Dial 112 for European unity

Today is 11 February which, expressed in numerical form is 11/2 – something which the EU commission could not let pass – 112 being the single European emergency number.

It has therefore launched a new initiative, calling for "EU citizens" to be "better informed" about the number.

To the commission's alarm, it appears that only 22 percent of its ungrateful "citizens" can spontaneously identify 112 as the number to call for emergency services anywhere in the EU. Thus, it tells us, a recent EU-wide survey has found that there is significant room for national authorities "to better inform their citizens". This is an interesting mix of phrasing – when the EU wants the member states to do something, these mythical "EU citizens" suddenly become "their citizens".

That aside, the number – which was first introduced in 1991 so that "travellers in Europe would be able to dial just one number, rather than having to memorise a different one for each country" - has since 2003 also been available on mobiles in 26 of the 27 member states.

Despite that, it has languished in obscurity with Booker reporting in 2003 that that, after its introduction to Britain in 1994, this led to 500,000 calls of which only 500 proved genuine. Most were either "silent calls" or resulted from misdialling, yet the police had to waste untold hours answering each one.

Such callous disregard for the benefits of membership of the European Union could not, of course, be tolerated by the "colleagues" in the EU Parliament who – led by Lib Dim MEP Diana Wallis, last year, demanded that the commission "do something".

Hence the new initiative and, from today, should your mansion burn down or your manservant or maid get run down by an automobile, the commission would much prefer you to dial their number instead of 999 – all in the interests of European unity. We are sure you will all be happy to oblige.

COMMENT THREAD

A silent edit?

Visiting Google News, as one does, the eye lit upon a link to a BBC story (illustrated) headed "EU delays Chad peacekeeping force". This is no more or less than the truth but, for the BBC represents a rare moment of candour which reveals its beloved EU in a less than favourable light.

Obviously, such negativity cannot be tolerated within the portals of Broadcasting House so, clearly, a deft piece of re-writing has taken place.

On clicking though to read the BBC story, we find not the negativity advertised by Google but a completely different, more upbeat headline, telling us that, "EU plans resumption of Chad force" (illustrated).

Thus does the BBC tell us that the EU "is hoping to resume deployment of its peacekeeping mission to Chad in the next few days, after a delay caused by fighting in the capital, N'Djamena."

So there it is – these brave EU soldiers are dressed up and ready to go, the only "delay" the BBC allowing us to know about is the short hiatus caused by those nasty rebels. Never mind that the "force" should have been in place since November.

Of course, what the BBC actually writes is neither wrong nor inaccurate. But the positive "spin" shines through on what is in fact a classic example of an EU failure and one which, as we know, has caused the "colleagues" no end of embarrassment.

Then, as we also know, money talks, and there is no way the BBC is going to bite the hand that feeds it.

COMMENT THREAD

Does nobody care any more?

This is the plaintive cry from Philip Johnston in today's Daily Telegraph concluding a piece headed, "MPs' debate on EU treaty is a scandal". "The House of Commons is about one third of the way through its debate on the Treaty of Lisbon," he writes, adding: "Have you noticed?"

In a word, yes! We had noticed and wrote about it yesterday. John Redwood also noted it last week, which we reported.

If you take the "temperature" from the political blogosphere and from the media, though, there is no interest and little concern. Johnston writes that, "You could say this is the media's fault for obsessing about MPs' expenses and the politics of another country." But he adds that the parliamentarians themselves "are hardly enamoured of their own discussion."

That there is no detailed debate on the treaty, he views as "a scandal" and "proof of the supine nature of national parliaments within the EU". Here, he has the measure of the beast – something we picked up in our other piece yesterday.

In legislative terms, the parliament has collectively lost the will to live. It is not longer really interested in its primary functions and has turned in on itself, to the extent that its internal, petty politicking has assumed an overweening importance, to the exclusion of everything else.

Thus does Johnston rail against the creation of "a powerful new EU interior department, called the Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI)." He devotes some space to home secretary Jacqui Smith's failure to mention it in her speech. He then refers us to details obtained by Bruno Waterfield who in turn links us to the "smoking gun" of the Council conclusions from 2006.

This is, in fact, our old friend the Hague programme, about which we were sounding the alarm in 2004. But, if you asked the average British political blogger about it, they would think you were referring to young William's last television appearance.

So it is that, as Johnston warns, "we are about to hand control of our criminal justice system to the European Commission and the European Court of Justice," leading him to his despairing cry.

Nevertheless, he has hit upon the root of the problem – nobody does care or, at least, not enough people care. Some of those that could make a small difference are happier gurgling away about the US primaries, about MPs expenses, about sharia law and a whole host of issues other than the way we are governed and the destruction of our parliamentary system.

Soon enough, they will have to care and, although it is never too late, the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to restore our democracy and the greater will be the pain. In the meantime, scandal it is, but one which will not get the attention it deserves.

COMMENT THREAD

If this is global warming …

For skiers, this winter has been a bundle of fun, The Guardian currently reporting that most resorts, from France, through Switzerland, Austria and Bulgaria have enjoyed "good snowfall".

That description applies even in the United States, where we are also told that the "good snowfall continues" and that, with temperatures around -10C, conditions are superb. There have been heavy snowfalls in most Canadian resorts, and more is forecast. Chilcotin Mountain Range has 80cm of fresh powder, while Blue Mountain has 50cm. More snow is expected this week, particularly in Whistler.

The outlook, however, is less good for travellers in Washington State where it is reported most passes in the Cascade Mountain are, "well, impassable!" In just one, the White Pass, 39 inches of snow have fallen and the season snowfall total is now at 42.4 feet, with 15.75 feet of that falling since January 26th.

Over in the east, The Boston Herald is reporting that Conway residents, while appreciating that this winter’s plentiful snowfall has been great for ski areas, are complaining about the amount of snow they are having to clear.

One store manager is saying that, in a normal year, she would have the snow removed when the snow banks reached about 6 feet tall, but because it has snowed so often this year, the shopping center can't afford to remove it as regularly. "It is very expensive," she says. "I'd say, right now, snow banks are more than 12 feet high" in some places.

In North Conway, as of Friday, 87.8 inches of snow had fallen since the beginning of winter, about five inches more than the 30-year average for the entire winter, with 16 inches falling in the last week.

The tales of bonanza and inconvenience, however, pale into insignificance with the fate of Afghanistan where the authorities are reporting that more than 750 people have died in "the harshest winter in decades". More than 500 homes, mostly traditional mud brick houses, have been destroyed and tens of thousands damaged by the heaviest snowfalls in 30 years. Nearly half the villages in the country were still cut off from major cities, and thousands of livestock have also died of the cold.

