An open goal in the making

A thought-provoking piece in The Observer continues the theme we discussed yesterday, this one headed, "Surging food prices put the world on high alert".

Global population growth and a shift from grain-based diets are contributing to a sharp rise in the cost of food, which has already sparked riots in several African countries, is the opening gambit, allowing Richard Wachman to look at "the threats to developed and developing countries and the hurdles in the path of increased productivity."

Wachman echoes our concerns about the effects food shortages might have, telling us that if you: "Scratch beneath the surface of major social or political upheaval - the French or Russian revolutions, Germany's military collapse in 1918 or more recently China's Tiananmen Square - and you will find that food shortages, brought about by crop failure, naval blockade or spiralling prices, lie at the heart of the matter."

No wonder, he writes, that recent steep rises in the cost of basic foodstuffs including wheat, barley, maize, rice, cotton and soya are sending shockwaves around a developed world used to bargain-basement prices at supermarkets. Anecdotal evidence in Britain suggests that people living in deprived areas are reining in expenditure to cut food bills that have been edging higher since 2004.

Actually, as we have continually noted, the interesting thing is that the rises have not cause "shockwaves" – at least in Britain. Over here, the political classes and the media have been remarkably relaxed about the whole issue.

In less developed countries, however, the situation is more serious. Wachman tells us that dearer food has sparked riots in former French west Africa, Yemen and Zimbabwe. In Burkina Faso, one of Africa's poorest countries, troops were called out to quell widespread public disorder. Disturbances have also been reported in Mauritania and Senegal.

Then, with a reference to the situation in China, we get an interesting quote from Robert Ziegler, of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute. He warns that "civil unrest" is possible as people in China are eating more rice than is being produced, and that the cost of rice has doubled to $400 a ton in five years. "We are at a pre-crisis stage," Ziegler says. "The way things are coming together isn't pretty."

The is the second direct warning of food riots we have recorded and, it seems, it is not only China where the problems will arise. Wachman warns that the price of food is heading north for a variety of reasons, but taken together, they represent "a perfect storm". Prices are expected to continue to surge for the next two or three years, perhaps longer.

Thus it is that global food security, he concludes, "is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 21st century". While there is disagreement about how to tackle the problem, few believe that it will diminish in importance in the foreseeable future.

This piece is one of a gaggle produced over the last few days, one other being on the Voice of America website. It offers more predictable fare, with the heading, "Climate Change Threatens Food Supply in Many Regions", referring to a "new study" from Stanford University's Program on Food Security which highlights the threat to food production posed by climate change.

This is worth noting, not least because – despite the current shortages – world food production has in fact increased to record levels. Where there are shortages at the consumer end, it is the response to global warming that has created the problem. If there is a downturn in production next year, it will have been the bad winter affecting much of the nothern hemisphere – cooling rather than warming.

But, when it comes to getting things topsy-turvey, there is no one as skilled as a europhile. One example is John Palmer, a member of the governing board, and former political director, of the European Policy Centre.

Writing in the Guardian's Comment is free, he displays the classic ignorance of the breed with a piece entitled, "Why the CAP finally fits." It is the strap that really gives the game away though: "With global famine looming, it's just as well we have returned to policies that encourage food production," writes Palmer.

It really is bizarre how both friend and foe get this wrong. The CAP never was an instrument for encouraging food production, and it is not now. It always was, primarily, a system for financing surpluses which were already inherent in agriculture before the CAP took effect.

Then, latterly, with successive "reforms" has it become an instrument for discouraging production and only recently – belatedly - have some of the incentives to limit production been slightly relaxed. Thus, it cannot be said, by any measure, that we have returned to policies that encourage food production. That is part of the problem.

Nevertheless, we do agree with Palmer's opening statement, where he writes:

The dramatic escalation of grain prices now feeding through into a wide range of other foodstuffs seems to have taken world leaders completely by surprise. This may also explain, though it certainly does not excuse, their almost complete lack of public response to the new danger of a global hunger pandemic.

That is indeed the case, both at local government level in Whitehall, and (especially) in Brussels where the response has been tardy and inadequate.

Predictably, though, Palmer thinks otherwise. He writes:

Although governments have been reluctant to talk publicly about the looming crisis of food inflation and outright food shortages, the European commission has proved quick to make drastic changes in the management of the (CAP). A year ago, the conventional wisdom was still that the CAP was irresponsibly generating European food surpluses that would then have to be dumped on world markets, undercutting farmers in poor countries in the process. This was, even then, a gross exaggeration: the EU's infamous grain, butter and meat mountains, like its milk and wine lakes, were long gone.

The commission has actually reversed policies designed to encourage farmers to take land out of production and, where possible, to use EU funds to protect the environment and make the countryside more accessible to visitors. During this coming year, farmers are being pressed to reconvert just about every square metre of farmland back to food production. Indeed higher world market prices now offer even smaller farmers genuine relief from years of falling living standards.

He then moves on to condemn the switch of land to biofuel output, adding the comment, "notably in north America", without mentioning the EU's attempt to impose a ten percent quota for biofuels throughout the member states.

