The power of the pen

You know you have made a "hit" when the greenies start squeaking, by which measure Booker's column last Sunday has achieved precisely that.

Only now dropping to number two on the Telegraph website's own "most viewed" list, it has been mentioned on the Drudge Report and many other US websites, as well as sites worldwide. In all well over a hundred blogs seem to have run it, most for and a very few against.

The piece, of course, highlighted the extraordinary blunder made by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) – prop. James Hansen - in compiling the temperature dataset for October, including September figures from Russia and elsewhere, thus falsely inflating the monthly figure. And, with this flaw embedded and undiscovered, GISS went on to claim that last October had been the hottest on record.

Reaction to Booker's piece on the comment's section was quite remarkable, with a huge number of replies, most of the in support of the article, but the one I enjoyed most was an anti, which stormed: "Every, and I mean every, comment on this thread made by the deniers that addresses the SCIENCE of GW is wrong … That applies also to the many worthless websites that are linked to by those in denial over AGW."

That, of course, refers primarily to the two key blogs which, more than any, have, with their expert commentators, exposed the flawed data used by GISS. The first is the invaluable Watts up with that whose current post on the issue sports no less than 270 comments.

The second is Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit. His current post picks up a mere 141 comments, but then he has done a whole series of posts on the issue, with the comments on each running to the hundreds.

Displaying an ironic sense of humour, McIntyre even heads a post asking, "Did Napoleon use Hansen's Temperature Data?", stating that "It's colder in Russia in October than in September, as Napoleon found out to his cost in 1812."

Flash forward almost 200 years later, McIntyre writes, to the NSA report of record warmth in October throughout Russia, with many sites experiencing similar temperatures in October as in September, and perhaps that was the sort of situation that Napoleon had hoped for - similar in actual temperatures in deg C.

Booker's piece itself was a marvellous example of the synergy that can be achieved between blogs, their commentators and the MSM. It was Watts who picked up the story in the first place and his expert readers then piled in to find out why the temperature record was so high, putting their findings on the comments section. McIntyre had also picked it up, and did a series of technical evaluations, with his readers joining in.

The now disjointed but technically comprehensive effort was then picked up by Booker, synthesised, compressed down to a mere 750 words and published in The Sunday Telegraph. From there it was picked up and spread throughout the world on more than 100 blogs, the cumulative readership now running to millions.

As for the greenies, lead naysayer is Gavin Hudson on his blog "Eco Worldly", who storms: "The power of the pen, when used irresponsibly, serves not to illuminate and progress human discourse, but to confuse and stifle it. Christopher Booker's article does a disservice to climate skeptics and climate activists alike."

Under the heading, "The Bias and Logical Fallacies of Christopher Booker's 'Freezing Heat'", Hudson purports to debunk Booker's piece, accusing him, inter alia, of resorting to ad hominem attacks of (sic) climate scientists.

But what is hugely ironic is that the piece itself is one long ad hominem attack on Booker. What gives the game away is that this author presents the case made by Booker as if it were his and his alone, an expression of his personal opinion.

Nowhere does Hudson mention either Watts or McIntyre (which means, of course, he does not link to either's site) yet the whole thrust of Booker's piece was to report the drama unfolding on these sites. They take the central place in his account and, on the online edition, there are active links to both sites.

Thus, you can see Hudson's game. His task – as with all the greenies – is to control the flow of information, close down the debate and silence, or denigrate the critics. Controlling the flow of information, incidentally, is what the MSM also does. Although scarcely a day goes by without the media running a "warmist" story and you can bet that, if the GISS figures had not been savaged by two expert bloggers and their readers, the "hottest October on record" would have spread throughout the MSM like wildfire.

But, strangely, when the great greenie guru James Hansen makes a complete Horlicks of the figures, not a word is said, apart from in the Booker column. Such is the real "power of the pen". Never is it so powerful, in the media's hands – to say nothing of the greenies - as when it is not used. It is perhaps deeply significant, therefore, that Hudson should use as his illustration for his piece (which I've nicked - top left), a pristine pen, evidently unused.

COMMENT THREAD

Change one can believe in?

Strong rumours flying around that President-Elect Obama is going to make Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. Well, he owes the lady. After all, she agreed to step aside at the Convention even though she had won the actual primary votes. The paying of debts will be a long process, given how many people have been promised something.

There are the unions who want the abolition of secret ballots (what will the Tory Socialists say to that?) and the Federal civil servants who were promised more power and more money; there are the journalists who appointed themselves to be Obama propagandists; above all, there are the Kennedys. We shall see.

Of course, Secretary of State Clinton was predicted by our friend John O'Sullivan, Executive Editor of Radior Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I found it hard to believe him at the time and may well have to eat my words. We shall see. Our joint prediction about European reaction was accurate, I suspect.

That's politics for you!

It looks like a "toy" story ... but it isn't. It is intensely political. It's got "toys" in it though, so I've put it up on Defence of the Realm, just in case the sight of them offends you.

It's funny, isn't it, how the really interesting political stories never get into the newspapers - mainly because the chatterati haven't the wits to understand what is going on, I suspect.

And that, dear reader, is politics for you!

COMMENT THREAD

Physician heal thyself

In one of those days when there’s too much coming at you to be able to focus, I was nonetheless taken by Philip Johnston's column in The Daily Telegraph, in which he complains, "Browbeaten MPs fail to do their basic job."

He opens with an entirely correct assertion that, "It almost certainly passed you by …" telling us that the House of Commons took quite a momentous decision last week. "MPs agreed to establish a Speaker's Conference, a rarely constituted forum for considering and, if necessary, changing how Parliament conducts its business."

The last conference, it appears, was in 1977 and this will be only the sixth such conference since the beginning of the 20th century. And, writes Johnston:

It has been established amid worries that the Commons is seen as a narrow, self-serving elite that bears no relation to the population as a whole. At the conclusion of what will be a year-long inquiry, it wants to make the House more representative and relevant.

Johnston then catalogues, with some skill, the irrelevance of the measures being considered, which is all very entertaining – and irrelevant. Two absolutely vital things are missing from his dissertation.

The first is the most obvious. As we have recorded in so many posts that we could not even begin to catalogue them, the vibrancy has been drained from Parliament with its erosion of power, the real power now residing in Brussels and in its satellite, up the road from Westminster, the Whitehall machine.

Much of what Parliament does these days is irrelevant because Parliament itself is irrelevant. And until that issue is redressed, we are going nowhere. Yet, Mr Johnston, for all his skills, does not mention the EU at all.

He does, however, rehearse the idiocies of the Licensing Act 2003 - not the bit that allows 24-hour drinking, but the section that licenses entertainment, law actually passed by Parliament in one of the few remaining areas where the UK still has residual power (give it time, though, and that too will be gone), and the point is made well enough. But I could give him a better and more relevant example.

