Media: you read what you are allowed to read

One of our number remarked recently on the absence of any mention of Article 50 from the broad sweep of the legacy media. A quick search proved that to be the case.

Autonomous Mind coincidentally notes the role of Article 50 as an antidote to FUD, the latter from the Goldman Sachs stable. Its report author was careful to avoid any reference to the potential of the Article to enable an equitable settlement to be negotiated, in circumstances which must be deliberate. 

One wonders, though, whether the general absence of comment in the media represents active censorship, which is turn invites dark thoughts of conspiracy between media bosses. 

Before these thoughts are dismissed outright, the emergence of yesterday's piece from Booker provides more than adequate testimony that pieces which contradict the editorial line do get spiked. Active censorship is a fact of life in the media, and everything you read is filtered through the system of editorial approval. 

So it was in the early days of UKIP in the European Parliament, where we found that stories submitted by journalists which mentioned UKIP were edited, and any reference to the party was removed. 

As a result, self-censorship took over. Not uncommonly, journalists would remove quotes attributed to Farage or one other of our MEPs, and similar quotes substituted, bearing the names of Tory MEPs. Daniel Hannan, himself a Tory MEP and then a leader writer for the Telegraph Media Group Ltd, was particularly prone to this, something for which I have never really forgiven him. 

This does remind us though that the current wave of publicity afforded to Farage and his party is neither accidental nor spontaneous. He gets publicity at the pleasure of the media barons - because they permit it. The moment that permission is withdrawn, Farage will disappear into the obscurity from which he emerged. 

That further raises the question as to why Farage is getting such a volume of (largely) favourable publicity, especially as the corporate businesses that run the major newspapers do not share his values or objectives. With the possible exception of the Express none want to withdraw from the EU. Given the opportunity, all will support any renegotiation concluded by Mr Cameron or his successor, no matter how weak it might be. 

An obvious conclusion to draw from this is that Farage, and thereby his members, are being used. Senior Tory members are convinced that he is a convenient stick with which to beat Mr Cameron, who has – for several and different reasons – fallen out of favour with the media barons and their corporate interests. 

Should Cameron at some time rebuild his bridges, or a more acceptable replacement be put in place, Farage will be ditched, leaving UKIP members in the wilderness. At the moment, journalists are being allowed to play, but the moment business gets serious – round about general election time – the teachers will rap the table, and the children will be brought back into line. 

That gives the clue to the treatment of Article 50. On the face of it, invoking the Article, seeking EFTA/EEA membership, and repatriating the acquis offers a sensible, temperate solution to withdrawing from the EU. It minimises any collateral damage and allows trade to continue uninterrupted, without loss. 

And that, of course, is the last thing that the corporates - which include the media interests -actually want. They do not want a solution to the problem, otherwise people might agitate for it, and we could end up actually confronting a successful withdrawal. Thus, they will publicise Farage, under license, but not Article 50. 

Through this dynamic we get the surreal situation where the self-appointed "expert" from Open Europe manages to write a long piece about leaving the EU, without mentioning Article 50 once. It is raised only in the comments by a reader.

The point to emerge from all this is the reminder that we are very far from enjoying a free press in this country. Anything of political significance that you are able to read in the print media is there only because someone decided you should be allowed to read it. 

There may be exceptions, but these only go to prove the rule. A few licensed dissidents – such as Booker - are allowed. They are treated with benign amusement, and kept on because they have high page traffic. But they are kept firmly in the "ghetto" and not allowed to play with the rest of the girls and boys. 

Sadly, though, people – the dwindling band that continue to read newspapers and believe what they say – actually believe that they are well-informed after they have expended so much of their life-energy reading the tat they are permitted to see. 

But they should never forget that most censorship comes not from governments but from the media itself. They have the power to dictate the agendas and they are not at all reticent in using that power. You read only what you are allowed to read. 

COMMENT THREAD

Media: more "accuracy" from the Mail

A tragic accident during a police exercise in Berlin had two Super Pumas landing in sequence near the Olympic Stadium on the Maifeld, the first of the pair – according to Berliner Zeitung - being hit by what looks to be a Eurocopter EC155B, as it came into land.

Witnesses report that the first Super Puma helicopter landed smoothly on the snowy Maifeld. Shortly thereafter, the second Puma landed at a distance of about 30 meters. The pilot had waited until the whirling snow had settled. The third pilot, flying the Eurocopter, had apparently not as much patience. His aircraft crashed into the still-rotating blades of the first Puma.

This, however, is translated by the Daily Mail into a crash between two Puma helicopters - each with 25 police officers in them - even though the photographic record clearly shows one of the stricken machines to be a very much smaller Eurocopter.

