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Climate Change
Blog Archive
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▼
2011
(1596)
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▼
December
(147)
- The invisible revolution
- Hannan loses it
- Find your inner ape
- Spot the difference
- The great and the good?
- What if
- Slow on the uptake
- Why we must leave - 5
- A perfect storm
- Standing up for Britain?
- Slaves to the media
- Home for the stupid
- Why we must leave - 4
- Catching up?
- Burn the boxes
- One-dimensional thinking
- A pre-New Year resolution
- This England?
- Babies at work
- The "bounce" fades
- Christmas greetings from Bradford
- Christmas shenanigans
- Why we must leave - 3
- A retreat into dogma
- Semi-hidden Europe
- Fantasy business
- "Trappists monks" do the Hallelujah Chorus
- Words have meanings
- Have yourself a very merry Christmas
- Why we must leave - 2
- Fantasy politics
- Why we must leave - 1
- A Bill goes to the Commons
- A War of Choice
- No disaster before Christmas
- You can see why
- Soap opera time
- Virgin hypocrisy
- That fantasy veto
- A little more optimistic
- Don't ask an economist for history lessons
- The propaganda continues
- Boring
- Vote for apathy?
- A policy vacuum
- Making a meal of a meal
- Jong-il is dead
- Randall at large
- Running it to the wire
- To the shame of us all
- A lack of rigour
- The truth will out II
- The facts of (political) life
- The truth will out
- Xenophobia
- The forum
- Playing it as a farce
- Nothing more to add
- Superbly put
- The Monnet play
- We need to win
- The fog of Europe
- The collapse of politics
- The yellow in peril
- All rather downbeat
- Ve haff vays
- Hidden Europe
- Now it's official
- Wrong questions
- A force for evil
- Gone missing
- A rum do
- Tribal loyalty
- Not all it seems
- Wow!
- Not even close
- These we kill
- Reality begins to intrude
- A media contrast
- A rare event
- The looting continues
- Courage is not enough
- The story so far
- A statement from the Great Leader
- A phantom veto?
- The agenda all along?
- Electoral deception
- Telling porkies
- From the horse's behind
- Now you see it, now you don't
- A waste of space
- When fantasy becomes reality
- Armageddon deferred
- Authors of our own grief
- Sack Black
- A good start
- Been there before
- It must be true
- An odiferous rat
- An uncertain situation
- Decline and fall
- Walter Mitty territory
- A huge coup de théâtre
- A few points
- Read my lips
- Endless horror?
- The soap opera
- Keeping warm
- A triple betrayal
- A focus on news
- Planting the flag
- Spitting in the soup
- That letter
- Settling down?
- The arrogance of the Anglo-centric élites
- Which is the master race?
- No one listens
- Just leave
- Not a referendum - a veto
- Does he read his own clog?
- The Grand Old Duke of York
- Spot the difference
- A history of failure
- A-level fail
- They are getting there
- For the record
- The tales of tosh
- Civil disobedience
- A lack of political momentum
- A tale of two fantasies
- The Cameron paradox
- Taking candy from a baby
- The arrogance of office
- A disgrace
- Referism at work
- Fairytale?
- The other credibility chasm
- The credibility chasm
- Buying inflation?
- Another milestone
- Quick off the mark
- Danger, part-timer at work
- Never mind the evidence
- Synchronised departures
- Confused signals
- Tory Fail!
- Please let it fail
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▼
December
(147)
Since when did printing money ever do anything in the long-term, other than buy inflation – the wrecker of economies and lives? Yet this is what Ambrose is most earnestly recommending as a temporary "fix" for the solvency crisis in Italy and Spain.
He may well be right in the short-term, but Ambrose goes on to note: "This does not solve the 30pc intra-EMU currency misalignment between North and South, of course". That leads one of his commenters to note, somewhat acerbically, "It's the Eurozone, stupid".
And this is the issue. The more the "colleagues" thrash around, trying to solve an unsolvable crisis, the worse it is going to get. By such means are the pressures building until they become so great that an explosion is inevitable.
But for the moment, short of anything constructive to do, the Great Leaders are indulging in grandstanding. Last night, it was Sarkozy's turn, addressing a 5,000-strong crowd of his faithful in Toulon. Today we have Merkel strutting her stuff and then, on Monday, we have the Merkozy duo, doing an imitation of the Franco-German motor of integration – the power plant recently salvaged from the Trabant pictured.
That then clears the way for the soap opera of the European Council on Friday, condemning hundreds of witless hacks to hours of immeasurable tedium, while the heads of state, etc., play out their charades.
What they are all coming up with now, though, is dribble. The markets have fully sussed that eurozone ministers are mouth and no trousers, Merekel is bound hand and foot by the Karlsruhe judges, and her own receding electoral prospects. Come solution or (more likely) collapse, the likelihood is that she won't be around as chancellor to see it happen.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy isn't playing ball anyway. Reasserting Gallic manhood, he told his faithful last night that: "France will push with Germany for a new European treaty refounding and rethinking the organization of Europe."
So, after 60 years of economic and political integration, rolling out the Monnet method, the dwarf now has the magic potion that will cure all ills. And this, he says, has national governments to continue to hold sway over key strategic and political decision-making in the European Union.
"It is not by going down the path of more supranationality that Europe will be relaunched", he says.
So, we are either back to the Directoire, run by France, the Franco-German Axis or an intergovernmental "core group". None of those will play well in Brussels, where such plans will have all the longevity of a toilet roll in a dysentery clinic.
However, apart from being dismally predictable, even the dwarf seems dimly aware that he has a problem. Deploying understatement of Ango-Saxon proportions, the told his audience yesterday: "We do not hide it. Europe could be swept away by the crisis if it does not get a grip, if it does not change".
The main thing he got wrong there was the "could", but the little man always did lack vision. Perhaps he should have gone to Specsavers. Then he could read Raedwald. And we can always daydream.
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