Unbeknown to many, the EU commission has put forward a proposal for decision by the European Council of Ministers and the European Parliament to ban consumer and professional use of dichloromethane (DCM) – known by some, including me, as methylene chloride.

Boring, you might say, but this is the key ingredient of ninety percent of all paint removers sold. Virtually all, including your useful and familiar tin of Nitromors, will simply disappear from the shelves.

Furthermore, we are told, the commission, in bringing forward this proposal, did not allow this proposal to be further discussed or voted by Member States’ representatives who have been debating the matter for six years. Despite knowing that banning ninety percent of paint removers from the market will clearly be highly disruptive, it intends to go ahead.

Actually, this will be more than extremely disruptive. Not only is the product used for paint stripping, in the professional cleaning world, it is the only agent available that can be used to clean heavily carbonised soiling from aluminium kitchen equipment and car parts, without damaging the metal. In my time, I have used gallons of the stuff and would have been totally lost without it. I could even tell you a hilarious story about using it … but I won't.

"Nitromors", however, is another symbol of Parliament's impotency. The battle to keep it will now be played out (and lost), between Whitehall and the rest of the member states, each vying for position against or for the proposal – which will be subject to qualified majority voting. Germany is very much pro-ban and it is likely that it will prevail.

Then, in the fullness of time, when the outcome has been determined and can no longer be changed, our Parliament will be informed and required to give the measure its assent. It will – as it always does - and, some time afterwards people like Philip Johnston will be complaining at the "mad bureaucracy" that has banned yet another essential product.

And therein lies another omission – Mr Johnston and his colleagues. As they indulge themselves is recording the trivia and tat, gleefully recording the political theatre of Parliament and ignoring the substance, they fail entirely to tell the population at large quite how etiolated Parliament has become.

It is not just a question, therefore, of Parliament failing to do its basic job – as Johnston observes. It is also a question of the media failing to it its basic job. But then, I guess he might have a little difficulty selling that line to his editor.

Rather like Parliament, the media is very good at dishing it out, but extraordinarily sensitive about accepting criticism. Try putting a note critical of a media story on the corresponding "comments" facility on any online newspaper and you will see exactly what I mean.

That, unfortunately, leaves us only one response to Johnston's piece – something along the lines of "physician heal thyself". The media is as much part of the problem as is Parliament.

COMMENT THREAD

Hmmm, if this goes through ...

... we shall have to start writing about freedom of speech being destroyed in the land of the First Amendment. Think how shocking that would be. Oh yes, I wonder what those Tory Socialist supporters of the new President-Elect will say. Will they still swoon and chant hope and change?

An analysis on American Thinker of how conservative talk radio, paid for privately by businesses, can be silenced as it is likely to criticize the new order without the use of the unpopular "Fairness Doctrine". If, instead, you use the word localism, you will get a lot of people nodding their heads. Who is against localism? By the time people realized they have been bamboozled, it will be too late.

Heh!

"New safety fears over Army vehicles after soldier killed" headlines The Daily Telegraph (online). "A British army soldier killed in southern Afghanistan is the 22nd to be killed while inside one of the Army's Warrior vehicles in Afghanistan and Iraq, raising fears insurgents have found an effective way of attacking the armoured machines."

Now where did that come from? Actually, that's not quite correct - 22 soldiers have been killed in Warrior-related attacks, but not all of them were inside the vehicles at the time.

However, what I hadn't fully realised, when I wrote yesterday's piece was that the British Army had developed a new, highly secret piece of equipment. It's called a magic wand. They take Warriors out of Iraq, where they have been torn to shreds by bombs, and fly them into Afghanistan. There, there are met by an officer standing on the ramp who waves the MoD-issue magic wand over them and says the magic word, "abacadabra". Then, hey! They're bomb proof!

Isn't modern technology wonderful!

COMMENT THREAD

Caught out

I had lots of plans for yesterday's posts, not least a full review of Booker's column, on the "surreal scientific blunder" made by Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and our friend Hansen (pictured above).

However, I was caught out by the news from Afghanistan of another soldier killed by a bomb. My intentions to do a brief piece changed when I found out what vehicle was being used or, to be more precise – misused. I decided to do a little digging, which became a lot of digging, ending up in my writing a far more detailed story than originally intended, which is posted on Defence of the Realm.

This piece will be entirely ignored by the chatterati who have so many more important things to discuss and the points made will be largely missed by the media, most of which find it impossible to understand the finer points of military issues, and therefor so often completely miss the point of an emerging story.

Nonetheless, as Booker very kindly (it was his idea) points out in his column, it is really quite interesting how many of the things reported on DOTR (and EU Referendum) later appear on the front (and other) pages of the MSM sometimes with acknowledgements but most times not. We can take a quiet pride in that and it would not surprise me if some of the story just written also found its way into the MSM.

The claim (I can't recall when or who) by some clapped-out dead-tree journalist that blogs are "derivative" quietly dies when you look at the material this (and a few other) blogs provide. The trouble is, though, not being "derivative" sometimes takes a lot more work than simple "drive-by blogging", as today has shown.

So, we'll pick up the threads later today and, mixing metaphors outrageously, crank the treadmill into gear.

COMMENT THREAD

It has come to this

So low down on the news agenda is it that, even though The Sunday Telegraph offers a short, five paragraph piece on it in the print edition, even this newspaper does not seem concerned enough to post the story online. It will, therefore, be missed by commentators who surf the net for their news.

The story itself is headed, "Tories pledge to end fish dumping" – the obscene practice of "discards" which is a central feature of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, about which Christopher Booker has written so much and which had kept this blog continually exercised, most recently here.

So, if the Tories are pledging to end this obscenity, this must surely be good news, except for the fact that it should already be Tory policy. That it became so, briefly, was happily announced by Booker in his column on 8 January 2005. That was the day before Owen Paterson, then shadow fisheries minister, launched his consultation paper on fisheries, which included the unilateral repatriation of the CFP, an event which was also recorded by this blog.

This policy had in fact been adopted by Michael Howard, the former Tory leader who, after frenetic behind-the-scenes negotiations, affirmed it on 10 June 2004, after a clear statement at the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Dundee on 14 June 2004, again recorded by this blog.

However, with the accession of David Cameron to the leadership of the Tory Party, after its earlier defeat in the general election, the policy was quietly ditched, without even a formal statement to that effect.

So, here we are, more than three years later and, once again, it looks as if the policy is back. But, as we all know to our cost, appearances can be deceptive. What we learn is that Bill Wiggin, now the shadow fisheries minister, has apparently discussed new proposals with Joe Borg, the EU fishing commissioner. From these discussions, what David Cameron's new "conservative" party now has in mind is – according to The Sunday Telegraph - as follows:

The party is seeking EU support for a pilot scheme that would require British fishermen to land and report all fish caught and killed in the catching process.

From a robust, principled stand, where the Tories would reassert control over a valuable national asset, and re-introduce a proper and effective management system, David Cameron now proposes that his fisheries minister in a new Tory government would do what Tory ministers have always done since the very first days when we joined the then Common Market.

He will go cap-in-hand to Brussels and there he will say "pretty please" to our real masters, and ask if they would, very kindly, allow us to stop doing something which, had we been a sovereign nation, we would never have actually done in the first place.

That is what it has come to. That is what we always suspected might happen and that gives us the revealing clue as to Mr Cameron's real policy towards the European Union … more of the same, as it has always been. What we can't say, however, is that we have been betrayed. We never expected any different from Mr Cameron.

The question is, on this basis, are we expected to vote for the Conservative Party? And, if so, how are they different from Labour?

COMMENT THREAD

What do we do now?

A report in The Sunday Times today tells us that the United Nations has commissioned a £12m decorative ceiling for its building in Geneva (pictured).

The work, at the headquarters of the UN Human Rights Council, is to be unveiled this week by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain and Jose Luis Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister.

It was produced by Miquel Barcelo, 51, one of the world's most highly paid abstract artists, who was hire to redesign a 14,000 sq ft dome. Barcelo has said his design aims to create a "grotto", with stalactites reflecting "infinity and the multiplicity of view-points". He has built a honeycomb of aluminium from which to hang resin stalactites up to 3ft long. They are coloured with paint containing pigments from all over the world.

Needless to say, the expenditure has prompted furious protests from campaigners who believe it is an extravagant misuse of development funds. They are right, of course, but it will not make a blind bit of difference. As in all things, these tranzies are totally out of control and can happily stick two fingers up to outdated concepts such as accountability, responsibility, good governance …

Well done the Sunday Times for reporting it. But what do we do now?

COMMENT THREAD

Ever popular

According to Associated Press, via IHT, Kosovo police say attackers threw an explosive device at the European Union's headquarters in Kosovo amid rising tensions over the bloc's plan for a police mission to the country.

Police say nobody was hurt in the attack at 5:30 pm (16:30 GMT) Friday in the capital Pristina that slightly damaged the EU office.

What does one say?

COMMENT THREAD

A choice of catastrophes

To the disgust of some of the commentators on the Tory Diary blog – but applauded by others – Robert Winnett sketches out the timeline on "How the Conservatives lose the next election".

Separately, the lead editorial declares, "The Tories should be as angry as the rest of us", pointing out in lucid terms quite why that should be. It then remarks that "the place where there is a dearth of the splenetic anger felt by the rest of us is on the front bench of the Conservative Party."

The focus here, rightly and necessarily, is on the dire financial situation and the paper has put its finger on the pulse and correctly diagnosed the disease. Behind the posturing and preening of the Tory front bench, there is manifestly lacking that outrage at the appalling mismanagement of the current government, which means that the Tory leaders fail entirely to transmit to the nation sense of conviction or seriousness.

And, while the focus of The Telegraph is on economic issues, the greater problem is that the rot spreads far wider. In September, for instance, just before the Conservative Party conference and after a series of carefully crafted posts not least this one, we called for a clear statement of policy on energy - an absolutely vital need if we are to stop the lights going out.

Of course, we did not get that statement – nor even a proper speech on energy – at the conference. Instead, as we later discover, we get the Friends of the Earth.

As with energy, so it is with defence, we get the same lack of coherence. Instead of an energentic and principled attack on the government, we see the Tory opposition staring at an open goal and then sauntering off to the pavilion for a cup of tea, leaving the balls unattended.

In this context, please spare the time to have a look at this piece. You may have passed it by, thinking it was a "toy" post, but it isn't. It tells the horrifying and desperately sad tale of Sergeant Hickey, which cannot help but move you. Tears do not come easily to me but, after a long interview last night with Sgt Hickey's mother, Pauline (on which this account - heavily revised from the original - is partially based), I struggled with this one and still do.

Of course, it goes without saying that one harbours a deep, unremitting anger at the government for sending gallant soldiers like Sgt Hickey into the battlefield (and that it was) so unprepared that their horrible deaths were all but inevitable. But, if you can spare a little bit more time to read this, you will see that the failures and dereliction were not entirely on the side of the government. We convey in this piece a stark illustration of how the opposition too failed to do its job.

As a conclusion to that piece, I wrote:

That is but one small example of where the Conservatives so consistently fail as an opposition – to their own disadvantage. They could have been trumpeting a "success". Instead, they have nothing to say. Until they re-learn the art of opposition, there can be little confidence that they are fit for the greater and more demanding task of government.

At the time this was written, I had forgotten that I had written a piece in December 2006 with exactly the same title – for exactly the same reason.

I do not accept – as some argue on the Tory front bench - that oppositions are powerless, or that they cannot control or dictate the political agenda. Careful, research-driven, forensic opposition always yields results – that is how Thatcher won her first election. But this is something the Conservatives, under the tutelage of David Cameron, have forgotten how to do.

Thus, I agree with the thrust of The Telegraph pieces this morning. And, in using again the photograph which we used in October, we make the same point.

As long as this is the prevailing image of the Tory front bench, then the paper has it right. The Tories are on their way to a defeat at the next election. That will be a catastrophe for them but, as it stands, a Tory victory would be an even bigger catastrophe for the country than a continued Labour administration.

And that, dear reader, the tragedy of our times. All that is on offer from our political classes is a choice of catastrophes.

COMMENT THREAD

Engrenage again

We've written about it before, most recently in June last year and then again in the January of the same year.

This is engrenage - not talked about much in polite company and if you mention it to the average politician of journalist, you will be greeted with a blank stare. Yet, in our June post, we explained that this mechanism, loosely translated as gearing is one of the major drivers of political integration within the European Union.

We even went so far as to explain the mechanism, even in the certain knowledge that many of those who should know will steer clear of this blog, like it was the plague, and this remain in their desired state of blissful ignorance. For the rest, those of us who have ambitions to drive the tumbrels or cheer their passing, we wrote thus:

First of all, it prevents member states implementing their own controls in a vital policy area (such as immigration), and then starts to regulate in these areas itself. The regulation is invariably incomplete and functions poorly, requiring more legislation. It is then not long before there are demands for additional laws, whence the EU commission happily obliges with proposals – grandly declaring that the member states are calling for "more Europe".

So it is that we see another example of the mechanism, this one relating to what qualifies – despite intense competition – as one of the most disastrous policy yet to be devised by the EU, the Common Fisheries Policy.

Through this dire, bureaucratic construct, the EU has managed to devastate the fishing grounds of the member states and, in particular, the formerly teeming waters of the Continental shelf around the UK, variously reckoned to have held some 80 percent of the commercial fishing stocks in the waters that come within the boundaries of the EU member states.

But, all-encompassing though it might be – there is one huge gap in the policy. It leaves the enforcement of the EU fisheries laws to the member states. And having turned commercial fishing virtually a criminal activity, having demonised fishermen and driven most of them into penury or alternative livelihood, the EU commission is complaining that those foolhardy or desperate enough to remain in the industry are not being fined enough by their member state courts when they fall foul of EU rules, and that there is too much variation in fines for similar offences in the different member state courts.

Thus, in an absolutely classic example of engrenage the commission is asking member states to approve "dramatically tougher enforcement of fishing rules". There is no word, of course, of the EU itself having created a conservation disaster and an entirely unworkable, which creates the very "criminals" to whom the "tougher enforcement" should apply.

Instead, it invokes visions of "motherhood and apple pie", pleading that this move is necessary to "stop years of illegal catches that have devastated species such as cod and tuna."

With such noble ambitions declared – quietly sliding over the real agenda, the pursuit of political integration – the commission thus proposes that EU officials would receive new powers to pursue fishermen in their home countries for offences such as fishing in protected spawning areas or out of season for threatened species. Inefficient and costly checks at sea would be replaced by reinforced investigations at port.

Needless to say the fishermen must be punished severely under this new regime, with fines rising to as much as €300,000 for serious breaches of (EU) fishing rules - 100 times greater than current fines in some cases. Repeat offenders could lose their permits.

To bolster his case, EU fisheries commissioner Joe Borg declares that low fines and weak enforcement by some member states "makes a mockery" of the EU's "tough catch quotas," calling in aid one of its favoured captive NGOs, the WWF, to support it.

But, while the WWF exudes horror at the supposed depredation of the evil fishermen – thereby seeking to enlist the approval of all "right-minded people", who have been indoctrinated with decades of "anti-fishermen" propaganda – the EU gets a new brick in the growing edifice of its common judicial system, with a uniform application of fines across the EU, monitored and controlled, of course, by the EU commission.

We have already seen a similar attempt with EU environmental laws, this one driven through the ECJ, but this is the first overt attempt to standardise penalties through the direct application of a new EU law.

If successful, this will set a stronger precedent for a system of common penalties throughout the EU. In the fullness of time, possibly after the passage of many years, the commission will then look to encroachment into another policy area. And so, slowly, steadily and inexorably, the process of engrenage does its deadly work, so stealthily and cleverly that hardly anyone notices – much less protests.

Jean Monnet – deviser of the mechanism – certainly knew what he was doing.

COMMENT THREAD

Welcome, but four years late

Yesterday, in a terse but informative announcement, the US armoured vehicle manufacturer, Force Protection Inc, told the world (or that small bit of it that was interested) that it had received from the United States Army "under contract W56HZV-08-C-0028" an additional order worth $15.5 million. This was for the delivery of 16 of its Buffalo A2 route-clearance vehicles - for delivery no later than the end of June 2009.

But the really interesting news followed. "In addition," Force Protection said, it had received "a Foreign Military Sales order of 14 Buffalo vehicles to be delivered to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence." This contract, although two less than the US order, was "not to exceed $18.6 million" and represented "the first orders for the Buffalo vehicle for the United Kingdom." Work, including vehicle deliveries and "sustainment" is to be completed by October 2009.

Read more on Defence of the Realm.

A bizarre U-turn

The elephant in the room is alive and kicking today in the print media reports of the government's unexpected U-turn on post offices.

As we reported in detail on 13 May 2008, a wave of closures has been threatened by the EU requirement to put out to tender under the Procurement Directives a contract to handle pension and benefit payments.

This was the "Post Office Card Account 2 (Poca2)" contract – which deals with pension and benefits payments and is due to expire in 2010. The 24 million or so transactions involved are valued at £1 billion between 2003 and 2010 and provide a key element of post offices' income.

The problem was – until the U-turn - that the contract for 2010 onwards had been put up for tender. It had attracted two rival bidders. If the Post Office had lost the contract, many small branches would go out of business, as the transactions provide about 12 percent of sub-postmasters' earnings, as well as attracting customers who spend on other services and products.

Now, as The Times reports, James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has told the House of Commons that the Post Office would retain the business under a new contract running for five years from 2010, with the possibility of an extension.

What is utterly bizarre is that, unlike some of the broadcast media, The Times political editor, Philip Webster, does not mention the EU at all, much less the Procurement Directives.

The Daily Telegraph, via Christopher Hope, "Whitehall Editor" is just as bad, although he does mention that the loss of the contract could also have jeopardised a £150million a year European Union contract. This, he writes, could have led to thousands more branch closures as a "social" subsidy was at risk, because the benefits contract was one of the criteria for the grant.

A quick scan indicates that most of the other print media outlets have missed the EU dimension, yet this is the really interesting development. Hitherto, the government has insisted that, to comply with EU law, it must go through the tendering process – as indeed it has done with other services, following which contracts have gone elsewhere triggering much of the current wave of closures.

Now, on the face of it, it seems either the government was wrong, in that it did not need to put these contracts out to tender, or that it is now acting in defiance of EU law.

What seems to have happened, though, is that lawyers have discovered an ingenious loophole in the EU law, by which post office services can be exempted from the tender process.

In his announcement, Purnell referred to the "award a new contract for the continuation of the Post Office card account directly to Post Office Ltd, within the terms of the relevant EC regulations." He was then asked by his Tory counterpart Alan Duncan whether the decision required EU clearance. The secretary of state answered, "We do not believe that it does, and we believe that it complies with EU law. The decision has been properly and legally taken."

Jenny Willott, the Lib-Dem MP for Cardiff Central, came back, noting that the secretary of state had decided to award a contract for the continuation of the POCA within the terms of the relevant EC regulations. She asked: "If he can do that now, why could he not have done it before or why did he choose not to do so?" Purnell, without a blush, answered:

The Post Office provides a service that is not only a banking service, but a social service, and that becomes even more important when people are worried about financial circumstances. In the light of that, we commissioned legal advice, which has said that this is the right way for us to proceed.

There is, of course, the possibility that the EU commission might disagree with the government's miraculous new legal advice, but Purnell could be taking a calculated risk. He will know, if the commission does argue the toss, he can stall them for a while and, if it decides to act, it takes about two years to crank into gear and start the formal infringement proceedings.

By that time, it will either be David Cameron's problem or, with Labour back in office, it will have a whole new term in front of it and can cross the necessary bridges when it comes to them.

Whatever the truth of this bizarre tale, the assembled hacks seem collectively to have decided that they will not soil their pretty little brains by writing about a petty little detail like EU law. More probably, they suffer from that strange disease which renders the EU entirely invisible to them. Can there be any other explanation?

COMMENT THREAD

Curse of the blogs

The trouble with running the two blogs, EU Ref and Defence of the Realm is that each one needs virtually full time attention. And when one particular issue takes on a special prominence on one blog, content on the other unavoidably gets neglected.

With the news coming in today of a further two soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Royal Marines both, driving in a Jackal, bringing the total casualties to 300 in Iraq and Afghanistan, defence unfortunately has had to take most of my time today. Under the circumstances, I would rather it had not.

Anyhow, a longish post over at Defence of the Realm.

A good deal of excitement ...

... out there about the Commission's proposals to ease up those regulations on straight cucumbers and curvy bananas (the ones they have always maintained do not exist). Can't let that one go. Posting on BrugesGroupBlog.

Couldn't have put it better myself

Don't know who Jerry Pournelle is but I was led to his blog by the inestimable Glenn Reynolds. In his piece Mr Pournelle (I hope he has no title I should know about) says that Americans should not despair. The first signs of how the President-Elect behaves are not good but the results were quite hopeful and there will be a turn-around. Others are saying the same.

This, however, is the money quote:

We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It's worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time -- not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine -- and it will probably never be true again.

And so I keep saying about this country, particularly about crooks running governments. It was ever thus but it matters now because they have more power to interfere, whether they are here or in Brussels or some place in between. Except that I think we should try to make sure that it is true again.

Vote blue, get Friends of the Earth

Oliver Heald, Conservative MP for Hertfordshire North East, is a great supporter of the Climate Change Bill. "It was originally put together by Friends of the Earth and the Conservatives," he says, "and we have put pressure on the Government to commit to the 80 per cent reduction."

This we learn from a piece tucked away in a local Hertfordshire rag called The Comet about the recent vote on the Climate Change Bill – the one where it was snowing outside as the vote went through.

One does not have to be a raving denier to express just a little bit of concern at this "revelation". The idea of the Conservative party in bed with a bunch of left-wing enviro-nutters, one step removed from the Kingsnorth vandals, is not one that fits happily with the idea of this Party being in office.

While David Cameron is keeping low profile on green issues, this is further evidence of the Conservative Party being far too close to the greenies, thus lacking the detachment and the concern for the wider public interest that is an essential requirement for Party destined for government.

The piece in The Comet itself was primarily commenting on Peter Lilley being one of "The Climate Three" who voted against the Bill and even this, it seems, it not all it is made out to be.

Lilley himself says, "I am not one of those who deny that CO2 emissions heat the planet. They do. But the recent global cooling clearly suggests that either man-made warming may be smaller or the impact of other factors greater than climate models have assumed." Even so, he adds, "I still strongly favour taking out an insurance policy against global warming, just as we insure our houses against fire."

Then he tells us, "I voted against this Bill - not because I oppose in principle its objective but to try to jolt the House into giving such a hugely costly measure more serious scrutiny than it received."

That gives an opening to Dan Gomm, coordinator for North Herts Friends of the Earth. He tells The Comet: "Despite assuring members of the public who wrote to him in their hundreds and met him that he supported the motion, Peter Lilley was one of only a tiny handful of MPs who forced the Bill to a vote. It is this kind of action that breeds cynicism and mistrust of the political system."

And in a classic example of precisely why these people should not be let out alone, much less let anywhere near the Conservative Party, Gomm adds: "The fact that it was snowing on the day of the debate is more likely to show that climate change is happening than not, as unusual weather is a symptom of global warming."

If this is the sort of imbecility that is driving Conservative Party policy then, whatever its pretensions and ambitions, it is not fit for government. Even the slogan, "vote blue, get green," was too far for some – this blog included – but if it really means, "vote blue, get Friends of the Earth," then there is no deal.

COMMENT THREAD

That rarest of commodities

Today we discover that The Daily Telegraph "has learnt" that "Snatch" Land Rovers "blamed for the deaths of dozens of British soldiers should have been removed from battlefield operations a year ago, according to one of the military's most senior figures." This is Lt Gen Nick Houghton ...

Read more on Defence of the Realm.

Tory hands in the till

First out with what will undoubtedly be a big story is The Guardian with Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent, reporting that Tory MEP Den Dover, who resigned as chief whip in June, has been told by the EU parliament that he has "breached its rules" on expenses and demanded that he pay back just over £500,000.

The Sunday Times actually outed Dover in March, reporting that he had paid £8,143 a month in 2002 to MP Holdings Ltd, with is wife Kathleen and daughter Amanda having been appointed directors of the company in 1991 and 1999 respectively.

By June, The Daily Telegraph was on the case, reporting that Dover had been stripped of his post as chief whip, after there had been questions about the practice of using allowances to employ relatives through family companies – "which are legal under Brussels rules", said the paper.

Dover had admitted employing his wife and daughter. He had "vigorously denied any wrongdoing" over payments of £760,000 in staff and office allowances to a family firm since 1999

Oddly enough, I don't think we reported any of this on the blog. The idea of a bent Tory MEP was probably too much of a "dog bites man" story, but half a million nicker is, as they say "sumptn else".

David Cameron, in a swift attempt at damage limitation, has expelled Dover from the Party, leaving the MEP to face a fraud investigation by OLAF – and possibly criminal charges thereafter. This puts the petty larceny of Tom Wise into some sort of perspective. They're both crooks, although Dover seems to have done it with more style - and for longer.

Tory sources are now telling us that the leadership was not acting swiftly simply because there were large sums involved. "There is an important principle here," one source said. "David Cameron has said consistently that he wants total transparency. He will not tolerate this sort of behaviour."

Nevertheless, as The Guardian gleefully points out, Dover's website this evening still listed him as a Conservative MEP. It even had a picture of him next to Cameron (right).

Still, Dover can possibly take some comfort from the damages he will get paid if any of the media step over the mark, having retained libel lawyers Carter-Ruck to extract a "substantial sum in compensation" from The Sun after it had published on 14 February 2005 an article under the heading "Sign in, slope off" accusing him of "immorally claiming tax payers' cash".

One always appreciates MPs with such a refined sense of outrage, us having recorded in March 2005 - in the days when we were on the ball and could actually give a damn – that a little squall had broken out following the approval of the EU parliament's budget committee to spend £6 million on an "information campaign" on the EU constitution.

At the time, this was denounced by Nigel Farage as "a monstrous abuse of taxpayers' money", in which endeavour he was joined by … Den Dover, who had led the fight against allocating the funds. He told the BBC that he thought giving the money was "unacceptable" and possibly "illegal". Dover, it seems, was speaking from first-hand experience.

Funny old world, isn't it.

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It isn't news – until we say so

From being a broadcast news addict some years ago, watching virtually every television news programme and filling in the time in between listening to radio news, I have virtually stopped watching television news entirely and rarely listen to it on the radio.

Most often, I turn the radio on, such as for the evening's PM programme but, after a few minutes of the smug tones of Eddie Mair, turn it off in irritation.

What I object to most, however, is the underlying assumption that the listener – or watcher – shares their values as to the relative value of the news items offered, and the lack of choice given.

Thus, the broadcast news might spend as much as ten minutes on one item, when you might think it is worth only a fleeting mention, yet pass over quickly an issue which might be of far greater importance or even – most often – not mention it at all.

Through this means, the broadcast media exert their most malign influence – they way they set the "agenda", effectively deciding what you should think is and is not important. And, by and large, it succeeds. The "man in pub" discussions – when they touch on current affairs – will most often be dominated by what has been on the news that day, rather than any issue generated by the group.

In effect, therefore, by act and omission, the media, especially the broadcast media, it deciding for us what is and is not "news". And, effectively, until they say so, no matter how important an issue might be, it is not news.

A classic example of that came this morning when the BBC Radio 4 Today programme decided – at last – to twitter on about the prospect of power cuts, something this blog and Booker in his own little ghetto in the Sunday Telegraph has been banging on for ages. But we are not "news". Once the mighty BBC deigns to do it though, it then become news.

The amateurishness of the piece itself was a wonder to behold. The BBC's idea of research to is rely on their environment "analyst" Roger Harrabin to carry out a vox pop of "experts" in the energy field, asking them whether they think the lights might go out. It then concludes the "work" by interviewing energy minister Mike O'Brien, who tells the programme that we (the government) will "make sure we keep the lights on."

Not for the BBC is there any likelihood of it doing its own research, which would lead it to the inevitable conclusion that the lights will indeed go out. No, it has made the "news". WYSIWYG – move on, next story please, to feed the insatiable maw of the broadcasting machine.

On the other hand, a classic example of "non news" in The Guardian business section today. This gives a fascinating insight into a long-running preoccupation of this blog, the "mark to market" rules which we – and many, many others, almost entirely the other side of the pond – hold to have played a major part in the banking crisis.

In its piece, the Guardian recounts how Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board threatened to resign over the EU pressure to amend the rules, the original decision arising from the ECOFIN meeting in early October, picked up again here and with one result recorded here.

By any proper measure, the "mark to market" issue was a major story, which is why we devoted such an enormous amount of time and space to it – one of the key issues in the whole of the banking crisis. The US media largely agreed, but not the British media.

This current story, therefore, plops out from The Guardian, without context or background and, without that it is a bland, curiosity hardly likely to attract any great interest. Even if, behind it, there has been "blood on the floor" of the otherwise staid world of professional accountancy, with vital implications for the whole of the economy, the British media has decided, individually and collectively, "mark to market" is a "non-story" – it is not news. We know that - by its silence, the media tells us so.

This is where – in our statutory but necessary swipe – the British blogosphere is such a disappointment. That the "old" media sets the agenda is nothing new – not least it was something I was writing about in November 2006 in what I still think is one of my best pieces on this blog. I could re-post it today and it would be just as relevant.

The great promise of the blogosphere was that it would wrest the monopoly control over the news agenda from the "old" media and, in the style of the "coffee houses" of the Eighteenth Century (pictured), reassert our independence from the mind games played by the fourth estate.

Although I set out a template those two years ago, it was not to be. Largely, the blogosphere remains derivative, feeding off the crumbs from the "old" media's table, dissecting them and tweeting in its own fashion, responding to the agenda set by others instead of attempting to create its own.

In the main, from reading – or at least scanning – a dozen or more blogs each day, I now ready very few indeed, one of my few "favourites" being Watts up with that, one of the few blogs which is actually attempting – and largely succeeding – in setting its own agenda. Unsurprisingly, it is a US site.

What it will take to make things different for the majority of the British political blogosphere, I really do not know. But whether it is my co-editor seeking to provoke a discussion of the future of the Right (although how she expects to do so without posting a forum entry defeats me – you can post on this thread if you like), or myself with my own agenda (one of many), we refuse to accept the monopoly position of the the "old" media and will continue to plough our own furrows.

This reminds me, by way of conclusion, of a long flight over Canada, from east to west, looking for hour after hour through the window at the fields, all regularly ploughed, all in the same direction. Then, up on the horizon came a wondrous sight. I saw a single field – just one field amongst thousands - with the furrows ploughed at right angles to all the others. I would like to meet the man who ploughed that, I thought. Now, I would like to think he writes a blog.

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We are not the only ones

Barack Obama's election was the result of a democratic process (give or take a few problems with the MSM and fund-raising by the winning candidate's campaign, which are unlikely to be investigated, according to a link on Instapundit). It is not true that conservative ideas were rejected wholesale or, even, that the Republican Party was. The results are a little more complicated than that and are being chewed over, even as I write and you read.

The winning side, on the other hand, is beginning to face up to some unpalatable problems. The Washington Post, for instance, having admitted that they were dishonest and unethical during the campaign (though they did not admit the full extent of that dishonesty), is now prattling about continuity trumping change.

I do bring this rather long posting round to British politics and the problems the right is facing. Here it is, with no distracting illustrations, on EUReferendum 2.

Obsession

Moved to Defence of The Realm.

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Remember the living as well

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, fine and noble sentiments from my co-editor over at Bruges Group blog, which I completely endorse.

The hour cometh and some were silent for the two minutes. Others, of course, will be silent for eternity, and it was those we remembered, those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who did their duty to their country and have passed away with the passage of time. We salute them all.

But fine words and moving ceremonies are more for us than they are for the dead. Unless they are up in heaven looking down upon us, they cannot hear us and in any case our actions are of little consequence to them. Less so the living. Those who serve our country and those who in the near future and beyond are put in harms way.

Like some of their comrades before them, some will not survive the experience. That is the way of war. It is unutterably sad, but that has been the way of things since the dawn of time. But some of those, in the past, should not have died.

Their fall arose, albeit though the direction action of our enemies, but compounded by the stupidity, ignorance, laziness or even the corruption of men and women whose duty it was to care for them and minimise the risks. They should be remembered especially.

The purpose of so doing is to remind ourselves that, even in war, terrible though it is, death is not always inevitable. Even the arena of battle life should be treasured and respected.

And remembering those who have fallen, and who should have walked away alive, we remind ourselves that it is our duty – collectively as is the case in a democracy – to do our best to ensure that those who do serve now and in the future are not put needlessly at risk.

