A "loophole" in the law

In the print edition of The Daily Telegraph - but not repeated in the online edition, which publishes a very similar story - reference is made to a "loophole" in the law which allows Irish pork to be labelled and sold as British.

The online edition of the story, headed "Irish pork dioxin fears expose 'made in Britain' rules", retails that the discovery of "cancer causing dioxins in Irish pork" has shone a spotlight on the confusion faced by shoppers in being sure that what is labelled British is in fact from this country.

British pig farmers, we are told, have been calling for better regulation several years to prevent products such as sausages or pork pies being labelled as British when they contain meat from other countries. Then we are blithely informed that:

Because there is no watertight definition of the term "county of origin" in UK or European law, meat packers can label sausages, pork pies or other processed meat products as "made in Britain" even if the original raw materials are from other places, including Ireland.

One looks at this with a sort of weary disdain as we wonder how it is that our journalists – in this case John Bingham, but assisted by that idiot Harry Wallop in the print edition – can be so malevolently stupid, or just plain ignorant.

The issue here is of long-standing and goes right back to the original EEC laws that prevailed when we joined the "Common Market", when the rules then – and do now – prevent "national discrimination".

Far from being a "loophole" or "confusion", the now EU law is specifically designed to prohibit traders from distinguishing between goods containing produce of just one country of origin and those containing material from other EU member states.

This is, of course, all part of the broader plan to break down national boundaries and create a single market in European goods, the result of which is exactly what we have today, the total inability to distinguish between produce of home and Irish origin.

For sure, this rigor broke down with beef, with the introduction of the Beef Labelling Regulations, devised primarily at the behest of the French and Germans, whose producers wanted to be able to isolate British beef during the height of the BSE scare. Facing "illegal" national bans of British beef, the commission caved in to pressure and allowed this single exception to its general rules, but has held the line on all other products.

But what you don't get from The Telegraph or its idiot journalists any sense that we are in this situation entirely as a result of EU law. Instead, you get such gems as, "The Food Standards Agency, which is responsible for all food safety issues in Britain …", and the sequitur, "...admits that simply following its advice to avoid pork labelled as from Ireland might not be enough to be sure of avoiding produce from the country."

The point, of course, is that the Food Standards Agency is not "responsible for all food safety issues in Britain". Food safety is entirely an EU competence. The FSA is simply an agent which, under the aegis of the European Food Safety Agency, is not giving "advice" but explaining the effect of EU rules.

It gets even worse when the paper tells us that, "In its guidelines to the industry the FSA relies on World Trade Organisation rules which only require manufacturers to name the place where the meat underwent its "last substantial change", heedless of the fact that the WTO "rules" are simply a copy-out of EU rules, which are in any event implemented by EU law.

To conclude the dire tale, we have cited: Stuart Roberts, director of the British Meat Processors Association, who is allowed to say – with reference to the beef labelling scheme: "I think it a very legitimate question to be asking is 'Is it time to revisit whether a similar framework of regulations ought to be applied to other species?'"

Er … possibly. But since these are EU "regulations", we would have to go cap in hand to Brussels and ask them to consider changing them. That is unlikely to happen, for the very reason that it would undermine one of the most treasured and fundamental precepts of the single market.

But, in its muddled piece, you won't get The Telegraph saying that. We must step round the elephant and leave it unmentioned.

And … by the way, this whole dioxin "scare" is a crock – much ado about nothing. It is a mirror image of the Belgian dioxin scare, which we deal with at length in Scared to death. The experts agree but still we have not found a way of dealing with these issues which, like global warming, end up costing massive amounts of money for no good reason.

We're eating pork tonight, cooked on a barbecue, while watching a firework display.

COMMENT THREAD

Grecian flames

In the third day of riots in Greece, the unrest – which started in Athens - has spread to the central cities of Larissa, Trikala, as well as in Corinth to the west of Athens, Piraeus, Corfu and the northern town of Veria. Now, Deutsche Welle is reporting that the violence is set to continue.

Damage so far is estimated at €100 million, and rising, with more than 130 shops in central Athens having been torched and looted.

Needless to say, the Greek government is anxious to project the disturbances as "vandalism", strongly emphasising the youth element and "self-styled anarchists". This line is very much reflected in an AP report which has prime minister Costas Karamanlis casting himself in the role of the upstanding supporter of law and order, declaring, "The state will protect society."

However, while the riots first erupted across the country last Saturday after a 15-year-old youth, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was fatally shot by a police officer in Athens, the sheer scale of the rioting, and its duration suggests something more than a simple reaction to the shooting.

Not least, there seems to be a reaction to a brutal police force, which is regarded as out of control, having been involved in a number of unexplained violent incidents where deaths have occurred. That two police officers have been arrested and one has been charged with murder in relation to this incident indicates that something very sinister is going on.

Certainly, The Daily Telegraph is directly reporting that the shooting has been but a catalyst for the violence. It comes against a background of high youth unemployment, the rising cost of living, stalled pension reform and a widening gap between rich and poor.

Furthermore, the centre-right government, with a wafer thin majority of one, is massively unpopular. Not least, it stands accused of doing little to help low-income Greeks who are in the grip of the current financial crisis, while at the same time pumping €28 billion into a support package for national banks. Many of these are privately owned, associated with multi-millionaires in a society which is riddled with corruption.

There also, according to a letter in The Scotsman, seems to be a strong immigration element to the riots, the correspondent referring to earlier PA reports, the day before the shooting.

These indicated that the riots were the direct result of asylum seekers being told there would be no further residential applications for the week. "Hundreds of migrants waiting to submit asylum applications rioted in central Athens, setting fire to rubbish bins and attacking passing cars," it said. Twenty years ago, Greece had no visible immigrant community. In 2008, one out of every ten residents in Greece is foreign-born.

Buried in all this, unmentioned by media reports, is a broader resentment that the governing élite has lost touch with its electorate, being tucked up with EU "colleagues" and unresponsive to national priorities and needs.

Reuters is reporting that, with the funeral of the shot youth taking place today, violence is sure to continue. And, although currently denying reports, the government is meeting today with party political leaders to consider the declaration of a state of emergency.

Altogether, we seem to be looking at a deeply disturbed, dysfunctional society, with a government that is losing control. And, while Greece has perhaps a more recent history of major violence than the UK, there are enough factors between this troubled country and the UK that it would be rather unwise to suggest that something similar could not happen here.

COMMENT THREAD

Compare and contrast

Read this account of a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, an organisation which describes itself as "one of the world's largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data."

Then compare it with this.

COMMENT THREAD

How Long Before We See Eco-Terrorism?

A guest post by Christopher Booker

Today's news that Stansted airport, the third largest in Britain, had been shut down for five hours by a group of "climate activists" provides yet further evidence that we are faced by a dramatic new escalation in the battle over "global warming".

More than 50 flights were cancelled and thousands of dismayed passengers milled about in chaos and confusion, as the protestors, under a banner reading "Climate Emergency", blocked off a runway with metal barriers and padlocked themselves to fences.

Although the police eventually arrested 57 people on various criminal charges, what was significant was that the young demonstrators, most between 18 and 23, declared that they were so "terrified" by the threat of global warming that they were quite prepared to break the law in support of their demands that the government must take much more immediate and drastic action to "save the planet".

