EU Referendum

After their long summer break, the apparatchiks of the Socialist Republic of the European Union are slowly coming back to life – inasmuch as these zombie-like creatures can ever truly be regarded as "alive".

And right up front is agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, indulging in a bit of crude populism, declaring that the zombie-in-chief José Manuel Barroso is to consider allowing member states to ban EU-approved GM crops.

The European Commission President wants to "look at whether we can give the member states more freedom on this issue," says Fischer Boel, adding that she would support this idea.

At the same time, apparently contradicting the supposed effect of this new "freedom", she also advocates speeding up market approval for new GM maize lines "to lift trade barriers that have a emerged as a result of asynchronous approval of GMOs in the EU and in GMO export countries."

But then come the weasel-words. A distinction must be made between the importation of genetically modified plants and those grown in the EU itself, she says.

Then she adds: "I know that cultivation is a very sensitive issue." Member states do not have the right to prohibit the cultivation of GMO crops on their territory once it has been authorised in the EU, except if evidence is provided that the GMO is harmful for human health or the environment – which, so far, no member state has been able to provide.

Nevertheless, because there is little or no public acceptance for GMO acreage among the public, a majority of EU member states are lobbying to change this practice and Fisher Boel is making soothing noises about letting them have their way.

But all is not what is seems – it never is with that lot. Having been unable to break the logjam and get the member states to accept EU law on GMOs, and with the WTO breathing down its neck, the zombies are trying to pull a fast one.

Basically, the deal is that, at long as the member states accept the import of GM crops from Monsanto-land in Brazil and the USofA – thus keeping the WTO off their backs - the munificent EU will allow them to ban their own farmers from growing them.

I can see this going down a storm with our own NFU, and then the greenies won't be too happy either. But with the poison dwarf also playing games, the Poles telling the commission to get stuffed (in Polish, of course, when even "please" sounds like a swear-word), the zombies are really over a barrel.

So the drama continues, dragging on into eternity, we wrote last year. Nobody in the media here really gives a damn, the Tories don't want to touch it because it sets the greenies and their EU-luvvies on a collision-course, the government is running so fast from it that you can smell the burnt rubber at the top of Whitehall, and nobody listens to the farmers anyway. They're always moaning, so they can safely be ignored.

For all that, this really is a delicious conundrum – greenies versus zombies. It doesn't matter who wins, as long as they tear each other apart in the process.

COMMENT THREAD

Airbus, that world-leading generator of computer graphics, has succeeded in suckering HMG into dolling out £340 million (€394 million) in soft loans to help build its A-350 long-range, medium capacity airliner.

This, we are told is not quite as much as Airbus had hoped for, having already extracted promises from France for a loan of €1.4 billion and from Germany €1.1 billion, towards the development cost of about €12 billion.

According to The Times, inputs are normally proportional to the amount of work share and since the UK typically gets about 20 percent, including the wing building, between €700 million (£600 million) and €850 million might have been requested.

However, with sales of the A-380 "superjumbo" stalled – with little chance of ever reaching a break-even point - and the A-400M programme running heavily behind schedule as well as massively overspent, by any normal commercial criteria, Airbus would have great difficulty attracting loans on the money markets.

Cash flow in this game, though, is everything and this healthy injection of cash from government coffers will undoubtedly be used to shore up the existing programmes, in the hope that they will then generate enough funding to finance the A-350 development. Even if the A-350 money is ring-fenced, Airbus can be as creative with its accounting as it is with its computer graphics.

What we have therefore – in effect – is a massive Ponzi scheme, where the money for future projects is being used to finance current, loss-making aircraft which have yet to pay their way. This locks Airbus into a continuous cycle of producing more and more projects, the cash for each new one financing the last, the scheme continuing until the supporting governments finally pull the plug (which may be some time never).

Needless to say, the Yanks are a tad miffed. The Office of the US Trade Representative, which negotiates trade agreements on behalf of the US president, has slammed the move, complaining that to launch a new raft of "subsidies" just as the WTO is due to rule on a previous dispute is "a major step in the wrong direction."

Boeing, with its competitor 787 "Dreamliner", which has also had its fair share of troubles, sniffs that "Airbus should finance its aircraft development using its own cash and commercial loans." But as long as Airbus represents a cross between a national symbol for the EU and a job creation scheme for member states, that is never going to happen.

British ministers hope that in addition to supporting jobs at Filton and Broughton the loan will help create and sustain more than 5,000 jobs within the supply chain across the UK and, at the moment, jobs are the sensitive point in the economy.

The real loser though – apart from the British taxpayer – seems to be the RAF and the Armed Forces in general. Instead of dumping the A-400M and buying something sensible like more C-17s or C-130Js, HMG has used its continued support of this failed project as a bargaining chip to maintain its job share on the A-350 while reducing its input.

As they gaze at their computer generated graphics of weapons and supplies delivered to them overland, for the want of the real things, as our strategic airlift awaits the pleasure of Airbus – British troops in Afghanistan (if they are still there in a couple of years) can at least bask in the warm glow that comes from knowing they have supported jobs in Filton and Broughton, and helped sustain more than 5,000 within the supply chain.

Pity about their "supply chain" but then every Ponzi scheme has to have its losers.

COMMENT THREAD

I actually laughed. Now I must go and mow the lawn ... haven't done it for three weeks, then I'll get down to some serious blogging.

Meanwhile, they're thinking about a new Taliban chief in Pakistan. Rantburg considers the options.

On a sombre note, Tom Newton Dunn reports on the Jackal deaths. "Three hero Paras killed in Afghanistan were in a lightly-armoured Jackal vehicle" – while the Ridgebacks gather dust.

Quite.