We owe that to those whom we honour now, who mount their fine parades, who willingly pose with our elected representatives (pictured, members of the Royal Irish Rangers, their mascot and Owen Paterson MP), and who then serve, and die.

And for those who say that today is not a day for politics, the answer is yes it is, ever more so. It is politics that sends young men and women to their deaths. It is politics which protects them and brings them back safe. That is the real stuff of politics – not the prattling in the chamber of theatres that has become the House of Commons.

The reality of life and death is not some abstract issue for us to watch on the television from the comfort of our living rooms, but something which – even in our small ways – we have the power to affect.

So, while we remember the dead, we must also remember the living and those about to die. We owe them that.

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A magical mystery heatwave

After last week's effort, I had not intended to return to the subject of the weather so soon. But after the intervention of the railway engineer, we now have a further episode of madness that simply cannot be ignored.

Our friend James Hansen, uniquely it seems, is reporting via his magical mystery GISS temperature dataset that October 2008 was the warmest October on record. This is conveyed via Watts up with that. What pulled the temperature up, according to Hansen was that, although North America was cooler than normal, Asia apparently suffered from a massive "heatwave".

On the other hand, the satellite data from NOAA recorded that the US had its 44th coolest October (out of 114 years), much of Europe was cool, ice extent grew at a record pace and snowcover exploded in Asia.

It didn't take Watts's readers very long to discover why Hansen was so adrift. An examination of the individual records shows that the September figures for Russia have been carried forwards into October unchanged. Thus, Hansen has magicked a heatwave out of a simple data error.

In the real world, away from Hansen's foetid dreams, the weather continues to deteriorate. Most interesting is our tiny corner of the world where, in Scotland, agencies report that "early snow and ice has triggered the start of an £8.5 million plan to keep Scotland's main roads open this winter." The early start to winter has already seen contractors and operating companies treating parts of Scotland's 2,000-mile motorway and trunk road network (below, right).

Strange, though it is part of the UK, nothing of that has been mentioned by the English press. But then it ain't London snow. That, apparently, might come by Thursday and then the world will come to an end.

Meanwhile, across the pond, it seems to be Canada and the US Lakes area that is taking a beating, with reports here, here, here and here variously bringing tales of heavy snow and unseasonable weather.

Interestingly, the first report talks of a high number of deaths from road crashes – an inevitable effect of bad weather. But we never hear of global warming the advantage that it reduces road deaths attributable to bad weather.

This story here, from Ontario, is also interesting, not least because it offers a gallery of 24 snow pics. We have used the first (top of this post), for the very simple reason – it depicts a Mr Cameron. David? I wish. It might bring him closer to the reality he so very obviously has left behind.

Worrying though is the news from South Dakota. This brings reports of downed transmission lines and snapped power poles, with a "lot of deep snow" and "...snow cats and snow machines out there trying to figure out what's going on." Some 45 inches of snow fell in the northern Black Hills and 10-18 inches on the prairie in western South Dakota. Where there was not snow there was freezing rain and high winds, with local floods.

But that was not the worrying bit. That came from the Agriculture Department. It reported that rain and snow had "halted row crop harvest progress", adding in its weekly crop report that some farmers do not expect to get back into the field until next spring.

That is the reality. We were talking about the effects of prolonged cold weather earlier this year. Last winter was highly marginal for winter wheat and if the conditions we are seeing begin to be commonplace, we are looking at five percent or more shaved off global crop yields, particularly wheat. The effect of that do not bear thinking about.

The problem is that pace Hansen, the "colleagues" are still in the land of the fairies, intent on looking the wrong direction. They won't change, or course – not until Hell freezes over. But then, we might not have very long to wait for that.

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More of that successful recycling

Watch this above, or from here. It is focused on the US, but it applies just as much to us.

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No end to their ambition

It does not really matter how much they deny it, or how many soothing words the Europhiliacs utter. Actions speak louder than words.

From the very first, before even the European Union was formally launched, there had been an attempt to launch a European Army, giving rise to the European Defence Community (EDC). And, although this attempt failed – scuppered by the French Assembly in 1954, the ambition has never gone away.

Thus we read, courtesy of the IHT the latest development aimed at bringing this ambition to fruition, with an agreement between "EU governments" to establish a joint military air squadron.

So far, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have signed on to the initiative, which will be implemented by the European Defence Agency.

Notably, the UK has not signed up – although that is the way things happen. The "colleagues" set up the structure first, with us sitting on the sidelines and then, when it is fully established, we enter into a co-operation agreement and then, step-by-step we get sucked in until, in the fullness of time, British officials and politicians become the most enthusiastic supporters.

Ostensibly, this initiative is to improve the transport capabilities of the "colleagues" to far-flung operations such as Afghanistan, Africa or the Middle East. But, of course, it is not such thing. Aircraft sharing and joint-leasing could easily be arranged without going to the extent of developing full-blown squadron structure. This is all about political integration – as it has always been.

Needless to say, at the core of this capability will be the long-delayed Airbus A400M, which the IHT is still fanatasing about being ready in 2009 but, however, long it takes, the EU will wait patiently for the opportunity to adorn them with the ring of stars – the core of an emerging EU air force.

To follow is a Franco-German heavy-lift helicopter project, in which other EU member states will be encouraged to join and, with that – in slow steady stages – the EU "force" will grow.

Also, it seems, ministers have agreed that at least one of Europe's five operational aircraft carriers will be at sea at all times. These would be escorted by destroyers and frigates from various other EU nations, which would also provide refuelling and other logistics vessels. Two of those, of course, will be British carriers and, right from the very start, these have always been "pencilled in" as part of the EU's European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF).

Since 1999 when Romano Prodi declared overtly the ambition to create a European Army, teasing us that we could call it Mary Ann or Margaret, but it would still be a European Army, the writing has been on the wall.

An independent military is, of course, a vital part of the state-building to which the EU aspires. Today, it is a little bit closer and, tomorrow, it will be closer still, drawing closer as each day passes to its ultimate ambition. Those who cannot see the shape of the end game are either blind, stupid or knaves (or all three).

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All is explained

It wasn't anything sinister. The pigeons were taking a break!

Normal service is resumed with some more additions today.

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What have you been saying?

Here we go again, writes Marta Andreassen for The Times today, for the 14th year in a row, the European Court of Auditors will unveil their report, telling us that they refuse to clear the EU accounts. What's worse, no one will really seem to care.

And she's absolutely dead right! Nobody actually gives a damn. The Daily Mail has a bit of fun with the report but, by tomorrow evening, its own report will be the electronic equivalent of fish and chip wrapping.

