong equipment, it is also paying far too much for what it does buy – the worst of all possible worlds. It also suggests that the problem is much more complex than the simple issue of "underfunding".

On the one hand, we have committed far too much on equipment that is of no use for the current campaigns and, on the other, much of what we do buy for the respective theatres is either overly expensive, under-performing or too late – or any combination of the three.

Echoing Booker's lament in his column last week: "Oh, for a properly clued-up media and an Opposition worthy of the name," we urgently need a properly informed debate both in Parliament and in the media.

We have no great hopes of the former and, as for the latter, even if there were journalists around who were capable of understanding the issues, the likelihood is that they would not be allowed to write even half-way detailed stories (as we found to our cost here). Their editors, wedded to their dumbed-down diet of political soap operas and Diana-esq, human interest stories, can rise to the occasional cheap quickie - after the event – (or the occasional cartoon) but would judge detailed analyis too "boring" for their precious readers.

Thus is the public condemned to ignorance and, as we keep pointing out, the consequences are all too evident. Ironically, during the early '80s, when the killer disease AIDS made its appearance, the Department of Health advertising slogan – to increase awareness – was "don't die of ignorance". Decades later, this looks to be the fate of many of our soldiers. The horrible reality, though, is that it will not be their ignorance which does for them – but ours.

COMMENT THREAD

What a good question

It was the Russian Section of the BBC, as far as I can make out, who first reported that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has called upon students in universities and colleges to get rid of liberal and secularly minded teachers.

The Russian Service website headed its article yesterday: “Iran’s president calls for a purge in higher education”, words that have a deadly meaning to all Russians. Interestingly enough, the English language website had a much milder heading: “Iran’s liberal lecturers targeted”. Could be anything, really.

The delightful Mr Ahmadinejad knows very well that universities do tend to explode into strikes and demonstrations against his ever more oppressive and obscurantist rule. So, after the destruction of the satellite dishes and the periodic crack-down on bloggers, the Iranian President has decided to launch another assault at the academic institutions.

Last year Teheran University acquired an ayatollah as its rector as part of the campaign to turn Iran into a completely backward kind of Islamic state. The students and academics responded by demonstrations after which many of the latter were sacked. (Though according to the BBC correspondent, that was not such a big problem as “many have found new jobs with institutions run by people linked to the president's political opponents”. Not for long, I imagine.

In the meantime, The American Thinker has asked a very pertinent question. Bearing in mind the outrage expressed by the Association of University Teachers on the subject of transgressions by the Israeli government, to the point of wanting to break all relations with all Israeli academics, can we look forward to a proposal for a boycott of Iranian academics? After all, unlike the case with Israel, what is at stake here is any semblance of academic freedom?

A reversal of roles

For all that so many people talk glibly about the "power of big business", the more normal experience when it comes to political issues is how cravenly neutral businesses often are. Many a time, on quite contentious issues, we have looked to them for leadership and support, only to find that they go for the easy, safe option and support the status quo – for fear of offending some of their customers.

It is quite remarkable, therefore, that yesterday, the Adsa supermarket chain came out with a press release calling for Britain's withdrawal from the EU's Common Fisheries Policy – which has destroyed our fisheries and wrecked the fishing fleet.

In US equivalent terms, this is something rather like Wal-Mart (which just happens to own Asda) calling for the abolition of hand guns. Getting directly involved in politics like this is something supermarkets simply do not do.

Anyhow, says Gordon Maddan, regulatory affairs manager at ASDA: "We want all the fish we sell to be sustainable. It's very clear however that the Common Fisheries Policy has failed to deliver this so we are now supporting calls for a radical change in approach."

As for Maddan's recipe, you need not waste your time on it – he provides the classic illustration of why shopkeepers should stick to selling their goods and not meddle in things they do not understand. But his heart is in the right place – he and his employer recognise that the CFP is fundamentally flawed and that we should withdraw from it.

But, if we are now seeing a supermarket chain taking an overtly political line, we are also seeing politicians taking an overtly non-political line – a complete reversal of the normal scheme of things. Enter Struan Stevenson MEP, formerly chairman of the EU parliament's fisheries committee and currently Conservative European spokesman on fisheries policy.

Asked by BBC Today programme's Sarah Montague why this was no longer Conservative Party policy, he simply blustered, saying: "It's not the easiest thing in the world to withdraw from the CFP". When Montague persisted as to what the current policy line was, Stevenson responded that, "If the CFP is not reformed substantially, then we retain the possibility of withdrawal".

It says something for quite how fatuous this response was that even Sarah Montague noted that reform "isn't going to happen…", leaving Stevenson stranded, high and dry.

Yet, since the Conservatives produced their green paper of fisheries in December last, written by then shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson. this is as near to the first definitive statement on fisheries that we have had from the Cameron camp.

This is from a man who has never had the guts to stand up and declare openly that he has abandoned the withdrawal policy agreed by all three of his predecessors. Instead, we are going to seek "reform" – something even the BBC recognises is not going to happen.

Nevertheless, the two-faced Stevenson is going along with the fiction. This is the man who tells the BBC that the CFP is "a treaty obligation… something you can't simply unravel overnight."

Yet when he was asked – pre-Cameron - to respond to the Owen Paterson's green paper on withdrawal from the CFP, he wrote: "It is brilliant. My smile got broader and broader as I read through it! You've done a startling piece of work which will be widely applauded by the fishing communities in the UK and beyond."

It said of politicians that some are born great while others have greatness thrust upon them. Others, it would seem, are born shits and remain that way all their lives.

COMMENT THREAD

The stinger stung

I really don't know what to make of this report from the Chronicle Newspaper in Lilongwe via allafrica.com, other than to say that – undoubtedly due to my perverted sense of humour – I found it hugely amusing.

The report, under the headline, "Malawi govt uses EU name to dupe suppliers" tells how the government, which cannot attract suppliers for various items due to its failure to honour payments, has used the name of European Union to dupe four major companies to supply it with vehicles, tractors and other equipment.

This goes back to June last year when the Malawi ministry of transport and public works advertised for the supply of plant, equipment and vehicles. To ensure that it got a good crop of bidders, though, it claimed that the financing would be by the Government of Malawi with support from the European Development Fund (EDF).

Interestingly, the government had applied for EU funding but had been turned down. It went ahead with the tender invitation anyway, using the EU's EDF format. The ploy worked and, unusually, its ministry received overwhelming response. Companies were encouraged that they would be able to tender without concerns about usual delays of payment because the tender was backed financially by the European Union.

However, more than a year on, the government of Malawi has only paid 60 percent of the money now owed to four successful bidders and is failing to pay the remainder.

The scam came to light when the companies started chasing their balances in Brussels, only to have EU officials deny any involvement with the contract. The commission has now written to the government of Malawi protesting at this misrepresentation.

Minister of public works, Henry Mussa, however, is unrepentant. He is stating that he cannot recall any tender advertisement for the supply of the goods. "I am in the bush, very far away here in Mwanza where I am inspecting public works projects," he told the Chronicle.

"I am not involved in the day-to-day running pf operations. I only come in on policy issues; where there is need for political will and policy guidance. The ministry's chief executive is the principal secretary - he is the one you can talk to," explained Mussa.

