Kinder Cops

Over 200 blogs have picked up on the "Climate Cops" – mostly American, but including blogs from Canada, Australia, Holland, Spain and Germany. Unsurprisingly, we find only a smattering of British blogs - although Devil's Kitchen has done us proud.

One of the German sites has dubbed the planet savers as Kinder cops. Another labels them Green shirts while yet another awards them the title of Climate Jugend.

However, it seems someone got there before npower. Apparently, in 2007, a former UN Undersecretary General was calling on Canada to spearhead a drive to establish a permanent World Climate Commission with authority to act as the planet's climate cops.

He didn't get as far as suggesting a UN Climate-Keeping Force but, when it comes, I suppose they will be wearing green helmets.

COMMENT THREAD

Don't panic!

Something we should have picked up yesterday, and now covered fully by Watts up with that, is the story run by The Telegraph (and many others), headed, "Arctic ice shelf splits in big melt".

A part of the Arctic ice shelf has sheared off creating two huge ice islands, we are told, covering an area of seven square miles (our emphasis). This, journalist Paul Eccleston breathlessly announced, "marked the biggest break up of the ice for three years."

Needless to say, it is not very long before we come to the punch-line, "The scientists say they believe the split was almost certainly caused by the warming climate which is affecting polar regions more than anywhere else. The break-up of ice, known as calving, is regarded by scientists as being symptomatic of the warming of polar areas."

Er, right! This is why arctic sea ice is reported to be around a million square kilometres greater in extent than it was this time last year (see pic below) – nearly 400,000 square miles … and they're writing stories about seven square miles?


However, there is no need to panic! Warmists will be comforted to learn that this does not in any way impact on the AGW theory.

According to Mark Serreze, a senior research fellow at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), there is a 90 percent match between rising greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from use of fossil fuels, in recent decades and observations of a retreat of the ice. "Ninety percent ... of the decreasing sea-ice extent is empirically 'accounted for' by the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Serreze says.

He adds that, if the match continues to hold true, the annual average ice extent would be several million km smaller by 2050 than predicted by the UN Climate Panel. He thus stands by a prediction that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2030, decades before predictions by the Panel.

The NSIDC, by the way, suggested in May that it was "quite possible" that the Pole could be ice-free this year.

COMMENT THREAD

Prattling while Rome burns

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.

This is so similar to our own view that we could be forgiven for wondering whether the commissioner reads our blog.

What is also remarkable, though, is that the comment comes from the EU trade commissioner and not from a British politician. On the failure of the talks, it seems, our own political "leaders" have no comment, hence our own somewhat jaundiced view which we expressed earlier:

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.

Interestingly, in the United States - a land where some grown-up politics does still exist – we see the Wall Street Journal actually offer political comment, declaring:

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.

Nothing of that could apply here as neither main party has an opinion on the subject – other than to fall into line with what the EU has agreed, and then to ignore the outcome because it is entirely out of their hands.

Similarly, do we see comment on yesterday’s publication of the UK Drug Policy Commission's report, but couched in entirely apolitical terms with, of course, no linkage with the failure of the WTO talks – and definitely no political input.

We also see the news of the massive increase in gas prices, but this again is treated at a superficial level without any political dimension. Instead, we see this razor-sharp analysis. Yet, as we remarked recently, this has major political implications, stemming as it does from political failures - which actually span several administrations.

Three major issues, therefore, are all on today's agenda, trade, drugs and energy, but the domestic politicians and the prattling political commentators are silent on them, focusing yet again on the soap opera.

I spoke at length about this earlier with a journalist friend – and exchanged notes with another who was bemoaning the fact that an important and interesting story he had filed had been ignored by the news desk. The conclusion to be drawn is that the political classes are retreating into a second childhood.

Unable to cope with the complexities of the modern world, and their own impotence – having handed on their powers to the EU and other tranzie bodies, and to the quangos at the other level – they devote their time to inane prattle, to fill the void of their own making.

In that very real sense, we are seeing the death of (domestic) politics – not so much fiddling as prattling while Rome burns.

COMMENT THREAD

Try looking in the mirror

Six columns of the front page on "Labour at war"; reports on pages 2 and 3; Mary Riddell takes up the op-ed and the lead editorial opines at length.

In this, the paper has the nerve to say: "The electorate will, rightly, look on with disgust at such self-obsession…".

Has The Daily Telegraph editorial team looked in the mirror recently?

COMMENT THREAD

The final insult

Far too little attention was given to the Metock case last week, when the ECJ ruled that failed asylum seekers could stay in the EU if they married a citizen of an EU member state while they were waiting to be deported.

The one thing that the ECJ did concede, however, was that, if it was a "sham" marriage, the right to remain in the EU did not apply – but no more.

In a judgement yesterday our own Law Lords decided that the government cannot even ask such people to demonstrate that their marriages are valid. Such an idea is "arbitrary and unjust" - even for those who are here on a temporary visa and are getting married only weeks before their permission to stay in Britain runs out.

This follows a crackdown introduced by the government in February 2005 after the number of suspected sham ceremonies - often arranged by criminal gangs who could earn £10,000 a time - reached 3,700. It was cut this to around 300 a year.

But now, the Lords have ruled that the government's procedures breach of Section 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to marry. In future, the Home Office will be forced to consider the merits of a union being made even at the very last moment before a migrant is due to leave the UK.

In our earlier piece, we wrote that we were being taken for mugs and this confirms it. In fact, this is a negation of any idea of territorial integrity as, increasingly, we are forced into opening our border to any Tom Dick or Hacene that thinks he – or she – wants to take up residence here. It is the final insult (until the next one).

COMMENT THREAD

Drip, drip, drip

Yes it is boring and tiresome to keep repeating the same things over and over again, be they about the European Union, the UN, assorted tranzis and NGOs or the evil that aid does in developing countries. We are not alone in doing this and there are people whose dedication to this duty fills me with the most astonished admiration.

One such organization is the Palestinian Media Watch that keeps on dripping water on rock of political stupidity and self-righteous victimology (though I would like them to keep their website a little more up-to-date).

Their director, Itamar Marcus, visited Norway recently and managed to spark something of an important political debate there about the money that goes to the Palestinian Authority and what use it is put to.

It seems that the shocked Norwegian politicians and media pundits (a.k.a. news readers) had known nothing about the psychotic mouse, named Farfur, his cousin and successor as presenter of children's programmes, Nahul the Killer Bee or the homicidal rabbit named Assud who thinks he is a lion with a diet exclusively of Jews. Even if they had heard of all these horrors the Norwegians appear not to have worked out that possibly the money they so generously hand over to the Palestinian Authority pays for some of this.

At least now they are debating the subject and, at least, one political party is calling for the cessation of payments though, I have no doubt, that if ever that became serious government policy the weeping and wailing about humanitarian crises would go up.

Still, it is good to know that the media and politicians of at least one donor country are beginning to wake up. Of course, we wrote about this problem extensively in February when the Taxpayers' Alliance produced a report on the subject, and referred our readers back to previous postings. We wrote about NGO funding that goes on hate-filled books and children's programmes in May. I have no doubt we shall return to the subject again. Who knows: maybe Norway will, by then, have shown the way to do things and cut off aid to the pernicious Palestinian Authority.

That complaint

Having sent a letter to the Advertising Standards Authority about the attempt by npower to recruit children to become "climate cops" and root out "climate crimes" we have received an incredibly swift response.

The reply (illustrated – click to enlarge) comes from "Complaints executive" Suzanne Thomas who wastes no time telling us that "we have viewed a copy of the press ad and considered you (sic) objections but do not feel it have (sic) breached our Codes on the basis you suggest." She then goes on:

The ad is indeed aimed at parents, asking them to get their children involved in environmental issues. They are then free to look at the website and decide if they wish for their children to participate in the campaign. It appears to be an attempt to encourage children to learn about climate change and to educate them in ways they can help save energy. While it warns that you may "being watched", there is no one your children could actually report to and this does not appear to be a sinister campaign that could be linked to propaganda of any kind. It seems to be just an educational way to engage children in this topical issue. We do not feel the ad to be misleading through omission and do not feel any further intervention from us to be necessary on this occasion.

The interesting thing about this is that we did not actually frame a complaint to the ASA. We wrote asking for their assistance in framing a complaint – a rather less than subtle difference – not least because we were aware that there could be multiple issues involved.

But, so keen is the ASA to exonerate npower - it would seem – that they have rushed to adjudicate on the very limited basis put to them, without exploring any further issues.

They could, for instance, have looked at their own rule 47.2, which states that: "Marketing communications addressed to, targeted at or featuring children should contain nothing that is likely to result in their physical, mental or moral harm."

More particularly, rule 47.4 then states: "Marketing communications addressed to or targeted at children: a) should not actively encourage them to make a nuisance of themselves to parents or others and should not undermine parental authority".

These are rules specifically applicable to children, but there is also rule 49.5, applicable to environmental claims. This states that: "The use of extravagant language should be avoided, as should bogus and confusing scientific terms. If it is necessary to use a scientific expression, its meaning should be clear."

Taking these in turn, we argued on the forum that:

1. the designation of certain lawful actions - desirable or not - as "crimes" is an unwholesome distortion of our moral code. It confers moral equivalency between not turning off a light and, say, shoplifting or vandalism. It seeks to impose a moral judgement on a normal activity, blurring the line between something which is lawful and something which is not. This confusion, especially when children are the focus, cannot help define and communicate our moral code, with which many children have only a distressingly limited acquaintance;

2. the recruitment of children to pass judgement on their parent's "crimes" is wholly malign, not least in undermining the authority of adults;

3. in that the campaign seeks to align children with an external agency, which is setting the parameters by which the children should judge their own parents and other adults, it creates an alternative authority which purports to be superior to that of the parents and other authority figures. That is confusing to the child, and also creates a potential area of friction ...;

4. not only does the campaign encourage the child to believe it has the moral right to pass judgement on the behaviour of parents and other adults, it actively encourages the child to "enforce" that judgement, distorting the normal relationships between adults and children.

5. by asking the child to record the "crimes", it undermines the bonds of loyalty which should exist between child and family. The children are being encouraged to put the notional and highly contentious objective of "saving the planet" above that of family cohesion and loyalty.

This would seem to be covered by quite adequately by rules 47.2 and 47.4. There would thus, on the face of it, appear to be a clear breach of the code.

As to rule 47.4 specifically, we have now an article from the Islington Tribune, where we have an npower spokesman happily admitting that: "I don't apologise if a bit of pester-power goes home with the kids but I don't see George Orwell looming round the corner."

Notwithstanding the "George Orwell" bit, there is quite clearly an admission here that the intention of the campaign is to employ "pester power". This, by any other description, is an attempt to "…encourage them [children] to make a nuisance of themselves to parents or others …".

And then there is rule 47.2. Here, we would point to the injunction in the advertisement which effectively, enjoins their "climate cops" to "save the planet this summer". Whatever else, we would have difficulty in accepting that any of the activities to which the "climate cops" are directed could actually "save the planet", to which effect, is not the language a tad "extravagant"?

Anyhow, in the ASA's opinion, this "… seems to be just an educational way to engage children in this topical issue."

We have made our views known to the ASA, and will keep you all posted.

COMMENT THREAD

A one-dimensional view

Playing big in the news today is the report from the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) that drug seizures by the police have little impact on Britain's (illegal) drug market.

In a market estimated to be worth some £5.3 billion, expenditure of £380 million on reducing the supply of drugs in 2005/6 had no measurable effect, despite seizures of Class A drugs having more than doubled between 1996 and 2005.

One author of the report, Tim McSweeney, noted, "We were struck by how little evidence there is to show that the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on UK enforcement each year has made a sustainable impact and represents value for money."

The report, necessarily, deals with only the UK enforcement perspective but, in so doing, is wholly one-dimensional. The so-called "end of pipe" solutions are only one tiny part of the bigger picture, an essential part of which is measures to reduce the quantities of illegal drugs produced.

It is here, in fact, that the failures are even greater. Respectively, the two major locations for heroin and cocaine are Afghanistan and Colombia and, in both those countries, production has increased. And, as we have pointed out, a significant part of the problem in Afghanistan and Colombia is the failure of developed nations to open up their markets to legitimate agricultural produce from these countries.

Essentially, we are faced with a choice – either take their farm goods or we get their illegal drugs. And that was where the Doha round was supposed to come in – precisely to open our markets to third world trade. The failure of the talks will have a direct impact on the quantities of illegal drugs that are flooding into this country.

Yet, in our piece earlier today, we noted that very few people – particularly amongst our political classes - "will link events to come with the failure". This report today is a classic example of that fatal disconnect. Much will now be heard of the "caring" agenda, trying to deal with the social and personal consequences of our drug epidemic, but when it comes to addressing the root causes, comment there will be none.

Nor will you hear widely - or at all in the MSM - the view expressed that, by handing over our trade policy to the EU, we have also handed over our capabilities to take unliateral measures which could - and most certainly would - have a real impact on the illegal drugs trade.

Such linkage is far to complicated for our media, politicians, social commentators and the massive counter-narcotics industry. All of these will remain in their one-dimensional rut, unable to see the connection between the lack of free trade and people dying in our cities through drug overdoses.

And so does our society decline, without us even beginning to understand the causes and thus failing entirely to address the issues, but nevertheless spending hundreds of millions in getting nowhere.

COMMENT THREAD

Where others lead …

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.

COMMENT THREAD

Perhaps they insist on organic milk

I picked up this story on Little Green Footballs but Charles Johnson, its online begetter, had it from some of his readers. There are some sharp cookies out there reading blogs and websites. Anyway, the story comes in Israel Today together with some highly entertaining pictures, issued by Hamas. For once, our own journalists did not get to the pictures in time to present them as the gospel truth (a particularly apposite phrase as we are talking about that part of the world).

The story and the pictures purport to prove that the so-called smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza (a wall runs along that border but that is rarely mentioned by the reporters) are not used for guns, explosives and "heavy mortar shells, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles". Goodness me, how could you think that? Whatever next?

No, they are used by selfless and dedicated Hamas fighters, pictured with their faces hidden, to bring in milk and babyfood. What else could you possibly use such tunnels for?

The Israelis have demanded that the Hamas leadership shut those tunnels down but Ismail Haniyeh, the Prime Minister, refused in a refreshingly honest fashion:

"We cannot talk about stopping smuggling because it is something beyond our ability as a government and we did not give a commitment in this regard," Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told worshippers at a Gaza City mosque on June 25 as the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire was being finalized.

It would appear that Hamas is no more in control of its territory, despite the periodic purge of Fatah supporters, than the latter is in the West Bank where there are also periodic purges.

Egypt has never denied that the tunnels exist and has, every now and then, shut a few down.

But we were all wrong. The tunnels quite clearly exist for humanitarian purposes. Understandably, Israel is a little sceptical. Israelies tend to be sceptical about most things, especially their own leaders, but this time they go beyond that and pronounce themselves to be extremely dubious.

Between 100 and 150 trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Israel and international aid organizations enter Gaza on a daily basis. Out of that number, the 50 or so daily shipments that enter via Gaza's central Sufa Crossing contain milk and baby food, according to the manifests.

A long way from the humanitarian disaster we keep hearing about but, of course, this all contributes to the social and political disaster that Gaza remains. What of the smuggled milk, though? I can only suggest that the Gazans prefer the organic stuff and the nasty Israelis insist on providing them with Longlife milk. Enough to make anyone's blood boil.

ADDENDUM: Actually I wrote "onlie begetter" about Charles Johnson, getting a little carried away with the Shakespearian references but the boss changed that. He doesn't like me getting all greenery-yallery.

Another stealth tax

It was yesterday that we saw reports of MPs calling for a multi-billion pound windfall tax, to "top slice" utility companies' profits allegedly made from the EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS) for carbon dioxide. Yet, unacknowledged by those self-same MPs, moves are already in place for the government to grab the income from the scheme.

The ETS itself is that mad scheme whereby the EU member states have agreed maximum carbon dioxide emissions which specific industries in each member state can produce each year, then awarding to individual enterprises permits for given tonnages of emissions. To date, since the scheme started in 2005, these have been given out free of charge but companies which exceed their individual quotas have to buy permits for the excess, from companies which under-produce (via brokers).

In theory, electricity companies have been able to make millions of pounds a year in "windfall" profits from this sceheme, being allowed to pass on the notional costs of their permits to customers in higher charges. And it is those millions which the MPs want to target.

However, there is serious argument as to whether the income derived actually represents additional profit. The case is made that, since the generators work to basic margins on their sales, had they not been able to benefit from the free permits, electricity prices would have gone up even more than they have already.

This notwithstanding, from this year, the EU is allowing member state governments to auction off up to a third of emissions permits allocated to electricity companies. This will be a nice little earner for Gordon Brown, the Financial Times estimating that it will bring him in nearly £2 billlion over the next four years, after which the first phase of the scheme comes to an end.

Come the next phase, which starts in 2013, the government is likely to be an even greater beneficiary, standing to make about £2 billion a year from auctioning permits, if the power sector is forced to buy all its permits as the EU commission proposes.

According to the FT, though, this should not increase electricity prices to consumers, as the costs have already been factored into to current prices. But this optimism may be misplaced. The electricity industry has to find upwards of £100 billion in new investment to fund improvements in generation capacity and infrastructure and, if the government is set on taking £2 billion a year out of the industry, that shortfall will have to be made up from somewhere. And, in the way of things, that "somewhere" will be our pockets.

What makes this even more reprehensible, however, is that the current price of an emissions permit, at around £25 per ton, is generally acknowledged to be insufficient alone to incentivise switching to low emissions technology such as nuclear generation – which was the whole point of the scheme in the first place.

On the other hand, the abstraction of large sums of money from the industry and the variability in costs of emissions permits actually deters investors, and adds to the confusion on energy policy.

Shorn of any economic or other rationale, that makes Gordon's latest cash grab little more than just another stealth tax, this one made all the more malign for having been legitimised by the European Union.

COMMENT THREAD

A political black hole

Very often it is The Sun which has its finger on the political pulse of the nation, leaving the politicians (and many of the more self-important political bloggers) floundering.

It is of some significance, therefore, that today this paper should run a major story on the energy crisis, pointing out the implications of spiralling energy costs for the less well off.

Thus, under the headline illustrated above, the paper notes that, "It's odd to talk about heating bills in the hottest spell of the year, but many Sun readers must be scared about the coming winter." Last week's rises of 22 percent for gas and 17 percent for electricity are terrifying, it adds, then predicting: "There's worse to come. Prices are sure to rise AGAIN in the winter, and by Christmas families could be paying £30 a week or more for light and heat — nearly double last winter’s bill."

Later in the story, we see the political slant, with the observation that, "The Government appears clueless. Labour have been asleep on the job as the rest of the world has been busy building nuclear power stations. Our own nuclear stations are years away." The paper adds: "Thanks to Labour inaction we can store only 13 days’ worth of gas compared to 122 days in France. That leaves us at the mercy of sudden global price changes."

Then we come to a damning, if not muted conclusion that: "Instead of plotting to remove Brown, Labour ministers should be plotting how to avert misery for millions this winter," with the payoff line, "Lives will be at stake. It is as serious as that."

It is indeed as serious as that, and the final point is well taken, but should have wider application. We have noted how the chatterati have been obsessed with the political theatre, relentlessly pursuing soap opera narrative of Brown’s supposed impending demise, all built on the thinnest patina of idle speculation.

Yet, in the here and now, we have an energy crisis of massive proportions building up which, in time, will become the main political issue of the day. But, at a time when – even at this eleventh hour – urgent and well-founded action could at least mitigate some of the worst effects, the political classes are silent. Energy simply is not on the political radar as a mainstream issue.

Part of this is due to the neglect of the main opposition, the Conservatives in what, as we remarked yesterday is not a technical issue but a politically induced crisis. By pursuing its soft, social agenda – and letting its "green" obsession overtake it - the Party has dropped the ball on something of far more importance and much greater urgency: the impact of spiralling energy prices and impending energy shortages, which as The Sun points out will affect most those who can least afford it.

It is actually no exaggeration to say that "Lives will be at stake," and it is thus a damning indictment of the political classes that they indulge their petty obsessions with soap opera politics and evade their greater responsibilities to deal with those issues which will have a massive and increasingly damaging effect on the welfare (and prosperity) of this nation.

COMMENT THREAD

It's a mad, mad world

Readers may be intrigued by a headline in the IHT retailing a report from AP, telling us that, "South African says it will shift energy policy from coal to combat climate change."

The thrust of this piece is that the South African government has declared that it is planning to move away from cheap "dirty" coal as its primary source of energy – accounting for nearly 90 percent of its electricity - and embrace nuclear and renewable energy "in a bid to combat climate change".

However, less than a week ago, we recall a report that pointed out that South Africa was forecasting a 100 million ton shortfall of coal by 2017, and, unless its government restricted its exports, its local supplies would suffer.

Add to that little snippet, the information that the biggest customer for South African coal is Germany. Then note a report from last year reminding us that Germany is to shut down all of its 17 nuclear power plants - currently its biggest source of electricity - by the early 2020s and that coal will cease to be mined in that country by 2018.

Also note another report which tells us that, to replace its nuclear power, German utility companies are planning to set up a total of 26 new coal-fired power plants. As a result, Germany will need to increase its demand for coal from abroad from around 30.6 million tons a year to 56-66 million tons by 2020 – the bulk of it to be imported from South Africa, which is planning to increase its export capacity by 20 million tons a year.

Now put all the pieces together in sequence.

Germany – in order to go "green" - is abandoning nuclear power and turning to coal-fired generation, relying on imports of South African coal. South Africa currently relies on coal-fired generation, but has insufficient production to service both its domestic and export demands, and it is planning to increase exports. Thus, as we have just learnt, South Africa is going nuclear – and is telling us that this is in order to go "green".

Are we going mad, or have we missed something?

COMMENT THREAD

Always good for a laugh

One of my daily must-reads is James Taranto's Best of the Web of the Wall Street Journal. (I must admit to rather dreading what News International and its myridons will do to the newspaper and its website.) Today's collection of stories, analyses and amusing juxtaposition of quotes had the following item:

Well, Maybe Not as We Speak

• "As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic . . ."--Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24, 2008 •

"New data from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute shows that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago. In most years, there are open waters in the area north of the archipelago in July month. Studies from this year however show that the area is covered by ice, the Meteorological Institute writes in a press release."--Barents Observer (Kirkenes, Norway), July 24

He should stick to parables.