COMMENT THREAD

The D-Notices (or "Defence Advisories" as they are called) are flying around at the moment, keeping a damper on speculation on the "dodgy chopper" that went in at Sangin yesterday.

Sarah Montague for the BBC Today Programme was actually in Sangin this morning – flown in by a US Army Blackhawk helicopter with General Dannatt for an an interview. Yet, neither then nor on the web report did the fair Sarah mention the crash, even though it is the talk of the base and the biggest incident since the death of the 2nd Rifles soldiers last week.

Nor indeed has the British media covered the story, except for the briefest mention in The Times, where the helicopter is wrongly described as delivering "humanitarian aid". Yet, much of the BBC report was about helicopter capacity and here you have a 50-ton helicopter – the largest production helicopter in the world - delivering supplies to the base, crashing and burning not a mile from the gates, after being shot down by the Taleban, leaving seven dead.

And that does not even rate a passing mention? That isn't news? Pull the other one.

Instead, the media agenda is Dannatt wanting more targets for the Taleban boots on the ground. Thus we can see more young officers mowing the grass, with no sense of mission, getting shot for their pains. All that so the General and his mob can keep up with the Joneses Americans, while DFID build more latrines for grateful Taleban Afganis and erect another Ferris wheel.

The other item of the day is why Dannatt flew in an US helicopter, something about which The Daily Mail drooled, not realising – or caring – that much of the reason why we do not have enough machines is down to the saintly General himself, who has been shafting the Army ever since he took office as CGS – and before.

Of course, to turn the critical spotlight on the saintly General goes against the narrative and while Tom Newton Dunn is still beating the drum about the dreadful Lynxes in The Sun, he too is muzzled and cannot tell the full story.

For instance, every defence journo knows that the RAF is operating for the special forces Russian-built Mi-8 MTVs in Afghanistan. That is widely known in theatre and you can bet the Taleban know.

But we are not allowed to know ... there is a "D-Notice" out preventing us being told officially. And why? Well, if it was more widely known just how successful these machines really were – they were designed specifically for operations in Afghanistan – then there might be agitation to get more. And, with a bit of effort, we could have machines in place within WEEKS and a full squadron up and running in months, with as many more as we needed.

But that would mean that the RAF would not have got more Merlins, it would not have got to raise another squadron, and it would not be able to milk the Treasury for more and more staff, upgrades and the rest. That would never do. Empire-building is far more important than capacity or soldiers' lives.

However, with a media only able to report under license from the MoD and its "D-Notice" system, this leaves the field wide open for the blogosphere. Except that, as my co-editor observed, the British blogosphere has largely sold its soul to the MSM, following rather than leading the agenda. If it is outside the "comfort blanket", most of them don't want to know.

So, when EU Referendum/Defence of the Realm comes up with a real scoop – "Moldavian gun-runners flying supplies to 'Our Boys' in dodgy choppers", while Dannatt swans about in US choppers because he personally blocked a cheaper alternative to his beloved Future Lynx - with the full backing of the Tory defence team and the defence contractors' lobby - no one wants to know ... EXCEPT this brilliant piece HERE, which has really got the point - and one more here.

Dannatt, however, is the saintly figure, that "fine soldier speaking out for his men". That's the narrative so the claque puts its brains into neutral and falls into line. It's all Gordon Brown's fault, doncha know.

P****d off? Yea ... I'm officially p****d off as well.

COMMENT THREAD

I first heard that there had been another IED strike on a Viking early Wednesday evening, long before there was any media coverage. This was from Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, who told me two soldiers had been killed, and more injured.

At that time, we did not know that Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe had been killed. Thus, to us, there was only one story – another example of men being killed in the perilously inadequate Viking, so lightly armoured that it is incapable of resisting even a minor IED hit under the belly or tracks.

As the details of Thorneloe's death came in the following morning, to us the tenor of the story did not change. In fact, it reinforced the line and made it both more tragic and more outrageous. Although every death counts, there is still something special about a senior officer – and a very highly regarded one at that – being killed. The utter, devastating waste of life, arising from this useless vehicle, was very much in our minds.

Harding's story reflected that outrage. On the other hand, Newton Dunn who went out early breaking the embargo to claim an "exclusive" for The Sun, focuses on the claimed "massive hidden bomb" rather than the vulnerability of the Viking.

Michael Evans, who has previously written about the Viking, followed up with a piece in The Times. He thus wrote of "the rising number of deaths among soldiers travelling in Vikings, which are driven by the Royal Marine Armoured Support Group" and of the "growing concern to the troops in Helmand."

From there, however, it went downhill. The story was then covered by The Daily Mail which focused mainly on the fact that Thorneloe was the highest ranking casualty since the Falklands.

Initially, The Guardian pasted in a Press Association release, which made no mention of the Viking. On its own though, the Press Association offers another piece, with the headline, "Commanding officer shot in Helmand". This is picked up, uncritically by hundreds of local papers throughout the land, not a brain cell between them as they paste it into their websites.

Needless to say, the vehicle was only briefly mentioned by the BBC, without comment. Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent of The Independent also fails to pick up the thread.

Then The Guardian followed up with a piece by Richard Norton-Taylor. He, like Newton Dunn, retailed a description of a "huge bomb" that shattered the armoured Viking tracked vehicle. This time though, that detail came from a "defence official", reflecting the MoD's determination to "talk up" the size of the IED in order to divert attention from the weakness of the Viking. Even in death, politics plays its part.

Here, The Daily Express excels itself. Col Thorneloe, it tells us, was travelling in a tracked Viking armoured vehicle when it was hit by a blast from an IED. Then, trotting out pure, undiluted MoD-ese, it tells us, "The Vikings have been given extra armour but nothing can guarantee protection if a bomb is big enough."