Whether the companies involved – including Toyota Malawi – will ever see their money is questionable. But one thing you have to concede is that, while the tender may not have been genuine, Mr Mussa's approach to ministerial responsibility is pure, undistilled European Union.

Seems to me that, when Kofi finally gets his pension, the UN could do no better than headhunt our Henry.

COMMENT THREAD

PDF report available

In response to several requests, we have converted our web report on Corruption of the Media into a .pdf document.

This has necessitated repositioning and re-sizing the illustrations so we have also taken the opportunity to carry out some limited editing, to reduce the size slightly: it now comes to 75 pages (down from 104) - with some photographs omitted.

It can be downloaded from here. The link is also posted on the report site here.

The original report will remain accessible from the link on the sidebar.

Gone and largely forgotten

On 31 August, we picked up a "tirade" from Julia Langdon, in The Daily Telegraph, on the employment of 3,259 PR men by the government.

Readers will recall, though, that we were somewhat less than sympathetic with our Julia, not least because we felt her protest was simply a space-filler. There was no real commitment to seeking change and, as long as the situation suited the media, they would confine themselves to ritual complaints that would soon be forgotten.

In the letters column today, of the same newspaper, there is some support for our view from Christopher Jones, the Parliamentary correspondent for BBC Radio and Television News between 1964 and 1989.

What he has to say is that political journalists "should also look at the motes in their own eyes."

Since the premiership of Harold Wilson, governments have made every effort to control political reporting through the lobby system – a system that is based entirely on secrecy and unattributable gossip and rumour; the antithesis of good journalism.

This system means, of course, that politicians – and especially governments – hold the whip hand, since they can act against any journalists who break the secrecy code, while journalists accept the system in order to keep their credibility.

It also means that the proceedings of Parliament – the reason why politicians are at Westminster – now go entirely unreported (except by the BBC, which has a charter obligation to do so). Only the weekly nonsense of Prime Minister's Questions is ever covered, plus the occasional appearance of some unfortunate fall guy before an entirely toothless departmental select committee, or sketch-writers portraying politicians as figures of fun. Journalists should find it hard to complain about a PR system which is set up, at enormous taxpayers' expense, to feed them with their livelihood.

This is not quite the point we made – which was that whole tranches of the media rely for their copy on the never-ending supply of free government press releases – but it is a good one all the same.

And the net conclusion is the same. As long as the current government PR system suits the media – which indeed it does – we will see no fundamental change. Largely proving the point, the indignation so forcefully expressed by Mz Langdon is gone and largely forgotten. In due course, she will get her cheque for writing her piece and that will be the end of the matter.

COMMENT THREAD

What a great idea

I must admit that I have not until today come across the Bullwinkle Blog, which I found through the invaluable Instapundit.

Its writer has come up with an absolutely splendid idea as to who can replace SecGen Kofi Annan (father of Kojo) when he finally departs from the UN to pastures even greeener. Who other than Tony Soprano?

The argument is impeccable:

"He’d steal less. He wouldn’t take any shit from anybody and a UN Resolution would be enforced, or else."

Actually, I am not convinced about the first one of those.

COMMENT THREAD

Gone AWOL

It really is quite bizarre but, now that the reality has been acknowledged, it is safe for the media – in this case The Daily Telegraph - to jump on the bandwagon.

Thus it is that Richard Westmacott's story on the loss of a soldier in Afghanistan, ambushed by a suicide bomber while riding in a "Snatch" Land Rover (illustrated), is headed: "Bombers target our soldiers on patrol in lightly armoured Land Rovers".

With the death yesterday of two more soldiers in Iraq, also riding in "Snatch" Land Rovers, this invites another story from the Telegraph, written by Oliver Poole with a dateline of Basra. And the headline here is: "The vulnerability of troops on roads".

All of a sudden, therefore, the fact that the "Snatch" Land Rovers are inadequate is the perceived wisdom - hence so many starting to write about it. Poole's story thus starts: "The two British soldiers killed in southern Iraq yesterday were patrolling in a lightly armoured Land Rover."

But why you just know that Poole, like his colleagues, is simply trotting out a mantra – with no semblance of understanding – is the stock paragraph which is appearing in various guises in virtually every newspaper where "lightly armoured" Land Rovers are mentioned. This goes as follows:

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has announced that 300 tougher armoured vehicles, mainly designed (sic) Pinzgauers, and US Cougars, will be purchased for use in Iraq and Afghanistan but they will not be available to the end of the year.

The point, of course, is that even Des Browne has admitted that the Pinzgauers are no better armoured than the "Snatch" Land Rover and, by virtue of their flawed design, probably offer less in the way on mine protection.

But that does not trouble the likes of Oliver Poole. It has entered the collective brain of the media establishment that Pinzgauers are "tougher" armoured vehicles, and that is the way they will be described – even though they are coffins on wheels.

Just at a time when a responsible, knowledgeable media should be putting the boot in to the government, in an attempt to stop the dangerous machines being sent to Afghanistan – when serious numbers of troops will be killed if they are used – all we get in a new conventional wisdom.

When – and I do mean when – we see troops slaughtered unnecessarily in these dangerous machines, the media will no doubt then apply the descriptor "lightly armoured" to Pinzgauers as well. After the event will this become the even newer conventional wisdom. But, at a time when it really matters and lives could be saved, the media has gone AWOL, along with what passes for its brains.

COMMENT THREAD

Why don't they just go away?

You can tell it's September. The EU commissioners are back from the long hols and the EU news agenda is stirring back into life. And, like attention-seeking children, the commissioners feel they must have something on the slate to prove they still exist.

One seeking to grab the limelight is Markos Kyprianou, the EU health commissioner who has told the Financial Times that "Europe's" public healthcare systems must brace for radical change as barriers to patients crossing borders to seek treatment drop. Kyprianou is saying that he intends to act to implement the right of patients to travel for treatment across the EU, in the wake of recent court judgements.

This relates to a European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling in May last which supported 74-year-old grandmother, Yvonne Watts, in her claim for free treatment in France after her own health care trust had placed her on a one-year waiting list for surgery.

But this is not the only case. Others include the B.S.M. Geraets-Smits v Stichting Ziekenfonds judgement in July 2001, which accepted that a system of prior authorisation, before patients could seek treatment abroad, was justified, if there were overriding reasons connected with "the financial balance of social security systems" and "the maintenance of hospital services available to all", provided such restrictions were not applied arbitrarily.

As we pointed out at the time, the EU is stretching the boundaries of the Treaties, all in a back-door attempt to create a European health service. The overall objective, though, is the same old thing – pursuing European integration by creating systems and service structures on an EU-wide level.

As we also noted, this initiative presents a serious challenge to eurosceptics. Most would welcome a weakening of state control over health services and wider patient choice, but it is uncomfortable to find that the impetus for "liberalisation" comes from the European Union.

But, as we all know, the EU has no real interest in the functioning of health care services – all it is interested in is having them at a European level. And, given its disastrous management of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy and, latterly, its flawed rules on waste recycling, the only thing you can guarantee is that, however bad the current National Health Service is, under EU direction it would be even worse.

The temptation, therefore, is simply to say "no way Hosé" – or José, since the commission president bears that moniker – and to ignore the issue in the hope that it will go away, just as the Conservative Party and the media do.