A politically-induced crisis

After the recent eye-watering increases in gas (and electricity) prices, The Economist is telling us that the situation is going to get even worse.

Britain's gas market, it says, is changing fundamentally in ways that make it much more vulnerable to higher gas prices. As domestic supplies dwindle, Britain must make up the shortfall from overseas, either through pipelines from Europe or by buying shipfuls of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the global market. Currently, North Sea production can supply around two-thirds of Britain's maximum demand; that will fall to around half as soon as 2010.

Expensive gas is particularly painful for Britain, which relies on the stuff to heat around 85 percent of its homes. The country also uses gas to generate around 40 percent of its electricity, a particularly high proportion that is set to rise still further over the next decade.

The reason cited for this is the closure by 2023 of all but one of Britain's "doddery nuclear plants" and new environmental laws (aka the EU's large combustion plants directive – although The Economist does not state this) which "could mean that up to half of coal stations will have to shut down over the coming years."

The magazine then tells us that, "On current plans much of that capacity will be replaced by cheap, quick-to-build gas plants, boosting demand and making Britain even more reliant on flaky supplies from the international markets."

Herein, though, lies another story which the Economist does not tell us. In written evidence to the Environment Audit Committee, from our favourite energy company npower, the true causes of the excessive reliance on gas are sketched out.

Specifically, the company states that the UK has benefited from a diverse energy mix which has helped to ensure security of supply through the balance of nuclear (around 16 percent), gas (around 31 percent) and coal (around 35 percent) generation. In recent years, it says, there has also been an increase in renewables, which now constitute between 2.5 and 3 percent of the UK generation portfolio.

However, even with energy efficiency measures reducing demand growth below historic levels, the company says that it anticipates that peak demand will grow by almost 9GW between 2005 and 2015. During the same period, 7.5GW of nuclear plant (Magnox and AGR) is expected to be decommissioned as well as up to 4GW of older Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) stations.

This, we are told, requires investment in 20GW of new plant by 2015 in order to maintain a 20 percent capacity margin. With peak demand then forecast to grow by almost 4GW between 2015 and 2020, and the retirement of old coal and oil plant under the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) by the end of 2015, the UK would require almost the same amount of new plant again to maintain security of electricity supplies.

Thus, the company asserts that there is a "a need to consider the more serious concerns to electricity from 2008."

These concerns, it tells us, "are avoidable with suitable infrastructure investment if action is taken now." But, whilst the National Grid's Seven Year Statement shows substantial planned new capacity, very little of this is actually under construction.

And then we get to the beef:

A major impediment to commitment is absence of clarity on two important environmental issues: LCPD and Phase 2 of the EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS) beginning in 2008, and also whether there will be any successor to the Kyoto Protocol or even any carbon trading post-2012.

We are concerned that the definition of a combustion plant currently being proposed under the LCPD will curtail the life of "opted out" coal plant even further. In summary, we have strongly urged the UK Government to implement the LCPD on the basis of plant="boiler", rather than plant="stack" at least for plant opting out under the terms of the 20,000 hour derogation. If the LCPD is implemented in the way currently proposed, the UK would be deprived of the security that retiring coal plant can provide during the challenging transition from a high carbon generation industry to a low one.

There is no clear view of the availability or cost of CO2 emission allowances from 2008, during the second phase of the EU ETS and therefore no market view of the value or cost of power. Yet the UK energy industry urgently needs to commence investment in new forms of generation to meet demand and further reduce emissions. We propose that the UK Government resolves the issue of the allocation to the electricity sector urgently, in advance of finalising the National Allocation Plan and submitting to the European Commission.

In light of such fundamental uncertainties, it is difficult to evaluate the outputs, costs and revenues for investment appraisal purposes with any degree of confidence. Any appraisal would need to factor in a variety of adverse regulatory scenarios or apply a marked cost of capital premium to reflect the risks. In these circumstances investment decisions tend to be postponed, the risk of supply disruptions inevitably increases and the costs of responding to shortage are ultimately higher. The principal impediment to effective markets and investment decision-making is uncertainty regarding the environmental legislative and regulatory framework.

Note, please, that last sentence: "The principal impediment to effective markets and investment decision-making is uncertainty regarding the environmental legislative and regulatory framework."

When the lights go out, it will not be because there have been any technical impediments to the supply of the power we need. The cause will have been regulatory failures which have inhibited and distorted investment decisions. And, because of that also, the power we do get will be that much more expensive.

The piece we have quoted, incidentally, was in October 2005. "If we act now …" it said. But we didn't. That we did not is through the combined effect of the dead hands of both Whitehall and Brussels, setting the scene for an entirely avoidable crisis. That makes it a politically induced crisis, which is now virtually unavoidable, the issues raised by npower still largely unresolved.

Yet still it has not registered, with the bulk of the chatterati frittering their time away on mindless speculation about the fate of our prime minister. You can see why we get so irritated and despondent.

COMMENT THREAD

Those "climate crimes"

Following our post yesterday on "Climate Nazis", reproduced on Watts up with that, a number of commentators – across both sites – have suggested we contact the Advertising Standards Authority.

We did contact the ASA this morning and, as one might expect, making a complaint is not so simple. The basis of our complaint lies not so much in the advertisement (illustrated - click to enlarge) as in the campaign itself, which is essentially website based.

The remit of the ASA, however, is limited to advertisements in the media and it cannot directly concern itself with the content of websites. Should we wish to complain about the npower website, we were advised to contact Trading Standards – which is unlikely to yield dividends.

However, there is possibly a way forward. The advertisement itself does not refer to "climate crimes" or in any way state explicitly that the purpose of the campaign is to recruit children to spy on friends, family and relatives, to accuse them of "climate crimes" and to keep records of their "infractions".

In that sense, the advertisement is possibly misleading, to which effect we have written a draft letter, published below, which might allow a formal complaint to proceed.

Dear Sirs,

With a view to making a formal complaint about a newspaper advertisement, I wish to seek your advice on its framing in order that it comes within your remit.

The relevant advertisement was in The Sunday Times dated 27 July 2008, placed by or on behalf of npower (attached). In my edition, it was on page twelve.

The substance of my complaint, at first sight, is that it is misleading, in that it addresses parents, inviting them to direct their children to apply by e-mail for a "free climate cops challenge diary", with an additional "offer" of "interactive games and fun downloads", available from a company owned (or managed) website (www.climatecops.com).

However, the tenor of the website is very different from the print advertisement. There, a direct appeal is made to children, inviting them to enlist as "climate cops", with a view to searching out "climate crimes". The website urges its recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, inviting each of them to build up a "climate crime case file" in order to help them ensure their putative criminals do not "commit those crimes again (or else)!"

I understand that, on their own, websites to not come within your remit and, while I find the tenor of the "offer" made on the website disturbing, it would thus appear that you would not be able to act in respect of that "offer".

This notwithstanding, it would appear that the advertisement is misleading in that it is couched in terms of its address to parents who are invited to "get your kids to help you switch-off this summer". In no way does this advertisement indicate that the company is in fact seeking to indoctrinate children, encouraging them falsely to attribute lack of "energy saving" as "crimes", and encouraging them to spy on families, friends and relatives, inviting each of them to keep records of these "crimes" for future use.

It would be my contention that, were parents fully aware that the intent of the website was to brand them, through the eyes of their children, as perpetrators of "climate crimes", many would feel deeply uneasy – if not very angry - and would not allow or encourage their children to visit the website.

I would ask you, therefore, whether the framing of a complaint which referred to the lack of references to the true intention of the advertisement could fall within your remit, and whether any such complaint should be couched in terms of the advertisement being "misleading", or whether any other issues should be identified.

Yours faithfully …

I am inviting (constructive) comments before sending it – which I will do, with or without amendments – tomorrow.

This aside, it would appear that, if npower wishes to recruit children as "climate cops" to root out "climate crimes", there is very little that can be done to stop them via any statutory authority … unless you know different.

COMMENT THREAD

First the bad news …

Friday's growth figures suggested Britain is tipping into recession.

And now for the good.

Across the Channel it suddenly looks as if the eurozone might beat us to it.

That is, at least, according to The Guardian, which has Ashley Seager telling us that the news from the single currency bloc is bad and the prospects look even worse.

The data flow last week from the 15-member bloc, Seager writes, was simply awful and will undermine the argument that while the UK's housing market, construction industry, banking sector and just about every other part of the economy are slowing rapidly, we could export our way out of trouble. Since we do half our trade with the rest of western Europe, that idea is looking increasingly shaky.

Er … perhaps it's not such good news after all, except that if the result is a collapse of the euro, it would be worth the pain.

COMMENT THREAD

Climate Nazis

Can I be the only one more than a little disturbed by the latest campaign to be fronted by energy company npower?

Launched today with large colour ads in the Sundays, it appeals directly to children, urging them to enlist as "climate cops", to root out "climate crimes", and thus "save the planet".

In a luridly-designed website, mimicking the style of "yoof" cartoons, it offers a bundle of downloads, including a pack of "climate crime cards", urging its recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, inviting each of them to build up a "climate crime case file" in order to help them ensure their putative criminals do not "commit those crimes again (or else)!"

Quite what the "or else!" should be is not specified, but since the "climate cops" are being encouraged to keep detailed written records (for those who can read and write), there is nothing to stop these being submitted to the "Climate Cops HQ" for further sanctions, the repeat offenders being sent to re-education camps. And for those "climate cops" that successfully perform the "missions" set (or turn in their own parents), there is the reward of "training" in the "Climate Cop Academy".

In a system which has echoes of Hitler's Deutsches Jungvolk movement, and the Communist regime Pioneers, perhaps successful graduates can work up to becoming block wardens, then street and district "climate crime Führers", building a network of spies and informers.

How nicely this ties in with James Hansen's call to put the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming.

No doubt, with a willing band of "climate cops", the prosecutors can spread their nets wider, reaching into the homes of all climate change deniers, until the insidious virus of doubt is exterminated (final solution, anyone?). Then we can all march on the sunlit uplands of a "carbon-free" planet – to the tune of Ode to Joy no doubt.

****

A complaint to the (UK) Advertising Standards Authority is being actively considered. However, it is not entirely straightforward. More details here.

****

If you have any doubts as to why this is dangerous and offensive, see here, and see also comments on Watts up with that.

COMMENT THREAD

A climate of deception

One of the interesting phenomena of our times is the parallel between euroscepticism and "global warming denial": those that are antagonistic towards the European Union also tend to disbelieve the hype on anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

On the other side of the divide, there is also a close relationship between europhilia and belief in AGW, the EU having enthusiastically embraced the dogma of the warmist religion, not least because of the opportunities it affords to pursue the integrationalist agenda.

But there is another link. As is the EU built on a foundation of deception, so too is the global warming hype, so much so that it has become not "climate change" but a climate of deception.

One strand of that deception is brought home to us to day in the Booker column, which highlights to extent to which the great climate change guru James Hansen, of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), is manipulating temperature figures to promote his own beliefs and to pursue what is quite evidently a political agenda.

What is fascinating about this is that Hansen's data manipulation brings home an essential truth about modern politics: he who controls the statistics controls the high ground. It does not matter what the reality it – what matters is how that "reality" is portrayed.

We actually saw this in graphic form right at the beginning of the modern "scare" cycle, with the great "salmonella in eggs" scare. Then, the public perception was greatly influenced by the appearance of a new database on salmonella food poisoning, produced by a certain Dr Bernard Rowe of the then Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre.

Almost as a free-lance operation, in 1987, he started producing his own weekly digest showing what appeared to be a massive upsurge in food poisoning outbreaks, to which he – and he alone, in the early stages – was able to attribute a cause. And it was that database which provided the raw material which was to fuel the salmonella scare which dominated the media through late 1988 and early 1989.

That is not to say that there was not a problem with salmonella at the time, but it was the ability to shape the data which allowed Rowe, behind the scenes, to turn a statistical phenomenon into a highly political agenda.

To demonstrate the power of the figures, while the UK media in 1999-9 was dominated with scare stories about food safety, based on statistics produced by the ever-willing authorities, back in Holland, which had and even bigger problem with salmonella, there was no such diet of scares.

The way this was managed was breathtakingly simple and ingenious. While, in the UK, salmonella food poisoning was a "notifiable disease" which meant that all cases had to be reported to the authorities, the Dutch authorities made sure that this did not happen.

What they did in fact was change the law on diagnosing and reporting salmonella food poisoning, in a devilishly clever series of moves. Firstly, while the laboratory service to doctors for identifying the presence of salmonellas in patients was free, they introduced swingeing charges for identifying the type of salmonellas involved. Then, they introduced a rule that said salmonella notifications could not be included on the official database unless the isolations had been typed.

The entirely predictable result was that, while doctors continued to use laboratory services for basic diagnosis, to treat their patients they did not need to know the type of salmonellas involved, and stopped calling for typing information. The consequence was that, while the reported incidence of salmonella food poisoning was rising everywhere in Europe (and America), the Dutch authorities were able to show that their figures were falling. And, with an apparently declining incidence, there was no material to fuel a scare.

So it is with James Hansen. As long as he has control of an apparently authoritative dataset which shows that global warming is increasing, he can sustain the climate change scare. And, as Booker observes, it is on his alarmist figures that our politicians are basing all their proposals for irrevocably changing our lives.

Thus builds the "climate of deception", based on a strategy that is now becoming completely transparent. But, as long as the hard-core warmists, the media and politicians continue to give Hansen's tarnished figures their credibility, this dangerous man will get away with it.

COMMENT THREAD

Euro-chickens

"New Lisbon vote would be suicide for Cowen" headlines The Observer today, with the strap: "Public would punish party, says poll".

The poll had been commissioned by Open Europe and it suggests that Brian Cowen and his Fianna Fáil-led government would suffer a "Gordon Brown-style electoral meltdown" if they held a second referendum. More than half of those asked said they would be less likely to vote for Cowen and his party in an Irish general election if he decided to re-run the referendum

Some 71 percent of voters were opposed to holding a second vote while 62 percent would vote "no” compared to a "yes" vote of 24 percent compared with 47 percent in the June referendum.

Significantly, 17 percent of those who voted "yes" in the referendum would vote "no" if asked to vote again, while only six per cent of those who voted "no" would now vote "yes". Of those who did not vote last time, 57 percent would now vote "no", against 26 percent who would vote "yes".

If the weight of sentiment for a "no" vote continues, the "colleagues" might feel distinctly uneasy about running a second referendum, which would leave Sarkozy’s EU presidency high and dry. Although, the EU has made more comebacks than Frank Sinatra, options seem to be narrowing and the "Euro-chickens" may be running scared.

It really is going to be interesting to see how they break the impasse.

COMMENT THREAD

Taking us for mugs

"The European Union's top court," reports the BBC, "has ruled that non-EU nationals married to EU citizens are entitled to live in their spouse's country." It goes on to tell us that the court has overruled a law in the Republic of Ireland, which grants residency only to those who have previously lived in an EU member state.

This is our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC again, on which the court relies for its judgement.

Interestingly, though, neither the BBC, nor a similar report in the Irish Times, gives us any detail or background to the case, the BBC confining itself to the anodyne information that the case against the Irish justice ministry "was brought by four African men married to EU citizens resident in Ireland (pictured above). The men had been refused residence permits."

This is the so-called Metock case (Mr Metock pictured below left) - the essence of which is that failed asylum seekers have now established "rights" under EU law to reside in EU member state countries, having married citizens of EU member states while awaiting deportation. But, if this is not bad enough, there is much more to it than meets the eye.

For more detail, though, you have to go to the original press release from the ECJ and then, via that to another case report, the so-called Akrich case, upon which this judgement also relies.

No one seems to be writing about this background - although The Sun had a few comments at the time - so we've summarised the judgement on this Akrich case. Before you read it, you need to be sitting down on something very solid, with nothing breakable in reach.

And so we begin… hold tight.

This case, then - which dates back to 2003 - involved a Moroccan citizen by the name of Hacene Akrich. Since 1989, he had attempted on a number of occasions to enter and reside in the United Kingdom. Having no such rights, his applications for leave to remain had always been refused.

But, in 1992, less than a month after he had been deported for the second time, Akrich returned illegally to the UK and, in 1996 – having remained here illegally for the best part of four years - he married a British citizen.

Thus married, he again applied for leave to remain, claiming rights as the spouse of a British citizen. Unsurprisingly, the British immigration authorities refused him leave and, in August 1997, he was deported to Dublin, where his wife "happened" to be working.

There he remained for a time but, in August 1998, his wife took up work in the UK. Akrich then applied again to enter the UK, relying on previous EU case law relating to a certain Surinder Singh (of which he seems to have been advised). This stated that nationals of one member state who had worked in another could, when they returned, be accompanied by their spouses, of whatever nationality, provided they had been in that other country lawfully.

Both Mr and Mrs Akrich were questioned by the UK Embassy in Dublin, whence it emerged that they had always intended to return to the UK, "because [they] had heard about EU rights, staying six months and then going back to the UK". In other words, the period in Ireland had simply been a ploy to enable Mr Akrich to acquire residency rights in the UK.

Akrich was thus refused entry on the basis that the move to Ireland "was no more than a temporary absence deliberately designed to manufacture a right of residence for Mr Akrich and to evade the provisions of the United Kingdom legislation."

Mr Akrich appealed against this refusal to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, which referred the case to the ECJ. There, the court decided that, on the basis of the Surinder Singh judgement, the UK had been right to refuse Akridge entry. For him to enjoy rights in accordance with that judgement, he would have had to have been lawfully resident in the UK before he had moved to Ireland.

However, as to the "abuse" engineered by the couple, this the court declared was irrelevant, even though Akrich had entered the UK illegally, and then it delivered its bombshell. Notwithstanding the fact that he had been an illegal immigrant when he had married, the UK had to take account of the right to respect for family life under Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights, now enshrined in Directive 2004/38/EC.

Thus, the court held that "a non-Community spouse of a Union citizen who accompanies or joins that citizen can benefit from the directive, irrespective of when and where their marriage took place and of how that spouse entered the host member state."

Akrich was then able enter the UK with his wife and take up gainful employment, setting the important precedent that illegal entry or residence was no bar to claiming EU rights of establishment. It is that which this current judgement "developed", so extending its application. As it now applies to Metock and his co-plaintiffs, because they have married citizens of EU member states, they can remain in the country to which they first came, even though they were unlawfully resident in that member state when they married. By this means, they acquire their rights of residence.

So, what we have is the ECJ confirming, through a series of incremental judgements, that there is an open door for illegal immigrants, over which member states have no control. As long as third country nationals can get here or to any other member state by any means (whether illegal entry or by falsely claiming asylum) and evade the authorities long enough to marry EU citizens (who themselves may have been recent immigrants, as was Metock's spouse), EU law gives them an absolute right permanently to stay here or anywhere else in the EU.

And, of course, once they have been resident for five years, they too become "EU citizens" which means that, under Directive 2004/38/EC, they are entitled to bring over their mothers and fathers, any children they might have, and even grandparents and cousins, if they are dependants.

No wonder the Beeb and others didn't want to give us any details of this case. They, the EU and the ECJ are taking us for mugs, and they really would not want us to know that.

****

Hibernia girl has some useful background links, particularly here. This is not going to play well in Ireland, as some 1500 cases there are to be reviewed.

It is interesting to note that, to illustrate its piece, the BBC shows the hands of a white couple (above), as does the RTE news report embedded by Hibernia girl. Yet, all the appellants were black Africans. Also of interest is that, although this is an EU judgement and applies thus to the UK (and any other member state), the British print media has not reported the story.

****

Following the Hacene Akrich judgement, Lord Tebbit tabled a parliamentary question asking, whether, following the ruling, "the United Kingdom remains sovereign in respect of its immigration policy."

Bizarrely, when the question was asked, it became:

Following the European Court ruling in the case of Hacene Akrich, the United Kingdom remains sovereign in respect of its immigration policy.

To that, Baroness Scotland answered:

Following the European Court of Justice case of Surinder Singh, which was delivered in 1992, the non-EEA family member of a British national, who has legally resided in another member state, may claim a right to enter and remain in the UK under EC law instead of the UK's Immigration Rules.

In the European Court of Justice case of Akrich, the court was asked to determine whether a member state could refuse to apply the Surinder Singh judgment to a British citizen who had deliberately moved to another member state with the express intention of creating an initial right of residence in the UK for their third country national spouse.

The court found that third country national spouses of EU nationals can only benefit from EC law if they have legally resided in another EU state before they first came to the UK.

This court ruling supports the UK's view that third country nationals who are illegally in the UK, and marry British citizens, should not be able to use EC law to remain here. It will allow the UK to continue to be able to apply its national immigration legislation in such cases.

The answer is, to say the very least, disingenuous. To say that the court found that third country national spouses of EU nationals can only benefit from EC law "if they have legally resided in another EU state before they first came to the UK" is hardly true.

Akrich may have legally resided in Ireland, but he had been deported there having entered the UK illegally. What the court had actually found was that, even though he had first entered the UK illegally, his "rights" under the Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights took precedence over UK law and his illegal entry could not be taken into account.

COMMENT THREAD

So human rights do not matter?

How often have we heard this from pompous businessmen, commentators, politicians and officials: well, of course, human rights matter but really there are far more important things in the world such as business relations, trade, the Olympics and other suchlike matters that make the world go round.

I have news for these people. Human rights, as I have said before, make a difference in matters economic. For one thing, a respect for human rights means (usually) a respect for the law and that, ladies and gentlemen of the business and political world, means respect for contracts.

The sad story of the TNK-BP conglomerate and the enforced departure of its CEO from Russia has been covered in the business sections of most newspapers. Today's Times and Daily Telegraph do a reasonable job.

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Deputy Chairman of TNK-BP made stirring statements:

There is a legitimate way of bringing about change in a company - through negotiation and discussion. AAR's efforts to wrest control of the company through illegitimate means are damaging the company and, regrettably, Russia's reputation among international investors.

Anyone who cares about the security of international investment, and corporate governance should be concerned. This is not about British versus Russian interests as AAR has tried to portray it. It is about the actions of AAR and its affiliated executives and the resulting damage to the company and to Russia.

The trouble is that the sentence that springs to mind is "we told you so". The writing appeared on the wall when the Yukos affair played itself out, though British business looked the other way, muttering about trade links being more important than huffing and puffing about illegal destruction of a successful business and imprisonment of various people connected with it.

The writing intensified last year with the shenanigans over Shell and BP while the Russian state gathered more and more of the energy resources in its collective grubby hand, bullied partners and ... well, and what? It certainly did not invest those profits in further development or infrastructure.

It's the human rights, stupid.

Cost in space

Courtesy of the invaluable Open Europe daily press digest, we learn from Le Figaro that the "colleagues" have been plotting their next moves in developing a fully-fledged space policy, with a decision to allocate space spending a specific "budget line" in the EU budget.

This took place during a meeting in Kourou, French Guiana, home of the French Ariane space rocket launcher, where 27 ministers from EU member states warbled happily about wanting to make Europe "a global actor" in space policy.

Proclaiming that, "Space is a powerful catalyst for European integration", EU commission vice-president Günter Verheugen, called for "increased funding" allocated to space and for a "clarification" of the funding. However, the real money will not flow until 2013, when the next multi-annual budget period starts.

Nevertheless, Le Figaro reports that the decision to allocate the budget "seems irreversible", even though the space policy has no legal mandate unless or until the constitutional Lisbon treaty takes effect – something which the "colleagues" still cannot guarantee.

Despite this, they have been pursuing their policy ever since 2004, after it had been included in the failed constitution, progressively building their policy infrastructure without so much as a blush.

The fact that the EU is going ahead regardless, therefore, represents yet another manifestation of their contempt for us, the people who will ultimately have to pay the bills for their grandiose ambitions.

The only thing that really matches the arrogance of the "colleagues" is the complete indifference of the British media, which has consistently failed to take note of the gradual development of a massive new competence of the EU, the cost of which will eventually run to many billions – of which the French will be the ultimate beneficiaries.

No doubt, in due course, the BBC will wake up and produce a gushing documentary about the wonderful new European space policy. One suspects, though, that its title will not be "Cost in space".

COMMENT THREAD

A political earthquake

"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.

COMMENT THREAD

We should be happy about Obama's performance but ...

Setting aside the hysteria and stupidity of some of the comments, we ought to be happy about Obama's better than mediocre performance in Berlin last night. However, questions arise. Why Berlin? Germany is not the USA's closest ally and not on the front-line of any fight that the West might be waging.

It was during the Berlin airlift that Senator Obama quoted without any reference to President Truman; it was when President Kennedy (not mentioned by Senator Obama) made his famous speech; it was when President Reagan (not mentioned by Senator Obama though he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall) made his famous comment to President Gorbachev. But now? Hardly.

The frontline in Baghdad and there Senator Obama spoke less than fighting words, as the Wall Street Journal points out, and that is not particularly reassuring. The other developing frontline against the closest of the anti-Western authoritarian states is Eastern Europe, where the countries are, by and large, America's friends and allies. Senator Obama should have gone to Poland where they could have shown him the site of Auschwitz and he could have made his speech there, including the tale of his uncle liberating the camp.

Furthermore, when it comes to the crunch all those hysterical groupies are unlikely to be pro-American even if Senator Obama becomes President Obama. And there is the problem of the European Union and the evolving common foreign policy, which cuts across any ideas of a Western alliance. Given the poor knowledge Senator Obama and his campaign have displayed of foreign lands, it is unlikely that they have heard of this particular problem. They'll learn.

Trouble at t'grid

The importance of yesterday's story on renewable energy in the The Guardian can hardly be over-estimated.

For many month now, we have been banging on about the government's obsession with wind farms and its neglect of conventional power generation but, if this story is to be taken at face value, Brown has now taken a major step in ditching the whole wind policy.

The essence of The Guardian's story is that the UK is attempting to block proposed EU legislation that will cast in stone at a European level a requirement to give renewable electricity sources absolute priority to the national grid.

This is part of the proposed renewables directive which states that: "Member states shall also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced from renewable energy sources", with Britain intervening to change "shall" to "may".

It is that "shall" which drives the whole of the wind industry for, under this legislation, once a wind farm is connected to the system, the National Grid would have no choice but to accept any amount of power produced, shedding load from any non-renewable generators to accommodate it.

At the moment, this is already a UK requirement, facilitated by the ROC system which penalises generators for not delivering its quota of renewable energy, but the EU legislation would lock this in stone.

The problem is – as Denmark and other big "wind" producers have found - is that the variability of wind power, and the fact that grid systems are not designed to accept multiple small packages of power from diffuse sources, risks destablising the grid. Thus, forcing the system to take this power – especially as the amount of renewables increases – will create serious technical problems.

This, it is quite sensible to remove any obligation to take power from wind generators but, without that guarantee of buying anything they produce, many wind farms would not only be uneconomic but also unprofitable. At one fell swoop, changing that single word could bring the "wind rush" skidding to a halt.

And neither is this the full extent of the government's row back. The proposed directive also insists that wind developments immediate access to the grid, something which, without an investment in the order of £10bn, is not technically feasible. Thus, or so we are told, 9.3GW of wind power projects are currently on hold, waiting for word as to whether they can be connected. Some completed wind farms across Scotland are standing idle.

With the proposed directive forcing this issue – if it ever came into force in its current form - the UK government is working to "clarify this obligation", officialese for junking it.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg MEP and architect of the directive, has got the UK government sussed: "This," he says, "would take us backwards and would weaken the possibilities of connecting renewable energy to the grid. A government that says it wants to promote renewables cannot go for other policies behind the scenes."

We have, therefore, something of an enigma. Up front, the government is making a big deal of its renewables policy, with a "commitment" to meet its EU targets by 2020, yet, on the other hand, it seems to be doing its level best to ensure that that target cannot be met.

John Sauven, of Greenpeace, puts this down to "Brown's ideological obsession with atomic power," but then he would. More likely, it is motivated by the realisation that the national grid simply cannot accommodate the amount of wind power being proposed. Thus, Brown is trying to run with the hare and the hounds – putting up a public face of promoting renewables while actually preventing their development.

He must calculate that he can keep the charade going for two years, until the Conservatives are elected, when it will become Mr Cameron's problem, allowing the new Labour opposition to sit on the margins and jeer at his failure.

For us mere mortals, however, stemming the "wind rush" is probably good news and, in due course, we may have the added bonus of enjoying Mr Cameron's discomfort as he tries to come to grips with yet another failed policy - one which, in opposition, he has fully supported.

COMMENT THREAD

Do these people actually read anything?

It is always pleasant to be appreciated and I tend to purr (though not as loudly as my cats) when I get an e-mail from an unexpected quarter that tells me that somebody I have never heard of has read something I had written and has been inspired by it. Well, never mind about the inspiration, I am quite happy when they say that they have read it.

Mind you, if it is someone who thinks that the Russian town of Kursk (big tank battle) is in Ukraine, then I think about giving up because clearly one cannot get the readers one is used to any more. Nor am I all that impressed by people telling me with great sighs of sorrow about Greeks feeling strongly about Alexander the Great and me not understanding what Macedonia means to them. I wonder whether they feel strongly about all those Greek City States that Alexander and his father Philip destroyed.

Anyway, enough of this frivolity. Today I received a serious missive from one Carly Scott, who is on the campaign team of an NGO I have never heard of (they multiply by the day and guess who is paying for all that shebang), Every Human Has Rights. The missive was in response to my piece about Zimbabwe and economic matters. I really do not understand why Carly Scott did not write to the boss, who has been covering Zimbabwe far more assiduously recently but who can understand the mind of someone who is on an NGO's campaign team.

Hi Helen,

I saw your post on Zimbabwe at EU Referendum. It's great to see that situation getting coverage in the blogosphere.

Last summer Nelson Mandela brought a group of really dedicated individuals together - ex heads of state and Nobel laureates - to work on solving global issues. His hope for the new group, The Elders, is for them to "speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken". They're working on the crisis in Zimbabwe now, and they want your help.

There are so many issues in dire need of attention right now, but human rights ties them all together. The Elders launched the Every Human Has Rights campaign to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and celebrate human rights as that common thread that weaves our struggles and our victories together. We're asking the blogosphere to take part. Would you be willing to add a link from your page to the Every Human Has Rights website?

We also have badges and flash widgets so bloggers can show support for the campaign. We're trying to get as many people as possible to sign a personal pledge to uphold the principles of the Universal Declaration. We have action partners to help people get more involved. We have tools so people can bring the 'rights perspective' to their own organization's events. We're doing everything we can to bring people together to stand up for human rights.

We need bloggers. We need you. Please join our effort.

When I read through this bilge twice I realized that I had started purring a little too soon. Quite clearly Ms Scott had not read a word I had written. Otherwise, she might have found it a little difficult to conclude that I was the sort of blogger that went weak at the knees when an NGO, which is in partnership with all the usual suspects (at the bottom of the website), calls upon me to help them to bring people together to stand up for human rights. And what a painful experience that will be.

As it happens the story of the Elders was not new to me or to readers of this blog, I trust, and I sent her this link and this one, to inform her of what I had said, suggesting that if she still wants my involvement not to hesitate but get back in touch. I shall not be holding my breath.

At the time I suggested:

As it happens, I have an immediate suggestion for Bishop Desmond Tutu, ex-President Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graça Machel.

There is this country, called Zimbabwe, right on your doorstep. Plenty of immense human suffering there. You have time to spare on world problems, which all just happen to be caused by the United States in President Mandela's estimation? Well, how about spending some of it on that country on your doorstep?

I was informed by admirers of the good Bishop (really Shakespeare had the right idea about bishops, archbishops and cardinals, making them all as wicked as can be) that he was working very hard behind the scenes to sort out the Zimbabwe mess, though not, perhaps, the growing South Africa mess.

A year has gone by and the mess has merely intensified while the Elders, one assumes, have been holding meetings and making pronouncements. Ms Scott, bless her little cotton socks, tells me that the Elders are working on the crisis now. Well good. When I hear what they have done I might reconsider my opinion of that despicable bunch of has-beens.

In the meantime, I have two suggestions in connection with Every Human Has Rights. I have linked to it twice in this posting and let me encourage our readers to spend a little time on that website mostly by writing to the members of the NGO asking them what they have done in practical terms and making a few suggestions. Just five minutes from every reader should make the little darlings' day.

Secondly, I should like to point out that I do my bit to help the developing countries by the surest and simplest method of all. Whenever possible I buy goods imported from those countries thus contributing to their trade, their eventual welfare and human rights. I have told the boss that if he hears of any shop selling goods from Afghanistan to let me know - I wish to do my part in helping that country.

An exercise in nation-building

This blog has no wish to get drawn into the tortuous politics of Ulster. It was, after all, in Belfast many moons ago when I went to Stormont to get a briefing on the situation that I first heard that classic joke about Irish politics: "If you think you understand what's going on, you haven't been listening".

But what is interesting about the current Conservative party initiative, attempting to re-integrate the UUP and the Conservatives into one party in Westminister, is that it draws – perhaps unwittingly - from the same well of thinking that drives a corner of European political integration.

This saw its first manifestation in 1951 during the first meeting of the then Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, following on from the Schuman declaration (pictured). As the "deputies" found their places in their temporary accommodation in Strasbourg, they chose to sit in groups according to their political leanings, rather than as national delegations, so starting a process which was intended eventually to create European political parties.

That process is still ongoing today, the current EU parliament dominated by political groups, the three big players being the EPP (Christian Democrats), the PES (Socialists) and ALDE (Liberals).

This is far from accidental and was, from the very start, recognised as an important part of the drive for political integration. The aim was to get politicians detached from purely local concerns, thinking and acting on a "European" level, focused on issues rather than local interests. By this means is it hoped eventually that there would be created a European demos, with its own distinctive agenda, separate from national concerns.

This, then is what is being attempted on a different scale in Ulster and, while the process is fraught, with untold sensitivities and traps, it is at least intellectually coherent, resting as it does on the idea that united people require united political parties.

Thus do David Cameron and the leader of the UUP, Sir Reg Empey, in The Daily Telegraph (without direct acknowledgement to Owen Paterson, who has done much of the spadework) call for the "support of all those who share our joint agenda and common vision, regardless of their religion, background, or whatever part of the UK they happen to reside in." This, it is felt, will help people to break away from the "vicious sectarian divisions of recent years."

Should this initiative succeed – and it is touch and go whether it will – the model has applications elsewhere. In Afghanistan, for instance, there are over 70 political parties approved by the ministry of justice, while in Iraq there are nearly thirty, mostly organised on sectarian lines rather than issue-based. It could be considered an advance in political maturity if these countries could follow the initiative being so carefully negotiated in Northern Ireland.

But, if the development of issue-based politics is an essential part of nation-building (or, in the case of Northern Ireland, rebuilding), Cameron, in embracing the Ulster initiative for these very reasons, should be aware of the perils in his own back yard. If the process has value to the Conservative party – and the nation – it has the same value to the European integrationalists, who have so far trapped the Conservative party in the warm, transnational embrace of the EPP.

What it being attempted by the Conservatives in Belfast is also being played out in Strasbourg, for very much the same reasons. That makes it all the more important that Cameron, in recognising the technique, should understand the broader lessons and honour his promise to pull his MEPs out of the European exercise in nation-building.

COMMENT THREAD

Today's sob-story

A little while ago I was asked by a very charming and intelligent Italian economist whether I was becoming disenchanted with the European Union. She had detected this in the way I referred to that organization. I pointed out that disenchanted was not really the right adjective since that would imply that I had ever been enchanted.

Similarly, I find it rather frustrating to read about there being a "backlash" against the UN because so many things have gone wrong, through no fault of that organization's. Presumably, this blog would be considered to be part of that backlash but, honestly, when did either of us thought the UN or its peacekeepers to be the answer to anybody’s problems? (Yes, I know, the Korean War, which happened under UN auspices only because the Soviet Union was temporarily absent. The first Iraqi War was America's. If the UN had not agreed to support it, we would have had a coalition of the willing. Incidentally, neither of those wars was fought by the men in the blue berets or blue helmets.)

The latest of these sob-stories about the poor UN and how it cannot cope with all the responsibilities was an article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune by Thorsten Benner, Stephan Mergenthaler and Philipp Rottman, all researchers at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. The are also co-authors of the forthcoming paper "Learning to Build Peace? UN Peace Operations and Organisational Learning." Thinking it over I decided not to bother to order it. One article, which, I presume, encompasses the argument, is quite sufficient.

Incidentally, the GPPI's website talks of the organization’s research focusing on "effective and accountable governance". Yet the article by the three esteemed researchers does not mention the fact that the UN, whom they obviously hold in high esteem, is not accountable to anybody and that may be one important reason why it is so ineffective except to provide those who work for it with an extremely cushy life-style, whether legitimately or otherwise.

The argument, as outlined by the three worthy researchers is that the UN peacekeeping operation has become a little overstretched and, thus enmired in all sorts of problems.

The UN apparatus is severely overstretched, exhibiting increasingly serious pathologies ranging from sluggish deployments to shocking sexual abuse scandals.

Dear me, the things that happen and all of them pathologies, untouched by human hand or brain. The article proposes several solutions. Before we turn to them, let us look at what is causing the problems:

UN peacekeeping is the victim of its own success: Never before in their 60-year history have blue helmets been in such high demand. About 110,000 personnel are deployed in 20 peace operations around the world, more than a six-fold increase from 10 years ago.

That is a definition of success? We now send far more peacekeepers out, thus spending a great deal more money, not forgetting to make some of it disappear, than before, with no peace in sight anywhere, so we are successful? Let us suppose there is a patient on a saline drip, also needing blood transfusion. Do doctors and nurses say: gosh, he is doing really well, we have doubled the amount of blood we are pumping into him today and will probably double it again tomorrow. We shall also increase the amount of saline solution needed. Wow, what a success! I think not.

Then again, that is the only way most of the public sector and especially the transnational aspect of it measures success. How can we tell aid-giving is a success? By the amounts becoming ever larger. How do we know whether it is governments, NGOs or private organizations that are achieving more? By measuring which sector gives more. The idea that success would consist of countries no longer requiring aid or regions no longer requiring peace-keepers is simply outside the discussion. Well, it is time we started framing the debate in those terms.

So you are an organization dedicated to keeping peace? Right, how much peace have you kept, let alone created?

Mind you, some of the three researchers' suggestions are not stupid even if they seem to be unable to list all that "good work UN peacekeepers have done in exceptionally difficult circumstances over the past decade".

Darfur, they agree, is not one of those examples but, as they rightly point out, there really is no peace to keep there and the UN peacekeepers should not be sent into such places and situations. Fair enough but who should be sent in? One could argue that nobody should go in and we should simply stop sending aid to such entities as the Sudanese government. In fact, that is what we have argued on this blog.

On the other hand, if we believe that the world is one entity and we need to deal with crisis situations if for no other reason that these tend to spill over and create difficulties for us, then we have to decide who actually does go in. The UN, if it is not capable of sorting any really messy crises out should stop pretending it can do so and, above all, should screaming blue murder (if I may use that expression) when someone else tries to do something. Yes, I am referring to their routine anti-Americanism.

Messrs Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotman do not follow their own argument through in the way I did above because they are determined to find some way of making the UN workable, acceptable and popular. Not for nothing is the article called "Rescuing the blue helmets".

We are all guilty of making the blue helmets unsuccessful and unpopular except that, of course, they have been very successful and they would be more popular if only people recognized their success and gave them more money to steal use for the benefit of mankind.

Therefore, under present circumstances the UN should not deploy peacekeepers to Somalia or Chad, where the absence of political will among rival parties renders peacekeepers as little more than turquoise targets.

Key member states must also lower expectations on what peacekeepers can realistically achieve in Darfur. They must make it crystal clear to the public that the absence of peace in Darfur is not the fault of UN peacekeepers but a result of the international community's inability to force the conflict parties into a lasting political settlement.

I cannot quite see what it is the UN complaining about. After all, it explains to all and sundry that it is the international community and those nasty Yanks go against said international community when they do not accept the UN's guidance.

“In addition, UN members urgently need to invest in the infrastructure for peace operations worldwide. Resources need to match the grandiose rhetoric and ambitious goals set out in Security Council mandates. This includes seriously enlarging the UN's standby blue helmet capacity - with a clear manpower commitment on the part of the United States, Canada and Europe, not just Asian and African states who currently supply the vast majority of peacekeepers.

It also means expanding the team of rapidly deployable police officers and complementing it with a team of judicial and legal experts who can play a critical role in struggling peace operations worldwide.

UN members should also approve a permanent cadre of civilian post-conflict reconstruction professionals. Last but not least, UN members need to boost the Secretariat's ability to gather and analyze intelligence, develop doctrine, draw lessons and provide training. All governments should have an interest in ensuring that their own soldiers, police and civilian experts on loan with the UN have access to the best information, guidance and training.

I suggest the three authors do a little research into American constitutional history and public opinion, including military opinion, which regards it unconstitutional to have American servicemen and women wearing the uniform of another state and obey another command structure. Their Commander-in-Chief is accountable to the people of the United States, being the President of the country. Even if Senator Obama is elected (and anything is possible in a democracy) he will find it hard to change that attitude or even the constitutional decisions behind it. He will also have to find out how long a presidential term is but that is another story, not much reported by the British media.

Furthermore, the three researchers seem not to have grasped an important point. UN peacekeeping is a form of subsidy to the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. By putting blue helmets on their soldiers and sending them to do what they will in various trouble spots, such as DR Congo (not mentioned in this article) the countries in question acquire money to pay them and shiny new equipment to give them. Does the Global Public Policy Institute want to bring this system to and end?

Apart from that there is little here except a call on the developed countries who are financing the whole shebang to hand over yet more money to a corrupt and unaccountable organization. Then everything will be hunky-dory.

There is only one more thing to add to this sorry tale. The new SecrGen for Peacekeeping Operations is one Alan Le Roy, who has laboured hard in the French public sector.

After serving in the private sector as a petroleum engineer, he joined the public service as Sous-préfet, then as Counsellor at the Cour des comptes (French Audit Office). He is currently Conseiller Maître à la Cour des comptes and has served since September last year as Ambassador in charge of the Union for the Mediterranean Initiative – a proposed community of European Union member States and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea which is set to be established next month.

He has previously served the world body as Deputy to the UN Special Coordinator for Sarajevo and Director of Operations for the restoration of essential public services. He also went on missions for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Mauritania and was appointed UN Regional Administrator in Kosovo (West Region).

After having been National Coordinator for the Stability Pact for South-east Europe in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was appointed EU Special Representative in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. He was subsequently appointed Assistant Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs in the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, before serving as the French Ambassador to Madagascar.

Somehow, I don't quite see him sorting the mess out.

Interesting developments in Ulster

In The Daily Telegraph today, with comment by Conservative Home , this has fascinating implications not only for the UK but elsewhere in the world.

We'll write about it in detail later today.

COMMENT THREAD

Gullible or not?

Contrary to popular belief, we do not go out of our way to pick holes in the output of sundry journos. However, increasingly often, it seems, their claims are so outrageous – or their writing so gullible – that we simply cannot leave them without comment.

Storming straight into both categories goes the latest offering from Laura Clout of The Daily Telegraph who today tells us that, "A series of huge solar farms in the Sahara could supply the whole of Europe with clean electricity".

This is according to "EU scientists" with a madcap scheme so bizarre that we had to check the date so see whether the story had been left over from 1 April.

That aside, it is the detail that matters. Here we have the egregious Laura gravely informing us that the scheme proposed would require an estimated investment of around €450bn (£356bn), to "produce 100 GW by 2050, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in Britain."

For the record, peak consumption in Britain last winter was 60 GW but, only last month we were conveying an estimate from Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK, that the UK alone needs more than 120 GW capacity by 2020.

This tells you that we have another inhabitant of the land of the fairies. With Clout twittering away about 100 GW supplying the "whole of Europe" by 2050, we see that just the UK would need 20 percent more than that – thirty years earlier.

The fatuity of her piece really comes home, however, when you realise that, currently, European nations operate 197 nuclear power plant units with a capacity of 170 GW, and that accounts for one fifth of total capacity. By that reckoning, Europe works on about 850 GW, yet this lady is happy to run a story suggesting that the whole of Europe can be satisfied with 100 GW. In fact, by 2050, Europe will probably need in the order of 1000 GW, if not more.

Even then, our Laura has not finished. Through her story, she conveys the idea that this wonderful source of electricity could actually work out cheaper than we are currently paying – a highly dubious proposition. Clearly, she has not done any maths on the capital cost. At £356bn for the scheme, this works out at roughly twice the cost required to build nuclear power plants to produce the same amount of electricity.