This was precisely the kind of thing we were warned of three months ago after a landmark case involving another group of "climate activists" charged with causing criminal damage to a power station in Kent.

The six Greenpeace members who had invaded the ageing Kingsnorth coal-fired power station to protest against plans to build a new power plant on the site argued that they were only committing their criminal acts to draw attention to the far greater "crime" of global warming.

Their case became an international cause celebre when their chief witness was Dr James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the scientist who more than any other, with his friend and ally Al Gore, first set the worldwide panic over global warming on its way 20 years ago.

So fanatical is Dr Hansen in his belief that global warming is threatening the world with extinction that he has recently been campaigning to see every coal-fired power station in the world closed down.

When he told the Maidstone court that the proposed new power station alone would be responsible for causing the extinction of "400 species", the judge and the jury were so awed by his evidence that the activists responsible for causing £35,000-worth of damage were acquitted.

Outside the court, a spokesman for the protestors warned that this bizarre judgment, seemingly giving the green light for "climate activists" to commit criminal acts to further their cause, was only a start. Many more such actions would follow, as today's chaos at Stansted confirmed.

Not the least remarkable feature of Dr Hansen's willingness to fly across the Atlantic to appear in a British court on behalf of people accused of criminal acts was that he was doing so as a senior employee of the US government.

Furthermore it was reported that, before travelling down to Maidstone, he had a meeting with the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, himself a passionate believer in the threat of global warming.

It was David Miliband, in his previous role as environment secretary, who ordered that copies of Al Gore's highly controversial propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth should be issued to every school – and it is now his brother Ed Miliband, as fanatical about global warming as himself, who has been appointed as Brtain's first Secretary of State for "Energy and Climate Change".

We thus have key senior ministers seemingly so sympathetic to the general aims of the "climate activists" that it would be hard to distinguish between them.

It was Ed Miliband, for instance, who recently put on the statute book the government's new Climate Change Act, the most ambitious piece of legislation on this issue anywhere in the world, committing Britain by law to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by a staggering 80 percent in just 40 years.

As many experts privately observe, it is hard to imagine how this could possibly be done without closing down most of Britain's economy. It is potentially the most expensive law ever put through Parliament – yet our MPs of all parties approved it by such an overwhelming majority that only five voted against it.

Such is the power of this issue to arouse passion, however, that. even though our politicians, ministers and the EU now seem unanimously committed to the cause of "combating climate change", for the environmental activists themselves this is nothing like enough.

When the US President-elect Barack Obama recently pledged himself to a set of policies on global warming almost as extreme as those now adopted by the British government, our leading journalistic champion of the more extreme environmentalist cause, the Guardian's columnist George Monbiot, pronounced that, although such measures might have been welcome a few years back, the crisis now facing the world is now so desperate that they are no longer "relevant".

The "Great Moonbat",as he known in more sceptical circles, came up with his own "six point plan" for saving the planet, which included cutting back on air travel by 95 percent and imposing such "stonking" taxes on any industry which emits CO2 that most of what remains of our industry – including our power companies - would be unable to survive.

The awful fact is that belief in the threat of global warming has become like a fanatical religion, egging on its believers to vie with each other in becoming ever more hysterical and extreme in their demands.

Nothing should alarm us more in this respect than the newfound conviction of its adherents – as we saw again at Stansted today - that their cause is of such all-transcending importance that to further it can justify breaking the criminal law.

Even more alarming was that Maidstone verdict showing that the courts of the land are now willing to uphold the campaigners’ belief that they are above the law – that the cause of "saving the planet" overrides everything else.

Once we begin to travel down that path, where does it end? The late Michael Crichton, the best-selling science-fiction writer who was a considerable sceptic on global warming, wrote a novel a few years back, State of Fear, predicting that environmental fanatics would become so carried away by their cause that they would eventually resort to acts of organised terrorism to promote it.

Some, including James Hansen, have already suggested that those who dare encourage "denial" of global warming, such as the chief executives of power companies, should eventually face trial for their "high crimes".

Reading the comments of those responsible for today's closure of a major airport, costing millions of pounds, we do seem to be inching ever nearer to the day when "saving the planet" from global warming might seem in some eyes to justify even more destructive and violent acts of "eco-terrorism".

At least it may be some faint consolation to know that, from the Alps to North America, recent days and weeks have seen some of the heaviest snowfalls for decades. As plummeting global temperatures continue to defy the predictions of all those computer models on which our politicians base their policies, is it is just possible that nature could release us from this madness before it is too late?

COMMENT THREAD

Record snows in the Alps

I do hope Mr Gore likes skiing. And as for Lord Turner ...

COMMENT THREAD

How to contain terrorists

A nice historic overview on gun ownership in Britain by Richard Munday and a response to all those, like Justin Webb of the BBC, who misunderstand the Second Amendment and blather about an American gun culture. Enjoy.

Because we care ...

"The privilege of freedom of speech enjoyed by Members of Parliament is in truth the privilege of their constituents. It is secured to Members not for their personal benefit but to enable them to discharge the functions of their office without fear of prosecution, civil or criminal."

Thus writes David Davis in today's Daily Telegraph, citing the words of a House of Commons Privileges Committee ruling in 1939.

We would, of course, agree with that sentiment completely. But the point – and an uncomfortable one it is – is that we heard absolutely nothing from the Conservatives about the "privilege of their constituents" until one of their own was threatened.

Yet, as Booker pointed out in his column yesterday, Parliament's "greatest privilege, the right to make the laws which govern Britain, has now, with their consent but not ours, been all but removed from them."

Today, though, we will see MPs from all sides of the House are getting worked up about "freedom of speech" which, they say, is exercised on behalf of us, their constituents. But this is a freedom they have not exercised in respect of the gradual but consistent erosion of their powers, as the right to make legislation has been outsourced to Brussels.

If criticism on this blog if often directed at the Conservatives in this respect, it is for a good reason. We have no expectations of the Labour government. We did not vote for it, we do not want it, and we want to see the back of it. On the other hand, as a prospective government – and one potentially of our choice, which we are prepared to support - we have high expectations of the Conservatives.

Our dilemma is that, on the one hand, we have the Conservative leader stridently supporting Damian Green who declares "opposition politicians have a duty to hold the government to account".

On the other, we have a Party which, as a matter of policy, refuses to entertain EU issues. It thereby denies by word and deed that a major part of our government is in Brussels and that, in the areas of its "competence", the European Union is our supreme government, accounting for the bulk of our legislation.

Thus, when the Tories so loudly proclaim their duty to "hold the government to account" we can only assume that they see this as a duty to hold to account that little bit of the government that is left to us. The rest of the government – the major part of it – is off-limits. The Conservative Party doesn't "do" Europe.

Our secondary point, devolving for the first, is that we do not expect the current Labour administration to do anything about the encroachment of the EU. We do expect the Tories to do something about it – if only because they are the only people who can and who have within their ranks people who tell us privately that they would like to.

But it must be remembered that it was a Conservative government which took us into the EEC, that agreed one of the biggest leaps in bureaucracy in the history of this nation in the Single European Act and also rammed though the Maastricht treaty, which set the framework for the current European Union. As an opposition, it is also one that, so far, has refused to commit itself on the Lisbon treaty.