This brings us back again to Leveson telling us that mainstream journalists have "a powerful reputation for accuracy" while bloggers and tweeters were "no more than electronic versions of pub gossip".

Once again, though, the Mail offering is another powerful reminder that you simply cannot take anything the legacy media tells you at face value. At the very least, you need to triangulate, referring to independent sources, before an account can be accepted.

Then, one has to observe, if a newspaper cannot even get a simple account of an accident right, what reliance can be placed on accounts of more complex events, where technical issues are involved, and a degree of understanding is required? 

Sadly, the answer is all too obvious. Nothing, but nothing should be entirely trusted, not blogs (including this one), not tweets and most certainly not the legacy media. 

COMMENT THREAD

EU politics: the silence of the media

"You will have heard a lot about horse meat recently" writes Charles Moore in today's Daily Telegraph, something of an understatement, you might think. "Yet", he goes on to say, "you almost certainly will not have heard of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002".

That, of course, is true of the majority of people who rely on the legacy media for their information, but readers of this blog were told about it last Sunday, with a reminder through the week.

The regulation, writes Moore for the benefit of his less-informed readers, "discloses the key fact about this scandal. Supported by Tony Blair's government, Regulation 178 transferred responsibility for food safety from each member state to the EU. It set up the European Food Safety Agency. So the British Government is no longer responsible for the safety of the food that Britons eat".

This brings on confession time for Charles Moore, who admits that: "We in the media do not really want to focus on this fact, because it is more fun to hunt down and blame a British minister".

We have seen this throughout that last week, and indeed in Parliament where Labour MPs – from the same party which in government approved Regulation 178/2002 – have been desperately seeking to pin the blame for the scandal on Owen Peterson and his team.

As for the media, they are still at it in the very paper for which Mr Moore writes. Its editorial todayseeks to draw lessons from the scandal, but not once mentions the role of the EU.

Similarly, Geoffrey Lean, in his column seeks to analyse the cause of the scandal, without once mentioning that food control is an exclusive EU competence. And the europhile Guardian hasJonanna Blythman pontificate about improving food controls, without even once mentioning the EU.

In like mould, the Daily Mail offers: "The unpalatable truth: The horsemeat scandal is a brutal warning that Britain MUST change its ways". This is the paper that turned down the offer of an exclusive interview with Owen Paterson, only to have Dominic Sandbrook write two thousand words on the scandal, also without mentioning the EU.

With not the trace of a blush, Sandbrook tells us that the horsemeat scandal is one of those appalling stories from which nobody emerges well: "Certainly not the suppliers, some of whom will surely face criminal charges. Not the Food Standards Agency, which has proved embarrassingly passive. Not the supermarkets, whose obsession with profit margins has seen them drive prices and standards into the gutter".

His main target, though, is the "Great British public, whose love affair with cheap meat means we have effectively colluded in our own deception". Thus, with the EU not even on the horizon, Sandbrook could not begin to address the failure of the EU's regulatory model. He keeps his newspaper narrowly focused on its "little England" agenda, it having learned absolutely nothing from the events of last week.

Strangely, UKIP – which one might have thought would be shouting from the rooftops that food control is an exclusive EU competence, but all we seem ot have is one press release on the subject, that does not even seem to be on the UKIP website.

Back with Charles Moore, having launched his bombshell, he goes on to discuss the role of Downing Street in this affair and generally. "Horse meat provides only the latest example of the problem about how we are governed just now", he writes. "Everything seems very hard to do. No one really backs up anyone else. Authority does not lie where people think it lies".

For the sentiment expressed in that last sentence, the media bears a great deal of responsibility. And in a week of tumultuous publicity about an issue that lies within the exclusive competence of the EU, the general media not only seems to have learned nothing, it evidently wants to know nothing of how we are governed.

Still less is it prepared to tell the British people anything of such matters.


COMMENT THREAD

The media just don't get it

It used to be the case that one took some note of leaders in the newspapers, but these days the offerings seem so trite that one just pops in occasionally to sneer and jeer.

So it is with the Failygraph of "Spitfire" fame, which is proving consistently worthy of its nickname, its current leader on the water shortages being a model of superficiality. It shallowness competes with the reservoir it depicts. 

Not for this newspaper is there any thought that the current rainfall deficit is well within normal variation.  Nor is there any talk of the fact that the population has increased since privatisation by a factor greater than the current water shortfall, without there having have been any increase in storage capacity. 

And the question of leakage rates is obviously far too complex for the leader writers, so there is no reminder that just one water company drains away more than the entire annual deficit for the whole country. Such matters have to be left to lowly blogs and the Booker column, unloved and unread by the self-important leader writers. 