With the news out, the MoD posted some details of the incident itself.

We are told that the two soldiers were killed by an explosion whilst on convoy along the Shamalan Canal, near Lashkar Gah. Travelling in a Viking, Lt Col Thorneloe had left the Battle Group Headquarters on a resupply convoy so that he could visit his men. At 1520hrs local time an IED was detonated under this vehicle. Lt Col Thorneloe and Tpr Hammond were killed by the blast.

The rest of the lengthy post is taken up with eulogies, the text forming the bulk of the copy used by the media, drowning the limited operational detail.

The Times follows this line. Despite Michael Evans offering critical detail of the Viking, his newspaper offers a "commentary" by Crispin Black discussing how "Rupert Thorneloe's death will affect Welsh Guardsmen deeply", with not a word about the manner of his untimely death.

In a second piece, Tom Coghlan offered his reflections of Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the man, and then another piece where he described an earlier ambush on a Viking supply convoy, completely missing the point. How the MoD must love him. We will review this piece separately.

James Blitz of the Financial Times came in with his own piece. By now, the MoD was briefing freely and the focus again was entirely on the "commanding officer" aspect of the death. The MoD was cited as saying that only six Army COs have died on operations in command of their units since 1948.

There was no reference at all to the Viking. This, and its extreme vulnerability to IEDs, was gradually being filtered out of the narrative as the "damage limitation" mechanisms went to work.

Reuters had its staff reporter Peter Griffiths write up the story. He also failed to include details of the Viking. This report will be reproduced in thousands of MSM reports.

So it was that, progressively, an "inconvenient truth" was buried. The Viking has been written out of the script, and with it the dire role of the MoD in providing completely inadequate equipment. Unable to see beyond the narrow confines of a story and lacking the imagination and skills to report the real story, the media pack has sold the pass. Of the blogs though, at least A Tangled Web got the point.

But when men (and women) continue to die, who will share the blame? Not the media, of course. They just report the news.

COMMENT THREAD

It is rather ironic that, on the day an inquiry into the Iraq war is announced, a gaggle of defence correspondents should go into print in The Guardian complaining about how the MoD is controlling the reporting of the war in Afghanistan.

Fronted by Stephen Grey, the piece observes that thirteen British soldiers died last month in Helmand province, but their deaths were reported, for the most part, in small paragraphs on the inside pages of newspapers.

The reason for this, according to Grey is because journalists find it almost impossible to reach and report from the frontline of the conflict. For instance, when the Royal Marines launched a fierce hand-to-hand battle last Christmas in the muddy poppy fields of central Helmand, four soldiers died - but the only news that escaped was a press release from the Ministry of Defence.

Thomas Harding, defence correspondent for The Daily Telegraph is then quoted, telling us that there has been a devastating breakdown of relations "Dealing with the Ministry of Defence is genuinely more stressful than coming under fire," says Harding. "We have been lied to and we have been censored."

This is an issue about which we reported back in April, putting us once again ahead of the game – for what good it does us, as there is an almost universal lack of concern about what quite clearly is a deliberate and concerted programme of news management by the MoD, the depth of which is quite remarkable and pervasive.

This has got to the state now where journalists are taking the risk of being blacklisted and refused access to report from the frontline, and at last speaking out about the government's attempt to control the news agenda.

It is "lamentable", says one Fleet Street foreign editor; The Times correspondent Anthony Loyd describes it as "outrageous" and Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times calls "indefensible". Even the fearless Tom Newton Dunn of The Sun joins in, branding the MoD's actions "redolent of Comical Ali", although why he should be complaining is anyone's guess as even when he is given a red hot story he does not publish it.

Nevertheless, we do get a little insight into how controls are exercised, with Grey noting that almost all journalists travelling with British forces are ordered to email their copy to the military's press officers in Helmand before publication. Many fear that negative coverage could mean trips back to the frontline are cancelled or delayed.

At the root of tensions between media and the MoD, we are told, is the nature of the conflict in southern Afghanistan. The war in Helmand is so intense, so dangerous and so rural that covering it independently is almost impossible for any white western journalist. Most reporters travel as "embeds" (there are only four or five slots available a month for national newspaper journalists); the way these trips are allocated, and the conditions imposed, contribute to fraught relations.

Harding – who speaks from personal experience – gives us more background: "They manipulate the parcelling-out of embeds to suit their own ends … They use it as a form of punishment to journalists who are off-message or critical of strategy or tactics."

Earlier this year, a trip of Harding's to Helmand was cancelled, he said, because of "helicopter shortages". He later heard privately from a press officer that it had more to do with his campaign against the army's continued use of the Snatch Land Rover, and his tough questions to the chief of joint operations. Another reporter had a trip blocked after writing a critical feature about conditions for army soldiers.

Newton Dunn does, however, add to our knowledge, telling us that the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and Cabinet Office - who all have members sitting on a committee called the Media Management Group, which regulates who gets what trips out to the battlegrounds - all "want coverage of (non-existent) reconstruction and tree-hugging", according to. "Downing Street and the Foreign Office are incredibly restrictive about what comes out of Afghanistan," he adds.

It goes without saying that Nick Gurr, the MoD's director of media and communications, denies there are penalties on journalists who write anything critical. "You only have to look at who we bring out to see how determined we are to engage with everyone," he says.

Grey concedes he has something of a point - critics of army tactics including Harding, Loyd and even himself do get asked back. Even Al-Jazeera is offered occasional embeds. However, when a journalist manages to reach the war zone, many describe their frustration at the low priority given to getting them out to the frontline, as well as sometimes relentless control by "minders".

