The very worst of the media

Quite rightly, Christopher Booker observes in today’s column that last Wednesday's "humiliating blow" to the government, dealt by three of Britain's most senior judges, led by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, "should have made headlines across the land".

The ruling gave a final rebuff to the Government's bizarre efforts, over seven years, to appease the murderous regime of the mullahs in Teheran by outlawing their main democratic opponents as terrorists.

This is the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), the largest component of the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), led by Mrs Maryam Rajavim (pictured below right). The NCRI itself is a mass movement which enjoys huge support in that oppressed country, holding out the hope of a secular and democratic alternative to the ruthless theocracy which has murdered more than 100,000 of the NCRI's supporters since 1979.

Booker has been following this issue closely since last June, with the tale getting even more bizarre as it developed, with each twist and turn, despite being ignored by the MSM.

True to form, as the tale comes to its climax, far from making the front page headlines, it merited only brief mentions in the British press. In The Daily Telegraph, it did not even warrant a separate report, getting only a brief mention from Joshua Rozenberg, the legal editor, and a down-page reference from Con Coughlin.

Rozenberg, at least, did demonstrate – more than adequately – why this issue should have made front page news, representing as it did an utter humiliation not only for the government but also a personal defeat for home secretary Jacqui Smith - which alone should have ensured widespread media coverage.


Having already lost the case in the Court of Appeal, which had said that there was no "reliable evidence that supported a conclusion that [the] PMOI retained an intention to resort to terrorist activities in the future", she had nevertheless remained confident that she could gain leave to appeal, so much so that she had advised the Tehran regime that they need not be concerned about the ruling.

Now that no lesser person that the Lord Chief Justice has refused the home secretary permission to appeal, Jacqui Smith has nowhere to go. She must now lift the ban on the PMOI and unfreeze its funds, a decision, Rozenberg writes, "with immense symbolic as well as practical importance."

As you would expect, Melanie Phillips agrees, writing in her Spectator blog that: "This not only brings to an end a shameful chapter in Britain's long appeasement of the tyrannical Iranian regime but also offers a sliver of hope that that regime might now be toppled."

This is what is at stake, hence the celebrations outside the Court on Wednesday (pictured above), which makes it all the more puzzling why the British media did not take the judgement more seriously. The BBC only covered it on its website, and the Daily Mail confined itself to a simple factual report, as did The Times. By contrast, the New York Times did it better, as did the Wall Street Journal and the France-based IHT.

As for The Guardian, it reported the judgement briefly, but then gave space to Seyed Mohammad Marandi in Comment is free to complain about the Court "legitimising terror". Marandi, incientally, is an assistant professor of English Literature at the University of Tehran.

So often do we complain about the inadequacy of the media in the UK that we are beginning to sound like a cracked record – to say nothing of ensuring that we get minimal links from the newspaper-based clogs.

But, in this issue, we see the very worst of New Labour's appeasement of the vile regime in Tehran which, as Booker writes, is playing a key part in assisting terrorist movements all over the Middle East, from Gaza and Beirut to Iraq and Afghanistan, and is the source of 90 percent of the terrorist bombs used to kill British troops around Basra and in Helmand.

Thus, as the pages of the newspapers today are again filled with the tittle-tattle of the political soap opera, in Booker's column we not only see the very worst of New Labour but of the British media as well.

COMMENT THREAD

News of the World

The paper really, really does not like former UKIP MEP Tom Wise. A taste of the lurid prose (their capitals):

PORKY Euro MP Tom Wise raises a glass to another rewarding day in Brussels—one spent shamelessly DODGING work and SCAMMING a fortune in expenses.

As he leaned on the bar guzzling beer Wise bragged to a News of the World investigator how he milks the taxpayer for THOUSANDS every week in dodgy allowances and travel claims.

But then, he is not the only one in their sights. Certain Tory MEPs don't look too good either. Even little Roger Helmer, the paper suggests, "is another MEP filling his boots." We learn:

He has set himself up as a champion for openness and transparency in Brussels. But in an unguarded moment he bragged to our girl of his plans to exploit the crazy expenses system for thousands more — by tweaking the way his home address is listed.

The idea is to make his home in Ashby Magna, Leicestershire, appear at least 1,000 kilometres from Strasbourg — which under crazy Euro allowance rules will net him an extra £268 every time he flies there — £3,216 a year.

At present the distance is calculated from his postal town Lutterworth, which makes it 996km. Over a blowout meal of scallops and red wine Helmer said: "From Ashby Magna I make it 1,001km. If Brussels agrees with me I'll say, 'OK, backdate it!'"

Tom Wise is quoted, "in words that may haunt him": "There are two things that will destroy politicians. One is sex, the other is money."

Unsurprisingly, readers' comments are not too complimentary. And, whatever you might think of the style, the News of the World sells 3.5 million copies each Sunday.

COMMENT THREAD

Why are we unable to act?

It was only just over a week ago that we wrote despairingly about the media's lack of concern over the depredations of third world fishing grounds.

To give it its due, today The Observer has a long piece which deals with that issue. On the EU's involvement, it has this to say:

Strangely one of the first international attempts to conserve fish stocks, especially for the more easily exploited nations, also became part of the disaster. The United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, signed in 1979, extended national rights over fisheries to 200 miles from a country's coasts. But it included a provision that, if fish stocks in that zone were surplus to national needs, the country could sell its rights to outsiders.

That convention allowed cash-strapped and sometimes corrupt countries in west Africa to raise funds by letting the industrial trawler fleets in. Since 1979 the EU has negotiated deals on fishing rights with a string of impoverished African countries. Despite the EU's own studies indicating massive and quite possibly irreversible damage to fish stocks off west Africa, these deals continue to be struck.

In 2002, the year an EU report revealed that the Senegalese fish biomass had declined 75 per cent in 15 years, Brussels bought rights for four years' fishing of tuna and bottom-dwelling fish on the Senegal coasts, for just $4m a year. In 2006, access for 43 giant EU factory fishing vessels to Mauritania's long coastline was bought for £24.3m a year.

It's estimated that these deals have put 400,000 west African fishermen out of work; some of them now take to the sea only as ferrymen for desperate would-be migrants to the Canary Islands and Europe. And among the millions of Africans who depend on fish as their main source of protein, consumption has declined from 9kg per year to 7kg.

Much of the piece, however, relies on an interview with Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University, who believes the answer to global overfishing is to set up a network of marine reserves, "protecting up to 40 percent of the world's oceans in permanent refuges". This, he maintains, would enable the recovery of fish stocks and help replenish surrounding fisheries.

I met Roberts once, a long meeting, when I was working on fishing policy – and read his book. His views are interesting, but I profoundly disagree with them – they are politically naïve and unworkable in practice. That The Observer thus focuses on his views, using the details of the EU depredations as merely a foil, rather weakens its piece.

The real need is to encourage African and other third world countries to reject cash deals with predators like the EU and to develop their own fisheries, with effective policing of their waters. This, as we reported three years ago, almost to the day, was the option exercised by Namibia, which refused to enter an agreement with the EU and had developed from scratch an industry worth $10 billion.

What is useful about The Observer report though is that it puts a figure on the cost of the deals, estimating that 400,000 west African fishermen have been put out of work, "some of them now take to the sea only as ferrymen for desperate would-be migrants to the Canary Islands and Europe" – many of the migrants themselves being displaced fishermen.