Instead, ignoring all these things, ignoring the fact that we have been taken for a ride by the water companies who have been feathering their own nests while failing to invest in upgrading the infrastructure, the paper tells us that we can no longer take our water for granted. 

Instead of hosepipe bans, it suggests that "a better approach would be to let people pay extra for what they use", as well as compulsory metering. 

So, let's get this straight. After being robbed blind by largely foreign-owned water companies, which have taken their consumers for granted, the Failygraph says, out of the kindness of the water companies' hearts, presumably, we should be allowed to pay more actually to get some water from them. 

Is it any wonder that the media, alongside the politicians, are increasingly the subject of derision. 

COMMENT THREAD

Another reminder

Motorways: we've already paid for them through our taxes. Now Cameron wants us to pay again through tolls.

So Cameron wants to "privatise" roads, citing the water industry model as an example of where private ownership enables capital to be liberated to fund new infrastructure projects.

But, given the recent example of the almost complete failure of the water "model", one could be tempted to wonder which planet The Boy inhabits, except we have stopped speculating on this a long time ago – it is a totally fruitless endeavour.

However, the substantive point is that the motorist is already being charged £42 billion annually in taxes, of which a mere £9 billion is returned. The idea of having to pay a second time via tolls is not one that is going to fly (or even drive).

That The Boy can even think of this, much less be incautious enough to cite water as an example, simply demonstrates how completely out of touch he really is. Why he has to keep reminding us though is anyone's guess.

COMMENT THREAD

Warrior down

Six British soldiers were missing and believed to have been killed after their Warrior MICV was hit by an explosion while they were on patrol in Helmand, reports the Reuters news agency.

The soldiers, five from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment and one from the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, were on a mounted patrol when their vehicle was struck.

This brings the total number of British military deaths in the theatre since 2001 to 404, topping the 398 recorded on 13 February when SAC Ryan Tomlin was shot dead while on a routine patrol in the Western Dashte area.

This is the largest number of deaths from a single incident since September 2006 when 14 British personnel were killed in the crash of the Nimrod MR2, and is the most deadly single incident involving Army personnel on ground duties.

Given the significance the media attach to century events, there must be a suspicion that the media-savvy Taliban have mounted a "spectacular" to maximise media impact, and thus the embarrassment for British political leaders.

If that was the case, then - from their perspective - they have chosen well. Although the Warrior is an impressive-looking vehicle, with considerable ballistic protection, it is dangerously vulnerable when exposed to mines and IEDS, reflecting the traditional reluctance of British military specifiers to incorporate such protection in their armoured vehicles.

For its precise role, however, there is nothing else that can provide its combination of off-road mobility and fire power, and it has been a valuable attribute in so-called "kinetic" operations.

Unfortunately, the Taliban have shown themselves only too well aware of British vehicle vulnerabilities and, in this case, seem to have exploited the limitations of the Warrior to particularly deadly effect. The explosion occurred on the main Highway One, a tarmacked surface, so it was almost certainly a culvert bomb of the type that gave our troops in Northern Ireland so many problems.

The incident comes at a times when domestic political stresses are already pre-occupying British leaders, and this stark reminder of a "forgotten" and unpopular war can only serve to reaffirm the political determination to pull out before the next general election.

COMMENT THREAD

We are so lucky

… that we've had all this global warming. It is terrifying to think what it would have been like without it. And it's not just Norway. Alaska has suffered the coldest January on record in some part – although we can happily report that two ships going away from Nome have made it to open waters.

Elsewhere, it has been grim. Temperatures in parts of Ukraine fell to minus 16°C (3°F) during the day and minus 23°C (minus 10°F) in the night. Authorities opened 1,500 shelters to provide food and heat and closed schools and nurseries. More than 17,000 people have sought help in such shelters in the past three days.

In Poland, at least ten people froze to death as the cold reached minus 26°C (minus 15°F) on Monday. Warsaw city authorities decided to place more than 40 heaters in the busiest city transport stops to help waiting passengers keep warm.

City authorities in the Czech capital of Prague set up tents for an estimated 3,000 homeless people. Freezing temperatures also damaged train tracks, slowing railway traffic. In central Serbia, three people died and two more were missing, while 14 municipalities were operating under emergency decrees. Efforts to clear roads blocked by snow were hampered by strong winds and dozens of towns faced power outages.

And the "colleagues" will be looking forward to a bit of warmth (and Polish shale gas) as Gazprom reduces the flow of gas to Europe because of the cold snap. Supplies into Italy via the Austrian border have been reduced by ten percent compared with normal levels.