Currently it is the western region bordering Iran that has been hardest hit, but the weather does not stop there. After heavy snowfall in early January, killing 21 people, it is now reported that snow has fallen on the desert regions of Khur and Biyabanak in eastern Iran for the first time in 50 years. Four inches of snow had fallen in the last 24 hours, forcing schools to close.

Further east, in Indian Kashmir, snow has also been falling at an exceptional rate, with avalanches having killed 22 people and left 15 missing. The region's main highway to the outside world has been blocked.

In China, after the heavy freeze (pic below) the situation is reported to be returning to normal – although further snow is forecast – some ten percent of woodland is reported to have been destroyed by the recent freeze, while Xinhua reports that snow and sleet topped the list of ten words, which were most frequently used in China in January, selected from major domestic newspapers and news websites.

And even Japan has been hit, with heavy snow falling in several prefectures on the Pacific side of central and eastern Japan since Sunday morning. At least 45 people have been injured.

Meanwhile, Sweden is complaining that a lack of snow is affecting that Suzuki World Rally while, on the other side of the world, Booker is reporting that ice in the Antarctic – where it is currently high summer - has increased to easily its highest level ever recorded at this time of year, currently 30 percent above normal.

Thus, taking in our earlier report, we have had a band of exceptional snow and cold across the whole of North America and Canada, and from Eastern Turkey, through Iran, Tajikstan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, China and even Japan, with only parts of Europe escaping. Already, January 2008 had the largest area of Northern Hemisphere snow cover for the period of 1966-2008, just slightly larger than the previous largest anomaly of January 1984 - and February is set to exceed even that.

If this is global warming then, if it ever gets to cooling, we are in serious trouble.

COMMENT THREAD

The disappearing Labour rebels

At least 150 of them, possibly 200, is what we were told not so long ago. That many Labour MPs were threatening Gordon Brown, telling him that they would defy the whip and vote for a referendum when the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty is to be debated.

Our opinion on this blog was that those 150 or 200 or 5,689 or whatever figure you care to name, would disappear like morning mist and there would be half a dozen rebels left at most. Well, we were half-right. The 150 disappeared but the half a dozen was an overestimate.

Four Labour MPs, Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Gisela Stuart and Graham Stringer announced their support for the IWantAReferendum Campaign. They were threatened by the Chief Whip and two of them, Gisela Stuart and Graham Stringer gave in. They withdrew their support for the campaign and, one must assume, for the notion of a referendum on the treaty, though we must wait for the vote on the amendment.

Kate Hoey and Frank Field are holding out and there are calls for them to be expelled from the Parliamentary Labour Party, whether because they disagreed with the leader or because they were insisting on the party honouring its manifesto promise, is unclear.

Meanwhile, Andrew Slaughter, the rather hysterical Labour MP and frantic opponent of the IWantAReferendum Campaign, of whom my colleague has already written, is becoming more and more ridiculous. You wouldn’t think that was possible but it is.

On the CentreRight group blog Greg Hands MP for Hammersmith and Fulham writes that

Now, in a remarkable escalation of efforts to prevent the Hammersmith referendum from taking place, Slaughter has reported IWR to the Metropolitan Police for allegedly breaching the PPERA sections relating to literature carrying an imprint.

As somebody who lives in the area I am absolutely delighted with the idea that the police will once again be directed away from chasing criminals or preventing crime. I was afraid if there were no more political shenanigans they might be reduced to doing just that. No sirree, they will spend their time working out whether IWR is breaching the PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000) sections relating to whatever it is.

As the literature is not carrying a party political imprint, I cannot quite see how the complaint is going to be justified but it will keep the fuzz busy and off the streets so that’s all right.

Mr Hands gives his own explanation and it sounds reasonable to me:

Many readers will see two ironies here. First, this is the same Government that has spent the last 18 months believing that the PPERA does not apply to it. Second, my interpretation of the rules is this: no imprint is needed by IWR, as this is not a Government-organised referendum of the likes envisaged in the PPERA. These rules are for referendums like that seen in 2004 for the North East Assembly, or if there ever were a proposal to join the Euro. The irony here is this - if the Government did allow a referendum on the EU Constitution, as they promised before the 2005 General Election, then IWR would have to put an imprint on their literature!

I have already received my ballot paper. As readers of this blog know we are not convinced that the campaign will lead to anything by way of change in policies. However, I was, obviously, intending to vote and vote the right way. Now that my MP, Andy Slaughter, as he likes to be known, has made such a prize ass of himself, the need to vote has redoubled.

A case-study of impotence

Tucked into The Sunday Telegraph very much as a down-page item is a story headed, "Daytime car lights to be mandatory".

From this, we learn that all new cars are to be fitted with automatic daytime headlights within four years, the paper adding that the government had previously opposed the idea on the grounds that using lights in the daytime would increase fuel consumption and emissions. But, it has conceded it was unable to oppose European legislation.

The story is based on the response to a parliamentary question from Greg Knight, to which Jim Fitzpatrick, the road safety minister, answered:

The UK has been successful in arguing against the introduction of mandatory use of dipped headlamps during daylight hours by drivers of existing vehicles. However, from early 2011 all new types of passenger cars and light vans will have to be fitted with dedicated daytime running lamps in accordance with the relevant European directive. By summer 2012, all new vehicles will have to be so fitted.

As an illustration of the opacity of the system of government which we must now endure, several hours of research this afternoon has been unable to unearth the "directive" to which the minister refers, nor when it was agreed and under what circumstances.

However, what does become very clear is that this is a very contentious measure. Since the EU commission launched its consultation in August 2006, the measure has been opposed by car drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists, all of whom argue that the safety benefits are, to say the very least, equivocal.

Furthermore, it also transpires that this issue has been kicking around for many years, but the prime mover has not been the European Union but our old friend UNECE. It is this body which is responsible for framing motor vehicle standards in Europe – not the European Union.

Through multiple reports, in a process in which HM government has been fully involved, it has progressively amended existing "legislation" – the co-called "dual international quasi-legislation", leaving a paper trail which is about as clear as mud. Documents such as this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this, all make reference to the issue but there is no clear decision path and no obvious date on which an agreement was made that daytime running lights should become mandatory.

However, it is at UNECE level that the original agreement would have been made, one which the EU is obliged to accept. Thus, by the time it gets down to EU level, the measure is locked in stone and there is absolutely nothing the parliaments of the member states can do about it.

What we have had, therefore, is a process that has been running for many years, with massive discussions between officials – with the very occasional intervention by ministers – a full-scale consultation exercise with groups in all member states and then the appearance of legislation. But this has all been done at a European level and they only time our parliament gets to know about it formally (or at all) is after the new law is made and due to go into force.

In a different time, this highly contentious measure is one that we would expected to get a full airing in parliament, with a vote taken representing the best interests of the nation, based on full evaluation of the issues and the competing claims.

But the one body which has not been involved is that parliament, demonstrating its impotence with absolute clarity, as completely irrelevant to the legislative process. No doubt, the MPs are highly delighted with this. Relieved of the duty to discuss and approve legislation, they have that much more time for constituency work, for electioneering, for internal politics and for submitting their expenses claims.

But, when they no longer take part in the very process for which they were (nominally) elected, we are entitled to ask what they are actually for, and whether we still need them.

COMMENT THREAD

They can see it!

Courtesy of Warmwell, we picked up this piece recently published in The Times property pages. It tells us that:

The cost of farm property looks likely to soar as traditional British "lifestyle farmers" are joined by multimillion-pound investors hurriedly moving their wealth out of stocks and shares and into farmland.

Across the world, hedge fund managers, property developers and other investors are turning their eyes to places such as Russia, Argentina and Uruguay, where farms are thought to be underdeveloped and provide an opportunity to profit from the rising prices of staples such as wheat, barley and oil-seed rape.

Britain is likely to feel the effects because our farmland is cheap by Western European standards. Marc Duschenes, of the property company Braemar, hopes that the surge in grain prices will persuade hard-pressed British farmers to sell their land. Braemar aims to raise £20 million for its agricultural land fund.

"We are speculating that commodity prices will feed through into higher land prices," says Duschenes. Carter Jonas is quoting forecasts of prices increases of 10-15 per cent this year.

It is probably fair to say that hedge fund managers are a lot brighter than your average politician, and they do have a highly successful record of generating wealth in this country (and globally). If therefore, they are piling into agriculture in the expectation of making a profit out of sustained increases in commodity prices, then the smart money (to coin a phrase) is on betting that they are right.

However, interpreting the trends is not exactly rocket science – even this impoverished blog can see the writing on the wall. So how do we explain the acute myopia of our politicians?

COMMENT THREAD

"Collective amnesia"

What could be best described as a "wry smile" – others might have called it a grimace – passed briefly over the visage of this blogger this morning on seeing the strap line on the front page of The Sunday Telegraph.

"Migrants must obey British laws", the strap proclaimed. "I wish!", was my response, having written some time ago that the egregious failure of the immigrant communities to obey the law of the land was possibly of significant factor in their inability to integrate.

But there is a double irony here in that many of us would like the opportunity to obey British laws. In our current system, they are becoming rare as the legislative power in this land is increasingly assumed by the European Union.

It was rather apt, therefore, that Richard Shephard MP, in a debate on the EU constitutional Lisbon treaty on Wednesday (to a near empty House) should have remarked that, "this great parliamentary Chamber has collective amnesia as regards remembering to whom we are accountable and who should form our laws."

That amnesia is evident in the broader debate about whether sharia law should be adopted in this country, making an interesting contrast with the almost total lack of debate about whether more of the equally alien system of EU law should also be adopted.

Enter Christopher Booker with his column this morning, remarking on "Europe's parliaments rush into impotence". Like us, he noted the contrast between May 2005, when French voters chucked out the EU Constitution in a referendum and last Thursday, when the French Assembly nodded through a rearranged but otherwise virtually identical Lisbon Treaty.

In the former instance, the event made front-page news across Europe yet, last Thursday, not a single British newspaper recorded the French ratification.

This coincided last week, writes Booker, with the spectacle of a virtually empty House of Commons going day after day through the empty farce of "debating" the treaty, when a majority of MPs who couldn't care less about its implications had already, in effect, ratified it by nodding it through on Second Reading. He adds:

Considering how much more of the powers of Parliament this treaty hands over to our new supranational government - more than any treaty since we entered the European Community in 1973 - future generations may be baffled to read how little interest our elected representatives took in seeing their powers given away.

Parliaments all over Europe are rushing to follow suit and give the EU its Constitution-by-any-other-name, setting up the government that will dictate most of our laws and how our countries are run. The five that have already done so include those of Romania, where only one MP voted against, and little Malta.

Booker then picks up on a "handful of Maltese politicians" who asked how this could be done when Article 6 of their own constitution states that "the Maltese Constitution is sovereign" over all the affairs of the island. How can it be legal, asked Dr Josie Muscat, one party leader, to agree to an EU Constitution that will reduce the status of Malta's Parliament to that of "a local council in a European district"? He continues:

Once the new Constitution is in force, the status of our Westminster Parliament will be precisely the same. Its website still proudly proclaims that "Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution" which "makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK".

Yet Declaration 17 of the treaty now makes clear that "the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the treaties have primacy over the law of Member States". In other words, that boast on the Parliamentary website is fast becoming a lie. The authorities should ensure that, when the treaty comes into force, this obsolete claim is removed.

Of course they won't do anything of the kind because nothing has more clearly characterised the process whereby Europe's political leaders have rammed this Constitution through than their readiness to lie about it. At least most of them were willing to admit that the treaty and the Constitution were virtually the same.

Only Gordon Brown and his ministers persisted in denying this, to enable them to break their election pledge of a referendum. And now they have reneged on their further promise that Parliament would be allowed three months to subject the treaty to "line-by-line" examination, as happened over Maastricht.

Not only have they drastically reduced the time allowed to MPs for discussing the treaty, they have also rigged the nature of that discussion, so that most of the time is reserved for waffling about the treaty's "themes" rather than for the detailed examination MPs thought they had been promised.

In a way, however, it is only appropriate that, in giving away Britain's powers to govern itself, our Government should do so on the basis of showing such total contempt for Parliament, breaking promises and telling lies. They do so because they know they can get away with it, and that by next year when the Constitution comes into force, it will be too late to protest.

Not entirely unrelated, Vicki Woods in yesterday’s Telegraph writes of thrill of the American electoral race, contrasting the difference between the democratic process which selects the US president and the back-door process by which a "president of Europe" will be selected.

Sure enough, in today's newspapers, there is copious coverage of the US presidential race and – barring the Booker column – none at all of the parliamentary ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty. Whether they like it not, successive generations of MPs have, through their "collective amnesia", consigned themselves to irrelevance. It is no wonder that all the media is interested in is the expenses they claim, while the chattering classes indulge in the vicarious thrills of the US election.

Pic by Anoneumouse.

COMMENT THREAD

"An exotic and wasteful box-ticking exercise"

"Election observation is a vital component of European Union activities to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law worldwide," warbles the EU website. It goes on to say that, "With these objectives in mind, and by adopting a rigorous specific methodology … the European Union has become a leading force in international election observation."

So much for the theory, but the practice seems somewhat different. Tom de Castella writes in The Sunday Times of his experiences as an EU observer in Venezuela, noting that he applied to be an observer safeguarding fair elections — and our taxes — in the Third World. He didn't expect it to turn into a junket.

In a long piece, well worth the read, choice segments include this:

An eminent British academic who has been on EU missions sums it up: "They like to have young people from different countries and form a fellowship between them. I did feel there was something funny going on, that this was less to do with the election than with a sense of creating Europeanness. It's like a holiday camp to create loyalty to EU institutions."

… and this:

The mission is over. It will be my last. Policing democracy is a necessary and noble endeavour, but you have to employ the right people, trust them to do their jobs, and avoid the temptation to collect useless data. The Ecuador mission has cost about €2.5m. It has been a missed opportunity from the point of observing the country's election but a godsend for Europeans who like to travel and don't mind a bit of form-filling. In 2006 the EU ran 14 such missions, at an estimated cost of €35m. What it amounts to is an exotic and wasteful box-ticking exercise.

The thing you can guarantee about the EU is its consistency. One the one hand, you have the glowing propaganda from the "colleagues" about how wonderful their activities are. Down in the weeds meanwhile, the actualité is a disorganised, expensive farce. It doesn't matter what it is – the outcome is always the same. This is just another example.

COMMENT THREAD

A reckoning to come

The upwards surge in wheat prices which we reported last in December is continuing apace.

On the European Union market, prices set new five-month highs on Friday while US markets surged to another round of new highs. In Paris, the March price was €7.75 higher at €277.00 per ton at end of trading while wheat futures in the US "sprinted" to a fresh all-time high of $10.93 per bushel.

Interestingly, the London feed wheat futures market, although higher, lagged behind the more rapid advances in Paris and Chicago. This is attributed to a more balanced supply and a lower demand for feed wheat, reflecting a downturn in the livestock market and the purchase of substitutes.

Nevertheless, the earlier trend is confirmed with one trader in Belgium saying, "The only way is up", all supporting earlier analyses that we are looking at a structural change in the market.

Still, however, the EU commission is failing to recognise the sea change, as is the media generally – witness this piece in the Independent which is still prattling on about "Fat cats" benefiting from EU farming subsidies.

This piece is by Colin Brown, the deputy political editor, who writes a long screed about the Queen and one of the richest men in London, the Duke of Westminster, being "among the biggest winners from this year's payment of farm subsidies."

Others are also cited, including the Mormon Church, evoking protests from Labour MPs who are saying that the money was being paid to so-called "fat cats" who did not need financial support – at the expense of poorer farmers in the Third World who were facing unfair competition from the EU.

Thus we get Labour MP Harry Cohen said: "The CAP costs a family of four nearly £11 a week and it is going to fat-cat landowners for no useful purpose. The sooner this system is reformed the better. It is a shocking scandal."

The paper then gets on to record that EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel is proposing to reduce subsides above €100,000 (£75,0000) by 10 per cent; above €200,000 by 20 per cent; and above €300,000 by 45 per cent, and is also planning to scrap compulsory practice of "set-aside".

So it is that our valiant guardians fail to make the connection. While the Chinese are actually subsidising their farmers for the first time, in a bid to stave off shortages in primary commodities, we see here complaints that sums are being spent on supporting agriculture.

For sure, arable farmers are doing relatively well at the moment, but the livestock sectors are still under enormous pressure, which is only likely to intensify as feed costs continue to climb. Rather than cutting back subsidies, therefore, the EU should be looking to targeted assistance for the affected sectors, or face the prospect of real shortages as more and more farmers drop out of production all together.

But such is the disconnect in Europe that, not only is France still messing about with GMOs, having suspended the use of genetically modified corn crops in France today, the EU is processing new regulations on pesticides, which are set to reduce dramatically the number of plant protection compounds available to farmers.

As resistance to some of the remaining compounds develops, growers fear they will see yield reductions and quality problems which could see the loss of some crops from certain regions. That say that, at a time of rising food prices and a need for farmers in Europe and the rest of the world to maximise production to feed both a growing population and satisfy growing industrial demand for biomass, hampering the agricultural sector in this way seems at best misguided.

Two of the major suppliers of crop protection products - Bayer CropScience and Syngenta – have commissioned a report from the Italian research institute Nomisma, called "European Agriculture of the Future: The role of Plant Production Products", which confirms that consequences of the regulations would be large yield reductions, significantly higher prices and much increased food imports.

Inevitably, this has been condemned by environmental activists, so MEPs and Commission officials are unlikely to be influenced by it as they stumble blindly down a path which will benefit no-one.

In due course, the food issue will impact on domestic politicians but, as yet, we are still in that strange twilight world where it has not registered. When they wake up to what will undoubtedly become a crisis, they will find that they not only have no power to affect supplies but that the EU, in recent history, has been doing virtually everything it can to restrict their availability.

For the moment, though, they can live in their sequestered, foetid little worlds. But the reckoning cannot be that long in coming. People will forgive many things of their politicians, but not when their bellies are empty.

COMMENT THREAD

Crying "dog"

Tucked away now – because it is so common – the news of the global freeze continues to come in, the latest from Milwaukee in the American mid-west, where residents are rushing to finish digging out from this week's snowstorm, before the next batch of snow arrives – expected over the weekend.

So far, the major snowstorm has forced hundreds of schools and businesses to close and grounded hundreds of flights as snow piled more than 20 inches deep in some areas. Governor Jim Doyle called a state of emergency late Wednesday, sending National Guard troops to help about 500 vehicles stuck in a traffic jam behind semitrailer trucks blocking Interstate 90 south of Madison.

Meanwhile, without so much as a mention of global warming, the BBC Radio 4 World Tonight programme reported on the growing humanitarian crisis in Tajikstan which is in the grip of its coldest winter for five decades.

