More equals less … or is it more?

You pays your money and you makes your choice – or so the old saying goes. But, in this case, you pays your money … and you get no choice.

To what else could we be referring, other than the annual EU budget, the 2009 spendfest having just been announced by Dalia Grybauskaité, the EU commissioner for financial programming and budget.

With appropriate fanfares, her press release tells us that this particular budget has the "highest spending for growth and employment" which is, of course, in complete contrast to last year's fanfares which heralded the news that growth and employment was "at the heart of EU spending".

Inevitably, Reuters via IHT picks up the "growth and employment" theme, noting that the EU "is to spend more on growth and employment than on agriculture for the second year running" – is if this was an achievement or even intended.

In fact, while agricultural spending will remain "stable" at €42.9 billion, actual expenditure in the core EU-15 is reduced as more funds are diverted to the new members. They will receive 18 percent of CAP funds – up from 10 percent in 2006 and up from 16 percent in 2008.

That overall expenditure has been contained, however, is nothing directly to do with the commission. Some 25 percent of more of the CAP goes not to farmers but on market support schemes, such as intervention and export restitution. With current high global commodities, this expenditure will not be needed – giving the flexibility to spend the money elsewhere while keeping the headline budget figure down.

So it is that, for 2008, the proposal was set at €129.2 billion in "commitment appropriations" – an increase of two percent over the previous year and payments were set at €121.6 billion, a 5.3 percent increase.

Now, this forthcoming year's "washes whiter" budget increases commitments to €134.4 billion - a four percent increase. But, since not all of these "commitments" will fall due in the financial period, the fair Grybauskaité is able to reduce payments to €116.7 billion – a four percent reduction. Yet, as Dalia readily admits, there has been a shift (i.e, increase) in "the centre of gravity of spending", with proportionately larger sums spend on conditional schemes which directly further the integration agenda.

In effect - and with more that a little help from high commodity prices - the EU is squaring the magic circle. It is able to promise more money to its growing constituency but, on the year, is having to pay less out of its bank account(s).

Such legerdemain thus enables the The Guardian to offer the headline: "EU proposes smaller budget for 2009," a point that will be seized upon by the Europhiles as illustrating that the EU is not some monster spiralling out of control – or words to that effect.

Such is a dazzling ambiguity of the headline proposal, though, that maybe Mz Dalia Grybauskaité should offer the beleaguered Gordon Brown some help with the presentation of his tax policies. She has managed to spend more where it matters (to the EU), while appearing to spend less, allowing her plans to be presented any which way depending on what suits the particular circumstances.

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Reinforcing a world view

Sometimes you really do wonder about the BBC – even if that is a forlorn exercise.

Have a look at the Australian press, and you will find that it is full of hope and optimism about the cereal planting season. The Australian, for instance, headlines, "Rain brings hope for bumper crop".

It tells us that, "for the nation's graingrowers, rain has never been worth so much" then conveying the Government's Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics forecast of a 25.9 million-ton wheat crop, the second-biggest on record – compared with compared the 13 million tons in 2007-08 and 10.6 million in 2006-07.

The strong world wheat prices mean the crop would be worth a record $8.6billion - $2.3 billion more than the bumper 2001-02 harvest, the paper says, recording that the rains have fallen and "the best weekend falls of rain occurred over much of the South Australian grain belt".

Conveying the views of Adelaide farmer, John Lush, celebrating the inch of rain that had fallen on his farm, the paper cites him as saying: "It looks as if farming has turned the corner at long last and grain prices will remain good … If we can grow a good crop, we will make good money."

Then we get Bloomberg reporting that, "the grain-growing regions in parts of Western Australia state, the nation's biggest wheat producer, may get more rain this week, adding to falls in recent weeks, as farmers sow crops." The piece also tells us that other areas are benefiting.

Now cut to a report on the BBC website, by Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant, and we see: "'Big Dry' hits Australian farmers" "More than 10,000 Australian farming families have had to leave their land as a result of the country's ongoing drought, new figures reveal," Bryant tells us.

The doom-laden piece continues in this style, with talk of bankruptcies, interest rate hikes and "the difficulties of farming water-starved land." Then, after telling us that, "One of the main reasons why global wheat stocks are at their lowest levels since 1979 is because of the ongoing Australian drought," Bryant concludes: "Normally, the country would hope to harvest about 25m tonnes of wheat - in 2006 the crop yielded less than 10m tonnes."

For the real agenda, though, you have to read a Reuters piece - a backgrounder headed: "Farmers face climate challenge in quest for more food". There, we learn that, "If the world keeps on emitting greenhouse gases at the present rate, computer models suggest southern Australia will become much drier."

Now we can see where the BBC is going: Australian bad harvest causes global food crisis; bad harvest caused by drought; drought caused by global warming. Therefore, food crisis caused by global warming – QED.

Wouldn't it be nice though if, just for once, the BBC forgot its agenda and gave us the news?

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And the culprit is ...

It has been an article of faith amongst pundits commenting on the "global food crisis" that one of the factors contributing to the food shortage has been growing prosperity in developing nations, particularly in China and India. There, it is held, that the move from vegetable to meat diets has had a significant effect on supplies, as grain is fed to more "inefficient" animals.

Not so says the Indian Business Standard citing recent FAO figures, which show that, in the 2006-07 period, China's share of the global grain harvest is projected to have come down from 18.53 to 18.48 percent.

India - which is the world's second largest wheat producer, dwarfing the United States with 40 percent more production – is also in the clear. Although the country accounts for a sixth of the world population, it is estimated to have consumed 9.37 percent of world cereals in 2007-08, almost the same as 9.36 percent in the previous year.

As to the actual consumption of cereals, the Indian market is projected to have grown 2.17 percent from 193.1 million tons in 2006-07 to 197.3 million in 2007-08, while that in China has risen a mere 1.8 percent from 382.2 million tons to 389.1 million.

Thus, it transpires, the real villain of the piece, it seems – according to FAO data – is unequivocally the United States. In the same period, its consumption of cereals has been projected to have grown 11.81 percent from 277.6 million tons to 310.4 million. Furthermore, the US share of the global crop had gone up from 13.46 percent in 2006-07 to 14.74 percent.

To the surprise of very few, a large part of this spike is directly the result of biofuel made from corn, with the US having used 30 million tons of corn for that purpose. Overall, the FAO data show that the usage of corn in the US to make biofuel increased two-and-a-half times between 2000 and 2006.

Elsewhere, the EU also takes some of the blame for the crisis, with Liam Halligan of The Sunday Telegraph business section picking up on the extraordinary claim by Michael Barnier last week that the CAP is a "good model" for food production.

Apart from the usual suspects, Halligan blames "our bloated farm subsidies" which have, over many years, held back the growth of agricultural capacity across the developing world. They have also stymied the emergence of large-scale agro-industry in many parts of the world.