Although no one is panicking (yet), it is a timely reminder of how close to the brink supplies can get, when Europe relies on Russia for 30 percent of its gas.

COMMENT: "REALITY BITES BACK" THREAD

The charge of the councils

"We froze council tax this year", boasted David Cameron in his speech last Wednesday, "and we are going to freeze it again next year too". But, by talking only of council tax, Cameron has managed to hide from us is what has become one of the best-kept secrets of British politics.

This is the fact, writes Booker, that increasingly in recent years our bloated local authorities have found alternative sources of income which are now earning them as much as they get from Council Tax.

Building on our work, he brings to a wider audience the developments from 40 years ago when the most obvious source of council revenue was the rates, topped up by grants from central government - in return for which we could expect all the services which councils provided.

Largely below the radar, councils have now discovered all sorts of other ways in which they can take money off us, by levying charges, fees and penalties for countless things which used to be free or at least very much cheaper – some of which are actually illegal.

We have become familiar, for instance, with the practice whereby we must now pay for planning applications. I think it would come as a surprise, though, to anyone not familiar with the system that you can find yourself having to pay anything from £150 for a garden shed to £250,000 for a large housing estate.

Of course, we all know about the cost of parking fees and penalties, which earn councils £2 billion a year, and businesses must now pay councils billions to have their waste collected, while tipping fees have gone through the roof.

But what most of us are less familiar with is the proliferation of new licensing charges for everything from pet shops to car boot sales, from riding establishments to "sex establishments" (up to £9,935, plus a yearly renewal fee of £5,000).

Pubs which used to pay a yearly £10 to the local magistrates for their licence, must now pay up to £1,905 to the council (plus £23.50 to notify the council if the landlord dies). Big pop festivals must pay £64,000 for a licence, even before they pay hundreds of thousands more to hire the police.

In 2007 the Lyons report on local government found that more than a quarter of councils were already earning more from such charges than they were from council tax, and this has now risen to the point where "sales, fees, charges" and "other income" now yield £25 billion a year, much the same as Council Tax.

Most of these alternative sources of revenue are sanctioned by central government, but in some instances the "dash for cash" has led councils into activities which are outside the law.

This is the Summonses and Liability Orders scam, where under the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, councils are only permitted to impose "costs reasonably incurred" for the issuing of these orders, which must also under the law be charged for separately.

Booker picks up on one council admitting that the cost of issuing a Reminder Notice, which precedes them, can be as little as £1.22. Yet, as we know, Bradford council charges £80 for issuing the two further documents, which, using the same computerised process, involve no more work than sending out the Reminder.

Many other councils, quite illegally, impose a combined charge of up to £100 for issuing both documents - even though, if the debtor pays in full on receiving the Summons, the Liability Order is not necessary.

In the column, Bradford details spill out, but with 21 verified FOI responses now in, the city remains firmly lodged at the top of our "greed index". The point is made. Now at last, says Booker, we may begin to understand how these "lords of the town halls" can afford to award themselves salaries which make them some of the highest paid people in Britain today.

Nevertheless, these charges will be their undoing. Their greed has got the better of them.

COMMENT THREAD

The £4 million heist

In the last two financial years, over four million pounds has been fraudulently charged to Council Taxpayers, by one local authority alone. Hundreds more councils are also scamming their taxpayers for total sums which may account for several billions in falsely claimed charges.

The £4-million rip-off is from Bradford MDC. which has responded to our preliminary FOI question on charges for Council Tax summonses and liability orders, for the financial years 2010/11 and 2011/12.

For these two years, respectively 48,577 and 25,835 summonses have been issued. Charges levied were £2,428,850.00 (at £50.00 per case) for 2010/11 and then for 2011/12 so far, £1,420,925.00 (at £55.00 per case) has been charged.

As to liability orders, which permit local councils to take enforcement action for non-payment of Council Tax, in 2010/11, 32,428 were issued. So far this financial year, 18,281 have been issued. Sums charged for the two years are, respectively, £810,700.00 and £457,025.00 (at £25.00 per case).

The total charged, therefore, amounts to £5,117,500 – of which £151,827 has been paid to Bradford Magistrates as court fees (at £3 per liability order), with the balance accruing to Bradford council.

Each document amounts to a single sheet of paper sent out second class to Council Tax defaulters. While the regulations, The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 (as amended), permit councils to charge "costs reasonably incurred", industry experts claim that the amounts charged are grossly excessive.

As regards the summonses, although they purport to be court documents, bearing the Royal Arms and the court logo, they are in fact produced by the council on the same equipment as used for producing reminders. In response to a FOI request last year, the Council admitted that they "run several Reminder runs and Summons runs a month".