And yes, it is undoubtedly the case that even with this historical baggage, a Conservative administration would be better than the current Labour government, but one is drawn to the view that this is only because it would be impossible for it to be worse.

The trouble is that, aside from issues which both sides care to argue about in the public domain, whichever side is next in office, the bulk of our laws will continue to be made in Brussels. Thus, a change from Labour to Conservatives is not a change of government, but the selection of a Party to take charge of that little bit of government which is left for us to manage.

You may argue in this context that a little bit of something is better than nothing at all – and we would have to agree. That is why we have already written that, at the next election, we will probably hold our nose and vote accordingly. But the truth is that a little bit of something – when that something is our government - is not good enough. We want our government back. All of it.

And, if we have an opposition which refuses even to discuss this issue, much less commit to doing anything about it, it makes it hard, very hard, for us to give it our full support. We would like that to be different and feel impelled to try and make it so. We do so because we care.

COMMENT THREAD

A plea for help

Regular readers will have noticed that the volume of posts on this blog has declined somewhat over the past few weeks. The explanation is simple – with Booker, I am currently engaged in writing another book on "global warming" adding, this time, a detailed analysis of the coming energy crisis.

As if this was not enough, I am also writing solo a book on the Snatch Land Rover and its role in the Iraq and Afghani campaigns. This is more than just a book about a vehicle though. The Snatch, in its own way, was an icon which symbolised the lack of preparedness for a messy and dangerous series of counter-insurgency operations.

Thus, the book is turning out to be a comprehensive account of the Iraqi insurgency in the British sector, whence I will move on – perhaps – to Afghanistan. It is possible though that the experiences in Iraq alone will take up the whole of this account.

Inevitably, this self-imposed burden means that I have less time to devote to the blog, which had developed almost to the extent that it had become a full-time job in its own right. This is more the case as, when researching for a book, I obey the classical precepts of letting the facts tell the story.

Thus, unlike much of contemporary so-called science, where the researcher decides on the outcome in advance and then selects the facts to prove the a priori hypothesis, I am trawling through contemporary sources and assembling a narrative, from which I will then draw my conclusions.

As such, the writing is a journey of discovery (the outcome of which I cannot as yet predict – although the shape becomes clearer as I progress) the detail of which is already staggering. I am ashamed of my own ignorance.

In making this journey, I am applying the same techniques which I learned when at the age of 40 I undertook the arduous process of studying for my PhD. Initially, I recall, my view was that writing a thesis was simplicity itself. I was already a published author and long pieces of writing were no sweat – or so I thought.

In a matter of a few months – of what was supposed to be a five-year (part-time) course - I dashed off some 40,000 words and proudly presented the document to my supervisor. His response was to rip it to shreds, clinically dissecting its failings in such a masterful fashion that, defensive though I was, I could not help but agree. I tore up my work and started to learn.

I have to admit that completing the thesis, which eventually ran to 80,000 words, nearly broke me. After four years and some more, despite the investment, the sheer labour and the rigorous discipline had me prepared to walk away from the whole thing, with only the conclusion section to complete. I have since spoken to other PhD students and many went though the same trauma.

Complete it I did, however, and I applied the hard-won skills to the research I conducted for The Great Deception, written by Booker on the basis of the briefs I provided him. After the two years that that took, I vowed to myself "never again", such was the labour and the gruelling intellectual effort. Yet, here I am, doing exactly the same thing, albeit on a completely different subject.

This, though, is a book that must be written, and so far in the long journey I have got up to December 2004, starting from May 2003, having written 25,000 words.

It occurred to me however, as with the exploration of the Qana incident in July 2006, that I could enlist the power of the blogosphere and make this a co-operative effort, as we did the final report.

For those that are interested and prepared to help, what I am after is media, agency and other reports of events – factual accounts, not opinion – from as wide a range a sources as possible, in the British occupied sector of Iraq, currently for the first six months of the year 2005, with special reference to al Amarah and Basra.

As our forum so often illustrates, many of our readers have quite remarkable internet search skills and, if anyone is prepared so to do, I would appreciate them posting links to stories for the relevant period on the thread I have opened up.

In the meantime, for the time it is going to take me to complete the work, I will keep the blog going as best I can, and plough on with the writing. My thanks to you all for visiting the site and bearing with me.

I have cross-posted this on Defence of the Realm, a blog which I am – much to my own frustration – sadly neglecting. However, I will shortly post there, the next chapter of the work in progress.

COMMENT THREAD

The madness of our age

In his column today, Booker takes on the recently published Turner report, full frontal, under the apposite headline: "Blizzard of mad proposals descends on UK."

Published last week, the report is the first formal production of the government's Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, a committee that was appointed in February to give "expert advice on how the UK can best meet its climate change goals."

Its full title is "Building a low-carbon economy – the UK's contribution to tackling climate change", and it is available online as a .PDF document running to 511 pages.

That Booker is one of the few journalists to deal with it is critical terms is depressing enough but what is uniquely depressing is that he – or anyone else - should have to expend any energy at all in so doing.

As he points out so lucidly, in the limited space he has, the report is a catalogue of the most unremitting tosh, page after page of the most unrealistic, unscientific wishful thinking that does not have the remotest chance of coming to fruition.

In a sane world, this report would have been killed at birth, long before it got anywhere near the printing presses - and its stock of 75 percent recycled paper. Someone on the lower reaches of government would have taken one look at it and tossed it into the waste-paper bin, then composing a stiff memo to his minister, suggesting that Turner and his committee should be put out to grass.

But we are not in a sane world. In the upper reaches of government, we have Ed Miliband, a secretary of state of such dismally low intellect that recently "power industry chiefs" took the unprecedented step of ganging up and telling The Times that the man did not understand his job. Yet, this is the man at the receiving end of the Turner report. He, fool that he is, will take it seriously and use it as the basis of policy decisions which will drive us into perdition.

Interestingly, in The Sunday Telegraph today, we have another piece which addresses the "wind power targets" and the claims by the Turner committee that wind power can supply a third of Britain's electricity. These, we are told, "have been condemned as wildly optimistic by leading experts."

Actually, they are not "wildly optimistic". They are barking mad, so way beyond any possibility of achievement that their inclusion transcends mere myopia and stupidity and descends into the realms of lunacy. Yet – by government and so many others – they are being taken seriously, as if they were the production of sane, rational human beings.

The huge problem, though, is that despite the Turner report being a policy document created by blind technocrats, it will be adopted without input from the political classes. There will, for instance, be no debate in parliament on the report and, even if there was, it would be a low-grade, lacklustre affair as the main political parties have bought into the "climate change" miasma and argue only over detail rather than substance.

So it is that the debate lies outside the realm of formal politics, witnessed by Booker's columns on the issue routinely occupying the top slot on the "most viewed" section of his newspaper.

Yesterday, I wrote - in the context of the "Green affair", "We don't mind (about what happens to our MPs), because they don't matter. And they don't matter to us, because we don't matter to them."