That indeed may have been an effect, but to this we need to add the more recent performance of the EU commission. Having badly over-estimated the EU-wide crop yield for 2007, it sold off its intervention stocks at knock-down prices in anticipation of a bumper harvest. When this did not materialise, member states – which normally export cereals globally – had to import 18.9 million tons, adding to pressure on already tight global stocks.

Anyhow, if the lion's share of the blame can be placed at the door of the US, farmers throughout the world are riding to the rescue. The US has recorded a six percent rise in winter wheat plantings for this year, the EU is projecting an overall 15 percent, the former Soviet Union is up eight percent and Canada has announced that 2008 wheat seedings could jump 16 percent.

Nevertheless, persistent reports of poor weather in North America have indicated that farmers are still having difficulty in planting spring seed, while low temperatures are holding back winter wheat development. A spell of good weather and a hot summer could dispel any pessimism, but concerns are building that yields might be adversely affected.

Certainly, the markets are nervous. From their recent low of $8.01 a bushel, 40 percent below its record peak of $13.50 a bushel in February, July wheat futures have rebounded to climb nine cents and prices well over the $9-mark are being forecast. Everything depends on the weather – as it always does.

Where is that global warming when you really need it?

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All eyes on Serbia

Well, some eyes on Serbia and not nearly as many as Serbia thinks or hopes. Next Sunday will see the parliamentary election and, in theory at least, the results will decide whether the country continues to look more or less to the West or turns inward again, isolating itself from its neighbours beyond the odd snarl across the border.

The threat the Serb nationalists issue from time to time is that if the EU continues to be nasty to Serbia, the country will turn eastward to Russia and China. On the whole, it is not clear what that might mean, especially when it comes to China. Will there be investments from that country? And if so, into what? That gas pipe that Russia has been negotiating has not been built yet and, in any case, its purpose is not to supply China but Europe.

Aid? Unlikely. That is not the way China does business, being considerably more hard-headed than the “selfish, capitalist” West that turns mushy when it comes to developing countries at whatever stage of development they are, playing on guilt feelings.

Russia is not going to help Serbia all that much. She did little in the eighties and will not start to get involved in Balkan politics too much now. Incoming President Medvedev may have a greater appetite for foreign adventure than outgoing President, soon to be Prime Minister, Putin but so far we have seen no evidence of that.

What Russia has done is to sign an agreement with President Tadic and Prime Minister Kostunica for the construction of part of the proposed South Stream pipeline. Russia is anxious to see that agreement be finalized, election or no election.

From a certain point of view, Serbia is important to Russia but, from the same point of view, so are Bulgaria, Italy, Austria and Hungary. In other words, Russia’s desire to consolidate her control over the supply of gas to Western Europe is what motivates that country and its biggest industrial conglomerate, Gazprom. (Incidentally, one wonders whether outgoing President Putin will become chairman of Gazprom, as it has been mooted.)

On Friday the International Herald Tribune carried an article about Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the Radical Party, generally described as far-right, though such terminology has little meaning outside Western Europe. The Trib also published an excellent picture of the “charismatic”, as they describe him, Mr Nikolic.

Mr Nikolic’s predecessor, as leader of the ultra-nationalist party (I think we can describe it as such) was Vojislav Seselj, until he turned himself in to the UN tribunal to face war crimes charges. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction among Mr Seselj’s supporters because of what was perceived to be undue pressure put on him by the Serbian government.

Mr Nikolic has ruled out the idea of war to regain Kosovo, a decision that has a good deal to do with the fact that Kosovo is under NATO’s protection and also with the other fact that there will be no military help from Russia, no matter what was said in the heat of the moment when Kosovo declared its de jure independence.

Kosovo has been a diplomatic failure for Russia (and, of course, for Serbia) in a completely unnecessary way. If the negotiations had been conducted slightly differently and if Serbia had been genuinely prepared to negotiate, this messy situation might not have occurred.

Actually, the most interesting comments by Mr Nikolic are about the late unlamented (except by a few supporters around the world) President Miloševič.

The problem with Milosevic, Nikolic says, is that he never finished what he started.

"All the wars Milosevic started, he gave up," Nikolic said. "His biggest mistake is that he was not a person who would take things to the end. I have the popularity that Milosevic had, and my votes come from some of the same people. But we got crazy from his politics. I can't be called another Milosevic."

There were very good reasons why those wars were not finished but fighting them well-nigh finished off the Serbian people. It is hard to understand what Mr Nikolic would have preferred.

Mr Nikolic, whose party is the largest in the parliament and who has an excellent chance of becoming a prime minister, having failed repeatedly in his attempts to become president, seems to be serving up a mixture of nationalism and social control, popular in many parts of post-Communist Eastern and South-East Europe, where moorings disappeared in the nineties.

At the same time he is insisting that Western investors and, above all Western aid-givers have nothing to fear. Serbia will not change under his government. She will co-operate with the Hague tribunal and will continue their efforts to join the European Union – a long-term project, despite the recently signed Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA).

The problem is that the United States and the European Union might cut their aid if Mr Nikolic is elected, though according to some commentators, Vojislav Kostunica will be more of a nuisance for Europe.

But while Serbian liberals portray Nikolic as a radical demagogue, some Western diplomats say he poses less of a threat to Western interests than does Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, who helped lead the revolution that overthrew Milosevic but has now adopted nationalist rhetoric.

"Kostunica is a 19th-century, anti-Western, romantic nationalist," said one senior Western diplomat, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the domestic politics of another country. "Mr. Nikolic is more pragmatic."

A fellow blogger, whose previous professional involvement means that he has forgotten more about the Balkans than I ever knew, told me that I should not underestimate the readiness of Serbs to be “different”. Perish the thought, I replied. How could one underestimate something like that?

The problem is that the EU cannot afford another member that is “different”. We already have Greece that is an ally often in name only but one that relies heavily on subsidies from the European Union.

The situation with the Balkan countries throws up once again the basic problem with that much vaunted common foreign policy – it has no idea what to do about the EU’s neighbours because it is not based on any common interest. All it can do is assimilate those neighbours as well as it can manage and all relations must revolve round the possibility of membership rather than agreements on various matters.

Having assimilated one lot the EU comes up against another set of neighbours and the same problems arise. Once again the only discussion is whether those countries can become members and if so how soon. If not, there is no real plan as to how to deal with them. This militates, for instance, against any such thing as a European policy towards Russia, though the member states, by and large have no individual policies either.

Entirely unsuitable countries become members of the EU, adding to the tensions within while the Commission, its officials and the budding external service struggles with ideas as to what to do with even less suitable countries that lie on the periphery.

A rebuke

Booker is put in his place.

Now, that's "green"!

Forget plastic carrier bags. The EU has a much better plan for saving the planet, using up a massive quantity of a valuable renewable resource which, at present, is going to waste.

We are, of course, referring to the three million tons a year of meat and bone meal (MBM) – the remains of dead animals – produced by EU member states (pictured). Until the terror of Mad Cow Disease gripped the civilised world – and the European Union – it was happily fed to animals, not so much with government approval but with its active encouragement.