What is more, there is one other minor problem with this scheme, which Clout does not seem to mention. Solar power, strangely enough, depends on the sun. That is fine as far as it goes, but – unless you know different – the sun does not shine during the night. During the hours of darkness – which is when we get peak demand – there would have to be 100 percent back-up from conventional generation.

Only yesterday, we were writing about green illiteracy and here again we have another classic example - from the same journalist who, recently told us that the cold wet summer was attributable to global warming.

And yes, it does matter. Even now, broadsheets like The Telegraph carry a certain amount of authority. This sort of garbage, therefore, will be believed by some, supporting the general ignorance of the extent of the failure of our energy policy. We really do deserve better from our serious newspapers.

COMMENT THREAD

Global mismanagement

While European Union member states, individually and collectively, seem intent on wiping out their productive economies through their regulatory obsession – in the main "guided" by global warming paranoia - there is a comfortable assumption that affected industries can move to more benign regulatory environments. Alternatively, we can take up the slack by importing primary commodities (or finished goods) from elsewhere in the world.

Certainly, we have seen industries like cement production and aluminium smelting – caught between the vice of the EU's emission trading scheme and higher energy costs, top-loaded by diverse climate change levies – threatening to relocate. But, it seems, this is not by any means an easy option. Productions systems around the world are undergoing their own stresses and there may be very little spare capacity to make up for the EU's determined bid for economic suicide.

That, at least, is one possible inference from a very recent Reuters survey on copper and aluminium production. This tells us that "sluggish copper mine output and disruptions in Latin America" have wiped out an expected surplus this year, while energy supply problems have cut a predicted aluminium surplus.

The agency's findings are based on a poll of 22 commodity analysts around the world carried out over the past month. It shows the 41-million-ton per year aluminium market only produced a slight surplus of 148,500 tonnes in 2008 compared with 325,000 in the January survey and, for 2009, the market is expecting a deficit of 144,500 "due to power problems". Similarly, the copper market is in deficit to the tune of 68,000 tonnes this year versus an expected surplus of 160,000 January.

Inherent problems have been exacerbated by a strike in Peru, the world's second largest copper producer, taking futures prices to a record $8,940 a tonne in July. Strikes have also hit the world's number one producer Chile, and there has also been a cut in production from China.

Analysts now believe that falling ore grades, delays in bringing new projects online, rising capital expenditure and labour unrest would persistently keep the raw materials market tight.

Equally worrying is the energy-intensive aluminium industry. A shortage of electricity in China and South Africa reduced the expected surplus in both 2008 and 2009 and, when energy accounts for 45 percent of the production of aluminium, tightness of supply cannot help but have a knock-on effect.

In isolation, this survey is bad enough but we also see another report forecasting a 100 million tonnes shortfall of coal in South Africa by 2017, unless the government takes urgent action to secure local supplies.

The South African state electricity company generates about 87 percent of its power from coal and the government may restrict exports to ease a national power shortage. The country is the biggest supplier of coal to European power plants and there is growing demand from India.

Electricity supply difficulties in South Africa are by no means new and, last March, Barclays Capital was reporting that a "global shortage of electric generating capacity" was "dramatically curbing world metal production" - amounting to just under 1 million tons.

Aluminium, in particular, is singled out. Production has been the hardest hit by the world-wide shortage of electric generating capacity, with Barclays estimating that this year alone, shortages of electricity have caused the loss of nearly 800,000 tons of aluminium production.

South Africa was one of the problem countries, alongside Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Thailand, all of which had "critically low levels of power reserves," leading Barclays to suggest that the shortage of production was "a trend expected to continue for years." The result would be a sustained commodity price hikes.

In South Africa, the electricity supply problems also extend to the production of precious metals, placing supply constraints on gold and platinum. These are also driving up prices in this sector and power is rationed and mines are being forced to make unscheduled shut-downs.

And, what is troubling South Africa also extends to the rest of the continent. Last year, IHT was reporting that energy shortages were hampering development throughout Africa, with frequent power outages being experienced in Zambia and perhaps 25 of the 44 sub-Saharan nations face crippling electricity shortages. This, some experts are saying, is an "unprecedented" power crisis.

With all this happening around the world, messing around with our own power supplies, and driving major production plants offshore by a surge of regulation, does not seem the most intelligent strategy that one could devise. In the context of what appear to be global supply constraints, more enlightened administrations might want to be considering actively encouraging the retention of strategic industrial capacity.

Instead, though, we have the European Union and a claque of member state leaders in the thrall of a shared obsession, determined to add to the crisis rather than relieve it.

COMMENT THREAD

Green illiteracy

With the advent of the London Motor Show, more than a few journos are twittering about the new "green" Hummer, mentioned in passing by The Guardian and given pride of place by our favourite paper.

What allows this sudden conversion to "green" credentials is the use of biodiesel, which the manufacturers "insist" is far more environmentally-friendly than using conventional petrol – a claim which is accepted uncritically by far too many hacks.

Would that they have read our piece on the Great biofuel con where we report that the production of such fuels from conventional food crops can be as little as 69 percent fuel efficient. That means, of course, that for every unit of energy put into the production of the fuel, you get just over two-thirds back – meaning that the conversion of a vehicle to biodiesel ends up with it using even more energy.

To be fair, Car Magazine refers to the Hummer as the "All-American dinosaur" and Greenbiz notes sourly that, "there are more than a few companies that … are trying to put green lipstick on a pig by making environmental marketing claims that far outweigh the size of their efforts."

But the bigger problem is the "green illiteracy" brought about by the lazy shorthand of journalists. Recycling is always regarded as "green" even though, for many items, the energy inputs required for collection, sorting and processing exceed the energy recovered, making it more energy-efficient to go for landfill. Yet landfill is always styled as "environmentally damaging", or some such.

Similarly, the idea of electric cars is fast becoming the idée fixe for the chatterati, lauded yesterday by that economic illiterate Gordon Brown, who wants Britain to be the "electric car capital of Europe".

It takes very little intellectual effort to work out that conversion of fossil fuels (still the main source of electricity) to electric power involves a massive conversion loss, the distribution loses more and then even more losses are involved in battery charging and conversion back to usable power.

Various sources quote an overall efficiency of between 20-25 percent, with masses of other sources claiming internal combustion energy efficiency is as low as 15 percent. Such is the miasma of claim and counter-claim that it is very difficult to work out where exactly the truth lies, although there are some claims that high-efficiency internal combustion engines can deliver 30 percent or more. The science, as they say, is far from settled.

Of more immediate importance, however, is the prospect of real power shortages as the generation infrastructure crumbles, yet here we have Mr Brown advocating an increased burden on the system. This simply cannot be sensible.

All of this points, once again, to a fundamental incoherence in public policy, which is worrying enough in its own right. But when the media also displays its own brand of green illiteracy, peddling uncritically the received wisdom, we stand at risk of sinking into the morass without even being aware of what is happening.

COMMENT THREAD

Meetings in the east

EUBusiness reports the AFP story that there is a meeting due between the two presidents, Kaczynski and Klaus, in Prague tomorrow (Thursday). The main, indeed the only item on the agenda is the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty.

But a senior Polish official dismissed reports that Kaczynski was there to try to influence Klaus's position on the treaty.

"The debate on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon is following its own course in the Czech Republic," Mariusz Handzlik, Director of Poland's Office of Foreign Affairs, told AFP in Warsaw.

"President Klaus' position is well known. But the problem remains to be solved in Ireland, not in the Czech Republic or in Poland," he added.

So, if President Kaczynski, the remaining twin, is not trying to influence President Klaus, what is there to discuss?

As it happens, the Czech President's powers are limited in this respect. The Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, has already made it clear that he was in favour of the treaty going through, assuming that the Constitutional Court decides on that side. If it so does, there will be nothing President Klaus will be able to do as it will be to the two Houses of Parliament to vote it through (as well as the decision on the radar system).

President Kaczynski, having announced with great pomp and circumstance that the Treaty was dead (a bit like Marlow and the doornail) changed his mind after a conversation with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who clearly has necromancic powers. Certainly, the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty was once again alive in Poland.

The Czech Republic takes over the Presidency in January 2009 and, clearly, does not want to be in the embarrassing position of being one of the few countries holding up the ratification. Not that it is likely to have gone through by then. Will it happen before the next Toy Parliament elections?

We have a problem

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has dropped us a little leaving present for the last day of parliament before, they and the rest of the MPs dashed off for their much-deserved 11-week break.

The committee (prop. Tim Yeo) told the government that it must set a deadline for coal-fired power stations to install technology massively to cut their emissions, or they must be shut down.

Lovingly recorded by The Independent, the committee also tells us that "urgent and ambitious" steps were needed to develop measures to capture and store underground the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels.

And, despite the fact that the technology is not commercially available – to say nothing of being hideously expensive – new coal-fired power stations should not be permitted unless they were "carbon capture ready" and undertook to fit the capture technology as soon as it was available, on pain of being shut down if they did not.

That the MPs on this committee can be so cavalier about the prospect of shutting down vital power stations, on the basis of the imagined harm they might do to the environment, readily demonstrates quite how detached from reality they are.

While one of the most pressing problems we face is the imminent shortage of generating capacity, only someone living in the land of the fairies could even begin to contemplate reducing our capacity still further – or hampering attempts to build new capacity.

Such is the land that these MPs live, however, so it is as well to remind ourselves that the obsession with the global warming is by no means confined to our legislators in the EU.

Mind you, it is probably no coincidence that Tim Yeo is also a rabid europhile, the love of the EU and climate change paranoia very often going together. But, that this man, as chairman of an influential committee, should be spouting such arrant nonsense definitely demonstrates that we have a serious problem – and it isn't global warming.

The picture of power station cooling towers, incidentally, is "uplifted" from The Independent - it is fascinating how the warmists so often show this type of picture to illustrate stories about carbon dioxide emissions. Do they not realise that their plumes are simply water vapour, or do they not care as long as they appear to make a point?

COMMENT THREAD

Proud of the Union

It is times like these which make you really proud to be a European citizen, a member of that glorious, expanding European Union, which can reach out with its "soft power" and bring peace and harmony to the rest of the world.

Thus with such glowing feelings do we applaud our brave and far-sighted foreign ministers who gathered in Brussels today to slay the evil Mugabe, going far beyond the remit that even our own wise and experienced Mr Miliband asked for.

Following in the footsteps of our great leader, it was he, at great personal risk, decided to propose the "killer blow" of adding the names of a further 36 Zimbabwean officials to the EU sanctions list, in a manner which could not help but strike mortal terror into the breast of the foul dictator in Harare.

But so impressed with the prescience of Mr Miliband have been our other 26 gifted foreign ministers that they have not only taken on board this brilliant plan, but have gone even further. Not for them a mere 36 names added to the list. They have made it 37 and gone the extra mile kilometre, adding the names of two companies linked to the Harare government.

Clearly, it was the prospect of this terror that brought Mugabe to heel and forced him into talks with Morgan Tsvangirai, agreeing to sign up to power-sharing talks in a bid to pave a path towards lasting peace in Zimbabwe.

Deny the European brilliance though Mugabe may, it is very clear to all of us who so dearly love the European Union that, having brought peace to Europe for over sixty years, our magnificent leaders have now taken the decisive step in bringing peace and tranquillity to the troubled continent of Africa.

You must excuse me now while I rush off to collect my cheque sing "Ode to Joy".

COMMENT THREAD

Another return

Some readers may have noticed that I have been blogging lightly recently. The reason was preoccupation with other work. That is now finished and I can return to duties though the boss, as ever, managed to fill those gaps.

I shall not write about Obama's trip to Europe as I think I should follow neo-neocon's example and start weaning myself off the subject. Instead, here is one of my favourite subjects, the behaviour of that defender of the nation state, Russia, under its new President, who just happens to say exactly what the old President, now Prime Minister, said.

After the Czech Government signed an agreement on the placing of a radar tracking system in the country Russia voiced her displeasure (one wonders if it is fear of that displeasure that is making the Poles so hesitant - an interesting historic reversal, if true) by cutting down the amount of oil, agreed and contracted for, that would be allowed to flow.

Oil supplies dropped about 40 percent on July 9, the day after the Czech government signed the antimissile deal with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Prague, and have remained at that level since.

Never mind. Putin has stormed to the Czechs' rescue. Well, sort of. According to the article he has instructed Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is in charge of energy policy, to make sure that all partners remain satisfied.

Apparently, there was a certain amount of discussion between the two as to why this rather regrettable situation might have arisen. Nothing to do with the anti-missile deal, which was not even mentioned.

The Czechs appear to have crossed their neighbour in another way as well:

The two then ruminated on the possible causes for the shortfall, according to the report. Putin said he agreed with Sechin's conclusion that "the immediate blame is not on Russian oil suppliers" but rather on unspecified offshore oil trading companies that deal in Russian oil.

Sechin noted that the Czech Republic had declined to sign a energy agreement proposed by the Russians last year.

Putin added that, as a result, the Czechs were purchasing oil "not directly from Russian producers, but through offshore companies."

Russian oil supplies should be back to the agreed levels by August but, it seems, that unlike Germany, the Czech Republic is looking round for alternative suppliers.

Incidentally, as far as I understand it, the much-heralded and much-trumpeted Obama visit will not take in any East European capital. I wonder why that is. Have his 300 foreign policy advisers not managed to tell him that Berlin is no longer the frontline? Ooops, I have failed at the first hurdle.

It's all down to those "modalities"

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.

COMMENT THREAD

Back to the garden

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.

COMMENT THREAD

Where Africa leads …

Would our own politicians follow? Nice "spot" from House of Dumb.

COMMENT THREAD

One weeps …

Why they ever let Rosa Prince near a newspaper is one of those modern mysteries that is beyond human ingenuity to resolve.

Styled as a "Political Correspondent" her talents (not) are well demonstrated in a piece she writes for our favourite newspaper, telling us that more than 30 waste incinerators are set to be built around the country as councils seek to avoid substantial hikes in landfill taxes.

Under European Union rules, she adds, landfill charges are set to rise from £32 to £48 a ton by 2010, and local authorities have struggled to increase recycling rates to levels which would substantially reduce the rubbish mountain.

Then, apparently not making, the link – and heavily imbibing the received wisdom - she blandly tells us that, "Many are now said to be considering incineration as a means of replacing expensive and environmentally damaging landfill sights (sic)."

Er … even the Green Party admits that it costs only £30-50 to landfill a ton of mixed waste, compared with £90-190 to incinerate it. At top rate, therefore, you are talking about £98 per ton (but as low as £78 even with maximum tax), as against costs which start at £90 and go up to £190.

In fact, an industry estimate puts the cost at £12 per ton which makes the maximum landfill cost nearer £62 per ton, very much cheaper than incineration.

Clearly, therefore, cost is not the issue – and neither can landfill be considered "environmentally damaging". In many respects, it is the most environmentally friendly (and energy efficient) form of disposal known. This is more so if it is given its alternative label of "land reclamation" (pictured) and there is methane recovery in place – which currently provides 30 percent of our renewable energy.

The point, of course, is that Rosa Prince has missed the point. The reason why local authorities are being forced into building a vast network of waste incinerators is because the EU requires it. As pointed out by The Guardian last year, the infamous landfill directive lays down a hierarchy of options, starting with waste reduction and recycling, through incineration and thence to landfill, to be used when there is absolutely no other alternative.

And since the limits of recycling capacity have already been reached, local authorities have no option but to build their incinerators. Last year, the number was estimated at "in excess of 20" and now it seems to have grown to 30. All that is to achieve the 75 percent diversion from landfill required by 2010, which will cost us £5-8bn a year with an additional £10 billion infrastructure costs.

And, just to put the canard to bed that we are running out of landfill space, one enterprising blogger has done the maths. He writes:

We quarry about 260 million tonnes (mt) a year of land minerals, mostly limestone, granite and sand and gravel, plus 9mt a year of opencast coal. In terms of volume, that equates to new holes with a capacity of about 110 million cubic metres (mcm) a year. Our existing licensed holes have a capacity of about 700 mcm. We produce less than 100mcm of waste and refuse a year. The system, as scientists would say, is therefore in equilibrium.

The waste "crisis", therefore – says our man – has been created artificially by a combination of EU blind stupid regulation and the Labour government's cupidity (not that the Tories would be any different). Perhaps now, with the economic situation tightening, the general public will begin to see the madness of this scheme - a criminal waste of resources - when cheaper better alternatives are available.

But, as long as journos like Rosa Prince are allowed to write the story, the public is going to have difficulty understanding quite how badly they have been shafted.

COMMENT THREAD

An unprecedented amount of scrutiny …

That was Channel 4's own description of the reaction to its programme, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which has been subject to an Ofcom investigation, the results of which are published today.

The "warmist" Beeb is trying to spin it as a big deal, but the fact is that nothing in the programme "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence". That was despite 265 complaints having been received by Ofcom, including one 176-page document alleging 137 breaches of the Broadcasting Code.

The Broadcasting Code, we are told, requires Channel 4 to show "due impartiality" on "matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy".

The substance of the Ofcom finding was that the last segment of the programme, dealing with the politics of climate change, broke this obligation, It did not reflect a range of views, as required under the code. But the main portion of the film, on climate science, did not breach these rules.

Ofcom's logic, says the Beeb, is that "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007". This being so, it says, climate science was not "controversial" at the time of broadcast, so Channel 4 did not break regulations by broadcasting something that challenged the link.

Andrew Bolt, however, has a slightly different take on the issue. The Guardian, predicably, gives house room to an opposing view (no impartiality or "balance" there).

David Hughes of The Daily Telegraph notes that the climate change lobby tends to react like scalded cats should anyone have the temerity to question their assertion that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. So certain are they of the righteousness of their case that it has taken on the aura of a religious faith - and heresy will simply not be tolerated.

But, he observes, the programme was actually polemical and since when are polemics supposed to be impartial?

He, like us, does not recall Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" being impartial, or giving a voice to a range of views. But then, it has not yet been broadcast on British television. When or if it is, we shall have some fun.

COMMENT THREAD

Another one?

According to RIA, reporting from Buenos Aires, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus has confirmed that his country would be happy to host an interceptor missile base, if talks between Poland and the United States continue to stall. Hmm. Russia is not going to like this and anything Russia does not like Germany and France absolutely hate. In any case, what happened to the EU's common foreign policy?

A licence to print money

So, Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to sell its stake in the £2.5 billion London Array, the world's largest offshore wind farm, to Eon and Dong Energy, its former partners.

The utilities agreed to divide Shell's one-third stake evenly between them. Eon and Dong will now own 50 percent each.

This, we are told, "will be a relief" to the government, which has put wind at the heart of its renewable-energy agenda. When Shell announced its intention to quit the project in May, there were fears that Eon and Dong, a Nordic group, could scrap it altogether because of the soaring cost of building wind farms. However, the decision by Eon and Dong to buy out Shell means the scheme, already seven years in development, will almost certainly go ahead.

Since Paul Golby, chief executive of Eon UK, had already called the project's economics "marginal at best" as prices for turbines, ships to install them and personnel have soared to record levels, one wonders what might have changed.

The answer, not supplied by The Sunday Times, is to be found elsewhere - the "magic potion" being a change in the arcane subsidy arrangements which turn wind farming into a license to print money.

Uneconomic by any measure, the whole industry is buoyed up by a raft of subsidies and other inducements, in the forefront of which is the Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) which requires energy generators to contribute to a pot, paid out to wind farmers for the electricity they produce, thereby overcoming their inherent lack of economic viability.

Thus do we find that offshore wind farms, which are even less economic than their onshore equivalents, are to benefit from a 50 percent higher subsidy, lifting these installations from their "marginal" status into a profitable enterprise.

It is worth, in this context, revisiting a piece published in The Sunday Times last January, headed. "Wind farms turn huge profit with help of subsidies". This tells us that the "lavish subsidies and high electricity prices have turned Britain's onshore wind farms into an extraordinary moneyspinner, with a single turbine capable of generating £500,000 of pure profit per year."

Ofgem is then quoted. Having done its sums, it says: "We calculate that renewable energy subsidies will add £60 to consumer bills this year and that will keep rising." This is nothing more than Booker has been constantly "banging on" about, the latest instalment of his exploration into the fantasy world of subsidy wind farming coming in his column yesterday.

There, he offers "final proof" that Gordon Brown is living on another planet, our revered prime minister having boasted to last week's EU "Mediterranean summit" that "Britain's North Sea could be the Gulf of the future for offshore wind".

The absurdity of this claim is readily apparent when it is realised that the 3,000 giant wind turbines than Brown wants built round our coasts will produce a mere 3,000MW, compared with the single Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, which has a capacity of 3,800MW. Thus the entire output of Mr Brown's "Gulf of the future" would be less than that of a single conventional power station.

Compare also the cost of building his turbines. Estimated at £2.3 million per MW, would be at least £20 billion (the £10 million cost of the solitary 3.5MW turbine recently built in Cromarty, Firth, ran out at £2.8 million per MW), plus the cost of building up to a dozen gas-fired power stations just to provide backup for when the wind is not blowing, and we could get considerably more electricity from two new nuclear power stations at a fraction of the cost.

The trouble is that, if Mr Brown is living on the Planet Krypton, he has, alas, been joined by David Cameron and our entire political class. Not one MP, it seems, dares question a policy the total insanity of which they could work out for themselves just by spending 20 minutes on the internet.

And therein lies the tragedy. The entire political class has bought into the myth of "renewable energy" – or acquiesced - which means the fantasy must be tested to destruction before someone finally pulls the plug. By then, of course, we will not need to do that – there will be no electricity coming though the wires any more, as we sit in stygian gloom waiting for sanity to prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

Welcome to Hectare

Many a happy hour was spent wandering through the old town – a kaleidoscope of smells, sounds and sights that never failed to entrance. And now, according to The Daily Telegraph, the EU has banned it. Never more Acre, it must from 2010 become Hectare, although there is no word as to whether the town will have to increase its size by two-and-a-half times.

This was, incidentally, the date when we were to go fully metric, with the abolition of all supplementary measurements – so that it would have become a criminal offence for a trader, even by way of information, to tell shoppers the Imperial equivalents of the weights of goods they were buying.

This was also to be the date on which the pint disappeared but the EU, conscious of the PR disaster which awaited it, backed off from this high profile measure – although we can no longer buy pints of milk in our shops.

But, true to form, in its sly, underhand way, it works at the margins, gradually eroding the very basis of our national identity. All the time it tells us it is celebrating diversity, while doing its best ruthlessly to eradicate anything which is distinctively national.

One wonders, though, whether the Israelis have been informed of the change, and whether the travel agents are preparing to change all their brochures, on pain of being locked up for using the soon to be prohibited word.

Oh! And, by the way … the Tories are "angry"!

Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU."

And who got us into this mess?

COMMENT THREAD

Excused trade

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".

COMMENT THREAD

A mixed blessing

We've been getting rumours for some weeks now that "a personality" was intending to start up a new eurosceptic party, headed by none of the "usual suspects".

Now, it appears that the cat is out of the bag, with an article in The Sunday Telegraph which has the "hero" of the Irish referendum, Declan Ganley, stepping up to the plate.

According to this article, Ganley is planning to field more than 400 candidates for next June's euro elections, in all the 26 countries – including Britain – where voters have had no direct say on the treaty.

The man claims to be starting to raise £75 million from online donations to run candidates in all 12 of Britain's European parliamentary constituencies, and in seats throughout the EU. As his base, he will use his existing platform, Libertas, turning it from a straightforward pressure group into a fully-fledged political party.

Ganley's message is a simple one: "We will tell people that Libertas is the box you put your X in if you want to vote 'No' to the Lisbon Treaty. It's clear, it's simple," he says. "The message will be: we are now giving you a referendum and it's going to take place in June of next year at the European elections."

The Sunday Telegraph thinks this plan "will unsettle the Brussels establishment," but it is more likely – in Britain at least – that it will unsettle the existing parties. Both the Conservatives and UKIP will be pitching for the eurosceptic vote next June. And like Ganley, UKIP has high hopes of turning the election into a referendum on the constitutional Lisbon treaty.

We have, of course, been here before with Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum Party in the 1997 general election. But, as he had a fighting fund reputed to be in the order of £20 million, Ganley's £75 million spread over 23 countries begins to look rather modest.

Further, Goldsmith captured the mood of the moment – effectively committing both Labour and the Conservatives to a referendum on the euro. Ganley has no prospect of gaining such a clear outcome. Neither – for all his recent fame in Ireland – does he have the charisma which gave the Goldsmith's campaign its initial boost and had volunteers flocking to the colours.

Ganley's biggest handicap, though – at least from persepctive of the hard core eurosceptics – is that he openly supports the European Union, confining his objections only to the constitutional Lisbon treaty, on which platform we are told he hopes his new party will return 80 MEPs to Brussels. But, in distancing himself from the eurosceptic movement in Britain and setting himself up in competition with the Conservatives, he could well find it difficult to make any progress at all.

The worse case scenario is that he could split the vote, making the euro elections something less of a disaster for Gordon than they might otherwise be. Another possible scenario – if his campaign does build a head of steam – is that he could leach votes from UKIP, robbing it of any chance of getting any MEPs at all for the next parliamentary session.

That makes Ganley's intervention a very mixed blessing indeed.

COMMENT THREAD

Our "strategic partners"

The grainy picture above, of uncertain age, shows one of the delightful ancient traditions of the Chinese government – a firing squad for Tibetan prisoners. The rest are too horrific to show.

But, of course, such barbaric rituals are now redundant. Instead, the government has acquired a fleet of modern "execution vans" – built with the aid of an Italian company. These are parked outside the courts ready to act the moment a verdict is handed down. The record is seven minutes between sentence and execution.

The merits of such a procedure are obvious. A lethal injection preserves the vital organs allowing the bodies to be rushed to the local hospitals where the organs are extracted for use in the growing trade in spare body parts, "donated" by their former owners to a health service which is not available to ordinary Chinese.

This is the country to which the great and the good will flock for the opening of the Olympics in a few weeks time and it is that self-same country which Booker highlights in his column today - the supporter of that bloody dictator in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.

Picking up on our work, Booker reports on how Mugabe is now the proud owner of a palatial £4.5 million mansion in Harare and a similarly lavish country hideaway, each fitted with the latest electronic security systems, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Thus he highlights that which our revered foreign secretary fails to point out – that the corrupt and violent Zimbabwean regime is bolstered by a similarly corrupt and violent regime in China, all on the back of shady trade deals, raping the mineral wealth of the continent.

The point which Booker makes so powerfully though is the contrast between this and our own Government's response to Mugabe's tyranny. Since Zimbabwe is included in the 28 areas of "common foreign policy" we have ceded to the EU, we can do nothing except in conjunction with our EU colleagues.

Last Monday we saw the humiliating spectacle of Gordon Brown pleading with the EU's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to add 36 more names to the list of Zimbabweans on whom the EU has imposed pathetically ineffectual "personal sanctions" and, this week, we are to see Gollum (aka David Miliband) creeping over to Brussels to ask his fellow EU foreign ministers to cement in a deal which simply goes to underline our impotence.

Meanwhile, we remind you once again of the state of play between the EU and that wonderful, liberal society that is China. This, as readers will recall, was articulated during Tony Blair's visit to China in September 2005, in his capacity as EU president. Then, at the 8th EU-China Summit, he signed a joint statement with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, part of which said:

The two sides underlined their commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights and continued to place a high value on the EU-China human rights dialogue. They underlined the importance of concrete steps in the field of human rights and reaffirmed their commitment to further enhance co-operation and exchanges in this field on the basis of equality and mutual respect, while making efforts to achieving more meaningful and positive results on the ground.

This was the infamous agreement which made the EU and China "strategic partners". Writes Booker, it is only too obvious which "partner's" strategy is proving the more successful.

COMMENT THREAD

Problems and solutions

For every solution, there is a problem – an aphorism which applies as much to the famed mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles as anything else.

Predictably, therefore, as the use of MRAPs becomes more common in Iraq and Afghanistan, the limitations of the vehicles are becoming more apparent, leading to a rash of articles bringing these to the fore.

One of the first of the recent batch found its way into the Army Times magazine in early July following the unfortunate death of three Green Berets who drowned when their RG-31 MRAP vehicle rolled into a river in Afghanistan.

Read more on Defence of the Realm

An economic suicide pact

The grumbling has been around for some time, but now Spiegel tells us that German industrialists are, to coin a phrase, getting a bit Bolshie.

In a piece headed, "Killing Jobs to Save the Climate", it warns that the price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.

Bringing this to life, author Karsten Stumm describes a seminar given by the German environment authorities, attended by sundry industrialists:

They sat silently through two lectures, but then they couldn't control their anger any longer. The civil servants from the Environment Ministry, the Environment Agency and the German Emissions Trading Authority made it sound easy for industry to take up carbon trading. It was just too much for the managers to tolerate.

"If that's the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine," a cement factory manager shouted into the lecture hall. "Then there won't be any trading here, nothing will be produced here anymore - the lights will simply go out here."

Bizarrely, the businessmen's anger surprised the emissions-allowance trading experts – although that in itself is indicative. Industry has been flagging up its disquiet for some time.

Anyhow, the experts had invited industry representatives to a relaxed forum at the Environment Ministry's office in Bonn. They wanted to present international developments in the carbon trading market. However, Karsten Stumm writes, the mood in the German business world has soured - managers no longer have the stomach for academic lectures:

The reason is that emissions allowances are already burdening some companies that require a lot of energy for production purposes.

In the last 12 months alone, the price for the right to pump a ton of carbon into the atmosphere has shot up from €23 ($36.5) to nearly €30 ($47.6), according to the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig. This hike of around 30 percent has a direct effect on the electricity production of power companies.

We are told that, according to calculations by Point Carbon - a Norwegian company that specialises in analysing global power, gas and carbon markets - this price hike would drive up the marginal cost of energy from an old brown coal power plant by the entire price of carbon.

For modern natural gas power plants, it would increase prices by a third. Energy company RWE, which is based in the German city of Essen, reckons it alone will have to pay €9 billion ($14.2 billion) for its own electricity production, which it, of course, will pass on in higher electricity prices.

This latter-day "snake oil" emissions trading system will, therefore, have a direct impact on which countries in which firms chose to locate.

Warns Andreas Kern, President of the German Cement Industry Federation: "If the cement industry is gradually pulled into the trading of carbon emission allowances, companies will move production to countries that don't take part in the scheme."

Worse still, this is only the start. When the third trading period starts up in 2013, prices will escalate as emission permits are auctioned. The cement industry will face cost increases of around €900 million - around half its current annual revenues.

The German finance ministry is looking into whether some sectors should continue to receive the emission permits for free, worried by the prospect of an exodus of industry. The Federal Statistical Office and the Institute for Applied Ecology expects a whole raft of enterprises to be affected, ranging from chemical manufacturers, the iron and steel sector, lime producers and aluminium smelters and refineries might be affected.

Yet, the movement will, of course, not result in lower overall emissions – the emissions will simply be relocated. The net effect of the "CO2 price signal" therefore is to shift production and investment. On the other hand, thousands of German jobs will be jeopardised – unless other countries can be inveigled into joining this economic suicide pact.

But, as it stands, not even the German exchequer will benefit. Although it has gained a windfall of €525 million from the emission trading scheme in the first half of this year possibly rising to €900 million for the next six months, this sum would not even cover a fraction of the fall in tax revenues from thousands of job losses which may result from the scheme.

Gradually, therefore, the costs of this obsession with "tackling climate change" are beginning to sink in. Soon enough, it will dawn on the politicians that this gigantic scam is indeed nothing more than an economic suicide pact. And what will the EU commission do then?

COMMENT THREAD

Democracy is perfect

Mr Sarkozy is not getting an easy time of it in the Irish Independent letters column.

From one correspondent: "Democracy, as Adolf Hitler once said, is perfect as long as it gives you the results you want."

COMMENT THREAD

End of the line

Stuart Wheeler has failed to persuade an Appeal Court judge that he should be allowed to appeal against the High Court decision on the government's refusal to hold a referendum on the constitutional Lisbon treaty. Lord Justice Dyson said the case would have "no prospect of success".

COMMENT THREAD

Apocalypse soon

A comment on global warming.

A new prime minister

In a piece which has Berlusconi - "The media tycoon, who has a record for embarrassing blunders and gaffes" - complaining about the "inexperience" of Europe's leaders, The Daily Telegraph notes that he fails to name Prime Minister Gordon Blair:


What was that about "embarrassing blunders and gaffes"?

COMMENT THREAD

Part of our government

Rejoicing under the title "EU subsidies 'looted' by Bulgarian mafia", Bruno Waterfield is running a story in The Daily Telegraph on the latest instalment in the long-running saga of corruption in Bulgaria.

Bruno has seen a EU commission report which criticises Bulgaria over the administration of EU subsidies that are being looted by officials working hand in hand with the mafia.

In the run-up to becoming an EU member in January 2007, Bulgaria benefited and continues to receive cash worth £1.7 billion from European programmes – known as PHARE, SAPARD and ISPA - which are designed to help Sofia manage future Brussels funding, not including farm payments, worth £5.5 billion over the next five years.

In rather anodyne terms, the commission report states that, "Bulgaria is experiencing difficulties in many of these programmes and has to demonstrate that sound financial management structures are in place and operating effectively." The truth, however, as The Telegraph rightly asserts, is that there has been wholesale looting of EU funds. And, as a result, funding worth up to £475 million will be withheld from Bulgaria.

Bruno gives more details in his blog but, according to the Sophia Echo he and the rest of the "international media" have rather missed a trick.

Little attention, says this paper, has been paid to an EU Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) report, leaked to Bulgarian media on 16 July, which indicates that the corruption goes right to the top of the Bulgarian political establishment, involving close associates of the president, Georgi Purvanov (pictured).

Amusingly, it also notes that one of the few international media organs to have picked this up is the Chinese news agency Xinhuanet. How appropriate that the state-controlled organ of a corrupt, totalitarian regime should publish these details, leaving the free press of Western democracies trailing in its wake.

The Sophia Echo covers this "leak" itself, with the following narrative:

"This criminal company network is managed and/or financed by two Bulgarian individuals, Mario Nikolov and Lyudmil Stoikov, who are said to have close links to the current Bulgarian government," the report says.

"One of the individuals allegedly financed the election campaign of the current Bulgarian president and is the business partner of the former deputy foreign minister, who, according to information available, attempted to influence an ongoing investigation into that individual," according to the report.

To British readers, the personalities are almost completely unknown but, courtesy of the wonders of the European Union, this is not "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing". As we have remarked before, the Bulgarian president, through the European Council, is part of our government, and his ministers take an active role in formulating our laws through the Council of Ministers.

As always, it is so comforting to know that we are in such good hands.

COMMENT THREAD

No sooner on than off?

If it was looked at through the same lens used for national politics, the media would be all over it – but since it is "Europe" it goes virtually without comment.

This is the commission proposal at the beginning of this month to divert €1 billion of the expected surplus from next year's CAP fund to provide food aid for Africa.

Two weeks to the day, however, a group of eight member states are telling the commission to think again, questioning the legality of the scheme.

The refusniks are Austria, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Malta, the Netherlands and Sweden, all bar the Czechs being net contributors to the EU budget.

Furthermore, the EU parliament is querying the scheme, its budget spokesman Cezary Lewanowicz saying: "We have had enough of political declarations about spending funds when no solid legal basis is provided at the same time."

Although the commission was due to approve the scheme today, it is now having to reconsider it, as well as another plan for chuck another €600 million into the fishing industry to compensate it for increased diesel costs.

The member states are also questioning the legality of this payment and, rather than giving the commission an easy time of it, are calling for a cut of about €1.7 billion from the €116.7 billion 2009 proposed budget.

Perhaps it was rather unwise of the commission to show its hand so soon, effectively giving the member states an easy opening to claw back some of the contributions they make to the budget, but this last-minute refusal must represent something of an embarrassment for el presidente Barroso.

And that embarrassment could turn to humiliation if his flamboyant largesse is finally rejected by the member states – not that many people will be aware of it, given the reluctance of the media to tell it like it is. But you can imagine the fun the hacks would be having if Gordon Brown had been forced to make a similar climb-down.

COMMENT THREAD

An outbreak of candour

The fragile support for the EU's obsession with the climate change agenda is beginning to look even thinner, with Irish scientists warning their government that the country cannot meet the onerous emissions reduction targets by 2020 set by the EU unless the most "lunatic" draconian measures are implemented.

This is from the Irish Times which has professors Richard Tol and John Fitzgerald of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) telling the Committee on Climate and Energy Security that a carbon tax would be the cheapest and most effective way of Ireland moving towards the targets.

However, prof Tol then went on to observe that the carbon tax needed to meet the stringent EU target would be equal to a carbon tax of €4,000 per ton of CO2, a level that would add €2-€3 to the price of a litre of petrol. By contrast, the EU commission’s own estimate for the price of carbon in 2020 is only €40 per ton.

Prof Fitzgerald, however, was quick to point out that his institute was not suggesting the imposition of such a tax. It was simply to illustrate the onerous nature of the EU's target. The research carried out by institute indicated that only that level of tax could achieve the change in behaviour of the scale needed to achieve the target.

The Fine Gael committee's chairman, Seán Barrett, responded in the only logical way – not something we see politicians doing very often – by suggesting that the current climate change strategy should be scrapped by the Government, although he then spoiled it all by calling for new ambitious, "reachable" targets for 2050.

The profs, though, had not finished. One of the problems in meeting the standard was the slow turnarounds of capital. New housing insulation regulations would not have an appreciable effect until the decade after 2020; power plants were not replaced for decades and people held on to cars for a decade and longer.

Fitzgerald said that agriculture, which is responsible for 28 percent of emissions mainly through methane produced by livestock, presented a problem. "We are wrestling with it and do not have an answer on this” he said. "If we had to meet the target and it was an absolute imperative, the cheapest thing to do would be to get rid of all our livestock."

"But," he added, "it would be a lunatic thing to do. It would do nothing for the world. They would just be bred in Brazil or elsewhere."

Thus, Tol concluded, "The other sectors need to work harder. If agriculture is off limits and we are not going to [target cattle], then we have to [target] commuters."

We can see how climate change is going to be a real gas for the Irish.

COMMENT THREAD

The dirty deed is done

The UK's ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty was completed yesterday when the "instruments of ratification" were formally lodged with the Italian foreign ministry in Rome.

COMMENT THREAD

Ahead of the game?

It would be entertaining to take a sarcastic view of the much-trailed speech to be given by General Sir Richard Dannatt this evening on the importance of reconstruction in the armoury of the modern soldier.

We could so easily offer the jibe, "nice of you to catch up", remarking that we have been banging this drum for some little time, the work based on the gradual realisation that the war in Afghanistan will be won or lost not by the force of arms but by the success of the reconstruction effort.

We have, however, resisted the temptation.

Read more on Defence of the Realm

Reports of looting greatly exaggerated

Remember all those stories of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites being looted after the Coalition invasion; all those accusations of chaos brought in by the nasty Americans and their equally nasty allies? Many people do remember them and repeat them. They remember slightly less well that there were subsequent stories - much smaller articles on less popular pages - that a good many of the museum treasures had not been looted but hidden by curators and were now being repositioned.

Of course there had been looting in Iraq - back in the nineties when apparently illicitly lifted treasures appeared in Western arts sales rooms. Except that they had been lifted by members of Saddam Hussein's government.

Now we get an interesting story about the archaelogical sites. Thanks to Clarice Feldman's posting on American Thinker we can read an article in the Wall Street Journal that tells us that stories of those lootings were seriously exaggerated as well.

A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites -- eight of them -- had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. This, according to a report by staff writer Martin Bailey in the July issue of the Art Newspaper. The article has caused confusion, not to say consternation, among archaeologists and has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. Not surprising perhaps, since reports by experts blaming the U.S. for the postinvasion destruction of Iraq's heritage have been regular fixtures of the news.

I'll bet it's caused confusion. Almost as much confusion as the acknowledgement by newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times that the surge in Iraq is working and the situation is improving by leaps and bounds. Not to mention caused by the fact that Barack Obama's website has wiped all criticisms of the surge.

The rest of the article gives an account of archaeologists producing results of how much has been looted and destroyed before going to see for themselves (is that how archaeology is done these days?) and how surprised they were to find that those preliminary calculations were wrong.

According to the Art Newspaper article, "The international team ... had been expecting to find considerable evidence of looting after 2003 but to their astonishment and relief there was none. Not a single recent dig hole was found at the eight sites, and the only evidence of illegal digging came from holes which were partially covered with silt and vegetation, which means they [were] several years old." Furthermore, the most recent damage "probably dated back to 2003," to just before and after the invasion when the Iraqi army maneuvered for the allied attack. (According to other experts, looting probably took place when the Iraqi army first moved out of areas near sites to counter the invasion.)

Neither the British Museum pair nor Prof. Stone responded to my calls seeking comment. The British Museum press official for the Middle Eastern department cautioned that the official report had not yet been compiled, but it seemed that the article was generally accurate. Certainly none of the experts have denied any of it. In the article, Dr. Curtis "admits that he was 'very surprised' at the lack of recent looting, but stresses that ... 'it may not be typical of the country as a whole, and the situation could be worse further north.'"

No doubt. But how could previous assessments have been so wrong, and why would one expect anything to be worse elsewhere? In phone conversations with me, both Donny George and Lawrence Rothfield argued that the eight sites were all known to be well-protected. Dr. George was able to itemize each one: "Ur was an Iraqi airbase and then a U.S. airbase. Uruk Warka was protected by guards from nearby tribes -- we always knew that. Ouelli is largely prehistoric and of no use to looters..." And so on. But Dr. George, perhaps the world's leading authority on the subject, also conceded that the greatest damage done by looters had generally occurred in the 1990s, in Saddam's time. Prof. Rothfield said that the no-fly zones back then had allowed illicit digging to occur.

As an erswhile amateur archaeologist (well, a gopher on archaeological sites, if we are going to be honest) and a great admirer of heroic archaeologists, I was saddened to see that their successors have joined the NGO-tranzi brigade of using inaccurate data to oppose Western actions. But then, what can you expect from an organization called the World Archaeological Committee (WAC)?

What will be Zimbabwe's future?

Some people would argue that Zimbabwe has no future – the country has effectively collapsed and its population, for the most part, barely manages to exist, while its tyrannical president and those close to him are leading a luxurious life, thanks to the Chinese control of platinum production and, let us not forget, to the ever gullible West that keeps providing him, his friends and relations with money and platforms for his poisonous attacks.

However, the truth is that there is always a future, though in the case of Zimbabwe it is anything but bright. As I mentioned before, few things are more depressing than attending discussions with people who are knowledgeable about that country.

For all of that, both my colleague and I write about Zimbabwe not just because it is one of the real horror stories in the world at the moment but also because the country has become a symbol, a distillation of all that has gone wrong with many parts of the developing world, particularly Africa and of all the mistakes that the West has made and continues to make, not least because of the activity of the NGOs and transnational organizations.

Yesterday the International Policy Network (IPN) held another lunch-time discussion about Zimbabwe. This time it was led by Rejoice Ngwenya who is the Director of the Coalition for Market Liberal Solutions in Harare – a brave and optimistic man. Well, he is alive and can even get some money from the West to help his mother and buy food for himself.

It was rather good to hear from Mr Ngwenya about the importance of the economic collapse, engineered to a great extent by Mugabe himself and the various placemen in the establishment. For example, there is a 10 million per cent inflation in the country, which makes any discussion of living standards a sick joke. This was caused largely by the Reserve Bank printing a great deal of money in order to finance the government’s debt and to ensure that the ruling elite had its wealth to play with.

How is one to overcome this problem on the assumption that there will be a post-Mugabe future for the country? How is any trust in the currency to be restored? Normally, a huge inflation of this kind has to be stopped by a ruthless reform by a government: the introduction of another currency or a deliberate recalibration of the existing one so the number of noughts is reduced from, say ten to one. When will Zimbabwe have a government that will be able to carry out such a procedure and what can be done in the country without it?

Priority, Mr Ngwenya asserted, will have to be given to the restoration of productivity (and let us not forget that Zimbabwe used to have a successful economy), the reversal of the catastrophic brain-drain as well as the above-mentioned restoration of faith in the currency and in any political process.

As is clear from the title of his institute, Mr Ngwenya is a free-marketeer who sees the roots of many of his country’s problems in President Mugabe’s consistent socialist policies. The trouble is that the MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai (a brave man but not one who inspires one with great faith in his economic and political abilities) is also a socialist though of the social-democrat variety. Can one, therefore, expect anything useful from the party if it ever comes to power?

There were many other problems and issues raised both by the speaker and the audience. The role of Thabo Mbeki and South Africa, for instance; the need to take into account in the future the sizeable Mugabe constituency (I must admit that sounds like whistling in the dark – should the man ever die, there will be a great settling of scores and it will not be pretty); the fact that the education system has disintegrated. Schools cannot afford to function with the inflation and so there is no education.

This is extremely bad for the future of the country. While I share (up to a point) my colleague’s obsession with roads (well, it’s better than those shiny toys) I cannot dismiss schools as being of lesser importance. One of South Africa’s problems at the moment is that boycott of schools that the ANC enjoined on the townships from the eighties onwards. A generation or two of uneducated, unemployable, highly volatile youngsters is a disaster for any country.

Let us not forget our own involvement in Zimbabwe’s catastrophe. It was Lord Soames that presided over the Lancaster House Conference in 1979 that gave Robert Mugabe power, which he used to destroy all rivals, all opposition and to launch a war against the Ndebele in Matabeleland. While the killing went on, Robert Mugabe was feted in the West as one of the most progressive African leaders.

Nor was there a great deal of interest or cutting off completely unnecessary aid when President Mugabe involved his troops in wars and civil wars around him, invading DR Congo in the 1990s. Not much was said even in criticism when he passed anti-business legislation and it is only in 2000 when, in response to a re-forming opposition movement he gathered the so-called war veterans to spread terror and anarchy and to destroy white-owned farms (as well as black-owned ones and the black workers on them) that the first feeble protests were heard.

They were not up to much. One mention of the word colonialism sent all protesters scurrying into hiding. Even those famous bans on travel have come to nothing as we have pointed out before. Oddly enough, I think President Mugabe cares very much about being invited to various international shindigs, be they African Union meetings, UN gatherings of one kind or another or the EU-Africa Summit. Banning him from them may not sound particularly harsh but it would cause him a good deal of grief. Furthermore, other African dictators might rally round, refusing to attend all those extremely expensive and completely pointless meetings and that would be all to the good.

What Zimbabwe has now is state-sponsored anarchy with bouts of extreme violence. Mr Ngwenya showed some pictures of what happens to people who oppose or are thought to oppose ZANU-PF. You will be glad to know that I do not have any pictures like that. Nor do I propose to quote some of the descriptions I have read in the last few months of what Mugabe’s thugs do to oppositionists and their families.

What of China some of us asked? My colleague has written highly illuminating posts on the subject of that country’s involvement in Africa. Interestingly enough, Mr Ngwenya was less concerned about it than we had expected though that may be because even China is not risking too much in Zimbabwe. Her involvement in DR Congo, for instance, is far greater.

According to Mr Ngwenya, China is not likely to make any long-term investments in Zimbabwe. It is heavily involved in the retail and it sounds like the only things that can be bought in the country are those imported by China. At other times a complicated system of barter or personal importation with great difficulty from surrounding countries take place.

The exact details of Mugabe’s agreements with China are still unknown but it is unlikely that they would in any way benefit the people of Zimbabwe. China is owed a great deal of money and this is being extracted via the platinum mining rights, as explained by my colleague. Mugabe receives a percentage and lives the high life off it while the rest of the country staggers on, occasionally helped out by bits of aid from us.

What is one to make of it all? Is there anything remotely not-too-dark for Zimbabwe in the short, medium or long term future? Can’t see anything immediately though the presence of people like Mr Ngwenya does give one some grounds for hope. Can we do anything? Not immediately, except giving support to the people who can possibly make some change. But we can, at least, try to do no evil. How about not sending any more aid to Robert Mugabe or any other bloodthirsty kleptocrat? It would be a small step but one in the right direction.

Another beef and dairy ban?

Having completely failed to stem the slow-motion epidemic of Bovine TB in this country, this government – via DEFRA (Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Activities) – has thus allowed the export of the problem to mainland Europe, invoking an immediate and unwelcome response.

That, at least, is what The Times is reporting, with the headline, "TB panic leads to new ban on export of British cattle".

This situation came to light when 12 British-reared calves imported to Dutch veal production farms in March tested positive for the disease – in a country which has been free from the disease since 1999.

Dutch farmers are understandably furious and have imposed their own commercial ban on live cattle imports from the UK. Unofficially, Belgian farmers are also refusing to take British calves and adult cattle. The Dutch Agriculture Ministry is said to be appalled at the breach of biosecurity.

Under EU law, of course, farmers are not allowed to do this. It is a breach of one of the most fundamental tenets of Community law – trade discrimination on the grounds of nationality. Thus, to make the ban stick, the continentals are hot-footing it to Brussels to apply for an official ban. British exporters now fear that a complete ban on the trade of live cattle throughout the EU could be in force by next week, an action which could be highly damaging for the British cattle industry.

Kim Haywood, the director of the National Beef Association articulates the concerns, saying: "People are very worried about possible loss of exports because we are just approaching the main three-month season for export of calves for veal production. Following the BSE crisis, the market only started at the end of 2006 but since then we have slowly been recovering markets. It could be a catastrophe for the industry. If this issue builds momentum in Europe, the consequences could be dire. This is all down to the Government's inability to control bovine TB."

Haywood is certainly right about the "government", but the criticism should go further. Animal disease control is an exclusive competence of the EU and the eradication of bovine TB has been a part of Community law ever since 1977, with the promulgation of Council Directive 77/391/EEC – a law that has been updated and amended many times.

This requires those countries which have endemic Bovine TB to implement a Commission-approved eradication programme, the principles of which are set out most recently in a working document drafted in 2006.

This is explored in detail in our sister blog, Bovine TB, but the crucial element of that document is the explicit requirement that, "The reservoir of infection within wildlife populations should be effectively addressed."

This, the British government has manifestly failed to do, having only last week rejected any cull of badgers, despite these animals having been proved to be an important reservoir of the disease. Furthermore, the government has not even submitted a formal disease eradication plan to Brussels – and neither has the Commission followed up what appears to be a clear breach of the rules.

The suspicions are that, because Bovine TB seriously affects only the British and Irish cattle industries, the EU has been indifferent to the problem. But now, chickens – or perhaps cows – are coming home to roost. The commission will no longer be able to ignore what has been a running sore in British disease control strategies.

Not least, there is the brooding presence of the Russian Federation in the background. Two years ago, it was threatening an EU-wide ban on cattle products and, although this did not materialise, the threat remains. Confirmation of Bovine TB on the continent could give Russia just the excuse it needs to ban cross border trade with the EU.

We can therefore, expect a speedy and vigorous response from the EU commission, one result of which may be that it looks more closely at British control measures and starts imposing EU law. In the longer term, that could in fact be beneficial to the industry, if it over-rides the dilatory DEFRA and requires effective action to be taken against the wildlife reservoir.

This puts the UK in a very odd position. Having suffered neglect by both our local government in Whitehall and our supreme government in Brussels, recent events now look set to force the hand of our supreme government, whence it may well enforce action which our own domestic government should have taken years ago, but has not.

This absurd situation is also explored further in the Bovine TB blog, but it comes to something that, if forced to choose between the two evils of DEFRA and the EU, the latter could come out better. Possibly to the delight of Europhiles, we would have to concede that there is only one thing worse than the EU. That one thing is DEFRA.

COMMENT THREAD

Shouldn't Brown and Cameron do "foreign"?

Some of our readers would have realized that there is yet another new kid on the block of political magazines. Total Politics is a political magazines for politicians, wannabe politicians and all those who surround them. Very nicely produced it is, too.

Its one great fault is that it does not seem to want to publish an article I lovingly crafted for it on the subject we have raised once or twice on this blog: neither Prime Minister Brown nor Opposition Leader Cameron do "foreign". In other words, neither of the leading parties has any notion of a foreign policy. I think that is an important problem and I wrote about it. For one reason or another the piece will not be published though there might be a very different article by yours truly some time later in the year.

Meanwhile, waste not want not. Here is the article that did not get into Total Politics on EUReferendum2.

We cannot afford this

If the Army is winning the shooting war in Afghanistan – and it tells us it is – the same cannot be said of the battle to reconstruct this war-torn country. A report in The Times on Musa Qala give some uncomfortable details and makes an interesting contrast with an earlier report on the MoD website.

The MoD report, published three months after the successful military operation to re-take the town from the Taleban paints an unashamedly optimistic picture of the reconstruction process. It tells us that the process of returning the town to a bustling centre of commerce is well underway. The Times tells a rather different story.

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Good cop – bad cop

The news yesterday that President Lech Kaczynski of Poland had effectively folded on the constitutional Lisbon treaty came as absolutely no surprise.

Apart from the general tendency of Polish politicians to make a great deal of noise and then give in at the first opportunity, this had been flagged up earlier this month when Angela Merkel had confidently predicted that ratification was just "a question of when".

Anyhow, Lech Kaczynski chose for his moment of surrender a visit to Paris where he met Sarkozy, leaving skid-marks on the Champs Elysée with the abruptness of his U-turn. Not weeks ago he was telling the world that it was "pointless" ratifying the treaty and now he is cosily reassuring the French president: "of course, Poland will not be an obstacle to the treaty's ratification".

Of course … we did not have to look very far for the reason. On the stocks was an EU commission decision, due today, on whether six years of "illegal" state aid paid to the historic shipyards of Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin will have to be repaid. Amounting to €2.1 billion, this could bankrupt the yards whose workers helped toppled the communist regime in 1989.

Sure enough, Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister completely denied any connection, adding credence to the belief that nothing is true in politics until it has been denied by a minister.

Thus, completely coincidentally, the news later emerged that, while the commission is indeed going to make its ruling today, it has indicated that it will delay execution for three months. By then, a refinancing deal will doubtless have been stitched up, the details of which we will not be allowed to know until the treaty ratification is safely in the bag.

This rather cast Barroso in the role of the "good cop", having yesterday spent a good deal of time on the phone with prime minister Donald Tusk, stitching up agreeing the details. But there is no such velvet glove treatment for the Irish.

Coming storming out of his corner is that nice M. Sarkozy – nice, that is, to the compliant Poles – in an ugly mood, bluntly declaring that Ireland must hold a second referendum.

With absolutely no attempt at finesse or diplomacy, he told a meeting in his office: "The Irish will have to vote again." And, on Monday, he is due in Dublin personally to deliver his message to the Irish government.

Predictably, Sarkozy's demand was attacked by Declan Ganley, of the Libertas group: "This typifies the anti-democratic nature of what's going on in Brussels," he told RTE radio. Sinn Fein described it as "deeply insulting to the Irish people".

Hilariously, Sarkozy's trip is billed as a "listening exercise". But this is the EU version – "you listen and then do as you are told". The Irish had just better get used to it. "Bad cop" Sarkozy has spoken.

COMMENT THREAD

An ex-Belgium government

It has resigned. Now that it has ratified the constitutional Lisbon treaty, it is no longer needed.

Shot down by the EU

As Bloomberg tartly remarks (one of only two media outlets to cover the event), Britain's Douglas DC-3 aircraft survived World War II and the Berlin Airlift. They won't survive the European Union.

Today, EU rules come into force that require aircraft used for commercial passenger flights, even vintage models, to incorporate safety features found on modern airliners, including such delights as oxygen masks, weather radar and escape chutes - requirements which make operating these aircraft totally uneconomic.

The rules are patently absurd for vintage aircraft, the Dakota in particular which only flies in clear weather, at altitudes low enough to breathe, and with exits about four feet off the ground. Nevertheless, the "one size fits all" mentality of the loathsome "colleagues" has reached out to swat down a cherished piece of our aviation heritage, taking out the UK's last three DC-3s.

"It's bureaucracy gone mad," said Trevor Cherrington, 49, a civil servant who paid £90 for one of the aircraft's last excursions. "If they've been flying this many years, how have they suddenly become dangerous?"

Well he might ask, as indeed we did in February when we first picked this up, observing that, what was good enough for the troops who liberated Europe, and the women and children of Berlin is not good enough for the EU.

The story was picked up by Christopher Booker in his column that month, following which Tory defence spokesman Gerard Howarth intervened, with a pledge to get this insane piece of nannying reversed.

So far, Mr Howarth has not succeeded, although Bloomberg tells us that the EU commission might be prepared to consider a derogation if some of the required modifications are made.

But, for Richard Parr, of Coventry-based Air Atlantique – the last UK commercial operator of the Dakota - this is a chicken and egg situation. "From a business point of view," he says, "we can't invest in the aircraft without knowing for sure whether they'll be able to fly or not."

For the moment, therefore, it looks as if the Dakota is grounded and while its passing will be mourned by hundreds of thousands of aviation enthusiasts, another remarkable facet of this whole affair is the lack of media (and political) interest – the only other media outlet covering the demise of the Dakota being the Belfast Telegraph.

As we remarked earlier, on the first flight of the rebuilt Vulcan, heritage aviation is probably one of the most popular spectator attractions in the country, events routinely attracting crowds in their hundreds of thousands - far more than football, in which every grubby little politician professes to take an interest, seeking to demonstrate an affinity with the "common man". It is thus a measure of how far the "colleagues", our own politicians and the media are up their own backsides that they can treat our passion with such disdain.

As we noted then, but extend our comments to the whole ragbag of these foul excrescences, they know diddly squat about what makes us tick – and care less. No wonder the majority of us, quite rightly, have little but contempt for them - especially as the Junkers Ju-52 flies on.

COMMENT THREAD

Crossing the Rubicon

As predicted and expected, British troops in Afghanistan are facing huge rise in Taliban bombs. Such is the scale of the change that, between April and last month, British troops encountered 150 IEDs, compared with 90 in the previous six months. The rate of attacks has risen fivefold, from 15 a month to 75.

The good news is that, even with minimal equipment, British forces have developed considerable expertise in dealing with this threat, the casualty rate fortunately not reflecting the level of attacks.

The bad news is that, if we are to win this campaign, we need a change of attitude, the fundamentals of which we set out in our piece on Zambia. This recognises that the battle will be fought and won not by military prowess but by delivering on the peace and prosperity than can only come with a properly devised reconstruction programme, fully integrated with our military effort.

And, despite the best intentions of our troops in the field, this we see no signs of materialising.

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A haven for libel tourism

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what this country has become and with that the enemy to free speech. American legislators are fighting back. In the wake of New York State's Libel Terrorism Protection Act, signed into law by Governor David Paterson and known popularly as "Rachel's Law" after Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose book and the libel action against it brought about the legislation, there is now a move to pass a similar piece of legislation through Congress.

In this article Senators Joe Lieberman (Ind. Dem.) and Arlen Specter (Rep.) explain why they think American authors need to be protected from this scourge and why they are sponsoring this legislation.

That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers.

Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. Disputed statements are presumed to be false unless proven otherwise. And the loser in the case must pay the winner's legal fees.

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To counter this lawsuit trend, we have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, a Senate companion to a House bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.). This legislation builds on New York State's "Libel Terrorism Protection Act," signed into law by Gov. David Paterson on May 1.

Our bill bars U.S. courts from enforcing libel judgments issued in foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech would not be libelous under American law. The bill also permits American authors and publishers to countersue if the material is protected by the First Amendment. If a jury finds that the foreign suit is part of a scheme to suppress free speech rights, it may award treble damages.

Tomorrow Policy Exchange is holding a discussion on the subject of libel tourism. I shall be reporting on it afterwards. In the meantime, let me declare my own interest in the matter. Not only am I anxious that Britain should once again become as much a haven of free speech as the United States is but I do have a personal interest. Rachel Ehrenfeld is a very good friend and I should like to see her in London again. Of course, I could always go to New York.

Fiddling while Africa burns

Behind the sad and increasingly embarrassing spectacle of Gordon Brown grovelling to his European "colleagues" in an attempt to gain some traction over the situation in Zimbabwe lies a tale of ineptitude, wishful thinking and strategic blundering.

Whatever we do now, either independently or within the framework of the EU, will have no impact whatsoever until and unless we address the core issues – of which there is no sign of us doing. Furthermore, our inadequacies here reflect the total failure of our overall Africa policy, which means that our continued intervention on this continent will remain wholly counterproductive.

The essence of these bold assertions lies in the growing influence of China on the continent, moving in with hard cash and no strings attached. Progressively, China is offering strictly commercial deals which keep dictators like Robert Mugabe in place and in a position to ignore the "international community".

While we see in Zimbabwe economic collapse, people starving and mass migration, Mugabe seems as powerful as ever, ensconced in his $9 million mansion in Harare (pictured), with no obvious challenge to his rule. And the reason for that is Zimbabwe's huge reserves of platinum ore, valued at $500 billion, the second largest deposits in the world.

In a series of barely reported developments over the years, the Mugabe regime has progressively "nationalised" – i.e., expropriated – these assets, culminating in a deal with then Chinese in 2005 when he sold mining rights to them. The foreign exchange earnings made from this deal have kept the regime alive, allowing Mugabe to buy what he needs, and keeping his supporters financed.

China also keeps Mugabe supplied with weapons to underpin his power base – at enormous expense. In June 2004 alone, Zimbabwe purchased from China 12 FC-1 fighters and 100 military vehicles worth an estimated $240 million. The order actually went above and beyond the $136 million defence budget.

Against the huge wealth from mining revenues, directed straight into Mugabe's coffers, the amount of financial leverage that the UK – with or without the EU – can exert is minuscule. By comparison, EU aid between 2002 and 2007 was worth a modest €107.5 million and in 2008, the "assistance" is expected only to be around €25 million.

This compares with the recent increase in platinum production, from 90,000 ounces per year to 160,000 ounces annually. Additionally, through a parallel deal with the Chinese, nickel production has increased from 1,540 tons to 2,900 tons annually. As a result, reported in May of this year, mineral exports, with the exception of gold, for the first four months of the current year stood at $302 million.

The trivial amount of money from the EU, far from competing with such largesse, actually serves the Mugabe regime. Directed at "humanitarian relief", it absolves the Zimbabwe government from committing similar funds to support its own people, yet the political leverage afforded to the EU by this aid is nil. Most of the distribution is under government license, and is used by the regime to buy or reward "loyalty".

Similarly, the package of €250 million restructuring aid recently offered by Louis Michel, the EU's humanitarian and development commissioner for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, is hardly likely to tempt any proto-dictator looking to fill Mugabe's shoes. Dribbled out over a period of years, the annual sums will be a fraction of Zimbabwe's defence budget.

This is not to say, of course, that EU aid – at any level – would have an effect. What it underlines is the complete ineffectiveness of the EU's economic sanctions. As long as China is prepared to bankroll the regime, Mugabe has nothing to fear from the worst that the EU can do.

Furthermore, the intervention of China negates the EU fantasies of using aid as an instrument of "soft power". Hard-edged trade deals are giving China much more influence than anything the EU has to offer and, while the EU concerns itself with the "social agenda" – thereby achieving nothing – the Chinese are in fact investing heavily in Zimbabwe's infrastructure and development.

A similar story comes in today's Daily Telegraph, with Mike Pflanz in Lubumbashi reporting under the heading, "China's £4bn drive to buy Africa's mineral wealth".

Here, we find China committing to rebuild 2,050 miles of roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo, "left to rot in the rainforest after the Belgian colonialists pulled out 48 years ago and further shattered by seven years of war." This will "triple Congo's current paved road network, and is part of China's largest investment in Africa, a £4.5 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal signed in January."

As well as the roads, Mike Pflanz writes, Beijing has promised to repair 2,000 miles of largely defunct railways, build 32 hospitals and 145 health centres, install two electricity distribution networks, construct two hydropower dams and two new airports. And, in return, China has won the rights to five copper and cobalt mines in Congo's southern minerals belt which boasts some of the world's richest ore deposits.

Britain, we are told, has increased its aid to Congo sixfold since 2002, and is now one of the country's leading bilateral donors, but analysts in the capital Kinshasa said that "the Europeans are now largely playing catch up to the Chinese, and they are unlikely ever to succeed". "Really to engage with the Chinese you have to move pretty quickly," a senior European diplomat in Kinshasa told The Daily Telegraph.

"They are setting themselves up as being unlike other donors who are seen as too slow and always telling governments what to do, and there is a sense that the Europeans have been caught a little on the hop."

Victor Kasongo, Congo's deputy minister of mines, says: "To be honest, China was Plan B. "We first approached the Europeans but they said they did not have the muscle to do what we needed. "China has stepped into that opening, very quickly."

Once again, the vital role of infrastructure – and in particular roads – comes shining through, with this extract:

More than 1,200 miles to the south, beside a corrugated earth road snaking through dense bush, Mambwe Katenta, 45, watched a mechanic trying to fix his battered Toyota pick-up, broken once again by Congo's atrocious roads. "It is only 30 miles to the city, but we cannot reach there with the things we have to sell: tomatoes, cassava, charcoal," he told The Daily Telegraph.

"The road is too bad, the trucks are too expensive, and we are facing too many difficulties. It has always been this way, but now we hear that the Chinese will come and fix this."

Mr Katenta will not have long to wait. South of his village, on the other side of Congo's mining capital Lubumbashi, the Chinese are on their way.

At the unheard-of speed of half-a-mile a day, crews from the Chinese Railway Engineering Company are rebuilding the key road linking Congo's south to Zambia, the first 60 miles of what will eventually become a 1,000 mile highway to Kisangani, the rainforest capital far to the north on the Congo River. Already, stretches of pristine asphalt have been laid.

"Our former rulers made so many contracts but we never saw the colour of that money, we saw nothing being built," said Moise Kitumba, the newly-elected governor of the Katanga, Congo's richest province. "The Chinese contract is much better because people will see the roads, the railways, the hospitals."

As we continue to fritter away our energies on the wrong things, the Chinese are comprehensively outmanoeuvring us, walking away with the prizes, while we confront the idea of our prime minister and now our foreign secretary pleading to add 36 names to a list of embargoed Zimbabwean officials.

Pathetic doesn't even begin to describe it.

You know aid money works

Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of the ever growing Ghanaian free-market think-tank IMANI (one wonders if any of the G8 bozos will ever listen to people like him) has sent out the following e-mail:

One More reason Why Foreign Aid stinks...

Ghanaian Government blows more than $1.4m on gold medals.

Only in Africa will prominence be placed on luxurious items as Presidential Jets, palaces, gold-plated cars and medallions forofficialdom at the expense of public infrastructure and open sewers that spread disease. To think that gold medals for supposedly national heroes (when in actual fact, the economy stagnates) in a 'poor' country will cost US$1.5 million can't be described as modest.