Herein is a classic example. The madness that is the Turner report touches us all – it will cost us a great deal in so many ways. Yet the politicians are silent. While tomorrow they will be expending their energies on a debate on the "Green affair", they are not interested in dealing with an issue which is of far more direct importance to all of us.

When they change their minds, and start to deal with this issue seriously, perhaps we will change ours.

(As for the photograph, illustrated is the original concept, with the snowball winging its way towards Turner. I would have preferred the snowball to have been replaced with a brick, or - preferably - a grenade. In the event, our wise and sober-minded editor decided to omit any type of projectile.)

COMMENT THREAD

Flying elephants

Our government meets again tomorrow – that institution called the European Council, which the hacks and all the rest of them insist on calling a summit.

You can tell it's imminent because, all of a sudden, we get a tranche of more than usually inane drivel from Gordon Brown's office, telling us how he is going to take the EU by storm and do such things …

This time, it has generated a highly improbable claim, heralded by The Observer as a headline that must even had this paper sticking its tongue firmly in its cheek.

That headline actually declares, "Jobs come before EU, says Brown", which is supposed to convince us that the munificent Gordon Brown will use the "summit" tomorrow "to push for the scrapping of EU red tape to help save jobs."

We are thus told that the prime minister believes some new directives should be ditched or delayed to ease the pressure on businesses teetering on the brink, and we also learn that he will also "press for the rules of the EU stability and growth pact to be relaxed during the crisis."

Since Brown's idea of running an economy is set to drive the proverbial horse and cart through these rules, this is something of an insurance for him against getting his knuckles rapped, but The Observer also thinks that this could be part of the dark plot to bring the UK into the euro.

Clearly, it thinks that waiving the rules could allow the UK to qualify when at the moment we would not have a hope in hell of meeting the Maastricht criteria. Certainly, the Spectator Coffee House thinks that this talk about the euro is more than idle speculation, and that there is something of substance to the current discussions amongst the "people who matter".

Nevertheless, the emphasis – as far as Downing Street is concerned – will definitely be on "protecting jobs", but getting anything scrapped, as is the declared ambition, is probably so much moonshine for domestic consumption.

So tarnished is the Brown brand, and so improbable the claim, however, that only The Observer has bothered to print it. But what we might see is Brown reactivating his idea about reducing VAT on "green" products, about which the "colleagues" have been distinctly unenthusiastic.

However, there is little chance of anything constructive coming out of the Council – which will run its to its usual overnight session, with the communiqué prepared long before the meetings start. We would have a better chance of seeing elephants floating by, suspended by coloured balloons.

Still, it makes a change from pigs flying. I've given up waiting to see them, so we may as well go for broke.

COMMENT THREAD

Which one's the democrat?

Excerpts from the transcript of a meeting between Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, and members of the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament, Friday 5 December 2008, Prague Castle.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP: I brought you a flag, which - as we heard - you have everywhere here at the Prague Castle. It is the flag of the European Union, so I will place it here in front of you.

It will be a tough Presidency. The Czech Republic will have to deal with the work directive and climate package. EU climate package represents less than what our fraction would wish for. It will be necessary to hold on to the minimum of that. I am certain that the climate change represents not only a risk, but also a danger for the future development of the planet. My view is based on scientific views and majority approval of the EP and I know you disagree with me. You can believe what you want, I don't believe, I know that global warming is a reality.

Lisbon Treaty: I don't care about your opinions on it. I want to know what you are going to do if the Czech Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approve it. Will you respect the will of the representatives of the people? You will have to sign it.

I want you to explain to me what is the level of your friendship with Mr Ganley from Ireland. How can you meet a person whose funding is unclear? You are not supposed to meet him in your function. It is a man whose finances come from problematic sources and he wants to use them to be funding his election campaign into the EP.

President Vaclav Klaus: I must say that nobody has talked to me in such a style and tone for the past 6 years. You are not on the barricades in Paris here. I thought that these manners ended for us 18 years ago but I see I was wrong. I would not dare to ask how the activities of the Greens are funded. If you are concerned about a rational discussion in this half an hour, which we have, please give the floor to someone else, Mr Chairman.

EU Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering: No, we have plenty of time. My colleague will continue, because anyone from the members of the EP can ask you whatever he likes. (to Cohn-Bendit:) Please continue.

President Vaclav Klaus: This is incredible. I have never experienced anything like this before.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Because you have not experienced me..

Pesident Vaclav Klaus: This is incredible.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: We have always had good talks with President Havel. And what will you tell me about your attitude towards the anti-discrimination law? I will gladly inform you about our funding.

Hans-Gert Pöttering: Brian Crowley, please.

Brian Crowley MEP: I am from Ireland and I am a member of a party in government. All his life my father fought against the British domination. Many of my relatives lost their lives. That is why I dare to say that the Irish wish for the Lisbon Treaty. It was an insult, Mr. President, to me and to the Irish people what you said during your state visit to Ireland. It was an insult that you met Declan Ganley, a man with no elected mandate. This man has not proven the sources from which his campaign was funded. I just want to inform you what the Irish felt. I wish you that you get the programme of your Presidency through and you will get through what European citizens want to see.

President Vaclav Klaus: Thank you for this experience which I gained from this meeting. I did not think anything like this is possible and have not experienced anything like this for the past 19 years. I thought it was a matter of the past that we live in democracy, but it is post-democracy, really, which rules the EU.

You mentioned the European values. The most important value is freedom and democracy. The citizens of the EU member states are concerned about freedom and democracy, above all. But democracy and freedom are losing ground in the EU today. It is necessary to strive for them and fight for them.

I would like to emphasize, above all, what most citizens of the Czech Republic feel, that for us the EU membership has no alternative. It was me who submitted the EU application in the year 1996 and who signed the Accession treaty in 2003. But the arrangements within the EU have many alternatives. To take one of them as sacrosanct, untouchable, about which it is not possible to doubt or criticize it, is against the very nature of Europe.

As for the Lisbon Treaty, I would like to mention that it is not ratified in Germany either. The Constitutional Treaty, which was basically the same as the Lisbon Treaty, was refused in referendums in other two countries. If Mr. Crowley speaks of an insult to the Irish people, then I must say that the biggest insult to the Irish people is not to accept the result of the Irish referendum. In Ireland I met somebody who represents a majority in his country. You, Mr. Crowley, represent a view which is in minority in Ireland. That is a tangible result of the referendum.

Brian Crowley MEP: With all respect, Mr. President, you will not tell me what the Irish think. As an Irishman, I know it best.

President Vaclav Klaus: I do not speculate about what the Irish think. I state the only measurable data which were proved by the referendum.

In our country the Lisbon Treaty is not ratified because our parliament has not decided on it yet. It is not the President's fault. Let's wait for the decision of both Chambers of the Parliament, that is the current phase of the ratification process in which the President plays no role whatsoever. I cannot sign the Treaty today, it is not on my table, it is up to the parliament to decide about it now. My role will come after the eventual approval of the Treaty in the Parliament. . .

...

Hans-Gert Pöttering: ... In the conclusion - and I want to leave this room in good terms - I would like to say that it is more than unacceptable, if you compare us, compare us with the Soviet Union. We are all deeply rooted in our countries and our constituencies. We are concerned about freedom and reconciliation in Europe, we are good willing, not naïve.