Now, eight years after its comprehensive ban on feeding the stuff to any animal (after partial bans dating back to 1994), the EU is having second thoughts and, according to The Guardian, is working on plans to allow pig-derived MBM to be fed to poultry and vice versa.

This, in fact, dates back to the end of 2006 – reported by The Times in mid-2007 - when the European Economic and Social Committee formally asked the EU commission to step up long-standing studies which, it said, "clearly show that the use of meat meal from non-ruminants can be used in pig and poultry feed without posing any danger to human health."

In its own laborious way, the commission is pursuing a project for the testing of animal proteins, to ensure it can police a partial lifting of the ban, but that is not due for completion until 2009. In anticipation of this, it intends to submit a proposal later this year, when it will ask the member states for permission to restore sales of this by-product to selected animal feeders.

Needless to say, even the prospect of a partial lifting of the ban has "animal rights campaigners" outraged, and the antis have also recruited Muslim organisations and other groups. They claim the move would put families at risk, offend religious sensibilities and lead to a major consumer backlash.

Says Dr Abdel Majid-Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association, "There are two million Muslims in Britain and 25 million in Europe and this move would be a disaster for every one of them." He adds: "This is a sinful idea," apparently totally unaware of what happens inside a Halal slaughterhouse.

Others are also piling in, including the RSPCA which has "major concerns" about the health risks involved. Even "agriculture experts" are warning that many consumers would be offended by the idea of a return to the use of animal remains in farm feeds. Tom Acamovic, a nutrition expert based at the Scottish Agricultural College, in Ayr, opines: "I think there will be such a backlash from consumers that the idea would have to be dropped."

However, since the alternative to MBM is a combination of fishmeal and soya protein, with the dietary phosphorous element made up from distinctly non-renewable sources – the restoration of MBM into livestock and poultry diets should be widely welcomed by the "Greenies".

They will not see it that way, of course. Their narrative is that everybody should give up eating meat and become martians vegans. Under that regime there would not be any MBM produced anyway, so the current problem would not arise.

For the rest of us though, sanity will not be properly restored until we can go back to feeding the remains of dead cows to our chickens.

COMMENT THREAD

Turning the Juggernaut round

Put it all together, as Booker as done in today’s column, and the case for a period of global cooling looks pretty persuasive.

As we have pointed out in numerous posts, the policy implications for this are huge, not least the effect on the global food supply and, in turn, the implications for global security.

What is remarkable, therefore, is how little coverage the media have devoted to the shifting sands of climate science. While Booker in his little ghetto draws it all together, the best The Sunday Times can offer is a pathetic article by environment editor Jonathan Leake.

Leake tells us that the Met Office - which believes this year will be one of the hottest on record - "is to warn gardeners to plan for a warmer climate by cultivating drought-tolerant plants such as palms, olives and Mediterranean herbs". Gardeners should resign themselves to the death of the traditional lawn, we are kindly informed.

There was once a time when newspapers actually offered news, but in between the torrent of political soap opera, they have in fact become propaganda sheets for the warmists. As their intellectual contortions become more and more comedic, we find that their latest explanation for the massive increase in sea ice in the Antarctica is, er … global warming.

So desperate have they become that climatologist Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey seems to be relying on "tea leaves" to assist him in forecasting Arctic sea ice coverage for next September.

Interestingly, of the articles posted on Google News forecasting a major ice melt in the Arctic this coming summer, not one seems to mention that the ice coverage this winter peaked at a million square kilometres above last winter's level.

In fact, atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University goes so far as to say that: "Over this entire fall, winter and right up 'till today the ice concentration, the amount of ice that's floating around on the Arctic, has been below normal every single day."

However, not all is lost. Some of the citizens in the small, Idaho panhandle town of Craigmon seem to have the right attitude (spool down). As we look out on a cold, rainy Sunday, and Gatewaypundit reports four feet of snow in Dakota (see pic), we can only agree with their sentiments.

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True heroism

While I gather my scattered wits (stop sniggering at the back) and decide what to do with the vast amounts of paper and certain number of books I had to bring home from the Great Glass Egg here is another posting that some of our readers might like to meditate on.

I, too, read the obituaries of Right Reverend Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, the Anglican Bishop of Iran, and marvelled at the heroism displayed by him and his family. Stories like that put our own puny efforts into shade. People who blather about this country being a fascist or any other kind of tyranny are especially encouraged to read about the man.

Here is an excellent summary by David Pryce-Jones.

Then there were six …

Yesterday brought news of the death of Trooper Ratu Babakobau, 29, from Fiji, late of the Household Cavalry Regiment. He was killed while on patrol in the Nowzad area of northern Helmand on Friday when the Spartan APC in which he was travelling hit a mine. Three others were injured.

Posted on Defence of the Realm

A lesson from Afghanistan

In February, we posted a story on the effects of the severe winter in Afghanistan. We used the story to illustrate the extent of the bad weather in the northern hemisphere – in the context of our more general points about global warming – and have not revisited it since.

However, if possible, the advent of the "global food crisis" has made the situation even worse, creating problems which exacerbate existing stresses in this war-torn country and which defy easy (or immediate) solution.

Remarkably, though, many of those problems are exactly the same as face more developed countries like the UK. We thus thought it might be interesting and instructive to explore some of the issues currently affecting Afghanistan, and to draw broader inferences from them.

Bringing us up-to-date, we first turn to a report from the FAO published in early April, which tells us that, "The aftermath of war, two severe droughts (from 2001-2 and 2006), and an ongoing insurgency have increased food insecurity throughout Afghanistan."

It then tells us that the "current food shortage" has been intensified by the soaring price of wheat (Afghanistan's staple food), which rose by 70 percent in the past year. So, we learn: "The brutally cold winter has therefore plunged Afghanistan into a humanitarian crisis."

This crisis has been intensified by the action of neighbouring Pakistan, which has banned the private export of wheat to Afghanistan and imposed a 35 percent duty on official wheat and wheat products exports.

This – as one might expect - has led to an outbreak of cross-border smuggling, driven by the price differential in the two countries. The price of wheat flour is equivalent to about 30 rupees (48 US cents) a kilogram in Afghanistan, compared with 20 rupees in Pakistan.

As to the forthcoming season, early indications are that the 2008 wheat crop will benefit from the heavy snowfall in January. Output may, therefore, improve on the estimated 4.6 million tons from the 2007 harvest, and well above the relatively poor harvest of 2006 (3.9 million tons).

This, however, does not make Afghanistan self-sufficient in wheat and it will still need to import an estimated half a million tons, which – at the current high prices – will create yet more stresses.

For the poorer segments of society, who spend up to 70 percent of their incomes on food, high prices put basic necessities out of their reach. Thus, the UN and Kabul government have appealed for $79 million to assist an estimated 2.5 million Afghans out of the 33 million population who have difficulty affording enough food.