Never mind that Ghana's Presidentcan purchase two Presidential jets under dodgy circumstances, completely shutting out the country's Parliament from the initial purchasing arrangements. However, be sure that at the next available photo-opportunity with G-8 leaders we'll be begging for more Aid dollars. If only these Aid givers knew

Would they care if they knew? Would all those people who demonstrate and wear wristbands to make poverty history and demand that we make one more push and up the aid care? Of course not. They don't want to see African countries do well; they merely want to have a warm fuzzy self-satisfied feeling.

Here is the story as covered by the BBC, complete with several useful quotes, including one from a representative of IMANI; and here it is on Ghana News.

It has come to this

Thwarted in his attempt to impose additional sanctions on Zimbabwe via the UN, Gordon Brown is left with nothing else in his locker, other than to go grovelling to his EU "colleagues" to ask them, ever so nicely, if they can help.

That, at least, is the sub-text of the report in The Times today, which has our prime minister turning to the EU, "pressing European leaders for new sanctions against President Mugabe."

He was speaking at Sarkozy's 43-nation extravaganza in Paris, launching his idea of a union between Europe and the Mediterranean nations of Africa and the Middle East – the so-called "Mediterranean Union" – where Zimbabwe was not even on the agenda. Brown was thus left to raise it on the margins, begging for attention from Mr Sarkozy, Barroso "and several other EU leaders".

Brown decision to switch his priority to "Europe" is a desperate last bid to be seen to be doing something, as the EU has supposedly already imposed EU travel and financial sanctions on 131 individuals connected to Mugabe's regime, under measures drafted in 2002. And we all saw how well those worked last June in Rome.

So, a British prime minister of a nation which formerly led an empire on which the sun never set is reduced to pleading with his "colleagues" to add the names of another 36 people to the EU's list. And - joy! joy! – we are told that Sarkozy "is sympathetic to Britain's case" and will kindly ensure that Zimbabwe is on the agenda at the next EU foreign ministers' meeting.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy's real interest is in his Mediterranean Union, which The Times tells us is "in effect" a recasting of the EU's 12-year-old engagement with the southern and eastern Mediterranean. The old process, it says, foundered over the Middle East conflict and old rivalries between the southern states.

Actually, as always, the paper does not know its history. The idea of a Mediterranean Union goes way back, to at least the 1930s, if not before – an integral part of the grandiose thinking at the time, around the concept of what was known as Panropa.

There was even a book published at the time by Georg Güntsche, who suggested damming the Mediterranean and lowering the level of the sea, linking the Africa and Europe more closely and, with the extra land, "relieving the pressures of overpopulation". Where else have we heard this?

Anyhow, Sarkozy's idea is very old indeed, part of the continuum which binds pre- and post-war thinking that has driven the EU agenda ever since the "project" started. And, with France having a long history of meddling in the Middle East, there is nothing new here either – simply the same old agenda.

What a contrast this makes, though – France using the EU presidency quite transparently to pursue its own interests, while Britain grovels on the sidelines asking for crumbs from the "rich man's table". This is what they must have meant when they said that Britain's membership of the EU increased her influence in the world.

A chilling tale from North

For his third tale today, Booker takes on the warmists full-frontal (again), pointing out that there is nothing that "true believers" like to use more to sustain their faith than a fear that Arctic ice may soon vanish.

Google News last week, he writes, showed 492 articles promoting this scare (now standing at 1,926), after Arctic sea-ice had last September shrunk to its lowest level since satellite records began in 1979.

What the articles didn't tell us (although it can be seen from the Cryosphere Today website) is that ice-cover last winter rose back at a record rate.

Although it is again in summer retreat, there are now 700,000 square kilometres more ice than at this time last year – pictured above. As global temperatures decline, the warmists may have to wait rather longer for that ice finally to melt away.

Yet, it was less than three weeks ago that The Independent was confidently reporting that, for the first time in human history, "ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year."

Interestingly, the "warmist" online journal Science Daily is now getting round the inconvenient truth that the ice retreat has slowed by reporting: "Summer Arctic Sea ice expected to be among lowest on record."

This is rather like that old Cold War joke, which had Kennedy and Khrushchev competing in a 100yd race. Kennedy, the younger man, won easily but when Pravda came to report the result, it had Khrushchev coming second and Kennedy second from last.

As with the old, in the new "Cold War", anything goes.

The erosion of liberties

In his main tale today, Booker recounts how metric martyrs Colin Hunt has been singled out for "harassment" by Hackney Council officials, in a classic example of how low-grade these jobsworths have become.

This is part of the ongoing saga which started last September when Hackney's trading standards officials seized two sets of imperial scales from a stall in Ridley Road market they thought was owned by Mr Hunt, when in fact it was owned by his sister, Janet Devers.

There is, however, a sting in the tail of this account of the latest machinations of the Hackney officials, in that Booker recalls how, as part of his campaign to highlight the state's erosion of our liberties, David Davis - now again MP - visited the market to talk to Janet Devers.

When Booker discussed the case with the new MP for Haltemprice and Howden, he records that Davis "seemed disposed to brush aside the metrication and EU aspects of her story." As with many MPs, this is not an issue in which they take much interest, despite its iconic status as a marker of the gradual erasure of our national identity by Brussels eurocrats and their fellow-travellers on these shores.

Writes Booker, if Davis really wishes to highlight the erosion of British liberties – where is has become a criminal offence for one Englishman to sell another a pound of apples - he may have to be rather more forthright about the part played in this by our government in Brussels.

It is one thing getting worked up about alleged terrorists being locked away for questioning for 42 days, but the man has been remarkably silent about that greater overall threat to our liberties.

Forum

The forum is down longer than expected, for reasons not unrelated to our earlier problems.

This time, though, they seem to have broken into the main server in the United States, leaving this delightful message on our site: "Do you think I forgot your site web Messenger of god does not forget you, son of bitch...".

The remedy is down to our service provider as it is entirely out of our control - with the effect that we cannot restore our own service.

Unsurprisingly, the help-line is innundated with calls. We can't get through to them and thus have a frustrating wait for the problem to be fixed. In the meantime, I've switched Blogger comments on, which I will now keep running until we have an assurance that the server security is capable of resisting these juvenile attacks.

The appeasement moves to Paris

If the Iranians have any hope of breaking free from the corrupt, murderous regime that is currently destroying their country – without having to resort to the bloody turmoil of a protracted civil war – it will be though the efforts of the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI). This is perhaps the one organisation which can engineer enough internal support to depose the mullahs and bring good governance to this troubled country.

On that basis only, it would have been logical to assume that the Western powers would be doing everything they could to support the PMOI and, through them, to exert leverage within Iran.

But, as we have recorded, taking our cue from the pages of the Booker column, far from supporting this organisation, Britain – with and through the EU – seems to be doing everything it can to frustrate the PMOI and, on the other hand, to appease the tyrants of Tehran.

Gradually, though, the media are waking up to the realisation that the latest round of Iranian bellicosity was nothing more than bluff. Even The Sunday Telegraph is retailing the story that the Shahab 3 missile was far from the "terror" weapon advertised, The Times is on the case, and Scrappleface is taking the only sensible line, treating the Iranian posturing with contempt.

Yet, as Booker reports, far from echoing that contempt for what is without doubt a failed state, the ongoing drama over the West's outlawing of the PMOI continues apace.

Last month, as readers will recall, the British Government was forced by the Lord Chief Justice and the Court of Appeal to remove the PMOI from its list of banned terrorist organisations, outlawed by Britain only in a bid to appease Tehran.

As a measure of the importance of this move to the mullahs – who regarded it as a serious defeat, since they used this proscription (which Britain persuaded the EU to copy) as evidence to the Iranian people that the West regarded their chief popular opposition as terrorists - Tehran has gone into overdrive to ensure that ban remains in place in the EU, where the PMOI is still banned.

Without Britain's overt support – it having been neutralised by the Court of Appeal - Tehran has since been focusing its efforts on the French government, which now holds the EU presidency. And, at a series of secret meetings involving the French foreign ministry and both countries' intelligence services, the mullahs have so far prevailed on the French government to maintain the EU's ban.

With the EU's "foreign minister", Javier Solana, due to meet senior Iranian officials in Geneva next Saturday, to grovel plead with Tehran yet again not to proceed with its nuclear weapons programme, it seems the EU is as bent on appeasement as ever.

This, writes Booker, leaves our Government in an extraordinary position. Unless it can persuade the EU to change its mind, thanks to Britain's courts having explicitly ruled that the PMOI is not involved in terrorism, it is now in serious breach of EU law.

And this mess has all come about through a vain bid to appease a regime that, as our Foreign Office admits, has been responsible for killing British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No for the first time, Booker then concludes by questioning the role of the rest of the media. "Isn't it time that this scandalous and humiliating farce was noticed in other parts of the media, and not just this column?" he asks.

And well indeed he might ask. With Sarkozy grandstanding over his half-baked idea for a Mediterranean Union (pictured above), it is time a little light was shed on these murky dealings, as the appeasement moves to Paris.

The great biofuels con

A long news focus piece in today's Sunday Telegraph comes from the Booker/North team.

One of our most bizarre findings is from a Cornell University study shows that biofuel production from farm crops such as corn takes 29 percent more energy than is yielded by the fuel itself - and that does not include the distribution energy to transport the ethanol.

To produce a "fuel" which actually consumes more energy than it delivers can only be described as insane – a "crime against humanity". The use of such inefficient feedstocks is made possible only by subsidies ($3 billion a year in the United States, just to support ethanol production) and the power of vested interest. These have basically hijacked the alternative fuel policy.

The equation looks even more insane when it is realised that an average US automobile travels about 20,000 miles per year and uses about 1,000 gallons of petrol per year.

To replace only a third of this petrol with ethanol, 0.6 ha of corn must be grown. Currently, 0.5 ha of cropland is required to feed each American. Therefore, even using highly optimistic data, to feed one automobile with ethanol, substituting only one third of the gasoline used per year, Americans would require more cropland than they need to feed themselves.

There is not and never has been any justification – economic, moral or environmental – for turning high-input food crops like maize and wheat into fuel. It is actually, beyond insanity. Which is why, presumably, the EU is so keen on the policy.

*** Forum temporarily down ... I'll post a link as soon as I can.

Reactions to the Colombian rescue

We have written before about the Colombian rescue of the 15 hostages and some of the interesting aspects of it, to do with the French government and our old friends the NGOs. Here is an interesting update from Soeren Kern on Pajamas Media.

It seems that a number of “highly regarded” European media outlets have been suggesting on the basis of “reliable” but unnamed sources that the whole operation was a front and that the hostages, in actual fact, were ransomed by the Colombian government. A little like all those European hostages in Iraq and other places who had been ransomed by their governments, as the author lists at the end of the article.

Well, it is not impossible, but innuendo and sources which are unnamed proves very little. Who are these sources, by the way?

Frederich Blassel, a journalist with the Lausanne-based broadcaster, told Colombia’s Radio W that the unidentified source was “close to the events, reliable and tested many times in recent years.” Colombian officials believe the source was Geneva-based Swiss diplomat Jean-Pierre Gontard, who had represented Switzerland in recent efforts to broker a peace deal with the FARC. The Colombian government suspects that Gontard, who by day was acting as an impartial mediator, worked by night as a cash courier for the FARC.

Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told the Bogotá-based El Tiempo newspaper that computer files name Gontard as the courier of the $500,000 in illicit monies that were seized from a FARC safe house in San José, the Costa Rican capital, by Costa Rican police at the request of the Colombian government. “This Mr. Gontard is going to have to explain why his name appears in email messages of [the now dead FARC commander] Raúl Reyes as transporter” of the $500,000, Santos said.

Some analysts believe that Gontard planted the conspiracy theory out of pique that the military operation to free the hostages upstaged his diplomatic efforts and effectively left him without a job. Gontard denies the accusations.

One can argue about the definition of reliability but somehow I do not think M Gontard [pictured above] would fulfil many of the criteria.

The elephant lives, part 400

Britain's last small, rural abattoirs claim they are under threat from a controversial plan to modernise the industry, which could cause the price of meat to rise. Hundreds of jobs could be lost through the plan to modernise meat inspections, ultimately hitting prices at butcher shops and supermarkets, they warn.

So writes Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, who then helpfully tells us that, currently, every animal killed in a UK abattoir needs to be inspected by an official inspector from the Meat Hygiene Service, who is responsible for the carcass being stamped with its distinctive label. A vet also has to be permanently on site.

We also learn from the helpful Mr Wallop that the process is hugely costly for the British taxpayer, which has had to cough up £190 million of public money subsidising meat inspections over the last seven years. And so rigorous is this inspection that, according to the Food Standards Agency, even the nuclear industry does not have such a thorough testing regime.

The FSA wants the abattoir owners themselves to pay more of the costs – part of a move to cut costs at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a department which has substantially over spent its budget in recent years. On Friday, the FSA published its proposals for abattoir owners to increase their costs by 12 percent.

What Mr Wallop does not tell us though is that the "controversial plan to modernise the industry" stems from Regulation (EC) No 854/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 laying down specific rules for the organisation of official controls on products of animal origin intended for human consumption – as amended.

And I'm sure it was a complete oversight that he failed also to tell us that this must be read with Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on official controls performed to ensure the verification of compliance with feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare rules.

Of course, it also goes without saying that this too must be taken with that vital instrument known as Commission Regulation (EC) No 2076/2005 of 5 December 2005 laying down transitional arrangements for the implementation of Regulations (EC) No 853/2004, (EC) No 854/2004 and (EC) No 882/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council and amending Regulations (EC) No 853/2004 and (EC) No 854/2004.

It is these little bundles of joy which have Norman Bagley, at the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers - which represents many of small red meat and poultry slaughterhouses - claiming the 12 percent increase is just the start of "an inexorable move towards abattoirs paying the full cost of meat inspections". These costs, he says, are likely to be passed on to the consumer, otherwise abattoirs would face closure.

Bagley points out that in 1975 there were 1,600 slaughter houses in the UK. Now there are just 300, with 176 of those being small, often family-run sites. "The authorities forget that old-fashioned, small abattoirs slaughter half the animals in the UK. They can't cope with cost increases. Many are just going to have to close their doors," he says.

The "authorities" in this case, are a combination of the British government and – more importantly – our master is Brussels, who foisted this insane system on us, the earlier version of the regulations having caused many of the closures to which Bagley refers.

So ingrained in the fabric of our meat industry is EU law that it is long since that our own (London) government had any say in the matter. Even the BBC seems to know this, but as long as we have "useful idiots" like Harry Wallop, the "elephant in the room" need never break cover.

COMMENT THREAD

Of course they have immunity

Some time ago I wrote on my alternative outlet, the BrugesGroupBlog, that, unusually, the UN was being sued because the negligence and, let’s face it, incompetence and lack of understanding of what was going on, had resulted in the deliberate murder of 8,000 men and boys. Given the UN’s track record in peacekeeping operations (DR Congo and the Balkans in general spring to mind but others are not far behind) this was going to be an important decision. And it is.

Yesterday the International Herald Tribune reported that

A Dutch court ruled Thursday that it has no jurisdiction in a civil suit against the United Nations by survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, affirming U.N. immunity from prosecution, even when genocide is involved.

A group called the Mothers of Srebrenica was seeking compensation for the failure of Dutch United Nations troops to prevent the slaughter by Serb forces of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males in the U.N.-declared safe zone.

The Hague District Court said the U.N.'s immunity — which is written into its founding charter — means it cannot be held liable in any country's national court.

As the Dutch government lawyer, Bert Jan Houtzagers, said

if a Dutch court decided it had jurisdiction in the case, "any court in any country could do so and that would thwart the viability of the United Nations."

Well, we wouldn’t want to thwart the UN’s viability, would we? And on that subject, we hear that the Security Council has rejected the idea of sanctions on Zimbabwe, a decision that, according to President Robert Mugabe, who has already been feted by the African Union, is a defeat for racism.

Two of the countries that blocked the American resolution were China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council. Is anybody surprised by that? Well, David Miliband, our youthful looking Foreign Secretary seems to be. To him Russia’s veto is “incomprehensible”.

"I'm very disappointed that the U.N. Security Council should have failed to pass a strong and clear resolution on Zimbabwe," Miliband said in a statement.

"It'll appear incomprehensible to the people of Zimbabwe that Russia, which committed itself at the G8 to take further steps including introducing financial and other sanctions, should stand in the way of Security Council action."

"Nor will they understand the Chinese vote," Miliband said. Veto-holding China was also among five countries that opposed the U.S.-drafted text in the 15-nation council on Friday.

Of the other members, South Africa, Libya and Vietnam also voted against and Indonesia abstained. Russia maintained that Zimbabwe posed no international threat and, therefore, the situation was not within the Security Council’s remit. This may well be true but it merely underlines the need to stop pretending that the UN is some kind of a moral force for good in the world. (Not that this blog has ever been known to say that.)

While we are on the subject of not pretending any longer, it might be a good idea not to pretend that Russia is in any way an ally of the West. Predictably, the Russian Foreign Ministry hit back at British and American criticisms of the country’s stand over Zimbabwe:

The Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement Saturday said the criticism "places a question mark over the worthiness of Russia as a G-8 partner," The Associated Press reported.

It added that the possibility of U.N. sanctions on Zimbabwe was excluded at a recent G-8 summit in Japan.

Russia said it believed the sanctions would set a precedent for U.N. meddling, AP reported.

Does this mean that Russia is about to leave the G8 in a huff? Let us hope so. After all, questions about the suitability of her membership – hardly one of the leading industrical economies or a democracy – have been asked ever since the anomalous situation had been created.

The last sentence, on the other hand, makes it clear what Russia is really saying, regardles of what it did or did not agree to at the G8 meeting. Ever since the idea of a United Nations was mooted, the Soviet Union showed itself to be determined to ensure that internal oppression and human rights crimes should not come under its aegis. This is probably quite a good idea as the UN can do absolutely nothing about any of these problems. On the other hand, it does rather obviate the necessity for the UN and that Russia would not like. The Security Council has always been a useful forum.

If the UN starts agreeing to sanctions on countries and politicians who are guilty of serious crimes against humanity and, indeed, human beings, then might it not one day start discussing the behaviour of certain politicians in Chechnya? Probably not, as it happens, but the Russian government believes in being safe. Of course, its recent intervention and creeping invasion of Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia may well be described as a threat to international security and may be the other reason why Russia is so very unanxious to see the UN straying into that territory.

The question is whether the UN refusing to agree on sanctions against Zimbabwe makes the government now legitimate enough for the EU to resume (if it ever stopped) giving aid to the country. As Reuters reports:

The European Commission is ready to provide up to 250 million euros in development aid for Zimbabwe's worst-hit sectors if the country gets a legitimate, credible government, the EU's aid chief said.

The European Union's executive arm would then also call for an international lifting of debt owed by the country, EU Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said.

"I would encourage the rest of the international donor community to make it clear today that it is ready to provide substantial and immediate assistance to Zimbabwe in the wake of a transition towards democracy," Michel said.

The Commission is not the EU’s executive arm but both legislative and executive (and completely illegitimate in itself, let it be said in passing, though not precisely in the Mugabe league of nastiness) and its readiness to plunge money into a country that is a complete mess without bothering to find out what is really needed and to what extent the people of that country should be allowed to take charge of it is really touching.

By the way, Mugabe’s government has been illegitimate and viciously oppressive for quite a long time, during which he, together with his friends and relations, has managed to wreck what was an extremely successful economy. Does that mean the EU stopped giving the country’s rulers our money to ensure that they stayed in power and continued to oppress the people of Zimbabwe? Not on your life and not on the Zimbabweans' life either.

The European Commission is the most important aid donor to Zimbabwe and last year provided 91 million euros in humanitarian aid and other assistance.

Anyone would think the European Commission was handing over the Commissioners’ own money to possibly the bloodiest tyranny in Africa at the moment. Mrs Mugabe, for one, must have been very grateful for the help she received in her shopping trips.

The real agenda emerges

Unless it is about the misuse of MEPs' expenses or other venality, you can almost guarantee that the British media will ignore the EU parliament – although there are some exceptions.

Not so Deutsche Welle which noted last week that: "European Parliament Approves Military Use of Galileo Satellite", telling us that it approved "the bill" by a massive 520 votes to 83.

Actually, the paper is a little confused. It was not a "bill" but an "own initiative report" by German MEP Karl von Wogau – a man we have met before, a doyen of the "European" defence establishment.

An own initiative report carries no legislative weight but, as we have remarked before, von Wogau, is no ordinary MEP. He is a respected member of the German political establishment, a senior and active member of the EPP – the political group to which the Conservatives still belong – and an arch "federalist" who is at the leading edge of integrationalist thinking. His agenda very much represents the thinking and ambitions of the hard core supporters of European integration.

Therefore, his report does actually carry some weight, effectively representing a statement of the state of play, the EU's "shopping list" and an indication of the direction of travel.

The reference to Galileo is instructive, as it simply affirms that which we have been asserting for four years – in the face of constant denials that the programme was anything other than entirely civilian, for civil use only – that the only way the project made sense was for its military applications.

In many ways, this bland – largely unrecorded - affirmation by the EU parliament typifies the whole of the EU "project". Like the EU, the rationale of Galileo has been shrouded in lies, deceit and obfuscation and now, only when the "colleagues" have finally got their way, with the project under commission control and an EU budget line, do they shamelessly admit the truth, which had largely been acknowledged anyway.

But von Wogau's report goes far beyond Galileo and sets out the entire strategy for an integrated European space programme, taking in surveillance and communications satellites, and all manner of space hardware. These, he asserts, should be managed within the framework of a Union budget – to add to the €5 billion already set aside in the 2007-13 for space projects and defence – all dedicated to servicing the European Security and Defence Policy.

Without so much as a blush, von Wogau relies entirely on the constitutional Lisbon treaty, which formalises space policy as a Union competence, in anticipation of which, the "colleagues" already have a Space Council up and running.

How easily do they now claim that "an autonomous European Space Policy a strategic necessity," underlining the "importance of the space dimension to the security of the European Union and the need for a common approach necessary for defending European interests in space."

What is particularly bizarre about this whole affair though is the lack of interest by the British media – which maintains its indifference to this day – as a major new policy unfolds in front of its very eyes. Even when the "colleagues" are openly parading their military ambitions, and outlining their plans to commit billions in expenditure for something which, as yet, has no legislative base, there is almost complete silence.

Secrecy in EU affairs, there is not. But, given the myopia of the British media, there is no need for it. Even though in plain sight, the steady march of integration is ignored.

COMMENT THREAD

Blogroll

A very much neglected (by me) corner of the EU Referendum empire is our blogroll - also accessible via our links button on the left.