Christina Lamb was one of the first to report close-up on fighting in Helmand, when she was caught in an ambush in the summer of 2006. She was "effectively blacked" for two years, only returning in September 2008. The new slot she was given meant she saw no frontline action. "I was told quite candidly the main priority was Tom Newton Dunn of the Sun, not me."

The Guardian's James Meek, embedded in Helmand in 2006, says he was allowed to speak freely, and had no problems with minders. However, he was sent to a relatively quiet zone, and his requests to visit bases where soldiers were engaged in combat were refused. "I was told quite candidly that the priority was the tabloids and television because it was important for recruitment," he says.

Grey cites a Fleet Street foreign editor who argues that the government's media strategy seems to be based mainly around "the Sun and an EastEnders actor". He is referring to Ross Kemp, who made two TV series in Helmand. Newton Dunn, however, says he is equally frustrated: "I can get out only once a year, and only through kicking and screaming."

If reporters do get a story, they are still controlled by the MoD, thanks to the Green Book - a contract drawn up jointly by the ministry and media organisations' editors, supposedly designed to give maximum press freedom while preserving operational security ("Opsec"). Its application, however, angers some reporters. In practice, they say, the Green Book is sometimes used to pressure them into removing facts that are merely embarrassing or politically inconvenient.

In Helmand, journalists say embeds are required to email their copy to the ministry's press information centre before sending it on to their own newsdesks, though Gurr insists there is no Green Book requirement that copy be sent to the centre; it could also, he says, be vetted by people in charge on the frontline. "There are no hard and fast rules here," Gurr adds.

You would expect an amount of self-justification from Gurr but, whatever he might claim, it is entirely true that the MoD is controlling jornalists in order to convey what senior officers refer to as the "official narrative" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This gets so bad that, in the absence of sufficient independent access to Helmand, news organisations are often willing to use interviews with soldiers gathered by army press officers, or video shot by the MoD's Combat Camera Team. Thus, while you read what might appear to be newspaper generated copy, some of the stories you see have been generated by MoD journalists.

The result, says Harding, is clear. "We have constantly been told that everything is fluffy and good - and we, and the public, have been lied to."

COMMENT THREAD

In the train wreck that constitutes the British media, the story of the day from Afghanistan is how "girlie girl" L/Cpl Amy Thomas, 20, serving with Royal Marine Commandos in Afghanistan's "Helmand province hellhole", loosed off a burst of shots with her SA80 rifle "after being flown into a notorious hotspot with comrades."

Although this must be of some antiquity – the Royal Marines have already returned home – this is recounted in loving detail by The Sun, under the by-line of super-hack John Kay, no less, billed proudly as an "exclusive".

This is investigative reporting at its best, brought to us hot off the MoD's "feel-good files", The Sun's reward for being good boys, getting the nod and the wink from the MoD before their rivals get a taste of the story. But so good is a "girlie with a gun" story that it was not long before The Daily Mail got in on the act, followed by The Daily Telegraph. They have both cribbed the story from The Sun in what passes for serious journalism these days - the motto being "where the Sun leads, we follow".

Meanwhile, back in the real war – entirely unreported by the kiddies korner media - we have another report of the Taleban deploying an anti-aircraft gun in the Lashkar Gah area. This is the third such incident, the first two reported last week when they were taken out by A-10s and a precision air-strike.

This time, the gun was a ZPU-2 (the twin-barrelled version of the guns previously reported). It was being towed by a tractor and was taken out by a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, which fired Hellfire missiles. Both the tractor and the gun were destroyed. Later, a US Air Force B-1B Lancer bomber flew several shows of force and expended flares to prevent an enemy force from assembling for attack near "a coalition forward base."

That is a British base and Lashkar Gah is in the heart of the so-called "security triangle" where, according to the MoD troll infesting the Booker column comments, ISAF has been "able to deliver sufficient security to enable the delivery of reconstruction and development aid by civilian agencies."

These incidents, however, only happened on Sunday. Yesterday, we saw a similar story, when US Navy Hornets and Super Hornets employed GBU-12s and strafes to hit enemy gunmen shooting from fighting positions in compounds and a tree line.

These strikes, we are told, caused the enemy personnel to stop firing on coalition personnel. An additional F/A-18E performed a show of force over an enemy compound during the engagement to suppress enemy fire.

Not only was this happening right at the heart of the supposedly ISAF-controlled territory, that day some 80 close-air-support missions were flown in support of ISAF and Afghan security forces, reconstruction activities and route patrols. That is currently about twice the rate strike missions are being flown compared with last year and, if such activity is a useful metric of enemy activity, then clearly the operational tempo is increasing.

Nothing of this, of course, is allowed to trouble the minds of the "kiddies korner" media. Readers will recall that, even as the last two anti-aircraft guns were being taken out, we were being regaled with the derring-do of Colour Sergeant Michael Saunders, Platoon Quartermaster Sergeant for the Combat Infantry Signals Platoon.

He had been writing his war stories from the safety of his signals cabin in Camp Tombstone and had become "the talk of his local town" after he had started sending regular letters back to his local pub describing daily life on the "front line".

Entertaining though such stories are, the inability of the British media to offer anything approaching hard news is turning the fourth estate into a parody of itself. Next topic on the agenda, dare we predict, is The Sun reporting how one of our "Brave Boys" farted in the showers in Camp Bastion – another "exclusive" by the fearless Tom Newton Dunn – while the Chinese News Agency reports the real news.

COMMENT THREAD

Recalling the huge fuss made over the threat that the EU might take over our seat on the UN Security Council, it is slightly perplexing that there is not a similar fuss over the proposal that the EU should take over on the IMF.

Apart from Reuters, the media seems entirely uninterested in the views of economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia (pictured). Yet what this avuncular little man is suggesting is dynamite.