This was precisely the point we were making two years ago, but the theft still goes on.

Tellingly, one of the reasons the Euro-luvvies give for British membership of the EU is that we are then able to exercise "influence" within the Community. Yet, when it comes to exercising it over this vital issue, which costs so many lives and is one of the main drivers of economic migration from west Africa, the UK is nowhere to be seen.

Not for the first time, we are asking why we are unable to act to stop this obscene exploitation of vulnerable peoples. We keep asking, and the very fact that we get no answers tells you all you need to know about our legendary "influence" within the EU.

COMMENT THREAD

The Greenies are worried

Andrew Grice, political correspondent for The Independent is weeping into his cups this week about the demise of "green issues" in mainstream British politics – although not without displaying the arrogance of his breed.

Grice notes that Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone and 300 Labour councillors were not the only casualties of the local and London elections. No one seems to have noticed, but the other big losers, he writes, "were those people who care about the environment."

As an aside, it is typical of these bleeding heart greenies to assert that they are the only ones who "care about the environment" – the same mindset which has it that those who speak up about food scares are "killing children". A pox on them all.

Anyhow, the weeping Grice tells us that we "might just look back on May Day 2008 as the moment when the power of green politics peaked and went into reverse." He hopes he's wrong – we, of course, hope he is right. He doubts he is wrong. On this, and only this, we agree.

Grice thinks the reaction of the two main parties to the elections was "instructive". Desperate to prop up his own position after Labour's rout, he writes, Mr Brown needed to toss a few bones to the voters and jittery Labour backbenchers:

So it suddenly emerged that he was about to dump the so-called "bin tax" - allowing councils to charge householders who do not recycle their rubbish. Downing Street didn't confirm it, and five token pilot schemes will go ahead, but it's clear the bin tax has been binned.

Brown allies also floated the idea that the 2p rise in fuel duty might be shelved again. No doubt this was an attempt to placate motorists. As well as being anti-green, it was a surprise, since the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, will need all the revenue he can get when he delivers his pre-Budget report in the autumn - not least to compensate the losers from the abolition of the 10p tax rate.

But it is not only Brown in the sin bin – taxed or not. Greenie David Cameron shares the ordure, having held "a prime ministerial press conference" in which he set out his priorities for government. Significantly, the words "environment" and "climate change" did not appear in his 1,200-word statement.

Was this, Grice asks, the same man who fought the local elections on the campaign slogan "vote blue, go green"? And was the leader who hugged huskies to convince us his party had changed addressing new issues and no longer preaching to the Tory converted? Green issues have gone out of fashion for Mr Cameron; they have served their purpose.

So the wailing goes on, with Grice commenting sourly that two main parties will continue to pay lip service to green issues in the run-up to the general election. "But something has changed in the past week," he complains. "Both parties will put saving seats before saving the planet."

And the answer, according to Grice is: "If they carry on like this, voters who still put the environment at the top of their list will have to vote Liberal Democrat or Green if they want to change the climate of British politics."

Despite his greenie fervour, Grice may find promoting the love of his life an uphill struggle. Reuters is recording that the recent Nature paper has sparked worries that "briefly cooler temperatures" may take the heat out of the warmists' sails (if I can mix metaphors).

"Let's say there wasn't much of a warming for the next 10 years, how will the public and politicians play this out?" said Bob Watson, former IPCC head and current chief scientific adviser to Britain's environment ministry. He adds that it is "important to explain that fluctuations were an expected part of a general, manmade warming trend."

From the media in general, he is certainly getting some help American Thinker report that sections of the US media downplayed flood warnings arising from meltwater from the "near-record snows" of this winter, because reminders of the big chill did not fit into the MSM's chosen story line that mankind is giving Mother Nature a fever.

On the other hand, with but a few days of sunshine and we have had a rash of stories in the media about "hottest days on record" and predictions of a hot summer. This conveniently supports the global warming narrative, in marked contrast to the absence of reports about the cold winter.

What Grice is pointing up, however, is a serious problem for the Conservatives. Increasingly, global warming is seen by the general public as simply an opportunity to levy more taxes and people are becoming increasingly aware of the costs.

Thus, despite having nailed his flag to the greenie mast, Cameron is going to have to find a way of rolling back the global warming agenda. Then the fun will start as he will find himself confronting the EU's environmental requirements – the poisoned chalice which he really cannot avoid.

COMMENT THREAD

Inhabiting a twilight world

"The Conservatives say they want to get government out of people's lives," writes Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph today. He adds that, now that it looks as if the Tories could win the next general election, there is a clamour from people - this columnist included - who want to know more about what this means.

But, he continues, "before you can announce detailed policies, you need to have in your head an understanding of why too much government has such a bad effect", from which point he offers his own analysis:

People cite bureaucracy, arbitrary targets, delay, insensitivity to local needs, politicisation and waste to prove the point. All true, and all worth saying. But behind these defects lies something deeper, something which is harder for democratic politicians to attack. The big reason why government is now so oppressive is that it is always trying to promote equality.

So the thesis runs, demonstrating once again how the likes of Moore and the "above the line" High Tory claque simply cannot get their brains round the simple fact that we no longer have an independent government that is capable of running our affairs.

Many of the examples of the ailments which Moore cites stem either from the Human Rights Act, or directly from EU legislation, but nothing of that comes across. He, like so many of his ilk are in denial, unable or unwilling to comprehend that our rulers are bound up in the alien system of government based in Brussels, which completely dominates the social agenda, churning out a torrent of directives and other initiatives.

Until and unless people like Moore wake up to the idea that "government" includes the European Union – which is, after all, our supreme government - the body politic will continue to inhabit a twilight world in which they continue to believe they are still in charge.

Thus, the problem is not "equality" but the myopia of our political class which simply cannot get to grips with the reality of the world in which we actually live.

COMMENT THREAD

A recipe for disaster

Whether it is Bono, or that self-important idiot Bob Geldof, celebs in their own way have done more damage to the developing world, and the reduction of third world poverty, than enough.

Now, to add to the long line of brain-dead celebs out to do damage to the third world, is celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, pontificating about a ban on out-of-season vegetables being served in restaurants.

Conveniently just before the fourth series of his Channel 4 show, he is challenging Gordon Brown to implement "stringent new laws". He wants heavy fines on chefs who choose exotic fruit and vegetables flown in from around the world.

The poor little darling "hates" – or so he tells us - being served asparagus in December or Kenyan strawberries in mid-winter, a situation he claims is "spiralling out of control." He wants to see food home grown. "It's a chef's job to ensure everything is locally sourced and, more importantly, when they haven't got it, take it off the menu," he declares.

Oddly, it is the Reuters blog that makes the obvious point. Citing the Department for International Development, it asks: what about the farmers in some of the poorest countries in the world who are producing the food for our supermarkets? That trade is vital to their wellbeing, with a million farmers and their families in Africa depending on it.

That was very much the point we made recently about Malawi. The only hope their impoverished farmers have of getting off the poverty treadmill is to grow high value fruits and vegetables to sell to Western markets, in exchange for the cash to buy their own food.

The real problem, though, is that it is not just economically illiterate celebrity chefs that come up with the particular brand of nonsense that espouses "self-sufficiency" and local food production. It also infects many of the governments of the world – and the bulk of the aid industry – which, as we pointed out in our piece on Malawi, is condemning it and many other African countries to stagnation.