But that is not a safe option. The commission niggles away at its pet projects, coming back again and again, never - as we saw with the constitution - able to take "no" for an answer. Even if they are defeated again and again, they still come back, wearing you down with their persistence until, eventually, they get their way.

But there are more important things than the EU's integrationalist ambitions – from the disaster in Darfur to the collapse of democratic government in our own country. Having to deal with the EU is a distraction, an irritation and a colossal drain on energy and resources that could and should be better expended elsewhere.

However, if you don't pay attention to the children, they will eventually wreck the joint – so we have to wade in and deal with them, even if it is just to slap them down. All the same though, we can do without this and not for the first time we find ourselves saying, "Why don't they just go away?"

COMMENT THREAD

Criminal incompetence

Not on the scale of the loss of the Nimrod over the weekend, another sad event occurred today with the death of two British troops in Iraq, and the serious injury of another, following a roadside bomb attack on their "Snatch" Land Rover, just north of Basra. A fourth soldier was lightly wounded.

A report from Middle East online describes how "insurgents" attacked a British army unit escorting a reconstruction team. They were tasked to escort a reconstruction unit to assist with the rebuilding of the area north of Basra.

The "Snatch" Land Rover was badly damaged, with the wreckage of the vehicle standing upright by the side of the road, part of the rear cabin ripped open by the force of the explosion.

This brings the total number of UK soldiers killed in operations in Iraq since the 2003 conflict to 117 and, by our reckoning, the number killed while patrolling or travelling in lightly armoured or unarmoured Land Rovers to 25 – the largest single group of casualties in the Iraq theatre.

This follows the story in the Scotland on Sunday last week, which revealed that the MoD had sold off 14 Mamba armoured vehicles for a fraction of their original cost.

That story was picked up yesterday by the Mail on Sunday and again by the Scotland on Sunday, based in information supplied by this blog.

Today, however, prime minister Tony Blair described the deaths as a "terrible tragedy". He should, perhaps, have a quiet chat with his defence procurement minister, Lord Drayson, who consistently maintained that the "Snatch" Land Rovers "provide us with the mobility and level of protection that we need".

It was only after a sustained campaign by this blog, backed by Conservative shadow ministers, Booker in The Sunday Telegraph, and then the Sunday Times, that Drayson eventually conceded that new armoured vehicles should be bought.

But, since these cannot be delivered to theatre until the end of this year, our troops must continue to ride – and die – in inadequately protected Land Rovers, and Blair has the nerve to call these deaths a "terrible tragedy". Criminal incompetence by his own government would be a better description.

COMMENT THREAD

They are getting there slowly

That famous UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon is getting there slowly. 1,000 Italian troops are supposed to have landed by yesterday evening, the eventual plan being 2,450 Italian ground troops. These will be deployed in the next two months and command will be assumed (if the French agree to give it up) next year.

Meanwhile of the reluctantly promised 2,000 French troops the same 250 that deployed last week are there and others are awaited. UNIFIL is commanded by Major General Alain Pellegrini, who is French.

The German naval deployment has been put on hold as the request from Lebanon had not yet arrived. Lebanon is supposed to ask the UN who is then supposed to pass the request on to the relevant country.

Indonesia said it would send 1,000 troops as Israel has withdrawn its objections. Indonesia is not just predominantly Muslim but is also a country that has refused to acknowledge Israel’s existence, which makes its role as a peacekeeper potentially very interesting.

Turkey is considering whether to participate, though the tiny Armenian community of Lebanon has protested because of the 1915 massacres. While those massacres were horrible, one rather wonders why an old historical event should weigh more heavily in the international community’s considerations than more recent attacks on a country that had been set up by the United Nations.

The UN has said that Israel should withdraw its forces as soon as the international contingent reaches 5,000 – some way to go. But the numbers matter less than the mandate. General Pellegrini may announce that the new UNIFIL has greater powers than the old one did but, in actual fact, neither the Lebanese army (despite all the huffing and puffing) nor the UN forces intend to disarm Hezbollah, who will, undoubtedly do what all terrorist organizations do when the UN moves in: rearm behind the shield of blue berets and blue helmets.

COMMENT THREAD

Sarkozy in the lead

One must never forget that Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian and is, therefore, reasonably familiar with the principle of coming ahead in the revolving door. He is also, interestingly enough, not an enarque, having attended the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (SciencePo) without graduating, rather than the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the alma mater of almost the entire French political class.

At present, Sarkozy seems to be a good way ahead in the race for UMP nomination in the presidential elections, due next spring. The Ifop survey published in Le Journal du Dimanche says that 45 per cent of the electorate wants Sarkozy to be the centre-right candidate with only 8 per cent opting for Villepin and 3 per cent for Chirac. The rest, one assumes, preferred none of the above.

According to Emmanuel Rivière, head of political studies at the TNS Sofres polling institute, Sarkozy may be in the lead as far as UMP is concerned but defeating the Socialists will be considerably more difficult. That’s as may be. As the International Herald Tribune article puts it:

“Several long-time supporters of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Sarkozy's main rivals in recent years, used the three-day conference in the port town of Marseille to express their support for the interior minister, among them the budget minister Jean-François Copé and the sports minister, Jean-François Lamour.

Villepin himself appeared to soften his opposition to Sarkozy, albeit without explicitly endorsing his candidature.

"Thank you Nicolas!" said Villepin on the opening day of the meeting on Friday. "Nicolas, you are a minister of state who is energetic, strong-willed and courageous. I give you all my gratitude."

The show of unity on the right comes one week after a similar gathering of the opposition Socialist Party was overshadowed by divisive squabbling among half a dozen potential candidates, several of whom multiplied their attacks on Ségolène Royal, the front- runner in opinion polls on the left.”

The three-day conference in Marseilles was for 6,000 young members of the party. They gave Sarkozy a rousing welcome and, apparently, endorsed his rather vague promises of creating a “new French model” and “reinventing the Republic”. The inevitable rock singers and, this being France, aged crooners were also present.

There seems to be some doubt in the reporting as to whether Sarkozy really does appeal to the young. On the one hand, we are told, he has not been forgiven for his references to the suburban rioters of last autumn, as “scum”. Forgiven by whom, one wonders. The suburban rioters are unlikely to vote UMP, anyway.

On the other hand, he has been promising lots of goodies to the middle class youngsters, who are likely to vote for him.

“On Sunday, he sought to woo young voters by proposing to create interest- free loans for students who want to set up a business and special education savings accounts. In a proposal that resembles one in the Socialist Party's program, he also suggested the introduction of a six-month community service for those aged between 18 and 30.

Sarkozy appeared to criticize a flexible work contract the government introduced a year ago, which allows small companies to fire employees without justification during the first two years. The contract is estimated to have created at least 40,000 jobs that would otherwise not have been created, but it has been fiercely criticized by labor unions and the Socialist Party.”

Meanwhile with les vacances annuaires over, children back at school, it is time for French politicians on the left to turn their attention to what really matters: next year’s presidential elections.

COMMENT THREAD

No war crimes in Darfur

As usual, it depends on who you are as to whether you might be a war criminal or not, rather than on what you have done. As Al-Jazeera reports, Israeli officials were told to watch what they are saying or they might be accused of being war criminals.