Lucy Jackson, speaking for Bradford Council, said that reminders were run generally seven days or more after the payment was due. The summonses were then run 15 days or more after the reminders had been issued.

Direct mailing experts estimate that the unit costs of single mailings should fall within the range of 45p to £1.70. On the scale of the mailings undertaken by Bradford, and the insert type, the lower end of the scale would apply. It would certainly be extremely generous to allow £1.00 for each summons in the 75,000 mailing.

This alone accounts for nearly a £3.5 million overcharge for the summonses, and by the time the excess charges for the liability orders is taken into account, the overcharge is well over £4 million.

Nationwide, councils are estimated to levy in the order of £230 million a year in summons and liability order charges and, if that rate had been sustained for the twenty years the regulations have been in force, the cumulative overcharge could run to £4 billion.

However, numbers issued are thought to have increased over the past few years but it seems hardly likely that the overcharging can be less than £1 billion. Groups of volunteers are now mounting a national exercise, using the Freedom of Information Act, to ascertain the precise extent of the overcharging.

In Bradford, Council leader Ian Greenwood, Labour (pictured, top right – centre of pic) has been contacted with the details of his council's overcharging – which has affected some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the community. He has been asked what plans the Council are making to identify the people who have been overcharged, and when they will be repaid,

Of the current cost of £80 for a summons and liability order, taxpayers who have already paid the full amount this year should be entitled to at least a £70 refund.

COMMENT THREAD

A suicide note from the centre

There is one very obvious penalty for not publishing news of a major political protest movement – it remains unknown to the bulk of people, and especially to the political classes who have a tenuous grip on reality at the best of times.

But, as I remarked recently, when you have four million summonses sent out each year in an attempt to gather a tax, and three million people refuse to pay until they receive a court order (and a goodly number then don't pay at all), there is a significant political event going on.

This is, in fact, where the media and the political classes demonstrate their fatal weakness. They will chase after union loud mouths and selected street demonstrations, as if they represent the reality of what is happening in this country, yet ignore the silent protest made by millions of us each year.

Nor even is the scale of that protest being properly recorded – as you might expect … which is why we have launched this probing exercise using FOI. As a reminder, the question we need asked is this, (slightly amended):

Please supply information on the number of Summonses and Liability Orders issued by the Council in respect of Council Tax, for each of the financial years since April 1992 to the present, itemised separately by year and document type, and the total fees charged for each year (specifically for the two documents), again itemised separately by year and document type.

All you need to do is google your own council name, with the addition of "freedom of information" in the search string, and it will bring up a site which will tell you how to contact your council.

Meanwhile, completely detached from a political revolt which is happening under their very noses, the politicians at the centre believe they can milk property taxes even more, blissfully unaware of what is going on, and failing to understand its significance. They seem to think that, because people are not actually out on the streets rioting, their proposals are tenable.

The point we made yesterday though, was that with each hike in the tax, resistance stiffens, more people refuse to pay and it gets harder and more expensive to collect the tax.

If the Lib-Dims in particular thus think that they can ramp up the tax still further, they are mistaken. We are already beginning to get to grips with the latest "weapon" they are deploying against us – the high-intensity bailiff campaign – and short of jailing us by the thousands, they have nowhere else to go. And even that, we aim to circumvent. There are procedural means which can ensure that no person ever goes to jail for withholding tax .

For the moment, therefore, on day four of the Great Siege of Bradford, we are getting the measure of the beast. With nothing on the horizon, the bellicose posturing of the Council has not been translated into any action. Nor, at this stage, do we any longer expect it to.  Bullies, as so often, are also cowards.

Thus, the paper tiger folds when it is challenged, and if the politicians really think they can screw more money out of an increasingly resentful and determined population, they are writing their own suicide notes.

So, incidentally, are the media writing theirs. With the momentum building, unreported, under their very noses, they are proving increasingly irrelevant. If they are not actually reporting major events, people ask, what is the point of having them?

COMMENT THREAD

No longer news

It all started with this, written in concert with Booker. After almost exactly five years, it ends with this and an online advert for second-hand Snatches. If I could afford it, I'd buy one as a reminder, just to make sure people do not forget.

But the heat has already gone, the interest dissipated. Today, Booker's piece on the Snatch gets three comments (at the time of writing). The one on windmills gets forty-four. Even my piece barely got any comments.

Furthermore, some newspapers didn't even bother to report the story. Many that did got it wrong. Now there is no political advantage to be milked from it, dead soldiers and forgotten wars are no longer news.