The poorest of the former Soviet Republics, this is a country which normally enjoys a mid-latitude continental climate, with hot summers and mild winters. With a population of seven million, the deteriorating food situation is part of the energy crisis which hit this mountainous nation. The cost of food has tripled in recent months, partially because of rising world prices. Some humanitarian agencies claim Central Asia's poorest nation is heading towards catastrophe.

More details are also coming in of the effects of the prolonged freeze in China, which has killed at least 80 people, destroyed or damaged 800,000 houses and caused economic and agricultural damage valued at 80 billion yuan (about $11 billion),

The worst hit parts of the China – the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou – include important farming regions where winter crops are now destroyed. The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.

The Ministry of Agriculture has reported the loss of 14.4 million poultry, 870,000 pigs, 450,000 sheep and 85,000 cattle, that either froze to death or died from lack of food and water due to transportation hold-ups. The disaster, now being described as China's "Katrina" has smashed a hole in the government price controls imposed just weeks ago. According to he National Reform and Development Commission the price of vegetables in 36 cities rose by 30 percent between 25-30 January.

Furthermore, the freeze has had a devastating effect on the national power grid, the expansion of which has consistently lagged behind the growth of the economy. Total demand for electricity increased 20.2 percent annually between 2001 and 2007, but installed generating capacity grew by about 18.5 percent a year over the same period.

During the storms, over 2,000 transmission towers [pylons] and a staggering 25,000 miles of power lines collapsed under the weight of ice and snow. China's use of a high-tension power grid as opposed to more expensive underground cables, and its crushing dependence on coal – for 80 percent of its electrical power – left it especially vulnerable to the storms.

In many areas where transmission towers collapsed this was because they were spread too far apart causing them to buckle under the additional weight of thick ice and snow on overhead cables. This is again a result of cost-cutting that is endemic to many construction projects in China. The heavy reliance on coal, apart from its dire environmental effects, also poses huge logistical problems: coal takes up 40 percent of total railway capacity.

Closer to home, Eastern Turkey is also in the grip of freezing weather conditions, which is paralysing life in Eastern Anatolia. A person froze to death in Hizan town of eastern province of Bitlis, flights have been cancelled in Van due to heavy snowfall and, in the provinces of Erzurum and Ardahan, the temperature dropped to -31 degrees Celsius on Thursday night. Roads to 215 villages are still closed to traffic in the region due to heavy snow and blizzards.

Interestingly, in Canada, we are told that, back in 1991 before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Given the devastating effects even short periods of intense cold can produce, bringing one country to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, we had better hope these scientists' worries are unfounded. If they are not, the "warmists" are going to have some explaining to do, as they will have been crying "dog", while the wolf is at the back door.

COMMENT THREAD

Who will rid us?

There is no avoiding variants of Henry II’s alleged comment, which sent the four knights on their deadly mission to Canterbury. The Sun was the only one to do so successfully by the headline “What a Burqua”. As good a reaction as any other.

When the first news of the latest faux pas by His Bloviation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hit the internet, this blog had every intention of staying out of the mess, on the grounds that we have covered the man’s pronouncements in the past and need not do so for a little while.

Sadly, the story has become too big for us to ignore and it does fit in with one of our usual themes – the need for a British identity to be defined. There has been a great deal written about Dr Williams’s lecture and interview on Radio 4 both in the MSM and on the blogosphere. A lot of it is quite good, a lot of it uninteresting and predictable, a good deal very silly.

We have little time for the Blair Derangement Syndrome, for instance, that has informed some of the postings. We have even less time for the hysteria that sees the inevitable or even probable supremacy of Sharia law everywhere in the UK. A little calculation and study of the situation on the ground should disabuse people of that one (though there is none so blind as those who do not want to see).

For all of that the Archbishop’s latest pronouncements are extremely stupid and dangerous. The best account of how this mess developed is on Melanie Phillips’s blog. It seems that the Archbishop was due to deliver one of his “nuanced” lectures yesterday evening in which, as many knew, he intended to argue that there should be some accommodation between English law (or, presumably, Scottish law) and Sharia law. He was, one assumes, also intending to explain that Sharia law in some form or another was “unavoidable”.

In itself that is nonsense. Nothing on this earth, except death is unavoidable and the Archbishop of Canterbury ought to know that. In particular, the introduction of any kind of law or legal form is not unavoidable. You avoid it by not doing it.

The Archbishop’s lectures are notorious in that they confuse and annoy people in about equal parts and Lambeth Palace thought that the media aspect of it all should be controlled. For that purpose Dr Williams’s staff restricted even the embargoed copies of the text and organized an exclusive interview with Radio 4’s “World at One”, reckoning, perhaps, that there would be friendly sympathy from the interviewer.

As an exercise in damage limitation this was not a howling success. The Archbishop cast all restraint to the wind and said all the things some well-meaning fluffy individuals are pretending he did not say. One cannot help feeling sorry for those unfortunate officials at Lambeth Palace who have to deal with the extraordinary phenomenon with the completely undisciplined mind that is at the head of the Church of England.

Yes, well, how could we leave the subject of His Bloviation, the Archbishop of Canterbury making yet another "nuanced" pronouncement. Will he go down as the most disastrous Archbishop of Canterbury in history? Read a long piece on EUReferendum2.

Colonial baggage

The Economist's Charlemagne comments on the much-delayed EU force deployment to Chad:

An "embarrassment", says a diplomat of the delays over a European Union peacekeeping mission to Chad. It is eight months since France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said there was an urgent need to stabilise Chad's border with Sudan, and to protect refugees from Darfur. Since then EU members have squabbled over who should provide troops, kit and helicopters - and who should pay the bills. Military chiefs proved "very cautious about casualties", comments the diplomat.

EU Referendum features somewhat in the piece, which also raises the same issues as this brief item.

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Service may be interrupted

EU Referendum has acquired a new editor.

Biofools?

Another entertaining little scrap is developing between the European Union and the United States as news comes in that the growth of EU biodiesel output slowed to not more than 10 percent in 2007.

This was, or so it is claimed by Raffaello Garofalo, secretary general of European Biodiesel Board (EBB), partly a result of increasing competition from heavily subsidised US biodiesel. The low growth in 2007 has, apparently, been worst in the past ten years, with the previous year having shown a surge of 54 percent to 4.89 million tons.

However, Garofalo says the slowdown was not entirely due to increasing imports of US biodiesel but also the lack of political support for fuel in some EU member states.