If we – as a collective - really did care, we would do something about it. We don't - not deep-down, storming the barricades caring … so we don't. Funny, I wrote a piece about this a while ago. Perhaps we ought to start a blog of the same name.

Meanwhile, after this, one of our avid – so he tells us – readers sent us the screen grab pictured above (click to enlarge). He lives in Turkey and clicked on his "favourites" to get his daily dose of EU Referendum and this is what he got. "What have you been saying?" he wrote.

It is a wee bit scary to think there is the technology that can do that. Won't be so long before they're doing it here, or planning an EU directive to the same effect. But, what the hell, we can always go and look at Margot Wallström. That's always good for a laugh.

As for the EU's accounts. WGAD.

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Matters to do with the late unpleasantness in the former colonies

We interrupt our normal programmes to bring you some more news about the President-Elect of the former colonies, now unaccountably grown from 13 to 50 (not 57 but then Nancy Reagan did not conduct seances in the White House, either).

First, a very judicious account of what happened and what can possibly be expected by Mark Coalter on the Conservative History Journal blog.

Neo-neocon, one of my favourite bloggers, who intersperses excellent political analyses with postings about food and ballet, writes about a subject I mentioned as well, that is the curious attitude to political women in this election.

The Anchoress has a wonderful cartoon that speaks louder than words.

More worryingly, President-Elect Obama has not started off well on his foreign policy remit, as I write over on the BrugesGroupBlog. Will the Europeans like what they have got as the leader of their greatest ally? Hmmm.

Something fishy

If you had googled "Snatch Land Rover" (with the inverted commas) yesterday, it would have brought you straight to this, as the number one search item. Then, however, the entry was a "stub" comprising three paragraphs only, of the most sketchy details.

Having spent most of the day yesterday working on the entry, building it to the equivalent of eight pages of text, the page traffic increased substantially. However, when you now google the search string, you get this - a rather inaccurate BBC Q&A on the "snatch" - which yesterday was way down the order. The wiki "snatch" entry is nowhere to be seen.

The plot then thickens. If you tighten the search and type in the string "snatch land rover" - again with the inverted commas - and add the word wikipedia, you will get this - the general entry for Land Rover Defender. Using google, therefore, it is impossible to find the page.

Try the same original search ("snatch land rover") on the yahoo search engine and it brings you straight to the "snatch" entry. Only on google is the entry impossible to find. This cannot possibly be accidental. What is google playing at? And why?

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Right on cue

One of the mysteries of our time, Booker writes, is the perennial reluctance of so many politicians and journalists to explain how much of the mess we are making of the business of government in this country derives from the avalanche of new laws, policies and decisions pouring out of our hidden government in Brussels.

Everywhere we look, businesses and other organisations are struggling in the miasma of confusion this creates, where it is no longer clear who is responsible for the laws they must obey, or what those laws are or are meant to say.

The stories speak for themselves, all pointing to one thing – that government is now so diffuse and complex that no one really understands it, or even knows where the centres of power lie.

The problems go far beyond "Europe" of course, which is just one part of the global "tranzie" nexus. The European Union, as much as anything, has become a portal for a proto world government in all but name.

But, because the system has become so utterly obscure and Byzantine in its complexity, it has the hacks and the chatterati diving for cover, seeking refuge in their individual comfort zones as they seek to avoid the reality of the mess modern government has become.

But the top and bottom of this is accountability. Government of a modern nation is a complex affair – we have to work with other nations, agreements have to be made and deals struck. Much of the internal administration of the nation has to be delegated, left to the ranks on anonymous officials who exercise power in a myriad of ways.

What matters is that, when things go wrong, someone must be accountable and be brought to account. The mechanisms must then exist to remedy matters and, as far is possible, to undo any wrongs. This is traditionally the role of Parliament, and the threat of it exercising is power is both the safety valve and the ultimate deterrent.

The fact is though, it no longer works. There is no single place where the buck stops. The buck stops nowhere. Because everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible, leaving Parliament an idle, empty talking shop, full of vain, posturing idiots who fill their time with prattle and useless gestures.

Thus, right on cue does Booker write. On a day when a great newspaper offers a diet of fantasy politics, he points to the miasma that fogs our society. We are lost in that fog, leaving us leaderless and confused. And that is the way it will stay, unless or until we demand that Parliament re-asserts its authority in our name, the name of the people.

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March of the morons

The latest daily arctic sea ice extent chart from IJIS (above) shows the current year ice extent at the highest level in the record back to 2002. It is 7.4 percent greater than the same time last year, 44 days before the official start of the northern hemisphere winter and five months before the ice peak (click the pic to enlarge).

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you moron.

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Unbelievable!

After all these years that we've been in the European Union, you really would think that The Sunday Times would have learned something about our new government.

But no!

Its leader today proclaims, "Be bold like the Bank and cut VAT", drawing a parallel between the Bank of England's base rate cut and possible measures that our provincial government could take to kick-start the economy.

With that in mind, it twitters about hints from the prime minister pointing "to an emphasis on helping 'hard-working’ families on low and middle incomes." What is important, says the paper, is that any attempted boost is not wasted. "Gordon Brown's instincts will be to plough more into his discredited tax credits or raise personal allowances to take the low-paid out of tax altogether. The former would be throwing good money after bad and the latter had little effect when it happened in September."

Therefore, the idiot leader writer(s) conclude:

The Centre for Economics and Business Research argues for an eye-catching five-point cut in Vat, taking the rate from 17.5% to 12.5% for a period of two years. It makes a lot of sense, helping families up and down the social scale – a bigger proportion of the income of the lower paid goes on Vat – and providing small firms with a fillip. It would certainly be noticed, unlike fiddling with tax credits.

Whatever Mr Darling unveils, it should not be half-hearted. As the Bank demonstrated, dangerous times require bold measures.

No! No! No! - as the lady said. VAT is an EU tax, governed by the Sixth VAT Directive. No government can reduce tax rates without the unanimous approval of all 27 member states, acting on a proposal from the EU commission – which it is not obliged to offer. Thus, there is a double-lock. First the commission has to agree to the idea and then the Council must approve it unanimously.

And, as Brown found to his cost last March, when he proposed limited VAT reductions on "green" goods, his own proposals got him nowhere. A wide-ranging cut of the type endorsed by The Times would not even get off the starting blocks. It would be laughed out of court.

That the newspaper can endorse such a move, much less the Centre for Economics and Business Research actually suggest it, speaks volumes for the amazing pig ignorance of people who should know better.

But, when they can make even these simple faux pas, what hope is there that they can even begin to deal with the full extent to which the European Union has taken over the powers of our government. One really despairs!

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Playing away from home

Light blogging over this weekend, as I am working on amending and adding to this. There is method in my madness, as you will see within the next few days. Interesting moves are afoot.

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