“The sources say the foreign ministry has established a legal team to deal with efforts by foreign groups to arrange the prosecution abroad of Israelis involved in the war against Hezbollah guerrillas and crackdowns on Palestinians.

A ministry memorandum issued to Israel's military and other government agencies urges officials to avoid belligerent remarks that could potentially be used to back up allegations they were complicit in excessive use of force in Lebanon or Gaza.

"The type of language now considered off-limits includes 'crushing' the enemy, and 'cleansing', 'levelling', or 'wiping out' suspected enemy emplacements," a political source who saw the memo told Reuters.”

There are, inevitably, all kinds of attempts in various countries, some democracies, some, like Morocco, whose own record on human rights would barely stand up to investigation, to prove that the Israeli army and only the Israeli army in the whole of the Middle East, has committed war crimes.

“According to the memo, numerous war crimes lawsuits against Israeli officials were being prepared. It cited venues such as France, Belgium, Morocco and Britain, but no further details were immediately available.

Three Moroccan lawyers said last month they were suing the Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, over the recent offensives.

Israel Radio reported that a Danish politician also tried to have Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister detained and prosecuted during a recent visit to Copenhagen but the request for an arrest warrant was turned down by prosecutors.”

Let’s face it, no Danish or any other West European politician is ever going to say that prolonged Hezbollah attacks on Israeli settlements in the north (all civilian) or Hezbollah use of Lebanese civilians as human shields could possibly constitute a breach of international agreements. I wonder why that is.

Could it be a form of European superciliousness or hidden racism? Could the unnamed Danish politician be really thinking that one cannot sue organizations like Hamas, Fatah or Hezbollah for war crimes because they cannot be expected to understand the meaning of the term? Just a thought.

In the same way, one does not think of the government of Sudan or any of the militias it has trained and financed to attack and murder the people of Darfur (or various other parts of the country at various times) in very large numbers.

As Associated Press reports, the government of Sudan has demanded that the African Union, whose 7,000 strong “peace-keeping force” has achieved precisely nothing, leave the area before September 30, as they cannot stay beyond that, and not even think of handing over to UN troops.

“The government on Thursday rejected a UN Security Council resolution for the deployment of a 20,000-strong U.N. force in Darfur.

Instead it has launched a major offensive reportedly involving thousands of troops and militias in the northern part of Darfur.

The week-old offensive targets rebels who refused to sign a U.S.-brokered peace deal in May aimed at ending three years of conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.”

Where the UN was going to get 20,000 peacekeepers for Darfur while still trying rather desperately to raise 15,000 for UNIFIL remains a mystery. It is probably just as well that they are not going to be allowed there. But is any Danish (or other West European) politician going to accuse Sudanese politicians and/or officials of war crimes? I thought not.

COMMENT THREAD

The tyranny of the officials

One view of American society, reflected by the British in our soooo superior way, is the dismissive comment on its local democracy, summed up by the sneer: "…but they even elect their dogcatchers".

Well, that may be the case, but to such pathetic levels of inadequacy has our so-called democratic system sunk that we now elect our dogs… or, at least, we might just as well, for all the power our elected local representatives have. Dogs, one has to say, have a use.

This is brought home to us by a news item in The Daily Telegraph, headlined: "Prescott's ethics fiasco hampering democracy", a commentary on a new report published by Owen Paterson, the shadow transport minister, and Gerald Howarth, the shadow defence minister.

Entitled, "A question of standards", this records how an organisation called The Standards Board of England", with a staff of 219 and a budget of £10 million a year, is wreaking havoc with local councils, imposing a draconian and absurd code of practice which ends up banning councillors from discussing local park-and-ride schemes if they own a car or barred them from speaking or voting on the location of a mobile phone mast if they themselves used a mobile phone.

Even councillors who have been elected specifically to fight a particular issue have fallen foul of the rules and found themselves told they cannot speak or vote on it.

The Standards Board for England, itself, was launched by deputy prime minister Prescott in 2001, who claimed that that the new body would help to ensure high ethical standards in local government. It supposedly handles complaints about councillors' behaviour and is supported by a network of ethical standards officers, who are each paid £61,000 a year. Each authority also has its own monitoring officers who advise councillors on their conduct.

In 2003-04 the board handled more than 3,500 allegations and launched 1,105 investigations. Sanctions were imposed on more than 200 councillors who were judged to have breached the code of conduct.

The net effect of the Board's activities, though, is to close down democratic debate and, as importantly, to elevate council officials to positions where they are able to monitor, judge and call to account elected representatives. In a system where, supposedly, it is the elected representatives which hold the officials to account, the tail is now wagging the dog.

The theme is taken up by a Telegraph leader which notes that the function of councils should be to maintain local administrative infrastructure, and to make and implement local policy in accordance with the wishes of the electorate expressed through the ballot box.

In fact, it says, our councils, responsible for raising only 25 per cent of their own budgets, have long been in thrall to Whitehall and Westminster, and have increasingly become the more or less willing tools of central government, distinguishable one from another by little more than the efficiency with which they organise refuse collection.

Now, it adds, their democratic autonomy is being undermined still further by the ethical guidelines instituted, ludicrously, by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott. Purportedly designed to prevent conflicts of interest, they in effect disqualify any councillor who knows about a particular issue from contributing to its resolution. Thus, informed debate and decision-making alike become impossible at the local level, and power, yet again, reverts to the centre: another victory for the New Labour ethic.

What could also be added is how like the European Union councils have now become. There, the whole ethos of the system is that appointed officials – the EU Commission – have power over elected representatives of the member states, to monitor them, to judge them and to hold them to account.

And, as national elections progressively become devoid of meaning, as the EU takes over more and more law-making powers, so it is too that local elections have become irrelevant as more and more power is vested in the hands of officials and council chambers become vacuous talking-shops, with "monitoring officers" ready to pounce if the councillors put a foot wrong.

Interestingly, it was an American, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill - a longtime Speaker of the House in the US Congress – who declared, "All politics is local". But here in the cradle of democracy, that is no longer the case. It has been replaced by the tyranny of the officials.

The full report can be downloaded from here (.pdf – 22 pages).

COMMENT THREAD

Late and badly…

It is ironic that, the day Booker devoted the main story in his column to an analysis if how EU directives were turning our system of waste collection and disposal into chaos, the Mail on Sunday should have reported on one of the dire consequences of this chaos – and not mentioned the EU once.

The piece starts with a strap which declares, "The Green Gauleiters who force us to recycle out rubbish…". It goes on to refer to local authorities who "bully UK residents into complying with new 'green' laws", and then refers to "town hall officials" who argue that "local recycling schemes – which carry fines if they are not obeyed - are essential to avoid a Britain blighted by landfill sites".

There is no mention of the origin of these "green" laws, nor any mention of why the local authorities might be fined if they do not obey them, nor indeed any mention, when we have been served by landfill sites for decades, why we should suddenly consider ourselves blighted by them.

Nothing more typifies the crass inability of the MSM to get to grips with EU issues, matched only by the inability of either of the main opposition parties to do likewise – giving extra force to Booker’s concluding line of his piece: "Oh, for a properly clued-up media and an Opposition worthy of the name." As for the MoS, when we finally get a story, it is late and done badly.