Nevertheless, it is to the US that the EBB is directing its wrath, claiming that the subsidies are "unfair", arguing that it is dumping the product on the European market and threatening to put many EU producers out of business. The existing EU capacity was only 50 percent used in 2007.

This, in fact, is a long-running issue, reported last October, when the EBB were considering taking legal action against the US through the WTO.

The irony is that US producers can claim not only subsidies from their own government but from the EU as well. Under the US legislation, that can get $264 per cubic meter, or about €200 per ton, by adding a "drop" of mineral diesel to biodiesel. Then, when it is exported to Europe, it is eligible for EU subsidies worth 11p a litre, or $300 per ton.

Concern increased in December when the EBB backed a formal complaint to the EU commission, asking Peter Mandelson department to carry out an investigation into the trade and to cut the EU subsidies to US imports.

Mandelson then was thought to view the industry’s predicament favourably, especially as imports of biodiesel from the United States had soared from about 100,000 tons in 2006 to about a million on 2007, in a market that can only absorb 4.5 million ton. Over here, it is sold at a substantial discount of up to €180 (£129) a ton, in some cases at a lower price than the raw materials purchased by the European industry for producing biodiesel.

Such has been the impact that Elliott Mannis, chief executive of D1 Oils, one of Britain’s biggest biofuel producers, said that the European industry was operating at only 10 per cent of capacity, with many refineries mothballed and several companies close to administration.

One British company, Biofuels Corporation, has cited American subsidies as a key reason for delisting from AIM in July, owing Barclays about £90 million. This was despite, the month previously, Tony Blair having visited the company’s plant at Seal Sands in Middlesbrough to declare the government’s support for the industry (pictured).

One can only stand and gaze in awe at the monumental insanity of a scheme which uses taxpayers money to subsidise already subsidised imports, to such an extent that domestic production is damaged. There must be a name for the people responsible – how about biofools?

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Touching a raw nerve?

The BBC is reporting (with some glee) an extraordinary confrontation between Derek Scott, chairman of I want a referendum and Andrew Slaughter, the Labour MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherds Bush.

With a majority of 5,520 at the last election, Slaughter's constituency has been targeted by the I want a referendum campaign for a mini-referendum on the Lisbon treaty, and was interviewed with Scott for Today in Parliament on BBC Radio 4, to be broadcast at 11.30 this evening.

According to Scott, as retailed by the Daily Telegraph website, Slaughter arrived "obviously very wound up and arrived at the studio in a rage" and accused Scott of fronting a "dishonest" marketing exercise for the Conservative Party.

On the one hand, Scott - a Labour supporting former adviser to Tony Blair - insisted that his campaign had support from across the political spectrum. Slaughter, on the other, said that rather than being genuine exercises in democracy, the mini-referendums were simply aimed at unseating Labour MPs at the next general election, and demanded that Scott revealed the source of his funding.

The Labour MP then alleged that IWAR was "a dishonest exercise from start to finish". He added, "It's masquerading as something else. It's a marketing exercise for the Conservative Party and its candidates and Mr Scott should be honest enough to admit that."

Certainly, the links between IWAR and Open Europe are well known, the one effectively being a "front" for the other.

And, despite Open Europe's claim to being "an independent think-tank contributing bold new thinking to the debate about the direction of the EU", its links to the Conservative Party are also well known. So close are the two organisations that Open Europe is privately regarded as an adjunct to CCHQ and as the research department on the EU for William Hague's office.

Other suspicions are that Open Europe - although having provided some excellent analyses on the Lisbon treaty - is "pulling its punches" on the EU, keeping the debate within "safe" areas which will not embarrass the Conservative Party. Thus, it has shown no enthusiasm for "broad church" Euroscepticism and has shunned campaigning groups such as UKIP, which take a more robust view of the treaty.

Slaughter may, therefore, have something of a point in his charges, but one wonders quite what motivated his apparent fury. The general expectation is that the IWAR mini-referendums will founder on a low turnout, demonstrating weakness rather than strength, in which case he has little to worry about.

But, with the Labour government itself so obviously rigging the debate on the Lisbon treaty, perhaps IWAR has touched a raw nerve.

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A new blog on the street

We're usually a bit sniffy about these corporate blogs, or "clogs" as we tend to call them, but will make an exception in this case. The Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent, Bruno Waterfield, has been given his own slot on the paper, and has put up his first post about "president" Blair.

It’s not a subject we would have chosen but it does offer a useful insight into the murky goings-on in the deeper recesses of our central government. We look forward to many more such.

Welcome to the blogosphere Bruno!

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Not with a bang, but a whimper

What a difference from the heady days of May 2005 when we thought the game was over. Yesterday, the French assembly rolled over and approved the Lisbon treaty, 336 votes to 52.

The vote of the Senate is seen as a formality so Sarkozy will soon be clear to sign the ratification instrument. That will make France the fifth, after Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Malta

"All of Europe is waiting for this signal from France," Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said before the vote, leaving only the Communist and other far-left groups to against ratification. The opposition Socialists, who were split in the 2005 vote, were divided again: 121 supported ratification, but 25 voted against and 59 abstained.

And so the march of integration continues.

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How very sensible

Perhaps I am being a trifle over-sensitive but I cannot help feeling that the Reuters headline "Euros Accepted" signs pop up in New York City is a little bit triumphalist. The story is all about the mighty US dollar being a lot less mighty than it used to be so shops in New York City have started accepting euros and intend to go on to accepting sterling and Canadian dollars.

"We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank," Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.

With respect to Reuters economic correspondents I shall wait a while before expressing pity for those unfortunate Americans and jubilation about the euro being so strong. Having a lot of people visiting the country and NYC in particular to spend a lot of money there is hardly a body-blow to its economy.

Conversely, the absence of American tourists, caused by the weakness of the dollar and the corresponding strength of the euro and sterling, as well as the hideously high prices we have to face in many places this side of the Pond, has caused problems in London’s theatres, for instance, and in many places in France and Italy.

The one cheering comment is made by Billy Leroy of Billy’s Antiques and Props. Not only he has decided to take euros, money being money, he is not bothering to exchange them, intending to use them when he goes “back” to Paris. Maybe Mr Leroy could be persuaded to take sterling and come “back” to London as well, to spend his loot.

We have a problem

This blog has pointed out on numerous occasions, for instance here and here that Western Europe is in danger of becoming completely dependent on Russian gas for energy. The way things are going in that country and given President (soon to be Prime Minister and Chairman of Gazprom) Putin’s tendency to use gas supplies to bully his nearest neighbours, this may not be the smartest of political moves.

