News values

In projecting the progress of the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, metrics most commonly by the media are the deaths of British soldiers and, more generally, the deaths of other coalition troops. Further "downstream" are reports of the deaths of Afghani citizens, both civilians, members of the security forces and such categories as security guards.

In the hierarchy of death, however, we have long been aware that there has been a ranking applied by the popular media – the emphasis (quite understandably) given to British troops. Much less attention is given to other nationalities and, down the scale, are incidents involving Afghanis, which are often completely unreported.

Much the same applied to the campaign in Iraq, to the extent where the death of even quite prominent Iraqis went unreported, sometimes dropped in favour of more prominent events, especially those with a domestic political content.

This, I remarked upon in Ministry of Defeat, in one instance noting that the murder of a prominent Sunni and his son in Basra – and the kidnap of five others - had gone unreported. The British media had focused on Tony Blair giving evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, where he had been asked whether life was then better for the citizens of Basra than it had been pre-war.

This came up during the Frontline Club meeting yesterday, as an example of my unreasonable criticism of the media, the argument being that the news value of the Blair evidence far outweighed the murder and kidnap of a few Iraqis, even if these crimes had been committed by men in civilian clothes and police uniforms, in a fleet of 10 "official" cars with no number plates.

This, incidentally, had coincided with a six-hour curfew being imposed in Basra in an attempt to stem the growing tide of violence and a report that oil smuggling in southern Iraq had reached epidemic proportions, costing the country an estimated $4 billion a year, followed by yet another report of a rocket attack on a British base – none of which were reported in the British media.

What I had not realised, however, was that the ranking was quite formally structured. In the early days, of the occupation, one news organisation imposed a "tariff", reporting events only if they involved one dead British or American soldier, or five Iraqis. But, as the violence increased, the bar was raised where, to qualify for inclusion in a news report, three US soldiers or 25 Iraqis had to be killed. A British military death, of course, was always reported.

This, in my view, undoubtedly distorted British public perception of events – and indeed misled journalists. Relying on the metric of British military deaths as a comparator, in May 2005 Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele actually wrote that the insurgency barely existed in the south, it having been "quiet for months". British troops could pull out immediately, he declared.

Undeterred, the media is playing the same games in Afghanistan. We know, of course, that the reporting of British troops has been extremely high profile, with the toll reaching 22 for the month.

Yet, in the last two days, four Afghani soldiers have been killed in Helmand, their lives ended by an IED which hit their vehicle, and – in two separate incidents, eight and then four Afghani private security guards were killed, also by roadside bombs in Helmand, the first incident injuring four others. None of these incidents have been reported by the British media. You will have to turn to the official Chinese news agency Xinhuanet for details.

This news, however, is highly significant, for several reasons. First, it points up the perilous insecurity of the roads, where the death toll is actually far greater than the British media would indicate. Secondly, it reminds us of an important, but again ill-reported dynamic – that the Taleban is by no means confining its attacks to foreign security forces. The Afghan forces are at greater risk than our own.

Nor indeed are just the security forces are risk. There is also a steady and largely unreported toll taken of construction workers, another incident recently reported in Khost. And just over a week ago, 13 Afghan road construction workers were kidnapped in Paktia.

All these issues have a much wider significance. On the one hand, the strategic plan for Afghanistan is progressively to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces and, on the other, much depends on the coalition and aid agencies being able to deliver reconstruction. Where both the security forces and construction workers are so much at risk, neither is going to happen, even discounting the unreliability of the local police.

The other significant issue here – one we have noted before – is the media-supported demand to increase helicopter lift for British troops, to enable them to be transported without using the road network, to keep them out of harm's way. Yet, that very process – effectively abandoning the network to the Taleban – could delay progress, by exposing local security forces and others to greater risk.

Meanwhile, in Lashkar Gah, in the city's main bazaar, turban seller Haji Lala says Taleban black is still the most popular colour. "Everyone wants black, like the Taleban. I sell 40 or 50 a month." It may be an indicator of where ordinary people think the province is heading, notes Australian writer Jerome Starkey.

Whichever way the province is heading, it seems not unreasonable to aver that we will not find out from the British media. Whether it is even reasonable to suggest that they should tell us is another matter. The very firm view I heard expressed on Wedenesday was, effectively, that it was not. What matters, it seems, are news values – not the actual news.

COMMENT THREAD

Not even a whimper

As of Friday, the British military presence in Iraq comes to an end. There will be no flags, no parades, no speeches and not even a formal withdrawal – just an administrative mess.

The warning signs were there in June when plans for Britain's final military mission in Iraq were in disarray, with no formal agreement finalised to maintain in place a Royal Navy detachment and upwards of 400 troops after the 31 July deadline, when the bulk of British forces were required to quit Iraq.

On the back of the ejection of the main force, this was the one diplomatic fig-leaf which enabled the British government to keep a toe-hold in the country and thus continue the pretence that we were still welcome.

However, even that has fallen apart. A "draft accord" which had been approved by Iraqi ministers in June allowed only 100 personnel to remain and that had to be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament. But, according to The Guardian, using an agency report, the Parliament has gone into recess without ratifying the instrument, forcing the remaining British personnel to leave the country by Friday.

Officially, of course, they have not left. They are being stationed over the border in Kuwait, pending the resumption of parliamentary business, whence it is hoped that the British detachment will be allowed to return in late September.

Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth is saying that the government has been "deliberately keeping a low public profile" on the issue - so as not to increase the risk to UK forces, he says. It is nothing to do, he might say if asked, with trying to conceal the humiliating prospect of British personnel having to scuttle over the border to avoid physically being ejected.

An MoD spokesman said US troops would stand in for British troops while they were out of the country, and explains that the "pause" is due to a "procedural delay," leaving the MoD website to laud the heroic work of the removal men, as the last ship sails for England with a batch of Mastiffs (pictured), there to be refurbished and sent to Afghanistan.

The Daily Telegraph tells us that the ratification was opposed by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr who stalled the process. That opposition should have come from that source is hardly surprising. But prime minister Maliki cannot have invested a great deal of political capital in trying to push the agreement through, if Muqtada's men were able to stop it going ahead.

The New York Times notes that the other two small remnants of the coalition, the Romanians and Australians, will also be gone on Friday, if not before, leaving the Americans as the sole members of a multi-national force which has seen contributions from 38 separate states.

My guess is that is how the situation will remain. Come September, the ratification will be quietly parked and the well-rested British personnel in Kuwait will be quietly found a flight home, where there will sneak in anonymously, with nothing more said. And that truly will be the end of what has been one of the more inglorious episodes in British military history in recent times.