He tells us that the EU "must consolidate its representation in the International Monetary Fund to be able to pull its weight in shaping global economic policy". And his ambitions are not confined to this institution. They stretch to "global institutions" in general.

"Too often the EU's voice on key issues at the global level is fractured and we fail to influence policy debates as effectively as we might," Almunia says. So we must have "one voice".

"There are currently several European seats on the IMF board, and even the euro-area members have separate seats," he complains, adding that the case for a single euro-area chair was obvious.

It is equally "obvious" in the World Bank, in Nato, in the UN and all those other "global institutions", where gradually, insidiously – as happened with the WTO – the EU takes over control of our external affairs, leaving member states responsible only for implementing domestic policy, which is increasingly dictated by Brussels anyway.

And no one thinks this is important?

COMMENT THREAD

In the print edition of The Daily Telegraph - but not repeated in the online edition, which publishes a very similar story - reference is made to a "loophole" in the law which allows Irish pork to be labelled and sold as British.

The online edition of the story, headed "Irish pork dioxin fears expose 'made in Britain' rules", retails that the discovery of "cancer causing dioxins in Irish pork" has shone a spotlight on the confusion faced by shoppers in being sure that what is labelled British is in fact from this country.

British pig farmers, we are told, have been calling for better regulation several years to prevent products such as sausages or pork pies being labelled as British when they contain meat from other countries. Then we are blithely informed that:

Because there is no watertight definition of the term "county of origin" in UK or European law, meat packers can label sausages, pork pies or other processed meat products as "made in Britain" even if the original raw materials are from other places, including Ireland.

Seeing as we are in "snarl mode" – our default position – let's have a go at Guido Fawkes, and the latest of his asinine comments, as he laps up the Mandelson "drama". "It is a fascinating world inside the ruling elite isn't it?" twitters Guido:

Rupert Murdoch parks his yacht offshore from Nathaniel Rothschild's sunshine estate and drops in. Mandelson and Osborne take a ride in the same billionaire's boat when not dining together. All very cosy, enough to turn you into one of those crazy conspiracy theorists ...

On matters of trade, and especially WTO affairs, Ronald Stewart-Brown is one of the commentators worth reading. In this month’s edition of The European Journal (no link), he writes about the failed Doha round. What stands out from his piece is this section:

… it needs to be emphasised, the UK no longer has any meaningful existence in the world of international trade negotiations as it has ceded Brussels controls of most aspects of its trade relations with third countries apart from currency and trade promotion. While she retains nominal WTO membership, it is now in reality little more than a region of the EU in trade policy terms, with the periodic right to nominate one of its nationals as EU trade commissioner.

In the early days of UK membership, when EEC decision-making on trade policy was primarily inter-governmental, the Department of Trade and Industry was a leading and respected player in EEC trade policy matters. But as EU trade policy decision-making became more supranational so DTI trade policy expertise gravitated to the commission in Brussels. The dropping of the word trade from the department’s title when it was renamed last year as BERR (the department of business, enterprise and regulatory reform) says it all.

The prospect of Thomas Cook reaping half a billion pounds from the EU, as a result of the commission's incompetence (or worse), has not come to pass.

As flagged up in our earlier post, the ECJ was due to rule today on whether the company was entitled to compensation as a result of the commission wrongly intervening in 1999 to prevent a merger between MyTravel - then known as Airtours and now part of the Thomas Cook empire - with First Choice Holidays.

Perhaps contrary to expectations, we now learn that the ECJ has ruled against Thomas Cook, stating that "mistakes" by the commission were not so serious as to "manifestly and gravely infringe" EU law and thus justify a payout.

The court's view was that, although the commission had made "mistakes" that warranted overturning the ban, these did not justify the award of compensation. For money to be handed out, a higher legal standard was needed than a court's decision to overrule regulators.

Separately, we also hear That the ECJ has thrown out an appeal filed by two Italian banana exporters — FIAMM SpA and Giorgio Fedon & Figli SpA — and their U.S.-based subsidiaries, who were arguing that they were entitled to damages incurred as a result of the long-running international trade dispute over banana sales.

They filed for damages on the basis that they had suffered financially because of US trade retaliation taken in 2001 against the EU, after the EU had refused to obey a WTO ruling against it.

So there you have it. While ordinary mortals who mess up are hounded by the state, to the ends of the earth, when it comes to our masters, they glide serenely on, totally unaccountable for they damage they do and the hardship they cause.

I think we have heard before that we now live in a society where there is one rule for them, and one for us. If any more evidence was needed, we have it in spades today.

COMMENT THREAD

We never, ever thought we would find ourselves in agreement with an EU commissioner, much less Peter Mandelson. But his view on the failure of the Doha round talks, expressed in an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph today, is unarguable:

The technical nature of the negotiations has all too often hidden the fact that they are about real lives and real lost chances in the developed and developing worlds. The fall-out from this collapse will not be clear for some time. But we can be sure of one thing: we would all have been winners from a Doha deal. Without one, we all lose.

But in the here and now, with dry technical subjects on the table, and decisions being made which will affect the livelihoods of hundreds of millions and threaten the very basis of world stability, everything is far too complicated and boring to merit any attention. It is so much easier to prattle on about a "political earthquake" in the nether regions of Glasgow, as if it actually meant anything.

The U.S. political class also bears a substantial part of the blame. In its waning months, the Bush Administration has less power to persuade. But part of that weakness goes back to the original trade sins of its first two years. With its steel tariffs and overstuffed farm subsidy bill of 2002, the Administration sent a signal that domestic politics took precedence over U.S. global trade leadership. Its credibility never recovered.