COMMENT THREAD

The Jamesmobile

In another fine piece, Dellers pimps the Turnballs Report. And therein lies prestige ... when we do feed-in tariffs, many times, we are lucky to get the occasional link. But when the Great Lord does it, the grateful plebs are swarming all over it:

The feed-in tariff mechanism is fast becoming a scandal. Those lucky enough to own buildings large enough on which to install solar panels or enough land for a wind farm have been receiving 30-40p per kwh, for electricity, which is retailed at only 11p. The loss is paid for by a levy on businesses and households. It is astonishing that the Liberals who attach such importance to fairness turn a blind eye to this transfer from poor to rich running to £billions a year. If you live in a council tower block in Lambeth you don't have much opportunity to get your nose into this trough.

That we should have more publicity for what is in fact just a legal way of picking pockets is extremely welcome, so this is not a complaint. And it is most certainly not a swipe at Dellers. He has been extremely generous with his links – unlike the other schissen in the Failygraph, who will rob you blind without as much as a word of thanks.

But it is a reflection of the way the world works ... and an important reminder of how campaigning has to be done. Prestige is everything ... attack the prestige of the enemy, not his message. Likewise, even if through gritted teeth occasionally, one must enhance the prestige of one's allies, if they are contributing to the fight.

COMMENT THREAD

Give us more!

The Kermits are getting seriously wound up about one of their own – one of their élite - being treated like a common criminal. And to explain it all, the New York Times enlists Max Gallo, a prominent historian and commentator.

Says Gallo, "It’s the first time in the history of France that a top-level figure is treated like a common criminal whose guilt is already established". He adds: "But it also manifests an egalitarianism in the American justice system that surprises us in France".

Nevertheless, Gallo poses the question on many lips: "Was it really necessary to do that?" The images struck several commentators as being more akin to scenes from American television crime dramas – dubbed versions enjoy tremendous popularity in France, including "C.S.I. ", known as "Les Experts", and "Law and Order", known as "New York Police Judiciaire" – than from French life.

"It was images from Greek tragedy mixed with those of American TV series", the centrist politician François Bayrou said at a press conference. "Everyone who has seen these images has had their throat tighten, they were so arresting and confounding. It's the destiny of a man that is toppling, with very important consequences for himself, his party, his country".

In truth, if the man is actually innocent, then what he has been through over the last few days is unconscionable, barbaric even. One can quite understand why the finer sensibilities of the Kermits might be offended.

But, on the other hand, he is one of "them". Whether he is guilty or not does not really matter. As a representative of "them", the ritual public humiliation and the suffering of DSK serves a greater purpose. It is a reminder of what we would like to do to them all – would do to them all – given a chance.

Just a few days ago, I republished an example of what a crowd could do when things turn really ugly. Over the last couple of days, we've seen a restrained example of institutional abuse of the élites. Finding DSK guilty will now be just a bonus. The pictures have already have sent their message – and, barbaric or not, our spirits soared when we saw them. And in minds of millions sprang only one further thought: "give us more"!

COMMENT THREAD

Happy Birthday to us

Today is our birthday and we're seven years old ... that much older, that much wiser and ten times uglier. We've put up with seven years of lies and betrayal, promised a referendum on what was the EU's constitutional treaty and which became the Lisbon treaty. Blair promised us a referendum. Brown resiled. Cameron then promised us a referendum. He resiled. All the weasel words in the world will not change that. And nothing will change our view of politicians that did so.

This, then, at a very precocious seven years old, is a blog built on hope and expectation - but sustained by lies and our hatred, yes hatred, of the politicians who uttered them. Having been set up to fight a referendum, we did not expect still to be round to see our seventh birthday, but we are still here and will remain as a vocal reminder to those who lie to us, and cheat us of our rights and democracy.

That is not a happy note for a blog on what should be a happy occasion. These, though, are not happy times. But, as long as we do not outlive our usefulness, we'll do our best to spread some misery to our political enemies and lighten the load for our friends. And we'll look forward to celebrating our eighth.

COMMENT THREAD

The death of satire

A state of near panic grips the power behind EU Referendum as the deadline beckons for the latest book and I realise how much more work there is to do. Measuring work rate over the last couple of weeks, and applying that to the reminder, the task is not going to be finished unless speed is dramatically increased. Hence the low rate of blogging yesterday.

But there is also a sense of the surreal, as I look at the newspapers and other sources of news. I wonder whether much of what I am reading is real, or one vast practical joke, as if 1 April has been extended indefinitely. In this topsy-turvy world, one supposes that there will be one day a year – or half-day – when the stories are true, and we are not being taken for fools. Will they call it "April non-fool's day" or will someone come up with a better title?