And we leave not even with a whimper but ejected by a "procedural delay" which even the British government wanted to keep "low profile". Our presence lasted from 20 March 2003, when British troops crossed into Iraq, to 31 July 2009. And, in two days time, it's over.

Note: very light blogging today. Frontline Club beckons, plus other business in London.

COMMENT THREAD

That's journalism!

As another British soldier is reported killed in Afghanistan, two investigative sleuths from The Daily Mail, Tim Shipman and Matthew Hickley, breathlessly tell us that the announcement came "as Lt Col Richardson revealed that American, Dutch and even Australian helicopters are being used to launch British combat operations in Afghanistan." UK forces have used coalition aircraft to "seize areas of ground" from the Taliban, said the Colonel.

The Daily Telegraph goes one further as star reporter Rosa Prince scribes these immortal words:

The Daily Telegraph understands that American Chinooks were used for a combat mission as part of the Panther's Claw operation within the last month. Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand confirmed that UK forces were forced to rely on foreign helicopters.

These fearless hacks can however, shelve their dreams for nominations for the next Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting. The MoD Website for 23 June – nearly a month ago – blandly informs us that:

More than 350 soldiers from The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), have launched an airborne assault into one of the last Taliban strongholds.

Twelve Chinook helicopters, supported by 13 other aircraft including Apache and Black Hawk helicopter gunships, a Spectre gunship, Harrier jets and unmanned drones, dropped the British soldiers into Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, just before midnight on Friday 19 June 2009.

Not only did we rely on helicopters (with the MoD thoughtfully providing a pic – see above), we were "forced" to rely on a USAF Spectre gunship, Harriers (USMC – ours have gone home) and probably US Predator UAVs. Since 90 percent – or thereabouts – close air support is provided by US assets, we are routinely "forced" to rely on F-15s, F-16s, B-1 Lancers, A-10s ...

And then, of course, on the ground, we are "forced" to rely on Danish Leopard II tanks, on their APCs, on Estonian APCs and even the Ex-MoD Mamba mine protected vehicles which we sold off for a song.

But Hey! This is a coalition effort. We are not alone ... and have not been for some time. But then, here's another "scoop". During WWII, the US stripped out the armour from its one and only armoured division and sent the Shermans to the 8th Army. To win the battle of el Alamein, we were "forced" to rely on foreign tanks.

Shock! Hold the front page!

COMMENT THREAD

Rigging the debate

One of the explanations for the unseemly rush to get the Waxman-Markey Bill through Congress is that the warmists are on the back foot. The global warming tide is shifting against them and, before too long, their creed will be consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another of those mad obsessions that periodically grip the masses.

This is certainly the view of the Wall Street Journal which notes with approval how the Australian Senate is giving Kevin Rudd's version of a climate change law a very hard time. Furthermore, it observes, Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public scepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The response of the warmists, however, is nothing if not predictable. Having controlled the agenda for so long, their reaction to the changing tide is to rig the debate, closing down on dissenting voices and suppressing alternative views.

One element of this strategy is recorded by Booker in today's column, where he describes the concerted efforts of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) to prevent one of the world's leading experts on polar bears attending a meeting because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

The group is meeting in Copenhagen under the aegis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, set up – as Booker puts it- "to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming," one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December.

The excluded expert is Dr Mitchell Taylor who has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. His problem is that, more than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

To add to his litany of sins, while Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years, he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

Thus Dr Taylor has been told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – are "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

This is but one example of how the warmists control the agenda, another being offered by Watts up with that, which catalogues measures taken by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suppress dissident voices within its own organisation.

None of this could happen, of course, without the active participation of the media and, in his second piece, Booker refers to Lord Hunt, who last week "made one of the most absurd claims that can ever have been uttered by a British minister."

Solemnly reported by the media, Booker writes, he said that by 2020 he hopes to see thousands more wind turbines round Britain's coasts, capable of producing "25 gigawatts (GW)" of electricity, enough to meet "more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs".

Hunt's ideas are so patently absurd that, had a minister announced that the UK was about to launch a series of manned space shots to the moon to mine green cheese in order to solve the global protein shortage, there would be little to compare between the two.

Booker notes though that perhaps the most disturbing point is that the media dutifully reported Lord Hunt's absurd claims without asking any of the elementary questions that could have revealed that he was talking utter nonsense. One cannot of course expect Opposition MPs to take an intelligent interest in such matters, he writes, but if journalists allow ministers to get away with talking such tosh, the slide into unreality can only continue.

This is a broader point that deserves more attention, touching on an effect we see in defence and elsewhere. The media – as a collective – has its own narratives and as long as an utterance fits with those narratives, it is given an airing. That which goes against the grain is buried.

Currently, the media narrative on climate change is that global warming is real and represents a major threat to the planet and humankind. Similarly, all the woes in the military stem from "under-resourcing" and all problems in Afghanistan will be solved by more "boots on the ground". Thus is the debate rigged, through which means our decline into obscurity, poverty and impotence is managed.

COMMENT THREAD

Clouded reason

One of the most dangerous phenomena of modern times is how the irrational greenies have hijacked the environmental agenda and suborned it in pursuit of their own political aims. No better example of this is offered than in a piece by Peter Schwerdtfeger, emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide, writing in The Australian.

Schwerdtfeger is reviewing the work of internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who asserts that the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection of minute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies carried out by his research group have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall. Thus, humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2.

What seems to be happening is that pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

This and other work is now showing that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi'an in central China has decreased by 20 percent, but rather than "climate change" this is attributable to man-made air pollution during the past 50 years.

The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

The work also shows the "frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas", not least in the Australian Snowy Mountains catchments, where a phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations may have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

The issue here is that targeted measures to limit specific pollution is a common good, and far from being objectionable, is economically as well as ecologically sound. And, by virtue of their very specificity, not only are such measures cheaper than the scatter-gun approach of trying to reduce CO2 measures, their effects are more immediately measurable and there is a true cost-benefit.

However, Schwerdtfeger remarks that the work has so far has been ignored in Australia (and elsewhere) because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions. And thus do the greenies, far from improving the environment, hold back sensible measures and lock us into the tunnel vision of group obsession, perpetuating the very problems they purport to be solving.

Booker and I had a phrase for this ... "the sledgehammer to miss the nut". Perhaps we should take the sledgehammer to the nut(s).

COMMENT THREAD

Being vague

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, lives up to that rhyme again. Before the ending of this parliamentary session he will make a major speech about the changes in foreign policy we are likely to see when he is in place. He does make speeches once every year or so, none of them memorable and all rather vague on matters of reality.