Anyhow, this is to be remedied, and I have added eight more links, as below (plus cleaning some out).

Captains Journal

Common Agricultural Policy

Daily Referendum

EU Corruption

Ezra Levant

House of Dumb

Neil Shearing

Peter Navarro

Politics, etc

If you think there is a blog that ought to added to the list, let me know either by e-mail or on the forum and I'll look at it.

COMMENT THREAD

But, if you are guilty …

… you get damages.

In July 2003 and for a few months, it was big news, a multi-million fraud at the Eurostat agency which was accused of operating with "black accounts", fictitious contracts and possible kick-backs.

As the story developed, investigators were reported as having identified the loss of £3 million in "a vast enterprise of looting" by senior officials in Luxembourg, mostly through inflated contracts with outside firms.

At the centre of this "vast enterprise of looting" were two of Eurostat's top officials Yves Franchet, the French director-general for 16 years, and director Daniel Byk. They were being investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) for alleged use of a private bank account in Luxembourg to cream off £650,000 of public money. Both denied any wrongdoing.

Now, after a "final report" in October 2003 that accused Eurostat of "failings" but not enough to force any political resignations (something then commission president Romano Prodi had already refused to do), the case has re-emerged.

This time, it has been the subject of a judgement in the ECJ when, this week, the court awarded Mr Franchet and Mr Byk €56,000 for being "confronted with feelings of injustice and frustration" and because they had "suffered damage to their honour and professional reputation …".

The pair had taken the commission to the court, claiming that both OLAF and the commission had breached procedures, and their human rights. The court has agreed, finding that, when it "disclosed various pieces of information in the context of the investigations at issue," the commission had behaved unlawfully, failing to maintain a fair balance between the interests of Mr Franchet and Mr Byk and those of the institution. As a result, "the commission committed sufficiently serious breaches of the principle of presumption of innocence to render the Community liable."

So, if you are accused of committing the heinous crime of "racial discrimination", this same court rules that there is a presumption of guilt but, when you are accused of ripping off the taxpayer, you have the full protection of the law.

In this, the court did not concern itself "whether the facts alleged are proven or not." It was only concerned with the way in which OLAF conducted and concluded their investigation which referred to Franchet and Byk by name. But readers can draw their own conclusions from the award of €56,000 between the pair, when they had originally demanded €1 million. Clearly, the damage to their "honour and professional reputation" had not been that severe.

As, as for that "vast enterprise of looting", not a thing more has been heard about those missing millions. Now, had Eurostat refused to employ Moroccans …

COMMENT THREAD

This is getting silly!

The Iranians aren't the only ones with photoshop. Little Green Footballs and Wired have more.

COMMENT THREAD

A blank cheque for the race relations industry

Picked up by the ever-vigilant Wall Street Journal blog (and also AP) is a "groundbreaking" ruling by the ECJ on racial discrimination, made illegal under Directive 2000/43/EC.

The case goes back to 2006 when a director of a garage-door company, Pascal Feryn, was quoted by the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, saying: "we aren't looking for Moroccans. Our customers don’t want them." He elaborated on this in a TV broadcast, declaring, "People often say: 'no immigrants'… I must comply with my customers' requirements." He added: "I'm not a racist. Belgians break into people's houses just as much. But people are obviously scared."

At that, the Centrum voor gelijkheid van kansen en voor racismebestrijding stepped in. This is the Belgian body designated to "promote equal treatment" in accordance with the Directive and it applied to the Belgian labour courts for a finding that Feryn had applied a discriminatory recruitment policy.

The labour court, however, dismissed the application on the grounds that "there was no proof nor was there a presumption that a person had applied for a job and had not been employed as a result of his ethnic origin". No one had complained of discrimination, there was no "victim" and, therefore, no offence.

This was not good enough for the Centrum. It took the case to the ECJ which, yesterday, ruled against the Belgian Court. It decided that an employer who "publicly lets it be known that, under its recruitment policy, it will not recruit any employees of a certain ethnic or racial origin may constitute facts of such a nature as to give rise to a presumption of a discriminatory recruitment policy."

What makes this so very different – even alarming – is that the court has ruled that the "absence of an identifiable complainant does not mean that there is no direct discrimination". Therefore, even though no one is affected by the "discrimination" it must still be treated as a criminal offence.

From here though, it gets worse. The court was also asked to rule on what sanctions were appropriate for discrimination of this kind, the Directive requiring that member states impose "effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions," even where there is no identifiable victim.

On this, the court set a number of options. At one level, a national court could simply find that discrimination had occurred, and order that it cease. This, with an "adequate level of publicity," was judged to be sufficient in some cases. But, as an alternative, the court considered that there could be "an award of damages to the body bringing the proceedings."

This, it would seem, leaves it wide open for the race relations industry to hunt out errant employers and drag them into the courts, demanding huge damages for themselves and thus making a tidy profit from their actions – even though they lack a "victim" to champion.

To add insult to injury, the court then made a final ruling. It decided to reverse the burden of proof in this type of case, deciding that if a "discriminatory recruitment policy is alleged by reference to statements made publicly by an employer with regard to its recruitment policy … it is for the employer to prove that it has not infringed the principle of equal treatment."

So, there were are – "European" justice for you: guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent, guilty of an "offence" even though there is no victim, and prey to any passing race relations industry zealot who thinks they can make a quick buck out of taking you to court.

Lord Denning, I think, will be turning in his grave.

UPDATE: We are informed by a correspondent that Feryn does employ qualified Moroccans and other immigrants. They work in the workshop at various production lines.

It complied however with its customers with regard to the nationality of the mechanics and technicians, who are in charge of the on-site assembly of these garage-doors, which nowadays feature coded sophisticated devices in order to attain a certain level of burglar-proofing. The director cited this market constraint as an exception to the general rule of non-discrimination in use at the firm.

The Centrum voor gelijkheid van kansen en racismebestrijding (equal treatment promotion office), funded by the Belgian taxpayer, initially lost the case in Belgium, but since money was not a problem it brought the case before the ECJ with the disastrous ruling mentioned.

COMMENT THREAD

The wrong things for the right reasons

Following our broadside against the EU commission's proposals to siphon off €1 billion from the agricultural fund to "help tackle the food crisis in Africa", other critical voices are joining in.

One such is economics professor Richard Mshomba, a Tanzanian now working at La Salle University in the United States.

Mshomba notes that EU subsidies are largely responsible for many of the problems faced by agriculture in Africa and as such it is a little ironic to suggest using an unused portion of those subsidies in an attempt to help.

Commenting on agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel's intention to "inject money to buy seed and fertilisers", Mshomba doubts the money will be used this way, arguing it will more likely be used to subsidise food for consumers in Africa.

On this, his scepticism seems to match our own, when he says, "The EU and other rich countries sometimes, and I emphasis sometimes, do things like this only to appear as though they are doing something."

His sentiments were echoed by the head of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO) Jacques Diouf:

We have to increase production in countries with low incomes by investing appropriately to enable them to control production and crucially we must come to a much fairer international trade system to allow poor countries to boost exports.

The crucial issues here, of course, are the control of production and boosting exports – the two going together. Unrestrained increases in production, without an outlet for surpluses produced, is a recipe for continued poverty, something which the aid community and the commentariat seem to have extraordinary difficulty understanding.

A classic example of that comes on the BBC website, with an authored piece by Paul Moss on rural development in Zambia, abridged from a long feature broadcast on BBC Radio 4's World Tonight yesterday.

The focus of the internet piece is entirely on improving production yet, in the broadcast version, Moss interviewed at length a local expert, who spoke intelligently about the importance of "market access" and the vital need for new and better roads. That segment, however, is completely missing from the online abstract.

The need for roads as a mechanism for improving market access is very much the drum we have been beating in my analysis of Afghanistan but, if Moss even heard what his own interviewee was saying, clearly it did not penetrate sufficiently for him to be able to understand it.

The problem, though, is even more profound than Moss indicates. In his book, "The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it", Paul Collier notes that infrastructure projects seem to have fallen out of favour with the aid agencies and donor nations, which prefer photogenic "feel good" projects such as building schools and health clinics.

Inasmuch as the NGOs are hugely reliant on an inflow of cash from the ever-gullible public, and the politicians who echo their sentiments, these types of projects are much more likely to invoke the "aaaahhh" factor which keeps the funds flowing. Building a network of roads to enable farmers to earn higher (or any) profits from the sale of their produce does not have the same caché – or revenue-earning potential for the NGOs.

We saw some of this recently in a highly publicised outing by Prince Harry in Lesotho where he and "26 chums from his Household Cavalry regiment" are devoting three weeks to building a school for orphan children.

Somehow, Harry as part of a road gang would not have had the same draw yet, had he really wanted to contribute to the long-term prosperity of this nation (from which sustainable funds would come available to promote social and welfare projects), he would have spent his time building a road.

All of this points to the single, unarguable fact that the problems in the underdeveloped world – which so often visit themselves on our shores – are not insoluble. But, as long as the aid and support "industry", including the EU, continue to do the wrong things, often for the right reasons, the situation will continue to deteriorate – in proportion only to the number of sound bites garnered by the "bleeding heart" community who soooooo much want to help the suffering blacks.

COMMENT THREAD

Contempt, not conciliation

Despite the widespread publicity given to the Iranian photoshopping extravaganza, The Times still has up on its website, a cropped version of the offending photograph, showing the non-existent missile.

This is to support a story written yesterday by Chris Smyth telling us that, "Iran test-fired more long-range missiles this morning, shrugging off international concern over yesterday's launches as the US sharpened its rhetoric against Tehran." Weapons with "special capabilities", we are told, were launched from navy ships in the Gulf ... along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles.

With its transparent attempts to doctor the evidence now exposed, however, the Iranian activities of the last few days are being rapidly re-interpreted. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, is topping its latest report with the headline: "Iran missile tests seen more as theater". Its narrative now runs:

But some arms control experts said the missile barrages may have been just for show and not intended to reveal any new strategic capacity. Iran's conventional arsenal is little match for the sophisticated US and Israeli precision weapons, antimissile batteries and air power, analysts said, and Tehran apparently unveiled no new weapons during the testing.

"This event is the latest scene in regional theatrics and represents Iranian chest-thumping," Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said in an e-mail message. "There is no evidence of a significant advance in previously known missile capabilities of Iran's medium- and long-range missiles."

This is not really coming over in the UK press, which tends to treat Iran as if it was still a functioning state, instead of what is it, a corrupt, backward and wholly dysfunctional kleptocracy on the brink of economic meltdown.

The same goes for the EU "colleagues", who are taking Iran far more seriously than its parlous state merits. Instead of treating the posturing mullahs with the contempt they deserve, we have little Javier Solana planning to hold further discussions with the Iranians on 19 July in Geneva. Hope clearly springs eternal, confounding years of evidence that sucking up to the mullahs is a complete waste of time and effort.

Instead of this misjudged response, which is entirely typical of the EU's dealings with Iran, the only really logical answer to the absurd posturing of this bankrupt regime is to respond in kind. We should send Ahmadinejad a photoshopped picture of his Natanz nuclear facility, after the Israelis have delivered their calling cards.

Contempt, not conciliation, should be the order of the day.

COMMENT THREAD

"European interference"

Rarely does the BBC front a news bulletin with affairs EU. So when, yesterday evening, BBC Radio 4 gave the EU parliament pole position and then went on to do a lengthy feature, one could easily imagine that some major crisis was afoot.

However, one should never underestimate the "social-liberal" conscience of the Beeb, so it should have come as no surprise that what brought it to the barricades was the latest development in the Italian "war" against the Roma.

What has happened now is that the Italian government has decided to fingerprint the residents in the 700 or so encampments dotted around the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples, where an estimated 150,000 Roma live, mainly in squalid conditions.

Although – quite rightly – Berlusconi's government says that this measure is needed in the battle against the surge of crime Italians are experiencing, and to avoid children being used for begging, as well as helping identify illegal immigrants for expulsion, this has attracted the ire of the EU parliament.

By a resolution adopted by 336 votes to 220, MEPs (with 77 abstentions) have called on Italy to bring the practice to an immediate halt and asked the EU commission to intervene against actions which, they aver, "clearly constitute an act of discrimination based on race and ethnic origin". It also "condemned utterly and without equivocation all forms of racism and discrimination faced by the Roma and those seen as 'gypsies'".

Although Italian newspapers have published pictures of officials taking fingerprints from gypsies living in and around the southern city of Naples and filing the prints according to religion, ethnicity and level of education, the Italian government is having none of it.

Franco Frattini, former EU justice commissioner and now Italian foreign minister, has dismissed the parliament's resolution as "European interference". Its claims he says are "a totally unfounded accusation, and the upshot of a political vote", the MEP’s vote being "the fruit of an unawareness of the actual situation".

Seemingly relying on a technicality, he claims that the parliament’s action is directed at "an Italian law that is not yet enacted, because Parliament is still deciding on the bill's enactment." Thus, it was "premature".

Frattini then complains that he had held discussions with the heads of the two most important political groups in the European Parliament, Martin Schulz (ESP) and Joseph Daul (EPP) "to tell them that the Italian government was ready for an exchange of ideas, as normally happens", and to explain the "evolution, contents and grounds" for the norm.

According to Frattini, though, the EU parliament went ahead with its resolution before the discussions had been concluded, even though there was "no substantial interest" from the EU commission in assessing whether Community law had been breached.

This has not stopped Deutsche Welle parroting the BBC line, conveying the idea that the Italian government is engaged in a "direct act of discrimination."

But it also cites Italian European affairs minister Andrea Rochi, condemning the move, declaring: "Today's resolution by the European Parliament is one of the worst aspects of the EU institutions …We reject with vigour and indignation the accusations of racism."

Then we get Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni. He is a member of the right-wing Northern League party, who sets out the objective – "to put an end to illegal camps and guarantee security to Italian citizens."

He and his colleagues thus argue that it is the camps that are being targeted, not people of any particular ethnicity or race. They do have a point in that the camps are occupied not only by Roma but also Sinti. Half are Italian citizens, another 20 percent are citizens of other EU countries while the remainder come from the former Yugoslavia. Most definitely, it is not a Roma therapy.

We seem, therefore, to be seeing a case of the EU parliament rushing in where angels – and the commission - fear to tread. But when we get Italian politicians complaining of "European interference", it is clear that there is no meeting of minds.

Immigration, once again, is beginning to show up as a fault line between the European "ideal" and national interest. And, when the chips are down, even in Italy the national interest prevails.

COMMENT THREAD

Added value

The mystery of those Iranian missiles gets more entertaining by the hour.

Not only did the Telegraph print the doctored picture, obtained by Agence France-Presse from the website of Sepah News, it also graced the front page of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers including the National Post. According to the National Post, it also appeared on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news websites.

The Telegraph has now published the "original" in the form of a video grab (left) from Iranian television, which shows the actual launch of three missiles.

This compares with its earlier photograph in the print version (below right). What comes over very clearly is that the Iranians have added another missile to their montage, a creative addition which adds drama to the picture.

Bizarrely, the Sepah News website owned by Iran's Revolutionary Guards has now made available as of today the original version of the same photograph (below left), this with the three missiles in flight, but with a fourth launcher visible, mounting an unfired missile. This, it would appear, had been edited out of the doctored photograph.

To add to the fun, The Telegraph now retails that the Iranian state television has today reported missiles launched from ships in the Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles. It also showed a brief clip of two missiles being fired in darkness – very convenient as this will complicate any comparative analysis.

Gone from the Telegraph's report is the caution in the earlier piece, "reported" details now assuming the veneer of fact, the paper now stating that the latest test follows "Wednesday's launch of nine missiles including a Shahab 3 long-range missile capable of hitting Israel."

Iranian officials, we are told, "suggested that missile had been improved to a range of 1,250 miles." Israeli intelligence officials, we are also informed, "have suggested this was an exaggeration."

In respect of at least one missile, however, the performance is not so much "exaggerated" as non-existent. How easy do the media fall for these tricks though, making their reports and photographs highly suspect. You would think they would learn.

UPDATE: Many newspapers are now falling over themselves to admit they have been "had", with a good animated version here.


Significantly, The Telegraph is running a story on how the Iranians doctored the photo to hide a "dud", but does not mention that it had published the doctored picture, without noticing the crude photoshopping.

COMMENT THREAD

Angriff auf England

On 10 July 1940, the Luftwaffe launched its attacks on the UK, in what became known as the "Battle of Britain".

Just thought you might like to know that.

Who is this "we"?

Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am not greatly enamoured of the “big lie” theory that Goebbels was supposed to have espoused. It is a sequence of small lies, I once wrote, that does the trick. Just look at that genius of propaganda, Willi Münzenberg. Nobody believes anything Goebbels said and not many people believed it even at the time but millions of people around the world repeat stories first started by Herr (or, as he was at the time, Genosse) Münzenberg without even realizing where they originated.

One of the small lies that is frequently repeated in the MSM and is believed by an astonishing number of people is that the United States has such an enormous influence in the world that justice demands that “we” should have a say in whom Americans elect to be President. Even Simon Heffer succumbed to that particular virus.

To which one can say only one thing: who is this “we”? We, the people of European countries, do not have a say in the selection of our real government. Nor do we have a say in whether to have a completely new constitutional arrangement, to wit the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty imposed on us. When the people of one European country are graciously allowed to vote on the subject and say no, plans are made to disregard their vote. So, before we claim a right to impose our views on the Americans on who should be their President perhaps we should take a closer look at what is happening in our own countries.

Furthermore, is it not strange that “our” opinion always seems to be on the side of the Democrats and the more left-wing and anti-American their rhetoric is, the more “we” seem to like them? Could it be because we are fed a succession of … ahem … inaccurate stories about American politics by our own media and various political pundits? Or could it be that "we" are only a very small proportion of the population?

The latest darling of all those who think they should be involved in American presidential elections is, naturally enough, Barack Obama, who is coming on a whirlwind tour of some European countries, just as soon as he finds out where they are, in order to bolster his credentials as a man who actually knows something about foreign policy.

The Daily Telegraph, which has set itself up to be a cheer-leader for the Democrats, has published two articles on the subject with many more to come, we can be sure. One tells us that Barack Obama will tell Gordon Brown that under his presidency Britain will no longer be America’s “poodle”. In fact, the headline tells us that he will “end Britain’s poodle status”. Is that now a recognized term in international relations?

Presumably there is no point in telling Alex Spillius that Britain’s status was far from poodle-like for many years, and it was Tony Blair’s far from poodle-like influence that dragged the United States through that UN farce before the Iraqi war.

Equally, there is, one assumes, no point in reminding him that far from considering Britain to be a “poodle” Congress saw her as an equal ally and offered a free-trade status. Prime Minister Blair then had to refuse it rather sheepishly because Britain no longer has the right to negotiate her own trade agreements. One wonders whether Mr Spillius actually knows this unimportant little fact.

Of course, facts must not be allowed to get in the way of a the “narrative” as presented by our hacks. Just let’s all pull together and get Obama in and all our problems, such as British mishandling of matters in Basra, as documented by us in this blog in great detail, will be solved. Oh woops, we cannot vote in the American election. That’s so unfair.

Then there is the story of Barack Obama intending to speak by the Brandenburg Gate, a wonderful backdrop to him, as someone from his campaign gushed. Harry de Quetteville explains

The Democratic candidate, who enjoys a 61 percentage point lead over Republican John McCain among Germans in a recent Daily Telegraph poll, has set his sights on a symbolic gathering in Berlin.

Here we go again. How can a man enjoy a 61 percentage lead in a country where where he has never been and where he is not standing for political office? I may add that his lead over John McCain in the country where it matters, the United States, is considerably smaller than that. In some parts of the country it is non-existent.

If his popularity in Germany is genuinely that high (do they even know anything about him or about Senator McCain, who has already travelled practically everywhere in the world, especially where there are American troops?) Senator Obama can only hope that this fact will not reach the American electorate. John Kerry’s boasts about his popularity in Europe did him no good at all in 2004.

Let us hope that the speech will be delivered in German as Barack Obama seems to have been complaining about Americans not speaking other languages while Europeans speak English when they visit the United States. (As he has not so far been anywhere else, except at school in Indonesia and, possibly, on a visit to a college friend in Pakistan, he wouldn’t really know how Europeans behave anywhere else. Then again, unlike the Bush brothers, he does not speak anything apart from English either.)

Meanwhile, as the Telegraph article hints, there has been a certain amount of discussion in Germany about Barack Obama speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, an honour that only actual American Presidents have been accorded so far.

Furthermore, even in Germany, despite the apparent support for the junior senator from Illinois, there is a strong feeling that campaigning should be done at home. By all means, visit other countries and speak to various people but an actual campaigning speech in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate, may be going just a little too far.

Chancellor Merkel and a number of other politicians seem to feel the awkwardness of the situation. After all, there is still an American Administration in place, and as one member of it said, it might be better to show some friendliness towards that, instead of looking to the possible successor. Furthermore, what if Senator McCain wins in November? How will this unnecessary gesture (after all the Brandenburg Gate is hardly the front line of the fight at the moment) will look to him?

The Social-Democrat Mayor of Berlin and other members of the party are, on the other hand, delighted with the idea. This will, they think somewhat mysteriously, improve German-American relations. Not if there is a Republican Administration next year, it won’t.

The other aspect of it is highlighted in what can be described as a rather cynical article in Der Spiegel: the rather lacklustre German Social-Democrat (and a few other) politicians are hoping that some of Obama’s glamour (somewhat tarnished by now in America) will rub off on them.

Of course, they could conceivably make themselves more popular with the electorate by attempting to solve some domestic problems and, above all, by ensuring that Germany’s own real government becomes accountable to the people of that country. But that would ignore the lies that these same people have been peddling for some time.

Spelling it out

He's said nothing new, but M. le president Sarkozy has spelled it out again, this time to MEPs in Strasbourg: there will be no further EU enlargement until the constitutional Lisbon treaty is in the bag.

Sarkozy also said the EU should not press Ireland to have a second referendum, while stressing that there should be no renegotiation on the "hard-forged treaty".

This just re-states the game plan, putting Cowen in the "hot seat", to let him "spontaneously" decide that the Irish actually want a second referendum – which will then carried out in the Spring, in time for the "colleagues" then to celebrate full ratification of the treaty before the euro-elections.

That, at least, is the plan – and so far they are sticking to it.

COMMENT THREAD

Opportunity costs