According to the economic theory of comparative advantage propounded by David Ricardo – and there has been none better – Malawi would be better off, with its fertile soil, hot climate and cheap labour, growing high value cash crops for export and buying in staples like maize from the United States or Canada, which can produce this crop far more efficiently and cheaper.

Even allowing for the largely discredited concept of "food miles", most intelligent analysts would agree that this is by far the better option for many third world countries. Yet we still get the likes of Ramsay sounding off, and the media giving him a hearing.

But, as my co-editor pointed out on this blog, more than two years ago and many times since, real assistance only comes with a careful and knowledgeable analysis of the particular needs of developing communities.

There is perhaps some hope, however, when even the BBC, reporting on the Ramsey outburst, was moved to cite Oxfam's head of research, Duncan Green. He told the BBC that he was sure, "the million farmers in east Africa who rely on exporting their goods to scrape a living would see Gordon Ramsay's assertions as a recipe for disaster".

Despite the source, truer words were never spoken.

COMMENT THREAD

News Values Today

With its usual unerring sense of what is really important in what is going on in the world, Channel Four News tonight devoted a very short item to the news that EDF, Electricite de France, is confident of buying British Energy.

This company not only owns Britain's remaining nuclear power stations but also their surrounding sites, on which, not least for ease of obtaining planning permission, it is likely that most of the next generation of sorely-needed nuclear power plants will have to be built.

EDF owns all the 58 nuclear power stations which provide France with 83 percent of its electricity. Since we sold Westinghouse, our last company capable of building nuclear power stations, to the Japanese in 2006 for a giveaway price of £2.8 billion, it is also likely that EDF, owned by the French government, will be building most of our new nuclear power stations.

This perfunctory item was given less than a minute by Channel Four News, which has previously given plenty of evidence that it strongly opposes nuclear power and thinks we should be relying on many more windfarms, The next item, five times as long, was devoted to a new exhibition staged by the transvestite, Turner Prizewinning ceramic artist Grayson Perry, featuring works of art which reflect British life between 1945 and 1980 - as Perry put it, between the two dark ages of "Nazism and Thatcherism".

If there was just one reason for hoping that those new nuclear power stations cannot be built in time to stop Britain's lights going out for rather long periods - which seems increasingly likely - it might be the thought of the expression on the faces of Jon Snow, Alex Thomson and Krishnan Guru-Murthy when they realise that Channel Four News has been forced off the air by a prolonged power cut.

Contributed by Christopher Booker.

COMMENT THREAD

Happy Victory Day

Having spent several of my formative years in another part of Europe and having come to this country with my family, without, so far as I know, a democratic vote being taken on whether we should be taken in as political asylum seekers, I find it hard to take Europe Day seriously. May 9 is Den’ Pobedi, which, as our various Russian experts will know, means Victory Day.

Every year there is a military parade in the Red Square and this year’s was predicted to be a very grand one, in the style of the Soviet Union. Russia would once again show off her power, it was said.

A new president, new prime minister, enormous wealth and a tendency to stand up to everyone else in the world (even Iran, occasionally), that is the new Russia, that likes to belong to clubs but sees no reason why she should obey the rules.

There are a few problems with that analysis as we have mentioned before. Yes, there is a new president and a new prime minister, who happens to be the old president but that, in itself, proves nothing. The transference of power was peaceful but hardly free or democratic.

Russia’s wealth depends almost entirely on gas and oil and, as we have written before on a number of occasions, the production of those two raw materials is falling as there is no investment being made in further development. Nor there is any investment being made in the country’s infrastructure, which is slowly disintegrating. There are fewer good roads in that country now than there were ten years ago.

Which raises the question as to where all that wealth is going. We can but guess. Some has gone into a prompter payment of salaries and pensions, which in turn allowed more people to spend more money on badly needed consumer goods, many of which are imported. And, one presumes, a good deal of that wealth has gone into keeping the ruling class, the privilegentsia, happy or, at least, peaceful.

The parade seems to have been all that was predicted. I shall leave the discussion of toys to my colleague, if he feels like having a look, but, apart from the Soviet-style bombast in the numbers and noise, there seems to be little really new or really threatening. As we know, numbers produced for a parade are deceptive. Putin himself has made numerous comments about the lack of young men coming into the army and the need for the population to keep up with military requirements, whatever they may be.

As we have pointed out before, when marking a previous Victory Day, few people in Russia know much about what really happened during and after the Great Patriotic War. Thus it is easy to tell them that any doubt or scepticism expressed by various nasty Balts, East Europeans and the occasional westerner about some aspects of Soviet behaviour is all part and parcel of the world trying to do Russia down.

Little is known of the horrors that the Red Army had to contend with, not least because of Stalin’s order that there shall be no retreats, not even tactical ones and his statement that all those who surrender are traitors to the Motherland.

Nothing is known about the various reasons why Soviet POWs were kept under far worse conditions than anybody else (except Germans and others in the Soviet Union, and even there that was no worse than the conditions for other inmates of the Gulag). Needless to say, there is no knowledge of what was the truth behind the formation of General Vlasov’s army and why it was that 1 million Soviet citizens were in German uniform at the end of the war – an unheard of development in Russian history.

Some people might recall what happened to Soviet POWs when they returned or were forcibly handed back to the Motherland. I’ll tell you: they were speedily sent further east to the Gulag. (Come to think of it, we could do with a little discussion on that subject ourselves.)

After a century of horror, after almost two decades of collapse and uncertainty, the one thing the Russian people can celebrate without, they assume, any doubt is the victory over the Nazi hordes. And they do celebrate it.

We have seen excitement from the Western media like the New York Times, which tells us that

The parade was the first display of armor and nuclear-missile launchers on Red Square since 1990, and was followed by a flyover of 32 military planes, including strategic bombers.

Even a non-toy person like this author feels that a little more is required. A first display of armour, eh? Was it the same armour or slightly more up-to-date?

Associated Press gives a little more detail but the tealeaves are still hard to read:

Russia has nearly quadrupled its defense spending in recent years, aiming to resuscitate the military forces that deteriorated in the post-Soviet period.

Topol missiles, which have the capacity to carry nuclear warheads, were part of the display of more than 100 tanks, mobile missile units and armored vehicles that was aimed at underlining the military revival. But many of the heavy weapons shown were only slightly modernized versions of equipment developed decades ago.

Although the display was significantly smaller than in Soviet-era parades, the return of the tradition has raised concerns that Russia harbors aggressive ambitions.

It might be a good idea to look to the sphere where Russia has clearly shown that she harbours aggressive ambitions, and that is energy supply and the related bullying of her neighbours as well as countries like Germany, who appears to take on the Russian yoke with no complaining. Possibly the people of Germany have not yet realized what has been foisted on them by their leaders.

Der Spiegel talks of East Europeans feeling a little chilled by this display and foreign diplomats shaking their heads over “wrong signals” but also refers with some bemusement about Russia searching “for its future in the past”. Ironically enough, the Red Square is the epicentre of the consumerist Russia, which is being developed in response to demands from the ruling elite, its friends and relations.

Al Jazeera also goes along with the media’s reading of the situation, without going into very many details as to what was really trundled across Red Square:

Jonah Hull, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Moscow, said: "This [parade] caps a political change in Russia, with a new president and a new prime minister … and is a message as much to the world as to the Russian people, that as well as political stability Russia also has military clout."