The high prices, though, are also having a beneficial effect, remarked upon by the Telegraph's Con Coughlin in his blog. Profits from wheat are now such that is more cost-effective to grow this crop instead of opium poppies and, as a result, farmers are shifting their cropping patterns. Opium production, currently, is on the decline.

The problem though, is that this situation is highly unstable and is unlikely to last. In 2005, there were expectations of a bumper harvest and analysts were then concerned that local surpluses would trigger a precipitous fall in wheat prices – below break-even point. The result, it was feared, would be that, the following season, farmers would move out of wheat and into alternative crops such as opium poppy.

This is precisely the dynamic which affects more developed markets. Commodities such as wheat are notoriously sensitive to fluctuations in supply. Relatively small surpluses lead to disproportionate drops in price, the reverse happening when supplies are short – as we are seeing at the moment. When the price drops, farmers move to different crops (or cease production altogether) and when prices are high, they increase production, leading to never-ending "boom and bust".

To deal with this, governments traditionally implement price stabilisation policies, adopting either of two approaches. The first is the deficiency payment scheme, which guarantees a basic minimum price to farmers for their crops: if the market price drops below that minimum, the government makes up the difference. This was the scheme adopted by the UK, prior to its entry to the EEC.

The other approach – which forms the basis of the EU's intervention scheme – is for the government to buy up grain in times of surplus and to store it, taking it out of the market and thus applying upward pressure on prices. It then releases the product back onto the market in times of shortage.

In the event, although this latter policy was mooted for Afghanistan, it was noted that the government did not have the storage facilities to accommodate such a policy action. Neither, incidentally, did it have the sophisticated market measurement tools or the capability to administer a complex agricultural payment scheme that would be required if the other approach was adopted.

The point here – of more universal importance – is that, although free-market imperatives require minimum intervention, the peculiarities of the food commodity market, and the vital need to keep populations fed – invariably require government action to smooth out the worst excesses in price fluctuations. Without that, you end up with a situation that is facing Afghanistan, swinging from the "boom to bust" and back again, with significant adverse consequences.

That notwithstanding, there are other issues holding back agricultural production in Afghanistan, one of which is pointed up in comments to a post on Barnett Rubin's remarkable Informed comment: global affairs blog.

The problem with any rural development policy in Afghanistan, the commenter wrote, is that nobody has an accurate idea of the current land tenure arrangements. Most of the recipients, it seems, are sharecroppers. Their "contract" with their landlord specifies that the inputs had to be provided by the landlord. He continued:

Most bodies involved in the aid business are not interested in delving further as this would complicate their task. It is easier indeed to report the distribution of xx tonnes of agricultural inputs to so many "poor farmers" than to actually figure out who you are really helping. The actual agricultural production arrangements in Afghanistan can be very complex and varied from one area to another, or even within one area. So it is very tempting to just ignore them.

This was further amplified on another blog who learned that opium traffickers often loan farmers the money to plant and fertilise the opium harvest for the coming year. On the other hand, there are no programmes in place to provide loan support for farmers who want to grow alternative crops. If you're an Afghan farmer who wants to grow wheat or strawberries instead of opium poppies, you're largely on your own.

Such input points up the extraordinary complexities involved in devising assistance for developing countries, and the observation that it is "very tempting to just ignore them" is very apt. Thus do we see president Bush this week proposing to spend an additional $770 million in emergency food aid - bringing US funding to $2.6 billion for the forthcoming year – but this may be exactly the opposite of what is needed.

Food aid, more often than not, acts has a hidden farm subsidy for the donor country. Small wonder, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois spoke favourably of the increase in spending.

But flooding an under-developed country with free food simply undermines the local agricultural economy. It drives down prices (who will pay for food when they can get it for free?) and thus deters farmers from growing crops – or pushes them into more profitable crops … like opium poppies.

To add to the already fiendish complexity, Rubin offers another posting, which points to unemployment as one driver of the insurgency – a view disputed by one of his commenters, who argues that distortions in aid payments are as problematic.

To be fair to the Americans, they are doing far more than simply donating food, evidenced by this site, which sets out some of the programmes they are undertaking. The British have similar programmes, albeit on a smaller scale.

However – cutting to the chase, so to speak – whatever the complexities of offering assistance and, in this case, attempting to reconstruct war-torn country, on one thing most sources seem to agree. Massive global price instability in commodity foodstuffs creates huge stresses and intensifies existing problems.

The lesson from that is clear. Developed countries which pursue policies – such as the promotion of biofuels – not only disadvantage their own economies. They create problems for developing countries, which are likely to suffer far more than the comfortable originators of those policies.

In short, we have to think not only for ourselves but for others – and assess the effects of our policies on those less fortunate than ourselves.

COMMENT THREAD

Enough already

We have no doubt on this blog that the political groups and groupuscules (and I am using that word in its correct meaning) will go on chattering about the local election results for some time to come. Undoubtedly, this was a catastrophe for the Labour party of some magnitude and one from which they will find it difficult to recover.

However, for the rest of us, life goes on and, let us face it, these were just local elections, which will change little and which were decided on a low turn-out as usual. In other words, for the majority of the population, even in the affected areas, they were of little concern. This will not change until there is a root-and-branch reform in local government (and that goes for the regional government in Westminster, Cardiff and Edinburgh as well).

Before I return to my usual themes I shall do one final round-up of events in London in the last couple of days.

We have a new mayor, though many of us prefer not to have one at all. Nor are we all that desperate to have a London Assembly or the rest of those quangos that together make up the GLA or, more widely, “London’s government”. London does not need a government as it has managed spectacularly well without one for centuries. This supposed government is little more than a money-hungry incubus on the whole city.

On the other hand, if we do have a mayor, even temporarily, it is better not to have a power-hungry, self-centred, not-much-reformed socialist who brought in huge white elephants, thought of new ways to fleece the public and saw himself and his entourage as another foreign office. The truth of how much those trips abroad to places like Venezuela or to conferences about global warming has not yet come out.

The truth of how much the many media officers have cost us will be known but shall we ever find out the money spent on endless groups and organizations that were supposed to “help” various “disadvantaged” groups in London, such as young people? Did you know that there is a whole “yoof” section in the GLA where youngsters, who should be looking for proper jobs and having a life are employed to create a great deal of useless and expensive (to the taxpayer) employment for themselves and others like them in endless groups, committees, discussions, forums etc etc?

On the whole they are a messy lot who seem to think nothing of dropping litter on the floor and never switch off their machinery when they leave the building. Last heard of they were a little worried that their cushy and mindless jobs might disappear under the new Mayor. Let us hope so.

On to the new Mayor. Boris Johnson has won very handsomely. Despite the ridiculous system of three ballot papers, two preferences for the mayor and two separate votes for the assembly, which has consistently created more spoilt ballots in London than anywhere else, the victory is clear and uncontestable.

The turn-out seems to have been around 45 per cent, about ten per cent higher than last time and about 13 per cent higher than the time before. This is still not spectacularly high but by standards of local elections, not bad.