The MoS story is indeed dire – about the way supposedly recycled refuse is being transported to China, where it is processed in extremely poor hygienic conditions, with scant regard for the environment, causing massive pollution.

But even then, we reported on precisely this on 14 May this year, which was actually based in part on a story written up in the Guardian in September 2004. On the ball, the Mail on Sunday ain't.

But what the MoS could have done – and did not – was develop the story. That it did not is criminal. The horrific scenes that paper describes (see also picture) arise directly and as an inevitable consequence of the EU's obsession with creating regulatory-imposed targets for recycling, irrespective of the market capacity to absorb the material produced.

This is the classic producer-driven system against which all sane economists warn against, the very system that ensured the Soviet Union had massive surpluses of unwanted goods and never enough of the products in demand.

Essentially, with no market capacity to absorb the material in the UK, there is only one option – short of landfilling it, which is what is happening in some instances – and that is to export it to countries which are willing to deal with it. And that, currently, is China (as well as Indonesia).

The MoS cites Greenpeace spokesman Edward Chan, calling on "British consumers" to put pressure on recyclers to make sure their waste goes where it can be managed without causing damage, but again that ignores the economics.

Firstly, the massive glut of recycled material drives the price down. In a competitive market, only those who process the material most cheaply can hope to make a profit. It is there that Chinese processors, paying workers a mere £1.70 a day and operating under primitive standards, are able to compete.

Secondly, recycled materials are competing against cheap raw materials and there is a limit to the prices the market will bear. If the cost of processing does increase, as result of increased wages and better hygiene and environmental standards, the material will be priced out of the market.

What this actually boils down to is that, under the current situation, it is not possible at all to process economically much of the material produced. It is only by cutting corners and using cheap labour that there is any demand for it at all.

On the other hand, there is no scope for increasing charges at the other end, where the waste is actually generated. The cost of separate collections, sorting and primary processing is already – as Booker reminds us – set to add £10 billion a year to the cost of the waste system. That, in the context of increased and highly unpopular Council Tax bills, is already politically unsustainable.

Booker, in his column, focuses on the experiences of Christina Speight, one of our most valuable forum members, who has confronted her council in Ealing about its mad scheme to issue residents with lidded plastic containers for "food waste". This was accompanied by a glossy leaflet illustrating the food waste allegedly thrown away by the average household each week, 8.5 kilograms (18 lbs) of it, including a mass of apparently untouched fruit and veg, bread, cream, milk and heaven knows what. "Our own household," says Mrs Speight, "throws away barely a tenth of that."

Christina discovered that the council had bought 95,000 of these containers from a firm in Italy, costing between £5 and £10 each, so that, in the name of saving the environment, whole truckloads had been brought half way across Europe. In recent days, Booker adds:

…our media (not least the correspondence columns) have been full of items on the chaos that now prevails in the collection and disposal of waste in Britain. They ranged from the 500,000 wheelie bins fitted with microchips (to measure how full they are) to householders so frustrated by new collection times and the mass of different containers into which they must sort their rubbish that a fifth of all Britain's 40,000 dustmen claim that in the past year they have been assaulted, many now saying they want to give up.

Further chaos results from a thicket of new rules governing what householders can or cannot dump at council tips. Some are now being asked by councils to pay for a permit allowing them to deposit waste at all. Rules making it more costly to get rid of old vehicles saw the number of "illegal disposals" last year soaring to 1.5 million.

With such a plethora of new laws making it ever harder to dispose of waste is it really surprising, many people ask, that Britain is seeing "an epidemic of fly-tipping"?

What is not explained, he goes on to say,

…is just why we are faced with this chaos. The answer is that the revolution in how we dispose of our rubbish has been imposed on us by a series of Brussels directives, the purpose of which is to phase out the burying of waste in landfill and to switch our efforts to recycling, while incinerating everything that cannot be recycled.

That is the eurosceptics’ main problem. Contrary to what our critics often complain, we do not oppose the European Union simply because of what it is, but also because what it does is inevitably a disaster. But, if the disasters it creates are not identified and publicised by the media – which seems more concerned to feed off a diet of never-ending "Euromyths", many of them which are imaginary – the public at large will never get to share the sentiment that we are "better off out".

When, on the other hand, still respected (by a majority) organs like the BBC puff up the non-existent achievements of the EU, the distortions magnify and the pressure for change is suppressed.

That the subject is so mundane and unglamorous as refuse, therefore, is not the point. What matters is that a previously efficent system that affects everyone is being turned into chaos at enormous cost – both to us and to those in China who suffer the consequences – and the media cannot be bothered to tell us the reason for it.

COMMENT THREAD

Squandered lives

It was with a genuine sense of shock that we learned yesterday of the loss of a Nimrod MR2 over Afghanistan, with the death of its entire crew of 14. We can only add to the expressions of sympathy to the relatives, friends and colleagues of the deceased.

The shock came in part because one does not expect to lose this type of aircraft, even in combat theatres. One presumes – as has been stated in a number of reports – that it would have been at an altitude safe from any anti-aircraft missiles that the Taliban could deploy. And, for a mature airframe, one does not expect a "mechanical defect" – the current MoD explanation – to have such a catastrophic effect.

Already though, the pundits are suggesting that it could have been a missile attack, discounting the MoD denials. They pointed out that the Hercules crash in Iraq in January last year was initially put down to "metal fatigue" when, in fact, it turned out to have been downed by a missile.

However, even if it had been a missile which downed the Nimrod, you would not expect the MoD to admit it immediately – and rightly so. It is simply not good sense to give the enemy, gratis, an after-action report, confirming his success.

A different line is taken by Colonel Tim Collins in The Sunday Telegraph today, who writes, "Government must find more funds or pull out". This is a line we ourselves have taken so we would not altogether disagree with Collins when he says:

If the 14 British servicemen killed in Afghanistan died because of the mechanical failure of their Nimrod plane, then it confirms what I have been saying for months — that the UK's aircraft and helicopters are old and absolutely worn out.

But, if The Sunday Times report is correct, and the aircraft was "co-ordinating special forces operations against the Taliban, intercepting their communications and providing real time video surveillance of what was going on on the ground", then there is an another problem which is quite as serious – if not more so – amounting to a major scandal.

The fact is that, if the Nimrod was providing coordination and carrying out electronic communications intercepts and video surveillance (and it is really hard to think what else it could do – as a marine reconnaissance aircraft, it radars would have been next to useless) then it should not have been there at all. These functions do not require a manned aircraft and, in fact, are better (and more safely) carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as the Predator deployed by US forces and – to and extent, by UK forces.

Thus, the announcement last week that the UK government was to buy two Predators from the US, for use in Afghanistan, might not be entirely coincidental. Not only does it confirm that UAVs are needed for this theatre (as we have long argued) but it also suggests that the Nimrod was being used as a stop-gap, to make up for the lack of capability.

Therein lies the scandal. When you look at the MoD performance in seeking to equip British forces with UAVs, you are looking at a tale of incompetence which beggars belief and a colossal waste of money. So much has been wasted in fact, that we could have had the capacity already, for a fraction of the cost. There would be no wreckage of a fine aircraft and 14 men might still be alive.