And, of course, he puts much of our ailments down to "the global warming crisis", opining that, "the rapidly developing international tensions over energy security and the all-too-possible disaster of worldwide famine are intrinsic parts of the same challenge."

So it is that he thinks we should demand that our political leaders (starting with George Bush) publicly admit the seriousness of the situation. That, we are told, should be followed by a world summit, called by the UN and relevant global agencies, to launch an emergency plan to deal with the consequences of radical food price inflation and possible mass hunger.

In the meantime, concludes Palmer, "we should be grateful that the anti-CAP zealots in this country and others have failed to prevent a return to policies designed to encourage food production."

This really is a classic – even where the EU messes up big-time, it still gets plaudits from its fellow travellers – while the "eurosceptic" community remains silent. Yet, with this and the EU's obsession with global warming, we have in the making the biggest open goal in the history of the Union.

COMMENT THREAD

Why wasn't there more fuss?

Christopher Booker, in his column today suggests that, in years to come, when the British finally wake up to the part played by the Lisbon treaty in setting up the new "government of Europe", they will ask: why wasn't there more fuss about it at the time?

Then referring to last Wednesday's mass lobby of parliament, he notes that there was "something forlorn about the few thousand people" who attended. Compared with the coverage of the five Green protesters who occupied the Palace of Westminster roof that day, their efforts to save what remains of our democracy were ignored.

The charade of the Parliamentary "debates" on the treaty lacks any reference to the appalling mess our new EU system of government is making of every area of policy it has already taken over.

A year ago, he adds, EU political leaders grandiloquently proclaimed a series of targets for "saving the planet" from global warming, from a huge increase in renewable energy (thousands more wind turbines) to a ban on incandescent light bulbs. Today, as world temperatures plummet and much of the world has its worst snowfalls for decades, every part of that 2007 package is in a mess, as one country after another protests that its targets are unachievable. As ever with the EU, vainglorious rhetoric is one thing, practical reality the opposite.

Google "disintegrating turbine", for a video Booker tells us (and see the Letters column - illustrated) for a video of a wind turbine spinning out of control before disintegrating into a useless heap (or see here) - a fine visual metaphor for all our new form of government stands for. And our MPs scarcely seem to notice.

COMMENT THREAD

A gamble succeeds

We make no bones about it. We were extremely dubious about the wisdom of holding private referendums on the constitutional Lisbon treaty. The result was a forgone conclusion – the majority would vote for a referendum, but the key issue was the turnout. A "good" result on a low turnout would, we felt, simply display our weakness.

As it turns out, our fears were not entirely borne out. The results from the ten constituencies announced to day by the I Want a Referendum campaign recorded 152,520 people turning out to vote, representing an overall 36.2 percent turnout – higher than in local elections.

The average turnout for local elections (when not held with general elections) since 1996 is 35.4 percent. Incidentally, the average turnout in referendums on directly elected mayors - including in London - was 30.1 percent.

In the ballot, voters were asked two questions: "Should the United Kingdom hold a national referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty?" and, "Should the United Kingdom approve the EU's Lisbon Treaty?"

Predictably, 88 percent voted yes to the first question and 12 percent voted no. Less than one percent did not answer. In the second question, 89 percent voted against the treaty and eight percent voted in favour. Three percent did not answer. A full table of the results in detail is available here.

Of course, the "antis" will argue that this was a self-selecting majority. There has been a sustained campaign by some of the targeted MPs to denigrate the exercise.

Europe Minister Jim Murphy sent a leaflet to all constituents telling them not to vote. It falsely claimed that the Conservatives had organised it, that if people voted the Conservative Party would know how they individually voted, and implied that a referendum would cost his constituents £110 million.

Bizarrely, when challenged about the misleading leaflet on BBC Scotland he pleaded ignorance about the activity of his own constituency party. He said: "You'd have to ask the Labour party about that."

However, with independent opinion polls consistently showing around four-fifths of those who express an opinion support a referendum, these results are in line with those polls.

Furthermore, as an added bonus, during the course of the campaign two MPs in the seats concerned came out in favour of a referendum. David Heath, Liberal Democrat MP for Somerton and Frome, announced during the campaign that he would defy the party whip and vote for a referendum on the Treaty. Paul Truswell, Labour MP for Pudsey, also announced that he will vote for a referendum.

Needless to say, with a crucial vote in the Commons on Wednesday, when an amendment on a referendum is expected, the Labour tribe – with a few honourable exceptions - will ignore these results and obey their party's whip. Nick Clegg – ex-MEP and commission official – will continue to play his dirty game, and instruct his party to abstain. That will ensure a government victory, despite some of the more honourable members voting against the whip.

Five Tories will vote with the government, defying their own party's whip. These will be David Curry, Ken Clarke, John Gummer and Ian Taylor plus, according to Conservative Home John Bercow – who puts himself still further beyond the pale.

England Expects also reports the results, offering his heartiest congratulations to all involved, then asking, "Now can we start to work as a team?"

That, unfortunately, is unlikely – and is the direct reason for much of our antipathy towards the Open Europe team and thus its I Want a Referendum clone.