The irony here is that we were told twice by pundits of the stature of Simon Jenkins that the magical personality and popularity of Ken Livingstone would bring the voters out in far greater droves than ever before. It didn’t and neither did the media blitz on the subject. It was actually the presence of a credible rival that did the trick.

The Tories could have achieved this victory last time if they had not been so stupid in their choice of candidate. Stitching up the highly presentable Nikki Page and putting forward the highly unpresentable Steve Norris, who had lost once already, was an act of madness. And there was serious talk of doing the same this time.

Unfortunately, this story wrong-foots the “local-is-best” brigade. It was the London Conservative Party that messed up last time and it was the national leadership that insisted on Johnson as candidate this time. We don’t know how the man himself was talked into doing this but if whatever he was promised means only one term as Mayor, that is all to the good.

David Cameron must have some ambivalent feelings. It does not take too many brain cells to work out that Boris Johnson will now have a power base that is completely independent of the leader and, unlike Livingstone, he has never made the mistake of antagonizing other members of his party.

Meanwhile, those figures for people who have not seen them yet. Johnson got 1,043,761 votes on first preference, that is 42.48 per cent and Livingstone 893,877, that is 36.38 per cent. Our Ken got more second preference vote but as the Evening Standard said around 8 o’clock yesterday, not enough to catch up. (They, of course, had the turn-out figures in various constituencies, information we were denied inside City Hall.)

Final count was 1,168,738 for Mayor Johnson and 1,028,966 for ex-Mayor Livingstone. One can but hope he will now disappear from public life and go back to spending more time with his newts.

Contrary to what the media tells us, Livingstone has not been a success in his political life. Nothing but a career local politician, he actually helped Thatcher to destroy the GLC, which he had seen as his power base. Then he became an MP, only to find that as a back-bencher and a greatly disliked one at that, he had no role to play.

Now he has lost his power-base again after a couple of rather disastrous stints. His “achievements” are not precisely great. Getting the 2012 Olympics for London is a poisoned chalice for the rest of us and we are resentful.

The extension of the congestion charge zone westwards was a highly unpopular, badly argued piece of spite against people who refuse to vote for him. Getting more people on the buses is a ridiculous claim as the buses are no more frequent or efficient than they ever were. In other words, this has simply added to the discomfort of travelling in London.

Some of those more people are children and teenagers under 16, who can travel anywhere for free and hop on and of at different stops, making life difficult for other passengers and adding to the obesity problem among children.

And so on, and so on.

It was time for him to go. Otherwise, the Conservatives have not done as well as they had hoped in London. They lost one first-past-the-post seat in the Assembly and failed to gain another one they had high hopes for. They have gone down to eight constituency members with Labour having six. However, their vote across London has gone up by 6.20 per cent, so they will make the seats up from the top-up list system. Labour’s vote went up by 3.36 per cent. A combination of higher turn-out and smaller parties being squeezed. It was rare to see any group quite as glum as the Greens were in the Great Glass Egg yesterday.

What about those top-up members? The big news is that, as expected, the BNP has passed the 5 per cent threshold and now has one member in the Assembly. Incidentally, if it is true that the main party candidates walked out of the room when the BNP mayoral candidate spoke but happily listened to the tyrant- and terrorist-supporting Lindsay Germain of the Left List, one can only marvel at their stupidity as well as bad manners. Then they wonder why people vote BNP. Richard Barnbrook, the man in question, will now be in the Assembly, so, as the song has it “ho, ho, ho, who’s laughing now”.

Having found the full list, I can say that the Conservatives have got three top-up seats, so two mayoral hopefuls, Andrew Boff and Victoria Borwick will be in the Assembly. Again, one can but wonder at their notion of what constitutes important political placing.

Labour have two top-up seats, with Nicky Gavron and Murad Qureshi back in place. That means there will be 11 Tory members and 8 Labour ones. The Lib-Dims have lost two seats and are down to three and the Greens have retained the two they had. BNP has one. What a jolly set-up that is going to be.

And so, my own adventure in City Hall is probably coming to an end. Technically, I remain a GLA employee until I get my redundancy and, theoretically, they are going to try to redeploy me. I think the chances of that are slim and I shall go on to pastures new.

The One London blog has effectively ceased functioning and will be closed down definitively. I can’t say it was fun but it had its moments of interest. My dislike and distrust of local government has been confirmed; my assumption that it is unbearably corrupt has been confirmed in spades; and my conviction that the GLA should be abolished has been strengthened even more.

Back to real life now. Well, after I have cleared my desk in the Great Glass Egg.

Stealing the food from their mouths

We often complain that the media's idea of journalism is to cut and paste agency copy or to print, almost verbatim, press releases from favoured sources, with little analysis or addition, other than the occasional "rent-a-quote" from a convenient personality.

However, sometimes the media cannot even be bothered to do that, even when an issue is topical, important and the information is from an unimpeachable source.

Such neglect is the fate of a recently released report on the multi-billion dollar theft by diverse vessels – including those from EU member states – of fish from developing nations. This is in spite of it being issued by the Department for International Development (DFID), complete with a convenient press release which even British journalists could understand if they tried hard enough.

The full 178-page report, entitled "Global Extent of Illegal Fishing", is produced by the Marine Resources Assessment Group with funding from DFID and support from the Norwegian Agency for Development
Cooperation (NORAD).

Its substantive finding is that global annual losses from illegal fishing in the waters of developing nations could be double earlier estimates at $10 to $23 billion. The scale of illegal fishing in African waters is now so serious that it is in danger of decimating stocks across the continent, with losses for sub-Saharan Africa alone totalling $1 billion per year.

To date, the only publicity the report has received (that we know of) is from The Nation in Nairobi.

What probably killed the publicity though is that the report, inexplicably, is dated July 2005 (a fact not evident from the press release) although "stale" data do not necessarily deter the media from publishing if it is interested in the subject.

More than anything, therefore, what we seem to be seeing is an almost complete lack of interest. Even though the "food crisis" and starvation in the third world are highly topical, the last time this issue was given a serious airing was in January, by the New York Times. Not since June 2006 has it been reported by Reuters, and it was a month earlier when a British newspaper last took it seriously.

Such is the black hole into which it has fallen that even Greenpeace – which had no trouble attracting publicity when shadowing Japanese whalers – has had difficulty making a mark.

Not our favourite organisation, it has nevertheless been doing good work in this area. In March 2006, for instance, it outed a Spanish refrigerated cargo ship, the Binar 4, illegally trans-shipping fish in international waters, caught by Chinese trawlers in Guinean waters.

Although it wrote a detailed report of the incident, it is difficult to recall any serious publicity arising from it and nor does the internet yield any evidence of media interest. Nor, a year later, when Greenpeace published the "first global database of blacklisted, illegal fishing vessels" did it get any media attention.

Quite why the media should be so reluctant to report on an issue of such vital importance is something of a mystery. On the face of it, as a story, it "ticks all the boxes". Complicity of the EU and the fact that responsibility does not lie directly with the British government may be a factor. It may be a victim of the elephant in the room syndrome.

But, as long as it does remain unreported, it can never build the political or popular momentum that is needed to drive action. For that – as with so many other things – the fourth estate bears not a little of the responsibility for the fact that this scandal continues unchecked.

COMMENT THREAD

From City Hall

17.57 - This is where it is all supposed to be happening but it is remarkably quiet. Something to do with the fact that the immensely complicated London voting system is too slow for the very generous time table that has been allowed for it. The votes, as counted in the constituencies were supposed to arrive to City Hall about two hours ago to be collated and generally made presentable for announcements.

The count across London is about 67 per cent through but some constituencies are ahead of others. There are screens downstairs in the cafe for the running total and I shall investigate in a minute to bring up-to-date information but I have just been told by someone who has been there that it is like watching paint dry. The most important activity seems to be people drinking tea and coffee.

Security is slightly tighter than usual, which means everybody has to go through the security check (good thing I remembered to take my Swiss army knife out of my bag) but it did not take too long. I have acquired a new piece jewellery - a paper wristband with a number - and, inevitably, my small ring made the machine shriek. Everybody made the machine shriek.

The headline in the paper is that the bookies are paying out on Boris as Mayor. One wonders whether that means they think he might get through on first preference only, which will be more than the present Hizonner has ever managed, despite his supposed "popularity" with Londoners.

18.45 Back from the hive of activity in the basement (good thing the water had been pumped out) and watching paint dry seems far more exciting. The screens are automatically updated every few minutes. At 18.38 74.43 per cent of the vote across London had been counted with some of the fourteen constituencies in the eighties and some still lingering in sixties.

On first preferences Boris Johnson was leading in eight constituencies and Ken Livingstone in six. In two of them, Brent & Harrow and Haringey & Enfield, by a very slight margine with the votes still being counted.

Brian Paddick not doing well at all and Sian Berry, the Green blonde, is getting nowhere. At times she is level pegging with the BNP. This means that the second preference of those who voted for her, which will go to Hizonner, naturally, are of less importance than assumed before. It is the Lib-Diom voters' second preferences that are of interest to us all and they are likely to divide fairly evenly between the two leading candidates.

Details are hard to discern as figures are not being given, merely a general pictorial representation in bar charts.

Estimated time of announcement has now gone to ten o'clock so I shall probably depart long before. But you never know, something interesting might happen.

19.09 I can report a little bit of excitement. There is a tiny anti-fascist demonstration outside the Great Glass Egg. Well, there was, but it has gone quiet because it was immediately surrounded by London's finest, who are here in large numbers, and the Egg's own security guards.

It seemed to be an anarchist organization as they had a black and red flag but their big banner was not very well designed, with a black background and part-white, part-brown letters. I suppose they thought it was a brilliant idea to remind everyone of the brownshirts but it is very difficult to read brown on black.

We do not know whom they consider to be fascists. Is it the BNP? Is it the Conservatives? Either way they do not seem to have a clear idea of what elections are about. If the BNP candidates acquire a seat or two in the Assembly, no amount of demonstrating can reverse that. The people who would have made it possible were all those politicians, journalists, bishops, bloggers, old uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, who kept writing about the evils of the BNP.

19.58 This may be my last update as there is some paint out there that will not dry unless I watch it. At 19.51 across London only 86.90 per cent of the votes had been counted with constituencies where Livingstone was leading on first preferences well ahead. Most of them are in the nineties and will complete the count very soon. Whether that means the turn-out was low there we do not know as the figures as opposed to the overall picture are still unavailable.

Boris is still leading in eight constituencies on first preferences as against six for Ken, with Brian Paddick and Sian Berry nowhere. Incidentally, pretty little Sian has turned up here now and is looking a little grim. Her supporters are looking marginally less civilized than the BNP. A few others have been sighted - English Democrats, Christian Alliance, the odd Tory and Labour and Winston McKenzie the independent candidate is here, looking as natty as ever.

My guess is that a declaration at ten o'clock is optimistic. I shall now disappear into the West End and update everyone on the results when I get home. Assuming I can tear myself away from that drying paint.

UPDATE: The London Evening Standard has jumped the gun and is claiming that Boris has "scored a stunning election victory to end Ken Livingstone's eight-year reign and round off a disastrous 24 hours for the Labour Party."

The paper is reporting that, "after a nailbiting count, Mr Johnson was so far ahead on first-preference votes he could not be caught by Mr Livingstone, even after second preferences were taken into account." Labour officials, it adds, are conceded privately that the Conservative was too far ahead.

We've all got it wrong

"What ordinary people understand by global warming is the world getting hotter - average temperatures rising," writes Charles Clover in The Daily Telegraph.

Dear me, what simpletons we all are! Charles graciously explains:

What scientists mean by global warming … is the sun's radiation being trapped near the Earth's surface by greenhouse gases. This has been going on for millions of years and is now happening at a faster rate thanks to rising emissions of fossil fuels. Clearly what scientists call global warming will continue through this decade.

So, when we are chipping the ice off our cars in August, we can at least be comforted by the knowledge that global warming is continuing.

COMMENT THREAD

Full circle

A new blog on the block. Enjoy!

Wheeler gets leave

Less "doomed" than some thought, millionaire Stuart Wheeler has succeeded in gaining leave to appeal from the High Court over the government's refusal to hold a referendum on the EU constitutional Lisbon treaty.

The proceedings started last month and now two judges have ruled that there is an "arguable case" which warrants of full hearing. This, we are told, is likely to take two days, scheduled for 9-10 June.

Wheeler says that, from what he has seen of the judgement, "not only do we have an arguable but a rather strongly arguable case," which is something of a testament to his perseverance and the skill of his legal team.

However, the case is far from in the bag but, even if he loses, Wheeler is hoping the negative publicity could put pressure on the government. Certainly, it will help to focus attention on the ratification process – which has become something of a "non-issue" of late - so a timely reminder can do no harm.

COMMENT THREAD

Local elections?

It is a measure of the health of our democracy that yesterday's local elections have been treated almost universally by our political classes and the media as a vast, publicly-funded opinion poll of our provincial government.

The most exciting news of the evening for the groupescules, therefore, was the analysis of the clutch of results then in, to produce a figure to represent the percentage national vote. This was then translated into a prediction for the next electorally-mandated reshuffle, when we get to decide which politicians we send to Brussels for their instructions.

For us, on the edges of far-flung Bradford – two hundred miles physically from the capital and a million miles in ideology – the opinion poll election was a non-event. We received but one election leaflet, from the local incumbent, and nothing else. Should we have been passive electors (the majority) we would have no idea what our respective candidates stood for – not that we have anyway.

In any case, the idea of local politics is a hollow joke. Living in an urban village on the outskirts of the city, with a population of 15,000, we are not entitled to our own administration. Instead, we are subsumed into the monstrosity of Bradford Metropolitan District Council with a population of over half a million, the administration of which might just as well be on another planet.