He has given ConHome a taster of what he will say and answered a few questions. Three main changes are being promised:

First, we would create a fully fledged National Security Council, comprising all relevant senior ministers and chaired by the Prime Minister. This would be a decisive break from the sofa style decision making of the last twelve years, which has often led to decisions being made without all the necessary information being considered or understood. Second, we would be firmly opposed to the greater centralisation of power in EU institutions, which reduces democratic accountability in Britain. Third, we would give a greater emphasis than in recent years to the role of the Commonwealth, a unique network covering a quarter of the world's population. These are a few examples but I will be making a major speech defining our whole approach to foreign policy before Parliament rises for the summer recess.

Hmmm. Why do I feel underwhelmed by these ideas? Well, let us have a closer look at them.

Number one is not precisely a policy, more of an administrative arrangement. Creating a National Security Council for no particular reason that I can see is something any Prime Minister and any Foreign Secretary can do at any time without changing or even announcing policies. The two take decisions about foreign policy and whom they consult is entirely up to them.

What of number two? Another Conservative prevarication about the EU, I am afraid. Being “firmly opposed to the greater centralisation of power in EU institutions” is very nice, indeed, but what will they do? Policy implies some action or attempted action and some commitment to a course of those actions.

What will the Conservative government and its Foreign Secretary do to prevent further centralisation of power and what methods will they use to reverse that trend? That is the question Mr Hague ought to be answering; that is the problem he ought to be working on if he wants to be taken seriously as a real Foreign Secretary rather than just a man who will say anything that comes into his head.

Number three may resound with some Conservative core voters but ever fewer, I suspect. What on earth does he mean by giving "a greater emphasis than in recent years to the role of the Commonwealth"? Greater emphasis in what way?

Does he mean that the Commonwealth will put pressure on certain members, such as Zimbabwe to clean up their political act and actually succeed? Because if he believes that I have a very nice bridge I can sell him.

Does he mean some kind of preferential agreements? Apart from the sheer stupidity of that and the unlikelihood of Commonwealth countries changing their trading patterns to suit us (especially as those memories of Britain changing her patterns in the seventies still rankle), there is the minor problem that international trade is EU competence and has been since Britain's accession.

If he is thinking about a defence network then he had better remember that there is this little problem called the United States. At least two important Commonwealth countries, India and Australia, are now major regional powers and have their own agreements and arrangements with the United States. Their interests are in the Pacific Ocean and South-East Asia; their worry is China and its client state, North Korea; their view of the world has little to do with Britain or Europe. Are they really going to change all that and start tugging their forelocks to the British government? I think not.

Does this mean that our future Foreign Secretary really has no idea what foreign policy is or what is going on in the world? I am afraid the rest of the interview, which gives plenty of opportunity for Mr Hague to make rather hackneyed and extremely vague comments about slavery and NATO as well as show his misunderstanding of China merely confirm that. Can't wait for the speech itself.

COMMENT THREAD

Fool's paradise

With Watts up with that exulting in the news of recent snowfalls in North Dakota (the first June falls in sixty years), a Daily Telegraph leader yesterday took the Met Office to task for issuing a weather forecast for 2080. How preposterous it is, the leader stormed, to issue a weather forecast for 71 years hence when the Met Office cannot guarantee getting it right 71 hours from now.

This was precisely the issue which Booker raised last week, noting also the downturn in temperatures which undoubtedly are giving rise to the North Dakota snows.

Yet it is not only this locale which is experiencing unusually cold weather. The delightfully named Carole Cloudwalker informs us of "2-4 inches of snow fall in Cody", in (almost) next door Wyoming. Further north, across the border in Alberta and Saskatchewan this weekend there were reports of six inches of snow on the ground while it was still snowing heavily, with an expectation of eight to ten inches.

In South Africa, unusual snow was also reported, with over an inch of snow in the Eastern Free State (pictured – note the caption), making driving conditions hazardous, with temperatures forecast to plummet.

Australia is experiencing good snow conditions for the opening of its ski season. It is also reported that skiing is well underway with resorts in New Zealand starting early. There is snow in Norway and a fresh fall in Austria - and some in India too. Even in Saudi Arabia there was snow, although this has now melted.

And, on the opposite side of the planet from Australia, last week we saw two inches of snow in the Cairngorms after temperatures on the mountain plunged to 0°C. Hail and snow was expected with winds of up to 30mph and temperatures at 3000ft were not expected to rise above 3°C.

All of this is jolly good fun with which to bait the warmists, but there is also a deadly serious side. Just one report from the Mississippi basin tells us that weather related problems have curtailed spring time planting for corn. Growers have reduced yield per acre prospects for the 2009 crop and projected end stocks to use for 2009/10 corn working toward a record low level dating back to 1999.

We see the same effect further north, where cool weather has pushed growth of Western Canada's wheat and barley crop at least 10 days behind schedule. Late-spring frost has hit and continues to strike the Prairie canola (rapeseed). One pocket of western Manitoba dipped to -4°C and some farmers are considering reseeding.

Similar weather effects are being reported in Brazil, which is considering cutting this year's corn output forecast for a third consecutive time as a frost in central southern states damaged crops. A drop of as much as nine million tons against last year is being expected.

What is extremely disturbing is that we are seeing the beginnings of a trend and, in fact, we were reporting similar woes this time last year. At the time, the message was don't panic … yet.

Despite this the global warming industry ploughs on regardless, continuing its ludicrous propaganda, heedless of the political implications of a prolonged cooling cycle.

And if a global shortage of food is a distinct possibility, the really disturbing thing is that the political classes – including our own – are so fixated with their global warming myth that there is no recognition of or planning for the travails that may well come.

That, above all, may well be the greatest political betrayal of them all, when the world starves because our fatuous politicians cannot even being to deal with reality and remain firmly embedded in their own fool's paradise.

COMMENT THREAD

Where does Britain stand?

Things do seem to be linked with each other. Just as I started reading up on the latest news about Durban II there was a call from the BBC Russian Service. Could I come in and take part in a discussion about the British position? Well, I could certainly take part in a discussion (what else do I do with my life?) but finding out what the British position was might be a little more difficult.

We have written about the first Durban conference and its deranged participants who turned it into an anti-American, anti-Semitic and, generally, anti-Western festival here and here. (The best site on which the whole farce can be followed is UN Watch. At least it would be a farce if it were not so tragic. We are, after all, funding this appalling event.)

After a certain amount of humming and ha-ing, the United States has, it would appear, decided to boycott the Conference, not least because Secretary of State Clinton might not have wanted the sort of abuse that was hurled at her predecessor, Colin Powell, at the original Durban conference.