Undoubtedly, they are doing good work and much of what they produce is of good value – but not all of it. And, if they continue to treat the campaign as their exclusive domain, they and their supporters can hardly complain if some of us continue to pursue our own line. Unlike the EU, euroscepticism does not require blind adherence to an official mantra.

COMMENT THREAD

Revolving doors

The Hungarian news agency, MTI, has reported that Hungary is now committed to the Nabucco project and the EU energy policy, whose purpose, more or less, if the story of it possibly taking gas from Gazprom is accurate and, more to the point, will be accurate in a year’s time when Russia’s gas production might change.

According to the MTI report:

Ministers Kinga Goncz of foreign affairs, Csaba Kakosy of economy and Janos Veres of finance met reporters after informing the EU and NATO member states' ambassadors about Hungary's energy policy.

Both Kakosy and Goncz emphasised that Hungary would provide "active support" for Nabucco.

Goncz said the Foreign Ministry would set up a post of roving ambassador who will act as a liaison to the countries involved in Nabucco, and promote the implementation of the project.

Which sounds good if we really want to reach a stage when European countries no longer rely exclusively or near-exclusively on Russia for their energy. How does this square with Hungary’s earlier decision to stay as close as possible to Russia economically and, particularly, to Gazprom.

At the time the Budapest Business Journal (BBJ) expressed some scepticism about the decision being a sensible one.

With no shortage of drama, political grandstanding, and perhaps hyperbole, Orbán sought to attack his incumbent opponent Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány where he felt he had the most leverage - the government’s decision to back the pipeline to bring Russian gas under the Black Sea through to Turkey (the Blue Stream extension) - a move which dealt a lethal blow to the rival Nabucco project which would ease energy dependence on Russia.

For countries that have only recently escaped the clutches of Soviet rule (the last Russian soldiers left Hungary in 1991), their hard-earned sovereignty is highly treasured, and for this reason Orbán’s exaggerated characterization of Gyurcsány’s energy policy decisions as a renewed surrender to communism gained so much traction.

But did Gyurcsány’s strategy to earn favor with the Kremlin get Hungary any relief? Or is the country headed toward a new version of Goulash State Corporatism no matter what? Indications point to the latter, as the latest protectionist move by the Hungarian government to allow its largest energy firm, MOL, to block unwelcome foreign bids via „Lex MOL” legislation is raising some eyebrows - illustrating at once a failed energy strategy and Gazprom’s tactics of disaggregation.

Move forward to last week and what do we see in the International Herald Tribune?

Hungary's government on Thursday signed an agreement joining a natural gas pipeline project anchored by Russia — amid calls at home for greater transparency in the deal and worries about Russia's growing influence.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany was in Moscow on Thursday to attend the signing of the deal with Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly, on a joint venture to build the Hungarian section of the South Stream gas pipeline. The pipeline would bring Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria before splitting into several branches to Western Europe.

Understandably, there are worries in Hungary about this deal. The opposition party FIDESZ and the Socialists’ coalition partners, the Free Democrats have raised concerns about the way the deal was negotiated with minimum transparency and about the damage it might do to Hungary’s standing in the EU and the Western alliance, in general.

As in Bulgaria, a deal of this kind raises the spectre of economic over-dependence on Russia in countries that have only recently regained their political (and economic) independence.

US Deputy Secretary of State urged Hungary to put the Nabucco project first and that may account for those pious statements I started this posting with.

Analysts are now putting their money on the South Stream pipeline as opposed to Nabucco, though neither has been built.

"The momentum is really with the South Stream pipeline now," said Andrew Neff, an energy analyst with Global Insight in Ankara, Turkey.

While South Stream and Nabucco could be complementary, "the onus is really going to be on the EU, because we may see some of the commercial support for Nabucco evaporate" as the South Stream project goes forward, Neff said.

The EU has seen efforts to coordinate the political and commercial sides of Nabucco slowed by having to deal simultaneously with the many countries and interests in the 27-member bloc, a complication Russia and Gazprom do not have.

"Gazprom's strategy is to have bilateral agreements with each country separately," said Gergely Boszormenyi Nagy, an analyst at the Perspective Institute in Budapest. "This is one of the most important obstacles to the development of a common EU energy policy, which Russia is knowingly using."

Then again, reliance on Russia producing enough gas and building those pipelines in time may be a little premature. One must recall that production of both gas and oil has fallen sharply in that country in the last couple of years and future extraction is likely to be more difficult both for reasons of geography and because of the gradual exclusion of western partners from major projects.

Also, Russia is a huge consumer of energy as well as exporter and if production falls, decisions will have to be taken as to what comes first: internal or external customers. That famed Putinite “peace and stability” depends on keeping both happy.

As for Hungary and its Prime Minister and his many opponents, we need to keep watching those revolving doors. Who will come out first?

A "shadowy bank"

Heather Stewart in The Observer today reports on, "The shadowy bank that has loaned £150bn of your cash".

This is the European Investment Bank - bigger than the World Bank or the IMF – yet, critics complain, the little-known lender is lavishing taxpayers' money on "pet projects", some of which fly in the face of development priorities.

EIB loans, Stewart writes, "have traditionally been used to support reconstruction projects in the expanding European Union, and that's where much of the cash still goes, from power plants in Germany to railways in Spain."

But, she adds, an increasing proportion - almost €2bn last year, with plans for much more - is now spent in Africa, Latin America and the Mediterranean, often on controversial projects that campaigners say the EIB lacks the expertise to oversee. 'It's basically a huge black hole in the middle of EU development policy,' says Anders Lustgarten, of non-government organisation the Bretton Woods Project.

One interesting example she raises is the case in 2002, when the EU launched a "mining sector diversification strategy" for Zambia, aimed at developing alternatives to copper and cobalt, on which the country is heavily dependent. Yet the EIB's loans still helped to fund a copper and cobalt mine.

Stewart also notes that a number of British-based companies, including BT, National Grid and Jaguar, have benefited from the EIB's largesse: it lent €4.2bn in the UK last year. It has also provided funding for a number of PPP and PFI deals, including schools in Newcastle - and to the doomed Metronet consortium to upgrade the London Underground.

Funnily enough though, there is no mention of the £141 million in loans to the BBC, nor of the EIB's role in promoting European integration. I wonder why.

COMMENT THREAD

"Trust in me"

Whenever I hear politicians talk about trust I think of that wonderful scene in the Disney "Jungle Book" where Kaa, the python, whom I found infinitely more frightening in both the book and the film than Shere Khan, sings to the monkeys:

Trust in me, just in me
Shut your eyes and trust in me
You can sleep safe and sound
Knowing I am around

I thought that during that pathetic episode of Tony Blair and Formula One, when the man actually said in an interview that people could trust him as he was a regular kinda guy. Anything more like a snake-oil salesman's talk I have yet to hear.

Then again, the Boy-King of the Conservative Party has come close. As the Toryboy blog tells us, Cameron has been speaking to Welsh Conservatives on St David’s Day about the need to restore trust in politics and politicians.

My colleague has already written about the subject of trust in connection with the well-meaning letter by a number of younger Conservative MPs. For all of that, the subject bears covering again, especially as there is now a speech by the leader himself.

One cannot help wondering about this sudden interest in the word "trust". This government has not been trusted for some time and neither have politicians or anyone else in the political establishment, which includes the political media. To be fair, very many people who say they don't trust the media do nothing but quote the BBC/Channel 4/selected newspapers without once bothering to scrutinize what they saw/read/heard.

Could it be that the Conservative Party is rather belatedly jumping on the bandwagon that was first rolled by Francis Fukuyama in 1995? If so, they are off base. I did not read the book because I was not completely impressed by his magnum opus "The End of History and the Last Man" but as I understand it from comments, Fukuyama's thesis is that in order to move forward societies must be based on the notion of trust whether this is true in every single case or not.

Without going into the details of the subject, it is clear that this is a large and fascinating topic, of particular interest to those of us who support the Anglosphere. (Perhaps I shall have to read it after all.)

The subject cropped up in the Reith Lectures of 2002, given by Professor Onora O’Neill, now Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve. These I did listen to and came away with a feeling of complete bemusement that a lady with such very impressive credentials in philosophy could talk such mush.

As I recall, the lectures (by this time reduced to 30 minutes or so and turned into a travelling circus) consisted mainly of a prolonged whinge about the lack of trust displayed by the public (that's us) towards the various institutions that had always been trusted in the past. Only someone with no knowledge of literature could believe that politicians, educators of various kind, the law or the police were always trusted in the past.

I have no memory of Professor O'Neill once discussing the need for reciprocity in trust and the importance of deserving it.

Cameron, one must admit, has advanced a little beyond that point of view. He seems to accept, though one hears the reluctance in the tone of the speech, that if politicians are to be trusted they must do something to deserve that.

Problem is, he does not seem to have understood why it is they are distrusted. To put it another way, why it is that the whole political process is distrusted to the point when ever more people opt out completely without even pretending that there might be some way of changing things. To be fair to the Boy again, none of the commenters, apart from my colleague, on the posting seem to have grasped the point either. Instead, there is a great deal of rejoicing in how well Cameron has spoken or some criticism on the edges.

One hears a great deal about the lack of trust in politicians because they do not tell the truth. Did they ever? No, as a matter of fact, they did not. Did politicians of the calibre of Gladstone, Salisbury or Churchill tell lies? You bet they did, not least because telling the truth at certain times demoralizes the country beyond recall.

Often politicians tell lies because politics consists of trying to reconcile irreconcilable interests, for instance those of the country as a whole and the constituency a politician represents. Often they tell lies for less respectable reasons, wanting to get re-elected or staying in power being the most obvious ones.

Are politicians venal? You bet. Nothing annoys the public more than watching those drongoes voting themselves ever higher salaries, expenses and other perks, including a very handsome pension, all of which the ever harder pressed taxpayer has to fund.

To those who say we must go on paying MPs ever more because if we pay peanuts we get monkeys, there are three responses. First of all, when you add up handsome salary, handsome expenses and no supervision we are not talking peanuts; secondly, the number of people who want to be MPs is absolutely enormous, so clearly the conditions are attractive; and thirdly, I’d rather have a bunch of monkeys there than the useless misfits we have now.

Which brings me to the main point not made either by the signatories of that letter or the commenters on the Toryboy blog or by David Cameron himself. You can mess around with salaries, expenses, telling the truth in Budget speeches (that’ll be the day) and getting rid of spin doctors (ditto).

The truth, the harsh, unvarnished truth is that there is no point to the House of Commons or to MPs.

Let us go through it systematically. The House of Commons is supposed to legislate and hold the Executive to account. It never does the latter. The only body within the British constitutional structure that still does it to an extent is the unpaid House of Lords and, with the help of the House of Commons, it has been emasculated and is to be destroyed completely.

Legislation no longer happens in the Commons. Between seventy and eighty per cent of it comes from Brussels, often bypassing Parliament completely. Even if it does hit Parliament, it cannot be rejected. Scrutiny, even if there were time to do it thoroughly, without the right of rejection or amendment is not legislation. It is akin to rearranging those famous deckchairs on the Titanic.

A good deal of the legislation both European and domestic, often intermingled, is produced by quangos, who are also responsible for implementing laws and rules. A good deal of the legislation that does go through Parliament is nothing more than the implementation of rules created by tranzis, starting with the UN and its many off-shoots.

In other words, MPs have abandoned all their duties and, while most people probably do not know the details of the EU or suchlike matters there is a widespread if unfocused understanding that there is no point in voting as that changes nothing. This is not because they are all the same, though that is true as well, but because they, the politicians, are not in a position to change anything and when they tell us otherwise, they are lying on a scale no politician has lied before.

This situation means that there is no trust in the political process either. What is the point of those constitutional structures, worked out over the centuries, if none of them function in any acceptable way?

The other side of the coin is that in the little that has been left to the politicians to deal with, they micromanage. No part of our lives is safe from their grubby little fingers: not education, not behaviour, not whether we need plastic carrier bags or not.

For a lot of people politics begins at home or as near to home as possible. I don’t mean local government, which is often more corrupt than the national one, but local institutions that people should run themselves – charities, organizations, schools, playgroups etc.

It has become impossible to keep politicians, pettifogging regulators and legislators to keep out of any of this. So, people who might contribute a great deal to society by involving themselves in those organizations, do not do so. They opt out and concentrate on their own and their families' lives, while the bureaucrats produce ever more forms and MPs, having voluntarily surrendered all their real powers, fill up their time by passing more and more fiddling legislation that takes up other people's time, money and energy.

No, we do not trust politics or politicians, Mr Cameron and ladies and gentlemen of the Conservative Party. Nor shall we until you at least show some understanding of where the problem lies. Oh and stop fiddling while Rome burns. It is not an edifying sight.

COMMENT THREAD

The real economy

What makes one feel that the economic situation is more dire than some pundits would have you believe is news like this in today's Telegraph which has: "Average grocery shop rises £9 in two years".

The down-page story is by Harry Wallop, the consumer correspondent, who tells us that the price of a basket of staple food items has risen by 17 percent over the past two years. This is an official government estimate that has figures for 20 everyday ingredients, including a packet of mince, a bag of potatoes, a pint of milk and a box of eggs, shows they have climbed from a combined cost of £50.03 at the start of 2006 to £58.74 now.

The weekly increase of £8.71 equates to an extra £453 over the course of a year - and the impact is likely to be more severe for families with children.

That, of course, is the real economy, which has food inflation running at 11.5 percent over the past year instead of the official broader index which would have us believe that inflation is still running below three percent.

As always, the proximate cause is well recognised, Darren Shirley, a food analyst at City firm Shore Capital, telling us: "It is staple lines that are being hit hardest. It's all because of rising global wheat prices, which have been caused by poor harvests and rising demand from China and India. So animal feed has shot up, causing meat prices to rise, as well as any animal by-product such as eggs and dairy."

But, by the time you add the swingeing increases from the utility companies, with energy, water and council taxes all increasing – to say nothing of thing like motor insurance, repair bills and the rest, the headline inflation rate bears no relation to the real thing.

What is doubly worrying is that City experts are beginning to realise that what should be a "near-term spike" in energy and food prices, which should only - in theory - cause just a short-term spike in inflation, might actually lead to longer-term pricing pressures, driving inflation up even further.

To that extent, our "weather watch" is showing the way. It is not only a matter of a short-term period of bad weather, but the attendant crop and livestock losses which are important. These can only add to the pressures on an already tight market.

It must be remembered that China was already having difficulties before the current round of bad weather, with its attendant economic losses, making an already bad situation immeasurably worse.

As a further indication of the global effect of this coming crisis, today’s Washington Post picks up on the effects soaring commodity prices are having on aid programmes – in this case US emergency aid.

This paper is telling us that the US government's humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world's poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is already drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both.

Yet, this is at a time when need has never been greater, with reports coming in of an emergency airlift being mounted to deal with the emergency. This is a country, like Afghanistan, which has been suffering from its harshest winter in a quarter-century and where there is very real hardship.

Despite this, the reality is spelled out by Frank Orzechowski, an adviser for Catholic Relief Services, who is saying that his organisation has calculated that US food aid would drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. His biggest concern is that there are going to be more people being pushed into food insecurity in poor countries at a time when the global community will be less rather than more prepared to cope with the situation.

Whether locally or globally, therefore, we are on the edge of an evolving decline in standards of living which has widespread political implications and which requires urgent and decisive political action.

Instead, as we have remarked, many policies seem to be pulling in the wrong direction while our own politicians (of both sides) seem to be more concerned with navel gazing than addressing this complex but increasingly urgent issue.

This political neglect can only last so long – you simply cannot conceal or ignore a crisis of this magnitude. Sooner of later, the politicians are going to have to address it. The longer they leave it, the harder it is going to be to resolve it – and the greater the political fallout.

COMMENT THREAD

And snow it goes on …

A meddlesome snowstorm mucked up Metro Detroit roadways on Friday morning, depositing 2.7 inches of snow before working its way out of Michigan and on to the East Coast.

Chicago was expecting its 35th measurable snow of the season, well beyond the 30 measurable snows that had occurred in the average complete season since 1928, while New Hampshire was two good snowstorms away from having the snowiest winter on record.

The midwest was also looking forward to breaking a 50-year-old snowfall record for the month of February. With two days to go, one town had recorded 49.9 inches, against the record for February snow at 51.3 inches set in 1958.

Snowfall already had broken several records, including the snowiest December, January and February. The total for the three months, as of today, was 100.1 inches, smashing the previous record of 78 inches set in 1886-87.

In Massachusetts, leap day got off to a frigid start in and if that wasn't enough - heavy snow was in the forecast for much of the state. At 8 am, Logan International Airport in Boston was reporting a temperature of 14 degrees and at Worcester Regional Airport, the mercury stood at 9 degrees (Fahrenheit).

Even colder temperatures were reported in northwestern Massachusetts, with a reading of 1 below zero at Orange Municipal Airport, up from 7-below earlier in the morning. Forecasters were then expect the snow to begin late Friday and continue into Saturday, with some areas receiving as much as 6-12 inches.

A fast moving storm system known as an Alberta Clipper was expected to arrive in New Jersey, with up to six inches of snow predicted for the northwest corner of the state.

So bad was in Medford, a northern suburb of Boston, that a snow emergency was declared.

And, if northern USA and Canada are experiencing record conditions, this is also a world-wide phenomenon. For instance, in Tehran (topmost picture), during 18 days from 10 to 27 January 2008, the minimum temperature in was continuously less than -5ºC; the lowest temperature recorded was -11ºC, while the maximum temperature was below 0ºC for 12 days. The lowest temperature recorded in Iran during this period was -32ºC.

And, while Afghanistan continues to suffer, hundreds of cashmere goats have perished in Kashmir's harshest winter in decades. Thousands more face starvation, with the authorities putting the number of animals at risk of starvation at more than 100,000 as winter stocks of fodder have been covered in snow.

Nomads and Tibetan refugees herd the goats in the remote and barren area. Despite being high in the Himalayas, the Ladakh region usually receives only about 10 centimetres of precipitation a year. However, this year, the Himalayan region witnessed the heaviest snowfall in the last three decades, with about 24 inches of snow accumulating in some places.

A similar crisis is afflicting wild animals snowbound in the Pamir Plateau in northwest China, with some 100,000 animals at risk. The worst winter weather in 50 years has blocked animals' feeding paths and the latest figures suggested that snow covers 400,000 square miles in southern Xinjiang, of which 200,000 had snow cover of more than four inches deep.

And, while the Daily Mail prattled on about plastic bags, to the evident approval of The Guardian, even the far away Snowy Mountains in Australia's New South Wales had taken on a wintry chill after snow fell last night at the ski resorts of Perisher Blue and Thredbo.

A light dusting of snow blanketed the ski resorts overnight as temperatures dropped to a low of minus 3.8 degrees Celcius at Perisher and minus 3 degrees at Thredbo. Weather forecasters are already predicting a bumper snow season for 2008. Temperatures are expected to remain low with persistent precipitation throughout winter.

"We have barely had a summer this year," said Gary Grant, Perisher Blue's general manager of marketing. "It's felt as though it's remained cold since the end of the 2007 season, apart from a few warm days, there air has always had a nip in it."

All this has the Wall Street Journal noting that cooler weather has the blogosphere alight with speculation about the climate's real changes, nicely timed for the climate change sceptics conference which starts Monday in New York – where heavy snow is expected over the weekend.

I guess the delegates will not be talking about 2nd Lt. Harry Wales, to whom the media have so far devoted 3,018 3,444 3,874 4,079 4,235 4,460 5,115 stories, as recorded by Google News.

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More on the mass lobby and the House of Lords

My colleague has already posted on Wednesday's lobbying of MPs, the unfortunate episode of the Green rooftop protest (which will get them absolutely nowhere, I am happy to say) and on Iain Martin’s article with which this blog is broadly in agreement.

I have little to add though I spent a couple of hours there. It was remarkably well attended, given that it was mid-week and whoever came had to take half a day or a day out of their schedule. As a good many people who queued were clearly of working age and equally clearly in employment, that says something. [Both pictures are from the I want a referendum site.]