The story actually starts with the Phoenix UAV, developed originally for the Army for artillery spotting and then – as the MoD so often does – given a role extension to take in battlefield surveillance, for which purpose it was entirely unsuited. The story is spelt out here and makes for sorry reading.

But where the real scandal lies was elicited by Tory MP Andrew Rosindell in a Parliamentary question, answered in July 2006. This revealed that the "Phoenix unmanned aerial vehicle system" had cost approximately £345 million since inception. Ignored by the media, this was for a system that was introduced in 1998 with a minimum 15-year in-service life, which had never functioned effectively – or at all- and could not be used in either Iraq or Afghanistan where it is most needed.

Now, the point is that the deficiencies of this abysmal machine were well known – and certainly to the MoD – by the year 2000, when the system failed to perform in Kosovo. It was certainly abundantly clear in 2002 when a reported upgrade to allow it to operate in hot weather was "put off to save money".

In fact, the "upgrade" was more likely cancelled because no amount of money would improve a basically inadequate design but, whatever the reason, this meant that the British Army went into Iraq without what is universally regarded as vital equipment.

We do now know that the MoD partly made up for this deficiency by leasing time on Predators in Iraq, but this, we also know, has proved unsatisfactory. The UAVs have been treated as "theatre assets" and have not always been available to British forces.

Instead of doing the sensible – and vitally necessary – thing, however, and buying more Predators from the US, not least to provide surveillance in other theatres such as Afghanistan, the MoD decided to launch on another programme of UAV development. And, with the speed of a glacier, that took until last October to finalise, with the government committing another £317 million to build 99 Israeli-designed Elbit Systems WK-450s, known as the Watchkeeper, the total contract running to £700 million.

But the worst of this was that, while the government was so eagerly committing troops to Afghanistan, the system was not due to come into service until 2010 – at the very earliest. Even then, its capabilities will fall far short of the Predator, which is already up and flying, proving its worth in both Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Thus, having so far committed the best part of £1 billion to providing UAVs for the armed forces – with no prospect of them seeing any capability until 2010, the MoD last week decided to spend yet another £30 million on two Predators for Afghanistan, to tide them over and provide at least some of the much needed support that these machines can give.

In the meantime, Nimrod aircraft, it seems, have been filling the gap and, if our contention is correct, that is why there is why 14 men now lie dead in Afghanistan.

Nor, indeed, does the story end there. Predators are not line-of-sight vehicles – i.e., they operate out of sight of their controllers – which means you need satellites to convey the communications and control signals and to receive the data they produce. Furthermore, as the US has found out, UAVs chew up band-width to such an extent that this has proved a factor limiting their deployment, not least because other services compete for air time.

To operate these Predators, the British government will need satellite capability and there has been no announcement on how this will be provided – or at what cost.

We do know, however, that the MoD is seriously short of capacity and is relying on its new communications satellite system, Skynet 5, which will not be fully operational until 2008. This could explain why only two Predators or being bought – for an area four times the size of Wales. It is quite possible that there is no capacity to operate more.

In any event, this whole sorry saga is yet another example of inefficiency, waste and mismanagement. As always, the taxpayer pays the monetary price, getting less for more, while those at the sharp end pay with their lives.

And, if the media has noticed something is wrong, it has not even begun to understand why.

COMMENT THREAD

They catch up … eventually

We did it on 3 July, barring a key bit of information that we had to tease out of the MoD through a Parliamentary question. This the Scotland on Sunday picked last week and we followed through last Friday.

Now, today – two months after we broke the original story - the Mail on Sunday has finally run it. Yet, at the end of the same month that we first ran it, little Shane Richmond, Telegraph web news editor, was happily pushing out an inane comment from Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker journalist, that blogs are "derivative".

Yet again this illustrates that sections of the MSM are so far up their own backsides that they haven't even begun to realise that, increasingly, blogs are running the agenda on certain issues. They are ahead of the curve.

As for the MoS, typically, it has gone for the cheap, sensationalist angle and has missed key parts of the story. That makes it just another space-filler rather than a contribution to the debate about the inadequacies of the MoD, which would have moved the issue forward.

Not least, it parrots uncritically the MoD line that the Mambas were "too heavy", without stating why - and that they "were not designed as a patrol vehicle". Yet, that is precisely what they were designed for, a task - even as we write - at which, in the form of the RG-31, they are excelling in Canadian hands in Afghanistan.

It then mentions that, last month, the MoD "revealed" that the Army is to get 300 new, "tougher" armoured vehicles for use in Iraq and Afghanistan - failing, of course, to note that 100-plus of these are the useless Pinzgauer coffins on wheels. This, incidentally, is from Whitehall correspondent, Jason Lewis, who should have been aware of what was happening. When the butcher's bill comes in, you can bet the MSM will be waxing indignant but now, when there is an opportunity to do something and actually save lives - they are silent.

And, although all the information for the MoS piece came directly from the exertions of this blog – they even used the same photographs – was there any mention of EU Referendum? I'll give you three guesses.

COMMENT THREAD

Which bit of useless?

It was on 12 September last year that my colleague wrote a somewhat less than laudatory analysis of UN SecGen, Kofi Annan.

Not quite a year later, we read this, published yesterday. And then, today, we read this.

The one is a Telegraph leader on the failure of the UN in Darfur, where this venerable organisation has been sidelined. The other is a stonking analysis in The Business, of the Iranian situation. There, guess what, the UN has been sidelined.

The final chapter on Lebanon, of course, has yet to be written but if the present UN force is supposed to be "UNIFIL on steroids", then the dose administered must be below detectable threshold.

All one can say of Mr Annan is, which bit of "useless" don't you understand?

COMMENT THREAD

2011? Do I hear 2014?

Hungary's probable entry into the euro (probable in the sense of not being completely impossible) is shifting. Not before 2010 we were told earlier this month and, although the country's convergence plans were accepted this Friday by the EU as being more plausible than the earlier ones, the chances of anything happening before 2011 or, even, 2014 are unlikely.

Whether entering the euro is quite the solution for Hungary's multiplying economic problems is questionable, but that some reforms need to be introduced is certain.

Finance Minister János Veres has promised that the country will meet the EU's convergence criteria by 2009. Among other matters this would mean reducing the budget deficit from the 10.1 per cent of GDP, forecast for 2006 to 3.2 per cent.

"The government's euro adoption plan foresees a budget deficit of 6.8 percent of GDP in 2007, followed by 4.3 percent in 2008 and 3.2 percent in 2009.

The six-year plan begins by focusing on creating long-term balance in 2006-2009. A more dynamic, second period between 2009 and 2011 is meant to steadily boost Hungary's economic standing."

Hungarian central bank President Zsigmond Járai remains dissatisfied with the programme despite it being welcomed by Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads Eurogroup, the committee of euro-zone finance ministers.

""Hungary's convergence plan "focuses too much on the revenue side", the central bank said in a separate statement on its Web site, adding the "program still underestimates the inflationary impact of the measures". The bank also said that without further austerity measures, the country's budget deficit may not be reduced after 2008."

Given the economic circumstances of most of the ten new member states it remains unlikely that any of them will join the euro in a hurry unless, the rules are bent, just a little, as they were for several of the original members.

COMMENT THREAD

Boredom

It comes to something when an article in the New York Times is actually interesting, and even more so when the subject matter is boredom.