The city itself is dying on its feet. Owing to dubious planning decisions and over-ambitions (to say nothing of inept) development plans, the heart has been ripped out of the centre, leaving few shops of any worth.

With limited parking, rapacious parking wardens and an air of menace conveyed by wandering gangs of Asian (and white) youths, the place is not one to visit unless you are in dire need – or have been summonsed to the magistrates court. Few from our part of town ever visit the centre. We do our shopping and business elsewhere.

The rot started in the 70s, with the Walker "reforms" of local government. These destroyed the small local authorities, creating the monstrous giants that still exist today.

But there were other changes afoot. When precisely one change happened is lost in the mists of time, but we used to have a system whereby local businesses paid their property taxes to their local councils. In return, business owners had the choice of casting their local vote either in their place of residence, or where their businesses were located, a system which led to a healthy network of independent councillors, beholden to no political party.

Now, businesses taxes are grabbed by central government, which pools the national income and doles out differing proportions to local councils according to an arcane formula which no one understands, bearing no relation to the amounts actually extorted.

As a rule of thumb though, the system seems to work on the basis that, the more you pay, the less you get. As a result, business-owners are disfranchised, victims of taxation without representation – the complaint articulated by Washington car drivers on their number plates (pictured).

Generally, something like 60 percent of each council's overall income comes from the government in London, but much more of its expenditure is dictated (and tightly controlled) by fiat from Whitehall. There is, of course, no local sales tax. That is levied by the London government as Value Added Tax, standardised nationally according to a system dictated by Brussels.

Administration is also tightly controlled, increasingly down to the frequency with which waste is collected, evidenced by a report in The Daily Telegraph which tells us of the steady march of fortnightly bin collection, driven by the EU's waste framework directive and the financial penalties incumbent therein.

That which is not controlled, directly or indirectly from Brussels, is micromanaged from Whitehall, while the day-to-day management of local authorities is mainly vested in overpaid officials and a small claque of paid councillors operating in a system known as "cabinet government". Ordinary councillors do not get a look in, are not even allowed to talk to ordinary officials and must make appointments with departmental directors if they wish to discuss council affairs.

That, and much more – not least the depredations of the local government code of conduct, which further emasculates local councillors – has stripped any meaning from local government. It exists in name only. Small wonder, the majority of voters simply do not bother to turn out – they know enough about the system to have realised that their votes will not change anything of any significance.

So it is that the elections have indeed become a vast, media-fuelled opinion poll, less accurate than some as the sample is self-selecting and therefore entirely unrepresentative. But, whether or not they reflect national sentiment – and well they might – they have very little to do with how we are governed locally. Their main purpose, it seems, is to provide entertainment for the political classes and the media.

COMMENT THREAD

The best laid schemes …

Once or twice, we have been known to write about the End of life vehicle directive, which has been causing no end of problems.

Imposing as it does a raft of strict requirements on car disposal, the directive had the potential to cause absolute mayhem, adding so much to costs that the last owners would either be tempted to dump their cars or get rid of them via unlicensed scrap dealers.

To circumvent that, the directive imposed a requirement on car manufacturers to pay for the disposal of private vehicles – the so-called "producers responsibility" - so that the last owner bore no costs. However, this only applies to "vehicles put on the market on or after 1 July 2002".

Since by far the bulk of cars being scrapped pre-date 1 July 2002, that means that most owners cannot take advantage of free disposal. And, as could be predicted, a huge number of scrapped cars are not going through the official system.

In theory, this should not happen. Under the government's "continuous licensing scheme", owners have to pay tax on their cars unless they are officially deregistered. In order to do that, they have to obtain a "certificate of destruction" from an approved treatment centre licensed to handle end of life vehicles.

However, as reported today by The Times, government figures reveal that only 900,000 certificates were issued in 2006 despite more than two million cars being taken off the road that year.

The weakness in the system, as it turns out, is the necessary opt-out for owners who intend to keep their cars, but take them off the road and therefore avoid liability for road tax. This is the Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN), which owners can make simply by a number of means. These vehicles then drop out of the system.

What has been happening, it seems, is that many owners have been taking advantage of this "loophole" – as The Times puts it - then getting rid.

Although the paper makes a big deal about many of these going to unlicensed scrapyards – unsurprising given the current high prices for steel – an even bigger problem is the number of dumped cars.

According to the BBC, until recently 300,000 cars were abandoned every year, costing local authorities £26m to remove them. This year, however, the number of vehicles being abandoned is expected to reach 500,000.

One really is lost in admiration at how the combination of our central and provincial governments can take a problem and make it so comprehensively worse.

COMMENT THREAD

Not on the side of the angels

If you ever needed any proof that the EU is a backwards-looking, protectionist, self-obsessed and basically malign organisation (not that any is really needed), you need only look at the latest development in the long-running saga of the ban on US poultry.

Reported on The Guardian website yesterday, this piece notes that the European Union's refusal to lift an 11-year-old ban on imports of U.S. poultry "raises doubts about the ability of a new trans-Atlantic forum to resolve disputes."

This is according to Daniel Price, White House international economic affairs adviser, and he is referring to the year-old TEC (Transatlantic Economic Council). Furthermore, in a speech at the US Chamber of Commerce, he went on to say, "This issue has implications that go well beyond the immediate interests of US poultry producers."

He is dead right.

The EU has banned imports of US poultry since April 1997 because US poultry producers use a low-concentration chlorine wash to reduce harmful pathogens, a practice not permitted by the EU's "food safety regime".

In fact, the issue is not "food safety" at all, but naked protectionism. Chlorine washes during poultry processing – especially in spin chillers, the water in which otherwise ends up a bacterial soup, spreading contamination – have long been established as a valuable and powerful tool in the fight against food poisoning and other food-borne disease.

The case is argued by the USDA here but, most damning of all, the EU’s own Food Safety Agency agrees that the use of chlorine washes "…is of no safety concern."

Most damning of all, it was the EU commission which formally put this question to the European Food Safety Agency, asking it "to update the previous opinion expressed by the Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health (SCVPH) on 14-15 April 2003" - which had already supported the practice. The Agency duly considered the issue and its opinion was adopted on 6 December 2005. Yet, since then, the commission has done precisely nothing to lift a wholly unjustified ban.

Behind this, of course, is money. Before the last round of enlargement - the big one - US producers were selling substantial quantities of processed poultry to the former Communist countries. When they joined the EU, and thus adopted EU standards, the trade was blocked and has remained so ever since.

And, despite the unequivocal opinion of the EFSA, the commission is still stalling. Recently, enterprise and industry commissioner Günter Verheugen wrote to Barroso in March asking for the ban to be lifted but, last week Gert Lindemann, Germany's deputy agriculture minister, said the EU was unlikely to lift the ban soon. "We can't solve this problem overnight or in the next four weeks," he says – despite the fact that this has been going on for years.