The posters looked very professional as did the balloons, much as I hate the wretched things. They always burst and there are always children crying. But, let me say it again, fancy dress looks charming on young children and funny on teenagers. It looks stupid and hideous on middle-aged ladies and gentlemen. What will it take for some eurosceptics to realize that dressing up as Britannia or John Bull is counterproductive?

In the short run this will achieve nothing. The House of Commons will not pass a referendum amendment. The obvious purpose of exercise like this is to make the troops feel that they are trying to do something, fighting skirmishes if not major battles. As military commanders always say, it is important to keep the troops’ morale high by activity.

The real battle, as I have said before, will be in the House of Lords and, as it happens, some of us heard a talk about that at the Bruges Group the same evening. It was a somewhat muddled event, which tends to happen when Tory MPs get involved in arrangements. Come to think of it, make that all MPs.

The original plan was to have Bill Cash MP and Richard Younger-Ross MP, Lib-Dim Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport address the multitudes. In fact, Cllr Steve Radford of the real Liberal Party moseyed along just to heckle Mr Younger-Ross. He was sorely disappointed as Mr Y-R announced that he would be late then that he would not come at all because of family matters. The chairman, Barry Legg, wondered whether it had anything to do with the disgraceful events in the House the previous day.

Let me state it for the record: the Deputy Speaker was entirely right and the Lib-Dims behaved abominably. They had already been told that their so-called amendment, really a distraction from the main issue, cannot be tabled as it had nothing to do with the actual debate. If they want to pass a law for an in/out referendum they can do so another time.

Storming petulantly out of the Chamber when your spokesman has been properly chastised from the Speaker’s Chair is infantile behaviour. People who thought it was clever have no respect for or understanding of the parliamentary idea, regardless of who happens to be inhabiting it now. And if you think it was ever different, read some history.

Anyway, back to the Bruges Group. The next thing that happened was Mr Cash pulling out as he was going to bore everyone speak on the Lisbon Treaty in the House. Robert Oulds, the Director, desperately called round and Lord Pearson of Rannoch agreed, very nobly, to step in at the last minute.

I shall write about his speech in a minute. Let me just add that as we were winding up question-time (and some members of the audience need to learn the difference between questions and statements but that’s by the by) Bill Cash MP and John Hayes MP turned up to speak, presumably because the entertainment in the House of Commons had finished.

Their speeches were entirely unmemorable except for the number of times the word “I” came up in them. MPs are incapable of seeing anything except their own performance and that in an overwhelmingly rosy light.

Oh and there was the wonderful episode of Sir Ivan Lawrence QC neatly skewering John Hayes MP, who pompously and long-windedly refused to explain why the Conservative Party thinks it is better for the UK to stay in the European Union than to get out. Presumably, they do not know and cannot think beyond their current mantra.

Lord Pearson’s own talk was of great interest as he outlined what might or might not happen in the House of Lords where there are no guillotines and the debate will carry on for as long as will be agreed.

(Mind you, with Bill Cash announcing that he spoke in the Commons every day of the debate at length and in great detail, I suddenly saw a new and urgent reason for cutting the promised 22 days to just 11.)

The important amendment is, naturally enough, the referendum one and this is still being worked on in the background. It is, for example, essential to work out who should sign that amendment because, as Lord Pearson put it, their lordships do not necessarily read all the material that comes their way but they do look at the signatories of amendments to decide whether these are people they want to follow.

Secondly, a great deal of work will have to be done among the cross-bench peers who, as another eurosceptic member of the Upper House told me, now consist of very many of the great and the good. We all know how the great and the good are likely to behave – in an ovine fashion.

Numbers matter. If there is a three-line whip for Labour and Lib-Dim peers (the latter is now becoming more questionable since it is not clear what if any whip there will be on the subject in the Lower House) then they will have a majority over the Conservatives, particularly as there are likely to be some rebels who will not vote for the amendment.

So a majority of 90 is needed, largely from the cross-benches. Work on that is in progress.

Then we come to the problems of what happens to the amendment, for even if their lordships pass it, that will not be the end of the matter. It will go to the House of Commons, who will, undoubtedly, reject it and there will be the famous ping-ponging between the Houses, with their lordships needing to keep their collected nerve. As this applies to the Conservative whips as well, I am not very sanguine. Really, a larger majority than 90 would be a good idea.

Then, Lord Pearson said, we come to a fork in the road. Suppose the referendum amendment goes through and we have one. As it happens, the first effect will be that ratification of the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty will be held up with unforeseen consequences but he did not discuss that.

Nor did he discuss the possibility that we might lose the referendum. But, suppose, we win it. In Lord Pearson’s opinion, and he has been quite consistent on this for years, we would then be faced with a situation not dissimilar to the mess that followed the Dutch and French referendums.

The government is not going to call a halt to the treaty and the opposition is unlikely to demand it particularly strongly. It is unlikely that we shall simply be given a few opt-outs. Instead, some of the Articles will be pushed through by stealth or, rather, with nobody paying any attention in the general rejoicing, and in a year or so, another IGC will come up with another treaty on which there will most definitely not be a referendum.

Net result would probably be worse for us, though I am not sure he has taken into account the fact that each IGC has been considerably more difficult for the colleagues than the one before it. The idea of another one appals them.