Written by Timothy Egan, the piece recounts how in Cody, Wyoming, barely five people per square mile live on the high, wind-raked ground. The entire state is a small town with long streets, as they say. The open space means room to roam and a sense of frontier freedom.

But, it also means that on any given night, an unusually high percentage of young people here are drinking alcohol until they vomit, pass out or do something that lands them in jail or nearly gets them killed.

A survey, conducted over three years by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said south-central Wyoming led the nation with the highest rate of alcohol abuse by people age 12 and older. In Albany and Carbon counties, more than 30 percent of people under age 20 binge drink — 50 percent above the national average.

In examining behaviour in 340 regions of the country, the survey found that 7 of the top 10 areas for under-age binge drinking — defined as five or more drinks at a time — were in Wyoming, Montana and North and South Dakota.

At the other end of the scale, some of the lowest areas for under-age binge drinking were in the nation’s most densely packed cities — parts of Washington, D.C., Detroit and Los Angeles. An earlier federal study found that rural youths ages 12 and 13 were twice as likely as urban youths to abuse alcohol.

And while it may be a mystery to some why the least-populated part of the country leads the nation in the percentage of young people drinking to excess, it is no surprise to many people in Wyoming or Montana. Teenagers, police officers and counsellors offer the same reason: the boredom of the big empty.

The "big empty", as you might expect, is not exactly a problem we have to confront in overcrowded Britain, with a density that would have most Americans running for the barricades. But binge drinking we certainly do have, in our towns and cities, and an epidemic of alcohol abuse amongst our young. Furthermore, the same factor is quoted – nothing to do. They are bored.

This very issue came up earlier this year during a general election hustings meeting in North Shropshire, when an articulate young lady in the audience complained strongly and bitterly about the lack of entertainment opportunities for the youngsters in her town, and the failure of politicians, national and local, to address the issue.

It was actually the UKIP candidate who suggested that there was plenty do. If the young lady wanted to volunteer for leafleting duties, and any number of the multitudinous tasks involved in political campaigning, then she would be very welcome. She would never be able to complain of being bored.

The derision with which his suggestion was met by some sections of the audience was not entirely merited. You do not have to be a political nerd to appreciate that party activism can be highly rewarding and entertaining. You have a chance to meet like-minded people, to discuss and air views, and to down the odd pint or two in convivial company. And, for many decades, the Young Conservative Party was widely regarded as the dating agency for the middle classes.

But, bored as they are – or protest to be – the very last thing most young people would ever consider, on either side of the Atlantic, is engaging in the political process.

To digress slightly (alright, to digress hugely), I have never understood what it is to be bored. As I youth, I lived the greater part of my life in a top-floor three-bedroomed flat, sharing a room with my brother and with two sisters to contend with. We had neither television nor, in those days, computers. A "radiogramme" came only later - our first one, hillariously, bursting into flames when it was switched on. But bored I never was. In a slightly impoverished middle class family, we were perpetually short of cash and I had to earn my own pocket money. With cleaning neighbours' cars, delivering paraffin and a variety of odd jobs, my Saturdays were frenetic with activity. On a good week, I could earn as much as two whole pounds.

In the week that the Airfix model company has gone into administration, I have to record that the main object of my expenditure was Airfix kits and it is a measure of my relative wealth that, in those days, a basic kit cost a mere two shillings – 10p in new money.

But it was not just the making – with two long-standing friends, we developed an extraordinarily sophisticated war game, each of us with our own model armies – strictly to scale, courtesy of Airfix – and the latter parts of Saturdays and Sundays would often be spent locked in mortal combat.

With three equally matched armies, funded by equal levels of wealth, the object was for any one to beat the other two, which was usually done by setting the other two against each other and then mopping up the survivor. It was either that or two would gang up against the one, but you would try to make sure your temporary ally took most of the losses so that you could move in afterwards and finish him off. For Machiavellian deviousness, it had more in common with three-dimensional chess.

For the long holidays, around the family vacation, there was always the Combined Cadet Force – with which we were blessed at our school. By the time I was sixteen, I had earned my gliding license, had attended a signals course in Catterick, North Yorkshire, an Engineer course in Chatham, when we had the youthful delight of blowing things up, and a Royal Logistics course where I had the terrifying experience of driving a 3-tonner round Regent Street Barracks - the first time I ever took to the wheel of a vehicle.

There were also annual camps, one of which was in Gutersloh, Germany, where we had the exhilarating experience of flying high speed at low level over the tank ranges in an 18 Squadron Wessex helicopter, with the added frisson of the pilot practising engine failure procedures and flying on one engine.

By the time I was eighteen, I had completed a flying scholarship, qualifying for a private pilot's license long before I could officially drive a car – although I had then been driving Land Rovers and one-tonners on airfields for some years. Bored? I did not know the meaning of the word.

So much for the digression – it seems to me that boredom is a state of mind. Even when not active, there were always books. I stripped the local library clean of books, and then ordered more when I had read all the titles available. There was never enough time in the day. As for drinking. Forget it – there were too many Airfix kits to buy and make.

But now it is, when there are possibly more opportunities then ever in the history of mankind for entertainment and self-enrichment – not least radio, television, cheap telephones, computers and the internet, to say nothing of books that have never been cheaper and more easily accessible – we are bored.

Not only that, at all levels, we are too bored to engage in the political process, too bored to go out and vote, too bored to get upset about the latest inadequacies and dishonesties of our politicians. Instead – adults as well as our gilded, pampered youth – we go out and get "hammered".

What is wrong with our society? Is this the way our civilisation ends – in a pool of vomit, spilled out onto the pavement from over-indulgence?

COMMENT THREAD

The realities of power

In a democracy, the ultimate power rests with the people, who hold their government to account during elections, voting them out of office if they fail to perform or do things of which they disapprove. Or so the theory goes.

What then of the news that the EU yesterday began paying aid to the Palestinians? It is making "social allowances" payments to 625,000 public employees who have been "left unpaid and impoverished" because of the financial crisis besetting the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

We are told that the funds - made through a programme overseen by the World Bank - bypass the Palestinian Authority government and benefit "those who have suffered a significant loss of income" when much foreign aid and some of the Palestinians' own revenues dried up after Hamas came to power earlier this year.

Besides direct cash payments of about $347 to each person, EU money will finance Palestinian health services and utilities, notably fuel to run generators.
Among the 625,000 Palestinians now receiving direct financial support are 11,500 health workers who are no longer being paid, says EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

Stepping aside from the specifics for a moment, the key issue here is that the money is being transferred by the EU. The report says that the EU is making the payments but, in the final analysis, the EU does not have any money other than is what is paid to it by its 25 member states. In other words, it is not EU money at all – it is member state money. And, on the basis of our gross budget contributions to the EU, about 12 percent of that is British – delivered by British taxpayers.

Now, I am a taxpayer and a voter. What if I disapprove of payments of my money made by the EU to the Palestinians? Well, if it was my government making these payments, I could object through the "usual channels" and, if I felt strongly enough about the issue, I could launch a campaign.

In the way of things in the democratic process, my exertions and those who I had convinced to support me - could make a sufficient difference to tip the government out of power. Even with out that, the fear of that happening could well make the government think again about what it was doing.

But this is the EU. I could campaign all I like, for as long as I like. By some miracle, I could gain the support of all the voters in the EU and I could even get the government to agree with me wholeheartedly.

It would not make one whit of difference. The EU does not need the specific approval of the British government to make these payments, and nothing the British government could do would stop them. In this respect – and many others – the EU is a law unto itself.

As it happens, I do disapprove of payments being made to a people which have voted a terrorist organisation into government. In fact, I object very strongly. And, if that was their democratic choice, then, in a grown-up world, there are consequences (not least a three day garbage collection strike – illustrated). Another of those consequences is me - and many others like me - wishing to exercise our democratic choice by not paying them any money.

Except that, in that very important respect, we no longer live in a democracy and we have no choice. Funny thing that – the Gaza territory run by a terrorist organisation is, in theory at least, probably more democratic than the country in which I now live.

Theory it may be – but that is also the reality. And I am not a happy bunny.

COMMENT THREAD

Not on this planet

Regular readers will recall our campaign on "Snatch" Land Rovers and our calls for more better armoured vehicles, in particular the mine-protected RG-31 used by both US and Canadian forces.

During this campaign, it emerged that the MoD had already purchased a fleet of 14 RG-31 type vehicles - the precursor version called the Mamba (although they were also called the Alvis 4 and 8 series) – for use in Bosnia.

As a result, through Owen Paterson MP, we put in some questions to find out what happened to these vehicles, knowing that some were actually in use in Iraq, being used to protect US diplomats travelling between Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone.

The answers were picked up by Scotland on Sunday last week and make fascinating reading. It seems that all the vehicles in the fleet, which originally cost £4.5 million to buy, were sold abroad for the princely sum of just £44,000. Nine went to Estonia, four to "a US company" – which we know to be Blackwater Security Consulting - and one to a company based in Singapore.

Even now, though, the MoD is still attempting to put their "spin" on the deal. It claims that the modifications of the Mambas left them "too heavy" to go on patrol. This, as we know, was the addition of underside armour to deal with the TMRP-6 mine threat, the armour having been developed specifically for the MoD by a South African technology company (see right).

But we also know, from an exchange of e-mails with some of the soldiers who operated the vehicles out in Bosnia that they remained perfectly serviceable with the additional armour. Latterly, we were told that the real reason for the claimed "maintenance problems" was that the UK supplier, Alvis, had withdrawn technical support for the model - for reasons we know not why.

The Scotland on Sunday paper remarks that while the financial loss to taxpayers is another embarrassment for the MoD, but adds, "far more serious is the suggestion it could have put the lives of British troops at even greater risk."

For sure, 14 vehicles would not have made much difference in Iraq, where over 200 "Snatch" Land Rovers are operating, but even they could have helped. At least one death, for instance, was attributed to a Land Rover ambush, where the vehicle was being used to ferry an officer from the British base to the airport – precisely the use to which the Mambas are currently being put by Blackwater Security Consulting. And, as we also know, Blackwater vehicles have survived at least two IED attacks (see picture below).

Tory defence spokesman Gerald Howarth insisted that the government should have kept hold of its Mambas when it had forces in such danger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He told Scotland on Sunday that, "To flog these vehicles so cheaply when there must have been a reasonable chance of them being usable in both Afghanistan and Iraq is unforgivable." He is absolutely right on this. As have Blackwater Security done, the additional armour could have been removed for the different theatres where there was no TMRP threat, and the vehicles would have been perfectly usable.

But, perhaps, an equal scandal is that the replacement vehicles – the Tempest MPVs, on which the US Cougar design is currently based, were not used in Iraq beyond the initial "war" phase of the invasion. The eight purchased have now been returned to the UK, pending despatch to Afghanistan.

It is decidedly ironic – if not tragic - that, having recognised the potential of these vehicles nearly four years before the US forces realised their value, the Army failed to exploit them. Only now, is the MoD buying a hundred to supplement the "Snatch" Land Rovers – with deliveries to start at the end of the year.

All of this, though, simply reinforces the wide-held and accurate view that, when it comes to understanding the equipment needs of our troops, and managing the procurement process efficiently, the MoD is simply not on this planet.

COMMENT THREAD

Press Complaints Commission

The immediate furore of the "Qanagate" affair has died down and attention moves elsewhere – that is the way of the world. But, as any old campaigner will tell you, that is when the work really starts.

Publishing the details and stoking up huge – and entirely justified – outrage at the behaviour of the media is one thing but, on its own, it means very little. Nothing has actually changed and, in fact, all we have seen, publicly at least, is the newspapers and agencies harden their positions and go into denial.

Furthermore, in the final analysis, nothing will change until and unless the players are forced into admitting they were wrong and are then forced to make changes.

Past the ten-day wonder phase, therefore, a campaign to achieve change takes on the aspect of trench warfare, pushing, probing and skirmishing, without any great dramatic breakthroughs which will grab the headlines.

To that effect, we prepared our report and, at the beginning of this week, submitted a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission. Today we received a response (illustrated), which confirms that we have passed the first hurdle – the complaint has qualified for acceptance and the Commission has agreed to "look at it".

The complaint itself is directed at four newspapers, The Independent, the Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, but the Commission has indicated that it will, as requested, "widen the investigation" if it considers it necessary.

This is good news as far as it goes. But, these are early days yet and we have only passed the first hurdle. There are many more and the outcome is by no means certain. Nevertheless, this is by no means the only shot in our locker, and others are also taking up the cudgels.

We will keep you informed of developments.

COMMENT THREAD

An international crisis

In addition to all the other suspect material produced by the media during the war in Lebanon, not least "Qanagate" and the Beirut bombing photo doctoring, first reported by Little Green Footballs (which now has a comprehensive list of links on the top of the page), we also now have the fake ambulance incident, superbly analysed by Zombietime, with a shorter article here.

And, to add to that, we have the Reuters Land Rover saga, the one that was supposed to have been hit by Israeli missiles. Well, Ynet News has reported on the superb debunking done by Confederate Yankee (and here), demonstrating that, whatever did hit the vehicle, it was not a missile.

All of this, and much, much more points to a crisis is journalism – which is much deeper than these headline issues indicate – as we have tried to show in our other posts, for instance here.

However, you really must give it to the international edition of the Helsingin Sanomat. It has put its finger on a far more serious crisis, which could have massive international ramifications and shake the European Union to its very core.

Sent to us by one of the blog's new friends, Fred Fry International, the report tells us that the European Chemicals Agency (ECA), which is scheduled to begin operations in Helsinki from 2007, is under threat – from a serious shortage of high-class rental housing. This could possibly delay the start of operation.

It seems that the seconded Eurocrats, unused to slumming it in distant lands, are demanding high-class furnished apartments which are currently not easy to come by. There is simply no high-class rental housing market in Finland and the 40 employees of the ECA already in place (with another 300 to come) are seriously unhappy.

Although the office building has already been rented - the former headquarters of the Eläke-Varma insurance company in downtown Helsinki (pictured) – it looks as if the Finnish government may have to be enlisted to help the poor, deprived Eurocrats if the ECA project is to get underway on time.

You have to admit it – this is really worrying. Or perhaps it is just another reason why we find it so very hard to take the EU seriously.

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