Mr Hull seems to have grasped one very important point. Nobody really sees this somewhat ramshackle parade as far as the equipment is concerned as a sign or real military clout any more than any sensible person regards arrests of opposition members, crack-down on all critics and a control of media as a sign of political stability.

By and large, the hardware was not impressive:

For the 63rd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, there were not only new uniforms to marvel at on Red Square, but newly choreographed marches and a new president. Dmitry Medvedev, who has only been in office for two days, gazed statesman-like at the proceedings
from the grandstand.

The weapon systems on show, however, were old. A voice over a loudspeaker hailed the S-300 anti-missile system as the "best in the world." The SU-24 fighter jets, which flew over the Kremlin, have been in operation for 30 years and the strategic bomber, the Tu-160, was delivered to the air force for the first time in 1981.

So far, only a handful of Russia's newest fighter jets, the Su-34, have even been supplied to the air force. According to aviation expert Ruslan Puchow, "Many of the weapon systems which were on display are more often sold abroad than given to our army." That is why the respected business newspaper Vedomosti ran a story on the parade with the derisive headline "Parade for Export."

Comments from Washington were particularly sneering, if not entirely inaccurate. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, derided the Moscow military parade in advance: "If they wish to take out their old equipment and take it for a spin and check it out, they're more than welcome to do so."

Ouch.

It is true, as my colleague would undoubtedly point out that this performance will be cited by the military hierarchy in this country in their argument for more and shinier toys to be used in some putative conventional war at the expense of equipment needed now in the wars Britain is fighting at the moment.

The real audience, however, are the people of Russia. They are the ones who are meant to be impressed and a little frightened by this performance. They are the ones who are being reminded by the display of hardware, the noise and the shouting of the Soviet period and of the might of the state. They are the ones who are either elated or frightened but, in any case, overawed by the constant playing of the Russian national anthem, which just happens to have the same tune as the Soviet one with new words written by the same poet, Sergei Mikhalkov.

It is not Russia that is showing off her might but the Russian state showing off its power over the people of that country.

The destruction phase

It would be churlish to do anything other than applaud the opening of Jeff Randall's op-ed on the Royal Mail in The Daily Telegraph today. "There exists no commercial, political or social problem that meddling by the European Union cannot make worse," he writes.

With that sentiment we can hardly disagree – having many times expressed something similar – and nor can we argue with his premise that, "Those who doubt this assertion might care to look at what's happened to the United Kingdom's mail system and post office network since the EU Directives of 1997 and 2002 …".

Thus far, so good. At last, we have a mainstream journalist who actually recognises the role of the EU in the destruction of our postal services, something his colleagues manifestly failed to do.

From there, however, Randall goes badly wrong in adding a qualifier to his sentence, asserting that the EU Directives, "…set out to improve the quality of postal services across member countries." That was never their intention.

The trouble with Randall and his ilk is that, although they are basically "on side", they have never really got to grips with the nature of the EU and its true (and only) agenda – political integration.

In that context, the postal services directives have exactly the same agenda as all the other so-called "liberalising" instruments, whether they are dealing with energy (see here), rail services, telecommunications, or whatever. The intent is to break up national monopolies, not for the sake of it, but in order to recreate then on a European level, under the direct control of the EU commission.

Thus, the attack on national monopolies is not an attack on the monopolies, per se but an attack on nationalism – it is an attack on the nation state, an attempt to reduce the power and influence of the member states. As such, the EU has no rooted objection to monopolies – it is, after all, itself a monopoly. Its apparent enthusiasm for "competition" is simply a smokescreen to gull free-market liberals into supporting its deeper agenda.

However, the great genius of the commission – as I have been wont to observe – is its realisation that it is no longer necessary to nationalise something in order to own it. Basically, it has developed a system of nationalisation by regulation. It you have complete control over an industry, you get all the benefits of ownership without needing the title deeds.

So it is with postal services, the EU objective is to break up the national monopolies. As an interim stage, it will encourage "competition" but is particularly looking for cross-border enterprises which operate across the EU, in as many member states as possible. That then legitimises supranational control and puts the commission in the dominant position.

Before too long, we will have a European postal service - but it will be messy, delivered by multiple providers, albeit under the control of the EU. The final stage – decades into the future – is then to "rationalise" and "consolidate" the market, slimming down the number of providers until a few megaliths service the entire (European) system under the benign control of the Platonic guardians in Brussels.

To achieve that final cover, though, the EU must first destroy that which exists, and it is well down that path with Royal Mail.

This brings us back to Randall. He warns that, "Unless dozy ministers wake up to this fact, it won't be long before they are sounding the Last Post over the grave of Royal Mail's Universal Service." He adds that: "It's not necessary and we must not allow it to happen."

But what he predicts is what is intended – it is necessary and that is the desired outcome. Before it can build its European dream the EU must first destroy what exists. We are in the destruction phase. For sure, we must not allow it to happen, but "we" are no longer in control.

COMMENT THREAD

Happy Europe Day!

Did you know that Jewish music was a force for integration in Europe? Well, they're having an "international conference" on it in Germany today, one of the many throbbingly exciting events set up to celebrate the 22nd Europe Day.

In Greece, they're having an open air concert at Syntagma Square "anchored around climate change and the environment", featuring international and Greek singers and musicians. Spain is launching a "Madrid in Dance" festival, in Malta, secondary school students will take classes in the cuisines of different European and non-European countries and, in Poland, they're actually having a Europe Day "street parade" in Warsaw.

If you want to find out what is happening in the United Kingdom, the EU commission happily informs us that, "There is a wealth of information online to help you make the most of what is on offer in your country."

To get this "wealth of information", you are directed to the European Commission offices. Go there and you get an interactive map, so you pick the UK and you get the European Commission Representation in the United Kingdom website.

And where are these "exciting events"? Er … no mention. Nada … not even a reference to Europe Day.

If you are desperate, you could try the link to the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, and that gives you a link to Europe Day.

That sends you to the agenda for the year. That promises you, "A wide-reaching and eye-catching schedule … including events proposed by the media and civil society as well as those that form the National Strategies of Member States."

To get to these, all you need to do is click on the link for member state events and, hey presto! You get a list of 129 events.

From this, you will find you can have, "Zur Eröffnung der Veranstaltungsreihe des grenzüberschreitenden Kulturparks findet ein Festakt mit Ansprachen von hochrangigen Vertretern …" in Bliesbruck-Reinheim, Germany. You can even have, "L'Europa alla lavagna" (L'Europe au tableau) est un concours destiné aux élèves des lycées organisé tous les ans depuis 2005..." in Rome, Italy. Don't ask me why it is in French.

If those are just too tedious, you can go to Vilnius in Lithuania, where, "A floating boat made of used plastic bottles will set off for journey in Vilnius towards Baltic Sea...", or you can content yourself with "Ung og nydansk – et liv i et spændingsfelt" in København Denmark.

After five pages of this, with each page loading with the speed of a snail on crutches, success! We have a "wide-reaching and eye-catching schedule" for the United Kingdom. This is: "Managing Diversity and Respecting our Differences: Modern Challenges for Ireland and Canada - A one day conference to bring together major Canadian and Irish theorists, pracitioners (sic), academics and policy makers to discuss matters of...".

You will doubtless be pleased to know that this is set in Jordanstown – which just happens to be in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland. The only trouble is that it is not being held until 25 May. But, if you are still keen to go, the details are here. And that, for the UK, is all you get.