Furthermore, there is the question of the former Communist states, now members of the EU. In their opinion, being left out of various agreements to supply gas directly to Germany and other countries, by-passing the Baltic States and Poland, is not quite the common energy policy they would like to see.

We hear a lot about the need for the EU to speak with one voice in order to sound stronger on the international stage but we see no evidence of this in the negotiations with Russia over energy.

There has been a new twist in the sorry tale. For some time now there has been talk of the Nabucco pipeline, developed for the EU by a private consortium that was going to diversify gas supplies and undercut the EU’s reliance on Russia. There have been numerous problems in these negotiations to the point when Ferenc Gyurcsány announced that Hungary could not afford to wait and was going to throw her lot in with Russia and Gazprom.

More recently, Hungary has announced that it wanted to support both the South Stream pipeline that Gazprom is patiently putting together and Nabucco.

Both Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Hungary's MOL Nyrt are currently shareholders in Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, the project company in charge of planning the 5 bln eur project.

Romania's Tranzgaz and Turkey's Botas are also partners in the 3,300-kilometre pipeline, which would bring gas from the Caspian region via Turkey to Europe from 2012. The project is led by Austria's OMV AG. South Stream is a potentially conflicting project involving a 10 bln eur pipeline being built by Russian gas giant Gazprom and ENI of Italy.

The trouble is, as we have pointed out before, that Gazprom now has a 50 per cent stake in OMV and President Putin has just signed an agreement with Bulgaria that has brought that country into the South Stream pipeline, which is still largely in the planning stage.

As Radio Free Europe explains,

At one level, the South Stream pipeline project is designed to get Russian gas to Europe while bypassing former Soviet transit countries like Ukraine and Belarus.

But more importantly, analysts say it is part of an ongoing Russian effort to stifle the European Union's efforts to diversify its energy supplies and lessen dependence on Moscow. In the process, the Kremlin and Gazprom are using Russia's energy might to establish a strategic foothold in Europe and expand Moscow's influence on the continent.

"This is part of a larger strategy," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the Moscow-based journal "Russia in Global Affairs." "Wherever possible, it is necessary to increase Russia's presence in Europe, either inside the EU or in countries that have a chance to join."

The fear is that this could leave Europe vulnerable to energy blackmail.

In fact, Gazprom’s manoeuvring appears to have been designed to undermine Nabucco and prevent the EU from getting gas supplies in any way except that approved by Russia. A particularly important development was Russia signing an agreement with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan “to build a pipeline along the Caspian Sea coast to transport their natural gas to Europe -- via Russia.”

It would seem that the effort has been successful. Today comes the news that Nabucco will function only with Gazprom providing a good deal of the gas.

The change in policy also comes as a rival pipeline in development threatens to undermine Nabucco's mission.

"Russian gas will feed into Nabucco," said Reinhard Mitschek, the managing director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, which is overseeing the project.

Vasily Astrov, energy expert at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, said, "There are now several competing interests around Nabucco." Astrov added: "In order to get Nabucco launched, the consortium is playing with the idea of cooperating with Gazprom. In that case, the original reason for Nabucco has changed."

Mitschek, who is also director of gas logistics for OMV, the Austrian energy company that is one of the six members of the Nabucco consortium, said he saw no contradiction in involving Gazprom. "Diversification has two angles - diversification of gas sources and diversification of gas transportation routes," he said during an interview. "I can imagine Russian gas being fed into our pipeline."

Yes, I expect he can imagine such a situation. Whether this is quite what the EU’s energy policy was supposed to provide is a moot point.

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Duncan?

On Monday, we are told, the Conservatives' shadow business team launched an independent review of regulation, risk and rules. This is from Alan Duncan MP in an authored piece in The Daily Telegraph headed, "Let us lift this burden of petty bureaucracy".

"We are weighed down by petty bureaucracy in our society," Duncan goes on to say, which is enough to tell you the Conservatives still haven't got the point. Since John Major’s first “deregulation” initiative, introduced in his speech to the Conservative Party conference in October 1992, they have been immersed in the legend of "red tape" and "pettifogging" regulations. They still have not understood that regulations are not "petty" and it is going to take more than yet another "independent review" to work out ways of getting rid of them.

Yet Duncan actually tells us that, to understand this subject, "we're going to need an entirely new lexicon." He says we should not be afraid of asking the really obvious questions: how do we define regulations; what should our first principles be; how can we preserve a free society through our legislative and regulatory processes?

But the questions he does not ask, of course, are: who makes most of our regulations; and are we free to change them or abolish them? The answers, known to us all are, respectively, the European Union and "no" – we are not free to change them as long as Parliament continues to accept the supremacy of EU law.

All we get on the subject from Duncan is that his new review, chaired by Sir David Arculus, is "in a unique position to look at how regulation creeps through our system in a three-stage horror machine: from Brussels to Whitehall to town hall, with a 10-page European directive turning into a 30-page British law and a 100 pages of local guidelines."

In other words, rather than look at the source of the regulation, the Conservatives are, once again, going to ignore the elephant in the room and concentrate on the red herring of gold plating even though, as Duncan admits, the cost of Brussels legislation is over five percent of EU GDP.

Coincidentally, the malign effect – and the scale - of this “petty bureaucracy” is to be found in The Guardian which heads a story, "Green laws and regulation risk energy crisis, say Europe's power companies".

Europe, according to the energy companies, is facing an energy crisis because of green-influenced legislation and regulation, and difficulty in obtaining planning approval for key projects.

On the continent as a whole, €2 trillion needs to be spent on upgrading power networks in the next 25 years but leading energy companies have cancelled investments in new power plants worth billions of euros because of increased regulatory uncertainty, a senior executive has claimed.

That "senior executive" is Johannes Teyssen, chief operating officer at E.ON, Germany's biggest energy group. He blames the EU commission's plans to make companies pay for all their pollution permits from 2013, huge delays in approving planning applications and confusion among national regulators for the cancellations.

Teyssen, vice-chairman of the World Energy Council (WEC) Europe, says: "We see now every week a new investment project being cancelled across the EU." The Guardian then cites him saying that at least four multibillion-euro projects to build power plants in Germany and that thousands of kilometres of new power lines were "lying on the table" because of planning delays.

Teyssen adds that the commission's plans to scrap free emission permits and move to a full auction system would further blight investment decisions. He also says it took longer to approve planning applications than to build a nuclear power station. "I hardly know of any EU nation where it's easy to build a high-voltage transmission line or new gas pipeline."