And guess which country sells the bulk of processed poultry into eastern Europe?

Now, all the EU is prepared to do is to deliver a "progress report" on the issue at the next TEC meeting in Brussels on 13 May, but action there will be none. Unsurprisingly, the US – no paragon of virtue itself when it comes to protectionism – is a tad hacked off.

The really interesting thing though is that chlorine treatment in poultry processing really is a well-established and successful technique for improving food safety. If "Mother Europe" – aka the EU – was really interested in protecting its "children", as the gushing commission tells us it is, far from banning this technique, it would be making it compulsory.

Which all goes to show that, when there is a conflict between the safety needs of "EU citizens" and vested interest, the EU is definitely not on the side of the angels.

COMMENT THREAD

"…several decades of global cooling"

Strangely absent from the BBC news bulletins (so far) - but headlined by The Daily Telegraph and carried by the major news agencies – is a "shock" finding that global warming is taking a break.

This comes from a report in the journal Nature which concludes, on the basis of computer modelling of changes to the "meridional overturning circulation" (MOC), that global warming "could take a break in the next decade".

Climate scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, it seems, believe a change in the Gulf Stream is impending. They predict this will temporarily weaken over the next decade, in line with what has happened regularly in the past. This, they say, will lead to slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic and in North America and Europe.

Separately, and apparently unrelated to this study, Watts up with that publishes an analysis offered by Don J. Easterbrook, a retired professor from the Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, in Bellingham.


This is in response to the news on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shift, reported yesterday, with Easterbrook concluding that we could be facing "…several decades of global cooling" (the graph shows the historic effects of PDO shifts on temperatures).

Nor do these findings stand on their own. Today we also see a report that March 2008 was clearly an extreme month for sea ice in the Bering Sea. St. Paul Island (see satellite location pic) remained in the sea ice through the month of March. St. George – to the south of St. Paul - was icebound for a total of 18 days during March.

Several captains of fishing/crabbing vessels decided by the third week of March to stop fishing and go home, hoping to return in early April to resume operations in less icy waters (pic below – the Bering Star while crabbing in the Bering Sea during early March 2008. This was one of the ships that suspended operations due to the ice).

Then, from the other end of the world, Science Daily reports that the Antarctic deep sea is getting colder. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile. At the same time, the journal confirms that satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent on record.

Putting all that together – bearing in mind that there has been no global warming since 1998, and taking into account the concerns over the lack of sunspot activity and the lateness of solar cycle 24 – one comes to the inescapable conclusion that, whatever the medium to long-term future might hold, we are in for some colder weather in the short-term.

Looking back to the last winter, and the heavy snows, it is also necessary to remind ourselves that, in the short-term, it is weather, not climate, which destroys crops and ruins harvests. With "global warming" seemingly turning to cooling, we also have to remind ourselves that moderate global warming increases food production and that we have been enjoying a "global warming dividend" for some decades.

Cooling, of course, brings with it the possibility of catastrophic winter weather events but, even without any such phenomena, lower crop yields are to be expected. And, with the global food production system under stress, we are relying on record harvests over the next few years to rebuild reserves and take the pressure off commodity prices.

We are thus in a situation where the world is relying not just on maintaining production levels but on record production, at levels never before achieved. These are achievable, but only if weather conditions allow – of which we cannot be certain, and less so now. In short, we really do have a global system "on the edge".

For wealthy countries like the UK, any immediate adverse effects of cooler weather will manifest themselves in food price inflation and occasional local shortages (as they are doing now). These will be more inconvenient than life-threatening. Not so, of course, for impoverished nations, which – as we pointed out earlier – could suffer severely. The knock-on effects for the UK and other developed nations are incalculable – but potentially serious.

For Britain, though, the deterioration in the global food supply is especially serious as, according to latest figures, we are only 60 percent self-sufficient in food – equivalent to four in ten of our population relying on imported food.

A lack of self-sufficiency is not a problem – the UK has always been a trading nation and has, since the Middle Ages, relied on imported food. What matters is whether, in a situation of global food shortage, we can manage our food supplies. The problem is that we cannot – and it gets worse. Our predicament is spelt out here:

Our food policy (including strategic stock management) – is the sole provenance of Brussels (the EU) through the CAP and other policy instruments.

The policy itself is fundamentally flawed in that it is designed to deal with the consequences of agricultural over-production and is neither appropriate for, nor capable of, dealing with structural supply deficits.

Even if the policy was appropriate, it is being managed by the EU commission, which has a record of incompetence and which, in any event, lacks the flexibility to respond effectively to rapidly changing situations.

We no longer have the capability to broker deals with third (non EU) countries, with a view to securing our own supplies, or make bilateral agreements with those countries in order to promote increased production from which we can benefit.

In short, whatever might happen in the short to medium future, we are entirely reliant on the good offices and capabilities of the European Union, to ensure that we as a nation remain well fed.

Furthermore, while the consequences (to us) of mismanagement of our food supplies in an era of food surpluses are primarily financial, in a time of shortages, the consequences are potentially far greater. That is really worrying.

In a sense, we see chickens coming home to roost. With successive governments having handed over their powers to control our food supply to the EU, we are now left at the mercy of Brussels, the commission and the council of ministers, comprising 26 other member states – all of which have their own agendas and their own priorities.

Arguably, would that they knew it, the developing situation is a gift for Eurosceptics. The fact that we are so reliant on the EU for our basic needs is an issue which provides the strongest possible argument for getting clear of that malign organisation and recovering control of our own affairs. This is no longer an academic issue (if it ever was), but one of increasing urgency.

UPDATE: New posting and comments on Watts up with that and an excellent post here.

COMMENT THREAD

Oh this is such fun

One can have a lot of fun at the expense of our political establishment. Sadly, at the end of it all, they have the last laugh. Here is a wonderful piece of news: Alistair Darling is setting up a working group or a think tank as one of London's freebie papers called it, to have a look at the British tax system that is driving multinationals away from this country.

Well, no, since you ask, it is not the fact that Britain has stayed out of the European and Monetary Union, popularly known as the euro, that is causing the problems. Some of these companies are, indeed, going to Ireland, but they do not mention the euro. What they do mention is the impossibly high taxes they have to pay in this country.

The CBI, instead of telling Alistair Darling a few home truths, is supporting the idea.

CBI director general, Richard Lambert said: ‘The CBI looks forward to working as part of the new group to identify a clear, internationally competitive corporate tax strategy for the UK.’

The employers’ body released a taskforce report last month revealing failure of the UK tax system to respond to increasingly global business activity which was creating an unsustainable regime.

Hmm. So, how much research will this working group or think tank have to do? How many staff will it have and how many position papers will it produce? How much will it cost the taxpayer? And all the time, the answer is so simple. In fact, it can be boiled down to two words. But one cannot quite envisage the government listening. Of course, this might be a ploy to drag matters out until the next President of the European Union, France, goes all out to harmonize those corporate tax rates.