Despite that, EU commission vice-president Margot Wallström is telling us: "Europe Day is an occasion for the EU Institutions to show their human face and for people to see that Europe is about people, and not just institutions or legislation."

Somehow, I am not quite convinced.

COMMENT THREAD

Are we shocked?

Bruno Waterfield on EU hypocrisy.

Another embarrassing showdown?

A delicious little spat is developing between our provincial government and our supreme leaders in Brussels – who are demanding that an expected £1.6bn windfall is spent on combating climate change.

This is the "snake oil tax" otherwise known as the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme which creates a market for carbon-permits. At the moment, these are handed out free to industry – from which it profits greatly. But, from 2012, the national quota will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, the UK proceeds going straight into the Treasury.

So far, according to The Independent, the responsible department, none other than the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is refusing to agree that the income should be spent on carbon-dioxide reduction schemes.

With visions of the Treasury hiring another fleet of armoured security trucks to gather up the proceeds (the true symbol of the global warming industry - pictured), the Greenies are incandescent. They are arguing that, without hypothecation, money raised from green taxes could end up being spent on road building projects or other initiatives that could actually exacerbate climate change.

But a spokeswoman for Defra is saying that the (provincial) government has a policy of not hypothecating any tax revenues, on the grounds that doing so could distort spending priorities. "We don't even know yet what the carbon price will be," she says. "Money raised from these auctions will be channelled across all government spending departments."

Clearly though, this does not satisfy our masters in Brussels, who are already crafting a directive that would make it illegal for member states not to earmark ETS income for "green measures". And so, says The Independent, the government "is on course for an embarrassing showdown".

Why are we not surprised?

COMMENT THREAD

Global cooling caused crash?

Here is something for disaster vulture al Gore to ponder.

Quick to point to global warming as the cause of any passing catastrophe, he might care to devote a few minutes of his precious time to reading an analysis of the crash of the British Airways B777 on 17 January 2008.

The title tells all, pointing to: "Sustained Exposure to Extreme Cold Weather", as a major contributory factor. Apparently, the cold may have caused the fuel to clog in the lines, robbing the engines of vital power as the aircraft came into land.

Readers will recall how the aircraft, on its approach to Heathrow after a trans-polar flight from Beijing, suffered an inexplicable loss of power. As a result, the aircraft only just cleared the perimeter road and a boundary fence, slamming down well short of the runway proper.

Mercifully, there were no fatalities, but it was a very close call. Touchdown was a mere 50 feet inside the airport perimeter fence. Another 600 feet shorter, and the crash would have occurred on a major road (the A30), recalling the fatal accident in 1989 at Kegworth, UK, when a British Midland B737 crashed short of the airport against a steep highway embankment, killing 47 of the 126 passengers and crew aboard.

From the investigation of the British Airways B777 crash, it has emerged that weather had been extremely cold that day en route from China to the UK. It had been so cold that some pilots had reported they had been forced to descend to lower altitude to keep their fuel from freezing. Amongst them was a South African Airways pilot who had to descend to 25,000 feet for the last hour of the cruise before his aircraft's fuel temperature had began to warm up.

Never in 25 years of jet flying had he been forced to do this and, he reported, every other jet in his vicinity that day had also descended for the same reasons. There had been an unusually cold air mass over southern Russia and Germany that day. Another pilot commented that the air temperature over the UK at the time [of the accident] was "some of the coldest I've ever experienced with OAT [outside air temperature] at higher levels down to -70 degrees Celsius".

Crucially, the BA 777 was on a more northerly flight plan out of Shanghai and would have been in the cold air mass longer than most aircraft. Undoubtedly, the pilots would have had to descend with low fuel temperatures as well, but there is an unconfirmed report that they did not.* (Adds)

The particular problem is that, at very low temperatures, wax crystals form in the fuel and "flowability" may be impeded (akin to the way a blood clot or embolus can cause a stroke). The cold fuel approaches a semi rigid state. Jet fuel also contains some amount of water, and at very low temperatures it will freeze.

There is also an issue here with the automatic engine controls, with a suggestion that the computer-controlled fuel metering systems may have become "confused or unresponsive" by the unprecedented cold.

But there was also another factor. Heathrow airport had adopted a new air traffic control procedure known as the Continuous Descent Approach (CDA). This is more fuel efficient than the traditional "step-down approach" and involves the aircraft descending from cruising altitude with the engines idling.

However, to prevent blocking of the filter due to formation of wax or ice in the fuel, a heat exchanger warms the fuel upstream of the filter. Such heat exchangers use hot air bleed from the engine compressor or heat from engine or hydraulic oil. In a classic application of "sod's law", the times when the greatest heating is required are often those times when the engine is not operating at maximum, for example, during a lengthy descent at idle from high altitude.

Thus the suggestion is that, with ultra-cold en route temperatures inducing clumps of paraffin or ice, and a cool engine during descent at flight idle, "perhaps the stage was set". Any blockages occurring at different times during the descent, and the simultaneity of the thrust loss, would have been seen only when (and because) the auto-throttle called for a thrust increment on the final approach.

This is a typical aircraft accident scenario, where a combination of factors give rise to an incident – the so-called "event cascade". But it would appear that the major contributory factor could have been the extreme cold. In other words, global cooling can kill.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Al!

*In another report, it states that, as part of its flight plan the British Airways aircraft was required to climb initially to 34,100 feet and then – owing to extreme cold – descend to 31,500 on the Chinese-Mongolian border.

But to accommodate a request from air traffic control the aircraft’s crew accepted a climb to a higher altitude, 34,800. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) says the ambient temperature at that height was minus 65°C, but adds that “the crew closely monitored the fuel temperature”.

After the aircraft crossed the Ural mountain range in Russia it climbed further to 38,000 where the ambient temperature dropped to as low as minus 76°C.

Analysis of aircraft data shows that the fuel temperature reduced to a minimum of minus 34°C. The AAIB says fuel temperature should not be allowed to fall below 3°C above the fuel freezing point. The fuel on board the 777 had a freezing point of minus 57°C.

There is some question as to whether the temperature gauge might have been misreading. Otherwise, it is certainly anomalous that the BA aircraft could have flown at 38,000 feet while other aircraft, experiencing the same conditions, were descending to 25,000 feet.

COMMENT THREAD

What next for Russia?

The new President, Dmitry Medvedev was sworn in yesterday in a ceremony that reminded everyone of the old czarist ones, though former President, now Prime Minister, Putin used the word "comrades" to elicit that well-known Russian roar in response.

The International Herald Tribune, which gives an excellent account of the ceremony, insists on adding what has become a journalistic meme that this ceremony is also a sign of "renewed Russian confidence". It is as if those satirical descriptions of how articles need to be written, with certain phrases already pre-entered, were actually true. Then again, maybe they are.

In fact, the best version of that satire I have ever read is not even in Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop", brilliant though that novel is, but in a Soviet novel, published in 1930, entitled "The Golden Calf", written by Il'ya Ilf and Yevgenii Petrov. Journalists, it seems, are the same, no matter what the political system is, though given the difference in risk, it seems rather odd that our own coddled scribes do not break out of the boundaries.

As we have said several times on this blog, there is little evidence that Russia's "renewed power" exists outside the media's imagination. Bullying, especially if it is largely unsuccessful, is not power. Of course, one cannot tell how things will go under the new President. Perhaps, real power, based on a developed economy, widely spread rise in living standards and a sensible foreign policy, will emerge.

The signs are not very propitious. It is generally assumed that a great deal of internal power will leave the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin and will take root in the White House, that is the Prime Minister's residence. (Very confusing, this, I know.)

The Eurasia Daily Monitor quotes several Russian political experts on the subject and they all sound rather cautious though they do agree that Putin will not only retain a great deal of power but will also claim a lot of it back from the "cabinets" of the Deputy Prime Ministers. His appointments will be interesting to watch.

Edward Lucas, the author of the excellent "The New Cold War", has, on a number of occasions, compared the Russian and the American presidential races. Apart from the freedom of the media, the fact that politicians do not get arrested or beaten up if they oppose the government, and demonstrations are not smashed up by the police there is the interesting difference that in the United States we have no idea who the next President is going to be but a reasonable idea about main political developments after the inauguration. In Russia, before the election, there could have been no doubt about the winner but nobody had then or has now any real idea of where the country will go from here.

In the meantime, let us note something quite interesting. President Medvedev has changed his style of speaking, walking and marching when taking the salute. In fact, he now does all these things exactly as ex-President Putin does. If it weren't so spooky, it would be quite funny.

Tomorrow all eyes will be on the Victory Day Parade in Red Square, which is promised to be as overwhelming as the Soviet ones used to be. We shall be watching with great interest on this blog.

Let me end this posting, however, on a historical note, that ties in quite well with my colleague's link to those interesting photos of the Obama rally (not!) and many other comments we have made in the past about press and media photos being manipulated. Spiegel has a fascinating account of how the iconic picture of the Russian soldier waving the Soviet flag over the Reichstag was created.

This includes the tale of the photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, later in trouble during Stalin's second, virulently anti-semitic purge, scratching out from the negatives the evidence of the soldiers' wholesale looting in Berlin with a needle. Well, they had no photoshop in those days but that never stopped anyone. Have a look at the pictures from an exhibition of Khaldei's work that has just opened in Berlin.

Mind you, Soviet photographers and editors were past masters of this sort of thing, as described in this enthralling book. Orwell knew whereof he wrote. The present lot, photoshop or no photoshop, are mere amateurs.

Political staging

What you can see doesn't always tell the story. Town Hall blog has it.

Tearing apart the House of Europe

With economic precision, the IHT reports that:

European Union authorities delayed decisions Wednesday on whether to allow European farmers to grow numerous types of genetically modified crops, heightening tensions with leading agro-science companies and risking further friction with trading partners like the United States.

So passed what was supposed to be the final, final deadline with the commission had set itself last month, the latest in the ongoing saga that is tearing the "House of Europe" apart.

This is what is so entertaining about this whole affair, barely reported by the British media – now there's a real surprise.

The EU, on the one hand, wants to be seen as "progressive", fostering the liberalisation of trade, and it regards biotechnology as one of the areas in its fabled "knowledge-based society" where it wants to Europe to take the lead. GM crops fit very nicely into that profile.

On the other hand, having cultivated the Greenies in a bid to talk up its environmental credentials – and thereby its popularity – and having also made itself slave to the "precautionary principle", the commission puts at risk the support of the entire Green lobby if it allows unfettered development of these products.

In effect, the commission is damned either way, and it is delicious watching it squirm.

Thus does the IHT record that the commission has come under pressure from industry and environmental groups - which is something of an achievement – over the approval of a potato produced by BASF of Germany and two strains of corn, one produced by DuPont and Dow AgroSciences of the United States, and another corn variety from the Swiss company Syngenta.

Desperately seeking a way out, the commission is attempting to kick the issue back into the long grass by directing the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to conduct additional safety tests on the products. This, it says, is the most effective way to reach a decision.

Needless to say, commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger could not say how long the review process would take, while trade commissioner Peter Mandelson's spokesman says that Europe (he means the European Union) is "making progress".

Mike Hall, a spokesman for Pioneer Hi-Bred, the maker of a pest resistant GM corn variety, was less then impressed. "Today represents continued procrastination and unnecessary delay," he said.

Another GM producer, BASF, is clearly losing patience and has warned of legal action against the commission if it did not rule soon to allow cultivation in Europe of the company's high-starch biotech potato, the Amflora. The food safety agency "has repeatedly stated that Amflora is safe for humans, animals and the environment," said Susanne Benner, a spokeswoman for BASF.

To add to the general disarray, a report from EU business tells us that its payroll lobbyist, Friends of the Earth Europe, together with Greenpeace, have ripped into the commission, condemning the referral back to the food safety agency as a "huge vote of no confidence in the EU's approval system," calling into question the agency's ability to vet GM crops.

Both organisations are now calling for EFSA to be "reformed", to ensure that its opinions are "scientifically sound and impartial". They also say that the agency is understaffed and lacks the appropriate expertise to fulfil its legal obligations on EU GMO risk assessments.

Asking Europe's underfunded and inadequate food agency to look at the safety of these crops for the third time is like putting a fox in charge of a hen house," declares said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU GMO campaign director.

So the drama continues, dragging on into eternity, a spectacle that can only be enjoyed – like a fine wine – by the connoisseurs of that uniquely corrupt and inept organisation, the European Union.

COMMENT THREAD

It was only a matter of time …

…before someone blamed the Burma cyclone on global warming – and it just had to be al Gore.

Andrew Bolt picks it up on his blog, noting that, "Al Gore is already feeding on Burma's dead." Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, he adds.

Bolt cites Gore, who did his shroud-waving on NPR's 6 May "Fresh Air" broadcast. Said the former vice president:

And as we're talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated … And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China - and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.

Even the most diehard warmists tend to fight shy over attributing particular catastrophic weather events to global warming but, as we know, this man has no shame. Next thing you know, he'll be blaming the Chaiten volcano on global warming.

COMMENT THREAD

The blogs have it

Devil's Kitchen was on to it early and Tim Worstall has done a magnificent job pointing out the media's total failure.

We are, of course, referring to yesterday's publication of the review of the postal services, led by Richard Hooper, a former deputy chairman of Ofcom, the communications industry regulator – which reported on the enforced "liberalisation" of the services.

The report noted that, "Large firms had seen clear benefits from liberalisation, including more choice, lower prices and more assurance about the quality of the mail service, but there had been no significant benefits for consumers and smaller businesses."

Hooper's terms of reference had been to carry out an "independent review" of the postal services sector … "in the context of significant developments in the market since the introduction of the Postal Services Act 2000".

However, one does not have to go very far into the Act before one comes across the "explanatory notes" – like the first page – to find that:

The Postal Services Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/2107) completed the implementation of the EU Directive into UK law and created a Postal Services Commission. The aim of the Postal Services Act 2000 is to enable Government to complete this package of reforms. The reforms comply with the requirements of the EU Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC). The Act will re-enact those obligations set out in the Regulations.

The review carried out by Hooper was, therefore, a review of the workings (not) of the EU Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC). And, just in case you were in any doubt, his report makes seven references to the Directive, including a detailed exposition of its application on page 19.

On this basis, there can be no possible excuse for the massed ranks of the Fourth Estate not being aware of the central role of the European Union in this issue yet not one mentioned it. This has to be more than carelessness – it is a phenomenon which strikes at the heart of the relationship between the media and our new central government in Brussels. To a man – and woman – the media are in denial (much like the Conservative Party).