Interestingly, an issue we also pointed up Teyssen is urging the EU to avoid putting all its eggs into the renewables basket, arguing that they could cause more harm than good if national and cross-border grids were incapable of meeting the growth in their use.

From this, it clearly emerges that regulation is (and will continue) to affect the most basic requirements of our lives and is thus very far from "petty". But one does not expect Duncan to understand that – or act upon it even if he did. But how long do they think they can continue trying to kid us that the Conservatives are going to do anything serious about regulation?

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In space, no one can hear you scream

A long scream of anguish comes from John Redwood on his blog as he sets out how the government is silencing debate on the EU constitutional Lisbon treaty, invoking surprise from one of his readers that the national press does not seem to have picked up on this.

Perhaps the nearest thing to comment in the MSM – and not very near – is an opinion piece from Iain Martin in The Daily Telegraph. There he observes, vis-à-vis the scandalous behaviour of "Gorbals Mick", the speaker of the House of Commons, that:

Parliament is weak enough, thanks to Whitehall and the rapacious European Union. Neuter it and the idea that it is a historical wonder, the product of centuries of constitutional evolution, and the defender of our rights and liberties, would be lost for good.

That, actually is the point. Over term, since our accession to the (then) EEC and the ratification of successive treaties which have given the EU more and more power, Parliament has weakened itself to the point where it is no longer relevant in huge areas of our daily lives.

Governance – rather than government – is a matter of dialogue between the provincial government in Whitehall and our masters in Brussels, and MPs are mere bystanders in a process over which they no longer have any control.

Shorn of any real power - a largely self-inflicted injury – we first get the phenomenon whereby the establishment turns in on itself and becomes obsessed with the trivia of the institution, a form of denial that reflects its inability to come to terms with its own diminished status.

Secondly, as Tapestry observes today, the commentators divert their attention to the centres of real power, where there is excitement and drama – hence the pre-occupation with the early stages of the US election process.

Meanwhile, as the Parliament's power gravitates to Brussels, the lobbyists, the NGOs and the rent-seekers follow it, leaving Westminister as an idle backwater, bereft of influence. It is in that vacuum that Redwood delivers his despairing cry – the vacuum of space. But, as the film Alien so aptly pointed out, in space no one can hear you scream.

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Elections in Italy

The Italian Parliament was dissolved yesterday by President Napolitano and elections will take place on April 13. There is a great deal of regret being expressed about this happening under the existing, unreformed rules that were introduced by the then Prime Minister Berlusconi in 2005.

Critics apparently say that the existing electoral law makes “stable government nearly impossible”. As there have been 61 governments in Italy since the end of World War II, with several being considerably shorter than Prodi’s 20 month one, that statement needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. We can’t help suspecting that the critics are all opponents of Berlusconi, a man who is an adroit if unimaginative politician and who excites strong passions.

Berlusconi will lead the right-wing coalition while Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, will lead the centre-left one. One wonders what Signor Prodi will do next? First President of the European Council of the European Union? Much more likely than Tony Blair becoming that.

Meanwhile Walter Veltroni is getting carried away and announcing himself to be Italy’s Obama though he does not have the latter’s inspiring good looks.

Given that it is not quite clear yet where America’s Obama is going to be at the end of this year and given that campaigning on “change”, any change, is not necessarily as popular in Italy as it might be in the United States, a country that is in some ways dedicated to change, though in others the most conservative land in the West, Signor Veltroni’s campaign may not be all that successful. At present Berlusconi’s lot are about 10 points ahead in the opinion polls.

Another problem raises its ugly head: what is to become of the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty?

Picture post

Another long day - too late to put up a proper post. Enjoy a pic of HMS Belfast, taken in the Pool of London yesterday.

EU macht frei

So, Hillary McCain won the states of Obama and Romney and is set to win the presidency race next year – or something like that.

Meanwhile, having already decided our presidency, without the expense and inconvenience of elections - and the attendant waste of time and energy - we Europeans, liberated from such anachronisms, have much more important things to deal with.

On the way to destroying our energy market and making sure that electricity is a luxury enjoyed only by the super-rich, the mighty EU has turned its attention to preventing cheap Chinese candles reaching our markets, in a bid to ensure that, when the lights go out, we are truly kept in the dark.

This, while the shallow facile Americans are frittering away their energies on elections and their wealth on fighting for democracy in far-flung places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, our brave Eurocrats are taking time out from not providing relief to Chad and preparing to referee a "fierce battle" between retailers and producers in the EU over who gets what candles.

According to The Financial Times, our ever-watchful trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is in the forefront of this endeavour, and is expected to recommend within days the pursuing of a complaint from candlemakers that a surge in Chinese imports is unfairly damaging their businesses.

An investigation by his diligent officials could lead to punitive tariffs on Chinese candle producers, but only if the majority of the 27 EU states does not object.

However, while the candle producing countries are in favour of this measure, the candle retailing countries are not. With such vital interests at stake, and splits throughout the Empire, the lights are burning well past midnight in the Berlaymont.

Candle retailers point out that only seven producers, representing a third of EU production, have complained and say their profits would suffer as they have nowhere else to source supplies. "You can only buy the quantity needed from China," said Alisdair Gray, of the British Retail Consortium in Brussels, representing UK shops. "We would be stuck."

Other voices can also be heard, grumbling about the Empire's more general failure to reform its trade regime. Jim Searles, a partner at Steptoe and Son (actually, Steptoe and Johnson) a law firm in Brussels, said the EU's credibility had been damaged by a failure to reform. "It missed a great opportunity," he said "The EU defence mechanisms will never fairly reflect balance of industry interests in the EU unless they are revised."

Heedless of these mutterings, the all-powerful European Candle Institute is continuing to storm the ramparts of the Berlaymont, complaining that the Chinese imports accounted for €280m of the €835m market in 2006 and made up more than 90 percent of all imports.

The institute says that "hundreds of jobs" have been lost in the past few months to the infernal Chinese producers who are actually selling their products cheaper than they can manage. Unsurprisingly, China's market share almost doubled to just under 40 per cent between 2001 and mid-2007. This is something, up with which the Institute will not put.

Thus, while the Americans continue with their obsession with this outmoded thing called democracy, it is good to know that, in the land of the freaks and the surveilled, it is business as usual as we attend to the really important things in life.

Admin note: Light blogging from me today - off to the "smoke".

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