President Vaclav Klaus: I did not compare you with the Soviet Union, I did not mention the word[s] "Soviet Union". I only said that I have not experienced such an atmosphere, such style of debate in the past 19 years in the Czech Republic, really.

My thanks to Anthony Coughlan for passing this on.

COMMENT THREAD

Mind over matter

Charles Moore is rampant in The Daily Telegraph today, giving vent to his tribalism as he gives "New Labour" a good kicking. But buried in his diatribe are some sobering words. Of the Speaker, and of parliament as a whole, he writes:

Mr Martin does what so many MPs have done in the face of the draining of powers to Europe, Whitehall, the courts and the media. He has settled for bigger offices, more pay, larger expenses and a massive pension - preferring a mess of pottage for himself to the birthright that is ours.

It has been saddening in this rumpus to see how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament - saddening, but understandable. We believe less and less that it belongs to us: we are right.

I am actually mildly surprised that the great Charles Moore has so correctly divined the wider sentiment but he is absolutely right when he notes "how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament."

Away from the pompous, self-regarding Tory claque that infests the blogosphere and the comment sections, this is exactly the case, as I tried to point out in my earlier piece. Far from universal outrage over the presumed breach of parliamentary privilege, what I discerned was amusement, observing that most ordinary people rather enjoyed the prospect of an MP's pad being turned over by the Old Bill.

Interestingly, Moore refers not to the "privileges" of MPs and parliament, but to "rights" and it is undoubtedly because MPs as a collective are so heedless of our rights that we care so little for theirs.

The most important of ours, of course, is the right to have a legislature which makes our laws and is accountable for them, rather than outsourcing them to Brussels and the legions of anonymous officials in Whitehall and elsewhere.

Taking Moore's piece in the round though, I would not disagree with his condemnation of New Labour. But what I dislike about Tory tribalism is the easy fiction that history begins in 1997. It is this that allows all the ills of our society to be laid at Labour's door.

The processes by which the authority of parliament has been eroded, however, started long before Labour took office, not least in 1972 when we joined the EEC - under a Conservative administration. Another giant step in its decline was the ratification of the Maastricht treaty, where John Major rammed through the amendments to the ECA in the teeth of opposition from his own party, a trauma from which the Conservatives have still to recover.

But another gigantic step was Thatcher's ill-conceived reforms of the civil service with introduction of "Next Step" agencies in 1988, and in particular the creation of "sefras". These, above all else, broke the link between parliamentary accountability and huge tranches of public administration.

That, combined with the increasing resort to Statutory Instruments – which saw its biggest leap forwards in the Major era as a handy mechanism for introducing EU law without the inconvenience and embarrassment of a parliamentary debate - and the scene was set for New Labour, which has continued rather than started the process of decline.

The other neglected issue is the nature of our parliamentary system which is, at its very heart, adversarial. The system relies not only on good government but good opposition. The one goes with the other to make a whole.

It is here that we as a nation have been so badly let down. Not only have we had to suffer a uniquely bad government but we have been thus saddled at a time when the opposition has also been weak and ill-directed. The failures we see, therefore, are not simply those of the government but of the system as a whole, the lack of robust and effective opposition being a significant contributory factor.

Whether or not the situation is recoverable, I do not know – I rather suspect it has gone too far down the road to destruction. Certainly, it is going to take a lot more than a debate on Monday. What will make the difference will be when MPs start to realise that they are in parliament not to defend their rights but ours.

Frankly, I do not see this happening and until it does, there will be very little general sympathy for MPs, even if the Old Bill turns over the whole damn lot of them. It is rather a variation on the theme of "mind over matter". We don't mind, because they don't matter. And they don't matter to us, because we don't matter to them.

COMMENT THREAD

Sack him!

I hadn't intended to return to the Damian Green affair so soon – or at all. One becomes a little bored with the whole thing, and more than a little bit despondent at the way the chatterati have dived in with such gusto, completely missing the point.

However, the affair has been useful in certain respects. It has shown up the weakness of the Speaker and the ghastly Jill Pay, the Sergeant at Arms. But more than anything else it has exposed a pathetically neutered parliament that is obsessed about its own standing and privileges and heedless of virtually everything else.

Thus, when the chaps and chapesses wax indignant on Monday about how affronted they all are, remember this is the same parliament that could not be bothered to force a debate on Brown's multi-billion bank "rescue" plan.

It is also – as we keep pointing out – a parliament that it quite content to see its power and authority eroded by the combined forces of an over-powerful executive, the steady march of the quangos and, of course, the European Union. Yet, while its workload had steadily diminished, MPs have awarded themselves increased pay and perks and cushioned themselves with over-generous pensions at our expense.

Most troubling though has been the easy acceptance by the Tory tribe of the misdemeanours of the self-righteous Christopher Galley, the Home Office civil servant who has ridden a horse and cart through the civil service code and breached virtually every rule in the book.

It is of some comfort, therefore – and this is what brings us back into the fray – to learn that Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, has conceded that if the official has "done the leaking" then the Home Office has a right to sack him. He says that the whistleblower will "have to live by that choice."

Grieve is not exactly over-endowed with charisma, which puts him at something of a disadvantage in modern politics, but he is one of the more sensible and certainly one of the brightest MPs in the House. And one senses that he must have been more than a little uncomfortable with a Conservative line that has looked perilously like condoning civil service disloyalty.

That Grieves is rowing back from that position – perceived or otherwise – is a welcome draught of sanity in a debate which has seen more heat than light, and more than a little bit of mindless hyperventilating from the chatterati.

It also seems to suggest that, after the first rush of naked tribalism, cooler heads are beginning to prevail. When a few more people have thought about it – as indeed some are beginning to – the rather tawdry actions of Damian Green will be looked at in something of a different light.

And while others, like the Speaker, have not come out well from the affair, the verdict of history will probably rob Green of his much-prized "victim" status. It may instead cast him as an unprincipled opportunist. One hopes also that Grieve will emerge with an enhanced reputation, which he undoubtedly deserves for breaking away from the crowd and showing some undoubted good sense.

COMMENT THREAD

Sense … but no sense

Given that the recycling system has ground to a halt with the collapse of the China market for our rubbish a report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers advocating the use of combustible (and biodegradable) waste to produce electricity seems to make absolute sense.

Entitled A wasted opportunity, it is picked up by the media today, as in The Times and sundry others, and given a fairly clear run.

Thus you have The Times noting that Ian Arbon, lead author of the report and a visiting professor at the University of Newcastle, says the public were being deceived over the value of recycling. Materials such as metals were ideal for recycling but paper and plastic were worth more as fuel.

So are we told that using waste as a source of energy instead of recycling it has the potential to supply a fifth of the nation's electricity by 2020. Paper recycling "wasn't worth the effort", it is "a nightmare to recycle in this country" but, since "it burns very well", it makes much more sense to burn it.

This is all good stuff until you actually read the report. It offers an executive summary, which is obviously as far as the journalists would have got (although most of them probably relied on the press release) and that rather obscures the real problem.

Happily, it chirps, "The government should redefine waste as an energy resource, allowing the new Department for Energy and Climate Change to focus on its optimal use," so pointing to the underlying issue that waste paper and other such materials are treated, for legislative purposes, as waste rather than an energy source.

What the report does not do, however, is identify what it means by "the government" and here, unfortunately, the whole argument runs into difficulty. The authority in question is not Whitehall (and that useless institution down the road in Westminster) but the European Union.

Alas, the impact of this is buried in the report, and thus missed by the journos. But the message is clear:

Because of public concerns about the emissions from EfW plants, a European Directive on the Incineration of Waste was developed in 2000, which is now almost always referred to as the Waste Incineration Directive (WID), passed into law in England and Wales in 20029 and in Scotland the same year.

Applying WID to a combustion EfW (energy from waste) plant is relatively straightforward in technical terms, but has required substantial redesign of the combustion process technology and is therefore very costly. The net result, however, is that the emission concentrations from a combustion EfW plant are required to be ten times lower than from an equivalent large, coal-fired combustion plant.

There we have it: Directive 2000/76/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 December 2000 on the incineration of waste. This makes it so prohibitively expensive to use combustible material for energy production that it is more economic to put the stuff on the slow boat to China, or anything else, rather than use it as an energy resource.

But the situation is not that simple - it never is. This is also the dead hand of the bureaucracy of Defra to deal with, as Booker reported, when entrepreneur Ross Donovan tried to develop a small-scale system for using cardboard, an issue that was never satisfactorily resolved.

Certainly, according to the Engineer live magazine, other EU member states seem to manage better than the UK and a number have got successful EfW plants up and running.

Here, there is some relief in Directive 2001/77/EC on "the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market", which defines what is acceptable as a "renewable energy source". This allows for the "biodegradable fraction of industrial and municipal waste" to be considered as "biomass" and thence count towards our renewables quota.

Looking at this in context, it would seem a far better idea to burn our paper (and use other methods of producing electricity from biodegradable waste), rather than litter the countryside with wind farms. And, presumably, if burning paper is the use of renewable energy, then operators can take advantage of the renewables obligation subsidy. But as long as Defra seems to labour under the impression that waste paper used for EfW comes under the EU's waste incineration directive, this is a non-starter.

Perhaps, when the Westminster parliament has finished discussing its "privileges", it might do something useful. It could perhaps find time for a debate on this issue, spending just a tiny bit of its valuable time "holding the government to account" on what seems to be its lamentable performance in this area.

That might require a little work on the part of our MPs, and the poor Tories would have to gird their loins and talk about the EU, but such a debate could yield dividends. Until then, the report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, sense though it is, makes no sense.

COMMENT THREAD

Bio-fudge

It is some time since we tackled the vexed question of the EU's biofuels regime but that does not mean that it has gone away. Once the EU digs its claws into an issue it never, never lets go.

As of yesterday, the highly contentious commission proposal that ten percent of road transport fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020 passed through the EU parliament, going to the wire in the third "conciliation" stage where there are direct negotiations between the parliament and the council to reconcile differences in their respective common positions.

The agreement, however – to judge from the limited coverage, including Reuters - seems to be a glorious fudge, as the overall target has been reduced by between a quarter and a third (depending on which report you read) and replaced with a requirement that the overall quota of ten percent "renewables" is made up with green electricity.

This, ostensibly means that member states will have to commit to promoting a huge expansion of electric cars, although how there can be any guarantee that they are recharged with electricity from renewable sources is anyone's guess.

But the fudge goes deeper than that, with the electricity component extending to cover trains as well as road transport, allowing those run by "green" electricity to count towards the renewables quota.

In a further twist, the commission has also agreed that, by 2010, it will come forward with proposals to limit the scope for using virgin land or forestry for biofuel production, answering criticisms that some types of biofuel production create more CO2 than they save. Production will have to be "sustainable", to which effect, the commission is also looking at non food-crops as feed stock – the so-called second generation biofuels.

Although this agreement will have a very significant impact on the UK, it goes without saying that the UK parliament has not been involved. It has much more important things to deal with, like the privileges of its members and the fate of the Speaker.

In due course, it will get its chance to rubber-stamp the proposals but the one thing it will not be able to do is change them. Such issues are can no longer be left to national parliaments as they, clearly, need the time to discuss endlessly their own internal workings and are thus far too busy to deal with tiresome things like environmental legislation.

MPs are, no doubt, eternally grateful that the EU has taken from them so much of their workload in order to allow them to concentrate on the issues that really matter (to them).

COMMENT THREAD

Changing the dinosaur

Without the right kit, our armed forces cannot function effectively, no matter how brave and well-led they might be. Thus, the apparently arcane issue of defence procurement is of vital importance to the well-being and effectiveness of our military. A recent contribution to the debate on procurement is the book "Changing the Dinosaur's Spots" by Bill Kincaid, himself an "insider" who spent 18 years in the MoD. We have a look at this, and conclude that the MoD – which is the subject of the book – is not the only dinosaur.

Posted on Defence of the Realm.

This ain't just "weather"

This is the scene this morning … the third snowfall so far this winter, and the worst early December snows in living memory.

Of course, it's only happening in Yorkshire and the North, so, despite it causing absolute chaos it isn't really happening at all. From his nice warm studio in London, Jon Humphries was thus able cheerily to dismiss the "weather" with the quick one-liner, "There's been some snow, but it will clear later" - the classic "London-centric" view.

The point is that, not only is this unprecedented, we predicted it – based on our own personal "climate model". For all the zillions spent on the official models though, none of them did – and neither are the "warmists" at all keen to draw attention to the current state of the Arctic sea ice (below) which is well ahead of last year.


We have charted the emergence of what is quite clearly a global cooling trend on this blog (google "snow" on our dedicated search engine, top-left) and also noted how the "warmist" twitterers have been banging on about ski resorts going out of business because of the lack of snow (they are enjoying a record early season) and the "green Christmas" with the leaves still on the trees because of global warming.

With the Climate Act, as we must now call it, on the statute book, history will doubtless show this to be one of the greatest acts of folly ever perpetrated by our legislators, and another example of the great "disconnect" between our political classes and the rest of the nation.

Out and about this morning, taking photographs of our new ice age (more on EU Ref 2 here), I exchanged merry words with a lady who was taking her dog out for a walk. One mention of "global warming" had her exploding into derision, storming: "They do talk a load of rubbish, don't they!"

This is indeed another sign of that "disconnect" that even Prof King noticed, something which the denizens of the Westminster bubble can't even begin to take on board. They're losing it - to say nothing of the "colleagues" - and they haven't even begun to understand why.

COMMENT THREAD

Scepticism "morphed into contempt"

It was a sad day for me yesterday, doing something I will only ever have to do once in my lifetime – attend my mother's funeral.

The death of the person who brought you into this world is something of a milestone in anyone's life, and it gets you thinking about what really is important and what is not. Too often, I sense, we chase after the things that seem so pressing at the time and neglect things (and people) to which we should give far more time.

It is no contradiction though that one of the first things I should do on returning home from helping, with my brother, to put my mother's body into an incinerator – in a building we euphemistically call a crematorium (which is still subject to EU emission regulations) – is sit down to write a very political post.

My mother was intensely political, in a non-partisan way, with a cutting wit and a way with words which could shred the pomposity and hypocrisy of contemporary politicians. That ability, I fear, she passed on to me – one that has dogged what passes for a political career and ensures that I will never progress.

Another thing she taught me was how to think for myself. That is more a curse than a blessing these days, when it is so much easier to absorb opinions ready-made and run with the crowd, but at least I can sleep at nights in the certain knowledge that the mistakes I make are my own.

Thus endowed, I could not resist reviewing the latest offering from Anthony King in what is now yesterday's Daily Telegraph. His piece is headed, "As the Queen opens Parliament, the chasm between politics and people widens," with a pull-quote which sums up his thesis: "Our scepticism about politicians has morphed into contempt".

Had my mother been alive to read this (although it is unlikely she would have read it – she had long ago given up on The Telegraph) she would have tossed the paper aside with the – dare I say it – contemptuous comment: "He's noticed, at last!"

Better late than never, though, and King is right. I was reared by my mother on a healthy scepticism of politics and, over the years it has indeed morphed, first into cynicism and now contempt. And it truly must be universal if King – in his own little bubble – has noticed.

In an otherwise laborious piece, though, one paragraph stands out, the second, where he states:

… the truth is that the deepest divide in British politics today is not between Labour and the Tories; or between Speaker Michael Martin and irate backbench MPs; or between members of Gordon Brown's Cabinet and each other. It is between Britain's whole political class and the great majority of the British people. On the far side of a chasm stand politicians of all parties and their hangers-on. On the near side is almost everyone else.

This is more or less what we've been writing on this blog for ages, trying to point out to the chatterati and the politicos that they are so ensconced in their impenetrable bubbles that they have lost the ability to realise how out of touch, and how detested, they really are.

Oddly enough, we published a piece on this blog, well over a year ago, headed "us and them" – precisely the theme which King rehearsed yesterday. It was that same theme which I aired in Tuesday's piece, with the title "From outside the bubble". Between us, we have rehearsed this theme so often that we sound more like an cracked 78 record, yet it remains relevant, for all the repetition.

However, there are serious problems with King's piece. Amongst other things, he does not mention the "elephant in the room" and the marginalisation of parliament that the devolution of its powers to Brussels has brought. While he complains that "our system of government is failing to perform adequately", he himself fails entirely to recognise (or even acknowledge) that our system of government now includes the European Union as the dominant player. And neither does he seem to understand that the two are connected.

As a result, he clearly cannot see that, having devolved most of the real governance of this country to Brussels, MPs have very little serious work to do. The thinness of the Queen's Speech illustrated that – little of any real substance. Yet the "big issue" over the water is the CAP "reform", about which Bruno Waterfield wrote yesterday.

Can anything better illustrate how far down the line we have gone when the main preoccupation of MPs yesterday was the Damian Green affair, and the protection of their "privileges"? Yet, the loss of their essential privilege (if you like to call it that) of making the laws in this country has completely passed them by.

Had she been alive, my mother would have enjoyed the comparison. As a Land Army girl during the dark days of the Second World War, she had first-hand experience of the importance of agriculture to this nation – an importance that has not diminished with time. Yet when did we last have MPs debating an Agriculture Act in parliament?

Thus, when the self-important David Cameron defended his little pal Damian Green, declaring that parliament was "here to hold the government to account and to publish information that is in the public interest", I am sure my mother would have loved to ask him how parliament can indeed hold the government to account when so much of it is in Brussels.

Come to think of it, I would dearly like to ask Mr Cameron that, myself. Perhaps one day I will get the opportunity. And when answer there is none, I would like to think that my contemptuous smile is worthy of my mother, my teacher.

COMMENT THREAD

Outrage shouldn't be one-sided

A fairly balanced review of the Damian Green affair from Peter Riddell in The Times. And a sharp reminder from Gus O'Donnell.

Very light blogging today ... I have to attend to family business.

COMMENT THREAD

It's getting bad here ...

The coal reserves are so low, we can see the bottom of the bath. Thank goodness we're going to be allowed to pay more for our electricity to stop this runaway global warming.

COMMENT THREAD

From outside the bubble

Waking this morning to a coating of snow, with the central heating thermostat control jammed up against the stops in an attempt to ward off the Arctic chill, one greets the news that the great Lord Turner is happily warning us of increased fuel bills to ward off "global warming" with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

A mere 200 miles from London, it really is a different world here, and the further news that, last week, the Climate Change Bill received Royal Assent and thus becomes law of the land, is greeted with a certain amount of incredulity, inviting shakes of the head and a bemused expression normally reserved for the actions of a lunatic.

Incidentally, if you look carefully at the right hand side of the picture – of a not untypical Bradford back street – you will see two old fridges dumped outside one of the houses. We have one of them in our road as well. They are a standard part of the street furniture round here – the Council won't take them away and no one is prepared to pay the small fortune needed to get rid of them.

Mind you, this is a neighbourhood which – away from the frenetic, self-serving bubble of Westminster, and the squawks of indignation at the treatment of Mr Green – rather enjoys the prospect of an MP's pad being turned over by the Old Bill. Most of us here have enjoyed the attentions of Yorkshire's finest and it is nice to see our elected representatives sharing our pain.

Should Green ever be banged up, the most probable reaction will be to ask when the other 600 or so will join him. You will not get any complaints here if the whole damn lot of them are locked up, much less any accusations of a police state, with Stalin-like tendencies. Only the "poofters daan Sarf" expect their police to be anything other than thugs in uniform - and even the dustmen seem better dressed.

Something of this is undoubtedly reflected in the ComRes poll conducted for The Independent. This puts the Tories on 37 percent and Labour on 36, with the Lib-Dems on 17. These figures, we are told, would give Gordon Brown an overall majority of 10 if repeated at a general election.

This, of course, is a rogue poll. Of course it is. But, a week ago, we were suggesting that Labour's pre-budget report might play better with the lower orders – the ignorati as we put it – than the clever-dick chatterati were prepared to admit.

Needless to say, we were shouted down, but an interesting facet of this current "rogue" poll is a strong surge in Labour support among the bottom social group. The DE group has risen from 35 to 51 percent over the past month while Tory support among the same group has dropped from 39 to 25. Labour's backing among C2 skilled manual workers has grown from 23 to 35 percent.

Perhaps significantly, even if it is a rogue poll, the number of "natural Tories" who intend to support their party has also fallen from 95 to 91 percent. And the Tory cause won't have been helped by the appearance of the well-groomed Tory Boy Christopher Galley on the telly last night – so confident of his "cause" that he remained silent and allowed his highly-paid lawyer Neil O'May to do his talking for him.

Thus it was his lawyer who told the world – or that small bit of it that could be bothered to watch – that the information leaked by Galley was "important for the public to know in an open and democratic parliamentary system." We are also pleased to learn that "as a shadow minister for immigration and as a Member of Parliament, Damian Green received the information in the same spirit and used it in his parliamentary duties." And the other one has bells on.

Up here in the sticks, though, we don't understand such subtleties. We ain't clever like what all these other bloggers are, having "lost our marbles" long ago. However, it may come as a shock to them that all the pub-goers see here, as they stand outside in the freezing cold to smoke their fags, is another "Tory prat" getting his comeuppance.

But then, it really is a different world 200 miles outside the bubble. Little Galley's lawyer yesterday burbled about his leaking being a case of "don't shoot the messenger". Here, we're not leaking – just pissed off. And it looks like, according to this totally rogue poll which don't mean nuffink, that the messengers here and elsewhere are shooting back.

COMMENT THREAD

The four horsemen for hire

War, hunger, poverty and sickness will stalk humanity if the world fails to tackle climate change, the 12-day UN conference on global warming at Poznan was told yesterday. Simultaneously – in what cannot be a coincidence – we have the government's "global warming advisor" warning that, "It is not too late to tackle climate change, but it will be unless the world takes action soon".

This is from a report by The Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner, but what grabbed The Daily Telegraph's attention was the committee’s acknowledgement that the higher electricity and gas prices created by investment in renewables "could push a further 1.7 million households into fuel poverty".

But never mind, says Turner, 400,000 of those could be lifted out by energy efficiency measures in their homes, which just leaves 1.3 million households driven into fuel poverty by a policy which seeks deliberately to raise energy costs in order to reduce consumption and thereby emissions.

However, the drive for renewables, funded by the hidden "renewables obligation" subsidy system is only one component of the raft of extra costs. The other major element is the EU's emission trading scheme which, two weeks ago, netted Alistair Darling a cool £54 million. He is set to scoop up another £1 billion over the next four years.

Writes Jonathan Leake of The Sunday Times, "we are witnessing the birth of the greatest and most complex commodity market the world has seen." The ETS is part of a global "carbon permits" market which, last year was worth more than £55 billion. Future trading volumes, if all goes global according to plan, will dwarf these.

Yet, as Leake observes, carbon trading shows no sign of achieving its purpose: CO2 emissions have increased, not slackened, since the first trading schemes. He even quotes Jim Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard space centre who believes carbon trading is a "terrible" approach. "Carbon trading does not solve the emission problem at all," he says. "In fact it gives industries a way to avoid reducing their emissions. The rules are too complex and it creates an entirely new class of lobbyists and fat cats."

This, we ourselves have observed, pointing up the fact now recognised by Leake that the whole system is nothing more than a money-making scam. But neither he nor anyone else, it seems, is making the final link between increased energy costs, greater fuel poverty and then, as we pointed out, increased cold weather mortality.

To add to this burden, there is also the added burden of carbon capture, with Turner recommending that the government should not allow the use of coal for electricity generation without carbon capture technology beyond the early 2020s. New coal-fired power stations, he also says, should only be built with the "clear expectation and certainty" that they should be retrofitted with carbon capture.

If we also factor in that the world, at this time, seems to be undergoing a period of cooling, reducing food supplies and adding considerably to domestic fuel bills, as well as increasing competition for scarce resources, we could easily make the case that the global warming scam, in adding to economic stresses, could trigger war, hunger, poverty and sickness.

For the moment though, it seems that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are out for hire, and the "warmists" are paying better. But then, with our money being plundered from our pockets to pay for their scam, they have an unlimited purse.

COMMENT THREAD

And talking of democracy being undermined ...

... here is a story that appeared in the Telegraph a few days ago, that my colleague covered some time back (though to be fair The Times was writing about it then as well). This time it has been noted by Rick Moran on American Thinker as well.

As my colleague wrote in September:

If there was any more evidence needed that the climate change scam has become precisely that – a vast money-making scam – turn to: The Times today (business section) for an interview with Chris Osborne, "boss of the LECG consultancy".

The egregious Chris is touting the idea that there should be an International Court of the Environment in London, which should become "the supreme legal authority for settling issues regarding harm to the environment". Apart from another boost to tranzie ambitions, this would, of course, provide another generous income stream for high-priced city lawyers - as well as jobs for the LECG "experts".

In the Telegraph story, the idea has moved on a bit. We now have lawyers calling for that International Court for Environmental Crimes. Well, they would, wouldn't they. Lawyers, generally speaking, will always call for more power being given to them as well as greater funds that they can play around with and not be accountable for.

The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.

Mr Hockman, a deputy High Court judge, said that the threat of climate change means it is more important than ever for the law to protect the environment.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland this month is set to begin negotiations that will lead to a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen next year. Developed countries are expected to commit to cutting emissions drastically, while developing countries agree to halt deforestation.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has agreed the concept of an international court will be taken into account when considering how to make these international agreements on climate change binding. The court is also backed by a number of MPs, climate change experts and public figures including the actress Judi Dench.

Mr Hockman said an international court will be needed to enforce and regulate any agreement.

I am, as it happens, a great admirer of Dame Judi Dench's but whether she plays Chekhov or comedy in "A Fine Romance" she is not somebody whose views on matters legal and political can be of the slightest interest to the rest of us.

I would, however, like to know which MPs are backing this latest proposal for undermining national, constitutional, accountable democracy and whether they have been bloviating recently on the subject of Damien Green.

The rule of law

Two MPs who between them have significantly contributed to undermining democracy and the role of parliament are now amongst those most voluble in defending parliamentary privilege – and both are given space in The Daily Telegraph.

The first pile of cant we have already looked at - that was Nick Clegg who gravely opines that "the sight of police rifling through boxes of Mr Green's correspondence, through disc after disc of computerised information, will erode public confidence in the role MPs play in their communities. All at a time when confidence in politicians is already at an all-time low."

Then we have democrat extraordinaire Denis Macshane, former Europe minister, who tells us that, "We defend our privileges not to be self-important or to defame our foes, but as a vital democratic defence of the rights of a free people in a country that lives under rule of law, not under decisions of the police."

With Mr Macshane's connivance, of course, we are no longer "a free people in a country that lives under the rule of law", but citizens of the European Union, subject to its arbitrary law which is beyond the reach of either the UK parliament or democracy. As for Mr Clegg's concern that, "confidence in politicians is already at an all-time low," he might better expend his energies on working out why that might be.

Then there is the "rule of law" that Mr Macshane prattles on about. Here, he might like to set himself a test by asking the following: if the police have reasonable suspicion that a person has committed an offence; if they then arrest him in accordance with legal procedures; if they question him within the framework of the procedures set down and agreed by parliament, and within the time-span allowed; if they then release him on bail, allowing them to carry out further inquiries and then either to charge the person or release him from bail – where is there conflict with the rule of law?

Further, if the police themselves ask permission from the Speaker of the House to search the office of an MP and take away material pertinent to their enquiry, and they are given it by the Speaker, where then is there any cause for complaint about police conduct?

And, when Mr Mcshane (and many of our forum contributors) have finished hyperventilating, they might care to refresh their memories about what the "rule of law" actually entails. Wikipedia does a good job, stating that, in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law. It cites Thomas Paine and his pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which notes: "For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." The entry then elaborates:

Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy.

Perhaps ironically, the Wikipedia entry also tells us that it has been said that the phrase "the Rule of Law" has become meaningless thanks to ideological abuse and general over-use. Certainly, I am not minded to take lessons on the "rule of law", nor democracy, nor even "parliamentary privilege" from the likes of Mr Mcshane or Mr Clegg - nor indeed from the mob rule which seems to be prevailing on this issue.

And if you wish to assert that majority opinion is always right, why is the Labour Party in government?

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