In the absence of media comment, it is left to the website commenters to make the point about EU involvement, such as here in The Times and here in The Daily Telegraph.

Time and time again, we have noted the media's inability to comment on EU issues or identify the involvement of the EU in our domestic affairs (use our search panel on the top left of the blog and enter "elephant in the room" – with the quotation marks), yet this has to be one of the most egregious examples of the failure. No longer do we just have an elephant in the room, it has become a "stealth elephant" (pictured), totally invisible to journalists and politicians.

But the blindness is not confined to the EU. As with global warming, and many other issues such as defence, the media have chosen to opt out of the debate, offering the public a diet of "tee hee" political soap opera, celebs, scandal and disaster and (mainly) trivia.

Today, the blogs have taken up the slack and, as the media integrates more with the entertainment industry, it seems that they will have to carry more of the load in future. If (the independent) blogs are not the future, they should be.

COMMENT THREAD

One crisis to another

From EU Observer via Business Week comes a tale which should warm the cockles of our free-market hearts.

The source of our supposed joy is the appearance before the EU parliament of American economist and former advisor to the UN, Jeffrey Sachs: in no uncertain terms, he told his audience that, to address the food crisis abroad, there should be less food aid and more through farming assistance.

The EU, he says, should provide structural aid to increase yields from peasant farmers in poor countries if it wants to help the global food crisis rather than just throwing emergency food aid at the problem. "Rather than just shipping expensive food aid, we should be helping the poorest of the poor to grow more food," he told MEPs.

Ramming home his point, he then cited "the biggest success story of this sort" which was the "doubling of food production" in Malawi in last three years. "This can be replicated in many places, and I urge the EU to follow this kind of logic," he declared.

All this looks terribly good and the are plenty of website that attest to the "success" of efforts to increase maize growing in Malawi, not least from our own government (and here).

However, amidst welter of self-congratulatory websites, there is but one (link no longer available) from a US aid worker, who suggests that the scheme – based on subsidising small farmers to grow more maize, is not a terribly good idea.

One problem for the aid industry is that the primary cause of local hunger is rarely shortage of food per sec but a decline in purchasing power. The food is there, but the very poorest people cannot afford to buy it.

However, getting these people – the very small farmers – to grow more maize is a distinctly double-edge sword. Even with significant yield increases, the vast majority of smallholders, with a hectare or half hectare of land or less, never "get ahead" devoting most of their land to maize in an effort to be self-sufficient. In good years, they may have a few extra bags of maize to sell, but producer prices are typically depressed in surplus years.

This dynamic is borne out by a local press report in 2003, which recorded "the increase in production combined with large maize carryover stocks by government", bringing the country into food surplus. As a result says this Malawian paper, "The price of maize has dropped significantly …".

In fact, the price collapsed, a factor which some believe was a significant factor in the subsequent "famine" in 2005 - and something any competent agricultural economist should have been able to predict. Even then, there were plenty of stocks – simply, as our US aid worker found, the very poor could not afford to to buy the food. Much the same is happening now.

His recipe for success is entirely different. Instead of chasing after the "food security" which has become the catchword for aid agencies, by growing cheap commodity maize, the farmers should shift into higher-value crops such as chilies, paprika and groundnuts.

There is persuasive anecdotal evidence that those farmers who have done this have been less affected by food crises. With the higher value from their produce, they could afford to buy the food they needed. Thus, diversification in higher value crops, rather than increased maize production, is the way off the poverty treadmill.

Aid programmes which are following the Sachs route are, therefore, creating more problems than they solve. But organisations like the EU, which are just beginning to accept that throwing food aid at a crisis simply perpetuates dependency, are now beginning to look at precisely what Sachs is suggesting.

The EU enthusiasm, in particular, is driven by the fact that these schemes, being based on subsidy systems - are something they understand. Furthermore, if they can be installed in developing countries, they legitimise their perpetuation within the EU.

This was the thinking behind Barnier’s outburst and the same arguments recently appeared in le Monde.

Another important point that emerges from our own studies is that, what might work for one country like Malawi, will not necessarily be successful in any other. Each country has its own unique combination of problems, which need addressing on a case-by-case basis, solving the pinch-points which keep people in poverty.

The dreadful certainty, though, is that the EU cannot deal with the subtleties and variabilities of different markets, and can only work with a universal, "one size fits all" model. That is what it has been doing with its aid programmes for decades. Thus, the fact that the EU is perhaps poised to discard its current model in favour of another universal model, is not a cause for rejoicing.

It will simply be shifting the causes of the food crises that follow, the only thing being certain is that the crises will continue unabated.

COMMENT THREAD

It's not that hard to understand (or maybe it is)

For years the big pharmaceutical companies have been the enemy. In fact, they have been THE ENEMY. While I consider that large corporations and conglomerates do tend to be on the other side of the divide in matters that involve competition, I cannot, perhaps because of certain personal events in my life, quite view the pharmaceuticals in that light. In fact, I never cease to be amazed by the developments in medicine that have taken place in the last thirty to fifty years. Of course, a good deal of that is thanks to developments in public health, made over the last 100 – 150 years, many of which our hospitals seem to be abandoning now, but that is a separate issue.

Pharma has been on the receiving end of attacks, excoriation and endless regulations. This posting is not intended as a detailed analysis of them all but a comment on the peculiar mentality or people who think they are in a position to run others’ lives.

This press release came my way earlier today. The title is “Innovative Medicines Initiative boost for Europe's pharmaceutical industry” and the idea is the usual straightforward way: let’s form another organization, throw lots of taxpayers’ money at ti and it will produce results that will put “Europe” ahead in the game. Fill in the blanks for what it is you want to get ahead in.

With the launch of its first call for proposals, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) got underway on 30 April. Joining forces, the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) hope to bring Europe back to the forefront of medical innovation.

Over the next five years, those two primary partners in the IMI Joint Undertaking (IMI JU) will invest €1 billion each, with an initial €123 million being channelled into research projects already in the 2008 funding period.

Following ARTEMIS (Embedded Computing Systems), ENIAC (Nanoelectronics Technologies 2020) and Clean Sky (Aeronautics and Air Transport), IMI is the fourth Joint Technology Initiative (JTI) to be launched.

Then there are details of what the research should concentrate on with a certain amount of self-congratulation and some breast-beating:

Europe's pharmaceutical industry still produces 35% of the world's pharmaceutical output, making it the second largest player in medicines manufacturing behind the US. The industry also important contributor to the European labour market: In 2004, the number of employed exceeded 612,000 with 103,000 highly-skilled employees in the research area.

However, Europe has lost a lot of ground in the area in recent years. Commissioner Potocnik stressed the fact that Europe once used to be called 'the world's pharmacy' with seven out of ten new medicines developed and produced in Europe some ten years ago. Today, however, a mere three out of ten new medicines are come from Europe.

The idea that scientific progress should be measured in the number of people employed is rather strange. Reminds me of the discussion in the dear departed Soviet Union about the number of writers there were from Tula province in the Writers’ Union. I can’t remember the exact figure but it was higher than the pre-revolutionary, which was one. The problem was that the one was Lev Tolstoy. Still, as Friedrich Engels said, quantity becomes quality.