Democrats in Congress have also spooked the world with their blatant protectionism - from their recent veto override of a farm bill jammed with trade-distorting subsidies, to their refusal to ratify bilateral trade deals even with such vital U.S. allies as Colombia and South Korea. Barack Obama's promise to repudiate Nafta if Mexico and Canada won't go along with his ideas was also a trade shock heard 'round the world. For all their talk about listening to America's partners, Democrats are the world's biggest trade bullies.

There is general agreement that the Doha round of the WTO talks has collapsed, to no great surprise and, no doubt, to the delight of Sarkozy and the other protectionist tendencies which are happy to see the process of "globalisation" brought to a halt.

The proximate cause is a dispute principally between the US and India - which also included Indonesia and China - over a safeguard mechanism to protect farmers in developing states from agricultural imports.

There are, however, deeper causes and much will be written in specialist magazines and in learned papers over the coming months and years about the these. For the moment, no one is particularly interested in playing the blame game.

Certainly, the US has left its offer "on the table" and the game remains to be played. It is unlikely though, that there will be any progress this side of the US election or, for that matter, until there has been an Indian general election.

In that senses, therefore, the collapse of the talks is just another hiatus in a process that has already taken seven years and which can be resuscitated once the global players decide to have another go.

This notwithstanding, that lack of any progress is raising serious questions about the viability of the WTO, articulated by the Irish Times. What may now happen is that the system disintegrates, to be replaced by a series of bi- and multilateral agreements outside the WTO framework.

Interestingly, that was suggested on the BBC Radio 4 report this evening, the BBC having led its new bulletins all evening on the collapse of the talks. That in itself says something about the level of interest, the collapse having attracted far more attention than the progress of the talks.

On the domestic political front, there has also been little interest. Apart from a ritual statement from Gordon Brown six days ago, there has been little reference to the talks, and almost no comment from the Conservatives. The issue has been all but completely delegated to the EU and thus depoliticised.

Despite that, the repercussions will be felt politically. As The Daily Telegraph remarks, "the failure of the talks is economically disastrous and could be politically destabilising." A deal, it says, could have been worth several hundred billion dollars in increased global activity, a fillip that national economies could use now. "Even more worrying," it adds, "when nations fail to cooperate on trade, it makes conflict more likely."

That, unfortunately, is the truth but it is not one that will impinge directly on our political system. The impact will be felt more directly by the developing world, in continued poverty, instability and, indeed, conflict.

But, for the moment, our political classes are more concerned with the domestic soap opera. Few, if any, will be asking what we as a nation could have done – if anything – to have brought the talks to a successful conclusion – and even fewer will link events to come with the failure.

Having ceded leadership in world trade, we have become impotent by-standers, so bereft of power and influence that we do not even notice its passing. That too is another casualty of the Doha round, the confirmation that the UK is no longer a serious player on the world stage. Now, where others lead, we simply follow.

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"No-one can possibly underestimate the scale of the disaster which hit Gordon Brown and the Labour Party in the Glasgow East constituency in the early hours of this morning," writes Angus Macleod, Scottish political editor for The Times.

He is one of the many journos hyper-ventilating over the result, declared long after most sensible people had gone to bed. This had the SNP overturn Labour's 13,507 majority to bring in the hitherto unknown John Mason into prominence as the victor.

He, if he excels in nothing else, certainly has a good line in hyperbole, declaring: "This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake, it is off the Richter scale. It is an epic win, and the tremors are being felt all the way to Downing Street."

In the round, however, this does nothing more than confirm that which we already knew – that the political tide has turned and, short of an electoral miracle, in 2010 we will see the Labour government turfed out of office, to be replaced with an equally lacklustre administration which, by all accounts, will continue as before.

If you want a real "political earthquake", however, look not to Glasgow East but to Geneva, where it appears, the latest talks in the Doha round of WTO negotiations are going belly-up.

Ignored entirely by the political chatterati with news confined to the inner reaches of the business pages of the few newspapers that can be bothered to report it, the talks reached an impasse yesterday over disagreements between the EU and the major, non-aligned trading nations over the degree to which developing countries should open up their markets to industrial goods, against a commitment from the EU to reduce its subsidies and tariffs on agricultural produce.

Since the need for third world countries to have access to the richer, developed world markets is absolutely essential to their future prosperity and thence political stability, a failure of these talks will have profound and long-term implications. These will become apparent in diverse ways for decades to come, many of which will over term be the stuff of front-page headlines.

But in the here and now, with dry technical subjects on the table, and decisions being made which will affect the livelihoods of hundreds of millions and threaten the very basis of world stability, everything is far too complicated and boring to merit any attention. It is so much easier to prattle on about a "political earthquake" in the nether regions of Glasgow, as if it actually meant anything.

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Sigh … the WTO talks win out. This is one area where there is no substitute for real expertise, and the number of people who really understand what is going on you can count on the fingers of one hand.

Yesterday, Mandelson opened the bidding on the part of the EU, offering to reduce its proposed tariffs agricultural products by 60 percent from the 54 percent originally on offer.

This was immediately denounced by Brazil as "gimmickry", with Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim telling reporters it was "meaningless". This was confirmed by Mandelson's fellow EU commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel, who said the offer was "nothing new", while French trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac explained later that the difference between the two figures was whether tropical products were included in the tariff cut calculations or not.

This is the nature of the beast – arcane detail and play on figures and words, that need prolonged analysis before you know where you stand. But the consensus seems to have been that the "technical discussions" have come up with, "nothing more, nothing less," according to Idrac.

Mandelson then pitches in, admitting that the 60 percent proposal was a "reiteration" of the EU's position, the great man offering the explanation to journalists that, "The more we clarify, the clearer it becomes exactly what we are offering in this round."

Today, it has been the American’s turn for grandstanding, with US trade reprentative Susan Schwab offering to reduce its “trade-distorting farm subsidies” to $15 billion a year provided large emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China open their markets further to imports of industrial products.

The proposed cut is $2 billion deeper than the US promised in June last year, but it is currently more than the US actually spends on agricultural support, which bottomed out at about $8 billion last year.

Brazil, which is one of the key developing nations in the talks, was unimpressed by Schwab's offer and said the US had to go further. "It's a nice try but it's still too high," one member of the Brazilian delegation said.

So for the opening sparring, where gesture politics takes the floor, but WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy – formerly the EU's trade negotiator – chirps that negotiators have "developed a clearer sense of the key issues at the political level that need to be resolved".

They will now turn to the so-called "modalities" - the key percentages for tariff cuts that would form the basis for any comprehensive deal, with Lamy leading the delegates into "detailed text-based work" on both agriculture and industrial goods. Then, and only then, will discussions start on possible solutions to the outstanding issues, with revised proposals released "probably by the end of the week."

You can see why the media largely turns away from reporting these negotiations. Watching paint dry might be more rewarding, except that this is serious stuff.

Taking it very seriously indeed yesterday were Irish farmers, who greeted Sarkozy's arrival in Dublin with a spirited demonstration, as more than 1,200 converged on the government buildings. In honour of their guest, that had decked six tractors in the red and blue of France by way of welcome its president.

On the other hand, bad guy not at the party was our Peter, with the farmers chanting "Mandelson Out" at a fever pitch as Sarkozy's convoy arrived. One man among the protest groups was arrested for throwing two eggs at the cars. And, such is the temperature that farmers' representatives are making it clear to Sarkozy that a "sell-out" of Irish agriculture at the WTO talks would leave most farmers and rural Ireland voting No in any future Lisbon referendum.

This leaves Mandelson in a bit of a mess as he is readily admitting that Europe's farmers will be "major losers" from a new world trade deal. Cutting back tariffs and subsidies will certainly leave them more exposed to world competition and will give Sarkozy plenty of room to make mischief.

Where precisely we go from here, though, is anyone's guess – it all depends on those "modalities" – not something you're going to see on the front pages.

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It has long been my view that the main trouble with our MPs is the frenetic lifestyle they lead in their artificial bubble at Westminster. It does not give them time to think – not that many of them are capable of that activity anyway.

From my lofty detachment 200 miles away from what is laughingly called the "centre of power", things sometimes look very different but, most of all, the ability as a "home worker" gives me the opportunity to ponder over the day's issues, to think them through in the calm and privacy of one's own home.

The real secret weapon, however, is the garden. A tiny postage stamp of a plot, we have nevertheless over the years turned it into an oasis of calm, styled as a forest clearing, with a stone bench from which one can retreat into one's inner thoughts (pictured).

It is not at all difficult then to imagine oneself in a completely different world, and let the thought processes stew, before climbing back up that "wooden hill" to the office, ready to do battle with the world again, through that gaping portal of the internet.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't help. Despite the thinness of the media fare today – one gets used to flipping through the newspaper and then turning to the net for more information – there is quite a lot going on … too much. The situation in Geneva, with the WTO talks is getting really interesting – and needs some serious treatment.

There is a fascinating interview in Defence News with Society of British Aerospace Companies' chief executive, Ian Godden, which touches on European defence integration. This needs some careful analysis. Then there is the situation in Zimbabwe and, of great interest to us is a recent article in the Zimbabwe Independent about China's role in African politics.

These are just three of the things we would like to do today, but to do them justice, any one will take what amounts to a day's work. And then there is the dog. Daughter has decided to take the family to France, leaving us dogsitting a huge black Labrador called Jeeves. And he likes walkies …

Choices … choices. Back to the garden, methinks.

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There was once a time when trade issues were a central part of British politics, with the potential to bring down governments and split parties.

It is yet another measure of the deadening effect of our membership of the EU, therefore, that one of the most important political issues of this decade – with massive implications for decades to come – does not even register on the domestic political scene.

We write, of course, of the WTO negotiations in Geneva today on the Doha Development Agenda which are widely considered to be make-or-break, having struggled through tortuous and labyrinthine haggling for nearly seven years.

But, with trade negotiations being an exclusive EU competence, this is not an issue for debate between our political parties and, taking a cue from them, it is attracting distressingly little coverage and comment from our own media, and next to none from our own self-obsessed political blogosphere.

Nevertheless, the issue is covered quite widely in the European press, no more so than in Deutsche Welle which retails the latest pronouncement from EU commission president Barroso, as he calls for the parties to reach a "balanced deal", and warns that emerging economies too had to make a major contribution.

The sub-text here is the EU commission's own attempt to break the deadlock between the developing nations' demand for lower farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs in the developed world. In return, industrialised countries are pressing that developing countries reduce import duties and make their markets more accessible to imported services and manufactured goods.

So far, the talks have been stalled on the extent to which developing countries like Brazil, India and China are prepared to open their markets, combined with a general reluctance of the "big three", the United States, the EU and Japan, to reduce their agricultural subsidies.

The precise details are not for mere mortals but suffice it to say that the pressure is on because, from next January, the United States will have a new administration and a new Congress whose attitudes toward trade liberalisation are "uncertain". If a deal is not struck now, it may be many more years before the parties even get close to an agreement.

On the other hand, there are considerable "noises off" from a protectionist French President Nicolas Sarkozy – with Merkel quietly lending support – over the degree to which the EU is prepared to cut subsidies, hence the recent spat between Sarkozy and Mandelson.

Waiting in the wings are also the Irish farmers who are convinced that the EU is prepared to go further than they would accept, with the WTO talks having featured strongly in the recent Irish referendum. It is probably no surprise, therefore, that Sarkozy has chosen this day for his delayed visit to Ireland.

Interestingly, French trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac is calling for a "new balance", but you can be assured that the French idea of "balance" is a million miles away from that set out by the commission, even if the same word is used. Certainly, the French are wholly opposed to giving away any more concessions to developing countries, and are struggling to maintain the current level of EU agricultural subsidies.

Whatever emerges over the next few days, therefore, will be complex and difficult to assess, with the different parties spinning heavily as they seek to gain maximum advantage for themselves.

Fortunately for our political classes, since we have dumped our trade policy on the EU, our politicians can carry on with their own internal bickering, untroubled by details which, over time, have the potential to change the world. They have been "excused trade".

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For months now, we have been warning that the French would be targeting the CAP as soon as they were in the driving seat.

Now it is coming to pass with the very public spat between Sarkozy and Mandelson over the WTO Doha round.

This has been building up for some time now, ever since the European Council on 19 June when the French president took a swipe at Mandelson over the Irish referendum. With the WTO talks have been played strongly by the Irish farmers, Sarkozy was keen to put the trade commissioner in the frame.

There was nothing accidental in this – and nor was it personal. There is a French agenda here and anyone getting in the way was going to get both barrels.

The second barrel came during a television appearance to mark France's accession to the EU presidency, when Sarkozy accused Mandelson – and WTO chief Pascal Lamy - of seeking a WTO deal that would lead to a 20 percent cut in European agricultural production and a ten percent reduction in its agricultural exports.

"That is 100,000 jobs lost. I will not let that happen," Sarkozy said, adding that such cuts were unacceptable: "in a world where there are 800 million poor people who cannot satisfy their hunger and where a child dies every 30 seconds from hunger".

It was yesterday that Mandelson "hit back" on BBC television's Newsnight, claiming (rightly) that he was being "undermined". "Europe's negotiating position in the world trade talks is being weakened and I regret that," he declared, then going on to say:

It is very disappointing because the mandate on which I am negotiating in the world trade talks - and trying on Europe's behalf to bring them to a successful conclusion - has been agreed by all the member states.

The Doha round is a global negotiation which will stabilise and lock in the openness that has guaranteed our welfare over decades, and has lifted 100s of millions of people around the world out of poverty. This is not about individuals – not me, not Pascal Lamy, not President Sarkozy. It is about giving the global economy a shot in the arm in order to be able to face the current economic pressures and help keep the global economy buoyant in years to come.

Food protectionism will not feed the world. A fair, balanced and carefully sequenced liberalisation of agricultural markets over time can contribute to solving the current food crisis. It will enhance efficiency of food production and ensure better access to food. The DDA is central to such liberalisation. We have not sacrificed European farm production in negotiations, but rather have been successful in defending core interests while opening new markets.

A Doha deal would also contribute to fairer farm trade by ensuring that poor farmers would no longer be forced to compete with subsidized farm goods from the rich world. Their production would rise, and South-South trade in food would be given a boost.

It is rather ironic that the "ratification instrument" – the document which the British government will formally deposit with the Italian government to complete the ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty – will be drafted on goatskin parchment.

Such are the recriminations flying about in the aftermath of the Irish referendum, though, that – as one of our forum commenters put it - the skin surely came from a scapegoat.

First off the mark, last Thursday, was Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who complained that the unwelcome (to the "colleagues") result was down to the member states, and the "Politicians give the impression that Europe is being built against their will."

He was followed by Sarkozy during the latter stages of the European Council meeting on Friday, who took a tilt at EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson for upsetting the Irish over the WTO negotiations.

Then it was Silvio Berlusconi's turn. He accused EU commission officials of "talking too much" to the public in the member states. "The forecasts and recommendations that the commissioners give, and which appear in the newspapers every other day," he said, "provoke negative reactions among the citizens of the EU, who see (the commission) as a body that imposes constraints and creates problems."

Warming to his theme, he added, "Moreover, they create difficulties for governments because they offer ammunition to opposition parties, whether of the right or of the left, to criticize the government."

To add to the discord, Italian president Giorgio Napolitano (pictured) has joined in, siding with the Juncker brigade by accusing member state governments of using the European Union as a scapegoat to hide their own faults.

"Too many governments, have in fact, hidden the positions they have taken in (Brussels), using Europe - and in particular the European Commission, 'the bureaucracy of Brussels', as a scapegoat to cover their responsibilities and inadequacies," he said in a speech to a European conference in France.

These remarks have been seen as a veiled swipe at Berlusconi, but Napolitano also has general criticisms of all member states, declaring that their governments were not persuading their citizens of the need for a stronger and more united Europe.

Far from taking a hint from Berlusconi about "talking too much", Barroso has been unable to resist the temptation to hit back, stating that, "It's not with populist slogans that we will succeed in renewing confidence among European citizens."

Barroso's view is that those who accused the commission of a "democratic deficit" were just plain wrong. "There is no point in falling into the populist temptation of depicting the European Commission as the expression of bureaucracy and technocracy," he stated.

Not content with that, he then put himself firmly in the Juncker/ Napolitano camp by declaring, "It is not possible to criticise Brussels from Monday to Saturday, and then on Sunday, ask your citizens to give a favourable vote for Europe."

Meanwhile, The Irish Times is blaming the "disastrous 'yes' campaign" for the failure to deliver the (scape) goatskin, bringing us to today when we wait agog for the next instalment of the blame game.

Nobody yet has blamed global warming – which has to be a first – although there is still time yet.

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