If, on the other hand, the referendum amendment is lost, then, paradoxically, according to his lordship, we shall be better off with the huge discontent that is rolling across the whole of the European Union (and Lord Pearson is against the whole shebang not just Britain’s membership of it) the tensions will increase and it will implode.

That is working on good Leninist principles and I can’t say I disagree with him. While we must all concentrate on the fight for a referendum at the moment, as it focuses people’s attention, it is not, in the opinion of this blog, necessarily the right response. There are too many imponderables and there is the undoubted problems that a no vote will change very little. It is, perhaps, better to show the whole process up for what it is and affirm the cowardice of the europhiliacs who must, somewhere deep down, realize that their cause is unpopular.

The other aspect of Lord Pearson’s presentation was his fight with the BBC. My colleague has already written about it. All I need to add is a link to Global Britain, a website that is more or less under Lord Pearson’s control (at one remove – no-one can accuse his lordship of being computer-literate), which will have the latest report of the Editorial Standards Committee as soon as it is technically possible and already has his letters to that organization.

In the meantime, with the express permission of Lord Pearson, I am putting up his letter to Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust Unit, here:

Sir Michael Lyons
Chairman
BBC Trust Unit
Room 211
35 Marylebone High Street
London W1U 4AA
27th February 2008

BBC and “Europe”

Your Editorial Standards Committee is publishing tomorrow (at last) its decision on Global Britain’s complaint against the Today Programme’s coverage of the EU from September to December 2006. As with previous complaints, that complaint was based on detailed analysis by Minotaur Media Tracking (David Keighley and colleagues).

We have not had time to respond to the ESC’s report in detail, but it is clearly a whitewash. The Committee has adopted without query their independent assessor’s report; I cannot help feeling it is regrettable that they chose someone who was employed by the BBC for 20 years.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the ESC’s judgment is its acceptance that programme staff are judge and jury on editorial matters. There is therefore no independent judgment on the real issues underlying the ‘European’ debate, no attempt to find out and expose how the project of European integration is being driven. The ESC does not accept that the BBC, with its uniquely privileged position, should take the lead in this, and make the news agenda, instead of being content to follow the Brussels PR machine. So Mark Mardell, the Europe Editor appointed to provide deeper coverage in the wake of the Wilson Report, appeared only 3 times in the 4 months.

The ESC accepts that nothing much was going on in the period under review, justifying Today’s return to pre-Wilson Report levels of coverage. But much was happening; the whole Constitution was being revived, with its attendant issues of immigration, justice and home affairs, over-regulation, foreign policy, national vetoes and much else. Surely the BBC has a duty to expose these things while they are in the melting pot, not just wait until they emerge in the shape of a Treaty which can only be wholly accepted or rejected by Parliament? There was no substantive discussion of the EU Constitution during the entire survey period, and Today didn’t feature the December 06 Summit at all, except for two brief bulletins.

We have continued to monitor Today since December 2006, and I fear the picture remains the same. It managed to spend 4 times as much time on the Glastonbury festival as it did on the June 2007 EU summit. When it did run a feature on the scandal of the Common Fisheries Policy, it omitted to mention that the policy is imposed by Brussels. And so it goes on.

I will write gain with a detailed rebuttal of the ESC’s report. I hope this will be helpful to you and the Trustees.

Yours sincerely,

Lord Pearson of Rannoch

As they say on the other side of the Pond: enjoy.

The real news from Afghanistan

Published by Russian news site is the news of an unfolding humanitarian disaster in … Afghanistan.

While the world’s media is besotted with the story of 2nd Lt. Harry Wales spending ten weeks in the south of the country (2,391 articles posted on Google News so far), to the north and west, around 1,300 people have died as a result of the freezing weather. Furthermore, this weather continues to cause havoc, with heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures hitting 17 of the country's 34 provinces.

For Afghanistan, as elsewhere, this winter is the coldest in the last 30 years. Temperatures have reached lows of -30 degrees Centigrade (-22 Fahrenheit). Some northern regions have been without food and medical supplies for over two months.

On February 20, the death toll since the cold struck in December had risen to over 1,100 with around 200 dying in the past week and hundreds losing their limbs from severe frostbite. More than half of the casualties have been reported in the western province of Herat, but with so many regions cut off it is hard to get a true picture of the devastation.

Local authorities in some of the most remote provinces say they have received no aid from the government.

There has also been devastation in the livestock industry. The agriculture ministry is reporting that over 316,000 cattle have died. Many farmers have been left with no fodder to feed their animals and are being forced to sell their livestock at rock-bottom prices.

People in Afghanistan's northern provinces, stricken with hunger and cold, have apparently even taken to selling their children to buy food and fuel. At least six cases have been reported in the Baghlan province.

Aid workers have also reported being attacked by starving Afghan mountain dwellers and the pain is by no means over. Local meteorologists are saying that over half of the country would be hit by severe flooding when the snow began melting.

And now, back to London where the BBC continues to take a close interest in weather conditions. It tells us we have had the sunniest February on record with, in many areas, the daffodils coming out early.

Please, somebody, tell me that the media has got its news values right!

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