Back to the pharma in Europe, which is underperforming but will no longer do so under the benevolent gaze of the Innovative Medicines Initiative. At the very end of the press release we find that there is a definite reason why there has been all this underperforming:

Speaking on behalf of the EFPIA, the federation's president Arthur Higgins pointed out that there is a growing concern in society about the need to spark pharmaceutical innovation. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry is faced with increasing regulatory hurdles in a strategy of risk avoidance, he said, adding that 'there cannot be therapeutic roses without thorns.'

Meanwhile, the average cost for bringing a pharmaceutical product to the market has risen to approximately €1 billion. In addition, the challenges in biomedical sciences were increasingly more complex. 'We are the first to admit that we cannot solve all of these problems alone,' said Mr Higgins. He therefore called on all stakeholders including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), academia, research centres, patient groups, public authorities and the research-based pharmaceutical industry to actively participate in new JTI.

Forgetting about the split infinitive for a moment, let us consider the fate of those SMEs that find themselves priced out by the ever increasing number of “regulatory hurdles” brought in as a result of pressure from various lobbying organizations, often with health and safety issues in mind.

What never ceases to amaze me is the insouciance of the regulators who first make it hard for businesses and enterprises to compete because of high taxes and even higher regulations, then use those taxes to set up official organizations and instruct the businesses to forge ahead. Anyone would think that entrepreneurship and development is something that can be legislated.

Another day, another failure …

"EU urges action on European transport network," says the Guardian. And so another bland headline plops into the ether, unnoticed, unregarded and totally devoid of significance.

But then, without the history, there is no way that the average reader could even begin to understand that this represents yet another EU policy failure – and this one has to be one of the biggest.

The Guardian story itself tells us that the cost of linking up Europe's transport network (TEN) has risen 16.8 percent from original projections to nearly €400 billion euros ($618 billion), and big sections are behind schedule.

This is lifted from a commission report which states: "It is very clear today that significant parts of the 30 priority projects will not be completed until 2015 or even 2020," and the paper then adds a comment from EU transport commissioner Jacques "Wheel" Barrot, who says the slippage is unacceptable, "… given that switching passengers and freight from roads to the more efficient railways could help the EU meet its targets of curbing carbon dioxide emissions, key to its strategy for fighting against climate change."

We are also told that, "Integrating trans-European roads and railways" is seen as vital to the growth of the internal market within the 27-member bloc, as well as to boosting employment and economic output.

But that does not even begin to describe it.

The TEN project, in fact, stems from an initiative presented by Jacques Delors – then EU commission president - to the European Council in Brussels on 11-12 December 1993. Delors was concerned to present a big idea to cure "Europe's structural unemployment" and, at the same time to demonstrate the supposed benefits of "Community action".

The "big idea" he presented to the Council was a massive scheme of public works which he equated to the "New Deal", a scheme to build the "trans-European infrastructure", interconnecting energy transmission systems and a series of cross-border road and rail projects.

This "trans-European network" or "TEN" was to cost 400 billion ecus (£260 billion), partly paid from EU regional funds but mainly by member states, with private finance involvement. And, crucially, in order to have the intended effect of a massive boost to employment, the whole, vast scheme was to be completed within fifteen years and

The initial approval, with the enthusiastic support of the then 15 member states - was given in 1995 and, for the 2000-2006 financial period, €4.2 billion was allocated from EU funds, co-funding projects up to a maximum of 10 percent. Top-ups came from the European Regional Development Fund to the tune of € 34 billion, with loans from the European Investment Bank totalling €37.9 billion.

Then, under the "multi-annual financial framework 2007-2013", the commission added another €8.013 billion to the pot, with billions more flowing in from other EU sources and member states.

Now, 15 years after Delors proposed his grand scheme – to last 15 years – TEN is behind schedule and massively overspent, soaking up huge amounts of taxpayers’ money. And, with nothing very much to show for what was originally hailed as Europe's "New Deal", it still has another 12 years to run – and some.

But, as another grand initiative bites the dust, all it warrants is a brief story in the on-line edition of The Guardian, the only media source even to mention it. It is no wonder the "colleagues" find it so easy to extol the virtues of le project, when even the most egregious of their failures go unnoticed.

COMMENT THREAD

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen

The time has come for everyone to start placing their bets on who is going to be the “EU President” or, to be quite precise, the President of the European Council. The job is being set up by the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty and ought to start on January 1 of next year. As things are going, it can be held up only by an Irish no vote or a miracle.

There was a lot of excitement among eurosceptics and others some while ago about Tony Blair becoming that august personality. I was even asked to sign a petition that said, more or less, anyone but Tony. Kindly but firmly I pointed out that signing a petition like that implies that I would not mind someone else taking that position. Well, actually, I do mind. I mind the fact that such a position with all its perks is being created. Who actually walks the corridors of power (well, semi-power as the President of the Commission will still be around) is of little significance.

As it happens, I do not now and have never believed that it would be Blair for a number of reasons, not least the one about no Brit getting that position, not even a particularly despicable one. So neither Lord Kinnock nor Lord Brittan need apply.

So who is in the running? Bertie Ahern, the front-runner for a while, has now dropped out of the race, maybe temporarily, as accusations of illegal payments is hardly something to disqualify you. On the other hand, as David Charter says in the Times,

The long-serving leader even talked openly of wanting the job, something considered extremely risky in top-level EU power-broking.

I’ll say. You need to learn some diplomacy, Bertie, m’boy.

We now have some other contenders. Firstly there is that old stand-by the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Any Prime Minister of Luxembourg will do. In this case, it is our old friend Jean-Claude Juncker. He, it seems, is favoured by the Germans.

Berlin is understood to favour Jean-Claude Juncker, the long-serving Prime Minister of Luxembourg, or Wolfgang Schüssel, the former Austrian Chancellor, but Britain will try to block both men as too federalist.

Wunderbar. So we do not want certain leading European politicians because they are federalists. Have we not been here before? There was the small matter of John Major getting all petulant and refusing to approve the appointment of the Belgian Prime Minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, as Commission President, only to get the Prime Minister of Luxembourg (told you it was the perennial stand-by), Jacques Santer.

Right, so the Austrian and the Luxmbourgian are too federalist and the Irish one got caught with his hand in the till. Who else is there? Well, there is the Dane, who could be described as less federalist than the Luxembourgian, which means that the UK will not object.

Anders Fogh Rassmussen, who has so far managed to avoid having to call a referendum on the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty, has been described by Silvio Berlusconi “as Europe’s best-looking leader”. What more could one want? I would have preferred a Humphrey Bogart or a Jimmy Cagney look-alike but I guess Rassmussen will do and, at least, he understands freedom of speech and the need to fight terrorism. (Actually, Leslie Howard would have been ideal, as he was also Hungarian.)

“Anders is intelligent, he is liked, he is a centrist and he is keen,” an EU diplomat who knows the Danish leader said. He added that Mr Rasmussen, who has never publicly expressed interest in the EU job, has started learning French, one of the main working languages in Brussels.

“Whenever there is a big EU job, the leaders usually look round the table first and only look outside if there is no acceptable candidate,” the diplomat said.

One of the arguments against Mr Rasmussen is that Denmark opted out of EU policy on justice and defence as well as the euro. He is planning referendums to reverse some or all of these. “The feeling is that, if he pulls them off, he will have brought Denmark closer to the core of Europe,” a diplomat said. “At the end of the day, the question is not how much support you can gather but whether anybody is going to put their foot down. No one will put their foot down over Anders.”

Well, that seems to be the field so far. Any late entries?