That we are descending into the abyss is evidenced by this particular story, although there are many more. This one tells us, the author no doubt keeping an absolutely straight face, that "the only way for the UK renewable energy market to grow to a respectable size comparable with Germany is for it to have the full support of the incumbent government".

We are then told that the fact that large-scale solar PV farms are beginning to appear in the English countryside should be celebrated as a success of the government's Feed in Tariffs (FIT) policy. And then we hear the lament that the scheme is being portrayed as an enemy to microgeneration, with little regard for the fact that large-scale solar PV helps companies to achieve lower costs that can then be passed on to domestic installations.

Here, the opening premise is so barking mad that I have difficulty dealing with it. In fact, I am not sure that I can. Had this appeared on 1 April, I would have smiled knowingly and said to myself, "nice try" – but so obvious that the joke was too transparent to be funny. But this writer is serious – either that, or I've been in a coma for fifty days and no one thought to tell me. That actually could be more plausible than some of the stuff I am reading.

The point, of course is that, as we wrote the day before yesterday, just as German is pulling out of solar subsidies as fast as she can, we have this commentator, with an IQ that is probably lower than the figure on my fridge thermometer, holding Germany up as the shining beacon which we should be striving to emulate.

But it isn't only solar which is having the same effect on writers' brains as would sticking their heads in buckets of liquid nitrogen. There is also the question of wind. Now, you've all heard the term, "soldier's soldier", usually spoken with approval of some wandering brown job. Well, this is the "moron's moron" speaking, Charles Hendry (pictured), to whom the task of differentiating the orifice positioned between the gluteus maximus and the ginglymus would be one of Herculean proportions.

This is the man – if it really is a human being, which is open to debate – that has told MPs that governments have spent £2.2 billion supporting wind power over eight years. Yet with that experience he finds it impossible to predict when windmills will prove profitable without grants.

Here, the one word "never" should be simple enough even for this mental midget to understand, a creature to whom the status of "retard" is a hopelessly unattainable objective. And, if "never" is the answer, then the whole policy falls apart, as the unfortunates who pay the burgeoning electricity bills will be quick to attest.

Despite this, we have in Mr Hendry, the supporter of a notion that we should pay for the erection of up to 20,000 more windmills – as well as putting millions of electric cars on the roads. Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers would make more sense, and would have the added merit of being less visually intrusive.

This now is the land where satire, and especially political satire, is dead. We have bred a whole new generation of self-satirising politicians, a group for whom no endeavour is so wild, or so utterly mad that they could not embrace it as their most dearly-held aspiration. Swift, thou shouldest live now ... if only for you to discover that there are limits to your creative genius, which have long been exceeded.

COMMENT THREAD

Re-writing history

Winston Smith has nothing on the Met Office, which is busy re-writing history in an attempt to convince us that it predicted this awful winter weather. Autonomous Mind is on the case, complete with a reminder of what the Met Office actually did say, in public at least.

The current legend is that the Met Office did know after all – and told the government Cabinet Office. But it did not make its forecast public. That, however, hardly explains why the government budget for winter fuel payments was only £40 million for the whole winter, with the early bout of Arctic weather having triggered £100 million of extra benefits spending by early December.

There is something particularly sinister about this attempt to deceive, and Autonomous Mind is determined to track it down. This needs blowing wide open. Biased BBC is also duly affronted – particularly at the role of Roger Harrabin, who is playing a dark hand in all this - and the admirable Tom Nelson is keeping track of the posts.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

The fluffheads have taken over

There is something rather odd in the amount of coverage the media invested in Gen Dannatt's autobiography, as it certainly does not reflect public interest in the issues he raises. But the uncritical publication of the last excerpt has annoyed a lot of people, and not just me - the piece where the man tells us all how much he wanted to buy Piranha APCs.

Instead of Dannatt's precious Piranhas, however, the Army got Mastiffs, and we now get another reminder of why Dannatt was wrong and a small group of people, including myself, were right. The piece linked says, "A group of soldiers serving with 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment in Afghanistan escaped completely unharmed after the armoured vehicle they were travelling in was struck by an improvised explosive device (IED) in August."

The "armoured vehicle" in which they were travelling was a Mastiff (pictured above). If they had been in a Piranha, most likely they would be dead. And other things Dannatt is saying have people in the know absolutely gobstruck. That a CGS (former) could actually say some of the things he is saying is almost unbelievable. But what is so puzzling is why the media are letting him get away with it.

At least, it was puzzling. Then you see this (see the second paragraph - above) written by this. And I actually expected these morons to be able to understand the relative merits of a Mastiff versus a Piranha? Silly boy! The fluffheads have taken over. We are doomed.

Doomed, I tell you ... totally doomed.