President Obama's decision may have annoyed the tranzis who, naturally enough, do not like to see their favourite president follow in the footsteps of their least favourite one, but has the support of various members of the House:

Last week a bipartisan group of House members sent a letter to Obama congratulating him for deciding to boycott the meeting, which is scheduled to begin Monday.

"We applaud you for making it clear that the United States will not participate in a conference that undermines freedom of expression and is tainted by an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic agenda," said the letter signed by seven members of Congress.

Voice of America confirms the non-attendance:

State Department Spokesman Robert Wood says the US will boycott the conference "with regret" because of objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration. Wood said Saturday that despite some improvements, it seemed clear the declaration will not address U.S. concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression.

Given that the committee organizing the conference was chaired by Libya, freedom of expression is unlikely to have ever been high on the agenda.

I shall write later on what is going on in Geneva at the Durban II conference and it seems to be rather entertaining. In the meantime, let us have a look at Little Green Footballs, which is listing the countries that are boycotting this noxious event.

Here we go: Australia, Sweden (with Canada and Italy having joined Israel and the United States before), Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. Poland has announced its boycott as well. There may be others but that is plenty.

Wait a minute. There is a country missing. What is Britain's attitude? Clearly, we are not boycotting or Charles Johnson would have noted that fact. Maybe he has simply missed the announcement. After all, even Homer, they tell us, nodded.

No he missed nothing. Not that I would expect him to – I was just trying to let hope win over experience. Britain is ratting on her allies going to the hate-fest Anti-Racism Conference, organized by the committee chaired by Libya at which President Ahmadinejad, for one, is expected to launch his usual anti-Semitic rant and other delegates are expected to applaud or, at least, look neutral. Quite appropriately, that event will take place some time today, the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.

We are not sending a very high level delegation but not a particularly unimportant one either. It is led by Peter Gooderham, British ambassador to the UN in Geneva. A nicely judged effort of fence-sitting diplomatic compromise. According to the official explanation, the Foreign Office is "watching how things will develop".

The spokesman said Britain wanted the conference "to get a collective will to fight racism now" but was "under no illusions about the scale of this challenge."

"We wouldn't be able to support a process that was skewed against the West or other countries," the spokesman said, adding that Britain had certain "red lines" on the issues involved that it would stick to.

"We have argued for the concluding document to have sufficient (content) on the Holocaust and combatting anti-Semitism... we would find it unacceptable if the process seeks to deny or denigrate the Holocaust".

Ah yes, those red lines. How reassuring to hear that phrase again. Remind me, how did it work out last time?

France, apparently, is also sending a delegation and this, according to The Telegraph, shows a rift in the EU. Bernard Kouchner, who is leading the delegation, has warned that they would leave if the Iranian President starts making racist or anti-Semitic comments. Given the man's track record that seems an absolute certainty.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, has made it clear that it would have been better if the EU member states had stayed together and followed a common line, preferably that of a boycott. One must admit, that Common Foreign Policy is not looking very good at the moment. But when did it? I am afraid, in this case we cannot blame the EU for our own government's pusillanimity.

COMMENT THREAD

The politics of stoopid

One thing that does not come over from the growing collection of videos on "police brutality" during the G20 demonstrations is the context. Greenie protestors have developed and refined the art of provocation to a quite remarkable degree, calculated to try the patience of a saint and geared to trigger precisely the responses which have been so assiduously filmed.

As to the demonstrators themselves and their creed, one can only marvel at the police restraint – that there were in fact so few instances of "brutality" when the natural and human instinct would be to irrigate the area liberally with tear gas or something with a more permanent effect.

The nature of the beast is well described in The Australian this week, an atavistic creed which is uniquely damaging to our way of life and our prosperity. Says Christopher Pearson in this newspaper:

The environmental romantics have a loathing and fear of population increase, seek to return to the past and promote pagan superstitions. Well before the crunch of global warming appeared, the environmental romantics hated the modern world despite the fact that in industrial societies we live longer, we are healthier, the air and water are getting cleaner, the area of forests is expanding and we have far greater freedom than in past times. It is the energy-intensive communication systems of the modern world that allow the environmental romantics to spread the word.

Quite how stupid and dangerous these "atavistic romantics" are, however, comes not from the streets of London but from the local US press which reports that "Oklahoma is getting a late dose of winter weather as a storm system pushes through the state, dumping snow across northern and western sections of the state."

Amazingly, the US National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning through Saturday for much west-central, northwest and north-central Oklahoma. A winter storm warning also was in effect through Saturday for southwest, central and northeast Oklahoma.

For the consequences of this weather anomaly, however, you have to read the Tulsa World which tells us that the freezes before this last one have already done serious damage, having devastated Oklahoma's winter wheat. It could end up killing 40 percent to 60 percent of the crop.

Mike Schulte, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, is saying that most wheat fields in the southeastern part of the state had 90 percent of the crop destroyed, adding that only areas close to the Kansas border have avoided most of the damage. "Its real bad out there," Schulte says. "In some places it's a total loss."

Actually, the situation is not that happy in Kansas either and there are disturbing signs beginning to emerge from commodity markets worldwide, with damage and disruption by no means confined to the United States.

As Booker has sought to point out many times in his column, we are no longer seeing a warming trend and, over the last seven years there has in fact been a distinct cooling trend. With the climate models sharply diverging from reality and an ominous quiet sun, there is now real, observable evidence to suggests that we are going to have severe global stress on crop production.

Where there have not been intensive periods of cold, there have been serious floods (pictured) all of which have conspired to reduce crop yields which, this year, could drive down global stocks to critical level.

The possibility of a global food crisis resulting from cooling was one we flagged up last year, almost exactly to the day. The possibility now looks more frighteningly real. But – as we have observed before – the consequences are manageable as long as there is an early and well-directed policy response.

That is the reality of politics – the politics of global (and national) food production – which lies at the heart of our survival and prosperity, and on which the world relies upon for its stability. But, since our politicians have outsourced food policy to Brussels, and our idle political gossips probably think food comes from Tescos, there is absolutely no prospect of the issue being given even momentary thought.

Instead, while the claque is wrapped up in its interminable court gossip, the "atavistic romantics" dominate the streets demanding exactly the opposite of what is required, screaming "police brutality" to an eager audience, when we should be shooting them all before their warmist creed drives us into starvation.

That our political claque can no longer focus on anything that even remotely approaches serious issues – like our survival – is the politics of stoopid.

COMMENT THREAD

The little picture

You can be terribly grand and go for the "big picture", as your canvas on which to portray your world view. But sometimes, the "little picture" is just as revealing. Let me take you through a sequence. First, we see an extract from the The Sunday Times (review section) today:

Next day, the eve of the Musa Qala operation, Jonno tried to fit Kevlar armour plates to the seat of his Vector armoured vehicle. But once they were in place he couldn’t get in with his helmet and kit on. Everyone hated the design of the Vectors. They had a crucial design flaw that made the driver or front passenger (usually the vehicle commander) particularly vulnerable to being killed if the vehicle struck a mine. "It's an absolute death trap. I don’t feel safe in this," said Jonno.

"You've just to get on with it," he was told. Everyone knew the problem all too well.

Sergeant Lee "Jonno" Johnson was killed in a Vector in December 2007, blown apart by a mine. He was not the only one. And it was not as if the MoD was not warned. Let us go back to the Booker column for 29 October 2006 based on information supplied by this blog. Headed: "Our troops will patrol in 'coffins on wheels'". It read:

At the heart of the disaster gathering round Britain's military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is the fact that our Government has in each case sent an inadequate number of troops, hopelessly ill-equipped for the job they faced.

Nothing brings this home more cruelly than the rising number of soldiers who have died because the Ministry of Defence failed to provide them with patrol vehicles properly protected against mines and roadside bombs.

Last week Dutch troops in Afghanistan were supplied with the first of 25 mine-protected Australian Bushmasters, costing £271,000 each.

This means that every other Nato contingent, American, Canadian, German, French and Dutch, now has mine-protected vehicles, but not the British, who still patrol in wholly unsuitable Snatch Land Rovers, like the one destroyed by a suicide bomber in Helmand 10 days ago, in which yet another British soldier died, with a second seriously injured.

The MoD says it will soon be equipping our troops with Pinzgauer Vectors. These are known as "coffins on wheels" because they are in some respects even more vulnerable than the Land Rovers; not least because the driver is sitting right over the wheels when a mine strikes, and because the nature of their armour is such as to confine the effects of a blast within the vehicle, probably killing all inside.

Yet each Vector costs £487,000, nearly twice as much as a Bushmaster. In other words, we are spending a great deal more money to give our men even less protection.

When our Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, was asked on October 18 by Mike Hancock, a Lib Dem MP, what risk assessments had been carried out on the Vector, he would only reply condescendingly that "we do not comment on the details of our vehicles' protection levels".

The Tory spokesman Gerald Howarth, on the other hand, far from recognising the shortcomings of the Pinzgauer, is pictured giving it a glowing testimonial on the makers' website.

Why is this national scandal not on the front page of every newspaper in the land?

More to the point, what were the MPs doing about it? Well, as we know, the Defence Committee eventually got round to asking about the Vector, last year. But there was no mention of the "crucial design flaw". However, in his defence, the committee chairman, James Arbuthnot tells us this:

Nobody had told us as a committee - or so far as I know as individuals - that there were any problems with the Vector, even though we had been going to Iraq and Afghanistan on regular visits and asking about the kit and whether there were any problems. Therefore we had nothing to prompt us to pursue it as an issue.

As for having a proper inquiry about mine protected vehicles, well says Arbuthnot, "We are at the moment choc-a-bloc with inquiries". The sub-text is, of course, that his committee of important MPs is far too er … important to look at unimportant things like saving soldiers' lives. And, in any case, nobody told them nuffink.

They are, needless to say, far too grand to read blogs which might tell them something that they didn't know. Gerald Howarth, for instance, tells us his diary is far to full to allow him the time to read blogs … although we know he is very familiar with Conservative Home, but then that is a political site, whereas we don't do politics.

But, if the Defence Committee owes us an explanation, there are the cohorts of Labour MPs who are equally useless, a subject further explored in today's Sunday Times. In the Atticus column, headed: "The devil may make some work for idle MPs to do", we read:

You'd think MPs would have a lot on their plates at the moment (fine china plates, let's not forget, available on expenses from John Lewis). The government is trying to wrestle the economy to the ground, we're still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Harriet Harman is absolutely not positioning herself for a crack at the Labour leadership.

But according to Tory Nadine Dorries, MPs are bored and don't have enough to do. "We have a bit of a problem here in Westminster," she says. "The business is sterile – that makes for lots of bored MPs."

She blames the prime minister for avoiding issues that might be controversial or would draw attention to government incompetence (which, let's face it, is pretty much everything).

But is that wise, Gordon? "Experience shows that bored Labour MPs are like naughty little schoolboys. And irritable, naughty little boys tend to look around for stones to throw, things to break and new friends to play with."

Now look at this, a debate initiated by Ann Winterton, on the design of military vehicles. Ann was there. The minister was there – because he had to be. And how many "bored" MPs were there, from either party? We can certainly reliably inform you that Nadine Dorries was not.

Interestingly, my piece on parliament as a failed institution did not exactly set the world alight. Too few people actually understand the nature of the problem, but of the political claque, many like it the way it is. It is much easier to report and enjoy the soap opera than get stuck in with hard-edged, detailed scrutiny, which actually requires some research and a great deal of effort.

Thus we turn to another bit of the "little picture", with this in the letter column of The Sunday Telegraph today, from Timothy Stroud of Salisbury in Wiltshire. He writes under the heading, "No laughing matter":

David Cameron warned last week that a full-scale depression is on the cards, marking some sort of turning point for the Tories. They would improve their respectability still further if, when we look at BBC Parliament to watch debates, we did not regularly witness giggling on the Tory front bench as they pull faces at the Government.

Some shadow cabinet members seem to believe they are starring in a live comedy show, judging by the way they act in parliamentary debates. The Tories won't find things so funny if they win the next election and have to face up to the grim realities of three million unemployed or the sad fact that the shadow Treasury team appears out of its depth.

This is not the first time this has been noted and we have made the same point. They giggle while our troops die, because they, like their fellow travellers on the opposite benches, are too idle to do their jobs.

And that, folks, is real politics – which is why nobody is interested. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some work to do.

COMMENT THREAD

Playing games in the bubble

We do not hear so very much about "joined-up thinking" in government these days – presumably because it has been given up as a lost cause. For the gentlemen (and ladies) in the House, however, their task is to mount a general oversight of the affairs of government, which presumably gives them the opportunity to take a wider perspective of issues.

That, unfortunately is not the case. Our wise and dedicated MPs, it seems, fall into exactly the same trap as our masters, thinking along tramlines, totally unable to deal with the bigger picture.

Yet another classic example of this inability is today's much-hyped report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee on the great Chinook disaster – a project started in 1995 which has left us with an expenditure of £422 million for eight aircraft, which originally cost £259 million and have yet to fly operationally.

For sure, it is the job of this committee to examine high expenditure projects and draw conclusions from them – and this the committee has done again. It has already visited this project several times. But what it is not entitled to do – and does not assist by so doing – is to draw lurid conclusions which are not supported by the evidence or for which there are other inferences to be drawn.

However, you can immediately see that the line taken by Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee, is calculated not to bring any light to the subject but simply to create an opportunity for grandstanding. This we see in the publicity, which has The Times reporting "'Troops put at risk' by MoD blunder in deal for Chinooks" and The Daily Telegraph telling us that MoD "Chinook delays 'endanger' troops".

Here, there is a link between the shortage of helicopters on operations and the fact that troops are often as a result required to use less safe modes of transport, exposing them to risk. And there is a case to be made that the absence of helicopter lift was a direct factor in a number of deaths in Afghanistan.

Not least, there was the death of Jack Sadler, killed by an explosion as he was riding in a Wimik while escorting a slow-moving convoy of guns which could have been quickly and efficiently delivered by helicopter.

But the point here is that these deaths occurred ten years or more after the original Chinook order, and many years after 2001 when it was evident that the project was going belly-up. The fault, therefore, lies in the failure then to make alternative provisions for airlift to make up for the shortfall of capacity represented by the non-availability of these machines.

On this, we have charted endlessly the availability of alternatives and pointed out that there were many different options that could have been taken. That the MoD consistently refused to take up any of these lies at the heart of the airlift shortage.

But what is sinister about this, and Mr Leigh's pathetic attempts at self-aggrandisement, is that this issue was explored in the oral questioning by the committee. Led by Ian Davidson, we thus see this exchange:

Q138 Mr Davidson: Was there nobody else, Australia, New Zealand, anybody else at all from whom we could have borrowed stuff?

Sir Bill Jeffrey: The truth is that in the two significant campaigns that we, the Americans, the Australians and others are engaged in, helicopter support resources of this kind are at a premium. In fact, there is in my view a strong need to persuade NATO allies in particular to be ready to deploy their own helicopter capability on their own account. At the point in time you are referring to, we did explore with Americans in particular and we found it just was not possible.

Q139 Mr Davidson: In the same way that it would appear the French want to borrow our aircraft carriers, if you read the front page of The Sun—and it must be true because it is in The Sun—there was nobody from whom we could tap helicopters at the time then?

Sir Bill Jeffrey: No.

Sir Bill Jeffrey is currently Permanent Secretary for the MoD, its most senior civil servant, made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2007 New Year Honours List. It cannot be said of Sir Bill that he actually lied. Most probably, there was nobody from whom we could have borrowed helicopters. But there were most certainly many opportunities to lease helicopters. Jeffrey was being somewhat economical with the actualité.

However, had Davidson been better briefed – or had he or any other members of the committee got off their idle arses and done some homework – they could have picked Jeffrey up on this, and got to the bottom of the issue.

This is not what our gilded MPs are all about these days. As long as Mr Edward Leigh can get his name in the papers with a lurid headline, the committee has served its purpose. As for ensuring that our troops are properly equipped, so that they do not have to die, well that is hardly of any importance at all.

But, if we want to play Mr Leigh's games, it is useful to note that, buried in the oral evidence – but not highlighted by the media – were some interesting snippets of information. The original request from the RAF for Special Forces helicopters was formally made in 1994, for the CH-47E (more correctly, the MH-47E). This was turned down by the then defence procurement minister, on cost-cutting grounds. From that stemmed the decision to adapt the eight HC Mk2s, a decision which led directly to this procurement debacle.

And the minister who made the decision? Ah! The Conservative colleague of Mr Leigh, Mr James Arbuthnot, currently chairman of the Defence select committee. It is he who so recently labelled the FRES project a "fiasco". Well, it seems it takes one to know one.

I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

Distorted values

I think that we were all shocked by the ferocity and scale of the forest fires experienced in Victoria, and the appalling number of deaths. In the back of my mind, though, the thought occurred that there was more to it than met the eye – and that turns out to be the case.

Miranda Devine has a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald headed, "Green ideas must take blame for deaths", making it clear that she has no doubts as to where the blame lies.

Her case is persuasive. Not least, she cites Scott Gentle, the Victorian manager of Timber Communities Australia. He actually lives in Healesville where some of the fires broke out and in July 2007 gave testimony to a Victorian parliamentary bushfire inquiry. Then he said:

Living in an area like Healesville, whether because of dumb luck or whatever, we have not experienced a fire … since … about 1963. God help us if we ever do, because it will make Ash Wednesday look like a picnic.

Gentle had complained of obstruction from green local government authorities of any type of fire mitigation strategies. He told of green interference at Kinglake - at the epicentre of Saturday's disaster, where at least 147 people died - during a smaller fire there in 2007:

The contractors were out working on the fire lines. They put in containment lines and cleared off some of the fire trails. Two weeks later that fire broke out, but unfortunately those trails had been blocked up again [by greens] to turn it back to its natural state … Instances like that are just too numerous to mention. Governments … have been in too much of a rush to appease green idealism … This thing about locking up forests is just not working.

The Kinglake area, we are told by Devine, was a nature-loving community of tree-changers, organic farmers and artists to the north of Melbourne. A council committed to reducing carbon emissions dominates the Nillumbik shire, a so-called "green wedge" area, where restrictions on removing vegetation around houses reportedly added to the dangers.

She also tells us that in nearby St Andrews, where more than 20 people are believed to have died, surviving residents have spoken angrily of "greenies" who prevented them from cutting back trees near their property, including in one case, a tea tree that went "whoomp". Dr Phil Cheney, the former head of a bushfire research unit and one of the pioneers of prescribed burning, said that if the fire-ravaged Victorian areas had been hazard-reduced, the flames would not have been as intense.

The communities most affected were built among tall forests of messmate stringy bark trees which pose a special fire hazard, with peeling bark creating firebrands that carry fire five kilometres out. "The only way to reduce the flammability of the bark is by prescribed burning" every five to seven years, Cheney says.

He estimates between 35 and 50 tonnes a hectare of dry fuel were waiting to be gobbled up by the inferno. Fuel loads above about eight tonnes a hectare are considered a fire hazard. A federal parliamentary inquiry into bushfires in 2003 heard that a fourfold increase in ground fuel leads to a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.

There are other accounts of the malign effect of "green" intervention, such as here, which records how angry residents have accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner - whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze - criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

Then we get this, where bushfire expert David Packham at Melbourne's Monash University also blames green groups. He says their opposition to controlled clearance in forests known as burn-offs had allowed leaves, bark and dead wood to build up for decades, providing fuel for the fires.

He told The Australian newspaper, "Elements of the (green) movement are behaving like eco-terrorists, waging war against proscribed burning and fuel management."

None of this can be dismissed. You do not have to look very hard to find any number of papers on the causes of major forest fires, not least this one, published by the FAO, this one written in the aftermath of the spate of fires in France in 1995, and this one co-published by global warming evangelists WWF. That one is especially interesting, as it points to the failure of forest management as a primary cause of fires.

Needless to say, the greenies are jumping on the global warming bandwagon but the more prosaic truth is that they, themselves bear a great deal of responsibility for this tragedy.

In the wider context, it is their distorted values which are in turn distorting public policy at all levels. In big and small ways, they are going to kill us all.

COMMENT THREAD

Pointing in the wrong direction

Given a choice between a heatwave in southern Australia, which is reckoned to have cost the lives of 19 people, and a severe ice storm in mid-Western USA, killing at least 42 people and leaving 1.3 million without power, which story would you run?

Well, for the warmist Telegraph, that is a no-brainer. You run not one, nor two but three stories on Australia in quick succession, making sure all your readers are told that this is the "worst heatwave in more than 150 years", where the temperature has climbed to 43°C for three successive days in Melbourne, about 7°C less than a typical summer in southern Iraq.

What you don't point out is that if it was hotter 150 years ago, then this pre-dates the infamous "global warming", concern for which drives this piece. Just for balance, though, you include two lines telling us, "In the southern areas of the United States, thousands of people were still stuck without power after terrible ice storms."

In those "southern areas" things are bad. In some parts of rural Kentucky, there is no water because the power supply to the water utilities has failed. About a million people were still without electric Friday, and small communities are frantically struggling to help their residents.

Some are asking people to evacuate their homes and head south to find shelter, with tiny Crittenden County housing about 9,000 people in emergency accommodation in the town's elementary school and other public buildings.

The fight to return power to Kentucky and other areas affected by the ice storm is difficult because of the sheer number of outages, but also because of the ice itself. Crews have joined the effort from around the country but, even as conditions ease, it gets worse. As ice is melting, power lines and tree limbs are springing upward and hitting other power lines.

Currently, reports indicate that there is no immediate relief in sight. In Kentucky alone, about 545,000 people are still without electricity, and 200,000 are without mains water systems, three days after the devastating ice storm hit the state.

The wider point, of course – which has been made several times on this blog – is that, between the notional (but non-existent) warming that the greenies are twittering about, and cooling, the latter is far more dangerous. Al Gore and his mate Jim Hansen, in diverting attention to what is increasingly looking like zero possibility, may be doing more damage than can possibly be imagined, by pointing in the wrong direction.

COMMENT THREAD

Collateral damage

Given that there is very little time left for the Bush presidency to make a significant mark on world affairs, given that President-Elect Obama seems to be strangely silent on the Gazan situation (voting "present" perchance) and given Secretary of State Rice's complete inability to understand what goes on in the Middle East, I thought that the United States abstaining on UN Resolution 1860, which was always going to be disregarded by Hamas and is, consequently, disregarded by Israel was as good as we could get.

It seems that the outgoing Secretary of State wanted to support the rather fatuous British proposal but was overruled by the President. So she abstained, explaining that the United States wanted to make sure that the Egyptian proposal (hey, what happened to the French bit of it?) would have a good chance of going through.

John Bolton does not think much of this. If the United States wanted to give the Egyptian proposal, which, incidentally concentrates on Fatah as the negotiating partner, not Hamas, a reasonable chance, there should have been a veto with that explanation. France and Britain, he thinks would have gone along with that, albeit with gritted teeth. As it is, America voted "present", as we know the favoured stand of the President-Elect.

John Bolton, rather gloomily, sees this as the precursor of many similar abstentions. He may well be right, though it is also fair to say that we still know nothing about the next President's views or attitudes as far as foreign policy is concerned. He said a number of contradictory things during the campaign, many of which were rather frightening. Then he appointed Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy expertise he contemptuously decried. Now he is keeping quiet though he is making plenty of pronouncements about more bail-out and yet more bail-out.

It is, however, fair to say that the present Gaza conflict (I doubt if it will be the last but you never know) has claimed a number of collateral casualties and one of them is Secretary of State Rice's reputation - or what was left of it.

When Condi Rice became Secretary of State (black and female, actually a descendant of slaves who grew up in the segregationist and KKK infested south but hey, the earth did not move) I had high hopes, which were based on her professional achievements. Sadly, she, too, fell victim to the State Department's mentality and disappointed many of us.

It was not only her cack-handed and fliberty-gibberty attitude to the Middle Eastern situation that were such a problem, although how anyone with a spark of intelligence could compare a fence put up to protect innocent civilians from suicide/homicide bombers with the segregation of her childhood Alabama remains incomprehensible. Luckily, President Bush stepped in from time to time and prevented her from making too much of a mess.

But Dr Rice's speciality is Russia, the Soviet Union and related matters. Yet she seemed unable to grasp what is going on in that country either. Possibly, those who briefed her from the State Department got it all wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Then again, I don't suppose her successor will be any better. But I should like to register my disappointment.

Today's Wall Street Journal, however, brings us news of a reputation that has been completely ruined by the Gaza conflict, according to the author Alistair MacDonald.

As the death toll in Gaza mounts, the conflict is causing some collateral damage in an unforeseen area: the reputation of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as an international statesman.

During his 10 years as Britain's prime minister, Mr. Blair played a prominent role in events ranging from the Northern Ireland peace process to the Iraq war. Now, though, as Middle East envoy for the Quartet group of the United Nations, the US, the European Union and Russia, he is finding himself marginalized while another European statesman, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, garners the headlines as a joint sponsor with Egypt of a cease-fire proposal.

Alistair MacDonald was appointed last year as the Wall Street Journal's UK politics, economics and European financial regulation correspondent. We shall see a lot of him and his articles, I assume. If this is a fair sample, the prospect does not fill me with joy.

First things first. One can argue about Condi Rice's reputation but Tony Blair's? He certainly spent a lot of time racing round the world, talking to all sorts of people - but an international statesman? On what grounds?

Yes, yes, I know he is about to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom together with former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe but that still does not make him an international or any other kind of statesman.

Mr Blair certainly played a prominent role in the Northern Ireland peace process but that, for Mr MacDonald's information, is not an international matter. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, of which Mr Blair was Prime Minister for ten long years. (My goodness, if this is the calibre of the people hired and/or promoted by the WSJ in the Murdoch empire, I shall have to give up on that newspaper as well.)

In any case, the situation in Northern Ireland where different terrorist-turned-into-criminal gangs control bits of territory is not much to the man's credit.

Tony Blair played a prominent role in the Iraq war and many Americans from President Bush down felt grateful to him. I think that he was right to line up with our greatest ally but his argument for the need to do so was so ridiculously cack-handed (I am beginning to like that expression) that we have done nothing but argue about files and their appearance instead of concentrating on the important issues: is participation in this war in Britain's interest and are we going about it the right way.

The first question was not aired even once, as the words Britain and interest do not figure high in Mr Blair's scheme of life. The second, as we all know from my colleague's meticulous research can have only one answer: absolutely not and, furthermore, we are refusing to learn from our mistakes.

What of Mr Blair as the Middle East envoy with somewhat nebulous tasks and no powers?

Mr. Blair, charged with developing the economies of the West Bank and Gaza, has faced an uphill battle since his appointment in June 2007. Because of security concerns, he hasn't visited Gaza but has focused on negotiating with Israeli and West Bank officials on issues such as removing roadblocks in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, the economies of the territories have declined, leading many to question his effectiveness.

I expect they did and Mr MacDonald quotes at least one "moderate" Palestinian politician who says just that, wording it slightly differently. (How does one get a job like Mr MacDonald's?)

The truth is that if Hamas was not prepared to or could not guarantee Mr Blair's safety then there was no point in taking on the envoyship. Roadblocks are an issue but a bigger one is the internal situation in Gaza and the West Bank, affectionately known as Hamastan and Fatahland, future parts of the coming three-state solution.

Economic development comes from within a country or a society with, naturally enough, links to the outside world. Either Mr Blair does not understand this, in which case he is the wrong person to appoint or he does understand this but does not bother to think beyond today. The latter tended to be his attitude during his premiership, so I am inclined that he jumped into this without bothering to consider the consequences.

As for President Sarkozy, who is so reluctant to relinquish his role as representative of the European Union and go back to solving the problems his own country is facing, it is not entirely clear whether his reputation will not be part of the same collateral damage.

At present he is managing to annoy the Czechs, who feel that they are the ones to conduct negotiations, as they have taken over the EU presidency. This is causing a certain amount of amusement.

Nicolas Sarkozy is a small man, about an inch shorter than Napoleon, with an ego as large as an empire. He also travels the world with a famous wife and a penchant for inserting himself into the center of international crises.

The most recent is the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza, where the peripatetic French president, uninvited by the participants, shuttled between Jerusalem; the West Bank town of Ramallah; Beirut, Lebanon; Damascus; and Sharm al-Shaykh, the Egyptian resort on the Red Sea; attempting to negotiate a cease-fire.

In fact, the cease-fire is now referred to as the Egyptian plan with the French part of it conveniently overlooked. Egypt is, apparently, trying to push Hamas into accepting a truce and the government is not happy with the Hamas leadership. Turkey is also mediating and seems to feel the same way. Hamas is, naturally enough, worried that a truce or a longer-lasting peace will sideline or completely destroy them.

Where is all this is the perpetually moving President Nicolas Sarkozy? Or the EU for that matter? Sigh. Another casualty of collateral damage.

COMMENT THREAD

More chaos and confusion

The news today that oil giant BP has dropped plans to build wind farms and other renewable energy projects in Britain should come as a major wake-up call to our guardians in Whitehall – but it won’t.

The company has shelved ideas of building a UK onshore wind farm at the Isle of Grain in Kent and will not bid for any offshore licences, instead focusing on renewables spending on the United States.

With some projects already in trouble, finding difficulty in attracting investors, the withdrawal of a major player like BP drives the government's renewable energy policy further into the land of fantasy, underlining the fact that we are now relying for our future energy supplies on something which is not only unachievable, but demonstrably so.

The fantasy economics of offshore wind power are well illustrated by news from another front, with RWE agreeing to buy 50 percent of the world's biggest planned offshore wind park from Scottish & Southern UK.

This is the development at Greater Gabbard, in the North Sea off the east coast. It is costed at £1.3 billion, yet will only have an installed capacity of about 500 megawatts and a deliverable capacity of about a third of that. Thus, with a price tag about the same as a modern nuclear plant, it will produce only about an eighth of the power. Even with the renewables obligation subsidy, this does not make sense.

To add to the government's discomfort, BP has also decided to pull out of carbon capture, withdrawing from the UK's competition to set up the world's first commercial-scale plant. The company had been one of four groups of companies shortlisted for the competition, along with consortia led by E.ON, Peel Energy and ScottishPower.

With the government pinning its hopes on "clean coal" as one of its energy policy planks, this must reduce significantly any chances of getting carbon capture into play, further increasing our reliance on gas generation. And here also the news is not good. We are told that much needed expansion of gas storage facilities needed to help the UK weather the vagaries of global energy markets have received a blow with the announcement that two projects have suffered serious setbacks.

One is by Portland Gas, under construction in Dorset. This had been expected to open in the second half of 2011, but is being held up by problems securing financing. The facility was now unlikely to open before March 2012.

Andrew Hindle, the Portland Gas chief executive, said: "The global credit crunch has all but closed off the likelihood of achieving [the 2011] target for the time being and this factor, combined with cutbacks in longer-term spend by industry participants in the sector, has meant that halting the current joint venture funding process is in the best interests of all shareholders."

Reflecting the broader turmoil in the energy market, we also hear of the collapse two small suppliers to the business market, Electricity4Business and BizzEnergy – both of which have gone into administration. This reflects the unstable wholesale prices and the increased cost of credit.

And, to add even more to the joy, The Australian notes that the wonderful EU's emission trading scheme is in trouble – the price of "carbon" has collapsed.

This, says the paper, is making a mockery of Europe's stumbling attempts to lead the world with a market-based carbon strategy. It is causing irritation and frustration to the armies of advisers and investors who seek to cajole utilities into big investments in carbon reduction.

James Cameron, the director of Climate Change Capital, a financial adviser and fund manager, said: "The whole purpose of the ETS is to take carbon out. It's not there to benefit funds or to support trading."

On that, you could have fooled us, as the whole scheme has degenerated into a money-making scam.

But then, this simply reinforces the sense of confusion and disarray which seems to pervade the very fabric of government and commerce. And, as always, it will be us that pays, not only in increased costs but also in the very real risk of the lights going out.

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