COMMENT THREAD

Hungary's revolt

Ambrose says it augurs ill for Greece. This is the collapse of Hungary's talks with the International Monetary Fund and the EU that we picked up on Sunday. It is a chilly reminder that sovereign debt crises do not end with a rescue package and a click of the fingers. As austerity drags on for year after year, democracies react, he writes.

The thing is, if it is as bad as he makes out, and as bad as I think it is, then it would be on the front page, instead of this meaningless fluff about a "big society". If this goes down, we'll be lucky to have a society at all, unless you count Grozny as a model (pictured).

But then I keep forgetting that our newspapers don't do real news any more, alongside our politicians who don't do real politics. So, when it happens we're likely to get little warning, and we'll be totally stuffed before we even realise it. Whoever said ignorance is bliss?

COMMENT THREAD

Pachauri: the real story ...

Booker reports in his column "a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed 'Glaciergate'".

Partly rehearsed in our previous story, Booker thus brings to a wider audience the remarkable tale of Dr Pachauri who has distanced himself from the IPCC's baseless claim about vanishing glaciers yet is now employing the very man who made those claims.

The piece serves, therefore, as an admirable summary of the multiple posts we have written on the issue, including a reminder that this issue is far more important globally than is indicated by the coverage in the Western media.

To understand why the future of Himalayan glaciers should arouse such peculiar passion, Booker writes, one must recall why they have long been a central icon in global warming campaigners' propaganda. Everything that polar bears have been to the West, the ice of the Himalayas has been – and more – to the East.

This is because, as Mr Gore emphasised in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth, the vast Himalayan ice sheet feeds seven of the world's major river systems, thus helping to provide water to 40 percent of the world's population.

The IPCC's shock prediction in its 2007 report that the likelihood of the glaciers "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high" thus had huge impact in India and other Asian countries, and it is precisely this statement that the IPCC has now been forced to disown.

Booker also reminds us that last November, Dr Raina, the country's most senior glaciologist, published a report for the Indian government showing that the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers had not increased in the past 50 years and that the IPCC's predictions were recklessly alarmist.

He recalls that this provoked the furious reaction from Dr Pachauri that tarred Dr Raina's report as "arrogant" and "voodoo science". Only weeks later came the devastating revelation that the IPCC's own prediction had no scientific foundation.

It was not until last week, when The Sunday Times put the issue firmly in the public domain that RK Pachauri finally began to acknowledge that there was a problem with his IPCC report. But, in typical style, he chose to disown his own report, saying that the offending paragraphs were "the work of independent authors" They're responsible, he said – he had "absolutely no responsibility" for the blunder.

But, now that Pachauri has suffered the humiliation of having to admit that his report was wrong all along, we see revealed the part played in this fiasco by a senior member of his own TERI staff. It appears, concludes Booker, that what we may soon be looking at here is not just "Glaciergate" but "Pachaurigate".

More on Watts up with that?

PACHAURI THREAD

This is not supposed to be happening

I should have saved the local Met Office forecast because, as I recall, the weather was going to turn yesterday and we were going to have rain clearing away the snow. As it is, after a cold, crisp day, we had the longest period of sustained snowfall we have so far had in this cycle (pics above and below). Unless the weather does turn, in Yorkshire we are set to have the first white Christmas in living memory.

And, apart from the travel chaos, which has caused untold misery and disruption, we saw yesterday a possible sign of things to come when The Daily Telegraph reported on how the snow and freezing temperatures have meant that the Brussels sprout harvest has had to abandoned in parts of Norfolk, Lincolnshire and much of the south east of England.


This is also picked up by the Farmers Guardian which has Phillip Effingham, chairman of the British Brassica Growers' Association, telling us: "The last time we had snow like this in the week running up to Christmas was in the mid-1980s "

"We've ground to a halt in Lincolnshire," he says. "It's been impossible to get any mechanical picking done. I think there over the next few days shoppers will notice a real shortage of loose sprouts."

Without mechanical pickers, however, TJ Clements, one of the country’s biggest sprout growers, has had to draft in hundreds of extras workers to pick the harvest. The grower said 10 percent of the crop may have to be destroyed.

This is small beer compared with what more severe weather could do, but it is a timely reminder of the vulnerability of agriculture to cold weather.


Needless to say, there are no strident calls from the warmists, telling us to prepare for the coming cooling, but as we noted only recently, with just a few severe winters we could be in serious trouble. Nothing less than the security of the global food supply is at stake.

According to those self-same warmists, of course, this is not supposed to happen. Food shortages they will predict – but only arising from warming. But the cold is a much more deadly enemy, and it looks as if nature could be about to remind us of that fact.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD